Raymond Khoury - The Sanctuary

The sun had disappeared behind the peaks towering over them by the time they turned off the main road to head south through a narrow valley. A small river coursed through it, and the Peugeot bounced down a gravelly path alongside it for a couple of miles before the road petered out in a small clearing where four dour-faced men were waiting for them.

They’d brought mules — loaded with gear, and, Mia noticed with a tinge of gratitude, saddled — and were armed with Kalashnikov submachine guns and rifles.

The driver cut the engine. Mia climbed out and watched as the men helped Abu Barzan out of the car. They exchanged hearty kisses to each others’ cheeks, coupled with big, backslapping bear hugs, and impassionedly bemoaned Abu Barzan’s gunshot. Once the intense ritual was over, Abu Barzan turned to Mia.

“We go now,” he simply stated, inviting her to the fly-infested mule that waited lazily by his side.

She glanced up at the daunting mountains bearing down on them and nodded.

Corben veered off the main road ten miles past Al Amadiyya and onto a winding dirt trail that headed north. The four-wheeled drivetrain of the Land Cruiser was getting a real workout, groaning in protest as the SUV struggled up the mountain along what wasn’t much more than a mule path.

“Abu Barzan said it was a ‘Yazidi’ village,” Corben recalled as he wrestled with the wheel, trying to avoid the larger rocks in their way. “You know much about them?”

“Only that they’re devil worshippers,” Kirkwood mentioned casually, with a wry smile.

“Good to know.” Corben shrugged.

It was a common misconception, but one that, right now, watching the annoyance across Corben’s face, gave Kirkwood a modicum of pleasure.

More accurately, the Yazidis, also known as the Cult of Angels, were a small, peaceful sect who had resisted Islam for centuries. Their religion, which included Zoroastrian, Manichean, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic elements, was claimed to be the oldest on earth. They rejected the concepts of sin, the devil, and hell and believed in purification and redemption through metempsychosis — the transmigration of souls — and, yes, they did worship Satan, only as a fallen angel who had repented, been pardoned by God, and had been reinstated in heaven as the chief of all angels. Saddam had a particular loathing for the Yazidis. He’d nurtured the devil worshipper tag, using it to carve a fault line between them and the Kurds. After the first Gulf war, during his revenge attacks on the Kurds, Yazidi villages were brutally raided and sacked. Men were executed, their own families made to pay for the bullets used in the killings.

The landscape grew progressively more lush, more closely resembling the densely forested mountains farther north. As the Land Cruiser labored up the steep trail, the temperature also dropped markedly. Sunset was less than an hour away by the time they spotted thin spires of smoke rising into the early-evening sky. Soon after, the bare village came into focus.

Corben parked the SUV on a small shoulder just off the rocky trail. He pocketed a small wad of hundred-dollar bills, tucked his handgun behind him under his belt, and glanced over to Kirkwood.

“Help me do this,” he reminded Kirkwood, “and I’ll help you get Evelyn out, you have my word on that.”

Kirkwood didn’t seem mollified. “It’s not like I have much of a choice, is it?”

“You want this too,” Corben reiterated. “Let’s find it. We can figure out the rest later.”

Kirkwood shrugged and nodded. Corben knew Kirkwood was right in that he didn’t have much of a choice. He also knew the lure of what they might find in that village was pretty hard to resist.

He freed Kirkwood’s wrist, and they headed into the village.

Nerva Zhori was a small, forgotten settlement, nestling safely in a cleft in the steep mountainside. Low stone walls, interrupted by the occasional rusty metal gate, lined both sides of the central, dusty alley; behind small courtyards littered with wheelbarrows and building material, low mudbrick houses squatted among scattered poplar trees, one side of them backing up against the rising mountain, the other looking down at the drop of the hill and the forest below. Mud was the material of choice in these mountains; even the reed roofs were covered by a thick blanket of dried earth. A few pickup trucks, old and weathered, dotted the lane. A row of ducks waddled across the lane while cows and horses grazed in wild fields behind the houses, picking at patches of tall grass in the otherwise barren soil. The harvests were long gone, and the harsh mountain winter was approaching.

As the two men advanced into the village, a few local faces stared at them. A couple of children and an old woman stopped what they were doing to watch them pass. They didn’t get many visitors up here, but the Yazidis were known for their mild, accepting manners and their hospitality. The two men acknowledged their hosts with small, friendly nods that were cautiously returned. Corben studied the faces of the villagers who eyed them somewhat nervously, then picked out a young boy.

“Do you speak English?” he asked.

The youth shook his head.

“Aawiz itkallam maa il mokhtar” —I need to talk to the chief — Corben told him, hoping the boy understood some Arabic. The Yazidis were Kurds and spoke the northern, Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish. He assisted the translation by reaching out to the boy’s hand and stuffing a hundred-dollar bill in it, reiterating, “Mokhtar.”

The youth hesitated, then nodded apprehensively. He stuffed the bill in the back pocket of his pants, then gestured for them to follow him.

Corben gave Kirkwood a triumphant nod and followed their local guide.

A burning sensation blazed across Mia’s back and legs as the silent convoy snaked its way up the winding trail. They’d mounted the mules hours earlier, and despite trudging on without a respite, she didn’t feel they were getting any closer.

They’d come across rifle-bearing shepherds, guarding their flocks of sheep and goats from roaming packs of wolves and hyenas — the thought of which only added to her discomfort — and armed smugglers who led cigarette-laden donkeys up the mountain, acknowledging each other’s presence with grunts and vigilant, silent stares.

The mountains were riddled with trails, and it was impossible for the authorities on either side to cover all of them, so they had simply given up. The border was porous, but getting across required a level of commitment and fitness that Mia was only just beginning to understand.

The landscape around them was markedly different from the flat wastelands they’d left behind. Deep valleys filled with rushing water cleaved through the dramatic ranges that towered above them. Pistachio forests and clusters of tall poplars dotted the otherwise inhospitable terrain, all of it crisscrossed by a maze of hidden paths.

“How much further?” Mia asked.

Abu Barzan conveyed her question to one of his men, then replied, “One hour. Maybe more.”

Mia breathed out despondently, then steeled herself and straightened up. She soldiered on, driven by the anger at being deceived, the need to find out the truth about her father, and the desperate need to rescue her mother.

The boy led Corben and Kirkwood past a battered Toyota pickup and into a dusty front yard. The low house that nestled against the hill was no different from any of the others. Not exactly Gracie Mansion, Corben mused, as he followed the boy up to the front door.

The boy pushed it open and announced their presence. A gruff voice bellowed out from deeper in the house. The boy took off his shoes and placed them alongside other, tattered shoes. Corben followed suit, as did Kirkwood.