The Dawn Prayer_Or How to Survive in a Secret Syrian Terrorist Prison

by Matthew Schrier

  The next morning, Obeida showed that he’d been thinking of us since laying the first block—the front gate was lifted from behind the wall and light flooded into the room through the opening he’d left at the top. The cell exploded with joy as everyone jumped to their feet, cheering and embracing each other.

  “Hamdullah!” the Moroccan blurted out, with tears flowing down his cheeks and his hands held up to the heavens. For once, I agreed with him.

  Now we had the luxury of a bathroom in our cell, and while exploring the room the men found an abundance of materials to make use of. Above the bathroom was a lofted storage area, where Shabiha Ali found metal wires and razor-sharp shards of ceramic tile that could be used to cut things. He also found a bag filled with what looked like miles of tape from a cassette. There were two shades of the glossy plastic, black and off-white, and it was heavier and tougher than I’d thought. It didn’t take long for one of the soldiers to go to work with this, and before we knew it he had constructed a whole other chess set, with knights that actually resembled horses. With the same material Rabir made a net and a ball about the size of a softball, forming a basketball rim from the thick steel wire. By nightfall we had two chess sets, one Mancala board, backgammon, a basketball hoop, and, after a visit from an electrician, the much-needed light Obeida had promised.

  I’m sure if you took a pack of dogs who got along fine and locked them up in a small cage it wouldn’t be long before they started biting each other, and that’s exactly what happened with us. Tiffs were common, but rarely went beyond yelling and shit talking. Oqba had a beef with Shareef, Rabir had a beef with Oqba, and the Moroccan had a whole list of beefs—with Rias, Fadaar, Shabiha Ali, and of course yours truly. Abdelatif wasn’t my only problem, though. Living in such close quarters meant that you could be at each other’s throats one second and sharing bread the next—fights usually didn’t last long, but they flared up easily. The closest I came to fighting one of the soldiers was when our holders were moving a group of prisoners, who they’d locked up across from us in our old cell. As soon as we heard them being taken out, I jumped to my feet and peered through the nickel-sized peephole that had been drilled just above where a doorknob would have been.

  “Jumu’ah!” yelled Ali Sheikh. Ali Sheikh was the biggest soldier in the room, about 6′3″ and maybe 220 pounds. He violently motioned for me to sit.

  When I ignored him, he complained to the Moroccan that if I was caught we would all be punished, and when this was translated to me I shrugged it off and kept my eye on the peephole. Then he yelled at me again and I snapped around and answered him.

  “Tell him to grow some fuckin’ balls and shut up!” I said for the Moroccan to translate. “If there are other Westerners or journalists locked up in here I have to know in case I ever get out!”

  Now an insult like this would no doubt have provoked a reaction in pretty much any American prison, but in an Arab one it wasn’t just an insult, it was an insult wrapped in a sin, thanks to their strong feelings about language. I definitely expected a scene once I was done with the task at hand, but first I counted nine prisoners through the peephole, all of them Arabs. Then I turned to address Ali Sheikh, now on his feet and storming toward me. I met him halfway and got right in his face, standing on my toes to meet the giant’s eyes.

  “What? You think I’m fuckin’ scared of you?” I yelled.

  His face was a mask of rage, but my confidence quickly drained him of his and before I knew it he was racing around me to the door to rat me out.

  “C-I-A!” he said loudly, moving to pound on the door; a wall of his brothers prevented him from doing so.

  This display caused quite a ruckus in the room, and later when Ayman defended my actions I heard the sound of Ali Sheikh’s open hand colliding with his face. Everyone jumped up to get between the two men.

  “You see what you did?” the Moroccan bellowed at me. “You see? He was defending you and that’s why this happened!”

  I stood there in shock. For an Arab to speak out against one of his own in defense of an American was unprecedented in our environment, an act of integrity and courage I never thought I would witness. I sat down next to Ayman, who was out of breath with anger, and gave him a soft pat on the shoulder.

  “Thank you,” I said, meaning it with all my heart.

  “You’re welcome!” he yelled out proudly in English, for all to hear.

  Later, Fadaar sat down to have a talk with me, with Ali as our translator. He wanted to know what the fight was about, and after I explained myself he nodded, looking searchingly at me with his clear blue eyes.

  “You have to be careful here,” he said seriously. “Because we all love you a lot and don’t want to see anything bad happen to you.”

  I was overwhelmed with gratitude and thanked him for the love.

  We could hear the two new Shabiha coming long before they entered our cell—not because of their footsteps or those of the guards, but because they were being tortured the whole way. We sat silently listening to their screaming; as they were ushered toward the cell it didn’t sound like they went a single step without the cord flogging them across their backs. We heard both men on the ground outside the entrance to the room, being whipped repeatedly and without mercy. Then the door opened and they were thrown in.

  “They look like thieves,” the Moroccan whispered in my ear.

  And he was right. They did look like thieves—both were dressed in tight, tacky black outfits like something from a cheesy eighties movie. One of the men was covered in jailhouse tats that looked like they’d been done in crayon by a six-year-old; healed up inside his cheekbone was a bullet from being shot in the face. They were Syrian-born Palestinians, raised in the ghetto among their own people, who were still loyal to the regime.

  The men sat against the wall catching their breaths as the call to prayer sounded and we all lined up. At first I thought the Palestinians passed on the prayer because they weren’t religious, but the Moroccan explained to me that it was because they were both filthy from being beaten on the floor, and to pray in such a state was haram. After prayer, the soldiers pooled some of their extra clothes for them to change into and welcomed our new cellmates into the circle.

  When the next set of Shabiha joined us it was worse—much worse. We heard one lash falling after another and two different screams roaring out, all directly outside our door. We heard others being tortured often, and every time we did I would look around the room at all the men’s faces. It was the only time I remember seeing Fatr without a smile on his face; he would sit with his arms around his knees staring at the floor with this blank expression. We all knew we were safe for the moment, but it didn’t spare us from feeling the pain of others. The only person who seemed unfazed was Theo, who would just sit there stroking his mustache with two fingers. It was something that not only I noticed—some of the other men did too, and they took great offense at it.

  This time, when the jihadis had finally finished, we heard the padlock open and turned to the wall. A second later the two men hit the floor inside the cell and we were given permission to turn around by the Wolfman, who was practically foaming at the mouth with rage. He told us our new cellmates were Shabiha and that we were not to speak to them or go near them at all, but as soon as the door closed, several of the soldiers ran over to help the injured men.

  These two were also Palestinians—neither one looked older than twenty, but they both looked broken. One of them, Norie, who was cute as a button when he wasn’t face down in agony, was an ex-con like the last two Shabiha. His hands were tied behind his back so tightly that tears poured from his eyes. A couple of soldiers untied the men’s wrists to get the blood flowing again and then loosely tied them back up. Eventually someone came by the cell and gave us permission to untie them, and as soon as we did Norie’s friend lifted his shirt.

  “Oh my God,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”

  All over his back were dozens
of purple welt marks the exact dimension of the PVC piping they’d beaten him with. It looked like the Shabiha had been used as piñatas and their interrogators had been dead set on breaking them open. Norie’s back wasn’t as bad, but his arm was worse, and any attempt to move it made him cry out in pain.

  “He thinks his arm is broken,” the Moroccan translated, after he hurried over to play doctor with the first aid kit Obeida had provided for the room.

  While Abdelatif was with his patient, a third prisoner was thrown into the cell, and when the Wolfman saw the Moroccan treating Norie he went ballistic and promised to punish him. Drowning in fear, Abdelatif immediately jumped to his feet and handed the Wolfman the first aid kit, apologizing and begging for mercy, saying he was only fulfilling his Hippocratic oath. This calmed the beast and a second later the door closed again and we were alone.

  After someone untied our newest arrival he lifted his shirt, and what I saw made the injuries of the previous two look like nothing. Instead of dozens of pipe-sized welts there was just one—and it took up his entire back.

  “Oh my God, it looks like The Passion of the Christ,” I remarked in shock.

  No matter how out of his mind the Moroccan had already proved to be, the more time that passed, the more insane captivity seemed to be making him. He was now fighting constantly with everyone in the room, and trying to unite all the Sunnis—which meant him and the Shabiha—into a katiba, with the hopes they’d be released to fight on the jihadis’ side. I fought with him more than anyone, but for the sake of all in the room did my best to uphold the peace in between disputes. He claimed to have “racial superiority” over all of us, and the good treatment we were getting had clearly gone to his head. One evening, Abdelatif hobbled up to the entrance and spoke adamantly to Obeida, who nodded and then closed the door.

  “What’d you say?” I asked.

  “I told him I wanna file a complaint against Kawa,” he told me.

  “What are you, outta your mind?” I asked him. “Who do you think you’re dealing with, the NYPD? They’re terrorists!”

  “No!” he barked in my face. “They’re going to pay for my leg! Somebody is going to pay for the surgery to my leg!”

  I tried to explain that he was better off just concentrating on surviving rather than on receiving restitution from al-Qaeda, but there was no getting through to him. I also warned him to stop bad-mouthing Kawa just in case we ended up back in his hands, but he brushed that suggestion off as well.

  The more dominant the Moroccan became in the room, the more abusive he was toward Theo. I’d be sitting on the other side of the cell, peacefully playing chess or having a conversation, when out of nowhere a loud slap would break my concentration and draw everyone’s attention—and it was always the same guy on the receiving end. And every time it happened Theo would be back on his knees giving him a massage within an hour or two, after getting the most hollow, insincere apology the sociopath could spit out.

  After a few slaps I started going over to Abdelatif once he had calmed down, to try to reason with him. I’d beg him to stop hitting Theo, and every time he’d promise to try, but we all knew it was an empty promise doomed to fail. To try and preempt the next assault I thought of a safety mechanism to maybe help my fellow American out a little. Whenever I saw that the Moroccan was at a boiling point and ready to explode, I’d yell “Code Red!” It sounds dumb, but it actually worked the first few times because the Moroccan went instantly from kill mode to laughing gimp.

  Unfortunately for me, there was nobody to yell “Code Red!” when it was my turn. The fight happened at night, and there couldn’t have been a stupider reason for it. One second we were getting along fine and the next we were cursing each other out, all because I asked him to translate something to Rias, who I’d forgotten he had a beef with at the moment. As soon as we started to really get heated I simply got up and walked over to the other side of the room, but this didn’t shut him up and as usual he started threatening to tell Obeida that I was a Jewish CIA agent, and—also as usual—I called his bluff. A few minutes later I looked in his direction and found him staring at me, clearly looking for a fight, so I decided to give him one and stared right back, which provoked an immediate reaction.

  “What the fuck are you looking at?” he screamed at me, jumping to his feet.

  I knew that, strategically speaking, it was the wrong move to go up against a Sunni in a Sunni prison, but I just couldn’t take one more second of this guy’s shit, and I leapt to my feet with my fists raised.

  “Come on, motherfucker!” I screamed at him, ready to go, but before he could hobble over every man in the room was between us.

  As soon as Ayman grabbed me I settled down, not having any desire to put up a fight against people who were trying to help me. I didn’t see the Moroccan’s fist coming because he waited for me to turn away so that he could blindside me. The punch landed flush on my jaw, but with nothing behind it except for the shit pouring out of his mouth, it didn’t faze me for a second. I balled up my fists, ready to rock, but before I could cock back hands were restraining me from every direction.

  Once everything had settled down again, Ali Hussain, a captain and one of the most loved and respected men in the room, came up and embraced me.

  “You are a great man,” he said gratefully, with the little English he knew.

  I felt a surge of pride when I heard this, and when I made eye contact with Shareef and Fadaar a second later they were both smiling proudly as well.

  “Jumu’ah!” Fadaar called out. He held up his fists, praising me for standing up to the most hated man in the room.

  I may have taken the hit, but the message was clear to everyone in the cell: I was not Theo and would not stand to be treated like Theo for a single second. In my eyes our environment was kind of like the Olympics—every man in that cell represented his country, sect, or hood, and I was going to do so bravely and honorably, to show everyone there and every jihadi holding us exactly what Americans were made of.

  Nobody in the room, including the Moroccan, ever raised up on me again.

  When the door opened and they strolled in, we all knew immediately that we were in the presence of power, but none of us had any idea just how much. On June first, we had been held prisoner within the stores for twenty-seven days, and had not received a visit from the emir since before we were transferred into the new cell. Now a group of men, the emir among them, entered, and leading the pack was an extremely confident man in his late forties with a long black beard, a buttoned-up black-and-white-checkered shirt, and camouflage pants. When he addressed the room he did so through squinted eyes to emphasize his contempt for the Alawites. He accused them of being terrible Muslims; he said they drank, smoked, and fucked their sisters. By the time he was finished every Alawite in the room looked crushed by having to take such abuse without defending themselves—although a few did try to speak up, without success. When the man finally looked down to see me by his feet, his expression suddenly softened and he abruptly switched to broken English.

  “Who are you?” he asked, confused.

  “I’m an American photographer.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “They kidnapped me!” I said. “And they robbed me! They think I’m a spy!”

  “You’re not a spy. How long have you been here?”

  “Since May fifth.”

  He looked shocked when he heard this and stepped over to the emir, who was leaning against the door in the background. The Moroccan translated as he asked why Americans had been held there for so long without him being notified. When Blackbeard came back over to me, he had a young man with him to act as a translator. I stood up out of respect and answered all of his questions.

  As all this was going on some of our guests got bored, and decided to head over to the Shabiha to slap the shit out of them for a while.

  During our entire conversation, Blackbeard wore a warm smile that actually had a comforting effect on me. Wh
en I told him I’d been tortured he looked embarrassed and even a little angry—as bizarre as it was, he seemed to like me because I was an American, although he wasn’t buying what the Moroccan told him about my newfound love for Allah.

  “Why don’t you wait until you go home to become a Muslim,” he said to me. “And tell all the Jews they can stay in America because we already have the Alawites here!”

  “Yeah, I’ll let them know,” I said with a smirk.

  Then he entered the room.

  Like I said, we’d all known as soon as Blackbeard and his boys came in that we were in the presence of power, but when the Old Man followed a few minutes later he dwarfed everyone there like the giant he clearly was. As he walked through the door, cleaning his teeth with a stick through his long gray beard, all the commanders and jihadis parted as if he were royalty. He was dressed in all black and didn’t say a word as he sized me up. I greeted him with a goofy smile.

  “Assallam alekum,” I said with a wave.

  Before he had time to answer, Blackbeard took him by the arm and led him over to the bathroom where he spoke to him passionately. When they returned Blackbeard told me and Theo that we would be supplied with pens and paper to write reports on everything that had happened to us up until now, and that he was going to try to help us. I couldn’t believe my ears and thrust out my hand for Blackbeard to shake.

  “Thank you!” I said earnestly in Arabic. He corrected me as he accepted my hand, reciting the more proper expression of gratitude called for.

  It was a few words too long for me to remember so I mumbled the ending like George Costanza would and got a big laugh out of everyone there. I then shook the hands of all present, from the Old Man to the Wolfman. When the door closed and then opened again a few minutes later to let Obeida in with our writing materials, I felt better than I had since the day I was kidnapped. For months I had been bitching to Theo that there had to be at least one Oskar Schindler somewhere in this fucked-up organization who would be willing to help us, and on this day we thought we’d finally met him.