The next day I decided to make my move and become a fake Muslim.
We were sitting on my blankets listening to Mohannad run down all the names of the Prophet when Abdelatif brought up conversion for the hundredth time. I didn’t want to fold too quickly so we went back and forth a little like usual. Then I expressed apprehension about the guards thinking I was faking it and giving me shit, and the Moroccan made a good point.
“If you’re a Muslim then you don’t care what the guards think,” he said. “Only Allah.”
“That’s true,” I said thoughtfully. “All right, let’s do it! I’m down!”
“But you can’t fake it,” Abdelatif warned. “You have to promise me that you will stay a Muslim when you go home.”
Naturally I made the promise, lying my ass off, and with that out of the way Abdelatif led me in reciting a few poorly pronounced Arabic words and—wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am—just like that, I was a Muslim, kind of. I didn’t have even the slightest idea what the fuck I’d said, but it was a very proud moment for Abdelatif and Mohannad, both thinking they’d scored big points with Allah for bringing over a nonbeliever.
Theo would have nothing to do with converting. He’d found out just how dangerous fake conversion was after writing his Undercover Muslim book, but of course I knew nothing about that, and he didn’t tell me. I tried to talk him into it one day when we were locked in the bathroom and I had him all to myself.
“I’m not changing my religion,” he insisted in his soft voice.
“Who gives a fuck, man! None of this is even real!” I hissed in a whisper.
“It doesn’t matter how much you yell. I’m not doing it.”
“Jesus Christ, you’re a fuckin’ atheist, man, and you don’t wanna change your religion?”
“I don’t want to lie,” he had the balls to say to me.
And that was the end of it. Theo let me convert, knowing the danger it put me in, and the almost certain death sentence I’d be facing if they ever discovered his true identity. I had just converted while locked up with the self-proclaimed “Undercover Muslim.” There was no way that the most paranoid and irrational people on earth would ever believe I hadn’t known who Theo was—though I hadn’t—or that he didn’t tutor me on how to successfully deceive them—though of course he never did. If Theo was discovered, we would likely have been separated and I would have been tortured for months, interrogated with questions I had no hope of answering about someone who was supposed to be my brother in arms, but who in reality I knew almost nothing about. And after that they would have sawed my head off online, to show the world what happens to “Undercover Muslims” in Syria.
Sometime after the lights went out for the night, Abu Dejana opened the door and took Mohannad from the room. He said Mohannad was going to court, and the word in the other rooms the Moroccan had been in before joining us was that this meant he was probably going home, but we’d never really know. There were gunshots outside all the time—only God and the jihadis knew how many were executions and how many were just target practice.
Once it was just the three of us again I got a glimpse into the soul of the Moroccan, and what I saw was a roiling, bottomless pit of rage and hatred. Being in a room with another Muslim for only twenty-four hours had transformed him. Before, he’d rhapsodized about how much he loved the US and longed to return. Now, “the Jewish state of America” was his enemy. He even tried to convince me that Kawa and the rest of the jihadis who were literally holding me prisoner were actually my brothers. Because I was a Muslim he expected me to share his opinions, which was especially hard to take once he started in on Israel.
“If I don’t die here in Syria on the battlefield I’ll just go to Israel and blow myself up in a restaurant,” he said nonchalantly.
I couldn’t believe I was hearing this from a man who was sharing my blankets. As a Jew, it was hard to remain composed, but I fought to suppress any reaction that might invite suspicion as to my true faith.
All night we argued about these things while Theo hid under the covers, but in the morning, after a few hours’ sleep, Abdelatif was back to his old self. He would later justify these incidents by claiming he was “a bipolar.”
Now that there were three of us in the room we started playing games. The first was checkers—I carved a board into the tile floor with a screw, and Theo made pieces out of an orange peel—but during the very first game between me and the Moroccan I pulled off a sick triple jump that sent him into a rage, claiming that they didn’t play like that in the Arab world, and while in Syria I had to follow their rules. Then he just quit.
The next game we attempted was hacky sack. I made a ball out of the same orange peel—shredded it, placed it in the corner of a plastic bread bag, wrapped it inside a piece of fabric, and then tied a shoelace tightly around the whole thing. Naturally the Moroccan could not play, and he’d pout as Theo and I kicked the poorly made ball back and forth, though it kept unwinding in the air.
The third and best game was baseball. Abdelatif’s leg had improved to the point where he could
