Extract: Gulf by Mo Ogrodnik

Mo Ogrodnik's debut novel Gulf traces the lives of five women from very different origins colliding in the Arabian Gulf. This extract follows Zeinah, a Syrian woman in the first days of her marriage to a jihadist. Alone and constantly reevaluating, Zeinah must consider her position in this new world. 

Zeinah’s father stood at the foot of her bed. He wanted her to consider a marriage proposal, even though girls in Raqqa were drinking antifreeze and committing suicide to avoid marrying ISIS fighters, even though her mother’s best friend, a surgeon, had fled across the border because no one can perform surgeries in a niqab. She watched her father’s hands search his empty pockets and then land on his hips, his fingers searching for a belt loop, something to hold on to. She heard her mother crying at the kitchen table, tears that traveled across floorboards, down hallways, and seeped into the rug beneath Zeinah’s bed. But still, the man was wealthy, her father said, and he promised to take good care of her.

In the beginning, Raqqa was the test tube for the revolution. Assad was too busy with Aleppo and Damascus, and he believed his payoff to the local tribal leaders would secure the city. Many people wanted the revolution, but few wanted to lead. Soon battalions controlled different parts of the city, policing broke down, and water and electricity were scarce. ISIS kidnapped activists and, like Assad, paid off tribal leaders for their allegiance, usurping the antigovernment forces. And initially ISIS offered relief from the chaos; they reopened the flour mill and reinstated local services. Everyone craved order and was grateful for the necessities. ISIS formed Islamic outreach centers, but they soon evolved into surveillance and spy organizations.

ISIS strengthened their mission through their commitment to family, offering bonuses for marriages, honeymoons, and offspring. They paid local sheiks to issue decrees, and foreign men arriving to build the caliphate were demanding wives. ISIS patrolled the streets and harassed women for not wearing the veil. There were rumors of murder and then the beheadings in Al-Naim Square. The central fountain where children swam last summer was now a theater of violence. Fear gripped families everywhere — at their kitchen tables and between their sheets, in the shoes they ventured out in. Meanwhile, the Syrian regime bombed neighborhoods to reclaim the city, abandoning its people in the cross fire.

Her father, once a Raqqa government official, now worked as a mechanic for ISIS in exchange for a meager salary. The marriage promised protection and Zeinah’s safety in an apartment nearby — a real concern for her parents after the kidnapping and disappearance of her brother, who’d participated in early protests against Assad. The marriage seemed impossible to refuse.

_____

Zeinah clung to her mother in the kitchen and heaved against the faded flowers of her apron, inhaling the scent of onions and talc lodged between her mother’s breasts.

Her father waited on the stairs. 'We can’t be late.'

Zeinah felt the slack in her mother’s embrace, felt her body recede, until she stood alone between the doorjambs.

Her mother and aunt boycotted the wedding — a legal proceeding in a beige room with broken windows. Her father and uncle were present.

A witness for the groom.

_____

After the wedding, Zeinah sat on the dusty bench seat of a white Nissan pickup, a marriage certificate tossed between her and a man, apparently from Iraq. Omar, probably not his real name, had slid a ring on her finger — a ring she dared not look at but touched and twisted, discerning a considerable stone.

They drove through Raqqa. Death was in heat: groins sweating, beards growing, urine reeking. Men tucked loose trousers into flat-footed boots and patrolled neighborhoods. Wild dogs rolled in the waste, dry-humping strangers. Metal grates closed like curtains across storefronts on the abandoned streets. As they passed Al-Naim Square, Zeinah saw puppies eating from the stomach of a rotting corpse. Her favorite café was boarded up, daubed in black, tables and chairs upended in the dirt. A ransacked town square: ice-cream store closed, shelves emptied, no men on the corner comparing lottery tickets.

Omar wore a date seed tasbih around his wrist, but she did not have the courage to look at his face. The air drew tight around them, and Zeinah cracked the window, exhaled into the afternoon. Omar pressed a button, and she watched the glass slide up beside her, and then close. His power was unapologetic. He drove one-handed with an easy steer of the wheel and parked in front of a makeshift women’s clinic.

She watched as he squinted into the sun.

'I’ve arranged for you to have an IUD.'

A pink plastic bag blew across the street, and she watched as it skimmed the dusty sidewalk away from them. 'You don’t want to have children?'

'No.'

A heavyset woman left the clinic with a young boy, who ran ahead of her. Wind billowed beneath her abaya, and she held it down as she lumbered up the street, trying to keep pace with her son.

'I thought that was the point.'

She felt his body stiffen, but his voice was flat: 'For some. Not me.'

'I don’t understand.'

He closed his eyes. 'It will weaken my will to serve God.'

Wind blew through the empty truck bed behind them. Neither said a word. Zeinah thought, This is our first conversation.

The door lock popped open.

'I’ll wait here.'

Zeinah lingered in the entrance of the health clinic. Women sat in chairs lining the walls while others paced with crying children in their arms. The mood was heavy, the facility understaffed, and people were irritable. She approached the receptionist and gave her name.

'We’ve been expecting you. Please come with me.'

Zeinah felt the judgment of the women in the waiting room and disappeared down the hallway, ashamed she’d cut the line. The receptionist escorted her into an examination room. 'The doctor will be right in. You can sit on the table.' Zeinah stood in the barren room, noting the rectangles of pale paint where medical posters of female anatomy must have hung.

The door opened and the female doctor entered. 'Zeinah?'

Zeinah nodded.

'You’re here for an IUD. Do you know what that is?'

'Birth control.'

'You’re lucky. Have you ever had a gynecological exam?'

'No.' Zeinah regretted the lace underwear her mother had given her that morning.

'Why don’t you scoot down and put your feet in these metal stirrups.'

Zeinah slid down the table, unable to meet the doctor’s gaze.

'Okay, I need you to open your legs.'

Zeinah spread her legs, and the doctor folded her dress and abaya above her knees.

The doctor sighed. 'I need you to remove your underwear.'

Zeinah rolled down her underwear and held the crumpled lace in her palm.

'I'm going to insert this metal device to open your vagina, and then I’m going to insert this small string. It may hurt, but it’ll be quick. Are you ready?'

She nodded.

'I’m sorry, but I can’t ... I need you to open your legs.'

Zeinah’s body trembled as she willed her knees apart.

'I'm going to insert my fingers into your vagina with some gel.'

The cold metal of the speculum startled her, and tears rolled down her cheeks. The icy instrument slid deep into her vagina, where no one had gone before, and spread her insides open. Zeinah felt a pinch followed by cramps, and she wondered if the IUD was an act of kindness or preparation for abuse. She knew nothing about Omar, the man she’d married, but she was not going to eat rat poison; she was determined to survive.

A weeping willow shaded the building. Yellow leaves stuck between the cracks of the broken terrace. Omar led Zeinah up the dim and slanted stairwell to an apartment he said once belonged to an Assad official. He halted on the second landing and fumbled with the locks. The metal barrels resisted and finally clicked open.

Omar handed her the keys. 'I hope you like it. They offered me an apartment on a higher floor, but the elevator’s always broken with the power outages.'

Orange curtains hung over the windows. The floors were bare, and a brown couch and matching chairs clustered around a glass coffee table with a twisted silver base. The kitchen was small and clean. Zeinah spread her palm across the glass of the microwave.

'I’ve never had one of these.'

Omar opened the cabinets to reveal a fully stocked pantry: canned vegetables, fruit, and an entire shelf of beans. They laughed. A five-gallon blue water jug sat in a dispenser. She poured herself a glass, and he watched her throat open and close as she gulped and swallowed.

'Good?'

'Very.'

'I want to show you something.'

He led her into the bedroom. At the foot of a simple double bed, a Qur’an rested on a kursi stand. Omar unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket and awkwardly reached for her fingers. 'It’s from a book I had as a child. A book from my mother. Sorry, it’s torn. I ripped out the page.'

Omar’s hands trembled as he flattened the paper so she could see.

'She would read me this story. A love story. Between a boy and girl who meet when they’re ten. There are three plates. See? Here on the right, the girl carries the Qur’anic script, and on the left, the boy holds the tablet. In the middle, the couple bends over the Qur’an – bonded in their love for Allah – their teacher behind them.'

This was not what Zeinah expected.

'Please.'

He invited her to kneel at the kursi displaying the Qur’an bound in engraved leather. She ran her fingers along the indentations.

'It's from Sudan. I took it from my family in Iraq before coming here.'

She unwound the leather cord and opened the onionskin pages.

'It's so old. So beautiful.'

'I was told you like to read. There are no books in the apartment. I hope it will sustain you.'

He stood behind her. She could feel that he was moved, and she turned to one of her favorite suras: 'God is the light of the heavens and the earth.'

He responded. 'We indeed created man; and We know what his soul whispers within him, and We are nearer to him than the jugular vein.'

'The jugular vein ... That is so close,' said Zeinah.

Long shadows cast across the floor.

'I’m sorry, but I must go.'

'Now?'

'Your old phone and social media have been disabled. I’ve left you a new one on the dresser and inputted my number and your family contacts.'

She felt flustered by the news of his sudden departure, and the sparsely furnished apartment and bare tile floors began to spark a wariness in her. 'What am I supposed to do all week?'

'I’ve arranged for people to bring what you need. Don’t go out. I’ll be back Friday.'

But Zeinah had never been alone ...

Gulf by Mo Ogrodnik is published by John Murray in hardback, ebook, and audio on 8 May.