Heather Rose - Bruny

As the hours went by, the truck began to smell more and more of men. If we were passing through towns blasted to rubble, I couldnt tell. All I knew was that we were squeezed into the back of a truck, part of a midnight convoy entering a stronghold of land I had observed only on satellite images.

When we finally drew to a stop, it was after dawn. I slipped the niqab over my clothing. The truck doors opened on a bleached dusty street with the usual piles of rubbish. Decomposing plastic bags were caught on thorn bushes and underfoot my boot broke an abandoned plastic fork. It was twenty-eight degrees and 6.30 am.

The compound had traditional dun-coloured walls. Half of our security detail went ahead, assessing the place for threats and traps. When they returned with the all-clear, we entered the home along a short corridor that opened into a wide, central courtyard. It was a beautiful homeor at least it had been. The ornate circular fountain at its heart was dry now. The citrus trees had been stripped of fruit. The mosaic floor and intricate stonework spoke of history. The black flags and the militants armed with M16s at intervals along the walls spoke of now. And there was a cage with a charred body within. A small American flag had been stuck into the corpse.

Instantly I was recalling the film posted two days ago of an American soldier burned to death. He had been the same age as my own sontwenty-seven. They had doused him with petrol and set him alight. He had flung his body against the bars while the watching men cheered. There are many things in my life Id prefer never to have seen. It comes with the job. We had not expected to find him here. We hadnt known this was the place.

I glanced at my travelling companion and saw that he was flushed with rage. I breathed and calmed myself. This meeting had been months in the planning. The deal we were here to make was mine, but my mouthpiece was an American ex-president.

The emir was waiting at the far end of the courtyard under an arched ceiling. Ignored, I went to stand in the shade of the rear wall without comment. I was the invisible, irrelevant woman veiled in black cloth. This anonymity is twofold; it provides a strange protection from scrutiny, and it makes it easier to observe people.

The emir and the ex-president sat and were served tea by a boy. The ex-president laid out the terms. We were offering to exchange fifty men for one hundred and thirty-six women abducted into sex slavery.

These women are not your concern, the emir said to the ex-president. They are not my concern. They belong to the men who own them. They have been bought and paid for. What are you really seeking? You have come a long way. He had a lean, bearded face with a beaked nose and dark, inscrutable eyes.

If the world knew we were looking to return Daesh militants held captive, there would be uproar. I had been working on the release of the women for years. This was the last of those still alive, we believed.

A Daesh recruit receives an additional monthly stipend for keeping a sex slave. And the slaves they had taken en masse were Yazidi women. We knew they were broken, diseased and severely damaged. Under the laws of sabaya a man is entitled to rape, beat and punish his slave. Some had been as young as seven when they were captured. They had been slaves now for over seven years.

The caliphate had open passage to the sea through Turkey thanks to President Erdogan, and it was expanding across the Syrian border. So much for Daesh being crippled. This was what the US withdrawal had done. That was the message of the US flag in the body.

I have learned through my years in this role that violent extremists can appear perfectly reasonable even when their extremism has obliterated charity, mercy and clarity. The emir had a political science degree from the London School of Economics but had returned home after the death of his father in Abu Ghraib prison at the hands of US interrogators in 2004. His brothers had disappeared in Fallujah. Our intelligence said he had a wife and two daughters living in Saudi. I knew he had agreed to this meeting because, with access to the sea, everything had changed.

In these situations, I quiet my fear as if it were an animal. Fear is how you get yourself killed. Or you kill someone else. I would have liked to pull out a hidden weapon and open fire on all of them. But I didnt have a hidden weapon. We had been carefully searched. Not quite well enough to find the tracking device under my skin, but enough to make me feel quietly violated.

More than twelve million people now lived under this regime. I had seen the tens of thousands of refugees made homeless. I knew how many Yazidi daughters had died. In all this, I did not forget what the emir had lost nor the horror he had witnessed. Or how he had chosen to disconnect himself from the world he once inhabited. I would kill to protect my children, I have no doubt of that. But when I saw a man like the emir, I wondered about the power of an ideal. The certainty of a belief. Would I ever kill for an ideal?

The ex-president said, A caliphate without mercy and compassion will never be viewed as anything but a threat to its citizens and its neighbours.

Christians have killed millions of my people without cause, replied the emir. What was the war in Iraq if not an assault by a Christian coalition on my people? Where was this Christian compassion when my father was murdered? When my brothers were thrown into a mass grave outside Fallujah?

This is negotiation. Its emotional, sometimes predictable and rarely simple.

But we share began the ex-president.

You think I can help you, the emir interrupted. Perhaps I could. But what is fifty brothers when five hundred are joining us every week?

This was an exaggeration, but in truth we had no idea. If it wasnt five hundred each week now, it might well be by next year.

Our brothers in captivity will find a way of making their deaths glorious. If that is in your prison, or in your streets, then beware. We will restore justice. Because everything we do is for the glory of Allah.

There was a pause and the emir turned to stare at me. What is this woman doing here?She is saying nothing but you are listening for her.

You know, Emir, said the ex-president, that Ms Sheppard is from the UN. She is here to ensure these women are returned home.

The emir inspected his hands. Perhaps we burn a slave every day until our brothers are returned to us. Perhaps we send out a call to our brothers across the world to also burn a woman every day. We start here with Ms Sheppard.

Our security tensed. The courtyard stilled. Even the breeze ceased.

My name is not Ms Sheppard but he would never know that. I was simply a long, black-robed vision of woman. All the emir could see of me was my eyes and that was going to have to be enough.

My death would be a very small death, Emir, I said. The killing of women will not give you the homeland you seek. The women we want returned are half-dead anyway. Before they die as slaves, they can secure the lives of fifty of your brothers. Consider it a good return on investment.

I repeat that these women are of no value to me, said the emir, turning back to the ex-president. What else did you come all this way to offer me?

A seat at the new UN Council for the Middle East, I said.

The ex-president was caught off-guard. Everyone knew his position on this. If he had known I would make such an offer, he would never have agreed to this meeting. This resurgent expanding caliphate, emboldened by the shift in US policy, fed by the trade of oil and weapons, was a virus. Some argued that only by giving it recognition, and making it answerable to the global community, would it find its way to human rights. Others, like the ex-president, had invested everything in its demise. But he was no longer in power.