The various rebel groups divided Raqqa among them. People streamed out onto the streets shouting, Freedom! Democracy! Justice!
Youth groups, women’s groups, and theater troupes were formed. Uncensored newspapers were published. The revolution had reached the province before the capital; the people were blazing a trail. Lawyers came together, doctors organized, political parties were formed, and people imbibed the spirit of freedom. A number of dawa offices were opened. A revolutionary city council was set up to manage the expected anarchy. All that had not been allowed under Assad’s rule was now to be tried.
Assad’s vengeance was not long in coming. Scud missiles were launched, destroying residential areas, but the people merely cleared away the ruins, buried the dead, and persevered. The streets were cleaned on a voluntary basis, people organized services the authorities had ceased to offer long ago, power generators were run in alternation, shop shelves were stocked. The border to Turkey was open, and the best goods at the lowest prices in the whole of Syria were now available in Raqqa. The city council declared the city a duty-free zone, commodities people had never seen before began to arrive, a market for American cars was opened. It was a city of joy.
Until people started to disappear.
First some young activists. A newspaper columnist. Some youths who had painted the revolutionary flag on the city wall. An actor in a theater company. A priest. A lawyer. A doctor. A journalist. An author. In the middle of May, the leader of the Raqqa council was forced into a car by masked men and never seen again. A militia leader was killed in an ambush. Then another. Followed by a third. Who was behind it? There was growing unease, tensions rose, everyone blamed everyone else, and conflict broke out among al-Nusra, FSA, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Faruk, and ar-Rassul, which all held different parts of the city.
Nobody took responsibility for the disappearances and the murders. People had their suspicions, but few dared to voice them. Black flags began to fly in parts of the city.
The inhabitants had not foreseen anyone other than Assad’s men suppressing and threatening them.
As soon as the regime’s forces had been defeated, the extremists had begun to infiltrate Raqqa via their newly opened dawa offices. Haji Bakr kept his files well up-to-date. Some of those who spied for him had previously worked as intelligence agents for Assad, others were rebels who had fallen from favor with local militia leaders and desired revenge, and there were those who simply needed to make a living. Most of the men on his books were in their early twenties and some were only teenagers. As before, the older generation was wary.
As soon as the lists were complete, the process of elimination began. First the ones who had raised their voices in support of freedom and democracy, followed by all those who might do so.
Fear had returned.
* * *
When the Islamists had enough people to spy and sufficient fighters to defend their spies, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced the expansion of ISI—the Islamic State in Iraq—into ISIS—the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
The summer of 2013 was a bloody one. The number of disappearances intensified in July, first by the dozens, then by the hundreds. Bodies were found tortured or with bullet holes through the back of their heads; others vanished without a trace. In August, suicide bombers attacked the FSA’s headquarters in Raqqa.
None of the rebel groups helped one another when they were attacked in turn. As long as it did not affect them, they looked the other way. They all believed themselves to be immune from ISIS.
On October 17, 2013, the same day Ayan and Leila took the afternoon flight to Istanbul, ISIS summoned Raqqa’s civilian leaders, clerics, teachers, and lawyers to what was understood to be a reconciliation meeting to discuss how Raqqa was to be governed. Of the three hundred in attendance, only two men dared to criticize the Islamists’ insidious takeover, accusing them of being behind the abductions and the murders.
One of the men was found a few days later with a bullet hole through his head. His acquaintances received an e-mail with an image of the man’s maltreated body and a single sentence: “Do you mourn your friend?”
Then the other man disappeared. ISIS knew who was friends with whom, who had ties with whom, who did not have clean records in the Islamic sense, and who were organized or might offer resistance. Several opposition people fled to Turkey. The high brought about by the revolution in Raqqa had reached an end.
* * *
Control of northern Syria was now divided between ISIS and a multitude of militias. In Atmeh, ISIS was close to taking over completely.
In late November, Sadiq stood at a blue door in the town and knocked. He’d been released from the stinking pit at the waterworks some days earlier. Osman hugged him tightly, squeezing him between his powerful arms.
“Thank God, you’ve returned!”
Osman’s mother also came running to embrace him. Her husband hobbled after her, with Randa behind him, while the other women stayed behind the door.
Sadiq had eventually been put in a vehicle and driven from al-Dana by the judge’s men. These same men were now offered tea, figs, and biscuits. Only when they departed did the Nusra men make an appearance. Hamza, the brigade leader known as the Lion, had tears in his eyes.
“I was the one who left you with ISIS that day…”
Osman’s men wanted to know all the details.
Sadiq told them everything. About the toilet cell. About the knife to his throat. About his acquittal and the night that followed it.
“Before dawn, while it was still dark and
