by Dan Mayland
“To do what?”
When she declined to answer, Sami repeated the question then said, “The children need you, Tahira.”
“I know that. And I am trying, Sami!”
He brought her face to his and tried to embrace her. When she failed to respond, he lifted the door handle a hair, which allowed the lock to disengage. As he opened the second of the two locks, he said, “I must tell you, we have a guest. I anticipated you would be home when I brought her here.”
chapter 44
Hannah and the children ate the bulgur in the sheet fort, from bowls decorated with blue fleur-de-lis. After they were finished, Hannah made up a story about two young chickens named Prince Abdullah and Princess Lila who discovered a secret room that brought them all the way to a chicken shopping-mall paradise in America known as the Paramus Park Souk where, because they were phenomenal tambourine players, they were able to make a lot of money which they used to buy pistachio ka’ak pastries and—
When Hannah heard a door opening upstairs, she stopped speaking midsentence.
“Baba!” cried Adam.
Hannah followed Adam and Noora out of the sheet fort and up the stairs where she saw Sami standing behind a conservatively dressed woman who was a good deal shorter than him. It took her a moment to realized that this woman, with her hollowed-out cheeks and troubled frown, was the same smiling, attractive woman Hannah had seen in the photograph at the hospital.
“Mama, where were you?” asked Adam. He hugged her, and while she didn’t turn him away, she didn’t hug him back. Noora lingered in the background.
“You should be in bed,” said Tahira. Her voice had an edge to it.
“Hannah was telling us a story,” said Adam.
Sami gestured to Hannah with an open palm. “This is our young guest that I was telling you about.” He introduced her and explained she worked for a relief organization that had been helping deliver medicine to hospitals in Aleppo, and that she had been the victim of a kidnapping attempt during which she had been injured.
“I am so grateful for your hospitality,” said Hannah, wishing that she had thought to put her headscarf back on before leaving the cellar. The necessities of war had upended traditions in ways large and small, but she still sensed that Sami bringing an unfamiliar woman home was not a welcome development. Upon receiving no response, she added, “I hope to leave tomorrow, I only wait for a call from my driver.”
“I am going to bed,” said Tahira.
Hannah slept for nine hours. When she awoke, she wriggled her toes in the clean sheets that Adam had found for her, feeling a little guilty because she was so dirty.
The room was dusty, but aside from that, it was easy to imagine that she was in an upscale hotel. The refinished shutters that looked out onto the courtyard had been pulled shut, but rays of morning light filtered past the louvers, casting a striped shadow on the thick marble sill. Above her, in between exposed beams, the ceiling had been painted with stylized tulips and pomegranate blossoms. The interior limestone wall that bordered the courtyard had been sandblasted clean, as had the other three walls of exposed fieldstone.
From the courtyard, she heard the rumble of a generator and smelled diesel smoke.
Her head was tender to the touch where Sami had stitched it up, and her neck and torso sore from the fight with her kidnapper. But she felt well otherwise, and knew she was lucky to be alive. Still hanging from a leather cord around her neck was her silver Hand of Fatima necklace. She’d bought it two years ago at a bazaar in Antakya, because many—Jews and Christians included, though it was named after Muhammad’s daughter—considered it to be a sign of peace and good luck, and she’d been hoping it would bring her both. As she clutched it now, she considered that perhaps it had.
She dressed quickly, putting on the same soiled, blood-spattered clothes she had been wearing for the past two days. Upon throwing open the shutters, she observed Adam in the courtyard, sitting in a patch of sunlight next to a collection of blue plastic jugs filled with diesel fuel. He appeared to be folding a paper airplane.
“I guess you woke early,” she called. “May I help make breakfast?”
He made a few more folds, focusing intently. “There is bread with oil,” he said.
“Is your father awake?”
He nodded.
“Do you know where he is?”
“Hospital.”
Adam finished a few more folds, then held up his new paper airplane and smiled. It had bat wings and reminded Hannah of the shape of a stealth bomber. “Amazing,” she said. “And your father—when did he leave for the hospital?”
“A long time ago.”
“Where is Noora?”
“At the Paramus Park Souk, playing with chickens,” he said. This was followed by giggling.
Hannah was able to get a weak cell phone signal on the second floor and learned that her new driver had left Azaz at dawn and hoped to meet her just outside the old city, near the Qinnasrin Gate, at ten.
Which was in twenty minutes. She texted him that she’d be there.
Before leaving, she rejoined Adam in the courtyard. The sun had come out, and he was wearing a collared short-sleeved shirt that was too small for him, concentrating as he repeatedly threw his new plane into the air. After each throw, he’d make small adjustments to the folds.
The generator had been shut off, but the smell of diesel fuel lingered.
“I have to leave now,” she said.
“But you need to finish the story.”
“I bet you can finish it. You have a good imagination.”
“It will not be the same.”
“No, I suppose not.” Hannah waited until Adam retrieved his plane, then asked, “And where is your mother?”
Adam led her to a massive door off the courtyard that had been decorated with a sixteen-point star and reinforced with black, wrought iron straps.
“In there,” he said.
“Could you knock?”
He did. No one answered.
“You just have to go in,” he said.
Hannah didn’t want to do that, so she knocked harder than Adam had.
When no one responded, Adam yanked open the door. “Mama!” he yelled, loud enough that Hannah flinched. “The guest woman leaves!”
Tahira was lying on a bed in a raised section of the room, a pillow propped up behind her back, the glow of her phone illuminating her olive skin. The shutters to the courtyard had been closed tight, and she’d draped sheets over them.
She shielded her eyes from the new light that spilled in from the doorway.
“I only wanted to let you know that I am leaving,” said Hannah. “Thank you so much for your hospitality.”
“Close the door. Now.”
Hannah did. She then said goodbye to Noora in the cellar, and Adam followed her to the front foyer.
“Are you going to help Baba at the hospital?” he asked.
Hannah bent down. “Probably not. I plan to go home. To America.”
“Oh.”
She nodded, suddenly filled with a sense that she didn’t want to leave this little boy. Struck with an idea, she cocked her head, squinted at him, and said, “I bet you would know how to use a cell phone if you had one.”
“I use Baba’s sometimes.”
“You know how to make calls and send texts?”
He nodded.
She retrieved her phone from her back pocket and turned it on. “This one is a little dented, but it still works. Would you like to have it?”
Her real phone was back in Antakya. This was just a cheap backup she used when traveling in Syria. She purposely hadn’t stored financial information, photos, or much else on it. Mainly it was just downloaded music.
Eyes wide, Adam nodded again.
“I will give it to you, but before yo
u use it, you must ask your mother or father whether it is permitted. Okay?”
Adam agreed, so after taking a minute to delete a few recent texts and enter her name and the number for her real phone into the contacts, she handed him the phone and charger.
“If you ever want to call or text me—or maybe not me, but maybe you have other friends, or family you want to get in touch with—if you want to call me or them, now you can.”
Hannah promised herself that, once back in Antakya, she would go online to replenish the minutes on the Turkish SIM card that was in the phone.
“Thank you,” he said, and he patted his heart quickly and bowed his head.
She wanted to hug him, but instead lightly placed a hand on his shoulder and asked him to lock the door behind her.
He said he would.
“Okay then, Adam Hasan. You take care of yourself.”
She turned, but at the last moment, she quickly slipped her Hand of Fatima necklace from her neck and placed it around his.
“An extra gift, to protect you,” she said, then left.
chapter 45
Ankara, Turkey
“A toast then!” said Oskar, lifting his glass. “To good friends becoming better friends.”
His date, a petite brunette named Melinda, smiled modestly and tipped her head, “To good friends becoming better friends.”
They clinked glasses. Oskar took a sip of his wine. Melinda did the same.
They were seated at a table for two in an old Ottoman-era home that had been converted into an upscale restaurant. Above them, dried sumac-berry branches hung from age-blackened wood beams. The orange flicker of a candle in the center of the table reflected off their wine glasses. The air smelled of cinnamon.
At twenty-four, Melinda was five years his junior. She was British, Oxford-educated, and fluent in Turkish because her mother had been a diplomat. She worked in the international trade department at the British embassy in Ankara, where they’d met at an embassy reception.
“Imagine what it would have been like to live in this place,” said Melinda. She shuddered dramatically. “Freaky.”
“I don’t know,” said Oskar, contemplating her use of the work freaky and wondering if their age difference might be more of an issue than he’d thought. “Maybe not so bad.”
“But it’s so dark!”
“It is that.”
“So,” said Melinda, after they had reviewed the menu. “I understand that you were posted to Syria before the war.” Wide-eyed, she placed her elbows on the table and rested her chin on the back of her hands as she stared at him.
“I was.”
“Tell me about it.”
“There’s really not much to tell,” said Oskar.
“Tell me about it anyway.”
“I was a field engineer. We were trying to develop a site for an urban park that was going to help revitalize a local neighborhood. Then the war came, and I left.”
“I was in Istanbul when the protests broke out there in the summer of 2013, that was really something,” said Melinda, and for the next half hour, prompted by Oskar’s tepid questions, she spoke of her experiences in the Turkish capital, exaggerating her brushes with violence.
As she did so, Oskar considered that his wine, a white clay-pot-fermented kvevri from Georgia, was quite tannic. He further considered that, while his last sexual partner had been a tattooed Romanian aid worker who’d left him with a case of chlamydia, at least there had been no postcoital emotional entanglements to deal with. He found himself wishing the same could be true in this instance, should any physical intimacy develop. He sensed, however, that Melinda harbored different expectations.
It had been a mistake to accept her invitation to dinner.
Interrupting his thoughts, Melinda asked, “So when did you leave for good?”
“Sorry?” Oskar turned to her, mildly embarrassed that he’d lost the thread of the conversation.
“Syria? When did you leave?”
“Oh, right.” He took a sip of wine. “Summer of 2012.”
“But the war had already started by then, no?”
“It had, in parts of the country at least. It came late to Aleppo. But still, we hung on longer than we should have.”
After he spoke, he realized that the use of pronoun “we” instead of “I” must have sounded strange given that he had never mentioned Hannah.
“That sounds so brave.”
Oskar sensed she was receptive to hearing him recount some valiant act. A few years ago, he would have been happy to supply such a tale, and to tell it with false modesty. But not now.
“It wasn’t,” he said. “It was stupid.”
2016
chapter 46
Rebel-held Aleppo
They came to bomb ISIS, or so they claimed. To their credit, they did.
KAB-500Kr glide bombs fell from Sukhoi and MiG fighter jets, 3M-54 Kalibr cruise missiles were launched from ships as far away as the Caspian Sea, Kh-101 cruise missiles were released from massive Cold War–era Tupolev turboprop bombers that rumbled so loudly in the sky they rattled window panes and dishes . . .
But they also claimed that they were not there to take the side of the Assad regime, and that was a lie because their bombs fell not only on ISIS, but also on the Free Syrian Army and her allies. In Raqqa and Homs, and then in Aleppo. Just a few, at first. Then hundreds. Then even more.
When the Russians entered the war, joining forces with Assad and the Iranians, Sami redoubled his efforts at the M2. If he had treated twenty a day before the Russians started bombing, then he would heal thirty a day now, he resolved.
Tahira dealt with the situation differently. In February of the new year, Sami found out exactly how differently.
He was between operations at the M2 when he received the call. Because the Bolero ringtone had indicated it was his wife, he was surprised to hear a male voice.
The man explained that his name was Abdul, and it was essential that Sami come to the town of Kafr Hamrah. Immediately.
After taking his phone from his ear and staring at it for a moment in confusion, Sami asked, “Why do you call me on my wife’s phone?”
“Out of necessity, sir. When can you come?”
Sami heard what sounded like a woman wailing.
“Where is my wife?”
“Here.”
“I must speak with her.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” said Abdul. Then, “But perhaps this is not possible. There was an incident.”
“What incident?” Sami asked. Then, “Are my children there as well?”
“I believe not.”
A part of Sami’s brain registered the import of what the man was saying, but a larger part did not want to admit it. He felt as though he were floating. “Perhaps I have not been clear,” he said. “I am a doctor. I have patients in need of care. To leave would be to—”
“If you want to retrieve your wife, Doctor, you must come to my shop in Kafr Hamrah!” He blurted out a street address, then said, “By God, I am sorry.”
“Is she hurt?” Sami asked, but the man had already hung up.
Sami stood outside the operating room for a moment. His legs began to tremble.
Retrieve your wife. What did that mean?
“Dr. Sami,” said one of the nurses. “They are ready for you.”
Sami felt his chest tighten, gripping him first with steady pressure then with a ferocity that left him breathless.
“Dr. Sami?”
He tried to wave the nurse away with one hand as he braced himself against the wall with the other.
“Are you not well?” she asked.
He straightened his back and inhaled once, then again. “I must leave.”
He walked back to Beit Qarah. A frail pensioner whom he did not recognize a
t first, but then realized used to be friends with his mother, lay bundled in shawls, napping in the front reception room.
Upon waking, she claimed not to know where Tahira had gone. “She tells me nothing, that one.”
“Then why are you here?”
After suffering a coughing fit, she explained that Tahira had begged her to watch the children until the evening. But that was all she knew.
Adam and Noora were in the courtyard, using chalk that Tahira had bought them to draw on the floor. It was cold and damp. Leaden clouds hung low in the sky. They were both wearing puffy winter jackets that had been repaired with tape.
“When did Mama leave?” he asked them.
“This morning,” said Adam.
“Did she say where she was going?”
“Look, Baba.” Adam pointed to one of his chalk drawings. “Look how fat the chicken is!”
“Adam! Did Mama say where she went?”
“To a secret place. But she said she would take us there soon.”
Sami glanced at Noora. She had barely acknowledged him.
“I need to leave,” he said to Adam. “To find Mama. Can you make dinner?”
Adam said he could.
“It is cold,” Sami added. “Do not wait to go inside until you are freezing.”
It was cold inside too though; there was not enough diesel to run the space heaters for long, much less to power the main heating system. Sami had bought a small, wood-burning stove, but there was little wood to burn save for the furniture, and it had not come to that yet.
“Okay,” said Adam.
“Put on your winter hat. You must set a good example for Noora.”
He walked, then hitched a ride with a private car. The driver tailgated a dump truck, using it as a shield from potential snipers in front of them, so the air stank of exhaust.
Some stretches of the road they followed were purgatorial visions of ruin—bombed-out buildings, twisted metal, blasted date palms—but in others, street vendors huddled around garbage-bin fires sipping hot sahlab drinks, selling cooking oil from giant plastic tubs. Pretending life was normal.
