Crop Top’s malicious behavior toward the Alawites reached an all-time low one day when he came downstairs just to confiscate all of the Korans in the room. There were about six in total—including mine, which Yassine had returned to me as promised after we were transferred—and every one of them was taken. This was a huge blow to the men and sent a wave of devastation through the room, as every man there spent time reading the sacred book, some of them hours upon hours. When Yassine joined Crop Top and Abu Ali outside our door, I started complaining as soon as we made eye contact.
“Yassine, he took my Koran!” I said. “The one you came down here to give me after we left the last place!”
Yassine pulled my Koran swiftly from Crop Top’s grasp and handed it down to me with both hands where I sat on the floor. Crop Top tried to say something, but Yassine cut him off.
“Jumu’ah, this is yours!” he said, so his voice carried through the room. “Do not give it to anyone!” The way he said it, I could have sworn he didn’t just mean the other prisoners, he meant Crop Top, too.
After the door closed we could hear Crop Top still arguing with Yassine’s decision, but he got nowhere and they moved off down the hall. I sat there wide-eyed with disbelief at what had just happened. All the actual Muslims had their sacred texts confiscated, while one jihadi overruled another to allow probably the only Jew in the entire country to keep the only Koran in the entire room. My God, I thought to myself, Larry David couldn’t make this shit up.
“Kawa’s dead!” someone said.
It was during a bathroom break; one of the men had learned of Kawa’s fate from a guard.
“What? He’s dead?” I asked eagerly.
“Yes, he was killed at a checkpoint when he wouldn’t let them search his car,” a soldier answered.
“Yes!” I exclaimed. “Yes! This is great news! You hear that?” I asked Theo, patting him on the back.
“Yeah,” he said, without emotion.
I was so jubilant that my friends had to warn me to keep it down so the guards wouldn’t hear. Kawa’s death gave me hope: Everyone in the room knew he had a hard-on for me and Theo and loved having us in his custody like little American trophies. Now we had a chance of getting someone else put in charge of our fates, and I had something new to pray for—surely there had to be one reasonable soul in this cursed fucking organization.
In spite of underfeeding, death, torture, and general horror, there were moments I remember with something almost like bliss, like when we all saw a full moon for the first time since being taken prisoner. Because my sleeping spot faced the window I had a clear line of sight, and some of the men who didn’t would come and sit by my feet, staring through the bars as they were bathed in moonlight. Syria has some of the most beautiful and clear night skies I have ever seen. I had forgotten all about that since being kidnapped.
On another night I heard Oqba’s voice calling me over.
“What’s up?” I asked, kneeling next to him in the dark.
“Come here,” he said warmly. “Come lie next to me and tell me all about New York!”
He said “New York!” with such excitement that it made me smile. I lay down next to him and we put our arms around each other’s shoulders like we were at camp, staring into the blackness as I told him all about Times Square, Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden, Central Park, the East Village, and all the other places I’d seen and been fortunate enough to grow up thirty miles away from. After I got through this list I started in on the places I only wished I’d had a chance to see, like Carnegie Hall and the Statue of Liberty. I talked for hours about New York, until Oqba was dozing off like a child and I left him to get some sleep.
I went to bed that night feeling lighter, thinking, Maybe I’ll get a chance to see those places yet.
It was at the villa that I first began making an effort to learn some prayers in Arabic, starting with the most important, the Fatiha. I’d requested a pencil or pen at the hospital to help me learn but was told it was forbidden. Being that our treatment was a hundred times worse at the villa, I didn’t even bother to ask, and set out to learn by memory alone. The men who helped me the most were Ali and Oqba—deep down they knew I was faking it, but they never once held that against me. Instead they seemed to love teaching me about Islam and the Alawite sect in particular. I will never forget the first time I heard Oqba admit to being a member.
“We are Alawite,” he said, a gleam in his eye. He stated it with such pride that I could feel it in the air.
That night he told me all about his people; how they lived side by side with Christians in their cities on the coast and even celebrated Christmas with them, because Jesus was one of their prophets as well. What bothered him most was that they were portrayed in America as the enemy because of their government’s actions.
“I don’t want to kill anybody,” Oqba would say, again and again.
All he wanted was to go home to his two little girls, who he’d finally opened up to me about, and who I often saw him thinking of with tears in his eyes.
I never really felt lonely when I was with the soldiers, but I always felt homesick. At first when we prayed, I’d say “There’s no place like
