Butt Sniffing in the West

Emma and her people would not get to Moria for another half hour or so. The barracks were less crowded than the evening before. All the refugee families were out, working on getting their papers. The tonsured man was still there on his cot a few feet away, still reading, and I still couldn’t see what book it was. I would find out later that his daughters had befriended Sumaiya’s and were somewhere out in the camp with his wife, leaving him alone with his treasured book.

I settled down on Sumaiya’s cot and listened to the journalists’ questions.

No, he was not an Islamist, Sammy said. He wasn’t sure what the word meant. Yes, of course he was a Muslim. I realized that the translator wasn’t nearly as good as I first thought. Her English was impeccable, her classical Arabic proficient but lacking any of the nuance of the spoken language, let alone any understanding of the Syrian dialect. The creaky conversation confused Sammy. No, he did not practice his religion. He was a Muslim. He did not need to pursue Islam; he was born a Muslim. Of course he prayed the requisite amount. He was apologetic, asking what that had to do with practicing.

I did not butt in. I should have, but I was too intrigued. I watched how the women sat, upright and matronly, how they approved of what was being said with an easy glance between them. I was a primatologist observing a strange species in its natural environment. The various forms of asking “Are you an Islamist” were the human equivalent of dogs sniffing butts.

But then Mazen intervened. He told Sammy not to worry about the questions, that the journalists were trying to get to know him, but they were not extremely bright. It wasn’t his fault. The Dutch interpreter did not translate that.

Sammy said the family didn’t have much of a problem when Daesh began to control the area, particularly early on. The Daesh men—worshipful, callow boys mostly, all peach fuzz and pistols—allowed him a lot of leeway in the beginning because he was well known in the area for being antiregime. He was able to drive his beat-up truck to work without slowing down for either checkpoints or potholes. He did not understand how horrible Daesh was at the time. His village was too small to matter, so everyone went about their business without much ado. For him, anything was more acceptable than the capriciousness of the regime. Why? He was arrested once, a long time ago, long before he met Sumaiya, when he was a teenager.

“He’s my hero,” Sumaiya told me, almost yelling. She nudged my thigh with her elbow. “He asks me to tell him he’s my hero whenever we get romantic.” Sammy turned his head toward us, his eyes as wide as porcelain plates, mortified, but she simply went on, her voice avid and light. “In between kisses, he keeps saying, ‘I’m your hero, isn’t that right?’ He’s quite sweet, you know.”

Mazen cracked up. “Who doesn’t love a romantic hero?” he said to Sumaiya.

I smiled at her, but I was perturbed. Was this hepatic encephalopathy? Her behavior was not normal, yet I could not be sure if that was because she was confused or if it was simply a general change of attitude. I needed help. She needed help.

The journalists wanted to know why Sammy was arrested. They listened to his story without moving, sitting on the cots with their backs firm and erect, like well-mixed concrete; you could pull out all the supporting steel rods and they would still be straight.

He was young, Sammy said. He talked too much, not knowing when to hold his tongue. He had criticized the regime to a friend, saying something innocuous, like you could only get a job in Syria if you knew someone important. Nothing significant or subversive. Then he said that if you knew the ruling family, you could steal money, and no one would say a word. Well, that friend told someone who told someone who informed on him. He ended up being arrested and tortured. He was in jail for six months.

Tortured?

Sammy lifted his shirt, showing pale scars, three long, off-color lines on his back, and one on his chest that began a little below his right nipple and ran all the way across toward his spleen. The security services whipped and cut him without interrogating him. They didn’t need information from him, although he would have willingly offered anything they wanted. They hung him by his wrists from a pipe in the ceiling for days for no reason. They sliced into him as he spun like shawarma.

“That’s funny,” Sumaiya said. “I think I’ve heard that before. He repeats a limited number of jokes, but they still make me laugh. You know, a prison guard taught him barjees because he needed someone to play with. He didn’t do a good job, though, because I beat my husband every time.”

The translator seemed unsure whether to translate Sumaiya’s running commentary. She looked toward her masters, the journalists, and they ignored Sumaiya. She followed suit.

Daesh did the same things as the regime, Sammy said, as did other Islamic groups like Ahrar al-Sham or Jabhat al-Nusra. Friends informed on friends, family on family. Daesh also set up a system to provide social services, and they cleared out the various criminal gangs in the area. Sammy didn’t pay attention to what was going on for the first few months, grateful that he and his family were safe and that the regime’s security services were no longer anywhere near their village.

“That’s because he’s a man,” Sumaiya told me. The Dutch woman glanced up at her but still did not translate. “I knew the situation was going to be bad before they arrived, so did every woman in the village. Our lives would become unbearable. No school for my daughter, I would not be allowed to leave my house without being accompanied by my husband. I did not need to wait until the killings started to know they were repulsive human beings.”

I whispered in her ear, asking if she was in pain. She said of course but no more than usual, and the pills from Emma were helping. I asked because I wondered if her loquaciousness was drug induced. I brought a few more pills, I told her.

“Why are they talking only to him?” she said. “Why don’t they ask me what happened to my family? Is my story not good enough fodder for them?”

Sammy began to guess at the danger they were in when he first heard of the murders. Anyone who disagreed with Daesh was killable. Christians, Muslims, it didn’t matter, Sammy said. If they didn’t like you, you were either an infidel or an apostate. They executed many and sent severed heads back to the families. Sumaiya and he understood that they should leave the area, go anywhere else—Turkey, Lebanon—but they were worried about their families. His parents had passed away a long time ago, but he had four brothers and two sisters. Sumaiya’s mother was still alive. She lived about an hour away, which meant they were seeing her less and less. Still, they couldn’t take her grandchildren away from her. They stayed—suffered and stayed until they were left with no choice.

“I was willing to leave,” Sumaiya told me, loudly enough to interrupt her husband. “And he was listening to me. We would have left much earlier, but then I became sick. It wasn’t awful in the beginning, but I had pains in my stomach and I was nauseated. I felt that I should wait to feel a little better before beginning a trek. I wanted to take my daughters away, but I didn’t know I was not going to get better. By the time I knew, it was too painful, too late.”

Still the translator said nothing. Sammy began to squirm. He adjusted his seating position and reached out to his wife. She had openly admitted what she made him swear never to reveal. He looked toward me, pleading.

“We’re going to the hospital as soon as Emma shows up,” I said.

I noticed a swatch of pink sticking out below her left hip. I reached down to find out what it was, and she momentarily flinched. She turned curious as I pulled a child’s sock out from under her. She took it from me, squeezed it in her hand. I covered hers with mine. She didn’t seem to mind. I tried to smooth out the rucked up sheet next to her shoulder. I was about to say something, but she beat me to it.

“I like your hair,” she said, “and I like that you leave it natural, like God intended. All the gray makes you look older, but that’s how it’s supposed to be. And I like that you don’t cover it.”

“You don’t have to either,” I said.

“Oh, no,” she said. “Your hair looks good uncovered. Not mine, definitely not mine.”