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Silence, then abruptly, the clatter of a machine gun. More silence, then the shuffle of Naser’s bare feet. He came back into our room, his cellphone lighting his way. “We can’t see anything. But there’s no one in the street. Must be a few blocks away. Al Shammas, probably.” Al Shammas was the neighbourhood adjacent to ours, and there had been months of demonstrations and protests there. Here in Akrama, posters and murals of Assad were everywhere and the only demonstrations were the ones the government organized and televised. We never went to these gatherings, on Father’s orders. But Father did put up a framed photograph of President Assad in front of our cash register at the bakery. As he did it, he gave me a mischievous wink and said, “Insurance.”

  Naser rubbed his forehead sleepily and yawned. “It’s probably nothing. Go to sleep, Bakr.” He flopped back onto his single bed and I still sat in my own, mouth hanging open. Go back to sleep? How? I wanted to be with Father, but I was too afraid to leave the safety of my blanket. “Naser, where’s Father?…Naser?”

  “Living room window.” His grumble was muffled by his blanket.

  I pulled my blanket up around my chin even though the June night was warm. I slowly eased myself back down into bed, staring up at the ceiling, ears straining.

  I heard a door open slowly. “Mom? Dad?” It was Maryam, whispering. I sat up, trying to see out of the crack of our door. Nothing. I heard the lopsided shuffle of a slipper on the floor and Father’s even voice.

  “It’s nothing we need to worry about, Maryam. There’s nothing I can see. Our street is quiet. No one has passed by. Go back to sleep, it’s okay. Tell your sisters.” My sisters’ door softly closed then my father’s head popped in and he smiled gently at me. “I knew you’d be up. Don’t worry, Bakr. I don’t see anything out there. It’s not us. I’m going to sit up and watch for a little while, but I don’t think we need to worry. Go to sleep. I’ll come get you if I see anything, okay?” His head was gone again, but I could hear his soft voice across the hall telling Mother the same thing.

  As I slid back into bed, I noticed Naser’s breathing was heavy. I couldn’t understand how he could be sleeping already. The pounding of my heart slowed but my throat was still so dry and my stomach was cramping. My T-shirt clung damply to me. Our alarm clock ticked steadily on, but I wasn’t any closer to sleep. I knew Father was out in the living room, on his silent watch.

  About half an hour passed, and then “TAHhhh!” A short, sharp crack. “TAHhhh!” Next, the staccato crashing of machine guns. Several beats, then the shrill scream and quake of a falling shell. Something inside me leapt up and without thinking, I was out of bed. I ran for Father and nearly crashed into him. I clutched onto him helplessly, without caring how babyish it seemed. His big hand rubbed my back. “It’s okay, son. Look.” I buried my face even further in his robe. “Look, Bakr, in the street. Do you see anything?” He shook me gently. A quiet minute dragged by. “Look, son. See the street?”

  Finally, I turned my head slowly. I saw our birdcages. The garden wall. The street lamp across the street.

  “See, nothing! It’s okay. No problem! Probably Al Shammas again…Okay, Bakr?” I looked up at him. “To bed!” He gently shoved me in the direction of our bedrooms. “I’m coming too. Let’s go.”

  That was the first night of the strange lullaby. From then on, we heard it more frequently, sometimes frighteningly close. It was my best friend, Amro, who discovered exactly how close those cracking gunshots were. Amro’s family lived in the same building as we did, and late one evening, Amro was lost in his thoughts carrying the garbage down to the dumpster. As he rounded a corner on the landing of the stairs, he practically ran into a stern-faced soldier who had a sniper rifle slung casually on his back. Amro turned and flattened himself awkwardly against the bannister wall, as if willing himself to disappear. He admitted he nearly wet his pants. The soldier passed Amro, his focus elsewhere. That’s how we discovered the army snipers liked to set up on our building’s rooftop. That’s how close those horrible pops in the night were. Sometimes, a few weeks would pass by in silence, but then we’d have night after night of that terrifying lullaby.

  “TAHhhh!” sings the sniper rifle.

  “Ra-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!” The chorus of machine guns.

  Then, the soprano screech and baritone tremor of the mortars.

  After a while, we learned to fall asleep to it.

  6

  MAY 2012

  My First Massacre

  Over the next year, the violence settled, uneasily, into the background hum of our daily life, which for me meant video games and Grade Five. The covered shopping arcades still buzzed with Arabic pop and the chatter of birds and parrots. People smoking hookahs shouted at each other as friends strolled by. Children continued to taunt and shriek as they dashed in and out of the crowds of shoppers. But now, there was a note of tension — everyone was on the lookout for the ever-increasing numbers of men in uniforms.

  One day, we were all gathered in the living room finishing off our lunch. Abeer was just tidying up while Aiesha and Asmaa were texting on their phones. Maryam and I were watching TV when Father cleared his throat to get our attention. “Okay, my family, I have something important to say. This…craziness isn’t going away anytime soon. It seems like every week there are more checkpoints and soldiers in our streets, and I think it will get far worse before it gets better.” He paused. “I know this is not what we are taught is right, but from now on, if anyone stops you and asks, tell them you are Shi’a.” Aiesha and I looked at each other. With our Sunni names, we knew, better than our other siblings, how being Sunni had marked us for scrutiny, ridicule, and sometimes even danger. Father continued, “It is wrong to lie and I am not ashamed to be a Sunni, but I think for safety’s sake, if the shabiha or a soldier ever asks, just take the easy lie.” I knew it was no easy thing for Father to tell us to lie; however, our safety was more important. I often heard him saying to Mother or my uncles, “What will tomorrow look like for my family? How do I protect my children?” Many nights, when I woke up for a glass of water, I would catch a glimpse of Father at the window, listening like an animal on alert to the noises and shouts in the dark streets.

  Father took even more precautions for my sisters. We didn’t even have pictures of them on our phones: Father forbade it. When the soldiers or shabiha stopped to check our IDS, they would often take our cellphones and look through our pictures, asking about the people in them. Weeks before, Father had had us change our cellphone wallpaper to the Syrian flag. Sure, that home-screen made the soldiers take on a friendlier tone, but they still questioned us too much for comfort. Any encounter with a soldier was terrifying because you never knew if he was going to try to make your life miserable, do a document check, or just ignore you. The danger was random. You never knew what could get you in trouble. Your name? Religion? The way you glanced at the man? It was better to avoid any contact. Father said he didn’t want the army to know anything about Mother or my sisters. As a further precaution, he insisted that they were always accompanied by Father himself, Naser, or me.

  Of course, I knew it was important but Ya Allah, the shopping felt endless! I would arrive home with Abeer, lugging her bags, and Aiesha and Asmaa would screech at me from the door for not taking them too. Father would snicker at me from behind his newspaper as my sisters whined until I agreed to take them the next day. Aiesha tugged me into store after store. “Which jacket do you like? The brown one or the white one?”

  I rolled my eyes. A mistake.

  “Hiff! Have more of a fashion sense, Bakr! Tell me! Which one?”

  A sigh. “Fine. That brown one, aiwa,” I pointed, barely looking up from my cell.

  A collapse of giggles. It was a trick question. “Bakr! Gross! You have no style at all!” Shopping, always shopping, my sisters. I could never understand what they had to buy all the time!

  Another task that often fell to me was accompanying my Grandmother Maryam but, unlike shopping with my sisters, I rarely min
ded. Grandmother was warm like the sun, always laughing and telling stories, her henna-stained hands dancing for emphasis. My sisters were especially close to her and they often sat together weaving mats and fans, in the traditional way. Although she lived with Uncle Najim and his family, she often visited our apartment and Uncle Mohammed’s: “keeping an eye on those lazy grandkids,” as she put it. She was nearly seventy-five years old but she didn’t let anything slow her down. Except the army. Because she was so scared of the soldiers at the checkpoints, every time she wanted to come over, she would call and one of us boys, usually me, would pick her up.

  On one of those walks together, we were arm in arm and Grandmother was chatting about her neighbour, when the air seemed to vibrate. It was such a strange, new feeling that we paused to listen. I was trying to figure out what kind of an engine would make that fluctuating, growling noise when suddenly two fighter jets blew by overhead. The roar of the engines was deafening and I’m not sure if it was me that was shaking or the ground. I clutched onto my grandmother and she onto me and we hit the pavement together. We stayed huddled on the sidewalk as the roar receded and all I could hear was our shaky breath. My stomach cramped violently and I squeezed my eyes shut to stop the tears from coming. After a few moments, I felt her hand rubbing my back. “Bakr, look, we’re nearly home, let’s go,” and she helped me up.

  “Bakr, it’s okay. It scared me too. Don’t be ashamed, dear boy.” I shyly glanced back at her as she chuckled and wiped the smudges from her kohl-rimmed eyes. “See? No one has to know.” My grandmother knew my heart so well.

  We walked the last block home in silence. We never spoke of it to anyone but I knew, by the way my grandmother gripped my hand, that she was terrified of those fighter jets too.

  Actually, it was Grandmother who taught me how to deal with my fear. We could tell she was especially anxious when she would start cleaning everything, even things that were cleaned just yesterday. Grandmother kept herself distracted with chores or tending to our garden.

  So, no matter how much the gunshots or explosions rattled me, I would clench my teeth and try to find that peaceful place inside. Praying helped. So did soccer. Father talked to me a lot. Video games were a way of forgetting. Father told us that it was important not to let the war scare us out of living.

  At the dinner table or around the TV, Mother would bring up Iraq. The violence, gunfire, and helicopters were getting to her, as they were for all of us. One day, after another news report, she turned to my father and told him she wanted to return to Iraq. Father sighed and switched the TV off.

  “No, Nihad. Iraq is not our answer. If I die, I will die in Syria, not Iraq.”

  Mother’s eyes flared with frustration.

  “Nihad, be patient. Everyone, listen to me. We have to be patient. I will never return because Iraq will never be our safety.”

  “Hafedh,” Mother bristled, “hiff…are we really any safer here?”

  “The UN,” Father began, “I refuse to give up on that hope. I’ve been calling the agency every month. The office only accepts phone calls on Tuesdays and Wednesdays but…” He sighed and turned to Mother. “Nihad, it is our only safe option. Think of it: America, maybe Canada. There, we will grow stronger together. We will be free. We can lead a happy, new life. No helicopters.” We all knew how much my mother despised the chopper blades beating the air. It’s a sound that you feel deep inside your body. It almost follows your own steady heartbeat, but the way the blades pound the air, your heart can’t help but race to follow it.

  Mother exhaled and Father turned again to the rest of us. “We can make a home anywhere we go together.”

  MAY 15, 2012. Our whole family, along with Father’s friend Aarif, Grandmother, and Uncle Najim’s family, crowded into our apartment. My younger cousins, Raiyan, Islam, and Maram, played with Abrar and Alush while the rest of us picked at the remnants of lunch.

  Cups of steaming, spiced black tea loaded with sugar were being passed around when gunshots rang out. Everyone paused and listened but they sounded far away. A beat or two of silence, then machine guns. Instinctively, we moved away from the windows and Uncle Najim drew Raiyan into his lap as she nuzzled down into her father’s shirt. Grandmother turned to her tea and sipped quietly. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat, about ten minutes’ worth. When the shots finally subsided, Father nodded at me. Since I was closest, I inched towards the window and peered out the side of Mother’s green curtains that were waving in the breeze. Outside on the street, nothing unusual, only traffic. A woman on her cellphone strolled by, her arms full of grocery bags.

  I turned back towards the room and shook my head. Uncle Najim shrugged and the men continued their conversation. Cutlery and dishes continued to clink and my cousins un-paused their video game. More cups of tea.

  I couldn’t shake that feeling in my gut. I returned to the couch but my eyes darted to the window every few minutes. Ali playfully slapped me upside the head and laughed at me. “So serious, Bakr!”

  Father shook his head gently at me, smiling. Something caught my eye out the window. Actually, it wasn’t something, it was nothing. Suddenly, there was nothing outside, not a soul, not a car on the usually busy street. I stood, attention trained outside and then, loud pops of gunfire. This time, it sounded a lot closer and we heard the call and response of several rifles. A few small explosions, far away. Father’s friend shot up from his armchair, hastily mumbled thanks and something about his family, and rushed out the garden door before anyone could stop him. The TV blinked out. My older cousin, Abdullah, picked up the phone. “Phone’s dead.”

  “Internet too,” Maryam’s voice rang out as she snapped her cellphone shut.

  The rumbling stampede of army boots on the pavement had us in full retreat to the back bedrooms. Father gently closed the hallway door that separated the two halves of the apartment and there we stayed, waiting for all the sounds to subside. How do you pass time like this? Video games played on mute. Quiet gossip about schoolmates and neighbours. A nap, maybe. By the third hour, everything sounded normal outside. There had not been any shots in a long time, so Abdullah and I snuck out into the garden to see what was going on.

  Outside, Abdullah and I ducked behind the garden wall and cautiously peered over top. What we saw was a huge army truck, with men in uniforms hanging out the open back doors, grabbing and hitting people as the truck slowly rumbled down the street. Abdullah and I turned to each other, adrenaline pumping.

  “They’re going to come for us! They’ll come inside —” I gasped. Before Abdullah could answer, Father and Uncle Najim hissed at us to come back inside. They, too, had seen the army trucks in the streets. We ducked back in, leaving the chickens and budgies to their blissful cooing.

  Back inside, my father was stammering something. Again, we packed ourselves into three bedrooms. Father looked at me as I entered his room, dread filling his normally calm eyes. “Aarif. I can’t believe I let him leave. Why did I let him leave? Why did I invite him over for lunch?” His eyes flicked to his cellphone in his hand. No service. “Inshallah, by the grace of Allah…” A quick prayer for Aarif’s safety. I had never seen Father so afraid before, and watching him agonize over his friend was worse than my own fear. He sat on the bed. He paced. He listened by the hallway door. He glanced, constantly, at his phone, waiting for the reassuring bars to appear, signaling cell service. Occasionally, machine gun fire punctuated the growing night but an uneasy silence slowly settled over the neighbourhood.

  Around nine, our home phone rang and we all jumped. Father dove for the cordless and let out a loud sigh. It was Aarif, and he was home safe. Apparently, he had woven through the back alleys to avoid the roving patrols. As he scrambled over a back wall, he was stopped, but it was just a document check and he was released without any problems.

  Rather than face the streets at night, Uncle Najim’s family stayed over, everyone a bit shaken from the day. Mother and Aunt Muna took to the kitchen and soon the reassuring smell of baking bread
wafted through the apartment, mingling with the voices of my cousins laughing and Al Jazeera blaring from the TV. My father sat on the sofa, absorbed in the news, the tension of the day slowly sliding off him. My mother brought out another plate full of steaming sesame bread.

  “Nihad, the smell of your bread is going to bring soldiers knocking on our door!”

  She snorted in mock contempt and suppressed a laugh, the light dancing in her eyes. She shook her head and I swear she muttered, “Hiff…the UN,” under her breath.

  The next morning, over a silent breakfast, we heard the news. Al Shammas: an unknown number of dead in the streets and hundreds arrested. Rumours of people being doused in fuel or prodded with live electric cables. We didn’t know what was true or false but no horrible act seemed impossible now. My first massacre.

  7

  AUGUST 11, 2012

  And Then a Second One

  On a stifling Friday night in August, Aziz, Yousef, and I took turns beating Ali at FIFA 13. To drown out Ali’s whines about switching to Grand Theft Auto instead, Aziz sang and rapped about whatever popped into his head. All of us laughed at them. Elbows in the ribs, slaps on the back, eyes dry and tired from staring at the screen too long.

  In the morning, my eyes were still heavy with sleep as I shuffled out to the living room, in search of some water. My fuzzy brain registered Uncle standing in the window. From the fifth floor, he had a good view of the neighbourhood below.

  My footsteps must have startled him because when he turned, panic was still on his face. That’s when I registered the shouts below and the faint popping of gunshots. I joined Uncle at the window and saw the swarms of uniforms in the streets about two blocks away. Men, sometimes even women, were pulled out of their buildings, some still in their pyjamas. The shabiha roamed about in hungry packs, like mad dogs, barking out insults and orders. Here and there were muffled shouts, thrown punches, shouting women, crying children, more gunshots. There were the distant screams of Grad rockets and explosions.