Above the dusty brow of Mount Abdulaziz, Ayla lays flat on her stomach preying on the retreating beasts through one eye.

The one that matters.

The one they trained.

The one that exacts revenge.

She’s alone, but doesn’t feel lonely. The ghosts of yesteryear’s massacre still haunt Hasakah’s ruined valleys; neglected whispers forever float along these crooked slopes. Empty houses in empty villages await the belated homecoming of their dispossessed.

This is where Ayla will make her mark. Her comrades would expect no less from a fellow warrior. Another martyr in the making. A plaited revolutionary who will never hesitate at the moment of truth.

No hesitation.

No remorse.

No fear.

Ayla homes in on a potential target. Through dense layers of blurriness arrives one crisp image amongst a devilish herd. Ayla blinks twice to get a better view, hugging her weapon into the warmth of her chest.

It’s a boy. No more than eighteen. He looks like all the other boys she’d seen since the invasion. Heavy, bushy brows split dark eyes from darker hair. Pathetic tufts scatter his chin-line from ear to ear.

Ayla slips back into her hatred.

He’s a boy. Just a boy. But Ayla was just a girl. A girl with a hardened heart who remembers everything. The separation. The panic. The cries of her mother’s last words drowned beneath the howling of her sisters…

Ayla zooms in further to mark the verminous cub.

The confused brute.

The misled dog.

The enemy.

The boy is even clearer now. He parades the Koran and his AK-47 as a show of courage to other invaders just out of Ayla’s vision. At first, she toys with him for afar, flirting with the idea of bleeding his joints first. Make him hurt. Make him suffer like she had.

Just then, he turns to her.

Chunky locks dangle either side of his chilling face. He stares straight back, the distance suddenly unclear. As if possessed, his mouth begins moving as though addressing Ayla directly from afar.

Stay still, Ayla.

Stay hidden.

Stay quiet.

A sharp dose of adrenaline trickles into her stomach and spine. Ayla’s torturer can’t see her, but she can still feel him. His breath. His hands. The acute outline unsettles her more and more. The boy seems tigerishly close. His image a chiseled portrayal of pure wickedness; only a tatty sniper rifle resting between their damaged worlds.

Ayla strokes the trigger as an untimely zephyr sails up Mount Abdulaziz towards her position. It whistles over her naked forearms teasing her hard-fought resolve. The labouring rush finally unlocks her dormant paranoia as the boy’s magnified eyes fix hers from down below.

It begins to happen.

Her head and heart freely tangle up in a moral stale-mate. Untapped dilemma’s spill from her demeanour at this, worst possible moment. Her rifle melts through the sweat of her palms. Her mouth gapes and spills mad mumblings in mute Kurdish as the boy tauntingly calls to Ayla and all her traumas. All her pain and heartache. Her firm fibre of humanity and new-found thirst for the blood of her enemies. The boy knows. Ayla is less so sure.

The current gathers strength. It becomes too much.

Ayla shuts her eyes and digs her nose into the sand. One hand scratches the rocks adjacent whilst the other snaps from the barrel unto her head as the tender wind blows all over. She frantically pulls her hair. Her body flails like a homesick mermaid as she screams a coarse, dry silence; deafening to the tortured ear.

Hold strong, Ayla!

Lift your head, Ayla!

Take your weapon, Ayla!

Ayla verges on tears. A sorrowful, wailing cry awarded the several rounds of pity she never got. She could cry. Her heart wants her to; knows it will pave way for some sobriety. But her head holds the reins. Stubborn and resilient. The hallmark of every courageous YPJ fighter.

So Ayla holds strong. She lifts her head. And takes her weapon.

Her head orders her to fire:

Shoot! Shoot him, Ayla!

Her vision tussles back into focus before she adjusts her sight back onto the target. The boy. She lines the cross-hairs to his temple; his profile inked perfectly down her scope. Her heart, seemingly tamed, thuds into the dry soil upon where she will claim her first scalp. She breathes slowly. Prays. And caresses the trigger.

SHOOT HIM, AYLA!

SHOOT HIM, AYLA!

SHOOT HIM, AYLA!

Her heart quakes at the epicentre of her sanity as the tarrying breeze flows through her dented rationale. It conjures up energy from the dark pastures it now lives and speaks out… but Ayla’s head drowns it from a fair hearing.

Fairness never had anything to do with it, Ayla.

The daunting peak of Mount Abdulaziz harbours the wind for split seconds more, dragging with it every man, woman and child who lost each other. Their livelihoods looted and their dignity stripped. The mountains never forget. Neither can Ayla.

Her head screams:

IT’S NOW OR NEVER!

SHOOT HIM! SHOOT HIM! SHOOT HIM!

His life hangs in her sights. His fate dwindles at the end of a shaky index finger. Her eyes wander sideways. Her body rattles. Her lips murmur. She squeezes the trigger and feels its resistance shoot up her arm. She knows what she has to do, but in her heart, knows she shouldn’t…

A last-ditch nugget of clemency belatedly pleads mercy. It’s Ayla’s heart, begging her to think again:

He’s just a boy, Ayla! A frightened boy! He too has family… perhaps even a wi—-

—-NO! NO MORE, AYLA!

You must kill him. KILL HIM, AYLA. For the greater good of our revolution.

For your mother.

For your sisters.

And, for yourself.

***

Sheikh never thought it would come to this.

He need not remember how or why he made the Hajj to Syria. All that mattered was the here and now. Even if he wanted to return home, he needed that passport once ritually burnt with other eager pilgrims.

Never would Sheikh see the bright lights of London again.

“Are you ready brother?”

Sheikh half manages a nod as other masked comrades fix the black flag just behind him.

“Okay… in 3… 2… 1…”

The digital camera starts recording. Sheikh stumbles but knows it won’t make the edit, anyway. He gazes into the lense, feeling it’s power absorbing him. So he turns away and spots a gleam on the towering landscape of Mount Abdulaziz. It’s here Sheikh decides to look. To settle his stare before spouting his forsaken soliloquy.

With the God’s word in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other he gives it his all. How his brothers sold the devil-worshipper’s daughters into slavery. How Kobani was conquered with the guidance of God above. How he was going to become a martyr with a bargained slot in paradise.

But that sense of adventure which lured him here quickly drains from his hollow eyes. Anxiety fills the void where faith once flourished.

A profound, overbearing shock erupts under his ribs; a sober reminder of what it means to be a mere human summoned before the cruel smirk of death. Here, under the arid terrains of Mount Abdulaziz, is where his destiny was written. Where his story would end.

Sheikh feeds the propaganda reel with more staged bravado. His brothers watch, unnerved. A comforting, beautiful breeze swirls kindly around them. Sheikh privately ponders about the wind. Something so simple he never paid attention to before.

It’s enough to provoke a tear or two for the online world to misunderstand.

Sheikh raps up his revelation pointing ‘oneness’ to feckless heavens and another chant of ‘God is Great’; conviction in his delivery fighting through the swell in his throat.

“This is bullshit,” his head keeps telling him, all the while his heart quietly cries for an angel of mercy to be present and felt. To end this all another, painless way.