Dayah says. “It’s usually something bad. Why can’t
you keep your head about you, Ghalib?”
“I made him do it, Dayah,” Alan says in a small
voice. Dayah looks at Alan. Bushra looks at Alan. I
look at Alan. “I told Ghalib I would tell you he was
going to the souq with Hamza if he didn’t take me
along.”
He’s a good liar. Even I’m convinced. Dayah’s
eyes soften as she looks at him. Everyone softens
when they look at Alan. Something about him makes
people want to care for him. Dayah bends down and
picks him up. He’s definitely too old to be carried
but he gets away with it.
“You’re never to go to the souq with Ghalib
again,” Dayah says to him.
And as we walk home, I think Alan might be
useful to bring along next time. He might keep me
out of trouble.
10
2
Our mukhtar is a smart man. As soon as we heard whispers of ISIS coming to Kobani, he gathered up
a group of men from our neighborhood and trav-
eled to the industrial center on the outskirts of the
city. They bought a dozen electricity generators and
drums of diesel with the utility allowance from the
city council, brought them home in a convoy of
minibuses, and locked them into the storage sheds
behind the mosque. Plenty of people were furious
about it.
“What a waste of money,” some said. “ISIS will
be gone in six months and we’ll have no money to
repair potholes and fix street lights.”
“How will we pay for trash collections?” others
said. “Our streets will stink of rotting litter. We’ll be overrun with rats.”
11
“Perhaps it’s time to vote for a new mukhtar,”
some even said.
But the mukhtar merely smiled and nodded.
“Just you wait and see,” he said.
And we did wait. And we did see.
ISIS attacked the city every day for months. Even
now that the Kurdish People’s Protection Units have
pushed them back, the fighting goes on endlessly and
US airstrikes can happen at any time. Every power
station in Kobani has been destroyed and most of the
utility poles are smashed in half, tossed like broken
logs along the roads. When the overhead lines were
first dragged down by explosions, the cables sparked
and whipped like live snakes but the current soon
ran out. Now Alan and his friends drag the dead
cables behind them as they play soldiers.
The mukhtar opened his stores to hand out a
generator and diesel drum to every inner courtyard
in our district. Now the families still living here are
full of praise for his farsighted thinking.
“What a great investment,” some say. “ISIS might
be here for a long time but we have power to cook
our food and light our nights.”
“How else would we manage to feed our families?
To brighten the dark?” others say.
12
“We’re lucky to have such a smart mukhtar,”
everyone says.
In the early evening, the streets in our neighbor-
hood vibrate with the engines of the generators. Blue
diesel smoke fills the air as women gather to cook
eggplant and canned tomatoes and rice. My family
joins in the bright light and buzzing energy. Once
the food is cooked, Dayah eats inside with Dapir,
Bushra and the other women and girls. They talk
about who has left the neighborhood, or the latest
school or health clinic to explode. Babies and tod-
dlers doze in their laps or play around their feet.
In the courtyard, the men and boys eat under
the stars. If my father gets home on time from his
pharmacy, he joins their talk of the war, or of hav-
ing no jobs, or when might be the right time to join
family in Canada and Turkey and Germany. Alan
and the little kids run around, pretending to shoot
each other.
“This is boring,” Hamza says tonight.
We sneak down the road to sit on the crumbling
wall of the mukhtar’s mother’s house. She lived there
until six weeks ago when a barrel bomb tossed from
a helicopter smashed into it. Luckily for her, she was
visiting her daughter and grandchildren on the other
13
side of Kobani at the time. The front wall was blown out, but by some freaky coincidence, her carved
wooden dresser full of her antique china collection
was left perfectly intact. She took herself and her
china collection to live with her daughter.
“Bring the women’s shoes and phones over to
my house in the morning,” Hamza says. “The buyer
will collect them at lunchtime.” The light from the
courtyard shines on his face.
“I’ve only got two pairs of shoes left,” I say. “One
pair got left behind after the airstrike.”
“Are you serious?” Hamza says. “What am I sup-
posed to tell the buyer?”
“Give him something else,” I say. “An extra
phone or one of the shirts.”
“You’re not being professional, Ghalib. We sup-
ply to order. We don’t offer random substitutes like
phones and shirts. How do you think I secured our
buyer in the first place? This is not a smash-and-grab
business.”
Hamza looks at me. Something in his expression
makes my scalp tingle. “We have to go back for a
third pair, Ghalib.”
“I’m going to the souq with Dayah and Bushra
in the morning.”
14
“The buyer comes at lunchtime.”
“You’ll have to go on your own.”
“You’re the one who lost the shoes, Ghalib.”
“I didn’t lose them,” I say. “They were collateral damage.”
“It was your fault.”
“We had no choice,” I say. “We had to get home.”
“There’s always a choice, Ghalib,” Hamza says.
“I choose to go to the souq and get another pair.” He
smiles as he looks at me. “Tonight.”
“What? Don’t be crazy, Hamza. Nobody goes to
Freedom Square at night.”
“It’s early.”
“It’s dark.”
“Scared, Ghalib?” His sneer is unmistakable.
“There are unexploded shells. And snipers.
And ISIS. Not to mention Protection Units every-
where—they’re not going to just let us get away with
snatching stuff.”
“Everyone knows where the sleeping bombs are,”
Hamza says. “ISIS and the Protection Units won’t be
out until later. We’ll be back by then.”
“We?” I say. “You think I’m going too?”
Hamza jumps off the wall. He brushes dust from
his trousers. Peers into the courtyard where knots
15
of people eat and talk in the blue smoke. Soft voices reach across the night. The smell of cooking hangs
in the air.
“Of course you’ll come, Ghalib,” Hamza says.
“We’re family.”
I blink. I look at Hamza. He’s far braver, fa
r stron-
ger than me. It’s his job to make decisions; it’s my job to go along with them, even if I don’t want to.
“What will I tell Baba and Dayah?” I say.
“Nothing! We’ll be back before they even notice.
It’ll take less than an hour.”
We skirt the bright courtyards around the
mosque, avoiding any light that might expose us. At
first it’s easy to see, but as soon as we move away
from our neighborhood, everything melts into inky
blackness. Familiar streets are unrecognizable from
a couple of years ago, the ruined houses empty and
silent. Hardly anybody lives here now. Only a few
places have candlelight gleaming through scorched
curtains or open doorways. Rubble heaps are the
remains of friends’ houses, of the corner shop where
we bought ice cream, of our local bakery. Walk-
ing here in the daytime is bad enough, but at night,
ghosts of the dead haunt these deserted streets.
I spook at every sound: rats cheeping in the trash,
16
broken bricks settling in the night. My heart skips a beat when I see the glow of a cigarette tip burning
in the dark. A man stands silently, watching us pass.
“We’ll go along Aleppo Way,” Hamza says. His
voice is loud in the darkness. “It’s quicker at this
time. Not so much rubble and masonry.”
“But lots of Protection Units,” I add.
“They won’t touch us.”
The streets reek more at night: darkness draws
out the smells. I hold my breath as the stench of rot-
ting trash mixes with smoke and pulverized con-
crete, smashed-up sewers and rot. We reach the
unexploded bomb half-buried in the ground at the
start of Aleppo Way, its nose buried deep in the dirt,
wing blades pointing at the sky. We’ve passed it doz-
ens of times, daring each other to touch it, but the
night bloats its evil. I scrunch my fists in my pockets
and sneak by, not wanting to brush my fingertips
against it. Even Hamza is silent and swift as he sidles
past. We pause to stare the length of Aleppo Way—
the longest stretch of our journey. Light from cook-
ing fires in derelict buildings softens the dense dark.
“So many fires,” I say.
They could be fires of the Protection Units, or of
local people forced out of their homes. They could
17
even be the fires of ISIS troops sneaking back into the city, creeping close to our neighborhood.
“Protection Units, Ghalib,” Hamza assures me.
“They’re not the enemy.”
He strides down Aleppo Way, passing the
scorched skeletons of trees along the street. Glass
crunches close to me as I catch up with him. I lurch
against Hamza. He shoves me away.
“You’re worse than Alan,” he says.
But a thread of nervousness weaves through his
laughter. It dies completely when a man steps from a
broken building. I see his silhouette. The silhouette
of his raised gun. My heart hammers. Words spill
out of me, stuttered, broken.
“We’re locals!” I say. I lift my arms over my head.
“We’re locals! No weapons. No gun.” My voice
cracks.
The man stops dead. He looks us up and down.
He holds his gun steady. “What are you doing here?”
he says.
Firelight shines behind him. I can’t see his face:
only his silhouette. Beside me, the brave and mighty
Hamza has clammed up. I look at him to answer,
and my heart stops as he slinks behind me. Me—his younger cousin!
18
“What are you doing here?” the man says again.
“Women’s shoes,” I blurt out. “We’re looking
for women’s shoes.” It sounds ridiculous. What will
he think?
He lowers the gun. Pulls hard on his cigarette.
“Not easy to walk in women’s shoes over rubble,
boys.”
His voice is louder than necessary. To draw the
attention of others inside, I realize, as four men
emerge from the broken building.
Their uniforms show they’re with the Protection
Units, not ISIS. They won’t shoot us, but we might
get a beating. The men circle us. They can hardly see
Hamza because my swaggering cousin has shrunk
to almost nothing behind me. The first man teases
us for the amusement of his friends even though he
must see my terror. Now that he has an audience, he
puts on a silly voice, high and girlish.
“Will you bring me back a new headscarf?” he
says. The others laugh.
“Let them go, Mahmoud,” one of them says.
“They’re only kids.”
“They shouldn’t be out looking for women’s
shoes at night,” Mahmoud says. He looks at me. Even
though it’s dark, even though his face is in shadow,
19
it seems that his eyes glow with red fire like the tip of his smoldering cigarette. His gaze burns into me.
“You know a war rages in the city, boy? You
know you could be shot dead at any time?”
I can’t bring myself to say it was Hamza’s stupid
idea. That I didn’t want to come in the first place.
That I agree with Mahmoud. All I can do is nod
dumbly and wish I was anywhere but here.
“Do your parents know where you are?” Mah-
moud says.
“No.”
“Then get back to them before I march you
home and shame you in front of your father. You
and that cowardly boy behind you.”
This is the truest thing Mahmoud has said. I
stumble around and crash straight into Hamza, hud-
dled behind me. I put my hands on his shoulders and
turn him from the men. I hiss in his ear, my rising
laughter clear to him.
“Come on, cowardly boy.”
I get no further. A deafening roar engulfs the
dark city streets. A wavering beam of light snaps on
high in the night sky. Powerful and glaring, it shreds
the darkness. Someone screams.
“Chopper!” one of the soldiers says.
20
I spin back, stunned by the sudden noise and light. In the dazzle, Mahmoud points skyward.
“Barrel bomb!”
He races from the blaze of brightness and the
deafening racket.
The roar of the chopper shrieks loud and low
until I think it will tear my head off. Its beam slashes glaring light through the blackness. Violent gusts
blast my ears and face. Clamor and chaos slice my
blood and heartbeat.
Men raise their guns. Blast them skyward in a
blaze of fire and bullets. Tearing wind beats me to
the ground. Hamza screams. He is still screaming
when I shove him into the broken building.
21
3
I push myself up from the smoking rubble. Wipe
dust and pulverized plaster from my eyes and nose.
My throat stings. I spit grit. My lungs scald in the
burning air. The chopper is gone, taking with it the
searing light and thunderous throb.
I look around from where I sit on top of ho
t
rubble and broken brick. It shifts and slides beneath
me with the sound of broken crockery. Everything
has changed. Everything is different from moments
before. Everywhere reeks of hot metal and burning
fuel. Teetering walls grind and strain. My back and
shoulders throb from bricks and chunks of plaster
that beat me as they crashed down. My fingers find
tender lumps on my skull but no blood. No broken
bones. I clamber to my feet, seeking something to
steady me. I reach for half-walls and broken pillars.
22
The ground slides and tilts and burns my feet. My shoes are gone, blasted off in the explosion.
“Hamza?”
My voice is small and broken. Thick with dust.
I cough. Spit again. I search for Hamza in the dark-
ness and smoke and dust. He must be close by. But
my world has shifted.
The whole building has shifted. The blast and
the collapse and the chaos could have flung him any-
where. Close to me, a broken body lies under a heap
of smoking rubble. Scraps of burnt uniform flutter in
the rising heat. It’s one of the men who stood next to
me moments ago. Some of him is missing. There’s a
lot of blood. I look away.
I clamber through the hot night. Feeling.
Searching. Rocks and blown-out bricks tumble
and clatter. A terrible grinding creaks up high, as
though the whole structure might collapse at any
moment. I need to get out. But I also need to find
Hamza.
Fires hiss in corners, seeking something to
devour. They flare high and angry as wooden
doors and old curtains catch light. They give a little
brightness in the ash-thick air. Heat rises with the
oily smoke.
23
I see another figure. I’m afraid to look, but I have to know. I slide and scramble over the hot uneven
ground. Hamza!
I crouch next to where he’s sprawled on his back,
blasted among the charred debris. He doesn’t move.
He might be dead. His legs are wedged between
broken bricks and fallen walls. One arm is flung
above his head, the other across his chest. I wipe ash
and grit from his face. Scoop dirt and broken bits
from his mouth with my finger. Something hot and
wet slicks over his face. I think it’s blood. I think the sharp broken bits are teeth, but there’s not enough
light to see. I lean close and listen. Hamza breathes,
but it’s ragged and unsteady. I clear the rubble across
his chest so he can get air, even though that air is
Without Refuge Page 2
