The inside of the mosque was as stunning as the outside, with rich red carpet and transfixing domes that seemed to spiral up endlessly, out beyond the Earth’s atmosphere and on past the stars. There couldn’t have been more than five people in the entire place by this point, and it felt like I was standing alone in some vast coliseum, or a cathedral designed by Michelangelo. I closed my eyes and raised my palms.
“Bismillah al rahman al rahim,” I said, beginning the Fatiha.
I prayed with all my heart, remembering all those I had to be grateful to, all that I had to be grateful for, and all those who were left behind. I prayed knowing that without God’s help I would not be where I was at that moment, or at any other moment moving forward, for the rest of my life. I prayed for a long while, and it left a profound impression on me; as I laced up my kicks outside the mosque, I felt different. I had fulfilled my promise to God, and I knew that as long as I continued to do so, he would continue to look over me, as he had so faithfully over the past seven months.
Once I had exited the gates and was officially off sacred ground I turned back to admire the mosque’s beauty one last time, glowing in the peace of the night. Then I placed a cigarette in my mouth, lit it up, and took a drag. I exhaled and turned from the sight of the dome.
“All right, now you’re a Jew again,” I said.
Early the next morning I was on a plane to Istanbul, where I was set down one last time before being lifted up again, climbing through the clouds to fly straight home to New York, where my family was waiting for me.
EPILOGUE
I know it’s hard to believe, but once my feet touched down on that lovely New York City soil, it didn’t take me long to get back in the game at all. I was at the gym within three days and dating within a week. And being that I’d instructed my mother not to alert the press—and the FBI only does so when they can take credit for the victory—there was no media whirlwind waiting for me when I stepped off the plane.
In other ways, however, reentry was harder. I quickly discovered that “Special” Agent Dilda Brody who’d been assigned to my case—and said she was the FBI’s Syria specialist, even though she had never been there, barely spoke a word of Arabic, and knew jack shit about Islam—wasn’t very special at all. In fact, not only had she done next to nothing to bring me home or keep me safe, she’d also failed to lift a finger to protect my finances after the Canadian jihadis—Redbeard, Chubs, and co.—took down my banking and credit information. Apparently, the fact that the terrorists had paid off my Discover Card convinced her that I had joined al-Qaeda, and I was judged guilty until proven innocent here in America just as I had been in Syria. Al-Nusra burned through my entire personal savings with online purchases (including one of a Kama Sutra guide, so yes, while I was being kept in the dark, starved, and tormented on a daily basis, some ugly bearded fuck was learning how to eat out his wife’s pussy on my dime). They also helped themselves to a nice chunk of my business assets, which Brody claimed—falsely, it turned out, according to Citibank—she’d eventually frozen. As a result, I had a little less than eight grand left to my name, which was a major blow when it came to reestablishing a life for myself in a town as expensive as New York. Thanks to all this she really could not have made coming home any harder if I were Jon fucking Voight.
As if this weren’t enough, I also discovered that for the entire duration of my captivity, Brody was doing her all, mostly via email, to convince my mother that I was perfectly okay, and probably just too busy traveling back and forth between Turkey and Syria to contact anyone. Of course, my mother trusted this woman and didn’t want to believe the truth might be much worse, and between that and the fact that she’d been estranged from my father for years, she never called him to let him know that I’d gone missing in Syria . . . and neither did the FBI. When I finally agreed to some interviews, this became a problem.
“Matthew! You have to call your father!” my mother screeched into my ear over the phone. “He can’t find out about this from the New York Times and CNN!”
I hadn’t spoken to him for a long time myself, and I wasn’t exactly eager to break the silence with a call like this, but as I’d given an interview to the biggest newspaper in the world and had 60 Minutes on the horizon, I decided there was no avoiding it. Besides, I’d had enough people screaming at me over my seven months in Syria; the last thing I needed was more of the same from my Brooklyn-born Jewish mother. I dialed my father as soon as I got off the phone with her, and was massively relieved to get his voice
