The Dawn Prayer[Or How to Survive in a Secret Syrian Terrorist Prison]

by Matthew Schrier

  “You’re in big trouble,” he said, and pressed play again.

  “Oh, come on, man! Fuck Bashar? Fuck Bush? Those are the people I’m really making fun of here. Bin Laden’s just a name I threw in! I’m sorry.”

  “You see him!” yelled Sheikh Ali, pointing to Ahmad in the video. “Donkey!”

  “Khar,” I agreed, nodding.

  “Yes, khar!” he yelled, picking up an AK-47. “Fuck Osama bin Laden? We’re Jabhat al-Nusra!”

  I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to know for certain who had me, but now the cat was out of the bag, which couldn’t be good. It just figured that this stupid fucking video was the thing that made one of them slip.

  “Oh, come on, man, you’re really gonna shoot me over this?” I said. “I’m on your side. I came here to photograph guys like you killing Bashar. I love the Syrian people. Mohammad, hand me my phone, please?” I pointed to my iPhone, which was lying on the desk next to the laptop. “Come on, I can prove it to you.”

  Mohammad, who was playing the video over and over again, handed me my phone. I opened it up and found the folder with the photographs of refugees I had taken on my first trip to Syria the month before. I passed the phone back and was shocked by their response. I expected them to be moved by the suffering of their own people; instead they laughed as they flipped through the photos, making fun of the elderly and sobbing women.

  “How can you laugh at that?” I said in a disappointed tone. “That woman’s son was killed. That’s why she’s crying.”

  Sheikh Ali said something in Arabic and he and Mohammad laughed some more, proving Joyce right: “’Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the vacant mind.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be fighting for these people?” I asked.

  “You—You!” yelled Mohammad enthusiastically, pointing to the phone and holding it out to me.

  “What? You want to see pictures of me?”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  “All right,” I said and opened another folder for them to look through.

  I couldn’t believe it had worked. Breaking out my photos had made them completely forget about the video. As they scrolled through them, they saw me with people from all over the world: Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, and finally . . . Rio during Carnival. I hadn’t remembered these, and will never forget the looks on the faces of my two militant jihadist captors when I popped up on the small screen, shirtless, tattoo visible on my abdomen, with five muscular transvestites in blonde wigs and cheetah-print miniskirts draped all over me, some holding beers, some puckering their lips for a kiss. There was a long, uncomfortable moment of silence as Mohammad and Sheikh Ali stared at the photo—which encompassed about five major sins—their jaws on the floor. Then the silence was broken: pointing at the picture, Mohammad began laughing hysterically and Sheikh Ali followed his lead. Is this really fucking happening to me right now? I thought to myself. That picture was some serious haram, but since nobody seemed to care, I just went with it, determined to keep them amused.

  “Yeah, yeah, that was in Rio! They were diggin’ my shit, man!” I said, laughing along with them. “Check out the next one! Check out the next one!”

  This next photo showed me standing tall, shirtless again and ripped, wearing a pair of joke glasses with a huge penis in place of the nose. They didn’t seem to know what they were looking at, so I tapped the screen and zoomed in for them.

  “Check it out, man—It’s a dick!”

  As soon as they realized I was wearing a giant penis on my face they lost it all over again, just laughing their asses off. Mohammad even reached out and grabbed my chest to see if I was still as firm as when the photo was taken.

  “Yeah, I hit the gym every day. We should work out sometime,” I said, motioning toward the hallway where free weights were set up for the jihadis.

  They scrolled through a few more photos and finally came to the last one of me, my head shaved like always, sitting next to a Buddhist monk in Cambodia. Laughing, Mohammad pointed at the monk and yelled, “Osla!” knowing “bald” was one of the few Arabic words I knew.

  “Yeah, I told him not to let the haircut fool him; I’m way beyond redemption!” I said, laughing, knowing neither one would understand what I had said.

  After about forty-five minutes of this I was taken back to my cell, where I paced for the rest of the night without sleeping. I had averted a serious ass whipping, or worse, thanks to my photographs, sense of humor, and quick thinking, and I had also done something else without even realizing it: I had strengthened my bond with General Mohammad. As I would later learn, if General Mohammad liked you, you were untouchable.

  If he didn’t? Well. Then you had a serious problem.

  Shortly after the darkness ended, the screaming began. It was coming from down the hall, in what I’d learn was the boiler room.

  “Allah Akbar!” the victim cried out, and between his screams:

  Whack! Whack! Whack!

  I would come to know the sound well—they were whipping the bottoms of his feet with a thick cable. This went on for about fifteen minutes, and then stopped as suddenly as it began. A few hours later it started up again, with someone else. This guy didn’t scream Allah Akbar like the first one. He just screamed.

  Whack! Whack! Whack!

  I paced faster, holding my hands to my ears to muffle the sound.

  “Jesus Christ, where the fuck am I?” I muttered to myself, over and over again.

  The screaming continued, on and off, all day. I paced; I sat; I stood there awaiting my turn, but it never came.

  All night long I heard intense fighting between the regime and the opposition just down the block; the machine-gun fire and shelling were constant. Outside my door, rebels marched by in large groups; they congregated in a room not far from mine. Sometimes they would all scream “Allah Akbar!” at the same time, something that always gave me an unsettling feeling.

  That night the electricity went out, which was common in Aleppo, and shortly after it did, two or three men came to look at me. One of them spoke perfect English; I called him the Ghost Man because I never saw his face. They busted in with flashlights when I was lying down—there wasn’t time to stand so I scrambled up and leaned my face against the wall while on my knees. As the others searched the room, the Ghost Man walked over to me and shined his flashlight right in my face.

  “Can you see me?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied.

  “Are you lying?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Are you hungry?”

  “Yes.”

  A few minutes after he and the others left, one of the guards brought me a piece of bread and a small Styrofoam container filled with cold rice. With no utensils I ate like an Arab, ripping off pieces of the bread and using them to scoop up the rice. It was too dark to see my hands, and I dropped more rice on the floor than I got in my mouth. The next day, when it was light again, I noticed that the Ghost Man and his friends had ripped out the one remaining wire where the light switch used to be. Life was definitely not getting any easier.

  I had no real contact with anyone except the guards, who fed me and took me to the bathroom. If it weren’t for these bathroom breaks I never would have left the cell. The guards were mostly young, in their late teens or early twenties. Two or three times a day, one would appear and say hamam—bathroom—and I would lift my head from the wall, cover my eyes with my cap, grab my piss bottle, and walk to the door. The guard would seize me by my arm and lead me down the hallway. I always kept my eyes open, looking out the bottom of my cap where I could see everyone I passed from the knees down. They parted before me and I could feel their stares as I walked by. I was glad I didn’t have to look any of them in the eyes.

  The bathroom was big and had two rooms. The first was for washing up before prayer time, and held a trough with three faucets and two sinks adjacent to it. The room beyond this had three stalls; I could not lift my cap until I had entered one of them. The stalls were always ver
y clean, and inside each was a squat toilet and a hose connected to a faucet on the wall. I’d hardly ever used one of these, though I was familiar with them. In that part of the world they don’t usually use toilet paper, just the hose and their fingers. I remember having to overcome a deep sense of repugnance to adapt to this, and before I was kidnapped I would wait to relieve myself until I got back from the field to the apartment where I was staying in Hraytan, which had a regular toilet. After my first bowel movement as a prisoner, I came out with my eyes covered and headed over to the sink to wash my hands. There was no soap.

  “Can I have some soap, please?” I asked.

  The kid didn’t understand, so I rubbed my hands together as if lathering up and asked again.

  “La,” he answered stiffly.

  This meant no.

  “Oh, come on,” I said, pleading. “How can you not give me soap after I just cleaned out my asshole with my fingers? Please?”

  “La!” he repeated.

  “Man, this is disgusting,” I said, as I rinsed off as well as I could.

  Back in my cell I stared at my fingers through the darkness. As hungry as I was, I dreaded my next meal, knowing I was going to have to eat it with those hands.

  By my third day the solitude was really starting to get to me. My two-day deadline had passed, and I was pretty sure no one had contacted my friends in Syria like they’d said they would. At one point the door opened and someone entered, alone. All I could see out of the corner of my eye was a pair of camouflage pants and boots.

  “How are you, Jumu’ah?” It was Mohammad.

  “I’m going crazy, man,” I said, defeated. “Just please stay here for a minute and talk to me. Just talk to me.”

  He stepped closer to where I stood, my forehead still pressed against the wall, and put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Jumu’ah, my English no that good,” he said. “It okay. It okay.”

  He gave my shoulder a friendly pat and then left. A few minutes later, the door that was covering the window from the outside slid over about ten inches to let some light into the room. When I jumped up on the pipes and looked outside, what I saw was quite the sight. A few hundred yards away was a huge building shaped like a zigzag. It had clearly been the scene of an epic battle, and was shot all to hell with not a single window left intact. Judging by the real estate they controlled, the katiba—militia group—within al-Nusra that had me was clearly a major power.

  My new view and this act of kindness from Mohammad made me feel a little better. It suddenly dawned on me why I hadn’t been tortured, abused, or so much as insulted since my arrival—it was because Mohammad said so.

  Still convinced that these people were ultimately going to let me go, I tried to find some kind of clue that I could give my government once I was home, to help them find where I’d been kept. The first thing I thought of was a serial number from something in the room, like a pipe, and a split second after this notion entered my mind I looked up to my right at the window and saw a manufacturer’s sticker pasted in the center. The window’s pristine condition combined with the fact that every single window in the building across from mine had been shot out suggested that it had recently been replaced, so I hoisted myself into a pull-up on a pipe to get closer to eye level with the sticker and read what was printed on it.

  My memory isn’t quite photographic, but it’s better than most, so after I made a rhyme with the numbers they were locked in my head for good. Now if I made it home, the FBI would be able to hack into the company’s system to find out where the window was delivered and who it was shipped to. Most importantly, they’d find out who had paid for it and was funding the terrorists who’d kidnapped me.

  By day four my mind was racing to come up with ways to negotiate with these people who I seemed to see less and less of. I had about twenty-five grand in the bank, so I figured I’d offer them ten. For the first time since I’d arrived, I knocked on the door. Within a minute, one of the guards opened it and asked me in Arabic what I wanted.

  “Get me the guy that speaks inglisi,” I said confidently. “I want to talk money. You understand what I mean? Money.”

  I held out my hand and rubbed my fingers together while repeating the word. He shut the door. Less than five minutes later the Ghost Man appeared, with someone new. With my head against the wall, I couldn’t see his face, just that he was small and wearing a judge’s robe that hung open. This wardrobe choice earned him the nickname the Little Judge.

  “What do you want?” the Ghost Man asked.

  “I wanna talk money. I’ll give you ten grand cash if you let me go,” I said. “I can call my people in Turkey and have it waiting for you when we get there.”

  “Ten thousand dollars?” said the Ghost Man, stunned, as if I had just offered him a million.

  “Yeah, ten thousand cash. We just jump the border, meet my friends, and then boom—you get your money and I get to go home to my family.”

  He translated to the Little Judge, which meant he was definitely someone with influence within the organization. The Ghost Man did this in a whisper, as if they were still unsure if I could understand Arabic.

  “I will talk to my brothers about it,” said the Ghost Man. “Wait here.” The two men left, locking the door behind them.

  They never came back.

  By the next day, my hope that we could come to some kind of an arrangement had completely faded. Making my mood even worse was the fact that it had been about a week since the last time I’d sent out emails letting my friends and family know I was alive, and uploaded some photos to my website. If they didn’t hear from me again soon, they’d know something had gone wrong and be worried beyond comprehension.

  While I paced, I started thinking about why the hell nobody had come to see me apart from my brief visits from the Ghost Man and the Little Judge the day before and Mohammad the day before that. I came to the conclusion that they were testing me to see if I had training for this kind of situation. I figured that if I continued to keep my cool they would only be more convinced that I was a CIA agent, so I decided to take a chance and just embrace all the emotions swirling through my head, and lose it.

  “Fuck it,” I said and started pounding on the door. “Come on,” I yelled. “Let me out! I didn’t do anything! I’m just a photographer! I told you, I’ll give you ten thousand dollars!”

  This went on for a good half hour before a guard finally opened the door, and it was at that moment that I seriously fucking regretted everything I had just done.

  “Yala!” the guard said.

  “No, you know what? I changed my mind,” I said, facing the wall. “I don’t wanna talk to anyone anymore.”

  “Yala!” he demanded again.

  He stepped over to me, pulled my hat down, and led me into the hallway by my arm. This is when I really started to bug out—and I was no longer acting.

  “Wait, wait, where are you taking me?”

  I thought they were going to torture me. I stopped short, and that’s when the Ghost Man came up beside me, put his arm around my shoulders, and cradled me like a beloved son.

  “Don’t worry,” he said consolingly. “In a few days they will come and take you.”

  “What? Take me where? What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything!”

  “Shh—shh,” he said as a guard took me by the hand and led me to a door on the other side of the hall.

  “No, no, wait! Wait!” I cried out. Then the guard lifted my cap and I saw it was only the office.

  A second later Mohammad and Sheikh Ali came up behind me and led me inside after lifting my legs and removing my shoes for me. They were being especially cordial, compassionate, and sympathetic to my state of mind, which was really confusing me. I felt like my world was spinning out of control.

  In the office there was a lounge area over by a hot stove, and they sat me down on one of the mattresses in front of it. Both seemed amused by my spectacle. Mohammad put a glass in front of me and fil
led it to the brim with hot tea. Then he did the same for Sheikh Ali and himself. On the other side of the room a TV was broadcasting Syrian news.

  “Come on, man, what is going on here?” I said pathetically. “You guys really don’t want to make ten grand for some loser who didn’t cost you a dime?”

  “Ten thousand dollars?” said Sheikh Ali. “No.”

  “Then how much do you want?”

  “We want one hundred million dollars,” he said. They both laughed.

  I countered with fifteen grand, but they didn’t bite and kept the price firm at one hundred million.

  “Come on, man, I’m trying to be serious here. I’m not worth anything. My parents don’t have any money and I don’t work for anyone.”

  Sheikh Ali shook his head and repeated his price. Mohammad took the pistol from his shoulder holster, removed the clip, and handed it to me, like he was giving a child a toy to play with.

  “Oh, cool,” I said. “Is this a Glock?”

  “Yes, American,” said Mohammad.

  “Nice, is this the safety?” I asked, fumbling with the gun to prove I had no experience with weapons. Then I raised it and pointed it at the wall wearing a badass expression.

  “Hasta la vista, baby!” I said, squeezing the trigger. Sheikh Ali and Mohammad both laughed, although I’m pretty sure neither of them knew where the line came from.

  Abdullah joined us, along with another man of about twenty, with dark skin, a long face, and glasses. As soon as they entered I handed the gun back to Mohammad and took another sip of my tea. Mohammad kept refilling my glass as soon as it was half empty.

  Abdullah’s hair was damp and he had water all over his face. After he sat down, Mohammad handed him a tissue and he wiped his face dry. He was in a good mood, and seemed a lot more relaxed than he had been during our previous encounters. The other man, Yassine, I hadn’t met before. He stayed in the background, walking around the room, listening and observing.