The Recruited and The Ruined

The Recruited and the Ruined

Perspective One: The Young Man Recruited by ISIS

I get asked frequently,

“How dangerous is ISIS?”

As if danger is a linear slope with no curvature.

Before the war, there was no education.

Before the war, there was no food.

Before the war, our voices constantly went unheard,

as if we were animals scavenging to find crumbs.

We weren’t born violent.

We weren’t born as the perpetrators of violence.

We were forced to adapt to the situations we were born into in order to survive.

That is a very human-like response to hostility.

So when the men came,

Promising vitality,

Promising brotherhood,

Promising a plate full of food,

It sounded less like terror,

And more like God saving us from the constant hell that we experienced on a daily basis.

They didn’t recruit us with a long script trying to lure us into a cult.

They recruited with certainty.

They created trust between us.

They created a community.

Making us feel as though we belonged.

But those same promises that we held so deeply,

Were broken.

The food that filled our plates,

Couldn’t withstand the burden we carried.

They taught us to pray with one hand,

And pull the trigger with the other.

They told us God was watching,

But only if we killed with the intention of living up to his name.

They said we had a purpose,

But it was never our purpose,

It was theirs.

Perspective Two: A Civilian Impacted by ISIS Violence

I never thought that I would see the firsthand impact of terrorism,

not in the way the news portrays it to be.

But I did.

It killed my brother.

and left a hollow grave with his name written in cursive,

leaving just the remnants of what he used to be.

They didn’t show this part on TV.

They didn’t show the silence I experienced at the dinner table,

or the chair that stays pulled out

as if he might return.

They didn’t show the way his clothes.

still hang in the corner of the room,

where the only time the fabric moves

Is when a swift breeze of air passes through.

They didn’t show the way the world kept moving.

while ours stopped beating,

How in a family

There could suddenly be one less heartbeat.

Reporters filmed the flames,

but never the ashes left inside of us.

They captured the explosion,

but not the echo that never stops repeating.

Terrorism is not just what happens in that moment.

It is what keeps happening.

Even after the cameras turn away.