The 21: a journey into the land of Coptic martyrs

Behind a gruesome ISIS beheading video lies the untold story of the men in orange and the faith community that formed these unlikely modern-day saints and heroes.

In a carefully choreographed propaganda video released in February 2015, ISIS militants behead twenty-one orange-clad Christian men on a Libyan beach.

In the West, daily reports of new atrocities may have displaced the memory of this particularly vile event.

But not in the world from which the murdered came. All but one were young Coptic Christian migrant workers from Egypt.

Acclaimed literary writer Martin Mosebach travelled to the Egyptian village of El-Aour to meet their families and better understand the faith and culture that shaped such conviction.

He finds himself welcomed into simple concrete homes through which swallows dart.

Portraits of Jesus and Mary hang on the walls along with roughhewn shrines to now-famous loved ones.