In a room on the second floor of the building, a thin, wizened Saudi cleric was lecturing several dozen spellbound fighters on the role they would play, inshallah, in bringing about the end of days. The time was drawing near, he declared, nearer than they might think. Drained by the arduous interrogation, blinded by exhaustion and her abaya, Natalie could think of no reason to doubt the old preacher’s prophecy.
The stairwell, as usual, was in pitch darkness. She counted to herself softly in Arabic as she climbed, fourteen steps per flight, two flights per floor. Her room was on the sixth, twelve paces from the stairwell. Entering, she closed the door soundlessly behind her. A shaft of moonlight stretched from the single window to the female form that lay curled on the floor. Silently, Natalie removed her abaya and made a bed for herself. But as she pillowed her head, the female form on the other side of the room stirred and sat up. “Miranda?” asked Natalie, but there was no reply other than the striking of a match. Its flame touched the wick of an olive oil lamp. Warm light filled the room.
Natalie sat up, too, expecting to see a set of delicate Celtic features. Instead, she found herself staring into a pair of wide hypnotic eyes of hazel and copper. “Who are you?” she asked in Arabic, but her new roommate replied in French. “My name is Safia Bourihane,” she said, extending her hand. “Welcome to the caliphate.”
38
PALMYRA, SYRIA
THE CAMP WAS JUST OUTSIDE the ancient city of Palmyra, not far from the notorious Tadmor desert prison where the ruler’s father had cast those who dared to oppose him. Before the civil war it was an outpost of the Syrian military in the Homs Governorate, but in the spring of 2015, ISIS had captured it largely intact, with scarcely a fight. The group had looted and destroyed many of Palmyra’s astonishing ruins, as well as the prison, but the camp it had preserved. Surrounded by a twelve-foot wall topped with spirals of concertina wire, there were barracks for five hundred, a mess hall, recreation and meeting rooms, a gymnasium, and a diesel generator that provided air conditioning in the heat of the day and light at night. All the old Syrian military signs had been removed, and the black flag of ISIS billowed and snapped above the central courtyard. The installation’s old name was never spoken. Graduates referred to it as Camp Saladin.
Natalie traveled there by SUV the next day, in the company of Safia Bourihane. Four months had passed since the attack on the Weinberg Center in Paris; in that time Safia had become a jihadist icon. Poems celebrated her, streets and squares bore her name, young girls sought to emulate her feats. In a world where death was celebrated, ISIS expended considerable effort to keep Safia alive. She moved constantly between a chain of safe houses in Syria and Iraq, always under armed escort. During her one and only appearance in an ISIS propaganda video, her face had been veiled. She did not use the telephone, she never touched a computer. Natalie took comfort in the fact she had been allowed into Safia’s presence. It suggested she had come through her interrogation with no taint of suspicion. She was one of them now.
Safia had clearly grown accustomed to her exalted status. In France she had been a second-class citizen with limited career prospects, but in the upside-down world of the caliphate she was a celebrity. She was quite obviously wary of Natalie, for Natalie represented a potential threat to her standing. For her part, Natalie was content to play the role of terrorist upstart. Safia Bourihane was the charcoal sketch upon which Dr. Leila Hadawi was based. Leila Hadawi admired Safia, but Natalie Mizrahi felt sick being in her presence and, given the chance, would have gladly pumped a hypodermic full of poison into her veins. Inshallah, she thought as the SUV sped across the Syrian desert.
Safia’s Arabic was rudimentary at best. Therefore, they passed the journey conversing quietly in French, each beneath the private tent of her abaya. They spoke of their upbringings and found they had little in common; as a child of educated Palestinians, Leila Hadawi had lived far differently than the child of Algerian laborers from the banlieues. Islam was their only bridge, but Safia had almost no understanding of the tenets of jihad or even the basics of Islamic practice. She admitted that she missed the taste of French wine. Mainly, she was curious about how she was remembered in the country she had attacked—not the France of the city centers and country villages, but the Arab France of the banlieues. Natalie told her, truthfully, that she was spoken of fondly in the cités of Aubervilliers. This pleased Safia. One day, she said, she hoped to return.
“To France?” asked Natalie incredulously.
“Yes, of course.”
“You’re the most wanted woman in the country. It isn’t possible.”
“That’s because France is still ruled by the French, but Saladin says it will soon be part of the caliphate.”
“You’ve met him?”
“Saladin? Yes, I’ve met him.”
“Where?” asked Natalie casually.
“I’m not sure. They blindfolded me during the trip.”
“How long ago was it?”
“It was a few weeks after my operation. He wanted to personally congratulate me.”
“They say he’s Iraqi.”
“I’m not sure. My Arabic isn’t good enough to tell the difference between a Syrian and an Iraqi.”
“What’s he like?”
“Very large, powerful, wonderful eyes. He is everything you would expect. Inshallah, you’ll get to meet him someday.”
Safia’s arrival at the camp was an occasion for celebratory gunfire and cries of “Allahu Akbar!” Natalie, the new recruit, was an afterthought. She was assigned a private room—the former quarters of a junior Syrian officer—and that evening, after prayers, she took her first meal in the communal dining hall. The women ate apart from the men, behind a black curtain. The food was deplorable but plentiful: rice, bread, roasted fowl of some sort, a gray-brown stew of cartilaginous meat. Despite their segregation, the women were required to wear their abayas during mealtime, which made eating a challenge. Natalie ate ravenously of the bread and rice, but her training as a physician informed her decision to avoid the meat. The woman to her left was a silent Saudi called Bushra. To her right was Selma, a loquacious Tunisian. Selma had come to the caliphate for a husband, but her husband had been killed fighting the Kurds and now she wanted vengeance. It was her wish to be a suicide bomber. She was nineteen years old.