* * *
The days passed. Wait. Pay. Wait.
Until his wallet was empty and he no longer had protection.
“Go to Hatay and take out money,” Osman said.
In war, cash is king, money in the bank is worth nothing. Sadiq had to make the run again, two miles over, two miles back.
He called Mehmut. The taxi driver promised to be waiting on the other side.
The sun was about to set. There were several others ready to try to make it across. A few of them tried but turned back, discouraged by the many patrols. Eventually Mehmut called him from the Turkish side. “Sadiq, don’t try it tonight, the guards are out in force.” One Egyptian took a chance and was caught, as were a few others. A Turkish prison awaited them. A crestfallen Sadiq returned to Osman and was given a day’s board and lodging on credit.
The following night he ran. Mehmut had arranged for him to be picked up by a motorcycle halfway across. He hopped on and rode pillion while the driver, a youth, drove as fast as he could over the gravel and stones. The mile on the back of the motorbike cost him twenty Turkish lira. He dearly hoped that NAV had put his rehabilitation allowance for November into his account.
The ATM dispensed the cash. He returned to the border, paid, and, for the second time, ran into the war zone.
Back in Idlib province, Osman continued to help him with his inquiries, at brigade after brigade, village after village. Sadiq described his daughters. Tall. Proud posture. Probably wearing niqabs. He shared his story with whoever would listen. By now he was becoming a familiar figure to the people in Atmeh. There goes the father looking for his daughters, they would say.
“We need to start looking beyond this province,” Osman said to him one day. “But that’s not going to be cheap.”
For a third time, Sadiq had to get his hands on money. The following day was a public holiday for the Turks, Osman told him, so crossing over would be no problem. He was right. Sadiq ran over, was picked up by Mehmut, emptied his account from the ATM in Hatay, and went to pick up the belongings he had left at the Sugar Palace. Suddenly Osman himself showed up in town, saying he had pressing business to attend to.
“For a few dollars, I can ensure your return journey is a lot more pleasant,” he promised.
A car picked them up and drove toward the Bab al-Hawa border station. The barrier was raised for them to go straight through without being checked or searched. They were back in Atmeh by dinnertime.
Osman had secured himself safe conduct across the border. He had leased out to a foreign aid organization a parcel of the family’s olive grove where Sadiq had first met him. In addition to money for the land and free passage across the border, he had seen to it that his relations got jobs at the camp, which had increased the population of Atmeh tenfold. Thirty thousand people lived in and around the olive grove: those who didn’t have the hundred dollars required for the run across the frontier.
The electrician from Aleppo cashed in on all this misery, making sure the wheels of war were kept in motion by smuggling even more jihadists into Syria.
He took Sadiq south. Refugees were moving in the opposite direction. Women, men, the elderly, children. On foot, in carts, and in cars. Headed toward the camp in the olive grove, toward the Turkish border, anywhere, just away. By autumn 2013, two million Syrians had fled the country. Many more were internally displaced and sought refuge in areas on the peripheries of the fighting.
Sadiq was downhearted. Bombed-out buildings. Fresh graves. Rubble. People. All the time, more people.
The regime had launched a new offensive in an effort to regain strategic areas around Aleppo, and opposition forces were now suffering heavy losses. Aleppo had long been a fighting ground for hundreds of jihadist factions, secular militias, and Salafist armies. Efforts were under way to unite and mobilize against the regime; several groups were on the way from the front at Raqqa and from Idlib.
The men stopped at every camp to ask if anyone had seen the girls. No one had. Who would be looking for girls when a war was raging around them?
Foreign fighters from Europe had arrived in the thousands that autumn. Their number had tripled since the summer. Some came to fight against Assad, others to abet the fulfillment of the prophecy that the final battle before judgment day would take place in the Syrian town of Dabiq.
ISIS used Assad’s abuses of the civilian population as a means of recruitment. When a thousand human beings slowly choked to death in a chemical weapon attack carried out by the regime that same summer, they exploited it in their propaganda. ISIS was the most open to taking in random foreigners. Other militias were more selective, preferring experienced soldiers, not cannon fodder.
Speaking to local Syrians, Sadiq got the impression they were fed up with jihadists coming to wage war in their country. They arrived with their own customs and ways from European cities or moneyed backgrounds in the Gulf. They were arrogant, boorish, and cruel, and set about trying to create their own state, a divine state on earth. On Syrian soil.
Sadiq pondered the nature of war. Everyone was sure that they had the right to the land and the others should be forced to leave. That they had God on their side while the others were in league with the devil. Everyone believed they owned the truth, and everyone seemed thirsty for blood. At night, words echoed through his mind. Kill, behead, avenge.
Like combatants, Sadiq and Osman sheltered in abandoned buildings. They had
