I Was Told to Come Alone Page 13

  In February we called Leena Saidi, a stringer in Beirut for the Times and other news organizations. Leena was a Lebanese-British mother of two who spoke English with a crisp British accent. We told her that we were looking for somebody who could help us get into the Palestinian camps.

  “Yes, there is someone who might be able to help,” Leena said. “Let me see if he can meet with you the day you arrive.”

  A week later, Michael and I boarded a flight to Beirut. The city had always had a nostalgic attraction for me. As a child, my parents listened to famous Lebanese singers like Fairuz, and Beirut played a key role in the classic Arab movies my siblings and I grew up watching on VHS. In these films, Beirut was a beautiful, sunny place filled with unbelievably good-looking people. Lebanese women were chic and powerful; Lebanese men were famous for wooing them with poetry.

  The movies were as formulaic as they were romantic: a man falls in love with a gorgeous, alluring woman in a short skirt, black eyeliner, and blue eye shadow, but some obstacle—usually a family conflict—keeps her from marrying him. For people of Arab descent, the movies were culturally familiar, yet they also celebrated Western freedoms. No one wore a head scarf, and the eccentric, demanding Lebanese women always got what they wanted. I wasn’t into miniskirts, but I loved the long Marlene Dietrich–style trousers the women wore. When I was eight, I sneaked into my parents’ bedroom, climbed onto a chair in front of the mirror, and experimented with my mother’s lipsticks and eye shadows. When my mother found me using her makeup, I told her I wanted to be like the Lebanese women in the movies.

  But what the movies didn’t show were the rifts among the different religious and political factions in Lebanon. Each religious group—Sunnis, Shia, Christians, Druze—essentially had its own political wing, and some areas of Lebanon had been carved up along religious lines. This was the legacy of the country’s fifteen-year civil war, which began in 1975 and killed as many as 150,000 people. Groups such as Hezbollah and the PLO had for years operated freely in Lebanon, and the country had increasingly become a haven for international terror suspects. One of the September 11 hijackers came from Lebanon, as did six men accused of planting bombs on German trains in the summer of 2006. Another Lebanese man was among those accused in 2006 of plotting to blow up the train tunnels connecting New York City and New Jersey.

  When Michael and I got to Beirut, Leena was waiting for us in the hotel lobby, where she introduced us to a slim, pale, lightly bearded man named Fakhr al-Ayoubi. Fakhr was a local journalist who came from a region outside Tripoli in northern Lebanon, not far from the Nahr al-Bared camp that had become Abssi’s base. Fakhr was friendly but quite traditional. Like many conservative Muslim men, he believed that touching a woman who was not his relative was sinful. He declined to shake my hand.

  “He knows the group you are interested in,” Leena said.

  We told Fakhr we wanted to meet Abssi, talk to him and his people, and see how Fatah al-Islam operated and what was happening in the camp. Fakhr listened patiently. When we finished, he sipped his tea and glanced at Leena before looking directly at us. “You really want to go into the camp? You want to meet him in person? No way! Impossible!”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because he won’t agree. But even if he did agree, it would be very dangerous. These people are jihadists. They don’t trust Westerners, and they don’t trust Western newspapers.”

  I’d heard this before, but in recent years I’d covered terrorist attacks in Casablanca and Spain, and I had developed a network of sources among the militants in North Africa and Europe, including Moroccans and others who had fought in Afghanistan and had links to Al Qaeda. I told him I’d dealt with jihadists who had never wanted to talk to journalists but who for some reason agreed to speak with me.

  “I saw your work,” Fakhr answered. “That’s the only reason I’d even consider working with you. But going in there is very dangerous. These camps are extraterritorial ground. If they kidnap you there or decide to kill you, no one can help you.”

  “Still, let’s try it,” I said brightly. “We should try to get his side of the story.”

  The next day, Fakhr came back to the hotel. “The good news is, Abssi knows your work and didn’t say no on principle,” Fakhr told us. “The bad news is, Abssi thinks it’s not the right time for an interview, and his deputy and other advisers said it’s better not to talk to you now.”

  Anticipating this response, Michael and I had already decided that I should still try to meet Abssi in person to explain our plans. Then at least I would get a sense of the situation inside the camp.

  “I would like to speak to Abssi,” I told Fakhr. “Tell them I insisted.”

  Fakhr laughed. “So you don’t accept no for an answer?” he asked. “Have you turned into a Lebanese woman?” I smiled at the memory of all those old Lebanese films.

  He dialed a number, and I could hear him talking to the group’s media man. “I’m here with the sister I spoke to you about from Morocco,” he said. “She wants to talk to the sheikh in person.” He was told that somebody would call him back in a few minutes.

  While we waited, I tried to figure out what I should say to Abssi. How could I convince this man, who knew that various security and intelligence services were hunting him, to meet me?

  After a couple of minutes, Fakhr’s mobile rang. Abssi was on the line. Fakhr handed me the phone.

  “As’salam alaikum, Sheikh!”

  “Wa’alaikum as’salam,” he answered.

  I told Abssi that I’d heard he didn’t want to grant an interview. “But how about I come for tea?” I said. “It won’t be an interview, I give you my word, but I came all this way to get your side of the story, so let’s at least meet. I know the custom among us Arabs—you can’t let a visitor go home without a cup of tea.” I’m not sure where I came up with this idea, except that I was thinking of my grandmother and how she would never let anyone leave her house without a cup of tea.

  I heard him laughing on the other end of the line. Fakhr was smiling and shaking his head.

  “You want to come for tea?” Abssi finally asked.

  “Yes, only for a cup of tea. No interview.”

  “God willing, you can come tomorrow with Fakhr for tea, but no interview!”

  “You have my word, Sheikh. It won’t be an interview.”

  I handed the phone back to Fakhr to arrange the time. “He has refused to see any journalist, and especially from the Western media,” Fakhr said when he hung up. “You’re lucky. Your family must have prayed a lot for you as a child!”

  “You’re going to have tea with the devil?” Michael responded when I told him. “Excellent!”

  The next day, I put on a head scarf and a long black abaya that Leena had loaned me. Before I left, I had handed Michael a piece of paper with phone numbers for the Fatah al-Islam spokesman, who would be at the meeting, and for various Al Qaeda members and their associates from the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe who could put in a good word for me in case anything went wrong. I knew that the Lebanese authorities had limited access to this camp and that Abssi and his people wouldn’t listen to them anyway. I needed people with strong reputations in the jihadist world to vouch for me.

  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 conservativ
e 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.”

  As we talked, the group’s spokesman and another man took notes on everything I said. When I asked why, Abssi told me the notes were only for the group’s internal records. “We won’t publish them,” he assured me.

  Abssi and his deputy had read many of my stories, from September 11 to Morocco to Iraq and the London transit attacks. The deputy was taller than Abssi and muscular, with a shaved head and dark, serious eyes. Abssi had said that all the fighters at his camp were Palestinian, but I could tell from their features that some of the men we’d seen outside must have come from North Africa or from the Arabian Gulf. I tried to talk to the deputy in Moroccan Arabic, but he told me no, everyone here is Palestinian. He was indeed Palestinian, but some of the others weren’t.

  “Didn’t anybody try to stop you when you worked on the el-Masri case?” the deputy asked.

  “No, actually,” I answered. “And as you saw, the story was in the paper.”

  “And what were the consequences for those who kidnapped and tortured him?”

  “That’s not clear yet. But at least this man had a chance to tell his story.”

  “Sister Souad, do you think there is a free press?” Abssi asked. “The press is never free.” He looked at me as if seeking confirmation.

  I thought that his calling me “Sister” might be a sign that he was beginning to trust me. I sipped my tea and thought about how to answer. “Sheikh, I don’t know what your definition of a free press is, but I’ve never been stopped by the Washington Post or the New York Times from writing things the way they were. In fact, that’s why I’m here: to give you a chance to tell your side of the story about all these accusations against you.”

  He smiled. “That’s a smart way of bringing up the interview again,” he said and took a date from the package.

  I looked at the dates. “It’s interesting that you hate the Shia and Iran so much,” I said. “But then you eat their dates.”

  “What?” Abssi asked and glanced at his deputy. The deputy looked furious. I suddenly had the feeling I’d said something I shouldn’t have. Fakhr looked at me and raised his eyebrows. />
  Abssi picked up the package and read the small type: “Made in Iran.” He called for the man who’d brought the tea. “Don’t ever bring these dates again,” Abssi told him.

  A little boy, about five years old, entered the room and ran to the deputy. “Baba, can I go and play with the other children?” he asked.

  “Yes, habibi, go. I need to finish my meeting here,” the deputy said. When the boy had left the room, the deputy turned to me. “Tell me, Sister Souad, are you married?”

  Here we go again, I thought. Since my first trip to Iraq, during nearly every interview with people from the radical or jihadist scene, the marriage question popped up.

  “Why? Are you looking for a second wife?” I asked him.

  All the men except him started laughing, even the one who had been pointing the gun at me. That man had been glowering at me since the meeting started.

  I looked at Fakhr. He had covered his face with both hands. What was wrong now?

  Abssi turned to the deputy. “I’m not sure my daughter would allow you to take a second wife now,” he said. He had tears in his eyes from laughing so hard.

  Now I got the joke. “Oh, he is your son-in-law, and the boy is your grandson? Masha’Allah!” I tried to hide my embarrassment.

  The deputy said he had no more questions. Abssi and the other men were still laughing.

  “I’ve answered your questions and endured your tea interrogation,” I said, looking at Abssi. “Now I have a question. What about our interview?”

  “I will discuss it with my advisers and get back to you,” Abssi said. “But I can tell you one thing for sure, we all haven’t laughed like this in a long time.”

  Abssi, his deputy, and the man who had pointed the gun at me left the room through the doorway behind me, while the spokesman and the other man who had been taking notes accompanied us through the same doorway we’d come in.