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  Finally, the tall soldier sauntered back. He looked at Father, peered in at the rest of us, huffed, and cracked a fake smile. “Okay, you’re good to go.” He patted the hood of the bus, stepped back, and nodded at his partner. Father was so stunned that he started to wave our documents at the officer but the driver peeled away before anyone noticed. Father turned back at us as we merged onto the busy main street, the panic and surprise on his face as clear as day. Through, we were through. Nervous laughter rippled through the van.

  The rest of the ride was a bumpy, boring three-hour affair on the Damascus–Aleppo highway. The crumbling buildings of Homs gave way to wheat and barley farms. Ragged cotton fields and olive groves turned into expanses of dusty desert, then into the hills and plateaus around Damascus. I wish I could say it was relief that I felt as we rolled into the City of Jasmine, but the streets, crammed with people who never made eye contact, felt cold and alien.

  Perhaps the only bright spot about living in Damascus was that now we lived in the same building as my cousins. We were the only occupants in the cramped, four-storey walk-up. The ground floor storefront was shuttered and empty. Assad’s portrait, old posters, and graffiti were plastered all over the metal shutters. Uncle Najim’s family and Grandmother Maryam took the second-floor apartment, ours took the third, and Uncle Mohammed’s would eventually occupy the top floor. The neighbourhood, Sayyidah Zaynab, was a rough place and its people were gruff, uneducated, and staunchly religious. We hated the place, but the rent was cheap and there were hardly any police or soldiers around. All the men searched for work, but it was scarce. Eventually, Naser and Abdullah landed jobs in a bakery, with bare-bones pay and long hours. Uncle Najim was so preoccupied with finding work that we weren’t even enrolled in school. There wasn’t much point anyway because most of the schools were routinely closed for safety reasons. That much, I was happy about. But soon, without the distraction of school, life became monotonous.

  Without the burden of school or the joy of helping Father at the bakery, my day became a cycle of chores, Counter-Strike, cousins. There was very little else to do. Eventually, we took to hanging out on the rooftop of our building. We’d bring up steaming cups of tea and just stare at Damascus below, numb with boredom.

  One lazy morning, we were sipping our tea, backs bent like old men, when Ali came bursting up the rooftop stairs with a clear plastic rice sack.

  “Look, guys! We can make a kite!” he crowed.

  Yousef, Aziz, and I looked at each other and burst into laughter. When we were Alush’s age, we had loved flying kites.

  “Kites, Ali? What are we, five? Dude!” We could barely catch our breath, we were snickering so hard.

  Ali glared hard at us, his lip curled. “Inchibb! Shut up! Fine,” he sputtered, “but do you geniuses have anything else for us to do?”

  He had us. We looked at each other. We looked at the sad little sack.

  Aziz sighed. “We’ll need sticks to make the frame.”

  Yousef, the oldest, gave into his boredom. “And string…”

  “Well…aiwa, we could fight them. Remember that? Our kite fights?”

  Ali whooped, pumping his fists and tossing the bag in the air. “Yeah! This will be great, you’ll see!” He threw punches at us, high-kicking the air. “Fighter kites, hwah!” We laughed.

  Funnily enough, Ali was right. It was great. That stupid kite project preoccupied us for nearly two months. It had been a long time since any of us had made a kite, and our first few careened and crashed on their maiden flights. We scavenged for whatever materials we could find but because it felt so silly and childish, we didn’t tell anyone else about our project. Mother and my aunties would giggle at us as they drank their coffees together. We thought we were being so sneaky, but they knew what we were up to. Once, I think Mother purposefully left out an old rice bag for me to find. We hunted for thin wooden dowels and branches for the frames. Any kind of scrap plastic. Kitchen string, fishing twine, discarded flyers for the paper chain kite tails to keep the kites flying high and stable.

  In the end, we each made a high-flying, somewhat shabby-looking kite. They sailed from our rooftop out over crowded, cramped, coarse Damascus. The brisk breezes that brought the smell of jasmine flowers carried our kites high. For those moments, we forgot everything we were trying to escape. We would wrap our fingers with tape or toilet paper to prevent the string from cutting into our fingers. Each dance and jerk of the hands caused the kite to flit about. There was magic in that; we had absolute control over this one thing. Four boys, four kites, our laughter and those kite tails whipping in the wind.

  Once we were confident about our kites’ abilities, we started fighting them. Seeing your own kite dip and dive in the sky wasn’t enough. You’d see your cousin’s kite dancing in the breeze and you’d just have to take it down. We didn’t have the means or expertise to coat our kite strings in glass fragments like the real traditional kite fighters did; instead, we just tried to knock the other kites down, without sacrificing our own. One by one, our kites fell. First Ali’s, then mine. Finally, it was just Aziz and Yousef. Their kites ended up so hopelessly tangled that we were in danger of losing both. As each boy tried to wrest control over his kite, frustration brought out the elbows, and they jostled at each other as they tried to untangle the strings. Curses rained down.

  “Ahh, gimme that!” I yelped as I grabbed the string out of Yousef’s hand. At that exact moment, both strings snapped and the two kites went crashing into the street below, careening into someone’s laundry line, dresses flapping in the wind. Peals of laughter.

  “Ugh, so much for that,” grumbled Ali.

  IF IT WAS POSSIBLE, Damascus brought my cousins and me even closer together. Back in Homs, we’d had our separate schools and soccer teams, but in Damascus, we only had each other. Every few mornings, I would visit the Bank of Father and he’d drop a few coins in my hand. We were living off our small savings and a meagre stipend from the UN agency, but Father understood the necessity of having us occupied.

  Another lazy afternoon in the arcade: the foosball table was busy so we gave ourselves over to Counter-Strike. Yousef, Aziz, Abdullah and I were just starting to lose ourselves in play when the clatter of metal shutters pierced our concentration. Everyone in the arcade looked up, straining to see in the dim room, the only light coming from the arcade games and pop machine at the back. The wide-eyed owner mouthed, “Shabiha,” and waved everyone into the back corner. He gestured and mimed wildly for us all to crouch or sit down. Everyone obliged as the world rumbled outside. My gut cramped in pain and fear. Hiding here in the dark felt more dangerous, somehow, and I couldn’t stand it. I stood up. I shook my head at my cousins and the storeowner shot a murderous look at me. “Sit. Down. Little boy!”

  I don’t know if it was because I couldn’t see what was going on outside, or not being given a choice in how to act, being chided like a child, or being away from my family. Every fibre of my being was just telling me to get out of there. “I’m sorry, sir. I know you’re trying to help us but I can’t…I have to go to my family.” I whispered evenly.

  Silence. Rather than risk an outburst with me, he led me to the back exit. A furtive glance to the left and right then I bolted into the sunlight, zigzagging down the alley. Then, footsteps pounded behind me, spurring me to go faster. Suddenly, hands grasped my shoulders and I was yanked backwards.

  “Idiot! Don’t do that! Don’t take off on your own. We do this together. If the shabiha takes you, they will have to take us together.”

  My cousins stared hard at me and I saw myself reflected in their faces. They were right. Together. Through everything, we were more than cousins — we were brothers.

  I nodded and Abdullah led the way home.

  IN THE END, we only stayed in Damascus for about six months. Right around my twelfth birthday in March, Father started wondering out loud if we shouldn’t just return to Homs. The rumours said that things had quieted down back there, but here in Damas
cus there was more violence in the streets. In particular, the people of Sayyidah Zaynab felt more dangerous. There was more than one religious zealot around. Worse yet, there were those who claimed to be religious but were only pledged to violence. Many men carried concealed knives, keeping with the old traditions. Danger lurked in plain clothes and in uniforms.

  Financially, we were struggling. None of the adults could hold onto a steady job so even they paced around like caged animals, just like the kids. My father and uncles took turns going down to the UN agency to check on our applications and whenever they returned, they shook their heads and went out on long walks together to talk away from our ears. On the issue of moving, there was a break in the ranks. My uncles disagreed with Father about returning to Homs. And, as much as we hated it in Damascus, my sisters and I wanted to stay near our cousins. Mother seemed ambivalent and resigned. During one of our many family dinners together, Uncle Najim turned to Father in frustration, “Hafedh, we need to do this together.” The tension between the adults was rising and they were at a strange stalemate I couldn’t understand.

  A week later, Father and Naser returned to Homs on a reconnaissance trip. They wanted to see for themselves what it was like back home. They found the atmosphere was more relaxed and there were far fewer soldiers and police in the streets. Many old checkpoints appeared abandoned and the neighbourhood felt much emptier. We weren’t the only ones who had fled Homs.

  A month after my birthday, we moved back. A few weeks later, Uncle Najim and then Uncle Mohammed moved back as well. The strange, silent tension settled. There was nothing for us in Damascus, we were all home. Together.

  9

  MAY 2013

  Oh, Father

  And so, life continued and it even got brighter. We returned to school for the final few months of the school year and I found myself back in Grade Six. Abdil Aziz enrolled in a collegiate institution, his dreams set on university and maybe even law school. Father reopened Baserah Bakery and installed a sunny yellow awning in the front.

  A few blocks away from our apartment building, there was an abandoned construction site with the concrete shell of a building at the far end of an empty field. The tall building was meant to be the corporate office of a car company, and its main floor was going to be a shiny new dealership. The wide parking lot in front was supposed to be for all the new cars parked out front, waiting for customers. Construction halted a few months after it began because there was so much bombing in the area. This was the perfect spot for our massive soccer games. We would call or text all our friends and descend on the field. Some of us would try to show off and do tricks. Gaggles of teenagers would hang out and watch all the action. It was a place where we could just relax and be normal.

  One afternoon, Amro and I threaded the maze of alleys on our way to the field, jostling and bouncing my soccer ball between us. The chain-link fenced loomed in front of us but as we neared, it was too quiet. We stopped in our tracks. Instinct kicked in, and we scooted behind a stone wall, listening hard, scanning the deserted construction site. Where is everybody, our raised eyebrows asked.

  A short, low whistle of scheming kids. Our heads pivoted towards the sound, and there, we saw our friend Ali and a bunch of other boys crouched behind an old dumpster facing the field, two streets over. Ali pulled out his phone and started texting: “My dad thinks the army have set up in the building.”

  “Inchibb. Seriously? What would the army want with an abandoned construction site, anyway?”

  Ali glanced right, then left, then dashed from his hiding spot to us. He left a telling trail of dust as he ran.

  “Al Shammas.” Ali nodded in the direction behind the building. “The army is always pounding the rebels living there. From that height, they have a perfect shot into that neighbourhood.”

  The rumble of an army SUV sent us crouching back behind the wall. An officer with a mean-looking rifle slung over his back jumped out of the back of the old Jeep and he unlocked the giant padlock that now secured the chain-link gate. Until today, the gate was never locked. The Jeep drove through the gate and waited while the officer locked up and jumped back in. It peeled away towards the building.

  Amro and I looked at each other, confused and curious. Ali was pointing wildly at his own back then at the soldier’s. “Dragunov!” he breathed, nodding knowingly. We all knew that name from Counter-Strike. Dragunov, the sniper rifle: that was what the soldier was carrying. My heart sank. One more thing the stupid war stole from us. Here, where we spent so many afternoons playing soccer, the army was building a sniper’s nest.

  AS MORE PEOPLE trickled back into Homs, business was picking up in Baserah Bakery, and I was needed more days of the week. After school finished at noon, I’d show up at the bakery around two and help out until we closed at seven.

  One late afternoon, I was carrying a twenty-five pound bag of salt to the bakery when I stumbled in the street and fell. I landed on a bunch of rubble but I didn’t cut myself or anything, so I just brushed off the sharp pain. Later that night, I woke up drenched in sweat and my insides were boiling. By morning, I had barely slept and was so drained that I couldn’t even tell Mother what was wrong. A day of rest was prescribed for me by Father, but by the following morning, I was so weak from the shooting pains, I was taken directly to the hospital.

  In Syria, there were public and private healthcare systems. Although the public hospitals did not inspire a lot of confidence, we had no choice since we couldn’t afford a private one. Everything looked old and dingy and it took hours to even be examined. When the doctor finally appeared, he poked me briefly in the abdomen, ordered blood tests, and was gone in a matter of minutes. More waiting. In the bed next to mine, there was a despondent girl, about my age. She moaned constantly in her sleep and her eye bulged, frightfully, from her eye socket. The entire right side of her face looked collapsed, a blotchy mess of purple stains. The girl scared me more than my pain. I didn’t know how long she had been lying there. There were no bandages on her face. What would happen to me?

  Six hours crawled by with my mother and sisters doing their best to distract me as I drifted in and out of sleep. The doctor suddenly reappeared with the diagnosis: appendicitis. He explained that my appendix could burst at any moment and that I would need to undergo surgery as soon as possible. No food or water before the surgery.

  Then he left and didn’t return for another twelve hours. I blubbered through the sharp pains. At one point, a tired-looking nurse came in to give me an IV. As she fumbled listlessly with the needle, I looked down at my arm, and blood spurted from my vein after her third failed attempt at insertion. I couldn’t even turn away from the grisly sight. And in that torturous time, it wasn’t just my appendix but also my stomach that cramped in pain. In hunger. It’s not like I wasn’t used to fasting. During Ramadan, we go without food or water for ten or more hours every day. I could bear that. But I couldn’t bear Father.

  Sometime later in the evening after Mother took my sisters home, Father came strolling up to my hospital bed.

  “Oh, my son. Abu Bakr, such a life we have.” He sighed and plunked himself in the chair beside my bed. I turned feebly towards him. A rustle of wrappers and the intoxicating warm smell of roast beef. My mouth watered, viciously.

  His eyes positively danced with mischief. My drooling mouth dropped in disbelief as he took a hearty bite of his shawarma. Pillowy soft, slightly charred pita embraced a mess of juicy, spit-roasted beef. Lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes. The meat juices mingled with the cool yogurty sauce and ran down Father’s hands as he bit down again, greedily.

  I stared.

  “Hungry, son?” He couldn’t help himself, laughter choked him. Little bits of pita flew out of his mouth.

  I couldn’t help it, I cried. This only spurred his laughter more.

  “Oh son, you’re hungry? Oh, so it can’t be that bad. See, Bakr? You’re not dying. You’ll be fine!” Love radiated from him, but all I wanted was that shawarma. Oh, Father. Th
is is how we passed the last few hours before my surgery, Father teasing me, making jokes, and reliving old stories. I drifted in and out of sleep, the pain temporarily forgotten.

  After the surgery, I stayed in the hospital for a week, recovering. My many visitors brought me bags of my favourite candy and Grandmother made her warak enab, grape leaves stuffed with rice and beef, especially for me. Father was there nearly the whole time. At the end of my ordeal in the hospital, the only thing I really lost was my chubby cheeks.

  10

  AUGUST 1, 2013

  The Night of Power

  During Ramadan, our lives were turned upside down, but in a good way. Our whole daily routine flipped. We fasted from sunrise to sunset, so we slept during the day and stayed awake through the night. In this time, we were supposed to empty ourselves of all the little things that preoccupied our daily lives and redirect our hearts towards worship. And, by not eating or even drinking water, we were supposed to be reminded of the suffering of the less fortunate and develop more empathy for others. We emptied ourselves of immoral thoughts and bad behavior; we refocused on devotion and charity.