Love Anyway by Jeremy Courtney

Author:Jeremy Courtney [Courtney, Jeremy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Social Activists, Religion, Christian Living, Social Issues, Political Science, NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations), World, Middle Eastern
ISBN: 9780310352433
Google: QSp5DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2019-09-24T02:44:16+00:00

CHAPTER 29

The Place of Descent

Sozan and the others had been trapped on the mountain, surrounded by ISIS, for two days now. Sozan heard a seven-year-old little girl crying nearby, but she was so dehydrated that she had no tears.

“Mommy! I’m thirsty!”

Her mom tried her best to comfort her.

“Mommy, I’m thirsty!

“Mommy! I’m thirsty . . .”

Each plea became more and more strained. Each moment grew more and more frightening.

She hadn’t peed in way too long either—a full day or more. Her skin was dry. Her heart beat fast.

Sozan couldn’t help but think of her own little girl who’d already died.

“Please, don’t let her daughter end up like mine!” she thought.

The phone batteries were running low, but they’d managed to take stock of who was still with them, who had been lost to ISIS, and who was fading fast from dehydration.

Things did not look good.

Marwa, Sozan’s sister-in-law, was catatonic. First her brother, then her mom and dad were all killed. At home. In their beds.

Hundreds of thousands had made a run for it. But ISIS stayed in hot pursuit. Men were captured and executed en masse, bodies falling one on top of another into ditches and sinkholes. Marwa’s husband, Zido, was still trapped in the village below. His cousin had been slaughtered right in front of him, just out of reach.

But even on the mountain, away from the murder, they couldn’t escape the stench of dead bodies. Some of the elderly had selflessly thrown themselves into the rocky crags below so that they wouldn’t be a burden to carry or slow anyone down. The sick couldn’t endure the heat or their lack of medication. And children were dying from dehydration as their mother’s milk dried up.

These memories won’t go away.

The guys ventured down into the foothills to fashion some rocks into a huge distress signal for the American jets that had just arrived on the scene, dropping bombs on ISIS convoys on the roads below.

H E L P U S

And help they did.

The air strikes assisted the Syrian Kurds in punching a hole through the ISIS siege, and hundreds of freedom fighters crossed the border, threading the narrow eyelet, to shuttle the Yazidis off the mountain to freedom. The Nightmare, part one, was over.

But it’s a bitter pill, salvation.

According to tradition, every living thing that escaped the flood and entered Noah’s ark came down from this mountain together, alive, ready to remake what had been unmade by God’s punishment below. But this was not that kind of deliverance.

“Mommy, I’m thirsty,” the little girl cried out again just before help arrived.

Sozan’s heart broke. How many times can a mother watch helpless children die?

“Mommy! I’m . . .” her voice trailed off again a few minutes later.

“Mom—” And with that, she was gone.

The flood of ISIS fighters had retreated. And families started descending the mountain in search of some place safe enough to remake their world again.

But Sozan’s brother would leave without his wife.

Sozan would leave without her daughter.

Marwa would leave without her mom or dad or brother—and wondering whether her husband, Zido, would make it out alive.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.