Walking back from the market I saw the same thing. I decided not to return to gawk at the Clock Square, so I headed back into the market. Everything was exactly the way it had been the last time I visited Raqqa. The price of vegetables and other goods was much cheaper than in Aleppo. Here the prices were reasonable. Also, there was no theft here because a thief would risk having his hand chopped off, and there was no adultery or homosexuality in this city. I felt strange in the market buying supplies. Here I am coming back by way of Al-Mansour Street, beginning in the museum district, rising up to the main street. An ISIS man stared at me as two of them changed money back into Syrian liras. One of them just stood there gawping at me for a long time as I stumbled past. What did this man want from me? I looked back at him as he sized me up, then reached his hand out toward me, stretching out his finger. I felt my skin turning pale. His friend spoke French with him and smiled. Then he asked, “Aren’t you so-and-so?”
Does this man know me? I wondered. What’s his deal?
“Yes, I’m so-and-so. Can I help you?”
A FRENCH FILMMAKER IN EGYPT
When I visited Paris, he was the only one waiting for me outside the airport, holding a sign with my name on it, and when he saw me smile he lowered the sign and motioned for me to approach him. As I drew closer, he introduced himself.
“I’m Abd al-Qadir’s friend. He couldn’t get out of work so I came in his place to take you to him.”
“Nice to meet you, but he promised me he was going to pick me up at the airport.”
“I know, that’s why he sent me.”
He was an olive-skinned young man, his thick hair pulled back, like a Hollywood celebrity, wearing pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a sport coat, and brown loafers, with a neatly trimmed mustache and beard.
“This way, please,” he said, and I followed him. I had only one piece of luggage, which he picked up and carried for me. I noticed he was wearing a gold ring on one finger.
He guided me to the airport taxi stand where there was a line of black Peugeots waiting their turn. After stowing my suitcase in the trunk he gestured for me to hop into the first car in line, so I climbed into the back seat. He addressed the driver in French and the Peugeot took off. It was a little before five as we left Orly.
“Sir,” he said, turning toward me and speaking in Arabic now, “women here are plucked and gobbled up like peeled and seedless grapes.”
“Well, back home your own parents managed to create you,” I said, nodding at him. “Wouldn’t you say your father must have had his share of that same fruit?”
As the Peugeot drove into the city, I was nearly struck dumb. The Paris you see on TV is nothing like the Paris I was seeing before my eyes, it’s more beautiful, more splendid, more amazing. No sooner had we arrived at the street where Abd al-Qadir lives than I heard his voice calling down to me from the fourth floor. I looked up to see Abd al-Qadir in the flesh. It had been twenty-one years since I saw him last. He was working for Euro News. He came downstairs and in the blink of an eye he was right in front of me, while Bahaa settled up with the taxi driver, grabbing my suitcase because I was too busy greeting my old friend, the one called Abd al-Qadir. The whole time we climbed the four flights of the staircase, slowly rising toward the sky, Abd al-Qadir was the only one who spoke.
I left behind all my troubles, all my worries. In the evening I cleansed myself of all the filth, washed my body well. Then we had a dinner that Abd al-Qadir had prepared in my honor before leaving the house to truly begin my visit to Paris. That night we wound up somewhere that Abd al-Qadir had selected especially for me, a place where women with the most beautiful voices sang, in French, bien sûr. Bahaa was always by our side. Abd al-Qadir took a break from work to show me the real Paris. The next day we strolled down the Champs-Élysées and I was flabbergasted, convinced that I was dreaming but couldn’t wake up. We went to Montmartre, the Bibliothèque Nationale and the Musée National, a Picasso exhibition, the Latin Quarter and the Cité Universitaire, Versailles, Père Lachaise: no stone was left unturned. The truth was that Bahaa and Abd al-Qadir were more than just noble men, more than just friends, more than just brothers—they were all of that combined, and then some.
We were sipping coffee in the sun at a cafe on the Champs-Élysées where Jean-Paul Sartre, father of existentialism, used to sit, when I asked Bahaa what he did for a living.
“I’m a film director,” he said.
Abd al-Qadir guffawed violently, which I found quite odd. He told me he had never graduated from film school.
“Listen here, my friend,” said Abd al-Qadir. “Bahaa used to be married, and he went to film school regularly.”
“So what happened?” I asked.
“His wife was very wealthy and she was unfaithful to him. One time he convinced her to travel to Egypt. Umm al-Dunya, Mother of the World, they call the place, isn’t that right, bey? He was going to pretend to be a famous French filmmaker. Anyway, Bahaa travelled to Egypt with his wife, they stayed at the Gezira Sheraton, announcing that he was a French filmmaker who had come to Egypt to make a movie. All kinds of actors and actresses came to see him, Egyptian filmmakers, too, anyone who had any connection to the film industry. Eventually he made the acquaintance of a woman with Swiss citizenship staying at the same hotel, and he cultivated a relationship with her. Long story short, it developed to the point that his wife realized he was being unfaithful to her, and she accused him outright of doing so, and then one day his wife packed her bags, bound for Paris, and left Bahaa at the hotel without any money. He couldn’t even pay the hotel bill. Anyway, he managed to sort things out for himself and return to Paris, because when the Swiss lady found out what was going on she gave him the boot as well. When he arrived back here, he went home to find that his wife had changed the locks and she invited me over to pick up everything that belonged to him, from clothes to cologne. She didn’t let me inside the house, though, just chucked everything out the window when she spotted him waiting downstairs.”
We all had a laugh about it, then Abd al-Qadir continued, “When he came back, he quit film school, left cinema behind, no longer aspiring to be a director. He’s been looking for work ever since. He’s not really qualified to do anything, though. He’s tried applying to a modeling agency, searching from company to company, sending out his resume and qualifications. If you ask me his appearance and his clothes make him seem like a mannequin, and he’d love to work for Yves Saint Laurent or Chanel or something like that, but they all agree that he’s about five centimeters too short.”
Bahaa was of Lebanese descent and his mellifluous voice betrayed a Beiruti accent.
“Brother,” he said, “I’m from the Aicha Bakkar neighborhood of Beirut, my family fled to Germany when I was one year old. I grew up there, learned German, and my mother died when I was ten, she died giving birth to my brother Barhoum. My father got married to another Lebanese woman there, and as soon I turned eighteen I moved here to Paris. This is the capital of beauty and refinement. I hung out in cafe after cafe until I met the woman who became my wife.”
“Tell him how much older than you she is,” Abd al-Qadir interjected.
“Her age doesn’t matter,” he said, ignoring his comment. “So I enrolled at the film academy, travelled to Egypt with her, then I met Abd al-Qadir. He’s such a good friend.”
He went on to speak at length about Abd al-Qadir, enumerating his virtues. Abd al-Qadir got up to make coffee for us, and Bahaa continued, “Don’t believe a word he says. It’s all lies. Lies, I tell you!”
“But how can I not believe him when Abd al-Qadir’s sitting right here, when I’m in his house? I know him too well. He’s my old friend from Aleppo. We used to sit in cafes there every day, too, until he got a university scholarship and came here to study. I stayed back home teaching schoolchildren: subject, object, predicate, verbs, and the neuter form.”
At this point I remembered the unusual thing that Bahaa had said to me. I turned toward him. We had all b
ecome quite comfortable with one another by this point, so I said, “Bahaa, you told me that women here are gobbled up like grapes! But I didn’t see a single woman who even noticed you! Brother, nobody wants to be compared to grapes, even if they are tasty.”
Abd al-Qadir overheard our conversation and he came in with two cups of coffee, laughing. “You mean to say you understood that women will just go with anyone who knows how to peel them?”
“Yes,” I replied.
ABU MUHAMMAD AND BAHAA AL-DIN AL-FARANSI
This is Bahaa, whose name had been changed to Abu Muhammad Bahaa al-Din al-Faransi, whom I met in Raqqa, capital of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. He hadn’t forgotten about our friendship that lasted for a month back when I was in Paris visiting my friend Abd al-Qadir. I had a great time with the two of them experiencing Paris, City of Lights, as they call it.
The man welcomed me in Raqqa, invited me to come and see him, so we made a plan to meet at the Al-Amasi restaurant, located across from the Al-Rashid cafe, near the clock tower, at 8:30. I wondered whether that was a good idea as I searched for my friend Hamadi Abu al-Issa. We had said goodbye to one another, planning to meet again in the evening at the restaurant.
First I wandered off to the right, the side of the square where the bakery is located. People were in two lines that extended all the way back into the square, wrapping around the street on the other side, waiting their turn just to buy some bread. An Islamic State militiaman watched over one line that was specified for women in niqabs, who chattered with one another about their daily lives through their veils. Even if you were only trying to get two loaves of bread you still had to stand in line. Everyone is the same, it makes no difference whether you’re a man or a woman, young or old, it doesn’t make a difference how pious you might be. The bakery that had been obliterated used to be on the opposite side of the square. People say that a meteor that fell from the sky had pulverized it, resulting in the death of dozens of people. I turned right onto Al-Wadi Street, trying to piece together my fragmentary knowledge of the streets and buildings of Raqqa just in case I made it to Hamadi’s house but couldn’t find him there. I knew what his building looks like, I had slept there before, that day I had gone to Raqqa with Abu Mahmoud, my friend whose side I never left. We had been invited for a night out on the Euphrates, having called up and rallied seven people to meet up with us. We gathered by the river and found a place off to the side, or I should say they found a spot for us out of the way. They had sent two people ahead of us to lay out a picnic with blankets, bringing a barbecue and coal and skewers, a fan for cooking and utensils. Two other people went to get vegetables and fruit, another two went to buy meat, and the last one came to pick us up at the bus station.
Hamadi Abu al-Issa picked us up in his Kia, then drove to park in front of the snack vendor, where he bought some stuff before we headed toward the Euphrates. At night the river looked like an old man dressed in white, as if the moon were looking down at him and laughing.
Once everyone had come together the party started. A musician showed up with his oud, which he started strumming as he belted out some songs. We were quite a group of young men, some grilling meat on skewers, some making salad, and others just sitting there and smoking, observing the oud player. The great river was beside us, listening in.
Now the performer was really ready. A tabla player had taken up his place, and the concert was about to begin. Without warning the performer began serenading the Euphrates, singing about forbidden lovers as they secretly embrace one another, and about separation. Some of us smoked cigarettes, we poured out arak, which we mixed with water and ice cubes. “Come on, everyone,” someone called out to the crowd as the food was cooked directly on the grill. At first we had mezzehs to go with our drinks. We drank so much that some of us mistook roosters for donkeys. We ate too much fruit, snacked on too many salty treats. When we heard the sound of the call to dawn prayer ring out, we lethargically made our way toward the river and then dove in after stripping down to our skivvies, plunging into the water and swimming, horsing around with one another, and then getting out when our bodies became too cold. They gave us blankets to wrap ourselves in, but I was still shivering even after they moved me closer to the fire. In the end they recommended that I sleep at one of their houses, at Hamadi Abu al-Issa’s, and I agreed right away. He started up his Kia and brought me over to his place, where he lived with his sister and his mother, in a house around here, in this neighborhood. He woke up his sister to offer me her bed and a cup of coffee. After I was done drinking it, he said goodnight and left the room. But I felt as though I had already slept and eaten the food of the gods.
In the morning I woke up to find Abu Mahmoud was with me at Hamadi’s, and the two of them were having coffee. I used the bathroom before joining them, said good morning, and they wished me an even better one, then we were served breakfast before Hamadi took us to the bus station so we could head back to Aleppo. Even more generous, he wouldn’t let us pay our own fare, purchasing tickets for us.
I’m in that same area now. . . here at the al-Amasi restaurant. I turned off toward the right and found the building just to the left in front of me. I walked closer, knocked on the door, and his sister came out to greet me. When I asked her about him, she said, “He left for Turkey, he and his wife and children.” When she asked what I wanted, I said, “Nothing . . . ”
I drew away from her, cursing my rotten luck, and went back to where I was going to sleep, laid down on the bed, and began to review the day ahead of me.
By 8:30 I was dressed and had gone downstairs to meet Bahaa, also known as Abu Muhammad. He had only been waiting for me in the restaurant for a few minutes. He gracefully called over the waiter and ordered a kilo of mixed grilled meats, salad and vegetables, laban, hummus, and ayran to drink, and the man hurried away to put in our order.
The mujahid Abu Muhammad was armed to the teeth. There was a Russian rifle resting against the seat beside him, a pistol attached to his belt, and two grenades on his chest.
“We had such a good time together in Paris,” I said.
“Those days are dead and gone,” he said. “We live for today.” He talked to me about jihad and how forbearance on the day of battle is deemed better by God than a hundred thousand days a believer spends in prayer and piety. “Those believers who fight against the enemies of God herald the coming of heaven, a heaven full of delight where people eat and drink by the grace of God.”
“What do you do exactly?” I asked.
“Jihad in the path of God,” he replied. “The most merciful and exalted God has revealed himself to me. After all those years in France, one day I went down into the street from your friend Abd al-Qadir’s place to see the owner of a book-shop. I was looking for The Collected Miracles of the Saints by Sheikh Yusuf al-Nabhani. He asked me why I wanted it, and I told him it was to educate myself. At this point he left the bookstore to his daughter and walked with me, without leaving my side until I had become half a mujahid. The second time he showed me the way. The third time he handed me a plane ticket to Istanbul, where I was to meet Sheikh Abu al-Waleed al-Rihani in the airport, and then he would show me the straight path.
“I didn’t come across any obstacles. As soon as I passed through security and passport control at the Istanbul airport and walked outside, I spotted him there, dressed in Pakistani clothes. He smiled when he first saw me, and I felt as though I were in the arms of my mother and father. He picked up my bag and we both hopped into a black four-wheel drive. Then we reached his home, or at least the place where we were all going to meet. He told me I must be tired and that I might like to rest until he could finish preparing some food for us. I washed up and performed my ablutions, and by the time I got back the food was ready. We expressed our thanks to God and ate. Then he invited me to go to sleep, and when I woke up we could have a nice chat. I surrendered myself to a pleasant slumber, as if my soul had never known comfort before.
“Anyway, my frien
d, the important thing is that I rested there. And the next day, after breakfast, he invited me to continue on to Diyarbekir. He had reserved a bus ticket for me, and from there onward to Tel Abyad, then to Raqqa, where I was to hand myself over to Sheikh Abu al-Khattab al-Anzi.”
At this point, the waiter came over with appetizers and a bowl of laban and we started eating.
“My first job was to deliver my passport to the security office,” Abu Muhammad went on to tell me, “then to complete a training course in all kinds of weapons, both light and heavy, and then to take a class on religion, in which I replenished my religious knowledge from the time I was a child, then a lesson in jihad, a course in Arabic language, and then the Arabic language teacher declared me proficient enough to teach Arabic myself.”
Then another waiter came over with the grilled meat on a bed of rice covered with bread. Shaykh Abu Muhammad pulled the bread away, revealing the mansaf and chunks of grilled meat. How could anyone be this hungry, you might ask. They brought kebab and steak and lamb shanks and we tucked into the food. He stopped talking and I didn’t say a word. The owner of the restaurant started paying attention to us, or to Abu Muhammad, really. He handed him a CD about jihad and fighting the enemy, about the heaven that awaited all the mujahideen.
Even after we had eaten our fill, there was still a lot of meat left over, so he started goading me into eating more, encouraging me to have some without the bread. I told him I had had enough, thank God for this bounty.
“Eat something, man,” he told me. “You haven’t finished a thing.”
He was force-feeding me, scraping hunks of meat onto my plate, until I said, “That’s enough, honestly.”
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