thick with smoke and ash and fumes. My body
shakes. My head pounds. We have to get out.
I grab Hamza’s dead-weight arms. He gasps and
moans. I drag him up. Slowly, he slumps to half-
sitting. Broken stones roll from him. I squat low and
hook my hands beneath his armpits.
“Get moving, Hamza,” I say. “Coming here was
your stupid idea. Getting out is my brilliant one.”
I rock him forward, haul him back. Somehow
it works. Slowly, he eases from the rubble. My back
24
aches. Sweat runs down my face. But I don’t stop.
The flames from the fires rise higher. The smoke
is thick and black. Something hisses deep in the
building’s belly as though a massive snake is about
to strike. The groaning up high has ceased. Now,
there is only silence from the remaining walls and
dangling roof. That scares me more. The building
has drawn into itself. Brooding.
I see a black oblong shape through the heat-
shimmer: an open doorway that might lead out.
Hamza’s legs give occasional lurches, strange
spasms that ease his dead weight in my arms. And
Alhamdulillah, they help propel him toward the open doorway. As we get closer, I hear men’s voices.
Shouting. Distant alarms. We are no longer alone.
I’m exhausted, but I’m nearly there.
“They’re here,” a man says.
There is shouting. Running feet. “Grab them.”
“It’s about to come down.”
Hamza’s weight is lifted from me. Someone scoops
me into his arms. I’m carried swiftly across the dark
street and into another building. Hissing fires and oily smells fade. I’m propped against a wall. Two men lay
Hamza next to me. One of them is Mahmoud. He
spins around as the ground shudders and rumbles.
25
“There it goes!” he says.
The building collapses in a rush of fire and thun-
der. Scalding ash storms across to engulf me again.
I scream and cover my head. I am certain I will die.
“You’re safe,” Mahmoud says. He puts his hand
on my shoulder. “I’ll stay with you.”
“I want Dayah,” I say. I sound like Alan.
He hands me a bottle of water. I drink it down,
gulping, retching. “Slowly,” he says. “You’ll make
yourself sick.”
After the collapse, silence rushes in as always. We
all hold our breath. The night waits. We can’t go
out until the streets are safe: there could be more
explosions. More barrel bombs from the chopper. I
slump against the wall. I can’t think straight. Hurt
is all through me: my head, my body, my thoughts.
Darkness swells in my blood as though great black
wings beat inside me and above me. Every breath is
fire in my lungs.
The men fret around Hamza. He doesn’t move.
There are urgent whispers. Mahmoud squats next
to me.
“Who is your friend?” he says.
“Hamza,” I say. “He’s my cousin.” My breathing
bubbles and rattles.
26
“Where do you live?”
I whisper my street, my district. My family name.
It hurts to speak. Mahmoud leans close to hear.
“Is Hamza dead?” I say. My throat gurgles.
“No,” Mahmoud says. “Rest now. I’ll get your
father.” He slips out.
I lean back. Close my eyes. Hamza is going to
die. I should have refused to go downtown with
him. I should have told my parents. Dayah always
says Hamza is foolish. Even though I’m younger, she
says I’m the sensible one. I was not sensible this time.
I should have stopped him.
After a long time, Mahmoud returns with Baba
and Uncle Yousef. Baba throws aside his bag of med-
icines. He kneels beside me. Snatches me into his
arms. I gasp and wheeze and cry at the same time.
My lungs have no breath in them.
“My son,” Baba says.
“I’m sorry, Baba,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
My words are lost in tears and rattling breath and
Baba’s shoulder. He holds me tight.
“Don’t speak,” he says. “We’ll get you home.
We’ll make you better.”
Baba, Uncle Yousef, and Mahmoud carry us
home by torchlight. It’s a long journey with a great
27
deal of shouting, shifting and moving through rubble and broken streets. I’m terrified of more barrel
bombs. More explosions.
“Baba,” I say.
“I’m here,” he says.
“I’ll stay with you,” he says.
“Breathe slowly,” he says.
I bury my face in his chest. Gasp for air. I hurt
all over.
They take us to Baba’s pharmacy. The lights
shudder and tremble from the generator. The smell
of diesel is comforting. A nurse who used to work in
the hospital before it was bombed has made up camp
beds for us. There are medicines and bandages. Baba
unrolls tubing from the oxygen tank. He attaches it
to a little flask with breathing medicine and straps a
mask on my face.
“It will help,” he says. “Breathe slowly.”
Dayah is there too. She squats in front of me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Tears run down my cheeks.
“Hush now,” she says. She strokes my face.
“Is Hamza dead?” I say.
“No. You saved his life.”
Gently, carefully, she peels scorched and smok-
ing cloth from my raw skin. Grazes and burns cover
28
my body. Dayah fills a little basin with warm water to wash my arms and legs. She combs filth from my
hair. She examines each wound closely. She mut-
ters. She tuts. When she touches my blackened feet,
I scream. What I thought was dirt turns out to be
charred blisters. Hot bricks and rubble have burned
my skin. Baba sets up an IV with painkillers, but
even so, I cry out and grip Dayah when he cleans and
bandages my feet.
“You’ll need to stay here tonight,” Baba says.
I don’t want to sleep in the pharmacy, with its
bright lights and noisy generator. There could be
more barrel bombs. More explosions. I want to be
in my own bed. I want to be home with Baba and
Dayah and Dapir. With Bushra and Alan.
“I want to go home.”
“Your lungs and feet are burned, Ghalib,” Baba
says. “There are medicines here to treat your breath-
ing and pain.”
“Please, Baba,” I beg. “I want to go home.”
“I want him home,” Dayah says. “I can care
for him.”
While Hamza lies unconscious on the camp bed
with the nurse hovering around him, Baba carries
me through the dark streets. I grip him tightly and
29
try not to cry out when he stumbles over broken bricks. Dayah carries my IV and medicines.
Baba lays me gently on the sofa in the front room.
Alan and Bushra sleep in the back room but Dapir is
awake and waiting for us. She helps to arrange my bed-
ding, to m
ake me comfortable, to fuss and care for me.
“My brave grandson,” she says. “You saved your
cousin’s life.”
Dayah sits on the edge of the sofa. “We can’t stay
in Kobani.” Her voice is brittle. “Not after today.”
I pull the breathing mask from my face. “I’m not
leaving.”
“This is no place to live, Ghalib,” Dayah says.
“I’m staying with Hamza.” I wheeze and gasp.
Replace my mask to suck oxygen into my burning
lungs.
“Stop speaking,” Baba says. He adjusts the flow
of oxygen. “Calm down and breathe slowly.”
“It was my fault.” I struggle for air. “I can’t
leave him.”
“We have to leave,” Dayah says to Baba. “Please!”
Her voice is a whisper. “For our children.”
Baba says nothing. The quiet, broken only by my
wheezing, reminds me of the brooding in the burn-
ing building before it crashed down. I wait for the
30
rush of fire and thunder from Baba, but it doesn’t come. His voice is soft when he finally speaks.
“I have work to do here,” Baba says. “We have
no choice.”
Hamza’s words from earlier flash into my head:
There’s always a choice, Ghalib. I understand the wis-dom of those words now. We make choices all the
time. I chose badly tonight. I’m the sensible one, yet
I was foolish enough to follow him into the city. I
should have stopped him. Dayah’s words cut through
my thinking.
“No choice?” She raises her voice. “No choice?
We can choose to leave, like almost everyone else.
We can’t stay in this place of death.”
“Who will look after my patients?” Baba says.
“Every hospital and clinic is blown up.”
“Who will look after your family?” Dayah says.
“They come first. Look at Ghalib—he almost got
killed today. Hamza is critically injured. They took
Alan to the souq during an airstrike. We can’t go on
like this. I can’t go on like this.”
A sob breaks Dayah’s words. She puts her head in
her hands. Dapir sits next to her, stroking her back.
“I’m sorry, Dayah,” I say again. My heart thumps
hard. I breathe slowly. Take in clean air before I speak 31
again. Everything that happened today is my fault. “I should have stopped Hamza.” I breathe.
“You saved his life,” Dayah says.
“I nearly killed him,” I say. Breathe. “If it wasn’t for the Protection Units”— breathe—“we would be
dead now.”
“Don’t say that,” says Dapir. “Hamza is alive
because of you! And Alhamdulillah, you too
survived.”
“If we leave,” Baba says, “where would Kurdish
families go for medical care? My pharmacy is all that
remains.”
“Kurdish families are not your responsibility,”
Dayah says. Her voice is steady now, only a little
above a whisper. Sadness puddles all through her
words. “There are aid agencies and foreign clinics to
care for them.”
“They don’t understand Kurdish traditions,”
Baba says. “They don’t even speak our language.
How can they provide for my patients?”
“How can I provide for my children?” Dayah
says. “Food is running out. We line up for hours for
clean water. There are no schools. Alan hasn’t had
physical therapy in months. And today, two of them
almost died!”
32
Now Baba sits with his head in his hands. I understand the battle in his heart, but before I take in enough air to lift my words, Dapir speaks to Dayah.
“This is home for us, Gardina,” she says. “Syrian
Kurds are our people. My son can’t desert them now.”
“I’m staying,” I say.
Baba checks the breathing medicine in the little
flask. He touches the bandages on my feet lightly.
“You need to rest,” he says. He turns to Dayah.
“We’ll talk about this tomorrow. It’s too late now.”
“It might be too late tomorrow,” Dayah says.
In spite of being in my own home with my fam-
ily, I can’t sleep. My heart is scarred by raw terror.
Heavy with remorse. Frightened Hamza will die.
My blood darkens in a way I have never known
before. When I close my eyes, the chopper slices
and throbs in my skull. Fire and smoke fill my nose.
Grit and burning ash grate in my teeth. I search for
Hamza in the burning rubble, crying out for him.
Twice in the night, Baba holds me when my night-
mares shudder me from sleep. My breathing bubbles
and gurgles.
“I’m here,” he says.
“Breathe easy,” he says.
“You’re safe,” he says.
33
---
The overseas aid clinic sends medics to examine
Hamza and me.
“We need to take Ghalib to the pharmacy for the
doctors,” Baba says.
“I’m not moving him,” Dayah says. “Let them
come here.”
“They’re foreign doctors! They don’t come to
people’s houses.”
“They can come to this one. He is mine and he
will stay with me.”
After they examine Hamza, the foreign medics
with their interpreter come to our home. Right into
my room. Dayah puts on a new scarf. She tries to
make Bushra wear one.
“I don’t need one,” Bushra says. “I’m at home.”
“It’s respectful,” Dayah says.
People gather to watch the medics arrive. Even
the mukhtar wants to meet them. The doctor
examines my feet and my other cuts and burns. She
helps me to sit up so she can listen to my breath-
ing. She looks at the medicines Baba has given
me. She checks that we have clean water from the
water truck. The interpreter translates her words
34
into Arabic. He doesn’t speak Kurdish.
“What’s going to happen?” Bushra says after
they’ve left.
“Are they going to take Ghalib away?” Alan says.
“I’m not going with foreigners,” I say.
Later, when Baba returns from the pharmacy,
he says, “They’re taking Hamza to the foreign aid
clinic.”
I look away from him. I don’t know what to say.
All I can think is that I should have stopped us from
going into the Freedom Square.
I feel Dayah’s hand on my shoulder. “We’ll
pray for his recovery,” she says. Her touch gives me
strength.
“I’m not going to the clinic, Baba,” I say.
“You will stay here,” Baba says. “They’ve given
me stronger medicine to help your breathing. And
fresh dressings for your feet.”
“And Hamza?” I say.
“He’ll get proper care and the right medicines,”
Baba says.
35
4
“Bushra, we need fresh water,” Dapir says. “The
container is empty.”
“Why is it always ‘Bushra, we need this’? ‘Bushra,
we need that
’?” my sister says. “Am I the only one in
this house?” She snatches up the container and gives
me one of her looks.
“Don’t look at me!” I say. “I can’t walk to the
water truck.”
“Ghalib’s legs don’t work right,” Alan says. “He’s
like me.”
“Go on now, Bushra,” Dayah says. “Take Alan
with you.”
They head off to the nearest army truck where Pro-
tection Units supply fresh water from huge drums. I sit
on the sofa in the front room to look out at the street
through the open door. I don’t need my oxygen mask
36
or breathing medicine anymore. My lungs are clear when I rest, but if I get out of breath, my chest rattles and burns. My feet are still bandaged and though I
can’t walk properly outside, I hobble around the house.
As for Hamza, there has been little change in
his condition since the night of the barrel bomb.
He needs a lot of medical care. His parents are the
only ones allowed to visit. They return with worried
faces to talk to my parents in hushed whispers. They
throw concerned glances at me. Baba doesn’t tell me
much, but I know Hamza might still die.
When Alan and Bushra return two hours later,
Protection Unit soldiers are with them. They carry
the water keg.
“Soldiers!” I say. “Soldiers are coming.”
Soldiers visiting a house never bring good news.
This can only mean trouble. Dayah and Dapir rush
to the door.
“That’s my cousin Dima,” Dayah says.
Dima greets us as she comes into our front room;
Mahmoud is with her.
“So here is the boy who searches for women’s shoes
at night,” Mahmoud says. He can’t resist teasing me.
“Mahmoud tells me you were brave. That you
saved Hamza’s life,” Dima says.
37
“I wasn’t brave,” I say. “He’s my cousin.”
She looks different from how I remember her,
dressed in her soldier’s uniform and heavy army
boots, her long dark hair swept back under an olive-
colored headscarf. I’m a little nervous of the rifle
swinging from her shoulder, the row of bullets hang-
ing around her neck. The smell of dust and sweat and
hard work rises from her as she leans over to look at
my bandaged feet.
“We need soldiers like you,” Mahmoud says.
“When you’re better, you will join the Protection
Units to fight ISIS and pro-government forces.”
These are dangerous words. I stare at Mahmoud
Without Refuge Page 3
