and Dima. I stare at my mother, who stands at the
open door with her hand to her mouth. It looks as
though every drop of blood drains from my face.
“I’m thirteen,” I say at last. “Too young to fight.
The army won’t accept me.”
“You’re strong and brave,” Mahmoud says.
“That’s enough.”
“You too, Bushra,” Dima says. “You will join
with Ghalib. We need new recruits. Fresh young
blood to continue the fight.”
Even if I was old enough to join the Protection
Units, I don’t think I would ever fight in a war. I’m
38
not courageous. I want to be a pharmacist like Baba.
I want to help people get better. But Bushra has a
brave spirit like Mahmoud and Dima. She smiles
now, her face flushed pink. She holds her head high
and looks Dima in the eye.
After Dima and Mahmoud leave, Bushra and I
look at Dayah and Dapir. They have many words in
their eyes, but we say nothing in front of Alan. The
first opportunity we get to talk is later that evening
when Alan is in bed and Baba is home.
“Mahmoud and Dima expect Ghalib and Bushra
to fight,” Dayah says. Her voice trembles.
“My children will not fight in the war,” Baba says.
“The Protection Units will not accept a refusal,”
Dayah says.
“But Dima is family,” I say. “Does that mean
nothing to her?”
“The war is in her heart and blood, Ghalib,”
Dayah says. “Family comes second.”
“I’m not afraid of fighting,” Bushra says.
“You are not fighting, Bushra,” Baba says.
“They need new soldiers, Baba. I can fight like
Dima. I’m almost sixteen.”
“You are fifteen,” Baba says. “Neither of you
will fight. That is my final word.”
39
I’m relieved to hear Baba’s final word, but Bushra sets her mouth in that sour way of hers.
“I dreamed of being an engineer,” she says.
“Then the war blew up my school and killed my
friends. My dreams are dead, Baba. I’m not afraid to
fight ISIS.”
Silence falls. I stare at Bushra. I’ve never heard
anything so sad. So final. So brave.
“Family might come second for Dima,” I say.
“But family comes first for me. This war isn’t in my heart and blood. I want to be a pharmacist, not a soldier. And Bushra wants to be an engineer.”
“Or a soldier,” Bushra says.
“But an engineer first.”
“Maybe,” she says. She’s not making this easy
for me.
“I don’t want to leave Kobani,” I say. “I want to
go to the souq with Hamza again. I want to go to
university. To open my own Kurdish pharmacy. But
I’m afraid, Baba. I’m afraid to be a soldier.” I swallow.
Baba sits in his chair by the open doorway, facing
the dark street. I can’t see his expression, but I know
he is listening.
“Baba, when there’s nothing left for us here
except death, then surely it must be time to leave?”
40
When Baba speaks, his voice is little more than a whisper. “You’re right, Ghalib.”
Bushra gasps—a soft intake of breath. Dayah
speaks, and her words hold so much hope, so much
brightness, they ache my heart.
“It’s time to leave Syria?” she says.
Baba turns his gaze to rest on me. Tears glint in his
eyes. “Your words twist a knife in my heart, Ghalib. I
have to listen to them. I have to hear my family.”
He looks at Dayah and Bushra. They hold each
other, eyes bright with hope.
“We will leave Syria and travel somewhere safe,”
he says. “But our leaving must be a secret. Nobody
can know, in case anyone in the Protection Units
hears about it. Not the neighbors. Not the mukhtar.
Not even Alan. It would put us all in danger.”
“What about Hamza?” I say.
“Hamza and his parents must stay until he’s well
enough to travel,” Baba says.
---
Everything changes from that day on. Even though
we know this is something we need to do, that
doesn’t make it any easier. Every day, something is
41
packed away or goes missing. Every day, a full feeling in my chest seems a little closer to brimming over.
Today the glass-fronted bookshelves are empty. All
of Baba’s old pharmacy books, our books of Kurdish
poetry. Gone.
“Where are they?” I say.
“Packed away,” Dayah says.
“We’re leaving them?”
“We can’t bring books with us.”
“They were always with us,” I say. “And now
they won’t be.”
“You never even looked at them,” Bushra says.
“That’s not the point. They were here if I wanted
to look at them. Now they won’t be.”
“There are other books to read,” Dayah says.
“He never reads,” Bushra says. “Unless it’s soccer
results.”
“Baba might want to read them,” I say. “He
sometimes reads Kurdish epic poems.”
“Not for a long time,” Dayah says.
“Clearly it will be a long time again,” I say.
We have to work hard to keep the secret from
Alan. He’s smart. He knows something is going
on and tries his best to find out. Every time I turn
around, I nearly trip over him.
42
“You’re being weird again, Alan,” I say.
“You’re hiding something,” he says.
“Go and find someone else to be weird with.”
“There’s no one.”
“Annoy Bushra.”
“She told me to annoy you.”
“Does Dayah know you’re sucking your thumb
again?”
He pulls his hand from his mouth and looks at
his chapped thumb.
In the front room, Dayah and Bushra fold up
the embroidered rugs and beautiful wall hangings,
the floor cushions and curtains. Stacked on the
table, their colorful stripes and woven designs folded
inside, they make the rest of the room feel cold and
empty. Alan stares at the ghostly squares left behind
by the rich tapestries on the walls.
“Why did you take them down?” he says.
“Too much dust and smoke in the air,” Dayah
says.
“You never took them down before.”
“Then it is well past time to take them down.”
“The walls look horrible,” Alan says.
“But the hangings will be clean,” Bushra says.
“I don’t like it.”
43
“Ghalib is going to get his bandages changed,”
Bushra says. “Keep him company, Alan.”
Baba changes the dressings on my feet every
other day. He cleans the oozing blisters, examines
them for infection. It hurts so much that I grip the
seat and bite the inside of my mouth. Baba talks to
me the whole time. He always has something to tell
me, a story or a memory from his childhood, to dis-
trac
t me. It rarely works.
“I have savings put aside,” he says today. He
smears on cooling antiseptic cream with his finger-
tips. “For university education for the three of you.
For Bushra’s dowry. For surgery on Alan’s leg.”
“My leg doesn’t want surgery,” Alan says. He
holds the tub of cream.
Baba studies my feet. “You’re healing well.”
They look like lumps of barbecued meat. “They
hurt so much.”
Alan leans over to see. I look away. I don’t want
to see them. I try to concentrate on Baba’s words.
“It’s invested in my pharmacy, in gold and
orchards,” Baba says.
“What is?”
“My savings,” Baba says. “I’ve thought a lot
about it.”
44
This is more than random chat to distract me. I listen closely.
“Education and marriage and medical treat-
ment are secondary now, Ghalib,” Baba says. “Other
things take priority. Some of my investments will go
toward those other things now.”
He looks at me. I see many meanings in his eyes,
but he talks in code because Alan hangs on every
word. He looks from Baba to me and back again,
trying to figure out the conversation.
Baba means his investments will pay for our way
out of Syria. I listen so closely that he finishes cleaning my burns and I hardly notice the pain. He stands
straight. Cracks his back. He wraps my feet in clean
dressings, which make them feel secure. His words
also make me feel secure, knowing he has a plan to get us to safety.
“What are you talking about, Baba?” Alan says.
“Your future,” Baba says. “All of our futures.
When the war is over, there will still be money left
in my orchards and my pharmacy—provided they’re
not blown up.”
Something about getting ready to leave fills me
up in a way I can’t explain. I say nothing to Dapir or
Dayah, and certainly not to Bushra. The only time I
45
let my feelings out is when I lie in bed at night and listen to the distant krump of explosions and barrel bombs, to the alarms and sirens after an airstrike. I
smell the fires. See their glow stain the clouds. Every-
thing wells up inside me then. I am scared it will spill out. My blood thickens and darkens. I don’t know
what frightens me most: staying in Kobani with air-
strikes and barrel bombs and the threat of Mahmoud
and Dima, or leaving Hamza and everything I love
to go somewhere unknown and different.
Baba knows how I feel. We don’t talk about it,
but sometimes he sits on my bed when everyone else
is asleep. We watch the fire-shadows dance on the
ceiling. We listen to distant explosions. Baba says if
we lie as still as dead people, perhaps our fears will
be still too and let us sleep. We don’t talk unless my
nightmares are so bad that he is already beside me
when I wake up. Then he holds me tight. He stays
until I am calm. Until the darkness in my blood soft-
ens and fades.
“I’m here,” he says.
“Breathe slowly,” he says.
Sometimes he stays until the next morning, in
case I have nightmares again.
46
5
The night before we leave, I sit on the floor in the
back room to sort what I will bring with me. Alan
stretches out on his cot to watch.
“What are you doing?” he says.
“Sorting.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Because what?”
“Just because.”
I make three piles: Essentials, Maybes and
Definitely Nots. Essentials include my computer
games, my music player and headphones, my three
favorite books (about soccer, survival in the wild,
and spies), the Syrian soccer team strip and boots
I got for my birthday, my sports watch and my
pocketknife. I add my leather wallet and best sports
47
medals from the last two years in school.
My Definitely Nots include my schoolbooks,
jacket, sweaters and jeans I don’t like, action toys,
board games and old sports cards. Alan snatches up
one of my old medals.
“Are you giving this away?”
“Maybe.”
“Can I have it?” He turns the imitation gold
medal over.
“If you like.”
“Thanks!”
My Maybes pile is tiny: deodorant and body
spray from Dayah, and a book from Bushra that I was
going to put in the Definitely Nots, but she might
see it there.
Dayah comes in. “How’s it going?”
I point to the Definitely Nots. “I’m leaving these
behind.”
Alan looks from Dayah to me. He sits up.
Dayah points to the Essentials. “And these?”
“They’re coming.”
“They certainly are not.”
I look at her. I look at my Essentials. “I need
everything here.”
“Sports medals? Computer games?”
48
“Essential,” I say.
“Are we going somewhere?” Alan says.
Bushra noses in with a smirk on her face. “Where
do you think we’re going to put all that, Ghalib?”
“We don’t need to put it anywhere,” I say. “I’ll carry my own stuff in my own sports bag.”
Dayah takes up my quilted jacket. “You’ll need
this.”
She lifts my schoolbooks, my sweaters, and old
jeans from Definitely Nots. “And these.”
“I don’t want them.”
“Where are we going?” Alan says.
“You’ll need warm clothes, Ghalib,” Dayah says.
“And schoolbooks.”
“I don’t have room.”
“Then take out the games and toys.”
“They are not games and toys,” I say. “They
are essential items. Survival items. It’s murder in the schoolyard, Dayah. It’ll be worse in foreign lands. I
can’t survive without this stuff.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Dayah says.
Bushra reaches down to add my deodorant and
body spray to the Essentials pile. “I’m not going
with you if you don’t have these. Where’s your
toothbrush?”
49
Alan stands on his cot now. “We’re leaving Kobani!” he says. “That’s why Ghalib is packing.”
“You said I could decide what to bring,” I say to
Dayah, ignoring Alan. “Now you and Bushra are
making all the decisions. It’s nothing to do with her.
I’m supposed to be making my own choices. I’m supposed to be growing up.”
Alan’s face is shining. “I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Two words, Ghalib,” Bushra says. “Bare. Essen-
tials. Which one do you not understand?”
“Four words, Bushra,” I say. “Mind. Your. Own.
Business.”
“That’s enough,” Dayah says. “Go into the front
room, Bushra.”
Alan jumps up and down on his cot and nearly
falls off. “We’re really leaving!”
Dayah lifts him down. “Go wi
th Bushra. She’ll
tell you what’s going on.”
When they’ve gone, she turns back to me. “We
have to carry everything, Ghalib. There’s no room
for luxuries.”
“These aren’t luxuries. You’re making me take
stuff I don’t even want. Sweaters and a jacket, stupid
old schoolbooks.”
“Either you decide what to leave behind, or
50
I decide for you. You can’t bring everything and that’s final.”
“It sounds like you’ve already made the deci-
sions,” I say. “Without even listening to what I want.”
---
It’s still dark when Dapir wakes me. We leave Kobani
today. “Stay quiet,” she says. “Alan is still asleep.”
I sit up. My belly is sick. Alan doesn’t move as I
pull on my jeans and sandals. The house is quiet but
busy. Dapir and Dayah are wrapping food parcels in
the front room. Bushra is piling bags and bedrolls at
the front door.
“Help Dapir to make breakfast,” Dayah says
to me.
“I don’t want anything to eat.”
“You’re not leaving this house without a proper
breakfast,” Dayah says. “Bushra, wake Alan and strip
the beds.”
After a breakfast none of us enjoys, Baba cleans
and binds my feet, while Dapir and Dayah empty the
cabinets of food and Bushra gets Alan ready. Baba
goes up to the attic and brings down a strongbox
full of gold jewelry I’ve never seen before: heavy
51
necklaces and chains, watches and rings. Alan, Bushra and I stare as he carefully lifts each item. He
gives five gold necklaces, two rings, and a bracelet to
Dayah, a necklace and gold bangle to Bushra. Dapir
doesn’t want gold. “I’m too old to be weighed down
with jewelry,” she says.
Baba clasps a gold wrist chain and neck chain on
me, and even Alan wears a fine gold chain.
“Keep them safe,” Baba says. “These are our
tickets to a new life.”
I finger the heavy gold and wonder how far it
will take us. Our nearest border crossing is in Mur-
sitpinar, twenty minutes’ drive from Kobani, but
Turkey closed down the border there months ago,
after the Protection Units took back Kobani from
ISIS. Before the war, Dapir, Dayah and Aunt Najah
crossed at Mursitpinar on day trips to Turkey. They
came home with gifts: jeans or a wallet for me, a new
skirt for Bushra, Turkish delight and embroidered
cloths.
“Now we have to travel to Aleppo,” Baba says.
“From there, to the crossing at Bab al-Hawa.”
Without Refuge Page 4
