by Dan Mayland
A few times—when Hannah prepared tea, and the children were playing in the cellar—he tolerated her questions.
She learned that his father’s family had lived in Damascus since the 1700s, and that his parents’ marriage had caused quite the scandal because his mother, a descendant of French colonialists, had been raised Roman Catholic, while his father had been a Sunni Muslim.
And even though he hadn’t asked her, he listened politely when she told him that her own father, a Syrian named Eli Samaan from a Sunni merchant family, had died in Aleppo before the war, leukemia, and that he’d been a con man of sorts, almost making it big in the United States selling electronics, buying a Cadillac, and marrying an American wife, but ultimately reduced to running back to Syria, tail between his legs, to peddle secondhand stereos in the al Madina souk.
Had Sami ever heard of her father, ever bought electronics from his shop in the souk, maybe when he was a boy? No? Well, she wasn’t surprised, but he should get used to the last name Samaan because it had been her original last name, before her mother had remarried, and she intended to take it back again someday when she had a chance to file all the paperwork.
On two occasions Hannah even got Sami to express what she gauged to be genuine interest in a conversation, once by inquiring as to whether he had heard that Einstein’s gravitational waves had been observed—he had, he read Le Monde on his phone when he could—and a second time when she mentioned that in Antakya, she had watched a program on gene therapies that were finally beginning to show promise. Had he heard of this?
Indeed, he had, he exclaimed, then proceed to speak—at great length—about it.
The matter of her lingering presence came to a head near the end of March, after she had been there for two weeks.
Sami came home early that evening, with news that the sister of a nurse who worked at the hospital was willing to move in and watch the children.
He made the announcement when they were all seated at the kitchen table. Hannah had made a lamb stew with a sauce of sour cherries.
“It came as a surprise,” he added. “I had spoken with this nurse over a week and a half ago, and she had indicated her sister might be interested, but I had not heard from her since.”
Three beeswax candles, set upon an overturned olive-jar lid, burned silently in the center of the table.
Adam gritted his teeth and squinted.
Hannah glanced briefly at Sami then studied a paisley pattern in the tablecloth. “And this woman—what do you know of her?”
“She and her son lost their home last month. Before the war, she was an elementary school teacher, and she has some nursing skills, so we may begin using Beit Qarah as a recovery ward again.”
He explained that patients too well for the M2, but too injured or ill to be released, had sometimes been brought back to Beit Qarah to recover, and Tahira had overseen this process.
Hannah wanted to protest that there was no reason patients couldn’t be brought back to Beit Qarah now, that she could manage. Instead, she held her tongue, and told herself that it was better this way, that she couldn’t stay here forever, and that repairing relationships in America should be her priority. The longer she stayed, the harder her eventual departure would be for her and the children.
“Excuse me,” she said, trying to smile and failing as she pushed her chair back from the table and stood. To cry over this news would be absurd, but she could feel the tears coming anyway. “I will be right back.”
Later that night, after helping to put the children to sleep in the cellar, she found herself alone in her room off the courtyard, staring at the ceiling, listening to Enya through earbuds, and wondering—what if? What if she were to go to him now?
Would he laugh at her? Push her away?
She pulled the bedsheet up under her chin, turned to her side, tucked her knees up into her waist, and pulled her forearms to her chest.
She’d seen the way he looked at her—the quick glance followed by studied indifference when they were drinking tea and talking. And she knew what it meant when men looked at her that way. In that sense he was no different from Oskar or half the men she’d worked with at the International Aid Coalition.
But would he perceive an advance as just a pathetic attempt to stay on as a nanny?
There would be truth to that, but it would be a half-truth.
She glanced at the door to her room. It was cracked open a hair. A sliver of light from a crescent moon extended to her bed. She closed her eyes and imagined what it would be like to touch him, to run her finger across his large, full lips. To run a finger across his chest. To feel his weight. He was thin, but he would be heavy anyway because he was so damn tall.
Oskar had been the last man she’d slept with, and that was four years ago now. With Oskar it had been easy, because Oskar was just Oskar. She remembered how he would always gently tease her about her wild knullruffs, post-sex hair, and how they’d laughed about it when looking in the mirror together, whereas with Sami . . .
The idea of him placing his hand on her abdomen caused her to shiver with something that fell between pleasure and desperation. She imagined the coolness of his palm, the roughness of the callouses on his fingertips, the pressure on her belly button. She placed her own hand on her belly button, held it there for a moment, then let it slide lower. The familiarity of her touch, the knowledge that it was her hand and not his, and the utter lack of real intimacy it implied, made her want to cry again, and she stopped.
Distraught, her thoughts grew dark. She recalled her father’s old Peugeot sedan and how when it was breaking down, he was always searching for replacement parts at the souk, but the replacement parts he found never seemed to be quite right. They’d work, but not as well as the original.
And that, she realized, was exactly what she was hoping she could be for Sami and Adam and Noora. A lousy replacement part.
When Hannah awoke she wasn’t sure what time it was, but it was still dark out. She assumed Sami had long since drifted off. The time to approach him had passed. Tomorrow she would meet the new woman, approve of her, and leave Aleppo for good.
She was hungry, having eaten little for dinner, so she swung her legs out of bed and walked barefoot across the cool marble floor. Her hair was tousled. She wore sweatpants and a loose-fitting cotton T-shirt.
Although intending to visit the kitchen, she noticed that the courtyard was bathed in moonlight, so she took a moment to step into the center of it and look up at the sky.
At first she didn’t see him. He was so quiet, and his dark form seemed to be an extension of the wicker furniture. Then he shifted slightly, and she startled.
“Salaam,” he said.
He was seated on the wicker couch and had been leaning forward with his arms resting on his thighs, but now he straightened.
She wasn’t sure whether the thumping in her chest was a result of having been startled, or because it was him, here in front of her. She turned to face him, taking quick sips of air.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. Her voice was barely a whisper.
He held her gaze. She felt frozen in place.
“You will be tired for work,” she said.
“Not very.” His voice was deep, and calm.
She hugged her arms to her chest. She’d been shot at while racing down Castello Road and she hadn’t been particularly afraid. She’d pulled people from rubble knowing it was possible, or even likely, that the regime would strike again at any moment. Compared to that, there is nothing to be afraid of now, she told herself.
But she was. He intimidated her.
She sat next to him on the wicker couch.
“Salaam,” she said.
They made eye contact and held it. Then Hannah slowly took his hand in hers and, encountering no resistance, guided his hand to her cheek. Their foreheads and noses touched
.
“I want to stay with you and the children,” she said, breathing the words into his mouth, breathing him in.
Their lips touched. He kissed her, and she kissed him back.
“Then stay.”
He guided her to his lap as she steered his hand from her cheek and up underneath her shirt to her bare breast. She shivered, and they kissed again, deeper this time, then he wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her up with ease.
Hannah laced both her legs around his waist. She pressed her whole body close against his as she buried her face in the crook of his neck. In her bedroom, when he finally slipped inside her, the sensation was both better and worse than she’d imagined. The stubble on his chin was so rough. For the second time that night, she began to cry.
“I know I am just a replacement,” she whispered to him afterward, as they were lying side by side, staring at the drifting moon shadows on the fieldstone wall opposite the bed. “For what you lost.”
Instead of denying it, as she’d hoped he would, he instead noted that he used replacement parts all the time in medicine. Replacement kidneys, hearts, livers. There was no shame in being a replacement, he said.
Replacements, in fact, were quite useful.
It was so unromantic, so not the answer she was hoping for, that she couldn’t help but laugh. And fall a little bit in love with him.
chapter 50
Regime-held Aleppo • Four months later
The cease-fire collapsed in April, and the airstrikes and artillery barrages resumed. In the Sukkari district, the al Quds hospital was hit, killing the last pediatrician. Newborns choked on dust. White phosphorus from incendiary munitions burned deep holes in flesh. Up north by the Turkish border, ISIS advanced.
The Russians began using cluster bombs, and Rahim helped generate the target lists for those bombs.
Indeed, that was his intention when, early in July, he picked up the handwritten intelligence report—one of many that had been delivered to his desk that morning—and began to read that two days ago a young man with a broken arm had attempted to pass through a checkpoint in the Ramouseh district of regime-held Aleppo. Because the soldiers at the checkpoint had suspected that the man’s papers were forged, he had been detained.
Under interrogation the detainee had revealed that until being wounded in an aerial bombing attack a week ago, he had fought for the al-Nusra rebel group. Detailed information about al-Nusra positions in the Malah district, near Castello Road, had followed. Rahim dutifully noted the positions, with the intention of forwarding the information to the targeteers.
It was not until the end of the report, however, that Rahim’s pulse quickened, and he sat up in his chair. For that was where he read that, when asked who had casted his arm and where, the detainee had claimed to have been treated at the old Omar Bin Abdul Aziz Hospital near the Maqam Gate, and that the man who had set and casted his arm had been exceptionally tall and known to all as Dr. Sami.
Three days later Rahim woke up an hour before sunrise. Feeling exceptionally vigorous, he stuffed himself with flatbread, white cheese, and apricot jam. After waking the Iranian intelligence officers who were still quartered in his house and downing two cups of strong black coffee, he performed his morning prayers with great enthusiasm. By seven he was dressed in his uniform, Makarov pistol at his side, ascending the steps to his office with an eagerness that had been unflagging ever since he had learned that Sami worked at the M2.
Today his optimism was rewarded.
The intelligence report had been filed at four in the morning. As had been the case the prior two nights, Dr. Sami had been observed at the M2 by the spy assigned to watch him. But this time, instead of spending the night there, the doctor had left at three thirty in the morning and had proceeded on foot through the Qinnasrin Gate and into the old city—stopping only when he had come to a locked door at the end of alley, the GPS coordinates of which were attached to the report.
When his secretary Aisha showed up at ten after eight, Rahim first upbraided her for being late, then ordered her to provide him with military grid maps, the ones that were comprised of photos taken on low altitude bombing runs.
Minutes later he sat back in his chair and sighed.
He had always envisioned buying a house in the country for himself someday. Maybe in the fertile Orontes Valley between Aleppo and the sea. Nothing that was unduly expensive—he knew his station in life was largely settled—but he had long pictured being able to save enough to purchase a house with a small courtyard. He would be content, of course, with a concrete fountain instead of marble. As long as he could hear the water running. It would be his own little private paradise, where his grandchildren and nieces and nephews could play.
That dream had receded further and further out of reach. He was now middle-aged, had no savings to purchase a house, and even if he were to stumble upon a fortune, the idea of his daughter bringing her children—assuming she ever were to marry and have them—to a house that he owned seemed far-fetched at best given that she, and his wife, still blamed him for Adel’s death.
So it was particularly painful for him to observe that, near the end of the alley where the Dr. Sami had last been observed, was a house organized around a spacious central courtyard and that in the center of this courtyard was a fountain.
It was one of the old houses, of the type that was renowned in Aleppo and Damascus and usually had a name. Beit Ghazaleh. Beit Wakil. Beit Achiqbash. The type of house that Europeans would pay to dismantle and reassemble in museums simply because it was so beautiful; the type of house that in centuries past, would have sheltered a rich merchant or foreign consul or a pasha of the Ottoman Empire. When an ambassador from Constantinople paid Aleppo a visit, he might be hosted in such a place.
Only now, Rahim suspected, it sheltered a doctor.
Curiously enough, half the courtyard was covered with a tent-like structure. While it was common enough for people to hang rugs and other blinds around their houses to protect themselves from sniper attacks, Rahim had not heard of people taking such precautions in interior courtyards. Did the fact that the inhabitants of this house had done so suggest they thought themselves important enough to be specifically targeted by airborne attacks?
Perhaps. A top doctor might merit such protection.
He forced Aisha to loan him her reading glasses—ignoring her protests that his fat head would ruin them—and expanded the image on the screen as he leaned toward it and squinted.
Upon closer examination, he noticed several other relevant details: a green rectangle on one of the roofs adjacent to the courtyard; a child’s slide and furniture inside the courtyard; and the presence of a man on the rooftop who appeared to be wielding an automatic rifle.
The man on the roof with the gun suggested the house was guarded.
As for the green rectangle, Rahim assumed it was a rooftop garden, not uncommon on either side of Aleppo, given the frequent food shortages. As of a week and a half ago, when the photo had been taken, it appeared to have been growing vigorously. Given that it had been a particularly dry spring, it was a certainty then that the garden was being regularly watered.
A busy doctor would not have the time to tend to a garden like that, though. So assuming this was where Dr. Hasan lived—and Rahim thought it probable, given the poor state of the adjacent buildings and the assumption that Dr. Hasan would not stoop to living in anything less than a small castle—the likelihood that he was living alone was slim. Indeed, the plastic slide in the courtyard suggested a child, or perhaps several, still lived with him.
Which in turn suggested the presence of a wife.
And why would Dr. Hasan’s wife and children not be living with him? It was true that most people of means had fled the city, but the doctor had chosen to play the role of a martyr, and the wife of a such great man would never abandon him. Unlike Rahim’s own wife, wh
o had fled to Lebanon.
Rahim spoke with a clerk at the property registry office, impressing upon him the urgency of his request, and that the Military Intelligence Directorate would not look kindly upon excessive delays. A mere four hours later, he learned that the house in question was still listed as being owned by a man who had allegedly purchased it in 1982 and whose name meant nothing to Rahim. He ordered the clerk to research the matter further, and learned that in 2010, a bill of sale had been signed and money exchanged. The sale had been noted, but the transfer from one owner to another had not been recorded due to unresolved claims against the title.
The names of the purchasers listed on the copy of the bill of sale agreement were Dr. Samir Hasan and Tahira Hasan.
The fact that Dr. Hasan had seen fit to give a woman equal property rights only confirmed Rahim’s dismal opinion of his character.
The interrogation report he submitted later that day to be reviewed by a targeting committee was marked as urgent and, along with the precise GPS coordinates of Dr. Hasan’s home, contained the following passage:
Aerial photographs of residence reveal presence of armed militants. Al-Nusra Front intrusion into al-Jalloum district suspected. Much of inner courtyard intentionally shielded from view, suggesting presence of high-value targets. Immediate action recommended.
Rahim knew the regime and the Russians were hungry for targets. And while the M2 had been bombed early in the war and again in 2015—and Rahim would certainly advocate for a strike now—it had a maternity ward, so the decision whether to strike it again would be a political one, made at the highest levels.
But a private residence? To add that to the targeteers’ list would be an easy affair.
chapter 51
Rebel-held Aleppo
On the morning of July 15, Hannah woke at dawn, made breakfast for the children and the eleven overflow patients from the M2 who were staying at Beit Qarah, then left the house pushing a wheelbarrow, intending to pick up a shipment of Mercy Corp food baskets by the Qinnasrin Gate.
