“They kidnapped me!” I said. “And they robbed me! They think I’m a spy!”
“You’re not a spy. How long have you been here?”
“Since May fifth.”
He looked shocked when he heard this and stepped over to the emir, who was leaning against the door in the background. The Moroccan translated as he asked why Americans had been held there for so long without him being notified. When Blackbeard came back over to me, he had a young man with him to act as a translator. I stood up out of respect and answered all of his questions.
As all this was going on some of our guests got bored, and decided to head over to the Shabiha to slap the shit out of them for a while.
During our entire conversation, Blackbeard wore a warm smile that actually had a comforting effect on me. When I told him I’d been tortured he looked embarrassed and even a little angry—as bizarre as it was, he seemed to like me because I was an American, although he wasn’t buying what the Moroccan told him about my newfound love for Allah.
“Why don’t you wait until you go home to become a Muslim,” he said to me. “And tell all the Jews they can stay in America because we already have the Alawites here!”
“Yeah, I’ll let them know,” I said with a smirk.
Then he entered the room.
Like I said, we’d all known as soon as Blackbeard and his boys came in that we were in the presence of power, but when the Old Man followed a few minutes later he dwarfed everyone there like the giant he clearly was. As he walked through the door, cleaning his teeth with a stick through his long gray beard, all the commanders and jihadis parted as if he were royalty. He was dressed in all black and didn’t say a word as he sized me up. I greeted him with a goofy smile.
“Assallam alekum,” I said with a wave.
Before he had time to answer, Blackbeard took him by the arm and led him over to the bathroom where he spoke to him passionately. When they returned Blackbeard told me and Theo that we would be supplied with pens and paper to write reports on everything that had happened to us up until now, and that he was going to try to help us. I couldn’t believe my ears and thrust out my hand for Blackbeard to shake.
“Thank you!” I said earnestly in Arabic. He corrected me as he accepted my hand, reciting the more proper expression of gratitude called for.
It was a few words too long for me to remember so I mumbled the ending like George Costanza would and got a big laugh out of everyone there. I then shook the hands of all present, from the Old Man to the Wolfman. When the door closed and then opened again a few minutes later to let Obeida in with our writing materials, I felt better than I had since the day I was kidnapped. For months I had been bitching to Theo that there had to be at least one Oskar Schindler somewhere in this fucked-up organization who would be willing to help us, and on this day we thought we’d finally met him.
I didn’t know it yet, but the Old Man was Abu Khaled al-Suri, commander of Ahrar al-Sham. He’d fought beside Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and was ordered to Syria to unite all the rebel groups under one flag—sent personally by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda and the most wanted man in the world.
As one day turned into two and two into three I struggled to stay positive. On the night of June fifth, the door opened, and in stepped the emir. He looked slowly around the room until his eyes rested on me and then he pointed in my direction. I jumped to my feet and ran over to him, eager for whatever news he had come to give me. Being that he didn’t speak a word of English and Theo still refused to translate for me, even when the news involved him as well, the Moroccan struggled to his feet and hobbled over to do the job.
“Do you know where you are?” the emir asked.
“No,” I said.
“Well, you’re with Ahrar al-Sham now. You were with Jabhat al-Nusra, but now you’re with us. We are going to investigate you both, and if you are who you say you are we will let you go—maybe.”
When the Moroccan was done translating I lit up like a menorah on day eight.
“Thank you,” I said fervently, gripping his hand.
“Maybe,” he reiterated.
After I sat back down he called one of the Shabiha over to slap him around a little before locking us all back in. Many of the men came over to congratulate me as I sat overwhelmed with emotion at the possibility that maybe, maybe, I would be going home. At least if I was no longer a prisoner of Jabhat al-Nusra then Kawa was no longer the master of my fate—Blackbeard was.
The room was like an oven now, as temperatures soared to well over 100 degrees. The gap from under the door helped a little, but not enough. To combat the heat Obeida installed a ceiling fan, but since it was on the opposite side of the room from where I slept I had to travel to enjoy the warm breeze it created. Another problem that came along with the summer heat was a lack of water. The water went out for days at a time, forcing us to ration what we drank and used to clean ourselves in the bathroom. Eventually it became so bad that Obeida had someone feed a thick fire hose through the hole he’d left in the cinder blocks, hooked it up to a tanker, and filled the stainless steel reserve tank above the bathroom. This tank would last us a day or two, long enough for the
