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

by Matthew Schrier

  “Yes, yes, Jumu’ah, I will fix it soon, Inshallah. I am very busy.”

  A few days in, we got a visit from the emir. When he gave us permission to turn from the wall and stand I did; Theo stayed seated.

  “How are you?” he asked in Arabic.

  I answered by motioning to the unlit bulb and then lifting my arms and raising my eyebrows in the universal gesture for How do you think? The emir raised his own brows, and when I told him, through Theo, how long we had been in the dark, his jaw dropped. He immediately ordered the punks with him to fix the light, and left. Within minutes a table had been dragged into the room and a guard was standing on it trying to fix the wiring while another lit his work with a flashlight. The bulb flickered, but didn’t stay on, and after about five minutes they gave up and walked out of the room. They said they would come back in a few minutes, but never did, leaving us to rot.

  Later that night the door opened. It was Bubbles, with a kid of around thirteen that we were pretty sure was his little brother. Bubbles was holding a small pistol—he’d brought the kid along to show him how American dogs were to be treated.

  “Stand up and face the wall,” he said to me in Arabic.

  Theo translated and I did what I was told.

  “You love Obama!” said the kid.

  “Great, they’re all watching that fuckin’ video!” I mumbled to myself, thinking back to my first night with General Mohammad.

  “Put your hands up,” Bubbles ordered.

  I did.

  “Sit down.”

  I did.

  “Stand up.”

  I stood up, never turning from the wall.

  “Put your hands up.”

  Theo began to translate and Bubbles snapped something at him.

  “What’d he say?” I asked.

  “He told me not to translate for you.”

  “Put your hands up,” Bubbles said again in Arabic.

  “I don’t know what you’re saying, man. What do you want me to do? Sit?” I said, about to hit the floor for a second time.

  “No!” he yelled.

  “Well, what? I don’t know what you’re saying!”

  “One of you has to stand all night and one of you gets to sleep,” said Bubbles calmly. “Which one will it be?”

  This he let Theo translate.

  “I’ll stand,” I said.

  “Why?” asked Bubbles.

  “Because someone’s got to do it.”

  His kick connected with my lower spine and sent me crashing into the wall, face-first. Now Bubbles raised his pistol and told Theo to stand up and move over so that he wouldn’t get blood splattered on him when he shot me. Theo didn’t translate this at the time, but I could tell what he expected to happen from the fear in his eyes and the way he was shielding himself. I rolled my eyes at him. I knew this tool didn’t have the authority to shoot me. After a few seconds I was instructed to sit down again, and Bubbles asked Theo the same question about standing all night. A moment later the door closed.

  “Wait, wait!” Theo cried out in Arabic.

  “Shut up! Why the fuck are you callin’ him back in here for?”

  “I don’t know if I have to stand all night,” he answered.

  “What?”

  They came back and Theo asked his question. Bubbles gave me a look that said Is this guy serious? and shut the door again without giving him an answer. I was livid, and explained to my cellmate why it wasn’t such a smart move to call someone who’d just attempted to make me think he was going to execute me on the spot back into the room after he’d finally decided to leave.

  This wasn’t the only time Bubbles did something like this. He would often open the door and point his pistol at my head to try and scare me. It never had the desired effect though.

  “Go ahead, do it!” I’d say, looking him dead in the eye and pointing to the middle of my forehead. “Come on, do it! Put me out of my misery already.”

  “Stop doing that,” Theo mumbled.

  “Shut up!” I’d answer him.

  “He’s going to shoot you by accident.”

  “Good!”

  I figured the thing these guys were proudest of was that they weren’t afraid to die, so I might as well connect with them on that level, which by this time wasn’t exactly a stretch. Eventually he got the point and just stopped doing it altogether.

  On February sixteenth, the door opened and Yassine told me to get up. He handcuffed me and led me out of the room without my eyes covered for the first time since I’d arrived. As we walked I noticed the huge flag on the wall at the end of the hallway with “There is no God but Allah” and “Mohammad is the true prophet” written on it in Arabic—the black flag of Jabhat al-Nusra.

  I was led to a door across from the staircase where the hall widened into what must have been a common area when this place was still a dorm. Now it was empty, except for an exercise bench and some free weights.

  Waiting for us in the room were Chubs and Redbeard, two of the masked Canadians who’d taken my financial information back at the hospital. I’ve never been so relieved to see two members of a terrorist organization. Maybe they had finished with their investigation and I was finally going home. Two guards came in to pay their respects to the visitors, and after they’d left Redbeard asked Yassine for a glass of tea, which he immediately went to fetch. Now we were alone, just the three of us, and I was offered a chair. I sat down and looked around the room. It was huge, and empty except for the chairs, a table, and explosive devices that sat on every windowsill.

  “I’m going to take these off of you, okay?” said Redbeard, gesturing to my handcuffs. “If you try anything it will be bad.”

  He was wearing some kind of military vest loaded with all the tools one might need to wage war, and when he bent down his pistol fell out of the vest and onto the floor at my feet. Redbeard froze and looked up at me as if I might lunge for it, but after a second I guess he realized I wasn’t that stupid and picked up the gun and took off my handcuffs. Now we were all settled.

  “How are you?” asked Redbeard.

  “How am I?” I answered. “They’re beating us and starving us.”

  “They’re beating you?” he asked, disgusted.

  “Yeah, I got flogged with a garden hose. You want to see my back?”

  “No.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little cookie about the size of an Oreo and gave it to me. I tore off the packaging like an animal and scarfed it down. Then Chubs handed me a small Kit Kat, the kind with two bars in it, and I put that in my pocket.

  “Aren’t you going to eat it?” asked Chubs.

  “Yeah, I just wanna split it with the other guy,” I said.

  “We need the answers to some of the security questions for your credit cards,” said Redbeard. “Make sure they are right. It took us an hour to get here and we don’t want to have to come back.”

  Chubs then asked me some basic questions like what my first car had been, where I went to elementary school, and where I’d worked for my first job. I wrote the answers down in a little pink spiral notepad they’d brought, the sort that kids used to write their homework assignments in. After this they moved on to Theo.

  “Do you think he’s a CIA agent?” asked Redbeard.

  “No way,” I answered.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because the guy’s the biggest sweetheart I ever met in my life and he’s way too stupid.” In reality, he was the biggest douchebag I had ever met, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to have his back the best I could—he was an American and it was my obligation. Anyway, the second part of my explanation was true.

  We discussed Theo for a few minutes more—what he’d told me about where he was from, what he did for a living, shit like that—and then I changed the subject to try to get a feel for how the war was going. They said that the opposition now controlled around 50 percent of Aleppo. When I’d arrived in country they’d controlled 85 percent, so t
his was bad news for them—the regime had made a major comeback. They then asked whether I was in a relationship with anyone back home, and I lied and said yes. I thought it might help to let them think I was planning to get married, being that they consider marriage such a sacred bond—even though they are allowed to have four wives apiece. Toward the end of our small talk I asked if they could email my mother on her birthday, which was nine days away. Redbeard said he would, and Chubs gave me back the notepad so I could write down her email address, along with a message that they would never send. With our business complete, I stood up to head back to my cell, and Redbeard asked me an unexpected question.

  “Who is your God?” he inquired.

  “My God? God is my God. The father of Jesus Christ,” I said, holding up one finger, a sign they use to say: There is no God but Allah.

  Redbeard seemed to like my answer and Yassine was summoned to take me back. I shook both of their hands and noticed that Chubs had an exceptionally weak grip. Next it was Theo’s turn, and as I sat alone in the darkness of our cell I opened the Kit Kat and ate half of it, leaving the other bar under the balled-up blanket Theo used as a pillow. About thirty minutes must have passed before the door opened, and as it closed again after Theo I looked over my shoulder from where I sat with my head to the wall and saw Redbeard in the hallway. He was staring into the dark room, with what appeared to be awe. It was obvious that he had never seen people being kept in these conditions before.

  “What happened?” I asked Theo, once the door was locked. “They give you food?”

  “Yeah, half a piece of bread.”

  “Did you save me any?”

  “No.”

  “Unbelievable! Look under your pillow.”

  Theo reached under the blanket and took out the remaining Kit Kat, looking sheepish. A piece of flatbread in Syria is almost as big as a record album; he’d had more than enough to share. After I’d shamed him for not saving me any of the food he was given he handed the Kit Kat back and I ate it.

  Theo explained that they were also charged with investigating him, but that most of the conversation had focused on my true identity.

  “You’d be very happy with what I told them,” he said.

  “Did you tell them they were beating us?” I asked.

  “Yes, I told them how they flogged you because they think you’re Jewish because of the tattoo.”

  “What?” I slapped him on the top of his head. “Why the fuck would you put that idea in their head? And tell them about my tattoo?”

  “It’s okay, they didn’t even care.”

  “Oh my God, are you the dumbest fuck I’ve ever met in my life!”

  Worse, going over what we’d discussed with the Canadians, Theo told me he’d mentioned to them that he’d been detained once on the Canadian border, entering the US on his way home from Syria. I had to restrain myself from wringing his neck.

  “Why the fuck would you let them know you’ve spent time in the country they come from?” I yelled at him. “You think they’re gonna wanna release us if they know that we know where they’re from? Are you retarded?”

  “Relax, I was just letting them know that I’ve had my own problems with our government.”

  Now not only was Theo killing me slowly by driving me nuts, he was potentially actually killing me by putting the people in charge of investigating my identity onto the scent that I was Jewish and letting them know that he’d recognized their accents. At this point the Canadians were our best chance of being liberated—if they weren’t just robbing me blind—and now thanks to my brilliant cellmate it was in their best interest to make sure we never saw the light of day.

  One evening the emir paid us a visit with all the guards and instructed them to come back every night for a week to beat Theo. The first night it was Yassine and Sancho, one armed with an AK-47 and the other with a thick rope. As I lay on my stomach with my face inches from the wall, Yassine walked over to my side of the bed; I could see his feet in my peripheral vision. Sancho approached on Theo’s side. They started beating him: Yassine yelling at Theo in Arabic while out of the corner of my eye I saw the butt of the AK being brought down again and again, at the same time hearing the lash of the rope. I could have sworn that as Yassine bludgeoned Theo with his gun he was also being careful not to step on my blankets out of politeness. This went on for about a minute—as they left, Yassine turned at the entrance to the cell, rage carved into his face.

  “He’s a bad man! He had nine girlfriends!” he yelled, before slamming the door shut.

  “I told you, you shouldn’t have told him that,” I remarked.

  When Yassine and Igor came to take Theo from the room they didn’t say where they were going, but being that they weren’t screaming at or hitting him like usual I didn’t get the feeling that he was in danger. He was returned about fifteen minutes later with a head that had been so poorly buzzed he had bald spots all over. Then Yassine pointed to me. I argued that there was no need and removed my ski cap to remind them that I was already bald, except for the sides, but he had orders from the emir to shave our heads and trim our beards, and like it or not that was what was going to happen.

  I was escorted to the end of the hallway where Igor waited for me, politely motioning to the floor while holding a pair of electric clippers. Reluctantly I sat down, Indian style, and he got to work. As I sat there watching the clumps of hair fall to the floor, I thought about when I’d visited Auschwitz, and remembered a room they had there, filled with thousands of pounds of human hair. I remembered footage I’d seen of prisoners jumping off the train cars on the way to the gas chambers, of them lying starving on the ground. That’s what they were turning this place into, and they didn’t even know I was Jewish.

  Igor didn’t get far because the blades weren’t oiled; they kept getting stuck in my hair and ripping it out, and after I started complaining he got frustrated and stopped. He said he’d come back the next day, but when the next day came it was only Yassine who returned, with manual clippers, a pair of scissors, and Sancho. I began cutting my beard myself in the light of the open door, with the two of them standing above me. At one point Sancho began to tap me hard on the top of my head with his wooden club, but Yassine stopped him almost immediately.

  “No, no, no,” he said in Arabic. “This one is to be pitied.”

  After a few minutes they got sick of waiting and locked us in with the tools. Theo took over, doing about as good of a job on me as Igor had done on him. After he was done I started pacing back and forth on the blanket, launching fists at the air.

  “Fucking maniacs are turning this place into Auschwitz!” I yelled.

  Theo had no idea why I was so furious; he just sat there listening to me rant—not that he had a choice. Since we’d been here in hell I’d thought a lot about the Holocaust literature I’d read describing what it was like to be starved, beaten, and infested with parasites. Now, not only was I being treated like a prisoner in a concentration camp—whenever I peered at myself in the mirror, I looked like one as well.

  The night the Little Judge appeared, all hooded up with an AK over his shoulder, the lights were out and I didn’t recognize him until he opened his mouth and I heard that shrill shriek of a voice. He was accompanied by two guys—one wearing a Puma jumpsuit and the other a suicide belt.

  “He said we’re going to make videos,” Theo translated. “You have to say you’re a CIA agent.” The Little Judge said he planned to send the videos to Qatar, so they could act as intermediaries in negotiations for our freedom.

  “Boss, there are three guys in masks doin’ an investigation on me,” I reminded him.

  “Forget about the men in the masks,” said the Little Judge. “This is between you and me now. You will confess to being a CIA agent.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Don’t worry, when you get home you can tell everyone you told us because you were being tortured.”

  “No.”

  “Well, then you can s
it in this room for five years and eat nothing but halawa.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Or I’ll just kill you,” he added.

  “I’m not saying it.”

  “I’ll come back in two days for an answer,” the Little Judge said, frustrated, and then he left.

  Fifteen minutes later, he returned.

  “Jumu’ah, what is your answer?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  A second later his cell phone rang and he held it up to my eyes so I could see the number in Arabic.

  “Ah, it’s the American ambassador—Hello?” he said, answering the phone in English, trying to give the impression that negotiations were taking place.

  He left, and Theo and I actually started to laugh.

  “I can tell everyone that I admitted it under torture?” I asked, with a smirk.

  “He doesn’t want you to get in trouble,” Theo answered, and in this darkest of moments we shared another real laugh together.

  Theo thought the videos were just a fantasy, but I was very much convinced that the Little Judge intended to make them a reality. As always, I was tormented by the thought of my mother seeing her son on the internet, being held hostage by terrorists, beaten or worse. This was an important moment of my internment—it’s when, in my holders’ eyes, I officially went from photographer to CIA agent, and it’s also when the Little Judge stepped up to show me how big he really was.

  February twenty-fifth, the day I had been dreading: my mother’s birthday. Not just any birthday—it was her sixty-fifth, the beginning of her golden years, and I was the sole reason it was ruined. The electricity was out, and I lay there in the dark thinking of my mom crying her eyes out on what was supposed to be a day of celebration. Before I’d left for Syria, the only danger I’d really considered was the danger to myself. Now, I found I could handle whatever horrors the jihadis threw at me better than I would have expected. The horrors I knew they—and I—were visiting upon my loved ones were a different story.

  On this day, Theo and I got along. He didn’t start with me at all—no complaining, no snide comments, no tracking bugs onto the blankets. He was respectful, even supportive. At one point we decided to honor my mother by singing “Happy Birthday” to her, together. It was a beautiful moment on a terrible day, and one that I can honestly say I was happy to have him there for.