The Black Widow

There was no electricity — a few minutes a day, if that — and no gas for cooking. Not that there was much to eat. In a land where bread was a staple, bread was in short supply. Each day began with a quest to find a precious loaf or two. The ISIS dinar was the official currency of the caliphate, but in the markets most transactions were conducted in the old Syrian pound or in dollars. Even ISIS traded in the currency of its enemy. At Jalal Nasser’s suggestion, Natalie had brought several hundred dollars with her from France. The money opened many doors, behind which were storerooms filled with rice, beans, olives, and even a bit of meat. For those willing to risk the wrath of the dreaded husbah, the sharia police, there were black-market cigarettes and liquor to be had, too. The punishment for smoking or drinking was severe — the lash, the cross, the chopping block. Natalie once saw a husbah whipping a man because the man had cursed. Cursing was haram.

To enter the streets of Raqqa was to enter a world gone mad. The traffic signals didn’t work, not without electricity, so ISIS traffic police controlled the intersections. They carried pistols but no whistles because whistles were haram. Photographs of models in shop windows had been retouched to adhere to ISIS’s strict decency codes. The faces were blacked out because it was haram to depict humans or animals, God’s creations, and hang them on a wall. The statue of two peasants atop Raqqa’s famous clock tower had been retouched, too — the heads had been removed. Na’eem Square, once beloved by Raqqa’s children, was now filled with severed heads, not stone, but human. They stared mournfully down from the spikes of an iron fence, Syrian soldiers, Kurdish fighters, traitors, saboteurs, former hostages. The Syrian air force bombed the park frequently in retaliation. Such was life in the Islamic caliphate, bombs falling upon severed heads, in a park where children once played.

It was a black world, black in spirit, black in color. Black flags flew from every building and lamppost, men in black ninja suits paraded through the streets, women in black abayas moved like black ghosts through the markets. Natalie had been given her abaya shortly after she crossed the Turkish border. It was a heavy, scratchy garment that fit her like a sheet thrown over a piece of furniture. Beneath it she wore only black, for all other colors, even brown, were haram and could provoke a thrashing by the husbah. The facial veil rendered her features all but indistinguishable, and through it Natalie viewed a blurry world of murky charcoal gray. In the midday heat she felt as though she were trapped inside her own private oven, roasting slowly, an ISIS delicacy. There was danger in the abaya, the danger that she might believe herself to be invisible. She did not succumb to it. She knew they were watching her always.

ISIS was not alone in altering the cityscape of Raqqa. The Syrian air force and their Russian accomplices bombed by day, the Americans and their coalition partners by night. There was damage everywhere: shattered apartment buildings, burned-out cars and trucks, blackened tanks and armored personnel carriers. ISIS had responded to the air campaign by concealing its fighters and weaponry amid the civilian population. The ground floor of Natalie’s building was filled with bullets, artillery shells, rocket-propelled grenades, and guns of every sort. Bearded black-clad ISIS fighters used the second and third floors as a barracks. A few were from Syria, but most were Saudis, Egyptians, Tunisians, or wild-eyed Islamic warriors from the Caucasus who were pleased to be fighting Russians again. There were many Europeans, including three Frenchmen. They were aware of Natalie’s presence but made no attempt to communicate with her. She was off-limits. She was Saladin’s girl.

The Syrians and the Russians did not hesitate to bomb civilian targets, but the Americans were more discriminating. Everyone agreed they were bombing less these days. No one knew why, but everyone had an opinion, especially the foreign fighters, who boasted that decadent, infidel America was losing the stomach for the fight. None suspected that the reason for the lull in American air activity was living among them, in a room with a single window looking onto al-Rasheed Park, with blankets that smelled of camel and goat.