Abu Ali had hooked us up with hot tea and the usual massive Ramadan breakfast of champions, and I stuffed my face like I would have on any normal day, eating most of Theo’s share because he wasn’t hungry. Then I hit the lights and we began to prep the room for the escape. When everything was in place we sat in silence, waiting for the Adhan to blare out from every mosque in the city for the dawn prayer, which would mean the countdown was officially on.
Once I’d figured out how to free up the window I spent every morning staring at the sky, studying the light so I could time everything just perfectly. We needed to get out that window ten minutes before daylight to avoid being seen by anyone who happened to look down from the apartment buildings or the roof. In a way it was the perfect job for me—I’d been a film student and a photographer, and both mediums boil down to the same thing: the study and capture of light. During one of these study sessions, Theo walked up behind me.
“Maybe they’ll let us go tomorrow,” he said.
“I don’t want them to let us go anymore,” I’d replied. “I wanna escape.”
Now, as the Adhan echoed outside, we could hear all the jihadis in the building running up the stairs to pray. All we had to do now was wait for them to finish praying and go to sleep, and then for the right light in the sky.
“We’re goin’ home, Theo,” I said. “We’re goin’ home.”
As I looked up I could tell that the sky was about to start changing color. It was time to get to work.
Theo got down on all fours and I jumped up and removed the ten horizontal wires that weren’t welded on and tossed them aside. Once these were out of the way, I bent down all of the verticals. Lastly, I grabbed the top two thick horizontals, bending them back behind the frame.
“Shit!” I said. “They both snapped off!”
There was nothing to do about it now; I jumped down. Theo tied the rope to the frame and I laid a blanket that had been folded to the exact width of the windowsill over the wires. We grabbed the few items we’d each chosen to take: I had my hat, slippers, and the mesbahah that Ayman had given me, along with an extra tee shirt to tie around my head Arab-style to help me blend in. Theo had his sneakers and toothbrush.
For some reason, instead of boosting me up Theo insisted that I use the rope for myself as well, saying “I don’t want to help you until I have to.” I put my foot through the loop; as soon as I put my weight on it, the loop tore in half.
“Shit!” I said.
“Forget the rope! Just go!”
There was no time to argue—Theo locked his hands together and hoisted me up like a cheerleader, and I maneuvered my arm, head, and shoulders through the interior frame with Theo pushing from beneath. The next thing to go wrong was the blanket—it was too thick and got in the way, so I tossed it onto the floor. Then, with one arm extended in front of me and the other pinned to my side, I slowly began to make my way through the outside frame of the window, where the wires had been. I got one arm through. Then I got my head out. And then, with Theo pushing as hard as he could, I found myself wedged at the shoulder, unmoving, between the third rail and the frame. As I tried to force my way through, pushing off of Theo’s hands with all my strength, I realized that if I wasn’t fitting, Theo never would, and I began to panic.
“I’m stuck! I’m stuck!” I cried out in a whisper.
By the time I got back down I was soaked with perspiration. The wires were a mess and the sun was starting to rise. If somebody came in or walked by and saw this we would be tortured until we were begging for death. For a full minute I paced back and forth, trying to come up with a solution as the sweat poured down my head.
“Get down,” I said. “I have to put it back together.”
Somehow, I managed to rig it so it looked like it had before. I folded the verticals back up and wedged the tops of them tightly against the roof of the frame, then slid the horizontals through. When it was as good as it was going to get I hopped down and had Theo examine it. We put the rest of the room back in order, and then we both lay down on our beds. I hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours and was exhausted, not to mention devastated. We had been certain we could both fit through with the third rail still in place, but were both wrong. Now we had a big problem on our hands as soon as someone inspected the room, which was bound to happen sooner or later.
I slept, kind of. Really, I drifted off into an uneasy doze, thinking about the window and the wires, and my shoulder stuck against the frame. When I woke up, with daylight illuminating the room, I knew what we had to do.
“We have to remove the third rail,” I told Theo. “We have to remove the third rail and go with two arms extended like Superman, so our
