“Aren’t you going to eat it?” asked Chubs.
“Yeah, I just wanna split it with the other guy,” I said.
“We need the answers to some of the security questions for your credit cards,” said Redbeard. “Make sure they are right. It took us an hour to get here and we don’t want to have to come back.”
Chubs then asked me some basic questions like what my first car had been, where I went to elementary school, and where I’d worked for my first job. I wrote the answers down in a little pink spiral notepad they’d brought, the sort that kids used to write their homework assignments in. After this they moved on to Theo.
“Do you think he’s a CIA agent?” asked Redbeard.
“No way,” I answered.
“How do you know?”
“Because the guy’s the biggest sweetheart I ever met in my life and he’s way too stupid.” In reality, he was the biggest douchebag I had ever met, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to have his back the best I could—he was an American and it was my obligation. Anyway, the second part of my explanation was true.
We discussed Theo for a few minutes more—what he’d told me about where he was from, what he did for a living, shit like that—and then I changed the subject to try to get a feel for how the war was going. They said that the opposition now controlled around 50 percent of Aleppo. When I’d arrived in country they’d controlled 85 percent, so this was bad news for them—the regime had made a major comeback. They then asked whether I was in a relationship with anyone back home, and I lied and said yes. I thought it might help to let them think I was planning to get married, being that they consider marriage such a sacred bond—even though they are allowed to have four wives apiece. Toward the end of our small talk I asked if they could email my mother on her birthday, which was nine days away. Redbeard said he would, and Chubs gave me back the notepad so I could write down her email address, along with a message that they would never send. With our business complete, I stood up to head back to my cell, and Redbeard asked me an unexpected question.
“Who is your God?” he inquired.
“My God? God is my God. The father of Jesus Christ,” I said, holding up one finger, a sign they use to say: There is no God but Allah.
Redbeard seemed to like my answer and Yassine was summoned to take me back. I shook both of their hands and noticed that Chubs had an exceptionally weak grip. Next it was Theo’s turn, and as I sat alone in the darkness of our cell I opened the Kit Kat and ate half of it, leaving the other bar under the balled-up blanket Theo used as a pillow. About thirty minutes must have passed before the door opened, and as it closed again after Theo I looked over my shoulder from where I sat with my head to the wall and saw Redbeard in the hallway. He was staring into the dark room, with what appeared to be awe. It was obvious that he had never seen people being kept in these conditions before.
“What happened?” I asked Theo, once the door was locked. “They give you food?”
“Yeah, half a piece of bread.”
“Did you save me any?”
“No.”
“Unbelievable! Look under your pillow.”
Theo reached under the blanket and took out the remaining Kit Kat, looking sheepish. A piece of flatbread in Syria is almost as big as a record album; he’d had more than enough to share. After I’d shamed him for not saving me any of the food he was given he handed the Kit Kat back and I ate it.
Theo explained that they were also charged with investigating him, but that most of the conversation had focused on my true identity.
“You’d be very happy with what I told them,” he said.
“Did you tell them they were beating us?” I asked.
“Yes, I told them how they flogged you because they think you’re Jewish because of the tattoo.”
“What?” I slapped him on the top of his head. “Why the fuck would you put that idea in their head? And tell them about my tattoo?”
“It’s okay, they didn’t even care.”
“Oh my God, are you the dumbest fuck I’ve ever met in my life!”
Worse, going over what we’d discussed with the Canadians, Theo told me he’d mentioned to them that he’d been detained once on the Canadian border, entering the US on his way home from Syria. I had to restrain myself from wringing his neck.
“Why the fuck would you let them know you’ve spent time in the country they come from?” I yelled at him. “You think they’re gonna wanna release us if they know that we know where they’re from? Are you retarded?”
“Relax, I was just letting them know that I’ve had my own problems with our government.”
Now not only was Theo killing me slowly by driving me nuts, he was potentially actually killing me by putting the people in charge of investigating my identity onto the scent that I was Jewish and letting them know that he’d recognized their accents. At this point the Canadians were our best chance of being liberated—if they weren’t just robbing me blind—and now thanks to my brilliant cellmate it was in their best interest to make sure we never saw the light of day.
One evening the emir paid us a visit with all the guards and instructed them to come back every night for a week to beat Theo. The first night it was Yassine and Sancho, one armed with an AK-47 and the other with a thick rope. As I lay on my stomach with my face inches from the wall, Yassine walked over to my
