"Are you placing blame on ISIS, little girl?" asked the turban-masked interrogator in perfect Arabic.
Amira sat motionless; her head slung forward with her hands zip-tied behind the back of the wooden chair. The ISIS interrogator attacked her with question after question without providing any time for a reply.
"I've asked you a hundred times already, little girl—are you blaming ISIS for your current problems?" he said, stooping his masked face below that of Amira's so that he could be sure she could see him.
But she did not see him. Her eyes were swollen shut, more purple than black and blue.
Amira could only offer a weak grunt of life in return as she used her remaining energy to roll her head like a broken pendulum away from her interrogator.
The interrogator angrily spat dissatisfaction at the observing ISIS members standing along the wall behind him.
"Mullah Abdul Tarabi!" shouted the interrogator after a brief silence. "Go. Go now and get me my machete. I need to teach this little girl a lesson about her American wrongdoings."
"Yes, Mawlawi, yes," he quickly uttered in reply before shuffling away his feet to retrieve it.
"Now, little girl," said Tarabi, speaking much more slowly and softly, leaning in to Amira's turned head. "I know you can hear me—you know what I am saying to you. You have two options now—to live or die. To live, you will never return to America. You have become a traitor of your nation and religion. Your people are very upset with you for your treasonous ways. Or you can choose to die, and I will slit your throat—after I cut off your nose—"
Tarabi paused for a moment, then continued before allowing Amira several seconds to think over his brutal words:
"then, your fingers; your toes; your ears; your knee caps; your cheek bones; your breasts; finally, I will cut off your tongue. And then you will no longer be able to change your mind, because I will not understand your slurring pleas for forgiveness and your acceptance of your wrongdoings."
Amira heard the return of the shuffling feet, every step louder than the last.
"Mawlawi," shouted Tarabi in his stern, staccato voice. "Come! Now!"
Mawlawi's shuffling feet scampered over to Tarabia and Amira.
"Amira, you have one final chance to accept your wrongdoings," began Tarabi, breathing his hot breath at her face. "If you accept your wrongdoings, turn your stupid head the other way."
Amira sat in pain. She could hear Tarabi's words, but she could not grasp what he was saying. Her ears seemed to fade his voice in and out from loud to faint and his voice seemed to not matter anymore. She focused on how warm her face felt when he breathed on it. She tried to move her lips, but only one trickle of sticky saliva dripped out of her open mouth, down her swollen and chapped lips, and onto her lap below.
"Honor your Muhammad. She has disobeyed His commands for a pious life. She is not grateful for His great advice. Punish her for her unrighteous treason. Cut off her nose!" screamed Tarabi, his voice fused with enthusiastic belief.
"Yes, Tarabi," replied Mawlawi.
Amira heard the steel machete being unsheathed. She heard the ISIS interrogators and witnesses begin an Arabic song-prayer.
Amira's face felt warmer now, even wet. Her face went numb and she was able to muster a slight smile of hallucinatory satisfaction. Her mind drifted off into a spiraling kaleidoscope of Iraqi camel spiders, her mother and father, and her burka; then it shifted to her ex-boyfriends in America, the red and brown American trees, and Jennie Farr's face.
Her mind quickly retraced, visually, her last year in America—arriving at the airport, moving in to her college dorm room with Jennie Farr, making love to her first American boyfriend, reading Jennie Farr's letter, watching Jennie Farr discuss her letter on television, and leaving America for Iraq aboard a private plane. Jennie Farr's face seemed to be peering from the corner of every new transitioning slide of nostalgic visuals, like the sun in an American landscape postcard.
Her head felt light, her hallucinations bright with a blinding ray of light, blocking out Jennie Farr's face from her closed-eye vision. The blood she tasted wetted her tongue enough for her to swallow.
"Why am I here?" she mumbled before passing out from the extreme pain and blood loss.