The city of Mosul is being coaxed to commit suicide. It has been for over a hundred years, ever since the Americans and their lackeys came for the first time. The words they whisper tell every citizen of the city to end it in a spectacular way, the most spectacular way.

Every single person that accepts their offer gives them further justification to be here – at least in their eyes.

Zahra realized not too long ago that it’s just another business deal. You, the repressed, broken down, socially atomized Mosuli with no hope for the present, much less the future, and are living under a permanent apartheid, get to martyr yourself and earn your place in heaven. They, the Americans and their slimy, suction cup-laden corporate appendages, get to point to your corpse and the bodies of the others you took out and say ‘See? This is why we need to be here!’ But you don’t care about that because you’ve gone and killed yourself to get to heaven.

The Americans love their deals.

For the young and dumb the trade-off might be worth it. For someone wanting to build something, well, it’s hard to build anything when you’ve detonated a suicide vest and blown yourself to bloody smithereens. Another victory for the Americans.

It tastes like ashes on her tongue and acrid smoke in her nostrils, even through the niqab she wears. Surrounding her are the Americans’ justifications – collapsed towers and destroyed warehouses. One puts people on the street, the other starves them. Then the homeless and starving people fall into the arms of the Ikhwan, who then offer them the chance at revenge through suicidal violence, which then causes more bombs to fall and on and on and on until the sun explodes.

To her left is half a building, a six-story apartment building that over a hundred people called home. Rescue workers and volunteers were still pulling out the bodies. Every so often they’d pull out a kid or an old woman. One half stands strong, the other half collapsed downwards upon its foundations. The bomb hit just the right spot to fracture the building up its spine.

And to her right is a small market, serviced by a nearby warehouse that was billowing dark smoke into the night sky. The dead, dying, and refusing-to-die lay or sit or stand where life as normal happened twelve hours ago.

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Between the two, in the middle of an intersection with knocked down stop signs, stand Zahra and her team.

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Zahra tilts her head back and looks at the sky. The lights across the river make it impossible to see the stars. Before it slipped beyond the unconscious veil, she saw a river. They’re about a hundred meters away, give or take.

<> she tells the very upset woman.

<> Khawla responds. She has the name of an ancient warrior that fought alongside the prophet Muhammed, blessed be his name, and Khalid and the likes. Perhaps she has the temperament, too.

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<> a helpful voice asks.

<>

In the firelights, Sajjad smiles at her. Under her niqab, she doesn’t blush. There’s a certain sleaziness about his good looks. Like he’d try to sell you a ‘brand new’ car with a hundred thousand kilometers on it.

<> another voice. Low and calm; almost bored. Idris – the whites of his eyes shine against the sub-Saharan darkness of his skin. Tucked into his waistline, held in place by his belt, is a copy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Always been a nerd.

Zahra inhales through her nostrils. The veil acts as a pseudo-filter, keeps her allergies at bay, keeps her pale face hidden. She’s an outsider in these parts, among these people. Best not to stand out.

<>

In a cave underneath a thousand tons of rubble, someone stirs. Physical details are impossible to make out – his face is caked with a grimy cocktail of blood and dirt and sweat. Whenever he moves, concrete sand falls and covers him further.

From his little grotto, he can see the people responsible. Skyscrapers across the river shine, beacons to the prosperity of the ‘new Middle East’ carved out of the old, built atop the skeletons of millions. Tallest of them all is the Burj Wolfe, outlined in neon lavender and taller than any building on the planet. If you stood atop it you could shake God’s hand.

Those buildings have taunted him all his life and now as he dies it’s all he can look at. Every so often an ambulance or fire truck roars past, ignorant to his plight. A building collapsed on top of him, why would anyone assume he was alive?

Out of the cloud of distant voices surrounding him, some draw closer. Two women, arguing.

<>

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<> A man this time, his voice high and nasally.

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There’s a pause in the conversation. He tries to make a sound but his throat fails him. His name, age, home, it all escapes him in the moment.

Another man speaks up, his voice deep and rough.

<>

There’s more silence.

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One of the women loudly groans.

Footsteps echo on the cracked pavement, the rubber and plastic soles of old combat boots. They draw nearer every second. He moves his arm; something loudly shifts above him.

The footsteps stop.

<> the calmer woman says.

<>

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

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Four figures walk into his limited field of vision. Three carry weapons in their hands, one is sheathed in an all-black abaya that blocks the light from the other side of the Tigris. The person in the shawl stops while the three continue on.

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The three hurriedly return to her side. They all turn to face him; the woman in the abaya is the shortest, the other woman has curly brown hair that tumbles past her shoulders, one of the men has pitch-dark skin, and the last is enormously tall and has a wild, frizzy beard. There might’ve been a fifth somewhere. Both of the women are much shorter than the men, but without a proper frame of reference he cannot tell if the women are short or if the men are just really, really tall. The three all carry weapons in their hands, two AK-type carbines and one shorter MP5.

The one wreathed in black walks forward, crouches down. She spots the small cave he’s stuck in, and his eyes meet hers. His are dark brown, bloodshot and exhausted. Hers are blue like a thunderbolt. There are golden rings surrounding her black pupils.

<> the non-sheathed woman says.

<> the man with the congested voice replies.

Footsteps crunch over debris-gravel as they approach. It’s the other woman; she pulls a flashlight from a pocket and shines it in his face. It’s like staring into the sun. He can hear his optical nerves frying.

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The woman in the shawl directs the flashlight away from his eyes.

<

It sounds right. Yusef. The eleventh son of Yaqub, the one who advised the pharaohs of Egypt and saved the early Israelites. It feels right. Haddad, either blacksmith in Aramaic or an ancient Canaanite storm god.

The woman’s Arabic has an accent to it, thick and strong and cold. To him, she might as well be a Russian. Maybe she is. Maybe Serbian, or Balkan. Bosnian? He tried to remember his old commander’s fairy tales of the Ottoman Caliphate, how this new caliphate would dwarf that one and the caliphates of the Abbasids, Umayyads, and Radishuns combined.

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<> the other woman asks.

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He coughs. Dust on his tongue, deep in his throat, coating his airways and lungs.

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He coughs some more.

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He trails off under the gaze of the two women. Spits bloody sand out of his mouth.

The woman with her hair loose crouches low, trying to get to eye level with him.

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<> The two glare at each other. He feels at a distinct disadvantage.

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One of the men – the dark-skinned one – walks forward to meet the two women. The Jalut-sized man stays distant. He makes the AK-carbine in his hands look miniscule.

<> the dark-skinned man asks. He’s African. Has to be. Has the accent and everything. He guesses Sudanese.

<>

The two women look at each other. The shawled woman’s blue eyes pierce through the night.

<> the woman with her hair loose asks. Zah? Was that her name?

<> this Zah woman mutters to herself. <> Her voice rises. <>

She rises and takes a few steps back. From out of her veil she pulls a flare gun, and she fires up at the stars. The flare rises high above the wreckage of this city, the newest, brightest star in the sky, shimmering green against the dark.

The Goliath-sized man trundles forward and scans Yusef’s precarious state. The dark-skinned man approaches as well .

<>

And he fucking lifts, the collapsed concrete and rebar wall holding Yusef hostage against the ground. At least two hundred kilograms; he bends at the knees and rises like an Olympic weightlifter, a picture-perfect deadlift. He doesn’t even exhale in the process. The dark-skinned one takes Yusef’s hand and drags him and his one good leg out.

The air tastes fresher outside. It almost tastes like water.

<>

He hears a gun cock from above him – a magazine being slammed into the well, the weapon’s action snapping into action, primed to fire. He feels cold steel against his crown, through his messy hair. He swallows; his saliva feels like mud going down his esophagus.

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There’s silence. They’re not here to save me. And yet they showed up at all. Something pushes his head to the pavement; the gun to his head presses down, down, down, like a dull spearhead, trying to fracture his skull inwards.

<> The Zah woman speaks, calmly, well-collected. Her accent is strong and foreign. Yusef still can’t place it but it’s certainly European in some way. <> She dips her hand underneath the abaya again, pulls out an old, break-action grenade launcher. The barrel is sawn-off. She aims it at him – even if the grenade doesn’t prime it’ll shatter his skull.

He looks around. What was left of them? There was never one Ikhwan, but dozens. Ikhwan translates to Brethren. There are the Ikhwan Ghazis, the Ikhwan Mutatawwi’a, the al-Mubarizun and al-Rahrain. But after this…

He nods. He used to be one of them; the Mubarizun. Champions. The best of the best. Best of who’s left.

<>

The launcher disappears underneath the shawl again, into a holster along her thigh – he makes out tan and dirt-coloured camouflage. Did I just get recruited into a paramilitary? They all have matching uniforms – tan and dirt, splatters and splotches of olive green.

<> He mutters to himself. He’s Yusef, for sure. He’s not sure if he wants to be anytime soon.

Over the hustle and bustle of nearby emergency services, the thrum of engines and squeal of tires and the creaking and clanking of old axles and suspensions, there’s the buzz of an approaching helicopter. The man with the dark skin looks up and Yusef follows his gaze, only to see, nothing.

Wait.

It’s blotting out the stars above.

An old Mi-17 helicopter, painted black as a starless midnight. It arrives from the east and swings around to block out the vile violet the Burj Wolfe radiates. It carries no weapons, not even machineguns.

The green flare continues its descent, burning up as it closes upon the river. Below it is the Mi-17, the Hip as the Americans call it. A side door slides open as it hovers just off the ground and out step two more men. One covers the lower half of his face with a bandanna, the other is short and stocky and wears a red beret.

Yusef rises to his feet and his legs scream in pain. But the handgun jammed into the small of his back moves him forward.

<> the man with the beret asks, loudly.

<> the woman in the shawl responds.

The rest of these paramilitaries easily hop aboard, except for the woman in the shawl. The man in the beret extends a hand and pulls her aboard, as Yusef slowly shambles forwards on legs that feel broken.

Then, in full view of everyone, she pulls off the black cloak and veil. Underneath is a young woman – barely more than a teenager, short and thin, with fair skin that has no place anywhere below the 50th parallel. Her hair is so blonde it borders on white. But across her round face is a nasty, gnarled scar, diagonal from the right of her jawline practically to her hairline, passing over the bridge of her nose between her eyes. The skin is healed, the tissue two shades darker.

Yusef stares at her.

Then he gets shoved from behind.

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>

The woman holding a gun to his back shoves him again. He turns despite the protestations of his legs and she raises the gun to his face.

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Yusef backpedals, this horrible woman advancing forwards until he smacks against the side-door of the Hip. He sees stars, then he sees the stars above. Then a hand spins him around and hefts him aboard. It’s the man with the beret, and he smiles at him.

<> He says.

Yusef looks around. It looks empty – a Hip has room for twenty-four. It is empty, even with all the weapons and supplies. There’s a small holographic television at the back, projected upwards off the floor.

<> Yusef asks. It’s time he gets answers.

But the dark-skinned man slides the door shut, and it closes on the outside world with a loud clang. He turns and looks at Yusef.

<>