Between Brody’s antics, one Bowfinger-esque movie producer after another trying to hustle me out of my story, and scumbag journalists doing the same, over time my happiness at being out was soured by anger. It seemed like everyone who contacted me wanted something for nothing. And then, one day, I received an email from the US Army—they wanted to know if I’d speak at their annual Antiterrorism Conference in Orlando. I had only done one speaking engagement before, for the LAPD, which Brody had canceled as I was flying there and only green-lit again after I promised not to discuss the Canadian connection in front of over four hundred counterterrorism police officers and detectives—my guess is she didn’t want these highly trained individuals asking me questions during the Q&A about who was responsible for my bank accounts not being frozen; why none of the addresses any of the goods were shipped to in Turkey or Canada had been raided; or about what was purchased, like over a dozen laptops and tablets. It’s quite possible some of these detectives would have been able to connect the dots long before I did to see that the FBI was most likely letting them steal my money so that they could then intercept the laptops and tablets before delivering them directly into the hands of al-Qaeda, creating the intelligence community’s wet dream for infiltrating the enemy. So in reality, the FBI wasn’t conducting an investigation; they were conducting an operation. Brody and her colleagues just used me as chum, to bring the sharks to the surface.
But when it came to the army, I jumped at the opportunity to tell my story to people who weren’t trying to use it to make money or make their careers, and I wrote back and said yes. To be honest, though, I expected the gig to be canceled as soon as the organizer contacted the FBI. In fact, I was so confident that this was going to happen that I didn’t even bother to rehearse. Little did I know that when it comes to their conferences, the Mother Army asks permission from no man and no woman—as the man who’d contacted me later said, “They need to just stay the fuck out of it.”
When I arrived at the hotel in Orlando and met my contact, he walked me around for a while, introducing me to various high-ranking military and government officials—including several generals. They all said the same thing: “I can’t wait to hear you speak tomorrow.” Apparently I was the main event; once I found out, I ran back to my room and began to rehearse like crazy. The next day I gave a thirty-five-minute speech, mostly about how I’d used humor to build relationships, the intelligence-gathering methods I’d successfully employed, like memorizing the serial number on the window, and the escape. By the time I wrapped it up, all 225 people in the ballroom were on their feet giving me a standing ovation. I was later told that no one in the conference’s fourteen-year history had ever received such a reception.
After I got offstage, people kept coming up to me to shake my hand. They all asked if I had ever served, and when I said I hadn’t they were shocked—most of the tactics I’d employed were taught in some of the military’s most physically and mentally challenging programs. Being among these men and women who understood me, and being so appreciated by them, was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life; it was what I’d hoped to receive from the FBI, but never did. In Syria I’d fought to show our enemies exactly what Americans are made of, and all I got from my government in return for my patriotism were lies and betrayal. Now I was being accepted into a community of people who could understand what I’d gone through and what I’d risked, who knew what it was like to wage war from a battlefield instead of an air-conditioned cubicle. I finally had friends here like I’d had over there, the kind I knew I would have been able to count on if they’d been with me in those cells. As for Theo, they were all in agreement that I’d done the right thing in leaving him behind (well, to tell the truth, a lot of them said I should have killed him).
Since then I have spoken to military audiences all over the country, using my experience to give perspective and insight into what it’s like to be held in an Islamic prison—in case, God forbid, any of our soldiers or pilots ever end up in a situation like mine. It’s a service that I’m proud to perform, and to not only support our troops but to have them support me is an honor and a privilege for which I will die a grateful man.
At the end of my speech there’s always a Q&A session. I usually get a lot of the same questions, and one that I hear almost every time is whether I have nightmares. My answer is always the same. “No,” I tell them. “I have dreams.”
Most of my correspondence with Shareef these days is via emojis, thanks to his poor English and my poorer Arabic, but as the weeks turned into months and the months into years, my friendships with him and with Ali have endured. I’m not certain how long it was after we came home, but during one of my early conversations with Ali, he told me that days before he and Shareef were exchanged they were allowed to make Skype calls with their families. When Shareef was on his call he learned the most unexpected thing: that an American photographer who had escaped from Jabhat al-Nusra had made it home, and this photographer had contacted his cousin on Facebook to let the family know that he was alive. After the call, Shareef
