Her wrists were bound with leather straps attached by a short chain. A sturdy chain was wrapped around her waist and attached to spikes, which were driven into the stone wall on either side of her.

It was a makeshift arrangement, which gave her some small freedom of movement. Indeed, it almost looked like she could squirm out of there, but what then? She was high in the mountains, far from any civilization, with dozens of Sunni fighters outside that door, holding this ridgeline. There was nowhere to run.

The militants had not fed her at all since she arrived. They had given her nothing more than a few sips of water. It was not out of cruelty or spite—they had very little food, and barely any water, for themselves. And with Kurdish fighting units roaming much of the lower reaches of the mountains, protecting the villages to the north, the east, and the south, it was unlikely the mujahideen were going to obtain more food any time soon. They were free to head west, except there was nothing but more barren wasteland that way—no villages or farms to raid.

Ahmet had also eaten nothing, but like the holy warriors, and unlike the girl, he was accustomed to the feeling. In the camps, they often made you go without food for days. It was done to toughen you. He supposed it worked. He had spent a year eating well in Geneva, whatever and whenever he liked. Now he had not eaten since the day before, and he wasn’t hungry at all. He was a little lightheaded, but he thought it was more from exhaustion, from stress, and from the altitude, than from lack of food.

He realized that he might never eat food again. The thought didn’t trouble him.

“They’re going to kill me,” the girl said now.

Ahmet nodded. “Yes. There’s nothing I can do about that, I’m afraid.”

But was it really true? Was there nothing he could do for her?

An odd thing had begun to happen. Before he had really met her, he had thought of her mostly as a thing, a prize, a goal to be reached. She was the daughter of an imperialist, someone to be targeted, taken, and killed. She should be slaughtered as an animal is slaughtered for the table.

But his feelings had begun to change. She was a person. She was a person adapted to comfort and fine things, who suddenly found herself in an alien environment, surrounded by people who hated her and planned to kill her for the whole world to see. And yet, she was trying to be brave. She was trying to adapt. She had not completely collapsed in the face of these things.

He realized now that her death would in no way avenge the deaths of his sister and brother. It was a tragedy, it was a crime, but another tragedy would never fix it.