Roundabout of Death Page 9

On the tenth day we got a phone call from a human rights organization. I gave them all the information they asked for so they could look into the matter.

  On the thirty-first day we got a phone call from someone who told us he was a friend of our son’s from prison, who said, “Don’t worry, Nawwar is fine, he’s alive and well, and he’s being held at the general Mukhabarat prison in Kafr Sousseh. He’s in Damascus.”

  This calmed us down a bit. On the thirty-ninth day we received more news over the telephone from another friend of his from Deraa, informing us that he was still alive.

  Things became more dramatic in the following days. Every day Nawwar’s mother went to the state security station waiting for them to accept the underwear she brought with her, that’s all she wanted from them, to let him change his clothes because she simply couldn’t take it anymore. She went to speak with the Party bureau administration on the university campus, explaining to them how her son had been taken away while taking notes at a conference, that he had done nothing wrong, and how he was a patriotic citizen. A party representative at the university told her that he sympathized with her plight but that there was nothing he could do. Then she paid a visit to the medical school where he was studying, and they told her the exact same thing. All we could do was wait.

  It had been several days of waiting when I got a phone call from the military police in Aleppo explaining that our son was with them, that we should try not to worry, and that he was going to be released the next day. I allowed myself to feel some excitement but I squelched that feeling as I informed my wife that we had found him, that the next day he would be home with us, God willing. My wife cast me a dubious glance and silently marched into the other room.

  It took all of the strength I had to endure the waiting for the next day, to keep my nerves together. I couldn’t sleep all night—I was plagued by images of a ravenous bug hunting for its prey. My head wouldn’t stop pounding even after I had popped a few Paracetamols and swallowed my blood pressure medication. I was still in pain, and around 4:00 a.m. it got so bad I jumped out of bed and went to the bathroom to wash my face. Without drying off, I sat back down on the edge of the bed, like someone dangling at the edge of an abyss, and I remained there until the first threads of light began to divide from the blackness all around me, then I lay back down on the bed and slept for a bit, dreaming about a hyena as it devoured my body. I was screaming, and had a hard time waking up. There was nothing there but me and the bed.

  My wife had gotten dressed and was standing by the door. She didn’t say good morning, didn’t speak a word, just glared at me.

  “Everything okay?” I asked, as I gradually found my bearings.

  “Well, are we going to see him or what?”

  I told her it was 7:15 a.m., they don’t open until 8:00, and they probably wouldn’t even bring him out before 11:00.

  “I’m going to see my son. You can stay here if you want.”

  “God grant me patience, hang on while I throw some clothes on.”

  I got dressed in a hurry and walked out as she had already started to leave.

  They transported him from the military police to the Ministry of Justice, where they were going to hand him over to the prison police. What a nightmare, I swear to God.

  We waited there at the Justice Ministry until 1:00 p.m., when some good tidings of hope started to emerge. They hauled out criminals and thieves and people with long rap sheets, and my son Nawwar came along with them. After forty-five days we were finally able to see him. We walked inside the Justice Ministry prison. My wife had made arrangements with the warden, who allowed us to see him. We handed him some fresh underwear and he changed on the spot. His beard had grown long and thick. I nearly broke down in tears at the sight of him. Meanwhile his mother was already crying. The reunion lasted until 2:00 p.m., which is when they asked us to leave. And so we waited . . . fifteen minutes, half an hour, an hour, but still they didn’t call his name. Then they loaded up all the prisoners in a windowless prison van and took them away, shutting down the Justice Ministry prison, and shuffling us all outside. When my wife learned that our son was not going to be tried that day, and that she’d have to wait another day before seeing him, she started to howl, a cry that became more intense when the door shut us out. The police had to escort her out by force as the presiding judge Hussein Farho slipped out to his car through the side door. I tried to help her walk but she declined my assistance, grabbing hold of the metal door and refusing to leave. She was crying and sobbing, cursing and insulting and squealing. She remained like this for nearly half an hour, until the police began to feel some pity for her, until the sky started to cry on her.

  I held onto her so that she wouldn’t fall down, hailed a cab, shoved her inside, and laid her down in bed when we got home, where she didn’t move a muscle.

  The next day my son arrived early in a prison van. I paid off the police to let me ride with them, and we drove to see the judge who had released him under the amnesty for those who had committed bloodless crimes. I was able to go along with the police because I had showered them with money as my son smudged a fingerprint here and added a signature there before he was released. And then, finally, there we were with our son, his hands free, outside the Justice Ministry. After bribing the police who were trailing us, we made our way home.

  My son told us how they had come for him while he was taking notes, which we already knew, insisting that he hadn’t done anything wrong, reinforcing the lawsuit we had already filed in his case, now being raised in Damascus. They had whisked away my son to Damascus for further interrogation, he was flown from the state security station to the capital, where they welcomed him with beatings, torturing some parts of his body but leaving him untouched elsewhere. The beatings continued every day until the evening, when they would let up. He had endured forty-five days of this, the duration of his prison time, and they released him after the amnesty law was promulgated, taking him to Homs and then to Aleppo, first to the military police, then the city jail, and finally to the Justice Ministry.

  “Thank God you’re home,” we said to him, but he didn’t reply, meeting us with nothing but silence. Over the course of the next few days Nawwar turned inward and didn’t speak to anyone. He stayed in his room, eating and drinking all by himself and refusing to go to university. His studies had gone up in smoke. If we set foot in his room he’d start yelling at us, he didn’t want to see anyone except for his mother, who would bring him food, place it on the table, then sit down on the bed beside him, stroking his head and his shoulders, cursing the university and education that had brought him to this, and he nodded his head in agreement. As soon as she left he’d start cursing and swearing, hiding beneath the sheets, and then leave in a hurry. A week went by like this. The boy needed water but we didn’t have any to offer him. The water had been shut off and our tanks were dry, so I picked up the plastic jug and went off in search of water. The water had been shut off at the mosque as well even though they had dug a well with donations from the pious. It was almost five in the morning and I was out in search of water when I noticed a young man carrying some. I asked him where he had found it and he pointed me in the right direction. I walked over to where I found just a few men and women waiting in line. I put down the tank and stood there to wait, too. There were only six taps, but all had been shut off, leaving just dribbles. I wondered what I should do and I decided to wait.

  It took one of those people a half hour to fill his tank, but the man didn’t stop there, pulling out another tank and placing it underneath the impeded tap. I waited another half hour until it had been filled, at which point he took his water and left. Then a woman filled her tank and left. When it was my turn I placed the tank under the broken, leaky spout as the rest of the people in line waited without talking to one another for whatever water remained. The man whose house we were at came out to throw out his garbage. He was wearing a white undershirt and shorts that extended slightly below his knees. After tossing th
e garbage he went back inside, without a word to us, only an icy stare. My tank was just about full and I was getting ready to leave when the man standing behind me asked, “You only have one tank?” I nodded as I picked it up and headed for home. By the time I opened the door it was 8:30 a.m. I could hear my wife crying so I went to see her after putting down the water. She was sobbing all alone.

  “He’s gone,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Nawwar left.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know, maybe Turkey. There’s nothing left for me here. I have to leave.”

  “And go where?”

  “To hell,” she exhaled.

  My mind drifted elsewhere as I thought about my son who had left, I had no idea where to.

  “How can you space out in a moment like this?” my wife asked. “I’m telling you I can’t take it here in this country anymore. Find us another place to live.”

  “I’m still in a bit of a daze,” I told her. “Just let me think for a minute.”

  “What’s the use in thinking? I want to get out of here.”

  “But go where?”

  “Raqqa. Didn’t you say you know a lot of people there? Rent us a house, any house, we’ll just go.”

  “We’ll see. I haven’t even had a chance to think now that he’s disappeared. Let me get dressed and go look for him.”

  “He must be gone by now, he crossed the checkpoint at seven, headed for Turkey.”

  “God knows best. Let’s wait until tomorrow, then we’ll leave for Raqqa to look for a place to live.”

  It was a struggle to get water to the house. The mosque was very close but the caretakers wouldn’t allow people to get water there. I walked inside after morning prayer; the ablution taps were still dripping a little bit, and the faucet by the toilet was running more quickly. I attached the hose and placed it next to the tank, letting the water flow for twenty minutes until it was full, then I picked up the tank and made my way back home.

  The regime had opened a new road to Raqqa and Damascus. After a period of time in which the checkpoint seemed to have been closed for good, the vegetables and fruit and other basic goods had started to reach us via that road.

  I had no need to tell her that I was going to Raqqa, that I’d have to be away from them for a few days. My wife could no longer bear to remain in the city, so I would go to Raqqa to see my friend Hamadi Abu al-Issa and rent a house, then bring my wife and daughter with me to live there.

  RAQQA...CAPITAL OF THE ISLAMIC STATE

  We hopped on a Pullman bus that crept through Al-Safira, then Khanasirah, which people around here pronounce Khanasir, where all you could see were soldiers sipping tea and cooking food. One street cuts through the city, which appears to be expanding to the right and to the left, silent and sorrowful: like an old man who has cloaked himself in a shroud and collapsed. As we continue along, we see storefronts with their doors blown off, houses with windows and entryways, nothing whatsoever indicates that this city was ever inhabited except for the rubble piled between the houses. Washing machines with nothing left but their skeletons, refrigerators tossed here and there have been converted into dining tables, and the early morning is still written all over the soldiers’ eyes; they have not yet woken up completely.

  Here we are in the center of the Al-Safira neighborhood, where the walls have been painted over and the Al-Safira police, Khanasir division, have written words of welcome to visitors, scrawled in beautiful calligraphy: “We Obey You, Zaynab.” The Pullman has to stop at a checkpoint.

  “Where are you going?” the soldier asked the driver.

  “Hama.”

  The bus attendant, who happened to be the driver’s son, got out of the vehicle, a glass of cold water in his hand. The soldier waved the bus along as he raised the glass of water up high and poured the water into his mouth.

  “No to Sectarianism,” announces one wall over here, and over there are some more walls with the same words of welcome and praise for the Prophet’s granddaughter.

  Now we’re on the Athriya Road, a narrow route that is just barely wide enough to accommodate two cars, typically it’s used as a footpath between villages. The army has taken up positions along the ridges and the heights, and they have also made it down into the lowlands where they have built fortified defense posts, some of them now furnished with creature comforts as well.

  We continued on our way through nearly empty countryside. It was autumn, the sky was blue and there wasn’t a hint of rain, on a level road where nobody bothered us, and it was serene enough for us to doze off for a bit had it not been for the periodic clattering and rattling of our bus. Larks and other birds soared to and fro all along the asphalt road, flying away in what seemed like glee as the bus approached and alighting on the dirt beyond the road. I closed my eyes for a bit, we still had a long way to go. Now we’re on the international highway and in two hours at the most we should be in Raqqa. Nowadays, though, we’d need five or six hours to get there, depending on the checkpoints. The road had become extremely long, and it was no longer international.

  The Athriya Road led us to a large factory where the army had installed itself, to the right lies Salamiyah, then Damascus, and to the left Al-Tabqa, then Raqqa. We encountered several low-slung checkpoints, which forced the bus to proceed in a zigzag so they wouldn’t be ambushed by any enemies. Several army soldiers carrying Russian-made rifles boarded the bus, sat down in silence, pulled out some tobacco to roll cigarettes, and then started smoking. We were just eighteen passengers, a fairly small group, including the young son of the driver.

  Without attracting any unwanted attention, the bus made its way down the road, which had no turn-offs, as if it had been drawn with a ruler. We rarely saw other cars out there, unlike on the Athriya-Salamiyah Road, which always seems to be clogged with cars and buses as well as vans both with and without passengers.

  After a while, we were stopped at an army checkpoint and the bus attendant hurried to hand over a glass of cool water, when they asked, “Where to?”

  “Raqqa,” the driver replied, and they waved us ahead.

  I had visited Raqqa many times before, ever since the eighties, when I was able to go there in the morning, taking the international road, store my belongings wherever I was going to stay, have some food, then hang out by the Euphrates, sit along the banks and watch the river flow past as it was sculled by an old man worn down by time, with a gray beard and a peasant face, prayer beads in his hand as he repeatedly muttered the name of God most high.

  The river would captivate me for long stretches of time, as I reminisced about the parties that used to happen there: a group of young men diving into the river, eating fish they had caught themselves, singing, and if the spirit moved them you would see them spring to their feet and start dancing in the Bedouin style, staying up until dawn moving to the beat of the darbuka and the oud and the voice of the singer, who sang about estrangement from the beloved, sorrow, and heartbreak.

  The bus slowed to a halt as we approached the next checkpoint. A man in fatigues came on board, offered his greetings, and gave us all a once-over before asking for everyone’s ID. After we handed them over, he checked the documents one by one and then inspected the bus, quickly peering in any hidden spaces, shoving his hand inside and rummaging around. He didn’t find anything of interest and invited the driver to move along.

  In the forty-five years I have been coming to Raqqa, I have never gotten bored of this small, modest city. Many mayors have served here, and all have ignored corruption, to say nothing of those who directly contributed to its spread. Imagine with me, if you will, how the streets were to be paved twice every year, once as it was budgeted officially, once in order to line the pockets of fat cats, and still the streets of Raqqa remained unpaved.

  There was nothing different at the third and fourth checkpoints, everyone followed the exact same routine—asking to see IDs, searching the bus, then saying, “Go in peace.” The dr
iver would forge ahead as if he had been scalded by fire. Now we were at the top of Al-Ayman Street. When the bus stops the attendant shouts that we’re going to have a ten-minute break, for those who wish to smoke or do something else, have some water or get some food, they are welcome to go ahead and do so.

  The rest stop was located on a slight rise that looked out over vast tracts of empty land. We walked up the steps to enter the shop, which sold all kinds of food and drinks, but I wasn’t hungry so I went outside to the water fountain, washed my face well, and then headed back toward the bus. There were dozens of empty bottles and packages alongside the vehicle. The other passengers had begun to return, buttoning their pants after urinating standing up on the desolate land. The only ones left to wait for were the soldiers getting on board here.

  After the break, the bus had traveled for another half hour when the attendant stood up and gestured toward his face, placing his palm against his nose.

  “Cover up, ladies,” he said.

  The women and girls hurriedly filed to the back of the bus, pulled out their niqabs, and placed them on their heads. I watched two of them in particular, two women I thought were sisters: one was a hairstylist and cosmetologist, and I overheard her explain her work to another woman and offer her phone number. When I first came on board I noticed that she and her sister were both unveiled and had makeup on, which caused me to doubt whether this could truly be the bus to Raqqa.

  There were seven women on the bus and now they were all sitting in the rear, niqabs covering their faces. When the bus attendant was satisfied that his request had been honored, he sat back down in his seat as his father lit up a cigarette and started puffing smoke out the window, staring out into the distance with some concern, in a daze. I had no idea what had come over him.

  “Welcome to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,” read the writing on a banner flapping in front of me, and on the massive black flags I saw all around as well. The road was littered with earthen barriers, which the bus traversed before stopping to wait its turn. All of us were silent, wary and more than fearful to be honest. We had to wait for about five minutes until a young man with a long beard appeared beside the driver, wearing a long flowing shirt that reached below his knees, matching pants, annd a pistol hanging from a holster. He had cradled a rifle on his shoulder, grenades cinched to his bandolier, and a walkie talkie in his hand into which he spoke in a Bedouin accent, his flowing hair pulled back behind his head with a handkerchief that was the same color as his clothes, and tattered slippers on his feet.