The weight of death that we’d felt resting on our backs the night before had been lifted in a matter of seconds—by an apology from a sociopathic torture expert. It was amazing how quickly things could turn around in Syria.
From this point on Abu Abdullah treated us as guests, feeding us well and providing us with clothes, soap, and pretty much anything else we asked for. Sometimes he would come down late at night to bring us a snack, sharing whatever he and his brothers were munching on. It was a pleasant surprise, in a world where surprises were usually anything but pleasant.
Other people in the warehouse weren’t so lucky.
The torture we heard being conducted upstairs by Abu Abdullah and the Leader was the worst of any so far. Often in the midst of it we’d hear a gunshot from out of nowhere, most likely fired inches from the victim’s head. I don’t think they ever wounded or killed anybody with one of these shots because the screaming never increased afterward, and it never stopped, either.
We only met one of the many torture victims. We were dutifully staring at the wall when they brought him down, and waited until we were given permission to turn around. In the background, taking a seat on the floor, was our new cellmate, Omar. Before us was the Leader, going nuts and pointing at him. I didn’t understand a single thing coming out of his mouth with the exception of one word, but that one word explained everything: Shabiha.
“He says don’t talk to him,” the Moroccan translated.
We all promised to leave him alone and they left. Omar, in excruciating pain, lay on a mattress they’d pulled from a pile. When I finally made my way over I saw that all the skin had been stripped away from his ankles, leaving nothing but raw, open flesh. A few days later Abu Abdullah called the Moroccan over to show him how he deals with Shabiha. He stood above Omar and placed the bottom of his boot on his ankle wound, mashing it like he was putting out a cigarette.
The Moroccan, not sure how he was expected to respond to such cruelty, encouraged the abuse to prove his loyalty as a true jihadi. When he came over afterward to describe the scene, he was laughing.
The bathroom situation had its ups and downs. Up: we had hot water in the shower. Down: the squat toilet had a broken pump, and had backed up all over the floor. Next to the bathroom were two little rooms right next to each other, one like a tiny kitchen area with a sink, one with the shower. I was the first to use the bathroom, the day after we arrived, feeling the greasy eggs coming back to haunt me from the night before. Opening that door was a traumatic experience, like something out of a Jackson Pollock nightmare. The entire floor and all four walls were caked and splattered in dried shit. It was the only toilet, so I found a big metal mixing bowl in one of the debris piles, took it into the shower room, shat in it, and then washed myself up nice. To discard the contents of the bowl I just opened the stall door and flung it in, aiming for the hole, but not particularly caring where it landed. After I washed it out I put the bowl off to the side for the other two to use when nature called. I gave stern instructions on the post-defecation process.
“You hear me, Theo?” I asked. “Don’t leave the bowl where Abu Abdullah can see or else we’re gonna end up eating from it!”
Most people know you don’t shit where you eat (or eat where you shit), but Theo being Theo, I watched that bowl like a fucking hawk.
I got sick several times over the course of my captivity, twice from overeating. My logic when it came to food was that we never knew when we might be moved or how they would feed us at our next jail, so whenever there was a surplus I went at it like a badger. The first time I got sick from this was at the stores, where I had my Alawite brothers there to support and help me. The second time was at the warehouse, where I had only Theo and a psychopath, and the psychopath was the more sympathetic of the two.
Abu Abdullah had served us some kind of meat and vegetables, and as usual I scarfed it down like my stomach was a bottomless pit. Afterward, I was so full I could barely walk. All I could do was lie there as the nausea crept up on me. I tried as hard as I could to put it out of my mind, knowing that if I puked my stomach would be on empty for at least the next fourteen hours, but there was no holding it in and I ended up bent over the sink, yakking my guts out until there was nothing left but the dry heaves. Eventually I made it back to my bed and flopped down on it.
“You okay?” the Moroccan asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
I looked over at Theo, who was staring at the ceiling stroking his mustache like he didn’t have a care in the world. This was at least the third time I’d gotten violently ill around him and not once had he asked me how I was doing or if I needed his help, though I’d done both for him when it was the other way around. The more I thought about it the more furious I became, but I didn’t have the strength to do more than fume at him from my mattress.
After making us write yet another set of reports for yet another promised investigation, Abu Abdullah led us over to the
