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

by Matthew Schrier

  “He said you can turn around,” the Moroccan said to me. “This is so nice.”

  I turned around and looked up. Peering down at me with these big, apologetic, puppy-dog eyes was Abu Abdullah, looking as if he was waiting for me to say something.

  “He wants you to know that what happened last night was a misunderstanding,” the Moroccan explained. “That they got some wrong information and he’s really sorry about what happened.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked.

  He was. I sat there in stunned disbelief for a moment as Abu Abdullah anxiously awaited my answer—he needed my forgiveness, or else Allah would hold him accountable one day for this sin.

  “Okay, thanks,” I said finally, extending my hand for him to shake.

  Then he moved on and apologized to Theo before leaving, telling us he would return shortly with our breakfast. He also promised to bring a plumber in to fix the toilet.

  “Dude, did that really just fuckin’ happen?” I asked, once he was gone.

  “That’s the first time anyone ever apologized for giving me the tire,” Theo said, and we all erupted into laughter.

  The weight of death that we’d felt resting on our backs the night before had been lifted in a matter of seconds—by an apology from a sociopathic torture expert. It was amazing how quickly things could turn around in Syria.

  From this point on Abu Abdullah treated us as guests, feeding us well and providing us with clothes, soap, and pretty much anything else we asked for. Sometimes he would come down late at night to bring us a snack, sharing whatever he and his brothers were munching on. It was a pleasant surprise, in a world where surprises were usually anything but pleasant.

  Other people in the warehouse weren’t so lucky.

  The torture we heard being conducted upstairs by Abu Abdullah and the Leader was the worst of any so far. Often in the midst of it we’d hear a gunshot from out of nowhere, most likely fired inches from the victim’s head. I don’t think they ever wounded or killed anybody with one of these shots because the screaming never increased afterward, and it never stopped, either.

  We only met one of the many torture victims. We were dutifully staring at the wall when they brought him down, and waited until we were given permission to turn around. In the background, taking a seat on the floor, was our new cellmate, Omar. Before us was the Leader, going nuts and pointing at him. I didn’t understand a single thing coming out of his mouth with the exception of one word, but that one word explained everything: Shabiha.

  “He says don’t talk to him,” the Moroccan translated.

  We all promised to leave him alone and they left. Omar, in excruciating pain, lay on a mattress they’d pulled from a pile. When I finally made my way over I saw that all the skin had been stripped away from his ankles, leaving nothing but raw, open flesh. A few days later Abu Abdullah called the Moroccan over to show him how he deals with Shabiha. He stood above Omar and placed the bottom of his boot on his ankle wound, mashing it like he was putting out a cigarette.

  The Moroccan, not sure how he was expected to respond to such cruelty, encouraged the abuse to prove his loyalty as a true jihadi. When he came over afterward to describe the scene, he was laughing.

  The bathroom situation had its ups and downs. Up: we had hot water in the shower. Down: the squat toilet had a broken pump, and had backed up all over the floor. Next to the bathroom were two little rooms right next to each other, one like a tiny kitchen area with a sink, one with the shower. I was the first to use the bathroom, the day after we arrived, feeling the greasy eggs coming back to haunt me from the night before. Opening that door was a traumatic experience, like something out of a Jackson Pollock nightmare. The entire floor and all four walls were caked and splattered in dried shit. It was the only toilet, so I found a big metal mixing bowl in one of the debris piles, took it into the shower room, shat in it, and then washed myself up nice. To discard the contents of the bowl I just opened the stall door and flung it in, aiming for the hole, but not particularly caring where it landed. After I washed it out I put the bowl off to the side for the other two to use when nature called. I gave stern instructions on the post-defecation process.

  “You hear me, Theo?” I asked. “Don’t leave the bowl where Abu Abdullah can see or else we’re gonna end up eating from it!”

  Most people know you don’t shit where you eat (or eat where you shit), but Theo being Theo, I watched that bowl like a fucking hawk.

  I got sick several times over the course of my captivity, twice from overeating. My logic when it came to food was that we never knew when we might be moved or how they would feed us at our next jail, so whenever there was a surplus I went at it like a badger. The first time I got sick from this was at the stores, where I had my Alawite brothers there to support and help me. The second time was at the warehouse, where I had only Theo and a psychopath, and the psychopath was the more sympathetic of the two.

  Abu Abdullah had served us some kind of meat and vegetables, and as usual I scarfed it down like my stomach was a bottomless pit. Afterward, I was so full I could barely walk. All I could do was lie there as the nausea crept up on me. I tried as hard as I could to put it out of my mind, knowing that if I puked my stomach would be on empty for at least the next fourteen hours, but there was no holding it in and I ended up bent over the sink, yakking my guts out until there was nothing left but the dry heaves. Eventually I made it back to my bed and flopped down on it.

  “You okay?” the Moroccan asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I looked over at Theo, who was staring at the ceiling stroking his mustache like he didn’t have a care in the world. This was at least the third time I’d gotten violently ill around him and not once had he asked me how I was doing or if I needed his help, though I’d done both for him when it was the other way around. The more I thought about it the more furious I became, but I didn’t have the strength to do more than fume at him from my mattress.

  After making us write yet another set of reports for yet another promised investigation, Abu Abdullah led us over to the elevator shaft, which was filled with all kinds of shit, and told us to clear it out and hide our beds in there for our own safety, in case there were visitors. We stared at the huge pile in front of us, towering well over our heads, all thinking the same thing: How many rats are in there?

  Since it wasn’t like we had a choice, we just dug in and began carrying stuff out of the shaft and tossing it on the other debris pile in the corner. There was an upside-down awning full of old dirty clothes; Theo took a pair of sneakers and put them off to the side and I did the same with some sweatpants. In three hours we had the entire elevator shaft cleared, scrubbed, and squeegeed—and miraculously, not one rat jumped out during the entire process. Theo put his bed in first, directly beneath the elevator; the Moroccan was next, in the middle; and then me. We could see through the cracks that on the first floor the elevator was right next to a garage door that was always open a little; this gave us a bit of sunlight on the dark days when the electricity was out. To conceal ourselves we hung a line across the entranceway to the shaft and draped several dark blankets over it. It was a cozy, if depressing, spot. Omar had to stay outside like a dog.

  Once I found materials in the debris piles to use as weights I began to spend most of my time working out, and pretty much kept to myself. There was an axle I used for curls; an extension cord I used for a jump rope, and an exercise mat that I used for air bicycles and sit-ups. In between reps I jogged around the entire floor three times. I’d always kept in shape back home, hitting the gym six days a week, so this was a way for me to try to reclaim some semblance of my old life. It also helped me keep my head clear.

  Sometimes hours would pass without me saying a word to anyone. This was a change as I had always been somewhat talkative, and now that I wasn’t feeling chatty Abdelatif decided to become Theo’s new best friend. The two would sit right outside the elevator shaft when I was inside, speaking in French becau
se they knew it annoyed the hell out of me—not because I wanted to know what they were saying but because I knew that if the guards heard Theo speaking in yet another language it would only reinforce their suspicions that he was a spy, which wouldn’t do anything to help my case.

  At night the Moroccan would sing the Koran so it echoed all through our vast prison. While he sang Theo would lie next to him facedown on an exercise mat like a mutt, letting the flies land and swarm around him by the dozen without moving to swat them off. He was now always at the Moroccan’s side, sleeping when he slept and staying awake when he was up.

  “I want to go to Anadan with you,” Theo said to him one day as we all sat in bed, staring up at the sunlight creeping in through the shaft.

  Abdelatif promised to take him there if we all got released together, and when I tried to convince Theo that it was smarter to head straight for the Turkish border than to accompany the Moroccan back to the town where he had been shot and kidnapped, it was like talking to a brick wall. He was totally infatuated with Abdelatif; sometimes it seemed like the two were in love. Theo even planned to help him get back into the States if we survived, offering to put him up at his mother’s house in Vermont and give him money to get started. The fact that Abdelatif was a member of al-Qaeda no longer seemed to register. Listening to them talk long into the night I thanked God that I’d never told Theo I was Jewish. There was little doubt in my mind that if I had he’d have told the Moroccan during one of these conversations, and even less doubt that this would have been my death sentence.

  The rats in the warehouse were big, but it was their boldness that intimidated us most. Before we relocated to the elevator shaft, we’d often be sitting on our mattresses when a rat came charging out of a debris pile like a raging bull. It would run straight at us, its little claws screeching across the concrete, and just before it reached the beds it would break to the right, darting around the mattresses and behind a lone file cabinet that stood against the wall.

  “They’re not afraid of us!” the Moroccan exclaimed the first time this happened.

  “No shit!” I said. “You see the way he came at us? It was like someone dared him to do it!”

  I tried several times to make traps, but these rats were way too smart for that. We were totally defenseless if they ever decided to rise up against us . . .

  The Rat Offensive began when I was sleeping. Next to me my cellmates sat on their mattresses, enjoying the little light we had. I was just drifting off into a peaceful slumber when I suddenly felt something heavy racing up my bare arm. My eyelids flew open to see a Chihuahua-sized rat sitting on my shoulder, staring me right in the eyes.

  “Ahhhhhhhh!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, flinging the giant vermin off.

  The rat hit the floor and then made for the garbage pile, dragging its hind legs as if it was injured. Meanwhile, I’d jumped up and run for the corner under the elevator; the Moroccan and Theo—who hadn’t seen a thing and still had no clue why I was screaming—scrambled to do the same. The three of us stood there, clinging to each other like three little girls trapped in a room full of snakes.

  “What happened? What happened?” the Moroccan asked, his eyes darting around in terror.

  “A rat! A rat!” I cried. “A fuckin’ rat ran up my arm!”

  Once they figured out why they were cowering in the corner Abdelatif and Theo began to laugh, more at how scared they’d been than at me and my new friend, who made Ben look like a bitch.

  After our initial misunderstanding—if you can call something that ended with Theo in a tire and my ankles bleeding a “misunderstanding”—Abu Abdullah worked overtime to make us feel like guests, which has symbolic importance in this kind of situation. One of the things he did to make it up to us was to sing the Koran in this shockingly beautiful voice that echoed through our massive cell. The first time he did this was when the electricity was out, as he was bringing us lunch. He said he was singing so Allah would hear him and bless us with light.

  Abu Abdullah was thrilled that I had found Islam. I think it was on our second morning that we heard him coming down the stairs right after the Adhan. Neither the Moroccan nor I had risen, but when the sound of his footsteps reached our ears we were out of our beds like they had ejector seats. I ran over to the kitchen room and immediately began Wudu, the cleansing process all Muslims must perform before prayer. Abu Abdullah had come over to watch and I pretended not to know he was behind me as I stood at the sink washing my arms, face, hair, ears, and ankles, making sure to do it properly to meet his expectations. When I came out I shook his hand, and he motioned for me to take my place on the quilt that served as my prayer rug. The Moroccan tried to insist that Abu Abdullah lead the prayer, but he refused—he was not there to lead; he was there to observe. Just before the Moroccan began the Fatiha, Abu Abdullah placed his bare foot beside mine so that the sides of our feet were touching, a custom I had never encountered during my time with the Alawites. I moved smoothly through the motions of the morning prayer, and by the time it was over there was no doubt in Abu Abdullah’s mind: I was the real-deal Holyfield.

  His talent as a singer was exceeded only by his brutality as a torturer, and the sounds produced by the latter were as bone-chilling as his singing was melodic. Once, Theo, the Moroccan, and I were lying in the shaft, staring up at the ceiling as we listened to the endless screams punctuated by gunshots. It was a long interrogation, and almost as soon as the screaming stopped we heard Abu Abdullah on the stairs. When he entered our corner we all looked up at him, without saying a word. He was filthy, covered from head to toe in dirt, and the look in his eyes was black as tar. In his hand was a plastic bag and once he was done looking us over he stepped closer and knelt before me. I noticed that he was panting, out of breath from whatever he’d been doing to the poor soul upstairs. He reached into the bag and pulled out some bread and a round container of cheese, unwrapped the plastic, placed it before me, and then held out his hands as if to say “Bon appétit!” When I reached out to take the garbage from him he shook his head once, held up a finger, and then left, making his way back across the basement and up the stairs.

  Nobody said a word throughout this entire scene. A few minutes later, Abu Abdullah was back at work, and the screaming resumed.

  As time passed and updates about how great our cases looked turned into promises of rides to the border, we all tried to stay positive and believe we would truly be released. Yet despite the hopeful signs, my mood was at an all-time low—when I wasn’t working out I was walking in circles, making endless, silent laps of our shadowy subterranean cell. It was during one of these laps that I heard the yelling coming from upstairs. I stopped at the entrance and looked up through the ironwork above the door, and a second later I saw Abu Abdullah rushing down the stairs holding handcuffs, the clatter of more footsteps behind him. I ran over to the elevator shaft.

  “Abu Abdullah’s coming,” I said. “He has handcuffs.”

  “That’s not good,” said the Moroccan.

  A second later Abu Abdullah, the Leader, and another jihadi I had never seen before entered the cell and walked over to us. The Leader did the talking; he said we were being moved and that he had no other information. I pleaded with him to let me run over to the clothesline to get my ski cap. It was the only part of my old identity that I’d managed to hold on to; an outline of the States hidden right there on the label, and there was no way I was going to let that go if I could help it. The Leader gave me permission to retrieve the hat, and a few minutes later we were led up the stairs, blindfolded, and then outside into the blazing sun. We had been underground for only eleven days, but the great, dungeon-like gloom of the cell made it feel as if it had been an eternity.

  The first voice I heard when we stepped outside stopped me dead, sending chills down my spine.

  “Jumu’ah, it’s Abu Dejana,” Kawa’s assistant said cheerfully.

  He must have expected a chipper response; it was obvious he thought I hadn’
t heard him by the way he repeated himself—just as friendly, but a little louder.

  “Jumu’ah,” he said again, “it’s Abu Dejana!”

  “Hey, how are you,” I said in Arabic, with a big smile.

  A large man came up beside me, twisting my free arm behind my back and pushing me toward a van.

  “No, no, no,” Abu Dejana said when I grunted in pain, letting my holder know I wasn’t to be treated that way.

  The rear door of the van opened and Theo, the Moroccan, and I were placed inside. A few minutes later, we were zooming through the streets of Aleppo—I was crushed, knowing that we were right back in Kawa’s hands.

  THE TRANSPORTATION BUILDING

  JULY 1, 2013

  Almost the second the van stopped, we were taken from it—this time the Moroccan and I had been cuffed together; we were ushered into a building and down a staircase just inside the entrance, then down another set of stairs to the basement, then through a door, about ten feet from the bottom step. We were made to sit down and heard men gathering around us from all sides. I felt someone’s warm breath next to my ear.

  “What is your name?” hissed a voice in English.

  “Matthew, but they call me Jumu’ah.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Huriya,” I answered.

  My Arabic had thrown him off.

  “What?”

  “Huriya!” I said, louder. “Freedom!”

  The man stood back up and addressed us in Arabic. He wasn’t whispering now, and I recognized the voice immediately—it was Kawa. A few moments later our handcuffs were removed, the door was locked, and a second after that our blindfolds were off.

  Theo, the Moroccan, and I were alone. The room was small, about twelve paces wide and the same across; on the floor was nothing but a single black mattress with no blankets. This cell was not like any we had been in before. For one thing, there were no names, calendars, or Koran quotes carved into the walls. Wherever we were, this was obviously not a room used for holding prisoners long term. When I pointed this out to the other two, there was really only one conclusion to draw: we were in court.