Northern Syria
He dreams of death.
The pistol’s muzzle, warm and heavy against the back of his neck.
The sweet reek of cordite.
A millisecond of agony.
Oblivion.
*
The blindfold was ripped from his head.
Rifaat al-Bosni sat up slowly, opened his eyes, squinting against the glare of the midday sun.
A boot smashed into his ribs.
He toppled over, bolts of pain shooting down his side, fought to breathe, scrabbled in the dirt, finally righted himself.
The khamsin was a yellow fury. The light blinded. The wind howled. The air was thick with sand, so hot it was barely breathable, slashing at the exposed skin of his face.
His shoulders were on fire, his legs numb, his wrists bleeding from the plastic cuffs that held his hands behind his back. He had not eaten for two days, had drunk only a cup of brackish water that morning. Cold sweat, peppered with grit, sprouted across his face. He closed his eyes for a moment.
The boot pushed hard against his chest.
“Get up, kuffar.”
He knew that voice. Younis spoke with the flat vowels of Manchester, a city in northern England. His face and neck were wrapped in a black and white keffiyeh. Only his eyes were visible, dark and gleaming.
Al-Bosni swallowed, coughed; even the interior of his mouth was coated with sand. “I am not a kuffar. I am a believer. Just not in your God.”
Younis laughed. “This is not a theology class.” He kicked al-Bosni in the thigh. “Get up.”
Al-Bosni struggled to his feet, then his legs collapsed. He sprawled in the dirt, daggers stabbing his thighs and calf muscles as the blood returned. He lay on his side, pulled his knees back and forth. The daggers became pins and needles.
Younis kicked him again. “What the fuck are you doing? Exercising? You have five seconds.”
Al-Bosni ignored the blow and stood again, carefully. His legs wobbled but stayed upright. The wind was so strong against his back, it helped him stand. He blinked, coughed again, and looked around. A giant black banner inscribed with white Arabic script, There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet, flapped back and forth in the wind. The rayah.
Reached by a single dirt track through the arid scrubland, the settlement was spread over two sides of a narrow inlet of the Euphrates. Huts huddled together a few yards from the river’s edge, but the fishermen and their families were long gone. There was no shop, not even a mosque.
Al-Bosni had been taken prisoner two weeks ago, in Aleppo. The Islamists now controlled hundreds of square miles of territory, from this hamlet with no name to the outskirts of Baghdad. Much of the border between Iraq and Syria no longer existed. A caliphate—an empire of Islam—had been declared, and its brutality was unrivaled. Scenes of torture, executions, and beheadings continuously streamed on social media. Every few days American air strikes pounded the Islamists’ positions, but the leaders kept relocating to small settlements like this one. Al-Bosni had been fighting with what remained of the Free Syrian Army, of moderate Muslims and secular nationalists. Unlike many of his comrades, he was still alive. On either side of the rayah a line of severed heads stared back at him, each mounted on a pole.
A mile or so away, out on a tiny peninsula, a different flag flew: the red banner of Turkey. The Tomb of Suleyman Shah, the father of Suleyman the Magnificent, was a tiny enclave of Turkish territory deep inside what used to be Syria. A road led from the mainland to the peninsula, where the gray stone mausoleum stood in the middle of a verdant, manicured lawn surrounded by a high fence. A small barracks housed a garrison of Turkish soldiers. Amid the swirl of alliances, betrayals, and counterbetrayals, somehow the tomb and its surrounds had survived the war untouched.
Al-Bosni glanced at the water. The Euphrates was swollen by spring floods, a fast-flowing palette of brown and green. A tree branch bobbed in the current, rebounded off the muddy bank, was sucked out into the great expanse of water. What bliss it would be to dive in and be carried away by the current, to float down into Iraq, be spat out into the Persian Gulf.
A blow to his back sent him reeling. He staggered, unable to use his arms to balance. Younis’s hand caught his shoulder, turned al-Bosni to the right.
Younis was famous on the Internet. He used prisoners for target practice. Ideally Shia Muslims, but those of any faith would suffice. Each time Facebook took down Younis’s page, or Twitter shut down his feed, it reappeared a few hours later, the name slightly altered, with even more followers.
Younis pushed al-Bosni toward a mechanical digger that stood near the riverbank, its engine idling. A few yards away black clouds of flies buzzed around a long, deep trench. A jihadist waited by the edge, his face wrapped in a black keffiyeh, a full-sized television camera on his shoulder, filming four fighters as they readied their weapons.
Al-Bosni and Younis stopped near the digger. A long column of blindfolded men, perhaps a hundred in all, waited there, each with his hands on the shoulders of the man in front. Al-Bosni glanced into the trench. Amid the bodies there were flashes of color: white sports shoes, a green T-shirt, a blue jacket.
The first prisoner was led forward. Al-Bosni watched the elderly man shuffle along, shaking and murmuring, worry beads taut in his hands. He stood on the edge of the trench, a dark patch spreading over the crotch of his tattered beige trousers.
The firing squad took aim. The moment he had been captured al-Bosni knew he was a dead man. This, at least, would be quick.
The leader of the firing squad looked at the cameraman. He peered through the viewfinder, then glanced at the gunman and nodded. Shots echoed over the water. The old man jerked sideways, tumbled forward, still holding his worry beads.
Younis jabbed his AK-47 into al-Bosni’s back. “Not yet. Schoolhouse.”
He pushed al-Bosni toward a single-story building. The walls, once painted white, were now a dirty gray. The windows were covered with black cloth. Two jihadists sat outside on either side of the door, their assault rifles resting on their legs. Banana clips of ammunition were piled up on a small chair nearby. The lid of a long wooden box lay open, showing a stack of Kalashnikov assault rifles, still shiny with grease. Somewhere a generator sputtered, spewing petrol fumes.
The fighters looked at al-Bosni with curiosity. Both were Americans. Al-Bosni had heard them talking in a Florida twang.
He walked into the room. The desks and chairs had been shunted to the side. Another black rayah was draped against the back wall. Two large standing halogen lamps stood in either corner. A fighter stood behind a video camera mounted on a tripod, making tiny adjustments to the controls. Bottles of Turkish mineral water stood on a small table nearby. A long, curved scimitar lay on a chair in front of the camera.
An older man with close-cropped hair leaned against the wall, watching as he methodically ate an apple down to the core. Al-Bosni had never seen him before at the camp. He was in his midsixties, tanned and fit-looking, wearing a light brown North Face jacket and Timberland desert boots.
Al-Bosni looked at the chair, the scimitar, the cameraman.
Not like this.
He forced himself to control his fear. A plan began to form in his mind.
“Water,” he pleaded.
Younis slung his weapon over his shoulder, took a bottle, twisted it open, and tipped it over al-Bosni’s head.
Al-Bosni leaned back, trying to send a trickle of water into his mouth. His right foot flew up between Younis’s legs. The blow was, at most, half strength. But it connected.
Younis grunted, in both pain and amazement. Al-Bosni flicked his foot forward again and swiftly kicked Younis in the groin, harder this time. Younis’s face twisted and he lurched backward, his gun clattering to the floor.
Al-Bosni sprinted for the door. He would not make it out of the camp. And even if he did there was nowhere to run. But he would die on his feet, in his own clothes, not in an orange jumpsuit, sedated and dragged before a camera.
The fighters outside the entrance jumped up and spun around to block the door, their assault rifles pointing straight at al-Bosni. He stood still and closed his eyes. Water trickled down his head, along his nose.
*
The stream flows clear and bright in the morning sunshine. His finger rests against the trigger of the hunting rifle. His father lies next to him, his breathing steady and slow as he points across the water.
*
He tensed, focusing hard on the memory.
What felt like a sledgehammer hit him in the side. He flipped around, landed on his back, felt the weight of his body pressing down on his arms and cuffed wrists.
*
The deer raises its head. The air smells of spring. The sound of the shot thunders through the trees. The deer crumples. Pride fills his father’s face.
*
Al-Bosni opened his eyes.
Younis stood above him, the butt of his gun raised like a hammer. He whirled the weapon around, held it against his shoulder, and aimed at Al-Bosni’s head.
Al-Bosni smiled, nodded. “Do it.”
Tata, I’m coming.
The visitor took a last bite of the apple, flicked the core away with his thumb, and stepped forward. He placed his hand under the barrel of Younis’s gun and lifted it upward. Younis’s face was a mask of fury. But he did not resist.
The visitor leaned over al-Bosni, helped him to stand, opened a bottle of water, and handed it to him. He took out a pocketknife and sliced through the plastic handcuffs. Al-Bosni clenched and unclenched his fists, feeling the blood returning to his fingers. His right leg shook uncontrollably. Then the visitor took out a small, light blue booklet the size of a passport from his jacket pocket. He looked at al-Bosni, then down at the identification page.
“Rifaat al-Bosni. Is that your real name?” he asked, his voice curious.
Al-Bosni gulped the water too fast, coughed, violent spasms that convulsed his body. He was angry and scared, relieved and, yes, disappointed all at once. “Does it matter? Who are you?”
“I ask the questions. How did you obtain a UN laissez-passer?”
Al-Bosni stared at the visitor, his leg slowly stilling. The man’s eyes were hypnotic: one pale blue, the other dark brown. His manner was casual but there was steel underneath.
Al-Bosni replied, “I work for the UN. I am an aid worker.”
“Meaning?”
“I help people.”
The visitor flicked through the pages of the laissez-passer, looking at the entry and exit stamps. “People in Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq …”
“I serve where I am needed.”
The visitor smiled. “Rifaat al-Bosni. A Muslim with light blue eyes. An aid worker who commands soldiers in battle. Who can plan an ambush, hit a target a kilometer away.”
Al-Bosni paused before he answered, drank some more water, slowly this time. He thought for a moment before he spoke. Who was this man? He spoke mid-Atlantic English, but there was the faint hint of another accent underneath, a staccato rhythm that had not quite been eradicated.
Al-Bosni said, “Sometimes a gun is the best form of aid.”
The visitor smiled. “Yes. Sometimes it is.” He walked closer to al-Bosni, glancing at the photograph page of the laissez-passer and then staring at his face. He nodded, as if satisfied, and slipped the document back into his pocket. “Armin Kapitanovic, please come with me.”