Roundabout of Death Page 10

  “As-Salaamu aleikum,” he said, and we all replied with the perfunctory “Wa-aleikum as-salaam.”

  “Thank God you have arrived safely,” he added, though none of us responded. “Where are you coming from?” From Aleppo, we told him. “Welcome, welcome.”

  He pulled out a few young men, those who had been conscripted for compulsory military service, at least, those he assumed would have been, asked for their mobile phones to be handed over to him as well, and he carefully examined their ID cards and compared them to their faces, then returned the documents to them, only a few people really, maybe four, and then he continued on to the women, standing beside the head of each one of them and asking who they were traveling with. One of them responded in a whisper. He then asked for the name of their mother and father, and when he was satisfied that everyone was trustworthy, he wished us all a safe and pleasant journey.

  A little while after the bus had started moving once again, we all saw the Al-Tabqa military air field, where there seemed to be no movement whatsoever, where you couldn’t even smell the presence of human beings, then we made our way past the Al-Tabqa exit, where there were some houses, a decimated gas facility, and a fighter jet that had been placed there for show, also completely destroyed.

  We were stopped next at the Al-Tabqa international checkpoint, although nobody boarded the bus this time, they were satisfied with simply asking the driver, “From where?” They waved us through as soon as we told them, and the bus headed for Al-Mansoureh, where we stopped to let off some passengers before speeding off on the home stretch to Raqqa. We only had twenty minutes to go, a half hour at most. I nodded off for a bit. My sleep had been troubled lately, I wasn’t able to sleep at all really, and I soon saw the river appear on the left-hand side flooding and irrigating crops, shimmering in the light, its blue color nourishing the earth and turning it green.

  Here we are in Raqqa. The road forked into two, one leading to Dayr al-Zur and the other to the Islamic State in Raqqa. The road was shaded by cinchona trees, which blanketed their shadows along the path with a mother’s tenderness. Finally we arrived at the checkpoint that would grant us entry to the city.

  A young man climbed into the bus, looking no different than the one from the last checkpoint, also covered with weaponry. He greeted us all with a sprightly, smiling face, and we responded enthusiastically while he gathered our identification, then strode over to the women to ask them the same questions—who is your male guardian, who is his mother? The endearing thing about our group was the fact that the woman who worked as a stylist had brought along her twelve-year-old son, establishing him as a guardian for her and her sister.

  The bus turned off to the right, toward the bus station. It was 1:15. I grabbed my bag, descended from the bus, and headed out of the station. Drivers were squawking at me, and I hopped into the nicest and newest car I could find, placing the bag in the back seat and sitting down in the passenger seat.

  “Mansour Street,” I said.

  The driver didn’t speak to me and I simply stared out at the street. Flying in front of the Cultural Center there was a gigantic black flag announcing the entrance to Raqqa.

  “How are things with you all here?” I asked the driver.

  “Can’t you see?” he said gruffly. “Every Friday they execute some of their critics. We’re tired of all the terror, man. Yesterday they murdered three people, right here at the clock tower, and, honestly, people gathered around the monument, so many that I couldn’t see a thing.”

  The traffic police all greeted him warmly but he didn’t respond. The officer was wearing the exact same outfit, raising his hand and waving at the cars as people honked at him and drove past. They didn’t pay too much attention though, and it appeared he wasn’t even carrying a ticket book.

  I paid the man my fare and walked into the hotel. By the time I put down my bag, hunger had begun gnawing at me, so I went downstairs to find some food.

  Al-Mansour Street, which used to be where ready-to-wear clothing imported from Aleppo was sold, had been transformed entirely by moneychangers, the storefronts now announcing exchange rates with huge images of the Saudi riyal, the American dollar, and the Turkish lira. A few shops had grown into larger operations, where fighters and mujahideen—as some people preferred to call them—would exchange money, loaded up with Syrian liras or other currencies, and you could see them strolling around leisurely, two by two, as they counted up all the cash in their hands.

  The smaller shops also advertised that they bought and sold currencies, even this tailor who ordinarily repairs the clothing of locals had put up a sign saying he was a moneychanger as well. Jewelers and goldsmiths were doing the same with their shops.

  After buying some food at the edge of the museum, I still needed to find some bread, for man truly does live by bread alone, which is how I found my way to the ancient market, which remained as it had been despite the arrival of modern generators. These shops were selling the same things they had sold for the past quarter century, even longer, and my feet guided me from God knows where straight to the clock tower neighborhood, where I found people gathered around, some snapping photos with their mobile phones. I walked up to the monument to see three human heads carefully arranged on top, one to the east and two facing north, placed on the edge of the clock as people took pictures. On the ground, along the base of the clock, were decapitated corpses.

  The schoolchildren from the Al-Rasheed School were pouring out of the main gate, all of them chanting, “Hey! Hey! Hey!” and as soon as they were out the door they sprinted over to the clock tower, each and every one of them toting a schoolbag. When they reached the severed heads, they stood in silence and stared up at this spectacle of the greatest terror imaginable.

  I headed off to the left, toward February 23 Street, the afterimages of the three massacred victims dancing before my eyes, until I was overcome with crippling nausea. Just then the muezzin called out, “Allahu Akbar,” time for prayer. I wanted to get some bread from the bakery but the stores abruptly closed as people left work to go to the mosque and pray and veiled women dressed in black waited on the sides of the street. I didn’t know what to do, a stranger in a city caught unawares by the time for prayer. Besides, I wasn’t a pious person anyway. There was nobody left in the street except for me and a few children milling about outside the bakery. I stood there with them until the bakery reopened. The employees were still inside, waiting for prayer to finish. A large car drove past calling out for people to come pray. I hid from it. I don’t know how I got myself into this mess! Then a young man came by asking the children why they hadn’t gone off to pray.

  “We’ve already gone and come back,” they lied.

  I walked over to a spot where people were gathering. It seemed like they had all just gotten out of the mosque. I stood there with them. My body wouldn’t be able to withstand a single lashing, so forget about seventy of them for failing to show up at prayer.

  When the bakery finally reopened, the employees were already hard at work, and I stepped inside to buy five loaves for ten liras apiece, then set off toward the north. There was a massive car blasting religious anthems about the virtues of jihad for keeping believers on the straight path.

  I veered left and found that another bakery along with whatever else used to be nearby had been reduced to rubble, flattened by a fighter jet: now there was a man selling chicken instead. I was so tired by this point that I stopped right there, my feet couldn’t carry me further. There were sandwiches for sale, too, so I ordered one. A young blond man carrying a rifle strutted over and asked how much. I’m not sure what language he was speaking. The owner informed him that he could buy a wrap for two hundred Syrian liras.

  “God bless you,” the man said, pulling out two one hundred lira notes even as the sandwich maker wrapped some shawarma in bread for him and loaded it up with condiments, including mayonnaise and pickled vegetables. The man started eating ravenously and in silence.

  ISIS me
n were spread all over Raqqa: black men and blonds, blue-eyed Europeans, Africans, Chechens, Tunisians, Libyans, Moroccans, Australians, and Americans: they all rested machine guns against their shoulders, driving or sauntering over to the international store, where they could call their relatives on an international phone line. There had already been several incidents between these foreigners and the local residents, but I never saw such things myself. For example, when a member of ISIS once caught a citizen smoking a cigarette, he told him to put it out and, when the citizen refused, he threatened him with his machine gun and ordered him to hand over the whole pack or else. When the person refused, this ISIS guy brandished his weapon, aimed, and fired, killing the man. There was quite a commotion. The cousin of this smoker came running over and, as soon as he saw the victim, grabbed the ISIS guy, stripped him of his gun away and opened fire on him. Afterward, he started shooting into the air, causing women to wail. The important thing is that they put a stop to those occurrences, covering up the incident and making it disappear. This ISIS guy happened to be from Raqqa and wasn’t a foreigner.

  On the way back to the hotel I saw six or seven people, sitting and standing, all with their hands or their legs wrapped up. I thought to myself that this must be a general hospital, and I hurried along to the hotel.

  There were eight to ten hours of electricity per day here, the water was shut off during the day but flowed during the evening, and gas was sold at impossibly high prices, three thousand five hundred liras per liter. Meanwhile diesel was sold at the official price of eighty liras per liter. There were hundreds of gas stations here, and they all advertised the price per liter of diesel or petroleum or gas, with the sum written on the caps atop the barrels.

  When I made it back to my hotel room, I switched on the lights. In Aleppo we were denied the pleasure of electricity, although we paid taxes to the government for it. We all bought amperage meters and electrical generators but that wasn’t enough. The government electricity was mostly worthless, and when it did come on we could do the washing and wash ourselves, use the refrigerator and the freezer. All the appliances would come on at once.

  As I was preparing my food, a violent explosion rocked the neighborhood.

  I heard people shouting about how a regime fighter jet had destroyed an entire building. If the bombing had come from an airplane, I thought to myself, there would no doubt be another strike. Before I could even assess the damage to the hotel room, the plane came back around for another sortie, making the entire building quake, filling the room with dust. I went to throw open the door and the windows but there were no windows left: the glass had shattered and the balcony doors had been torn off. I looked down at the entrance. All of the guests were sprinting inside to find a place to hide. Some of the wounded were being helped along by their shoulders, blood dripping from their heads, while others had to be carried. Dust continued filling the space as I ran down to the street. Everyone was hiding in concealed entryways. I struggled to find out where the airstrike had taken place but couldn’t find it before people started warning that the plane was coming back around for another pass and everyone took shelter inside. The dust started to crust over by the time I was sheltering along with them. I walked to a corner opposite the Al-Salaam Hospital. The result of all this was plain to see: an entire six-story building located beside the hospital had been flattened, there was nothing left standing except for the stores on the ground level, emptied of all their goods. It seemed that the pilot had misfired and hit this building instead of the hospital, or perhaps he had received faulty information from the security services and, though he meant to hit the hospital, aimed for this structure instead.

  The shops at the front of the building had been eviscerated, and the Al-Bitar clothing store as well as the cars that had been parked out front were ruined. You might say that the shops had all been barbecued and the primary school next door had been destroyed; whatever had been left intact was brought outside. There were stores beyond the immediate blast zone that had been damaged, all the way down to the pharmacy, and to the square that is off to the side of the explosion, to the left, right, and in front of which there was nothing but remains brought into the street. You could see fans that used to hang inside, goods that could no longer be sold in stores. The street where I was staying hadn’t sustained too much damage, just some shattered glass here and there.

  It was an awful day. I went back to my hotel room to try and pull myself together. I still hadn’t eaten anything. I stretched out on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, unable to tell whether I was asleep or awake.

  In the evening I went outside to walk around and buy more groceries. As soon as I stepped into the street, I saw militiamen shouting at people and at cars passing by, insulting them and ordering them to keep away from the blast site. I leaned over so that I could see the building where the two missiles had landed, and there were workers who had climbed up to the level above the storefronts clearing away debris, slow and dangerous work. As spotlights shone on the rubble, an armed human wall took shape, a battalion of the Islamic State had occupied the place. The general hospital had to be shut down, the Al-Salaam Hospital had already been closed for a while. Tunisians, Libyans, and Moroccans were cursing at everyone, trying to push them away. Shopkeepers were picking up glass and pulling out doors, air conditioners, and scattered products, sweeping everything out of the stores as some passersby watched and others ran away. I walked right past without paying attention to anything going on.

  I didn’t have to walk far until Raqqa became the city I liked, the city I remembered. A grilled meat vendor had begun to set up, placing tomatoes and spicy red pepper and other vegetables in front of him, the chopped parsley mixed with diced onions to make the biyaz salad. His lowly assistant was lighting up the fire, shouting at the top of his lungs, “Get your food here!” spraying down the cucumber and tomato to wash them. If you walked a bit further on you’d find a few shops on February 23 Street that sold just about anything. Here was a clay-oven bakery that displayed its bread outside the storefront with only two people working inside, one selling and one handling the oven: the loaves went in and then came out piping hot with a delicious aroma. If we walked a little bit more we would find a more affordable bakery, where people had come from all over to form a long line that stretched all the way to the end of the street and even wrapped around to the next block. Women stood here waiting their turn, all of them wrapped up tight in their clothes, nothing visible but their eyes, which they had beautifully lined with kohl, their eyelashes sticking straight out and announcing a hidden beauty, but the Islamic State men were too busy shopping for clothes and other things to notice, you’d find them in the shop that looked out on the main square, the one that sold camouflage gear and shirts that extended down below the knees, available in the colors of the desert or the colors of trees, under which they wore camouflage pants that came to the ankle, and then holsters to carry their pistols, and bandoliers that wrapped across their chests with niches to hold grenades and guns, head coverings and sandals. There were products of every make and color, for civilian life and for combat. There were three or four of them inside with the merchant, trying things on as the owner told them, “Mashallah, my friend, it fits you perfectly.” Meanwhile another guy stared into the mirror and tried to hold back his smile as he asked about the price. “Just take it, my friend,” the merchant replied. “You’re a mujahid in the path of God against the infidels, you deserve even more than this.” But the mujahid didn’t know any Arabic, although he sensed that the owner was paying him a compliment. He grabbed his companion by the chin and pulled him over, asking him to translate how much the owner had asked for, which was three thousand. The mujahid reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash and handed it to the man he had brought over, who counted it for the owner and then purchased a holster in which he could place his pistol that he was going to use to kill infidels. The owner wrapped up what the man had purchased and said goodbye to him at the
door, then returned to the two men who were still in the shop so that he could begin working with them on another sale.

  Islamic State fighters never quibbled about prices. This is the price, so here, no matter how much the item they were buying may have cost.

  I crossed the small plaza over toward the public park, which I reached just as the sun was going down. The shadows made the place a little chilly. I sat down on a bench, recovering from the exhaustion I felt from the hot sun that was saying goodbye to another day. I stood up to wash my face and feet in the nearby fountain and patted my hands dry, then returned to the same seat to relax for fifteen minutes or so. I strolled around the park for a bit. There were two ISIS guys with wives and children to the right of the entrance whom I avoided as I continued north on my way out of the park. There was a monument that had been demolished and thrown to the ground. Here was a hand, there was the head, that was a leg, and here was the rest of the body. The place was littered with the remnants of this monument. I turned left along the border of the park, walked along the outside, and it appeared that the Al-Shuhada Church had been converted into an Islamic Affairs Bureau, as far as I could tell, there were two men with long hair and unkempt beards dressed in ISIS clothes standing in front of the large door. The organization had also seized control of the party bureaus and all of the security services, transforming them into their own offices after painting them yellow, which I noticed when I first arrived in Raqqa. They built fences around large tracts of land they had seized, writing in large letters, “Property of the Islamic State.”