Cole

Homelife

The dreams of Jihad returned most nights. Usually I found myself doing boring tasks such as taking explosives out of crates that had arrived the day before and sorting them or loading small pickup trucks. Most of them seemed to be shaped charges that could be buried in the ground to blow up vehicles but many were rockets for our grenade launchers. I really enjoyed shooting the rocket propelled grenades. They made a cool whooshing sound and did a lot of damage to targets. They made you feel really powerful. I was told if I did it right I could destroy an armored truck or possibly even a tank with it. So far I had only shot a few for target practice at poles. I had not had a chance to shoot at the enemies of Islam yet.

There was one thing different about this latest dream, though. It was getting near sunset and a truck drove up and after some commotion the door opened and some girls jumped out. There were also a few young women. A small number of the girls looked like me with lighter skin and were about my age of 15. One of them might have even been younger. Two of them were holding on to each other like they were friends or sisters. They had come with backpacks, some with Disney characters on them and they were listening to music on their headphones, or fiddling with their phones. This was a very odd place for them to be, I thought.

Some of the other fighters were watching me so I looked away from the girls. I did not want to call attention to myself, but I was curious as to what they were doing. I stole a glance from time to time. Some men with beards were smiling and then took the girl's backpacks and phones. The girls did not want to give them up, but the men assured them they would be safe. A women emerged from a building and handed them hijab's to cover their heads and chest. One man said to them in broken English that the followers of the faith appreciate that they have come to their camp in Syria and that they would be trained to be faithful and that the vile corrupt things they brought with them would be purged. It was good that they followed the stories the read on the internet and adhered to the life. They no longer needed the evil music to live a pure life.

I began to realize that this is how my life began here as well, but this was the first time I saw girls. Why did they come here? What are they supposed to do? I wondered about it.

A man came over to me noticing my curiosity and punched me on the shoulder, smiled and spoke to me in broken English. "We will do better in battle. Allah has blessed our warriors with new wives in reward for our great sacrifice".

Two other men came up to me and had smirks on their faces. They started to twirk, thrusting their pelvis's in and out and laughed. I smiled too, not knowing what else to do.

I usually slept on the ground with my gun and a blanket and so I did so as the sun went down. There was not much in the way of lighting anywhere. When the sun went down, so did we. I always slept in my clothes as we always needed to be ready. I kept thinking about those girls, though. I felt that it was not safe for those girls, especially the ones that were my age. They must have come from Europe just as I probably had. They did not understand the way of life here anymore than I did. Yeah, sure it was exciting as we were starting a new nation and purging out the corrupt ways, but I did not like what was happening to the girls.

I got up off the ground and headed over to the small building that the girls had entered. There were a few men standing around but nobody seemed to mind. As I got closer to the building I could hear moaning of men inside and occasionally some of the girls.