“How are you, Jumu’ah?” It was Mohammad.
“I’m going crazy, man,” I said, defeated. “Just please stay here for a minute and talk to me. Just talk to me.”
He stepped closer to where I stood, my forehead still pressed against the wall, and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Jumu’ah, my English no that good,” he said. “It okay. It okay.”
He gave my shoulder a friendly pat and then left. A few minutes later, the door that was covering the window from the outside slid over about ten inches to let some light into the room. When I jumped up on the pipes and looked outside, what I saw was quite the sight. A few hundred yards away was a huge building shaped like a zigzag. It had clearly been the scene of an epic battle, and was shot all to hell with not a single window left intact. Judging by the real estate they controlled, the katiba—militia group—within al-Nusra that had me was clearly a major power.
My new view and this act of kindness from Mohammad made me feel a little better. It suddenly dawned on me why I hadn’t been tortured, abused, or so much as insulted since my arrival—it was because Mohammad said so.
Still convinced that these people were ultimately going to let me go, I tried to find some kind of clue that I could give my government once I was home, to help them find where I’d been kept. The first thing I thought of was a serial number from something in the room, like a pipe, and a split second after this notion entered my mind I looked up to my right at the window and saw a manufacturer’s sticker pasted in the center. The window’s pristine condition combined with the fact that every single window in the building across from mine had been shot out suggested that it had recently been replaced, so I hoisted myself into a pull-up on a pipe to get closer to eye level with the sticker and read what was printed on it.
My memory isn’t quite photographic, but it’s better than most, so after I made a rhyme with the numbers they were locked in my head for good. Now if I made it home, the FBI would be able to hack into the company’s system to find out where the window was delivered and who it was shipped to. Most importantly, they’d find out who had paid for it and was funding the terrorists who’d kidnapped me.
By day four my mind was racing to come up with ways to negotiate with these people who I seemed to see less and less of. I had about twenty-five grand in the bank, so I figured I’d offer them ten. For the first time since I’d arrived, I knocked on the door. Within a minute, one of the guards opened it and asked me in Arabic what I wanted.
“Get me the guy that speaks inglisi,” I said confidently. “I want to talk money. You understand what I mean? Money.”
I held out my hand and rubbed my fingers together while repeating the word. He shut the door. Less than five minutes later the Ghost Man appeared, with someone new. With my head against the wall, I couldn’t see his face, just that he was small and wearing a judge’s robe that hung open. This wardrobe choice earned him the nickname the Little Judge.
“What do you want?” the Ghost Man asked.
“I wanna talk money. I’ll give you ten grand cash if you let me go,” I said. “I can call my people in Turkey and have it waiting for you when we get there.”
“Ten thousand dollars?” said the Ghost Man, stunned, as if I had just offered him a million.
“Yeah, ten thousand cash. We just jump the border, meet my friends, and then boom—you get your money and I get to go home to my family.”
He translated to the Little Judge, which meant he was definitely someone with influence within the organization. The Ghost Man did this in a whisper, as if they were still unsure if I could understand Arabic.
“I will talk to my brothers about it,” said the Ghost Man. “Wait here.” The two men left, locking the door behind them.
They never came back.
By the next day, my hope that we could come to some kind of an arrangement had completely faded. Making my mood even worse was the fact that it had been about a week since the last time I’d sent out emails letting my friends and family know I was alive, and uploaded some photos to my website. If they didn’t hear from me again soon, they’d know something had gone wrong and be worried beyond comprehension.
While I paced, I started thinking about why the hell nobody had come to see me apart from my brief visits from the Ghost Man and the Little Judge the day before and Mohammad the day before that. I came to the conclusion that they were testing me to see if I had training for this kind of situation. I figured that if I continued to keep my cool they would only be more convinced that I was a CIA agent, so I decided to take a chance and just embrace all the emotions swirling through my head, and lose it.
“Fuck it,” I said and started pounding on the door. “Come on,” I yelled. “Let me out! I didn’t do anything! I’m just a photographer! I told you, I’ll give you ten thousand dollars!”
This went on for a good half hour before a guard finally opened the door, and it was at that moment that I seriously fucking regretted
