Abraham started to walk. At a supermarket on what seemed to be the main street he bought water, and in bad Turkish asked the woman at the checkout where he might find a hotel. That was where to start. A base. And in a hotel, even a bad hotel, you paid money and could start a conversation on the basis of it. It was the only place a stranger could establish a claim on someone’s time. The woman pointed down the street and turned to the next customer.
He kept walking, past an empty barber’s, nondescript offices, a mobile phone shop with six old phones in the window, and more functional cafes, white tables in white rooms. From a shop whose shelves were nearly bare he bought shirts, underwear, a pair of trousers that fit him well enough. Life was going on here, but only barely; what had to be done was getting done, and no more. Shopkeepers stood outside their shops, talking, smoking, accustomed to the new reality. On the other side of the road three bearded men were smoking silently, two of them leaning against the bonnet of a car, all in black: black jeans and T-shirts and zipped jackets. One of them pointed at Abraham with his cigarette and the other two turned to look, their faces young but hard, forever set in menace and cold calculation. Abraham felt himself being swiftly and efficiently assessed – friend, foe, civilian – and realized that he fit none of those categories. He walked on, eyes firmly on the ground.
He saw no hotel anywhere, but his nerve had gone and he failed to ask new directions from each person he passed. Where the shops ran out and the pavement became a track he stopped, peered down the street at the more scattered buildings ahead of him and seeing nothing remotely promising turned and looked back the way he had come. The three men were still there, still watching him, and opposite them – of course, it would be – on the side of a building was the painted word ‘hotel’.
Walking back, into the wind and the dust and the men’s stares, he passed a man whose face he knew he recognized from somewhere, Antep or the bus or maybe just now, he was so preoccupied he couldn’t remember. Without even a glance across the street he turned into the door of the hotel and went up a narrow flight of stairs into a dark room at the back of the building. Two of its walls were lined with low, battered, vinyl-covered chairs, and on them sat two young men in T-shirts and trainers, staring intently at their phones. One looked local, the other was white, with black hair closely cropped at the sides and razored with straight, stepped lines. At a desk opposite sat a squat, heavy-shouldered man in a white shirt that was too tight and showed between each pair of buttons a glimpse of string vest. All three looked up at Abraham as he entered, and their eyes stayed on him as he approached the desk and asked, in his guidebook Turkish, if there was a free room.
The squat man sniffed, took a deep breath and let it slowly out, looked Abraham up and down.
‘No room. You go.’
Abraham glanced round at the two men and found them staring up at him. Unblinking, like lizards.
‘Nice beard,’ said the one with the shaved head, in English. English English. He was young, maybe twenty, and clean-shaven. His accent sounded northern.
Abraham had no response to that.
‘Why are you here?’
‘I want a room.’
‘No mate. In this shithole. Akçakale.’
‘I have family in Syria. I need to see them.’
‘Family?’
‘My wife’s family.’
The man nodded, emphatically, like he didn’t believe a word.
‘That be in Raqqa, by any chance?’
He meant something by this but Abraham had no idea what. There was so much he didn’t know.
‘Not just Raqqa.’
The young man looked at his friend, stood up and walked towards Abraham until he was only six inches from him, fresh garlic harsh on his breath. Abraham was the taller.
‘You don’t look like a fighter, mate.’
‘I’m not a fighter.’
‘Why else go to Raqqa?’
‘I don’t want to go. I have to go.’
‘That’s what they all say.’
That was a joke, it seemed. He turned round to grin at his friend. He was wearing a white T-shirt that showed every detail of his pumped-up chest, and combat trousers with bulging pockets.
‘Really. I’m not here for trouble.’
‘Only trouble here, mate. That’s all there is.’
What should he say? I’m searching for someone. I’m here by mistake, more or less. I’m not even a Muslim.
‘How’d you feel about Assad, my friend?’
Bad. He felt bad about Assad. Without him there would be none of this. Everyone hated Assad, didn’t they? Unless they were trying to trick you.
‘The sooner he goes, the better.’
‘That’s good, that’s good. You’re doing well. So that’s why you’re here, is it, to fight the good fight?’
‘I’m not here to fight.’
The man pushed himself up on his toes until his face was an inch from Abraham’s.
‘If you’re not with us, my lanky fucking friend, you’re against us.’
‘I’m not here to fight anyone.’
With another grin the young man grabbed Abraham’s upper arm and squeezed.
‘I believe you. I believe you. Fuck me, pal. You’d take a lot of training up.’
He turned to his friend again and for the first time in a very long time Abraham wished he were stronger, and fitter, and capable of beating this character into being quiet. Shrugging his arm free he started to walk away.
‘Hey.’
He kept walking.
‘I’ll catch up with you later.’ Then to his friend: ‘Fuck me. Scraping the fucking barrel now.’
Back on the street, Abraham stood by the entrance to the hotel, his head empty of ideas. The three men had gone, and for now he was alone.