The Syrian Rent-Boy

Despite the reticence of all to leave Syria, most of the seven target families were willing to make the extreme change, conditioned, I’m sure by the truly primitive conditions in the camp. It nearly broke my spirit, though, when I couldn’t convince two of the families, both of four, to go with me. They either didn’t believe the letter was genuine or they would not attempt the change. I was equally saddened to find that another of the families had recently lost a daughter. They told me she had died and showed me photographs of a lovely young woman of nineteen or so, but the mother just started wailing and the father closed down when I asked what she had died of. Outside their tent, others were willing to tell me that Syrian camp guards had come and dragged the young woman out of the tent and away. I didn’t really need to hear more of the specifics on her demise then.

Toward nightfall, having had what success I thought I was going to have, although I’d make another run at the holdout families the next day, I started looking for this Asu Gemal, who Hal had told me to be sure to convince to leave. Finding him wasn’t that easy, and I soon realized why.

I went through the camp’s bazaar, asking shopkeepers if they knew where I could find a young man named Asu Gemal. Each time I got hard looks, and more than once, the shopkeeper, after giving me a hard look, spat on the ground and turned away. At last one, obsequious and sweating fat man, though, gave me a licentious look and told me I’d find Asu on his back in the tent of one Sargon. He had no trouble giving me directions. And I had no trouble then either knowing why I’d gotten the reaction I had from the others or why Hal had picked me for this assignment. It also started me to thinking that maybe this Asu Gemal was key to the whole operation.