Yassine entered the room and stepped over to me. “Is this better?” he asked, motioning to the other men.
“Yes, much. You speak English?”
“A little. I am learning, so speak slowly. Are they being nice to you?”
“Them? Yeah, but none of them speak English so it’s not like they can really be mean.”
“I did not understand,” he said, confused.
“That’s all right. Yes, they’re being nice to me.”
“Okay, I have to go now,” he said. “Bye.” He left again, followed by Abu Hamza, and the door locked behind them.
Shortly after this, the electricity blinked out.
I was amazed at how programmed these men had become. As soon as the lights died, most of them immediately lay down to sleep, except for a group that congregated in the corner around a fading flashlight. None of that group spoke English, so I was on my own. As I lay there, I heard the door being unlocked again and pretended to be asleep so I wouldn’t have to face the wall. A second later someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I turned to see who it was.
Bent over me was a firmly built man, dressed in all black and wearing a ski mask.
“Are you Matt?” he asked in a terrifying whisper.
I lay there, frozen, choosing my words carefully.
“Nuh-uh, my name’s Jumu’ah,” I said.
He turned and left the room. I sat up like a switchblade.
“What the fuck was that, man?” I said. “Did anyone just see that? Anyone?”
Nobody answered me. My gut said the fanatics were just having some fun so I decided not to let it worry me and instead closed my eyes to sleep. I remember lying there before I dozed off, smiling because I was no longer in solitary. I felt no fear among these men; instinctively I knew that as long as I was with them, I would be among friends.
When the lights came back on, everyone who had fallen asleep woke up again. It was still night. I stood, stretched, and watched as every man in the room, almost in sync, took off his shirt and started examining the fabric closely. For a second I was confused, and then it hit me.
“Oh no,” I whispered, full of dread. “Lice!”
I looked over at Oqba.
“What are you doing?” I asked. “Are you lookin’ for lice? Do you have lice?”
“They’re everywhere,” he said, matter-of-fact.
“Oh, great!” I muttered, stripping off my vest, hoodie, and tee shirt to examine myself.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Rias pointing at my abdomen; within a second, so was everyone else.
“What is that tattoo of ?” Oqba asked.
“It’s a tribal sun.”
“What does it mean?”
“I don’t know. It’s a Native American thing.”
Tattoos were haram, but the Alawites seemed more curious than anything. In fact, out of the eighteen of them, it turned out that only five even prayed.
“I don’t see anything on my shirt,” I said. “Can someone show me what one of these things looks like?”
Oqba translated what I’d said and Rias called me over. Crawling on his finger was a clear insect with a black dot in the middle.
“What the fuck is that thing?” I said, disgusted. “That’s not lice. It’s too big.”
Crunch! Rias crushed the parasite on the floor and held up his finger for me to see. It was smeared with blood—his blood. They were bedbugs.
After I checked my gear thoroughly and was certain I was free of critters, I started to pull my clothes back on. As I zipped up my vest, a short man with more salt than pepper in his hair walked over to my bed, put on my slippers, and walked off toward the small bathroom at the far end of our cell.
“Excuse me, what do you think you’re doin’?” I asked.
He just kept going, ignoring me, so I looked at Oqba.
“Did he just steal my slippers?”
“He’s the boss,” said Oqba.
“Well, what makes him the boss?”
“He’s the oldest.”
“He’s the oldest? That’s how you pick your bosses?” I asked, incredulous. “What is this, kindergarten?”
I’m not normally a confrontational person, but this being my first time as an outsider in a terrorist prison, I thought it would be a good idea to assert myself sooner rather than later, to prove I wasn’t a punk and avoid any further misunderstandings. “Well, he may be your boss,” I told Oqba, “but he’s not mine, and I’ll be taking my slippers back when he gets done in there.”
“We share everything here,” said Oqba mildly.
As I looked around, I noticed that—aside from the two pairs of boots in the middle—my slippers were the only shoes in the room. This made me feel like kind of a jackass.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Oqba.
“That’s quite all right, my friend,” he said sincerely.
When the Boss came out of the bathroom, he walked directly over to me and took off the slippers, leaving them exactly where he’d found them. I later learned that he wasn’t the boss just because he was the oldest—he was also a colonel, and a tough-ass colonel at that. The man took nine bullets from an AK-47 when he and three other officers were ambushed in a car by the FSA. He was the only one who survived.
Within minutes I found myself over by Oqba, the Boss, and several other prisoners; among them Shareef, the tall and lanky captain with the shot-up hand, and Fadaar, the lieutenant colonel, who was extremely good-looking, with piercing blue eyes and a commanding presence. Oqba’s earlier request that I refrain from talking to him (and everyone else in the room) had been seemingly forgotten. Now he was my way of connecting to the others, and not just as a translator, but as a friend.
As I stood talking with the group, they kept patting the blankets and inviting me to sit with them.
“No way, man, I’m cool here,” I said, flattered but also in no hurry to be infested. “You guys are crawling with bedbugs and I wanna hold them off as
