Path of Jen: Bloodborne (11 page)

“
Hello?
” she
said.

“Good afternoon. I am Tom Davidson. I am an
assistant to Congressman Paul Seaver, and the congressman asked me
to call you on his behalf.”

Fouzia rolled her eyes and groaned. “Look,
Tom, I am sure you mean well, but I just got off a long shift at
the hospital and I’m tired. I don’t have the time or energy to
participate in a survey or poll, or whatever this is.”

“Oh no, ma’am!” he said apologetically. “I am
so sorry, that’s not what this is about. The congressman wants to
meet with you and your husband to talk about your daughter." There
was an awkward silence on both ends of the phone as Fouzia fought
to catch her breath and Tom waited for her to respond. “Would you
be able to meet sometime this week?” Tom asked.

“Yes!” Fouzia shouted, sitting up straight.
Her heart was pounding and her entire body was trembling. “I’m
sorry,” she laughed while wiping tears from her eyes. “I didn’t
mean to yell at you, it’s just that I am so excited to finally
speak with someone about her." She stood up and began pacing. “We
can meet as soon as possible. You tell me when and we’ll be
there.”

“Okay then,” Tom said kindly. “I understand
your eagerness, and I apologize that we weren’t able to contact you
sooner. The congressman read each of your letters and assures me
that he is taking a personal interest in Jena’s case. I am putting
you down for tomorrow at 11:15. Do you need directions to his
Dallas office?” he asked.

“Tomorrow at 11:15,” Fouzia repeated as she
wrote it on the inside of her forearm. “
No,
we
’ll find it. Thank you so much! We’ll be there tomorrow."
She ended the call and fell face first onto the bed again. This
time it wasn’t from exhaustion. This time she was energized and her
whole body hummed with excitement. She bounced up and ran for the
shower. She needed to find Najid and get ready for the meeting
tomorrow.

A few moments later, Fouzia was standing
under the showerhead as hot water cascaded over her body. The
stress and fatigue seemed to melt away under the cleansing flood.
“The cleansing flood…
or
blood,
”
she considered. She remembered something Jena
said to her when she was eleven. Fouzia had praised her for being
extra helpful and considerate, and asked her why the big change?
Jena had shrugged and replied with a smile, “I’ve been washed
clean, Mom." At the time, Fouzia had passed it off as a weird
response.
“Sarah and her family are Christians…”
thought
Fouzia. She held her hand to her mouth and laughed. “Oh my
goodness! Was my Little Bird trying to tell me she was saved?” she
thought excitedly. Her head swam with random memories, trying to
make connections.
“She began to act differently when she was
eleven or twelve. She spent more and more time at Sarah’s house,
and always returned with questions about faith and why we believe
what we believe."

Fouzia’s heart suddenly felt heavy. It was as
if instead of a heart, her chest was filled with solid lead. She
succumbed to the overwhelming weight and sunk to her knees. She
doubled over and cried great heaving sobs as the water continued to
spray and wash over her. “Dear God,” she prayed as she cried. “I’ve
known you my whole life as Allah. Somehow I always knew that
something was wrong. I never truly believed that my God, Allah,
could sanction the ruin of so many innocent children and the rape
and abuse of so many innocent women. Did you save my Little Bird?
Do you watch over her now? Please, dear God, save my daughter! Wash
me clean with the blood of Jesus like you washed her. Take my sins
and give me my daughter, God! Take my life if you must, but let my
Little Bird live!" She rocked on the shower floor as she prayed out
loud. “Please forgive me!”

“Fouzia?” Najid shouted from outside the
bathroom. “Are you home?"

Fouzia reached up slowly and turned off the
shower. The last of the water washed over her and slipped down the
drain. She gracefully stood up, cleansed and renewed. She wrapped a
soft cotton towel around her body and walked out of the bathroom to
greet her husband. Without a word, she met him on the stairs and
took him in a warm embrace. It was the first real physical contact
they shared in many days. He hugged her back and she whispered, “I
love you Najid,” in his ear.

He kissed her cheek and they walked up the
stairs together. Fouzia put some comfortable house clothes on while
Najid unwound and changed out of his work clothes. They both sat on
the bed and Fouzia shared the news of the meeting with him.

“That’s wonderful news, dear,” he said. “But,
please don’t get too hopeful about it. There isn’t much chance that
he will do anything he promises, even if he can."

“I choose to hope, my husband,” she said with
a confident smile. She placed her hand on his.

Najid withdrew his hand and asked, “Why do
you do this to yourself? Why do you do this to us? Don’t you
realize she’s gone?”

Fouzia didn
’t let
the hurt she felt from his withdraw and accusation show. She calmly
said, “Until I know for certain that she is not coming home, I will
continue to hope.”

Najid looked at her suspiciously. “You’ve
been sulking for weeks. When I see you, you are always tired." He
stopped there and hung his head. “We both are." He turned his bowed
head to look at her. “Today you greet me with a kiss; you smile and
speak about hope. What is going on with you?” he asked.

Fouzia smiled, leaned close and whispered,
“I’ve been washed clean.”

He gave her a questioning look, and shook his
head. He stood up and went downstairs to watch TV.

Jen held her hands out and looked away. She
heard the loud snap of the switch and felt the sharp pain on her
hands almost immediately. She cried out and jerked her hands back.
The man in brown spoke and his men forced her hands back out in
front of her. Jen struggled to get away, but they were too strong.
She closed her eyes tightly and screamed when she heard the snap
again. This time the pain was more intense. A third strike was
administered before Jen was dragged back to the building and thrown
into the girls’ living area. It was June, and only three of the
original group remained.

During the first six months in the compound
things had loosened up a bit and the girls had grown closer. The
next six months had proven to be the opposite. Things were getting
much stricter and the girls who remained were being driven apart.
The other two girls were constantly turning on each other, and now
on Jen, to curry favor or to take the focus off of their own
mistakes. Jen had just taken the punishment for a ruined supper,
something she had no hand in. The girl who actually mismanaged the
fare blamed Jen, knowing she wouldn’t be able to properly
articulate a defense.

Other girls arrived sporadically in ones and
twos. Most of them were young, only five or six years old. None of
them was older than nine. They were sold or given away to Jihadists
fighting for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, ISIS, nearly as
fast as they arrived.

Jen learned that she was living in Northern
Syria, near the Turkish border. This compound was a rest and
resupply stop for ISIS soldiers fighting along the border. The man
in brown was particularly proud of their supporting role in the
fall of Raqqa, to the south.

Jen held her bruised and swollen hands
against her belly and curled up on the floor. She would not get to
eat tonight and possibly tomorrow. Her stomach was already
growling. More and more soldiers were coming through the compound,
sometimes too many to accommodate all at once. Several times, there
had been companies of soldiers camped outside the compound waiting
for their turn to come inside. The soldiers were priority. They
were fighting for Allah, and they ate first. When there was food
left over, the girls were allowed to eat. They found ways to get
by, hiding a little here and there, and stealing from the store
room when they could.

The one grace that continued to give Jen
reason to praise God, was that she had not been given away or sold
as a wife or sex slave to one of the Jihadists. “Thank you,
Heavenly Father, for watching over me and keeping me safe. I am not
at home, but I am alive and I am whole.” She prayed every day.

The next morning, Jen awoke when the door
opened. It was still early, and the sun had not yet appeared over
the mountains. The old woman beckoned her to come and waited for
her in the open doorway. Jen got up and followed her obediently.
The woman brought her to the cooking shack and instructed her to
quickly make a meal to feed four men. They were very important, so
Jen was to take special care. The woman knew Jen was a competent
cook. She also knew the other girl who accused Jen was not. She had
not tried to stop the punishment, and Jen knew she never would. The
woman didn’t care about them. She just cared that the work got done
and punishment, right or wrong, sent a strong message to
everyone.

Jen began setting out the pans and utensils
she would need to make breakfast. Once the woman left, Jen took a
cup of water and hurried behind the building to take care of her
morning hygiene. On the way back she ducked into the store room and
collected the ingredients she would need. She found what she
needed, but shook her head at the state of their supplies. The
stores were getting dangerously low.

She set about cooking and began quietly
singing as she worked. “It’s been a long day without you my friend,
and I’ll tell you all about it when I see you again…" She hummed
the rest and danced inconspicuously while she chopped and stirred,
and then fried the scramble she prepared in an iron skillet. She
heard the popping and grinding of rubber tires on gravel
approaching.

Jen saw a silver colored SUV with darkened
windows pull into the compound and stop. For a moment, it reminded
her of her dad’s Jeep Cherokee. All four doors opened, and four men
dressed in western clothing stepped out. Jen’s heart stopped and
jumped into her throat.
“Oh my God! Are they here to rescue
me?"
Her hands immediately started to shake, and her eyes
filled with tears. She looked down at the skillet she was tending
and couldn’t see through her tears. She wiped her eyes with a dirty
sleeve and looked up again. The men were being greeted warmly by
the man in brown. Jen’s heart fell.
“I see."
She looked up
to the sky and thought,
“In your time, I guess."
She looked
back down at the food and muttered out loud, “Your timing
sucks.”

Three of the men were brutish looking, with
close cropped hair, tight black t-shirts and khaki pants. Jen
thought they must be some kind of private security. They carried
AK-47 rifles in tactical slings, and at least one pistol holstered
on their belt or on their leg. They surveyed the compound and
seemed to have assigned sectors of responsibility. Jen noticed they
all stayed slightly behind the fourth man.

He was a slender man, and stood shorter than
most of the men who came through the camp. To Jen, he looked
Pakistani or Indian. He had ruddy brown skin, jet black hair and
glasses. Jen guessed he was probably about twenty-five. He also
wore khakis, but unlike the others he wore a white button-down
shirt with pink pinstripes.
“He looks like a college professor,
or a doctor,”
thought Jen. She stirred the scramble and placed
a tin lid over it.

On a separate burner, she seared strips of
goat meat slathered with oil and garlic. The smell was quite
different from the mouth watering food Aunt Fatima had prepared on
Jen’s first night in Tehran, but it was still quite appealing.
Jen’s stomach was grumbling at being denied a taste. She ignored it
and checked the water pot. It was just starting to boil. Jen turned
all of the burners down and set plates, cups and silverware on the
wooden serving table near the door. She scooped the last of the
coffee into a small bowl with a spoon and placed it next to a
coffee press that already sat on the table.

Jen stood ready, with her head down, when the
men came to get their meal. The three guards were first. The
smaller man was still talking to the man in brown as Jen served
them. When the guards were seated, the man in brown went back
inside his building and the small man walked quietly to the cook
shack. He picked up the last plate on the table and held it out for
Jen to fill. She dutifully filled his plate with a large scoop of
the scramble and three strips of steaming meat. As she laid the
third meat strip on his plate he grasped her arm.

Jen was startled and pulled back
instinctively. He held firm and set his plate down with his other
hand. He pushed her sleeve back to reveal the badly bruised and
swollen hand. Jen heard him make “Tsk,” noises. “I am a doctor, let
me see your other hand,” he said.

“
He is speaking English!”
Jen thought
excitedly. She held her other hand out for him to inspect.

“Oh my gosh,” he said when he saw the same
damage on the other hand. “Put the tongs down for pity’s sake." Jen
obeyed and he looked at her face with surprise. “
You understand me?
” he asked.

Jen nodded and looked down modestly.

“You speak English?” he asked excitedly. Jen
nodded again and continued to look down. “Where are you from?” he
asked. “Are you American?”

Jen dared to look up choked when she said,
“I’m from Dallas. Yes, I’m American.”

“You were born there?” he asked. Jen nodded.
“And you have had regular medical care?”

“My mother is a doctor,” Jen answered.

The doctor let go of her hands and turned
away from the table. He walked quickly to the door where the man in
brown had gone. One of the guards stopped eating and jumped up to
join him. The smaller man knocked on the door and called for the
man in brown. Jen watched with interest. She wondered if she was in
greater trouble, or if a miracle was happening.