He looked out.
Osman logged on.
“Anything new?” Sadiq asked.
“Yeahyeahyeahyeah.”
“What’s happened?”
There was a ticking sound on the line.
“Atmeh is under attack!”
“What’s going on?”
“Five rockets came down. Here, in the middle of town! It’s burning!”
It was a smaller war within the larger one. The war in Syria consisted of hundreds of minor conflicts, many of them centuries old. They all concerned the same things: land, soil, resources. One conflict was taking place right outside Osman’s blue gate.
The five rockets had been launched by Kurdish YPG guerrillas in reprisal for an attack. Two of them had come down near a hospital, two in a residential area, and one in the middle of the roundabout. On Twitter, Jabhat al-Nusra promised revenge.
The Kurds and the Islamists had been quarreling over control of the border areas since the beginning of the civil war. The Kurds wanted a coherent territory, not scattered cantons within Sunni-Arab land. The problems had intensified in early August when YPG erected a lookout tower near Atmeh, viewed by the Islamists as a violation of a local agreement forbidding forts. They accused the Kurds of shooting from the tower and launched an attack.
According to the deal, the Kurds were to keep east of the Euphrates and the rebel forces to stay west. But one of the Kurdish cantons lay on the west of the river, in the same little pocket of land as Atmeh, and this had led to repeated clashes. Each side blamed the other for reneging on the agreement.
Atmeh had become a more dangerous place. Coalition forces were bombing, IS was waiting for an opportunity to take over the town, and the Kurds were exerting pressure only a mile or so away. The border areas, with their supply lines and smuggling routes, were the locations of a lot of death.
Things were better under Assad, Osman now opined. When Assad was in power, you could get on with your life, things were predictable and not all bad, as long as you did not get mixed up in anything. Arrests were not made at random; people knew the score. No one was taken without a reason. Osman recalled the opposition to the war among the businessmen in Aleppo before he left there. The trading town had long refused to join in the revolt against Assad. People had feared the consequences; they had, after all, seen what had happened in Iraq, a long and drawn-out fight to the death between Sunnis and Shias. Syria could only be worse. Aleppo had held back, tried to stay out of it, until that was no longer possible. The city was now an inferno.
“Rockets will rain upon the Kurds,” Osman threatened. “Are you coming down?”
Osman knew two arms dealers in Dubai. They could meet him in Hatay. They wanted a sample of the red mercury to check its quality. Osman had responded that his suppliers were willing to send a drop of the substance for them to take a look at, but only on payment of a $10,000 advance. The price per pound was, after all, $1 million.
Sadiq could find no peace. He felt an acute urge to do something. One last heist.
It was early September. If he did not leave this week, it would be too late, the taxi course was due to start and failing to show up would mean losing his job seeker’s allowance.
He boarded the afternoon flight to Istanbul.
“I’m in Hatay!” he texted to Osman when he landed. “Come and meet me!”
It was hot and sunny, with a drowsy atmosphere prevailing in the town. Sadiq walked the same streets he had previously walked searching for his daughters, waiting for a call from the middlemen and his Syrian network. He dropped by his favorite places, first the breakfast café that served the best beans, after that Gulp, the bar on the corner by the modest Sugar Palace. He called Osman. No answer. He felt alone. He had made the trip on impulse. Madness. They were going to be fooled, he thought. Before leaving, he’d been told by someone that there was no such thing as red mercury, that any trade in it was a pure con.
Most of the tables at Gulp were empty. The only customer besides Sadiq was an older man. He was dressed in shorts and a faded T-shirt and was halfway through a large glass of beer. He had a reddish-gray complexion and looked tired, like an old laborer. The skin on his hands was coarse. He smoked, took a sip, sighed, and took another. Late morning turned into afternoon. Sadiq noticed the man’s identity card on the floor beneath his chair, together with several Turkish lire bills. He drew the man’s attention to it and the man picked up both the card and the money.
“Monthly salary,” he slurred. “If I drink any more, I’ll probably lose my trousers as well.” He laughed hoarsely. He had a Syrian dialect.
Sadiq drummed his fingers on the tabletop. Another hard-luck story was the last thing he needed.
On the pavement outside, a Syrian family was having a heated discussion. The father was angry and the mother was in tears. The father had bought a kebab for each of the children. One of his sons had asked for another.
“And who’s going to pay? Who’s going to pay? Who?!” the man shouted. “WHO is going to PAY?” He emptied his pockets, throwing small change on the ground in front of his son before turning to go while calling out: “I’m not hungry, I’m not hungry, you all go ahead and eat!”
The man rounded the corner. His family quickly gathered up the coins and hurried after him, out of Sadiq’s field of vision.
Suffering wherever you looked.
He had to get hold of a Turkish SIM card. Using the Norwegian one was expensive. Sadiq always had two telephones in Turkey, a smartphone with a Norwegian subscription so he could
