Fakhr came to pick me up from the hotel. The camp was about a ninety-minute drive from Beirut. We agreed that I would call Michael before we arrived there and that he would call me back two hours later. If he didn’t reach me, he would call again an hour after that. “If you don’t hear from me by four hours after our first conversation, call Fakhr,” I said. “If he doesn’t pick up, call the Fatah spokesperson.”
Michael nodded. “Souad, if you feel uncomfortable about this, please don’t go,” he said. “Because now I’m beginning to feel bad about it.”
“No, no, don’t worry. I’m just having tea with him. It will be okay.”
I was nervous, but also excited. Fakhr and I drove up past Tripoli, a coastal city that is generally more conservative than other parts of Lebanon and is known for its sweets, which are soaked in sugar syrup and stuffed with nuts or cream. After you eat one, you have to fast for two weeks. On this day, we didn’t stop. The camp lay a bit farther north. “There’s a Lebanese army checkpoint by the entrance,” Fakhr said. “But most likely they will check my papers, not yours, since you look like one of the women in the camp.”
Fakhr was right. The Lebanese soldiers glanced into the car and seemed to think I was his wife. Once inside, there was another checkpoint, manned by Palestinian guards. They checked Fakhr’s papers, but no one checked me.
The Nahr al-Bared camp had the feel of a small city. We passed grocery stores, schools, and car repair shops. Some of the houses were stable and well built, while other areas resembled a slum, the streets lined with open drains. Young men hawked sweets, vegetables, and fruit from carts or stands. We passed a shop that sold pirated DVDs and CDs. The shop displayed religious titles in the window, but Fakhr told me that if you knew the guy in charge, you could get the newest mainstream movies from all over the world. This Lebanon was totally different from some of the glossy neighborhoods in Beirut. Women wore long abayas and head scarves, and some even wore the niqab, a veil that covers the face, leaving a narrow slit for the eyes.
As we drove deeper into the camp, I lost my sense of direction. “Nearly every man here has a gun,” Fakhr told me. We were nearing Abssi’s compound. If I wanted to make a phone call, I had to do it now. I dialed Michael.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m okay. We’re inside the camp and we’re about to get to the meeting place.”
Even though Abssi was wanted on terrorism charges in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, he seemed to have built his current operation with little interference. The camps were like semiautonomous ministates within Lebanon, and as such, they had long been fertile ground for militancy, particularly against Israel, and more recently against U.S. forces in Iraq.
Lebanese intelligence officials feared that, by amassing a growing number of recruits from across the Arab world with experience fighting in Iraq, Abssi was trying to establish himself as a radical leader akin to Zarqawi. Abssi had already tapped into a pool of frustrated young Palestinians and was cultivating their anger against Israel and directing it far more broadly in the service of Islamist goals.
Fakhr stopped the car in front of high walls with a metal gate. A couple of men with automatic rifles stood out front. They asked us to leave our mobile phones and other electronics in the car. Then they led us to what looked like a waiting area. There were a couple of empty chairs at a table, but something about the room was odd. A Kalashnikov leaned against the wall in one corner. On one wall hung a black flag with the shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, written in white Arabic script: “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet.”
These were the words my parents had whispered in my ears when I was handed over to them in the hospital as a baby: the shahada is one of the five pillars of Islam, along with prayer, fasting, charity, and the pilgrimage to Mecca known as the hajj.
The armed men asked me to sit in a chair facing the wall with the flag. Fakhr and a younger man, who introduced himself as Abu al-Hassan, Abssi’s spokesman and communications adviser, sat in two chairs against the wall on my right. Another man sat opposite me a couple of yards away, fiddling with a handgun pointed in my direction. I looked at Fakhr, who had turned pale. I could see that this was not the kind of meeting he’d expected.
I wondered what would come next. Two more men entered the room. One sat on a chair to my left and took out a notebook and pen. The other, who was carrying an AK-47 and a knife, stood in a corner.
Then I heard a door open behind me. “’Salam alaikum,” a soft voice said. All the men stood up, so Fakhr and I did, too. A man of medium height with dark skin, graying hair, and moles on either side of his nose entered the room. This was Abssi, who later told me he was fifty-one years old. I hadn’t known what he would look like because he didn’t allow himself to be photographed. He wore a short-sleeved shirt and dark green trousers, and he sat in a chair near mine, facing me. “You insisted on meeting with me, so welcome,” Abssi said.
“Thank you very much, Sheikh,” I replied. My eyes wandered from him to the man some yards behind him, who was still pointing his handgun at me. “Actually, I came with respect and in peace to have tea with you.”
He smiled. “Yes, the tea is coming, of course, but my deputy and I would also like to ask you some questions.” A man entered with a tray, some glasses, tea, and a package of dates. He walked straight to Abssi. “No, no, please serve our guest first,” Abssi said.
What came next was a mix of interrogation and discussion about the West’s supposed plan to strengthen Iran. “Why else have they allowed the mullahs to take over Iraq?” Abssi asked, referring to the Shia politicians and clerics who now held the upper hand in the new Iraqi government. “We all know this is the long-term plan, to weaken Arabs and Sunnis here.”
He and his deputy told me about the humiliation and torture committed by Shia militias in Iraq. “So where are these human rights groups?” he demanded. “Where is America or Britain when these Rafidah are killing innocent men and women?” Rafidah is a pejorative word jihadists use for Shia Muslims; it means “people who refuse or reject.” The term dates back to the schism in Islam after Muhammad’s death in the seventh century. Abssi’s soft voice was full of anger. “The only solution for us, to protect us, will be a caliphate. And it should be founded here, in the Levant region.”
“The caliphate? What caliphate?” I said. “You mean something like the Ottoman Empire?”
“All Muslims should be united, yes.” He sipped his tea. “First Palestine was taken from us. Then they gave Iraq to the Shia and Iran. Every Muslim understands that only a caliphate with a strong leader can protect them.”