One day in the summer of 2015, Bassam Tariq logged on to Facebook to see a long missive posted by a former friend, Warren Christopher Clark. “I am now currently living in the Islamic state,” Clark wrote. “I’m sure people want to know what life is like here, so I’ll tell you honestly.” Clark went on to describe his life as a member of ISIS in Syria, from the food (“You won’t find Chinese takeaway, Mexican, or sushi”) to slavery (“Slaves do exist here, but I personally haven’t seen any.”)
For Tariq, now 33, and his friends from Sugar Land—the well-heeled Houston suburb where they and Clark had all graduated from high school—the message was bizarre and disturbing, but not entirely shocking. They’d been watching Clark unravel on Facebook for years, as he’d posted increasingly radical messages about Islam. “Nobody knew what to think,” Tariq says. “It was surreal.” How had a classmate they remembered as shy, quirky, and thoughtful gone so far astray?
That question drives Ghosts of Sugar Land, a short film by Tariq that debuted on Netflix this week. In this contemplative, vulnerable documentary, Tariq’s Muslim-American friends share their memories of Clark and struggle to understand why he joined ISIS. Compelling and dark, the movie manages to cover a lot of ground in just 21 minutes.
