Darkest Before Dawn

Unable to hold back, Honor reached across the short distance and laid her hand over the old woman’s and squeezed in a gesture of comfort but also solidarity. To let her know she believed as this woman did. That Honor found the things she’d related as abhorrent as the woman had.

“You lost someone to this faction,” Honor said quietly.

More tears glittered brightly in the woman’s eyes, and for a moment she dropped her gaze as though collecting herself. She placed her other hand atop Honor’s so that Honor’s hand was now sandwiched between both of hers.

“Yes. A son. He wasn’t evil. He was misguided. He thought what the group stood for, what they pretend to stand for, was right, and he had a strong sense of honor and he wanted to protect his homeland, his family. He wanted to provide for us so that his father and I would not have to work so hard any longer. By Allah, he did it for us,” she said in a stricken, pained voice full of guilt that wasn’t hers to bear, but she felt it nonetheless. And again, Honor understood that feeling. She still grappled with survivor’s guilt, of being the only one to have lived through the murderous attack on the place where she’d volunteered.

The older woman paused, going quiet, and the silence stretched between the two women. The mother was lost in thought as if in a distant place, lamenting decisions of long ago and likely blaming herself for not being able to stop her son. Her heart went out to this woman. A mother grieving for her son, a woman who despite her strong religious beliefs and her devout spirit felt hatred that at times she felt ashamed of. Honor was sure of it.

“What happened to him?” Honor softly prompted.

The woman took a difficult swallow and then reached for a small cup containing water and sipped to ease the dryness of her mouth and enable her to speak further.

“At first he was devout. The perfect soldier. He climbed the ranks quickly, impressing his superiors with his intellect and the fact that he was an excellent strategist. But the longer he was there, the more he saw, the more he began to understand. He began to question. First himself, because he was still reasoning out in his mind what was wrong when it had felt so right in the beginning.

“But then they grew bolder, more aggressive. Targeting the innocent for no other reason than they could. They began to expand their grip on their territory, always greedy and wanting more. Complete domination. They felt invincible, that no nation could stop them. Not even the best military forces in the world. Their plans shifted and they began to think on a much larger scale, bolstered by their many successes. They were remorseless, godless monsters who thought nothing of killing women and children. Unarmed men. Of destroying peaceful villages that had never taken up arms against another and for that matter didn’t even possess the weapons to do so. They were conquered effortlessly and every single man, woman and child was executed, the children being killed first, in front of their parents so that they felt the agony of their loss. They went down the line, killing all of the children first while their parents waited an eternity, grieving, hopeless, blaming themselves for not protecting their children. Only when the last child had been slaughtered did they start on the adults, and as with the children, they shot the women first so their husbands had to watch them die. Even worse, many were raped, right in front of their husbands, and there was nothing their husbands could do, no way for them to help. It drove them mad and when it finally came to them, they welcomed death, prayed for it and embraced it because they could no longer live with the horror of having their entire family violated and murdered right in front of their eyes.”

“You don’t have to continue,” Honor whispered, the woman’s sorrow so heavy in the room that Honor’s chest was clenched and tears burned, threatening to fall. “This hurts you far too much. I don’t want to make you relive it all over again.”

The woman tried to smile, but all that came of it was a hint of a grimace.

“I relieve it every single night when I go to bed. I relive it every single rising. I relive it every hour of every day. There is no banishing it from my mind.”

Honor closed her eyes, long-held-back tears leaking down her cheeks. She would have to rub more henna on her face just in case before she left the woman’s dwelling.

“My son was sickened. The truth was revealed to him in a vision from Allah himself. Allah revealed to him the group’s true agenda. That they were instruments of evil and not good. Never good. And that my son should leave at once.”

She sucked in an unsteady breath, her voice cracking, and she had to swallow back a keen of heartbreaking sorrow.

“He should have just left. Waited for the right opportunity. But he didn’t do that. So convinced was he after receiving the word of Allah that what the group stood for was wrong and not in keeping with the teachings of the Qur’an that he confronted the leaders. He told them of his dream and that they must stop or face eternal damnation. They didn’t kill him on the spot. Nor did they detain him. They toyed with him. They told him in absolute seriousness that they thanked him for sharing the word of Allah and that he must be a devout man indeed for Allah to have spoken to him and that they would take everything he’d told them into account and gather the members and discuss changes. And they let him go.”

The woman glanced at Honor as if judging whether the younger woman believed such a fantastic story. But Honor stared back at her in earnest, absorbing every word. Still, the woman must have felt she needed to back up her wild claims.