by Aeham Ahmad
I had made a mistake. In the winter of 2011, with all the optimism of a newly married man, I had taken on a large order from one of our best customers, the wholesaler from Lebanon. He wanted twelve hundred ouds. Because he was a good customer, we hadn’t insisted on a down payment. We never did with him. Instead, we began buying high-end wood. We must’ve spent almost fifty thousand dollars on it.
A short while later—and this was my second mistake—we bought a remainder of expensive Yamaha guitars, six hundred pieces at 120 dollars per piece. A bargain, I thought. But no. It was a disaster. All in all, the guitars had cost us seventy-two thousand dollars, and we never sold any of them! Just like the twelve hundred ouds. When they were finished and ready for delivery, the wholesaler pulled out. At first, he kept making excuses, then he canceled the order. When the war came, we were the proud owners of thousands of instruments, but we had hardly any money.
So we moved our inventory, and not a second too soon. On September 4, my cousin Mayad, who lived in the apartment above us, was getting ready to celebrate his birthday. I was out with an uncle of mine who owned a minibus, and we were getting oud parts. Tahani was already dressed and about to go upstairs with little Ahmad and my parents. And that was when the army began shelling Yalda with heavy artillery.
As soon as the first buildings on our street were hit, Tahani grabbed little Ahmad and a bag of cactus figs—I have no idea why—from the kitchen. My father grabbed a small backpack with our savings, my mother a bag full of food, and then the three of them ran toward Yarmouk, away from the hailstorm of bombs, the baby in their arms.
While all this was happening, I was still out with my uncle. We, too, were caught in the middle of it. The mortar shells were raining down all around us. There was a whistling sound and then—bang!—an explosion behind us. Debris rained down onto the road.
“Oh, we’re in trouble now!” my uncle yelled. “How are we going to get out of here?”
“God will protect us!” I called. “Drive faster. Faster!”
I talked to Tahani on my cell phone and she told me where she was. In the rearview mirror, I saw a building collapse as my uncle raced toward Yarmouk, hitting the horn. I sent a quick prayer to heaven.
Finally, we met up with the other four members of my family. I jumped out of the minibus and hugged Tahani. Missiles flew above our heads, toward Yalda, howling in the sky. We quickly drove to the former oud workshop.
It was early evening. We had escaped with our lives, but nothing more than that. We didn’t even have mattresses. A neighbor, a friendly man named Abu Abed, had seen us enter the store and came out to see how we were doing. He gave us bedding and two large mattresses. We went to sleep in our street clothes.
When we awoke the next morning, bones aching, little Ahmad had a red lump on his hand. A spider had bitten him.
We went out to get some essentials: underwear, toothbrushes, pacifiers, and diapers. Tahani’s aunt lent us some cooking pans. The room was about twenty feet high, the walls unfinished, the floor made of concrete. We had torn down two walls. The front area was used as a store, complete with a shop counter. There were keyboards and pianos everywhere, and hundreds of ouds hung from the ceiling like clusters of grapes. Behind the wall was our only room, full of violin cases and huge crates, with ten guitars each. All the way in the back, we had created a makeshift kitchen and toilet.
Each day, we hoped to be able to go to our apartments in Yalda to get a few things, but things simply wouldn’t calm down. It took another year before we were able to enter our apartments. All the windows were shattered, and half of my parents’ apartment was gone.
We were in for some difficult times. We were constantly arguing. Only a year before, I had moved out of my parents’ apartment, and now I was forced to live with them in one room. We slept penned together on the mattresses, like sardines in a can. I was cranky. And Tahani was doing even worse. She was a young mother, nursing her child, and her sleep was brief. During the day, we had to endure my students’ attempts at music. It would be a long time before we had any privacy again.
Most people around us still lived in their apartments, just like they had done before. But we, we were already refugees, desperately trying to create some semblance of normalcy. In the mornings, my mother put on music by Fairouz, whose bright voice was full of confidence and clarity. Just like before, just like in the old days. But my mother no longer had the heart to sing along.
— CHAPTER FOURTEEN —
Around noon on December 16, 2012, I was in the shop playing piano when suddenly, there was a heavy explosion nearby. Then a second one. The walls were shaking, and one of the large windows cracked. I ran outside. We had long since gotten used to the sound of nearby artillery fire. Over the past few months, the air force had bombed entire neighborhoods of Damascus back into the Stone Age. So far, however, Yarmouk had been spared. But this explosion sounded much closer than any of the others. In the distance, I heard a fighter jet roaring away.
I got on my bike and scanned the sky for smoke pillars. But those could be deceiving. After Tadamon, the sky was often full of smoke. People were shouting that a MiG jet had shot a rocket at the Mansoura School. My old middle school! I rode over—and found myself in the middle of the war. Cars were burning; black smoke filled the air. The rocket had hit a garden next to the schoolyard. All the windows of the school and nearby buildings were destroyed, and shrapnel had torn holes into the walls.
As soon as I arrived, I was told that another rocket had hit the al-Bassel Birth Clinic, where our son had been born. Out of damn curiosity I went over there as well. People were carrying the dead and wounded out into the streets. Some of the victims were missing limbs. A doctor arrived to see who could be saved.
“Bring him inside,” he called. Four men lifted up a blanket, carrying one of the victims. The man’s face had been crushed. You could barely make out his features amid all the blood. Another man arrived at the scene, anxious to peek under a sheet that had been placed over a woman’s body.
“She’s dead!” someone called.
“I’m looking for my mother!” the man called out. He pulled back the blanket and sent a quick prayer to heaven. “Alhamdulillah.” Then he continued running.
I saw my friend Thaer, a filmmaker, running around with a camera, shivering. Later, he would turn this material into a short film titled MiG.
The Husseini mosque, where some of the refugees had found shelter, had also been hit. People were still screaming as survivors wandered through the smoke, looking for relatives. Ambulances arrived. Blood was everywhere.
I saw I was of no use, and went home.
That night, my father and I sat up together for a long time and I told him what I had seen.
“Why Yarmouk?” he asked, full of sorrow. “We wanted to stay out of this. And now we’re getting bombed.”
And why had a school, a mosque, a hospital, and the registry office been targeted? That was where the refugee centers had been established. There weren’t any rebels there. The bomb had dug deep into the basement of the mosque, where dozens of families had found shelter. More than forty people had been killed. Despondent, we went to bed—that is, we lay down next to each other on the mattresses. We were awake for a long time.
The next morning, we got up at six. I wanted to go to the city, and my father said he’d come with me. We had to pass several checkpoints and realized it was best to do so early. At noon, when the sun was burning, the soldiers tended to be irritable. Then anything could happen.
One week earlier, the UNRWA had pulled its employees from Yarmouk, no longer able to guarantee their safety. The UNRWA schools were full of refugees, and regular classes were out of the question. Instead, the UNRWA announced that it would, for the first time, hand out cash to us Palestinians. From now on, each of us would receive three thousand Syrian pounds per month, around five dollars, with the payments issued by a bank in the center of Damascus. That’s where we were headed that day.
; It was still early—but when we looked out the shopwindow, we saw our neighbors moving bags and suitcases out of the building and into the street.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Visiting relatives, just for a few days.”
They were carrying mattresses and bedding. This didn’t look like a short visit. My father and I stepped out of the building. I held out my hand, he took it, and we were on our way, just like we had always done.
When we turned into Yarmouk Street, I saw a sight that made the blood run cold in my veins: a seemingly endless stream of people with all their belongings, slowly trickling through the heavy traffic, headed for Damascus. Though it was still early, there must have been tens of thousands of people, carrying bags and suitcases, pushing carts, strollers, and bicycles loaded with boxes. The roof racks of cars had mattresses piled on them. This is what it must have looked like during the Naqba, the mass exodus from Palestine in 1948.
I spoke to some of the people rushing past. Where were they headed?
“Visiting family,” one of them said.
“Don’t know yet,” said another. “We just want to get out of Yarmouk.”
“Why?”
“Haven’t you heard? Yarmouk Camp News ran a piece today: the government is urging all citizens to immediately evacuate Yarmouk. God help us! Who knows what they’re planning?”
No, I hadn’t read that. Yarmouk Camp News was one of many Facebook pages run by “citizen journalists.” Pages like that had been popping up since the beginning of the protest movement. There was something for everyone, for every political affiliation. Some were as useless as the official Syrian media. Others did meticulous journalistic work and offered a valuable alternative to the state-run media. Facebook allowed us to get around the government’s outdated 1960s-era assembly ban, at least in the virtual space. The regime kept shutting down various platforms, but we had all learned how to work around the censorship.
Yesterday we’d been attacked by two MiG rockets. Today the army had issued an ultimatum. And now one of the refugees whispered to me, “My uncle works at state security. He said they’re going to place Yarmouk under siege.” I became even more queasy.
We joined the stream of people. Normally, it took less than ten minutes to walk down Yarmouk Street. On this day, it took us forty-five minutes.
My father’s cell phone rang. It was Uncle Mohammed. He asked us where we were. Were we leaving Yarmouk? Should he come get us?
“No,” my father said. “We’ll wait it out for the time being. We’ll see what happens.”
We debated for a while—and decided to use our journey to Damascus as a trial run for escape, a “what if” scenario. If it turned out to be feasible, we’d leave Yarmouk before the war could crush us, as so many people had predicted.
I looked at the crowds. Many of them were made up of people who had fled in the preceding months from other neighborhoods, when there was shooting in their streets, when their houses were being bombed. Small wonder they were so quick on their feet. They had nothing left to lose.
We passed the Watermelon, the large traffic circle at the access point to Yarmouk, and a short while later we crossed a bridge toward New Zahira, a new development with well-maintained streets. The buildings here weren’t simply concrete shells like in Yarmouk; they had been refitted with bright granite cladding. Cars were parked along the sides of the street, the stores were open—and the refugees were streaming in. The first arrivals here had been housed in schools and mosques, but by now, Zahira was overflowing with refugees. They had nowhere to go, and many were simply sitting on the sidewalks, completely exhausted. They told us they’d been turned down everywhere.
It was depressing. The refugees stood in stark contrast to the locals. People here ran down their stairs, keys in hand, to hastily lock their entrance doors, not wanting the refugees to spend the night in their stairwells.
Under normal circumstances, the people of Zahira are decent and generous. But the sight of these masses must have scared them. They didn’t want Zahira to suffer the same fate as Yarmouk: we had taken in many refugees, and we were now paying a heavy price for that.
In my mind’s eye, I went through the options. Did I really want to put myself, my wife, and my six-month-old baby through this? Leave our store behind? How were we supposed to survive? The rents in Damascus were astronomical. We could never afford an apartment there. Our only option would be seeking shelter in a school or a mosque. And then we’d have to anticipate a raid every few days.
I hadn’t served in the military. Initially, I didn’t have to, because I was a student. But when my student exemption ended, I never showed up for my registration appointment. Now I was married, and I had a child. Would that help? According to Syrian law, you could get married only after having completed your military service. But my father had connections; he had bribed the right person to put a stamp on my draft card, allowing me to marry. But even with a wife and child, I could get snatched up at any time. In those days, nothing was reliable anymore.
If the soldiers didn’t scoop me up at a refugee center, then they’d doubtless catch me at a checkpoint. Checkpoints were everywhere now, sprouting like mushrooms. No, for me, the so-called safe neighborhoods outside Yarmouk were anything but safe.
Suddenly, I saw a soldier peeling off from his group and coming toward us. “ID, please!”
I showed him my identification card.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To the bank, to take out the UNRWA money.” I kept calm. My blind father was with me, and I had my official family document booklet in my backpack—I didn’t think I’d run into trouble.
“And then where will you be going?”
“Back to Yarmouk.”
He grinned maliciously as he returned my papers.
We quickly hurried along, Papa and I using the same route we had always taken on the way to the music school. Thinking about it made me melancholy. How many hours had we sat together in minibuses chatting about everything? When I was a boy, I had bombarded him with questions. And he had always answered me patiently. I remembered zipping through these streets on my bicycle, back when the future seemed so far away and never-ending. And now? Now we were sleeping on mattresses on the floor, and our future extended as far as the next checkpoint.
At the bank, we took our place in line. Life here in the upscale Malki neighborhood was perfectly normal. And yet, just a few miles from here, a war was raging. It seemed like a bad dream. When it was our turn, I showed my ID and received nine thousand Syrian pounds for Tahani, Ahmad, and myself. We immediately started on our way back. It was past eleven, the sun was high in the sky, and it was about time we got out of there. We walked next to each other in silence. Only here and there my father asked, “What was that?” Or, “What do you see?”
The closer we came to Yarmouk, the more soldiers we saw on the streets. We grew alarmed and started walking faster. What had we gotten ourselves into? Police cars drove past us, personnel carriers, tanks. Two bulldozers were slowly moving toward the Watermelon. Later that day, they would pile up dirt barricades on all access roads. The guy from state security had predicted it: Yarmouk was being sealed off.
And again, a soldier stopped us. “Where are you going?”
“Back to Yarmouk.”
“Are you insane?”
We shrugged, and hurried past the group of soldiers, hearing the distinct snapping sound of magazines being loaded into Kalashnikov rifles. At any moment, a firefight might break out. Snipers could be lurking anywhere. We decided to walk through narrow back alleys. As soon as we reached the next intersection, we hunched over and scurried across.
“All that for a measly nine thousand pounds!” my father said, cursing. “Next time, I’ll just give you the money.”
“I’m sorry!” I said. “I never thought it would be so bad.”
My father was a heavy smoker, and not used to walking long distances. He was sweating and wheezing.
“Papa, don’t give up,” I implored him. “We’ve got to get through this. We’re almost home.”
Finally, we were past all the soldiers. The streets of Yarmouk were empty, the shops closed. We were the only ones who had returned. As we rushed down the main street, there wasn’t a soul in sight.
After about ten minutes, we ran into a group of fighters from the FSA coming up the street on foot. They didn’t pay any attention to us. Their faces were covered by black bandannas and they cheerfully bantered with one another. One of them waved his rifle in the air. “Tonight we’ll be in Damascus!” he shouted. The others cheered.
Finally, we were home. Tahani and my mother almost began punching me, that’s how furious they were. “What were you thinking?” my mother said, enraged. “Next time you want to get yourself in danger, do it by yourself and not with your old father in tow! We almost died of fear!”
Tahani was so relieved to see us that she had tears in her eyes.
I realized they were right. Despite everything, it was safest to remain in Yarmouk.
My father had completely exhausted himself. He smoked a cigarette, drank a cup of tea, and then lay down.
In the evening, we turned on the news. We learned that the army had started an offensive against “terrorists who occupied Yarmouk.” Then they showed interviews conducted in nice-looking shelters, with refugees who were cursing the terrorists.
But that’s not what was really going on. The army had deliberately emptied out the neighborhood in order to draw in the FSA. That way, they could surround the fighters. They didn’t care about the people who still remained here.
— CHAPTER FIFTEEN —
By this time, our neighborhood was completely sealed off. Army sharpshooters lurked at every exit point, supported by the militias of the General Command. Yarmouk was turning into a ghost town. The silence was eerie. The shouting of the vendors, the laughter of children, the joyous cries of mothers, the boys whistling after the girls, the girls—seemingly annoyed—speeding up their steps, Abu Mohammed smoking his shisha at the corner, Abu Balila hawking his chickpeas—all gone. Just like my students, my customers, my friends. Yesterday, a half million people lived here. And now? There were maybe fifty thousand people left, at most. It was as if a deadly virus had decimated the population.
