“Wallahi bi’l Qur’an…” I swear on the Koran …
That he was not a spy. That he was not a traitor. That he was not an infidel.
Then Sadiq said, “I have only one mission in Syria—to find my daughters.”
The ISIS guard studied him for a time. “I believe you,” he said. “Call me Abu Ahmed.”
“My name is Abu Ismael,” Sadiq replied.
Abu Ahmed went out and returned with a dry blanket. “I can’t really help you, but I’ll try. I don’t want to meet Allah after making a big mistake. But if they come for you, there’s nothing I can do.”
What would happen then, if they came? Who were they?
* * *
That night Sadiq was awakened again by a person being thrown into the cell. A heavy man, large and muscly, was dumped on top of him. His body was wet, and it was not from water or sweat; he was coated in blood.
The man tried to get up. He stepped on Sadiq, who pushed him off. There wasn’t room for both of them.
“Wish al-jahim hada?” the man bawled. What kind of hell have I wound up in?
“Calm down!”
“Who are you?” the man asked.
Sadiq gave a dry laugh. “There’s no point asking me who I am.”
They stood, each with his back against a wall, facing each other.
“What sort of hell is this?” the man asked again.
“Zinzanat al-qatl bi qisas,” Sadiq said in Arabic.
The man took hold of Sadiq and pressed him against the cold, damp surface.
“What did you say?”
Qatl bi qisas was the term in sharia for the principle of retribution, an eye for an eye, a death sentence, in other words. Zinzanat meant “cell.”
The man held him tightly. Sadiq managed to get his hand around the other man’s throat and squeezed. He felt the strength in the man’s young body, the sticky blood on his skin.
“Look me in the eyes,” Sadiq said.
The man gave a bitter laugh. “What eyes?”
“Above where my voice is coming from,” Sadiq said.
The man released his grip.
“They can’t kill me. I’m from here. I’m Syrian. But you, who fell from the sky, you they can kill, not me!”
“Pull yourself together and listen to me. You being from Syria or my falling from the sky makes no difference, we’re in the death cell. That’s how it is.”
“No! It can’t be like that!”
He banged at the door with his foot, kicked at it with his heel, hammered with his fists. It opened.
“Antum majanin?” Are you crazy? It was Abu Ahmed. “Khalas!” Stop! Shut up! Keep it down and stay away from the door.
The young man gave one more kick, this time at the clammy wall.
“Where are you from?” Sadiq asked.
“From here. A village on the crest of the hill, a little west of here.”
“My name is Abu Ismael, I’m from Somalia.”
“Suleiman.”
“What did you do?”
The young man took a deep breath.
“My parents have an olive grove…”
He was silent for a time, then began to recount the story of the olive grove that his family had tended for generations. It was old; olive trees could live a thousand years. Their trees were hundreds of years old; if the trunk and the branches died, new shoots would grow, forming a new trunk, growing into new branches. The first olive trees took root right here in northern Syria, in the city-state of Ebla outside modern-day Aleppo. Thousand-year-old clay tablets show the boundaries of the farms, how many jars of oil were earmarked for the king and how many were allocated to the people.
Some time ago his family’s olive grove had been divided by a road. Following the summer’s fighting, land on one side of the road had wound up in ISIS-controlled territory, while the land on the other side was held by the Kurds. ISIS had warned him about going there. They would shoot him. It was enemy territory.
Summer passed. Suleiman tended only to the trees on the Islamists’ side of the Karasi road. Over on the Kurdish side, the olives ripened just as well from sun and a little rain alone.
November was the harvest month. Last week he had cropped the olives on the ISIS land. When he was finished, he looked over at the other side. The trees were heavy with their fruit.
It is not easy for a farmer to see his crop go to waste.
At sunrise this same morning, he crossed the road. The crop was his and the year had been a good one. He placed a net on the ground and gave the branches a shake, before climbing a ladder with a basket around his waist to pluck the olives that had not fallen. On his way home he was discovered by an ISIS patrol, made up not of locals who knew him but of foreigners. They detained him, accused him of spying for the Kurds. He had grown angry, remonstrated, pointed at the olives. They had beaten him senseless. Now he was here.
The young man burst into tears.
“They took my sister and … she had come with me to help pluck today, to get it done quicker, since she is faster than any of us. My little sister … I’ve no idea where she is, where they took her, what they’re doing to her!”
“Awlad al haram! Sons of bitches!” he shouted.
He got to his feet and pounded on the door. Sadiq attempted to restrain him, but Suleiman was like a raging young bull.
A gang of guards showed up.
Light fell on Suleiman. Sadiq had pictured a typical northern Syrian like Osman, pale-skinned, with brown hair, but he was dark, dark like Sadiq. His hair and beard were black, sleek and shiny. He stood, bloodied but unbowed, ready to take on ten men.
“Step aside,” they told Sadiq before grabbing hold of the young farmer, shoving him out and forcing him down the corridor.
Sadiq was angry at himself. He should not have said anything about the death cell, or made
