And we will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and a loss of wealth and lives and fruits, but give good tidings to the patient.
THE VILLA
APRIL 13, 2013
When the door opened that day, Yassine and Abu Dejana were on the other side, the latter holding thick plastic hand ties. I knew we were being transferred, and I immediately grabbed my Koran and ran up to Yassine, laying it on thick to convince him of my newfound love for Islam. He accepted the book from me and promised to return it when we reached our destination. I then held out my hands and he secured the ties loosely around my wrists so I would be comfortable during the ride. A few seconds later we were lined up by the door, blind and bound, holding our blankets with our clothes wrapped inside them and awaiting instructions. There was a lot of commotion coming from the hallway, as if the entire organization was moving out along with us.
I hadn’t been outside since we’d returned from the electrical institute, thirty-four days before, so when at last I stepped into the sunlight and warm air I felt like Dorothy landing in Oz. We were loaded into the back of a work van, the kind with two doors that opened out and a low roof, like exterminators and locksmiths use in the States.
Inside the truck it was a furnace, and with the ski cap as a blindfold I was sweating like a cold beer. We all kept quiet so the Moroccan and Theo could hear and translate what was being said outside.
“They’re concerned about the checkpoints,” Theo reported.
“Is that Mohammad?” I asked.
“Yes.”
A few minutes later one of the jihadis opened the door to check our restraints and noticed mine were loose. He tightened the tie so viciously that the zipper sound echoed through my head. Before long, huge blisters were filling up around the restraints on my wrists.
After what felt like forever, Jamal, Mohammad’s right hand, jumped behind the wheel wearing a turquoise jumpsuit jacket. In the passenger seat was a young man I had never seen before. He couldn’t have been more than twenty, with a wavy mop of hair so thick it stood up on its own. I would call him Crop Top.
When we finally started moving, I leaned back and saw that we were part of a huge and heavily armed procession. Directly behind us was Yassine astride a motorcycle with an AK strapped around his neck, and behind him came several trucks and cars packed out with jihadis and a tractor trailer carrying a huge bright-green shipping container on its back. I had no idea at the time, but inside it were prisoners, including all the Alawite POWs who’d been locked up down the hall from us at the hospital. The captives took up about half the space inside the container; the other half was filled by drums of gasoline, some of which were leaking onto the floor and making the air toxic to breathe. The ventilation was like the light: there wasn’t any.
It was a long and painful ride. The blisters on my wrists were so sensitive that every bump we hit on the unpaved country roads was agony. The Moroccan and I were seated facing each other with our backs to the walls of the van, but I had placed the blankets under me, which helped a little. We had to keep low or Crop Top would scream at us to get down, but I didn’t mind; I’d slid my cap up just enough to see, leaned back, and stared at the sun and the beautiful blue sky. I hadn’t seen either one in a long time, and had forgotten how incredible simple things that I had taken for granted back home could be. Before long, I started to recognize the scenery outside our window.
“We’re in Hraytan,” I said.
“How do you know?” the Moroccan asked—he was still wearing his camouflage blindfold.
“Because we just passed under the blue walking bridge,” I told him. “We’re on the Gaziantep highway.”
Then we turned off into the back roads and I lost my way.
We traveled through one town after another, some with the black flag of Jabhat al-Nusra flying high in the air from flagpoles planted onto rooftops so they could be seen from afar. Between the villages was the countryside, mile upon mile of hills covered in jagged rocks and bleak olive groves. For some reason I found myself thinking of that Louis Armstrong song “What a Wonderful World,” playing it in my head as the neatly planted rows of trees rushed past us under the scarce white clouds. Then we got to the first checkpoint, and the music was over.
We pulled right through and then off to the side of the road. The FSA group controlling this checkpoint wasn’t interested in what was in our little truck—they wanted to know what was in the big green shipping container. However, our captors were prepared to blow themselves and everyone else to hell before they would let anyone else get so much as a peek. We heard yelling, and then I saw Mohammad, a suicide belt strapped around his waist, pull out his Glock. By now our escorts had fled the vehicle
