Brothers of the Gun by Marwan Hisham & Molly Crabapple & Molly Crabapple

Author:Marwan Hisham & Molly Crabapple & Molly Crabapple
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2018-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

On YouTube, Muhammad followed the news and videos of al-Dawlah’s enemies as a form of entertainment—or possibly as a job. He didn’t, as the others had, shout ridicule or pray to Allah to enable him to cut their throats. Rather, one night he called Ammar and me to watch a YouTube video of Aleppo rebels singing: “You are in a valley, and we’re in another valley. Oh, Baghdadi, we are going to oust you.” The song continued: “You want a state, go convince people to follow you, but be careful not to alienate them through your actions.” He sat on the couch in the corner opposite my desk and examined our faces every time there was a phrase too critical of his group, as if to read our sequestered thoughts, a test of my ability to exhibit apathy even when my interest was excited.

Muhammad was interested in Ammar at first simply because Ammar came from Atareb, a small town in the western Aleppo countryside. There, the rebels had fired their first bullet against ISIS. That night in December 2013 put ISIS at odds with the rest of the insurgent groups, radical and moderate. Enmity and a long war followed. ISIS accused local Atareb rebels of raping its foreign female members, something that, whenever ISIS fighters brought it up in the café—usually Abu Abdullah, who made sure to tell every new member that Ammar was from “Tareb,” mimicking the local pronunciation in his thick Saudi accent—put Ammar in the spotlight.

Since Abu Siraj led the way, paid the checks, and drove the car, we joked that he was Muhammad’s boyfriend. However, their strong bond was of a different sort—and not one that we exactly guessed until later. One day, when the café was empty, Muhammad pulled Ammar to his side and whispered in his ear that he wanted him to be a spy. He asked Ammar to help him bust “underground brothels” and big-fish tobacco dealers in the neighborhood, offering him an irresistible stack of dollars. Ammar told me about the offer and I—lying—warned him that it was a trap; the boy was thankfully scared enough to refuse. It was easy for Muhammad and Abu Siraj to take in the unwary, since they were friendly and didn’t care about minor offenses like cursing or Ammar’s half-shaved, gel-stiffened “un-Islamic” haircut. It was only when Abu Siraj came alone and sat down for a few minutes that we understood something of the nature of their actual profession. We asked him about Muhammad and Abu Siraj replied that he had achieved shahada in a recent bombing by the “Nusayri regime.” This bombing was no doubt the only time the Syrian regime succeeded in hitting ISIS hard, for the building they struck housed Point Eleven, ISIS’s intelligence unit in Raqqa, which was notorious for kidnapping and torture. The Point Eleven building was pummeled by a dozen air raids. ISIS lost more than fifty members that day; one of them was Muhammad. That afternoon was the last time we saw Abu Siraj.

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