by Aeham Ahmad
We spoke to my parents. My father was strictly opposed to it. It’s too dangerous, he said. My mother said nothing.
I told Monika about my connection. She wired me the money—in three installments, to three different names, so as not to arouse suspicion. An aunt of mine withdrew the money from a bank in Damascus. And almost at once, the people from state security knocked at her door. They wanted to know why she was receiving money transfers from Germany. She told them the money came from her niece who lives in Munich (she did have a niece who lived there) and that she’d needed it to pay her rent in Damascus. This way they didn’t ask any more questions about that foreign name on the receipt.
One night, my mother took me aside. “Aeham, I have a feeling that you want to tell me something. I know you. Just tell me!”
“I’m not sure I should talk about it.”
“About what?” she asked.
“You know what it is,” I said.
“Yes, I know. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I’ll give you the money. I don’t want to lose another son. That’s all there is to it.”
My mother still had seven thousand euros—roughly eighty-four hundred dollars—in a bank account. It was the last of our savings. She used to teach at an UNRWA school, and a part of her salary had gone into a savings plan. Now she was allowed to withdraw it. With that money, we could reach Turkey. That was our goal. And then we’d see. But the main thing was to get out of Syria.
I hugged her. “I’ll pay it back, I promise.”
“I don’t care. I just want you and your family to be happy.”
We packed our things. One bag would have to suffice. We packed our passports, our family record booklet, and our UNRWA certificates, confirming that we were registered as refugees in Geneva. In addition, I packed my report cards from the university and the music school. And Tahani’s documents. I packed only the most essential clothing for the four of us. And two keepsakes: my green shirt and a small notebook of Beethoven sonatas, a long-ago gift from Irina Ramadan, the Russian pianist. We were ready.
— CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR —
On August 1, 2015, Samir called, telling me to be at the checkpoint at 12:30 p.m. the next day. A guy from state security, Abu So-and-So, would be waiting for us in a car.
I never prayed so much in my life as I did that night. I got dizzy from prostrating myself.
The next morning, Marwan came over to say good-bye.
“Do you want to get out of here, too?” I asked him.
“No. I want to stay with my parents.”
“I can try to help you from outside.”
“I want to stay. I want to get married soon. Everything will be all right.”
There wasn’t much left to say. We hugged. He said, “I’ll see you again.” Tears were running down my cheeks.
A short while later, Raed and his family came over. We sang a few songs together. Raed’s children and little Ahmad were plunking on the keyboard. My mother was singing and crying at the same time.
I knew that Raed wanted to get out as well. When we said good-bye, I looked him in the eyes. “I’ll get you out of here,” I said. “As soon as I can.” We hugged.
My parents accompanied us to the checkpoint. First we had to get through the FSA checkpoint, which was difficult for any young man. So my father lied, telling the rebels that he was the one who wanted to leave, and I was just helping him carry his luggage. They waved us through.
We stopped somewhere between the two checkpoints. Without Abu So-and-So, it would have been suicide to go on to the army checkpoint. If the regime arrested you, they’d throw you in a cell and no one would ever see you again, no matter who showed up two hours later.
I got impatient and called Samir. “Where’s the driver?”
“He’s coming, he’s coming. Calm down!”
My parents went ahead and lined up at the army checkpoint to wait for the man. As always, it only worked because of my father’s handicap. Normally, the soldiers didn’t tolerate someone standing around for hours, witnessing all the arrests and bribe payments.
The August sun was burning; we were sweating, and the wind was kicking up dust. Soon, we were all covered with dirt. There was no shade, except for that provided by one small tree. Tahani sat down under it, holding nine-month-old Kinan in her arms. He was sleeping peacefully. Ahmad, who was almost three, wanted to run around and play in the rubble, and Tahani had to keep warning him not to. The hours passed. I kept calling Samir.
“The driver will be there in ten minutes!” he said. And a half hour later: “Give him another fifteen minutes!” Clearly, he had no idea what was going on.
The two checkpoints were within eyeshot of each other. Syria is full of places like that, a kind of no-man’s-land. I’ve never been able to understand it: For months, the soldiers and the rebels would work facing each other, but then, when the order came, they would start shooting at each other.
I began to think about a plan B: What would we tell the rebels if we had to go back through their checkpoint? The one bright spot was that Samir would only get his money once we were safely in Damascus.
At five in the afternoon, Abu So-and-So finally showed up. We didn’t recognize him at first. He was standing near the checkpoint, wearing mirrored sunglasses and a trendy brown shirt. But Samir had mentioned a green shirt. Suddenly, my cell phone rang.
“Dammit, where are you guys?” Samir said. “He’s waiting for you!”
“So tell him to give us a signal! What am I supposed to do, walk over to the checkpoint and ask around? ‘Excuse me, do you happen to be Abu So-and-So?’ ”
So we lined up, our knees shaking. I couldn’t imagine how we would survive this. It felt like we were going to our execution. I saw the stern-looking soldiers guarding the checkpoint with their heavy weaponry. In the rubble of the surrounding buildings, snipers were aiming their rifles.
When it was our turn, the soldier asked me, “Are you Aeham Ahmad?”
I almost fainted, that’s how terrified I was. “Yes, that’s me,” I stammered.
He looked me up and down. Then he typed something into a computer and, without looking up, he asked, “Aeham Ahmad, born 1988?”
“Yes.”
Then came a test question: “By the way, where’s your brother?”
I gave the right answer: “He’s missing.”
“And those kids over there, you want to take them with you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What, they don’t have names? Come on!”
All of a sudden, I couldn’t think of my children’s names! My mind was frozen with terror. My head felt empty and I asked Tahani for help. When the man asked for my father’s name, I couldn’t think of that either.
Finally, Abu So-and-So stepped in: “Let them through, we’re all on the same side here.”
All on the same side? His remark felt like a slap in the face. Was I supposed to be cozying up to the regime now? It reminded me of my childhood, back in school, when I had refused to sing the national anthem. Suddenly, the word no escaped from my lips.
“What do you mean, no?” the soldier said menacingly. I immediately corrected myself: “No, no, sir. I meant yes!”
My father, who never lost his courage, not even when he was facing off with ISIS, suddenly turned quiet as he nervously listened to our exchange.
But in the end, the soldier hesitantly let us through. We were “out.”
We said good-bye. My mother was crying quietly. My father, who had held little Kinan in his arms, kissed the boy from top to bottom. “It’ll be all right,” he said to me, his face stoic. “May God protect you, my son.” All I saw was my reflection in his dark glasses.
“Challas, enough!” said Abu So-and-So. And so, reluctantly we turned away and moved on, grabbing our things and putting them in the trunk of his clean new car. We left my parents behind, as well as Yalda and Yarmouk. From now on, we were at the mercy of strangers. Like cattle. We had no idea whether we were head
ed to greener pastures or the slaughterhouse.
Abu So-and-So was tall and thin. I could smell his aftershave. He offered me a cigarette.
“Thank you, but I don’t smoke.”
“Then how about a coffee?”
Dear God, how long had it been since I last had coffee? Still, I turned it down. Music was playing on the car’s speakers. A song by Fairouz. Even the smell of his cigarette smoke, something I normally couldn’t stand, made my heart beat with joy, as if I was reconnecting with a long-lost friend.
A car, coffee, cigarettes, Fairouz—it all felt like a scene from a propaganda film on Syrian state television. The kind of film where people pretended that our country wasn’t broken. Abu So-and-So was cheerfully singing along to the music. I felt dizzy. I looked out the window and saw Damascus . . . old Damascus, the city I had known from before the war. Nothing here had changed. Nothing at all.
We drove across the President Bridge, crossing the Barada River. Memories flashed before my eyes. At this corner, Papa and I used to get off the minibus and walk through Zouqaq al-Jinn—the “Alley of the Jinn”—to the next bus stop. This was a small industrial neighborhood where merchants sold auto supplies. On the other side, Papa and I used to turn left and wait for the next minibus.
One time—I remember it so well—my father and I had run all the way through the pouring rain because we had no money for a taxi. Another time, we breathlessly ran toward the minibus that had just pulled up. As I was running, I almost lost my shoes because they were two sizes too large. My father had bought them secondhand somewhere. A pencil was sticking out of my pocket, and it got jammed into my leg as I ran. I was bleeding, but I kept running anyway, and attended my classes at the music school. At the end of the school day, I went to the hospital.
For some reason, Ahmad started to cry. Abu So-and-So offered him some candy. And little Ahmad, who had spent his entire life in a city under siege, said, “Papa, what’s candy?”
We passed the Hamra district. Well-fed people were carrying bags full of flatbread from a large bakery. And people like us? We risked getting shot for a sack of rice. Why, I wondered, hadn’t we escaped from Yarmouk on December 17, 2012? Had we made a mistake? But then I remembered playing piano with the kids on the streets. I thought of the kids gathered around me, giggling with joy. For me, the beauty and the terror of it all were intertwined.
The car finally stopped in the elegant embassy district, a stone’s throw from my old music school. The secret service and state security stood watch at every corner. This was where Samir’s aid organization had their offices. Two security guards were posted at the door. Samir came out, said good-bye to the driver, and let us in. He was tall and fat; he wore glasses and had a mustache. “Thank God everything went well,” he said. “What do you want to drink? Coffee? Tea?”
We politely declined. We passed chic offices, where the employees worked. When Samir opened the door to his office, my jaw dropped: I saw Niraz Saied! The man who had taken the famous picture of me in the green shirt. Dear God, how had he managed to get here? Then I saw a second friend of mine: Omar, who had worked for the civil air defense and had pulled people from the rubble when the bombs rained down on us.
There was a courtyard with an orange tree and a small fountain. About twenty people were sitting there. I recognized a number of activists—the people who had kept Yarmouk alive. One of them had photographed the grenade damage and then uploaded the pictures onto Facebook. By now, everyone had fled from ISIS. Yarmouk was dying out.
I asked around: How long have you been here? Some had been there for twenty days; others had just arrived. Niraz Saied had been there for several months. His girlfriend had fled to Germany, and now was trying to get him to join her.
After an hour and a half, my aunt arrived, the one who had received the money transfer from Monika. I gave Samir the twenty-two hundred euros, then I said good-bye to Tahani and the children. They would stay with my aunt until it was time for us to leave. It was much safer for them.
After they left, I went back to Samir’s office and asked how much it would cost to smuggle Raed out of Yarmouk.
“One thousand euros,” Samir said. Around twelve hundred dollars.
“Fine. I’ll pay for him.” I had to write down all his information on a slip of paper.
“Now,” I said. “How do I get to Turkey?”
Soon, dusk fell and lights were turned on. Electricity! I hadn’t seen that in a long time. Someone brought supper. Cheese! Labneh! Olives! Scrambled eggs! It all tasted absolutely incredible. Later, someone handed me a foam mat and a thin blanket. I lay down under the orange tree and fell asleep.
The next morning, the August sun shone onto my face. I got up and looked around. People were sleeping everywhere, and I could smell coffee inside the office. I got up and poured myself a cup, my first in almost three years. My body was shaking.
Then the phone calls began. Everyone here knew somebody in Europe. Friends or relatives who had already fled. Everyone wanted to get to Europe. The idea was to somehow make it to the Turkish border, cross the sea toward Greece, and then take the Balkan route to Austria, France, or Germany. But how, exactly? How much did the crossing cost? Which boats were reliable? We had heard stories about seventy-one refugees who’d suffocated in a truck on the Austrian autobahn. Two of them were from Yarmouk.
The days seemed to melt away in the August heat. A couple of guys were joking around: “You should try and get a piano. We’re probably going to be here a while.”
Was that supposed to be a joke? “What do you mean, be here a while? Samir said we could leave in two or three days.”
“Right, of course! Two, three days. He always says that.”
Just a few days ago, a group that had left before our arrival had been arrested somewhere in Syria. They had been charged with “illegal emigration.” The punishment was six months in prison. But in the course of the investigation, the regime was bound to find something else they could pin on you, so they could keep you in jail forever.
Once, the guys loudly asked me to sing something for them. One of them began humming “Yarmouk Misses You, Brother.” They were singing passionately out of tune. I thought of Mahmoud Tamim, who had written the lyrics and was probably sitting in a jail cell somewhere. I felt full of bitterness.
Every day I harangued Samir. “When can we move on? Did you find a connection?” With every passing hour, I felt more and more nervous. Many of the guys from Yarmouk had to regularly testify to state security; they had to pass on information about the rebels. One day, Samir asked me to testify. “Never!” I said. And paid him two hundred euros to get me out of it.
I knew all too well that some secret service guy somewhere was making a fortune off us. All it took was one jealous person from another department to blow the whistle. We could be arrested at any time.
On the other hand, Samir, this corrupt, good man, kept his word: he managed to smuggle out Raed. Beaming with joy, Raed and I hugged each other when he arrived. The next day, he snuck out into the city to visit his mother. That had been his greatest wish all these years: to see her one last time.
I decided to go out on a limb. For three years I hadn’t heard from Mohammed Munaf, my best music student, who now appeared on state television with his orchestra. I thought: My own war is over—it’s time for reconciliation. I dialed his number three times, but he didn’t pick up. Finally, I sent word that I was in Damascus. He called back but didn’t sound too cordial. Nevertheless, he visited me, looking dazzling, well fed, and clean, his beard elegantly shaved in the latest Turkish fashion.
“Aeham, how nice to see you!” he said.
“And you!” We hugged each other.
“You look exhausted,” he said.
“At least I’m alive.”
I told him that his old building had been bombed. Yes, he said, he had known already. We asked about each other’s parents. And what about so-and-so? But we didn’t have much to say to each other, since there
were too many sensitive topics we had to avoid. Luckily, he had brought his oud. And I had been loaned a keyboard by a former student who lived around the corner. So we made music together, both realizing it would be for the last time.
Finally, after eleven days, Samir called Raed and me into his office. After closing the door, he said, “You’re leaving the day after tomorrow. Get ready.”
Again, my aunt brought money: The journey to the Turkish border cost twenty-four hundred euros for Tahani, the boys, and me. Raed had borrowed the eight hundred euros he needed from relatives.
I called Tahani. We talked about where we could hide the rest of our travel fund. Sew it into a pants hem? Hide it in her underwear? Both ideas seemed unfeasible. And then Tahani had a thought. She carefully opened a diaper and slipped the forty hundred-dollar notes inside. Then she stitched up the diaper. This way, if they searched us, they wouldn’t be able to feel the bills. Hopefully. For now, our journey would continue.
— CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE —
On the morning of August 15, 2015, an SUV with tinted windows stopped in front of Samir’s office. On the hood was a sticker with Assad’s face. Beneath it was a little heart and the words WE LOVE YOU!—the slogan of his fans.
A small man with blond highlights and dressed in camouflage gear got out, introducing himself as Abu Jolan. He had the deep voice of someone who drank a lot of arak, the local anise liquor. Samir called us into his office, one at a time, to pay the driver. Two guys from Yarmouk climbed into the wide passenger seat; Raed and I got into the seat behind them, stuffing our luggage on the two extra seats behind us. Then we drove to the Mezzeh Children’s Hospital, where we picked up Tahani and the kids.
As Damascus vanished in the rearview mirror, Abu Jolan shared his plan with us. He was going to drive past Homs and Hama, to the edge of the ISIS-controlled area. There, we’d be on our own, and we’d have to somehow figure out a way to cross the border. He turned around to face us. “If anybody stops us, just say we’re on our way to a wedding. Got it?” Then he put on his sunglasses and stepped on the gas. He was silent for the rest of the journey.
