Aisha and her sister Nadia had spent the afternoon kneeling over a camping stove, preparing a lamb-and-okra stew. Ahmed’s brother Mohammed had shopped for hummus and bread, and Judy had carried a tray of raw chicken through the dusty streets to a pizzeria where he had rented an oven by the hour. Bilal had taken the night off from a twelve-hour shift in the back room of an electronics shop, where he fixed computers for ten dollars a day.
A Frenchwoman named Jeanne-Hélène, whom Isabelle had met through a pro-rebel Facebook group, had flown in from Paris. “I didn’t know where Syria was on a map until after the revolution,” Jeanne-Hélène told me. Now, as a member of the “Facebook brigade,” as she put it, she shared photographs of starving, injured, or dead Syrian children. Isabelle’s activity was similar. She often capitalized the word “ass” in “Bashar al-ASSad.” Some posts included images that were attributed to Syria but were, in fact, from different Middle Eastern wars.
The reception was held in a cafeteria with a small stage at the front. Ahmed’s brothers set up a pair of speakers and plugged in Judy’s phone. Deniz, the driver, arrived to d.j. He and Judy decided that Ahmed and Isabelle would walk into the hall to “Barbie Girl,” by the Nordic pop group Aqua.
Other guests began to trickle in, including a small group of refugee children who had heard the music from the park. Then, as Ahmed and Isabelle came through the front doors, Deniz pressed Play:
Ahmed wore a white suit with a bright-red tie; Isabelle wore a red-and-white dress embroidered with flowers.
Deniz pumped a fist in the air.
Isabelle’s children traded horrified glances.
Ahmed and Isabelle took their place near the stage, against a backdrop of glowing L.E.D. hearts. Guests posed for photographs with the couple, and Deniz toned down the music.
Isabelle’s children spent much of the evening on the porch, eating baklava and drinking wine. As the event came to a close, I asked whether they wanted to go to Kilis’s only bar. They did.
The barman dropped an ashtray on the table. Pierre, the oldest child, lit up, and the concerns and complaints poured forth. Lou, the second-oldest, said that Ahmed and Isabelle had been quietly making plans to cross into Syria for their honeymoon. Jean-Charles, the youngest, piped up. “She won’t tell us when they cross, and Ahmed said they had big plans for tonight,” he said. “I think our mum is in Syria right now.”
At that point, I told them that one of Ahmed’s close associates had warned me that Ahmed was a prolific scammer. For the past couple of years, he had been taking money from women he’d met online. I hadn’t been sure whether it was my place to tell Isabelle’s children, but I had grown worried about the situation.
