Oh, these blasted sounds. They were around him the entire time. While all he wanted was to hear Sara breathing next to him.
* * *
The second week in October, a few days after the missile strike that had wiped out the building with Osman’s friends inside, the Syrian told Sadiq that IS had withdrawn from a large area it held close to Hama.
It took only a few hours to realize why. Osman described the first coordinated attack by Russian airplanes and Syrian ground forces.
“At four this afternoon Russian planes began bombing the territory al-Nusra and FSA control in Hama. Oh God, this is so terrible!”
The next day: “At six this morning regime forces entered the area.”
The Russians were bombing the way for Assad to take back control of the country step by step. The IS retreat prior to the operation testified to a trade-off: Pull out if you want to avoid casualties, we’re taking over. IS and Assad were perfect enemies. Unlike the local militias, which desired regime change, it was all the same to IS who sat in Damascus—as long as they could run the caliphate as they liked. The Islamists had no intention of taking over all of Syria now.
“A dirty game,” Osman hammered into the telephone.
One day he wrote: “NATO air-dropped twenty tons of ammunition, provisions and fresh water to the FSA.”
It was sorely needed. The opposition forces were running low on supplies now that the roads were impassable.
“They dropped a further thirty tons, but in the wrong location, it all landed in ISIS hands! I’m not kidding, NATO gifted the supplies to ISIS!”
Osman believed the world was conspiring against the Syrian people—that Russia, Assad, and NATO were together against the ordinary Syrian. At least that was how it looked on the ground.
The next message Sadiq received was a picture of a corpse. He had no trouble recognizing the man. It was Hamza, Osman’s best friend, the one they had called the Lion. He lay outstretched, a red mark on his face, like a bruise. His face was framed by black curly hair and an unkempt beard that was dusty looking, or perhaps he had begun to go gray.
“Aaaaa I am hardly able to write this. Hamza, you remember him? The Lion in al-Nusra, killed north of Hama. He was with us when we went to the court in al-Dana. May Allah accept him as a martyr. Console me! I’m crying. My family is crying. He left behind two wives and seven children.”
Sadiq remembered Hamza as a force of nature; like Osman, in his early thirties.
He wrote back, “God accepted him into paradise. How was he killed? A sniper? Regime air strike? The Russians?”
“Russian air force.”
“May Allah raze the house of the pilot.”
“He wouldn’t listen to me. He never did, there was nothing I could do. Life has become miserable for us. For me and my family … our circumstances worsen by the day.”
* * *
The only woman in the Norwegian IS contingent maintaining a presence on social media was Aisha. While the sisters had not shared anything publicly, she published updates with reports on life in Raqqa on Facebook. The first post came in the middle of October 2015.
“I’ve noticed there are numerous people who want to know what it’s actually like living in IS so I’ve decided to write about it a little, in order to give a more genuine perspective.”
She wrote in Norwegian. The posts seemed intended for Norwegian girls considering traveling and were a sort of IS for Dummies. She had titled the initial post “Life and the Building of a Society in the Islamic State” and described how every district had its own administration, schools, court, police force, hospital, and welfare system.
“The criteria in order to receive assistance is of course in accordance with Islamic guidelines,” she emphasized. All that was not good in the state was the fault of the enemy: “The enemy’s brutal bombing of the civilian population and the hospitals is the reason for the lack of resources and equipment.” Enemy attack was also to blame for schools not functioning. The descriptions that followed were similar to what other IS girls had posted online. You were given a house or an apartment “dependent on availability,” everything was free, the refrigerator, microwave, washing machine, air-conditioning, and TV.
The portrayal of the caliphate was almost becoming a genre all of its own: Welcome to the lovely life where everything is free and, moreover, helps you get to paradise.
* * *
Sadiq had first promised he would vacate the apartment by October 1, then he’d been granted an extension to November 1. But October turned to November and his possessions still lay strewn about.
He awoke to hoarfrost and a chill in the air; the temperature would drop below freezing at night, and the white shimmering layer covering the ground would then melt in the course of the day. Autumn was at its most beautiful, with colors in bright yellow and red, and a breeze that cleared the air. One day, when he finally forced himself to start packing, he came across the gray-flecked beanie he had put away in May. It was time to pull it back down over his ears.
One evening in early November, as darkness fell outside, he was sitting at the computer. He heard a voice in his head: “Here’s some advice. Get the girls out! It’s going to get worse. This is only the beginning. This war will not quiet down for a long time. The girls must get out.”
The voice continued, “To think straight you have to forget they’re alive. You have to imagine you will ship two corpses home.”
He got to his feet. He had to leave. He had to get them out
