The Doctor of Aleppo

by Dan Mayland

  “Dr. Hasan?” she asked, appearing taken aback. She pulled headphones out of her ears, and he caught a snippet of English-language rock music playing before she tapped her phone and turned it off. He noted that her hands had been decorated with henna.

  Because they were close enough for Sami to feel uncomfortable, he leaned away from her. “Surnames are not used here. Dr. Sami will suffice.”

  “Of course, I should have known.”

  “It is a matter of safety.”

  “I understand.”

  Sami made as though he were about to leave.

  “I always wondered what happened to you,” the woman added.

  Curiosity piqued—he recognized her but could not recall from where—Sami asked, “And how do I know you?”

  “You treated my friend,” said the woman, sounding eager now. Too eager, thought Sami. “Before the war, when you were working at the university hospital. He had a broken leg.”

  Sami considered. “I see so many patients,” he said.

  “He was a Swede, tall, as tall as you. In July of 2012. We both worked for the European Development Service.” She stepped toward him and briefly touched his forearm. “It is so good to see you. After all these years.”

  “Hmm,” said Sami, pointedly staring at his forearm.

  “Oskar Lång was his name,” she added, withdrawing her hand. “He left when the rebels attacked.”

  Sami pressed his lips together then nodded. “Oh yes, of course.” He remembered the Swede. And now that he thought about it, he vaguely recalled someone pestering him with questions, and that—

  “But you are American, no?” he whispered suddenly, with concern.

  “And Syrian, my father was from Aleppo.”

  His voice still a whisper, he said, “But if you are American, of course it is too dangerous for you to be here. Why—”

  Interrupting, she whispered, “Think of my nationality the way you think of your last name.” Leaning in so close to him that he caught a whiff of peppermint lozenge her breath, she added, “Meaning it is something best not to mention.”

  “I would think not!”

  “Unless,” she said, her tone now cheerful and loud, “I am crossing from Syria into Turkey, and then it is useful because I have a Turkish work visa. By the way, in case you forgot, my name is Hannah.”

  They had been speaking in Arabic, but she pronounced her name in the English way.

  He stared blankly at her for a moment before stepping out of the way to let a nurse carrying an infant incubator squeeze by.

  “I was working for the European Development Service before the war,” she added, “but now I am with Bonne Foi. We just brought you fentanyl.”

  “Ah.”

  “Not enough, I know.” After a period of silence bordering on awkward, Hannah added, “I should be going.”

  Sami detested small talk and typically tried to engage in as little of it as possible. But as she was leaving, he found himself confronting an unfamiliar desire—to prolong a conversation.

  “And how is your Swedish friend?” he asked, as she was turning away. “His leg, it healed properly?”

  She turned back and, after using her tongue to reposition the lozenge in her mouth, smiled. “I believe so.”

  He nodded.

  “The truth is,” she added, “he is no longer my friend. I have not seen him in years.”

  Feeling as though he might have pried too deeply, Sami nodded mutely again then quickly asked, “You were looking for something?”

  She blushed, then said, “Only for the bathroom.”

  Embarrassed—this was why small talk should be avoided, he admonished himself—he said, “The end of the hall.”

  At that he turned, assuming he would never see her again, and his thoughts turned to where he might buy diesel fuel at this time of night.

  “Until tomorrow,” she called.

  “Tomorrow?” he asked, turning back to her.

  “My driver, he injured his wrist, and he insists upon waiting to see you because you saved his cousin’s arm. So I will see you again tomorrow morning.”

  Sami frowned, conflicted. And a bit chagrined. “Had I not committed to a prior engagement . . .”

  “I understand.”

  “He is in much pain?”

  “I think so, but he will not admit it.”

  Sami sighed then relented.

  Twenty minutes later he showed Hannah and her driver an X-ray image that he had loaded to an old Lenovo laptop computer.

  “The distal radius has been fractured,” he announced. “Dorsal displacement of the fragments.”

  The driver, a middle-aged man who smelled of cigarettes and garlic, offered no response.

  “Is that bad?” Hannah asked.

  “Certainly, it is not good.”

  “But you can you fix it?”

  “Given the level of displacement and position of the two fragments, to do so properly I would need to operate on his wrist, install a plate and screws—or if not that, at least pin the fragments into place. But I have no plates and screws, and what pins I have are too large for the size of the fragments in question.”

  “But you can do something?” asked Hannah.

  “I can use a closed reduction method as best I can.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I can try to push the bones back into place without operating, then cast the injury. After that, it will be up to the patient to be careful not to displace the fragments.”

  “So, you can fix it?” asked the driver.

  “Not as I would like, but if you are careful, you should regain full use of your wrist.”

  The driver offered his profuse thanks.

  “The reduction must be done manually. It will be painful. You may wish you had not thanked me by the time I am through.”

  But the driver tolerated Sami manipulating the bones in his wrist without crying out or demanding any form of anesthesia, although tears did form in his eyes. He was again profuse with his thanks after Sami took another X-ray image and confirmed that the bone had indeed been set as well as it could be, short of surgery.

  “The cast is thinner than I would like,” said Sami, as he wrapped the wrist with fiberglass casting tape. “We use only the absolute minimum to provide rigidity. Because it will therefore offer you less protection, you will have to take care not to bang it, lest you dislodge the bone fragments, which will not begin to fuse for two weeks.”

  Upon finishing with the cast, Sami gave the driver detailed instructions on what he should and should not do. Then he stood and said good night.

  “Wait,” said Hannah. She flipped a lock of hair out her eyes. “Make a list.”

  “A list of what?” asked Sami.

  “Of things you need the most. Medicines, supplies—like fiberglass tape! Or just tell me now, if you have no time to write it down. I may not be able to get them to you, but I will do what I can.”

  Sami began to explain that they were perilously low on propofol, and even fentanyl despite the Bonne Foi delivery of earlier this evening. And they would be out of atropine entirely as of tomorrow. Yesterday they had run out of vancomycin. And if they didn’t get a supply of the polio vaccine in, well, that could kill more children than the war.

  He was still speaking when one of the nurses interrupted. A new patient had arrived. A teenage boy with burns over half his body and a piece of shrapnel still protruding from his skull. Dr. Wasim wanted Sami’s advice. Could he help?

  Hannah left with a promise she would do what she could to meet Dr. Sami’s needs.

  Sami texted Tahira to say he would not be coming home that night.

  chapter 33

  All week long, Adam Hasan had been hoping that the old man from the M2 who had been staying at Beit Qarah would leav
e. On Sunday, upon announcing that he was finally well enough to walk—thanks to Adam’s father—he did.

  Which meant Adam and his younger sister, Noora, would be alone in the house for the day.

  Well, not completely alone. Their mother was still there. But she hardly counted anymore. At night she stayed up late reading books. During the day she slept with the shutters pulled tight, wearing a purple eye mask in case any light got through the shutters. She used to promise that soon she would take him and Noora on a vacation to Jordan to be with their cousins, but then one of their cousins died, and now she never mentioned Jordan.

  So he was not worried that she would interfere with his plan.

  “I have a great idea,” he said to Noora, a few minutes after the patient had left.

  Noora’s eyes widened when he explained what he wanted to do.

  “We can fly them all the way to the street,” he added.

  Looking worried, Noora shook her head vigorously. But when Adam turned to leave, she followed him anyway.

  The door at the top of the narrow, stonewalled staircase that led to the rooftop terrace was locked.

  “Wait here,” Adam said.

  From behind a sleek fur coat that smelled of mothballs, in an armoire that stood in the room where his Mémère used to sleep when she had been alive, Adam retrieved a large, black key.

  Minutes later, he unlocked the door and bounded out onto the roof of Beit Qarah and into the bright sunshine.

  Noora ducked her head out of the doorway but kept her legs firmly planted in the stairwell.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “Look! Look! You can see the Citadel,” he said.

  The fortress’s walls appeared to be floating amid plumes of smoke. The air smelled of smoke.

  Adam took Noora’s hand and pulled her out onto the tiled section of roof.

  A breeze was blowing, ruffling Noora’s hair. She leaned into it with outstretched arms.

  Adam observed that most of the nearby roofs were intact like his was. A few had caved in—from the bombs, he knew—while others were cluttered with water tanks and rusted satellite dishes. On a roof in the far distance, a man with a gun was sitting on a pile of bricks. Adam squeezed between a stone parapet wall and a wrought iron railing. Noora followed, and they positioned themselves near the edge of an untiled section of roof that overlooked an alley near the entrance to their house.

  The first paper airplane Adam launched from the roof flipped over in the wind and tumbled to the street below.

  He cursed. That had been one of his best planes. He had gotten the design, a Concorde jet, from the back of the origami book his father had given him, and it had taken a long time for him to fold it. He had even put a small pebble in the nose of the plane so that it would fly straight.

  “Throw it harder next time,” said Noora.

  “If you throw it too hard, it crashes.” He had been practicing in the courtyard, so he knew.

  Noora stepped close to the edge of the roof with the one simple, crudely folded plane she had made, pulled her arm back, and launched her plane into the air. Whether by luck or design—Adam guessed luck—the plane caught a burst of air that propelled it forward with a velocity that made Noora squeal and jump up and down as she clapped her hands together.

  It shot down the narrow alley all the way to an intersection far away, at which point it turned, slowed as it circled around an invisible eddy of air, and then drifted out of sight.

  “Whoa,” said Adam.

  “Where did it go?”

  “Follow me,” he said.

  They climbed over waist-high walls and squeezed between rooftop buildings. A few times they had to jump over small gaps between buildings or take long detours to avoid having to jump over much larger gaps. On top of one roof was a garden; on top of another, a ceiling fan had been converted into an electricity-generating windmill. Halfway to their destination, a helicopter appeared in the sky, and they watched it race low over the eastern half of the city.

  Upon arriving at the spot directly above where the plane had disappeared, Adam got down on his belly and stuck his head over the edge of the roof.

  “Do you see it?” Noora asked.

  “No,” said Adam, and then his eyes fixed on a group of boys playing soccer in the middle of the road. He was pretty sure he knew one of them.

  “Selim!” he cried. “Selim! Up here!”

  One of the boys in the street turned, but he was looking in the wrong direction.

  “Up here!” cried Adam. “On the roof!”

  A small, stick-thin boy squinted at the roof. Adam waved excitedly. The boy pointed to Adam and said something to his friends. Everyone stopped playing soccer and looked up at the roof.

  Adam waved again then asked whether anyone had seen the plane.

  “Do you want to be on my team?” asked Selim.

  Adam played soccer all afternoon while Noora and Selim’s sister shared half a piece of yellow chalk and drew flowers on the cobbled pavement.

  While the children played, two veiled women wearing formless, black abaya robes stood nearby chatting. Also standing watch, and occasionally kicking an errant ball back to the game, was a bearded, heavily armed man.

  Every twenty minutes or so, Adam would promise himself he would leave after just one more goal was scored. But then a goal would be scored, and the other boys would encourage him to stay, and the game would keep going.

  Finally, they got tired of soccer, but one of the boys had a bike, and they took turns riding it up and down a pile of rubble.

  When Adam’s mother appeared, at first, he did not recognize her. She was backlit by the sun, and her uncovered hair was wild and uncombed. She wore plastic slippers and a rose-colored terrycloth bathrobe over green silk pajamas.

  One of the boys pointed at her and laughed. Adam laughed with them—until he realized who it was.

  “Noora!” he cried.

  His sister was on her hands and knees, trying to trap a wounded moth. She looked up. Adam scampered up the pile of rubble.

  “Get down!” his mother demanded. She climbed up the front side, and Adam ran down the back.

  The two women standing to the side giggled.

  The armed man sauntered over. “As-salamu alaykum, sister,” he said. Peace be upon you.

  “Wa alaykumu as-salam,” said his mother back, distracted. And upon you, peace. Then to Adam, “For an hour I have been looking for you!”

  “The boy was perfectly safe,” said the armed man. “I was here.”

  “And who are you?”

  “Mrs. Hasan, you do not recognize me?” When it was clear she did not, he introduced himself as Ibrahim Antar and reminded her that she used to visit his father’s cheese shop by the Antakya Gate. “My son, Selim, he is friends with your son,” he added. “And your husband, last year he tried to repair the liver of my cousin.”

  Adam watched his mother cover the base of her throat with her palm, dip her head, and say that of course she recognized him, “It is just this boy of mine, he makes me crazy,” she said. Then she asked about his cousin—he died three weeks after Sami operated on him, evidently—and his wife.

  Ibrahim explained that his wife had been killed by a sniper early in the war trying to cross to the regime-held side to visit her ailing mother, but that no one need regret the will of God. Inshallah, he would soon marry the wife of a martyr.

  They turned back to Adam.

  “He did not have permission to be outside,” said Tahira. “That is why I am so angry with him. Adam! Get down now!”

  “Is this so?” Ibrahim directed his question to Adam.

  Adam nodded.

  “And you disobeyed your mother?” asked Ibrahim.

  Adam nodded again.

  Ibrahim sighed. “Had I known, I would not have permitted
it,” he said to Tahira. And to Adam, “You must respect you mother more. Come here.”

  Adam did as instructed.

  The blow came too quick for him to dodge. An openhanded slap to the side of his head. He felt a scream rising in his chest and opened his mouth, but for a moment no sound escaped. His ear was ringing, and it burned. Finally, he began to cry.

  “He is in pain now, but he will certainly be more obedient later, you will see,” said Ibrahim.

  Adam felt his mother grasp his hand. Selim and the other boys were all staring at him. He wanted to be able to stop crying but could not.

  “I did not ask you to discipline my child!” cried his mother.

  Ibrahim appeared taken aback by her outburst. “Then you should discipline him yourself. So that he respects you.”

  “Noora!” said Tahira. “Come here!”

  Noora took her place at her mother’s side. Adam felt his mother grab his hand and begin to pull him away. They had only taken a few steps, however, before Ibrahim said, “One more thing, Mrs. Hasan. Next time you leave your house, you must cover yourself.”

  His mother did not respond.

  Adam, scared but filled with anger, called out, “My father is a doctor!”

  By which he meant to say that, even though he was too small to stand up to Ibrahim, his father was powerful and respected, and that if he were here, he would surely do something.

  His mother tugged at his arm. “You!” she said to him when they had turned the corner and the entrance to Beit Qarah was in sight. Her lip was trembling. “You will bring death upon yourself and your sister by saying such things.”

  Adam pulled his hand from hers, clenched his fists, and kept walking toward the entrance to their house.

  He was not worried about getting himself or Noora killed. If they got hurt, his father would fix them. If someone tried to hurt them, his father would protect them. Adam was sure of it.

  Because his father was a doctor.