Operation: Dard and Devotion

18 | Risky & Ruins

"Tala, what's wrong?" I lifted Saad off of the ground, placed him on my hip, and walked over to where she was. "You okay?"

She stood in the opposite corner of the room with a medium-sized branch in her hand and gawked at the wall at eye-level in front of her.

"Tala?"

"Look," she whispered hoarsely, pointing to the wall. When my eyes followed hers, I drew in a sharp intake of breath as well.

"Oh my," I let out.

With all her etching and scraping on the wall, which I thought was done out of boredom, Tala had actually scratched enough of the cement between two cinder blocks to reveal the outside world. She had carved a hole into the wall, not a large hole, but it was slightly bigger than the peephole in my apartment door.

"What exactly is outside?" I mumbled, leaning towards the newly-constructed peephole.

"I think that's the inner courtyard!" Tala exclaimed, finally having enough energy to articulate a full sentence. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"If we're on the same wavelength, then I certainly hope you're actually not planning to make that hole bigger."

"Not quite," she whispered. "See, I kept scraping the cement where these four cinder blocks meet. The church is ancient and crumbly anyway, let alone the dungeon, so with a bit more scraping, I can easily scratch off enough dry cement, pull out the cinder blocks, and we can escape!" A certain sparkle gleamed in her eyes and I felt sorry for her; she actually believed her plan would work.

"You do realize that Al-Tho'baan has militants all over the church grounds and we'd never be able to really run off, don't you?"

"Surely they'll go to sleep sometime." She shook her head, completely being illogical. "We won't be able to run off for at least a few days anyway because this little hole itself took some time to drill through. After that, we can do it!"

"Are you crazy?" I stepped away from the wall, fearing the worst. "The idea of escaping is great, really, but what if we get caught?"

"What if we don't?" She snapped and glared back at the hole.

I set Saad back on the ground as though the weight of the whole world was suddenly thrown onto my shoulders and I was unable to continue carrying him. "Tala, the chances of that are so slim. Can you imagine what would happen if they caught us? They'd do every worst possible thing!"

"You are here alone, so you can say that," she muttered, beginning to sound more hostile. "But I need to find my sister, so I can see why escaping isn't a big concern of yours."

I clenched my jaw together and she could tell I was losing patience, but continued to prattle.

"You're an American. Your parents are probably rich enough to scoop you out of here," she scoffed. "I'm a Yazidi, an absolute minority. Do you think anyone will try to help me out? I'm so terribly sorry if you're so used to being waited on hand and foot, and that your parents do everything for you. Meanwhile, me? My parents aren't even alive so obviously I was never entitled to such special treatment-"

"Tala!" I yelled. Gosh, she completely exploded at me all because I told her it wasn't a good idea to escape! "I'm not coming. If you want to run off, then fine, but there's no need to spit out nonsense!"

Annoyed, I plopped down on the ground and tried to preoccupy myself with Saad. It was only midday, but his eyes began to droop as he sleepily motioned for me to place him on my lap. I complied, shifting him onto his normal sleeping position with his head on my chest. A hand fell on my shoulder.