The Curse: A short story about espionage, deceit and love

by Judit Neurink

Lisa wants Nabil to leave his family and live with her. But when he is kidnapped, she discovers which secrets he has been keeping from her. Can she accept that his past will also have an effect on the life she wants them to have together?

Lisa, a young Dutch lawyer, has been having an affair with the Iraqi mathematics professor Nabil for over ten years, when they break up. She wanted more, but he refused, and they fought. After the fight ended in violence, she puts a curse on him. But then she discovers that he didn’t just disappear but was kidnapped. Her search for him leads her into explosive situations full of suspense that are related somehow to Saddam Hussein’s war with Iran, and she finds that the curse is not quite what she thought.

A suspenseful short story that plays in Amsterdam during the Covid epidemic.

45 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 20, 2023

About the author

Judit Neurink (pen name: Judit Antonia, 1957) reported on the rise and fall of terror group ISIS, while working as a correspondent in Iraq for Dutch and international media (2008-2019). She wrote ‘The war on ISIS’ and ‘Slaves wives and brides’, the latter about women caught up inside the Caliphate. Her book ‘Violence Recycled’ (2021) is a personal report of a decade in Iraq while it moved from war to peace and back again.
She wrote ten books, almost all about Iraq. Her latest two novels are about life inside the Caliphate in Iraq and Syria (The Good Terrorist), and about the search for a kidnapped child in war-time Iraq (A Devil's Child).