Hussein and Bolbol sat down on a bare wooden sofa and proceeded to wait for more than five hours. Masked fighters passed back and forth, and while nothing about them pointed to their specific character or nationality, everything indicated their identity: their black clothes and masks, their long beards. They came and went from a large room in the heart of the building. Time passed with a peculiar slowness. No one spoke to the brothers. The building, which in the past had been some sort of governmental office, had been turned into the local headquarters of the extremist organization in control of the area. Guards emerged from the lower levels accompanied by blindfolded prisoners in chains, exhaustion clearly marked on their bodies and what was visible of their faces.
Hussein and Bolbol were more than ordinarily confused at this latest setback. Hussein tried to speak to one of the soldiers, but the man just glanced at Hussein in bemusement before continuing on his way. Later, this same man came back and beckoned them to follow him. They went into a small room containing a large table and a laptop and a single chair on which a masked man sat in full field uniform, turning over their identity cards. He spoke to them in a laughable attempt at formal Arabic, in an accent not too far away from their own, trying to enunciate each word properly. He said they would submit to being questioned about their religion and added that if they could simply answer a few questions correctly they would be allowed to pass. He didn’t add anything else but waved at the masked fighter to take them to the Sharia judge’s room for questioning. Before they left, he said that the organization was aware of their father’s membership in the Baath Party fifty years earlier; equally, they knew they were also relatives of the late Lieutenant Colonel Jamil, who had been executed by the government forty years before. The past was catching up with them. Hussein now knew that their family name would hardly serve as a password among these people; it might even be a hindrance. They could be detained on account of the delusions of dead family members. He guessed at the identity of the man who’d ordered their transfer to the judge; Hussein was certain it was one of the three men from S who had joined this organization.
They left the room, trailing behind the fighter, who led them to another building. A large sign hanging on the door read SHARIA COURT. A group of women and men were waiting in a corridor, and despite the crowding, silence pervaded everywhere. The brothers moved through the crowd and, behind their escort, turned into a narrow passage that opened onto a large, dusty courtyard off which opened a number of doors, evidently locked. Huge men guarded these doors, their fingers on the triggers of their automatic rifles.
Bolbol entered the courtroom first; their escort asked Hussein to wait. Without preamble, the judge asked Bolbol simple questions about how many rakʿat should be performed at each prayer time. Bolbol was taken aback. He counted and made a mistake in his answer. The judge asked him outright if he prayed and undertook all his religious duties, and Bolbol replied without fear that he did not, apart from fasting at Ramadan and giving alms. The judge asked him the extent of these alms, and Bolbol wasn’t sure what to say. The judge then made him listen to a short recitation of the Qur’an and asked him which verse it was. Silence reigned as the judge waited for an answer. Finally, he asked Bolbol his opinion about this organization. Although Bolbol knew it would take all his courage to get out of this mess, he felt himself slipping into a deep, dark hole. Without a word, he allowed himself to creep slowly into this abyss. Speaking, he knew, would not be to his advantage. The judge directed a few more questions at Bolbol, who had no answer for any of them. He thought of saying something along the lines that, to him, religion meant good conduct, integrity, and devotion, but nothing came out. What he wanted was to slip back into his daydreams.
Bolbol’s refusal to speak was irritating the judge. At last the accused summoned up all his energy and tried to explain about the body, about bringing it home to be buried, and Bolbol then affirmed that he would in future take care to carry out all his religious obligations; he would pray at every prayer time, he would listen to recitations of the Qur’an, and he would commit it to memory, as he had done when he was a child. The judge pointed. The fighter who had brought the brothers to court blindfolded Bolbol with a leather strip and took him through one of the rear doors and down a few steps. Bolbol heard a door clang and then felt a hand shoving him inside a cell.
Hussein passed his examination successfully. The judge asked him about how he performed his religious duties, and Hussein replied vehemently that he was a good Muslim and performed all his duties; he correctly explained the number of rakʿat and the right way to perform ablutions, and thanked God fervently for the blessing of Islam. He was allowed to leave. As he left the court, the judge told Hussein to forget about his brother; he would be staying behind to complete a religious reeducation course.
Hussein left the building. When he reached the van he was astonished to find that Fatima had been struck mute. Five hours of waiting had paralyzed her vocal cords. She could only point to the corpse, from which dense clusters of maggots were slithering. Hussein set the minibus in motion and fled that horrifying place like a fugitive. He was afraid the maggots would soon be chewing on himself and his sister as well. He didn’t much mind that Fatima was mute. He assumed it was only temporary, the result of too many shocks. At the next, “last,” checkpoint, he asked one of the guards to help him call his family. There was only a short distance left to Anabiya. The maggots were multiplying uncontrollably, it seemed, climbing the windows of the bus and covering the seats. Fatima moved to the front, tried to speak, and couldn’t. She knew she would never be as she was. She was mute, and that was that. She lost all desire to try speaking again and surrendered to her new world.
Hussein managed to get through to one of his cousins, who promised to come and meet him at the checkpoint. Hussein now disavowed all personal responsibility for the corpse. He couldn’t wait for the dawn. He couldn’t spend another night in a place where death was so rife, whose only inhabitants were widows and orphans. He felt every ounce of the idiocy of bringing his father’s body all this distance. It was the same old story here: the houses on both sides of the road were utterly destroyed, all the villages were abandoned, the marks of aerial bombardment were clearly visible, and no one cared about the skeletons.
Hussein didn’t have to wait at the checkpoint long. Car lights gleamed in the distance, and he felt oddly relieved when his cousin Qasim strode toward him, armed, with three other cousins. Hussein realized that his young cousin had grown up quite a bit in the past four years; he remembered a shy teenager trying to convince his family to let him finish his studies abroad. Now he wore a long beard. The cousins were shocked at the terrifying number of maggots crawling from the corpse and all over Fatima, who had given up and no longer bothered trying to brush off the ones clinging to her clothes. They wasted no time in asking for the details of the difficult journey. Qasim asked Fatima to switch to the other car; Hussein told his cousin that Bolbol had been arrested at the checkpoint of the Islamic extremists. The cousins exchanged glances and decided to handle the matter quietly, assuring Hussein everything would be fine, and there was no need to worry. The remainder of the trip took less than an hour. They didn’t stop at the checkpoints along the way but made do with a quick greeting to Qasim’s colleagues, also armed, who all exchanged a few words of condolence with him. There was a swift discussion in the other car about Bolbol and some ambiguous words about future interventions and threats should Bolbol continue to be detained. Fatima was afraid for Bolbol. She had surrendered to her own fate, but his rested in the hands of a family he didn’t know and who didn’t know him. Still, custom decreed that their northern bloodline, blighted since time immemorial, should be defended.