The Doctor of Aleppo

by Dan Mayland

  But it was still smoky.

  “Shh,” she whispered. “Adam is sleeping.”

  “Quiet, Noora,” said Adam.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” said Noora.

  Hannah took three breaths. “Does anybody here want to hear a chicken story?” she asked, then told them about how Prince Chicken Abdullah and Princess Chicken Lila learned how to travel secretly though the air vents at the Paramus Park Souk, the better to spy on a group of terribly misguided chickens who were stealing sugar-coated fennel seeds from a candy store and how they out-negotiated a rich mustachioed rooster from Damascus, resulting in a purchase of one million purple sheets and the biggest piece of paper in the world. They used the sheets to build a giant sheet fort and they folded the piece of paper into a giant origami spaceship that they glued to the roof of the sheet fort. The wind on top of the sheet fort was so fierce that it caused the origami spaceship and the sheet fort to lift off the ground and fly around in the—

  Hannah stopped speaking in midsentence, thinking she might have heard something above them.

  “I wish I was like Prince Abdullah,” said Adam as he rearranged himself on the mattress.

  Hannah, still listening intently, said, “You are.”

  “But I am not a prince.”

  There it was again—some thumping perhaps? Maybe a voice? But Hannah couldn’t be sure. It was possible her mind was playing tricks on her.

  “How do you know you are not a prince?” she asked.

  “Because Baba is not a king.”

  “He is almost like a king, no? He is one of the best doctors in Aleppo, which is very much like being a king, I think. And your mother, she helped make the best soap in Aleppo, which is almost like being a queen. And Beit Qarah is like a palace.”

  “I mean a real king,” said Adam.

  “If you go back far enough in your history, maybe to your father’s father’s father or further, you would find somebody you are related to who was a real king.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean it. If you go back far enough, we are all related to each other. Even the two of us. So, I am certain that you, Adam Hasan, are related to a real king.”

  He was quiet for a moment then asked, “Really?” in a way that to Hannah seemed so innocent. And trusting. It was the trusting part that made her ache.

  “Really,” she said, but then thought—there! There it was again! A distinct thumping. It was hard to tell for sure, but it was conceivable that it was coming from near the cellar entrance. She held her breath.

  “What happened to the origami spaceship?” asked Adam.

  Distracted, and still concentrating on what was going on above, Hannah exhaled then said, “The wind blew so hard, it sent it and the sheet fort into outer space.” She listened again, thought she heard a muffled banging, and then had an idea. “But there was a problem,” she said quickly. “All the electricity got disconnected when the sheet fort lifted up from the ground, so there were no lights, and all the little chickens who had been playing in the fort started getting scared. So Prince Abdullah and Princess Lila started singing to them, which made everyone feel a lot better.” She gave them both a squeeze. “Hey, you know, besides being a prince and a princess, the other thing that makes you two a little bit like Chicken Abdullah and Chicken Lila is that you are both pretty good singers.”

  “I am pretty good,” admitted Adam.

  “And I would like to hear you both sing now, just like Chicken Abdullah and Chicken Lila in the story. What should we sing?”

  “Shadi,” said Adam immediately.

  It was the Fairuz song he had been listening to just before the barrel bomb exploded and would not have been Hannah’s choice because the song was about a boy and a girl who used to play together, and then a war comes, and the boy goes off to watch the fighting and is never seen again. But she didn’t think Adam and Noora associated the song with their own plight.

  “That is a great song,” said Hannah. “Should we sing it together?”

  She felt the children nodding next to her.

  Moments later, their three voices rang out loudly in unison.

  A long time ago, when I was a young girl, a boy used to come from the nearby woods, his name was Shadi . . .

  chapter 54

  The alleys in the old city were too narrow to accommodate the type of construction vehicles that could tear through debris quickly, but one of the white helmet men had a jackhammer, and he used it to break large sections of collapsed walls into pieces, and then everyone came together and used pry bars to lift the pieces off the pile.

  Sami’s hands were shredded and bleeding, his lungs filled with dust. Some of the wood ceiling beams that had been smoldering under the wall burst into flame when exposed to air.

  It was shortly after breaking apart a particularly large section of wall, that Sami thought he heard a snippet of one the songs his mother used to sing to him at night when he was a boy.

  Shadi was lost forever, snow fell and melted for twenty times, I grew up, and Shadi remained the boy I knew, playing in the snow . . .

  At first he thought his mind must be succumbing to sadness and exhaustion-induced dementia. But then he saw that the men around him had stopped and were listening, too, looking around them as though trying to ascertain where the sound was coming from. It was hard to tell, it seemed to be from everywhere, resonating in strange ways both beneath and above the rubble. Sami briefly wondered if one of his mother’s Fairuz records had been playing when the bomb hit and somehow had managed to keep playing, but that was improbable to the point of being fantasy. In any event, what he was hearing sounded nothing like the clear, plaintive voice of the real Fairuz.

  In fact, he noted as he concentrated on the song, whoever was singing clearly could not even carry a tune; the lyrics were being shouted more than sung.

  Sami turned, prepared to ask whoever was attempting to sing to please, please desist—did they not know they were trying to listen for people trapped under the rubble?—when a cheer erupted. And then another and another, and then Sami looked down, and understood.

  Excavation efforts were redoubled. An hour later the serpentine tunnel that had been dug through the collapsed stairwell had reached the cellar.

  When Sami first saw the top of Noora’s head, her dark hair rendered gray with dust, it reminded him of a baby crowning at birth. As she slipped easily between the final blocks of cracked limestone, he slid his hands under her armpits and pulled her to him and just held her close for a moment—wincing because of the pain in his hands.

  Adam’s little fingers appeared moments later, gripping the stone. One of the white-helmeted men bent down to pull him through, but he popped out before any assistance could be rendered.

  Sami embraced his children.

  “Were you scared?” he asked them, his voice cracking. He had never felt so humbled in his life.

  “Some, Baba,” said Adam.

  “You are so brave, both of you.”

  Adam turned back to the hole. “Hannah!” he called.

  Her hands appeared. Two men attempted to pull her out, but even though she was a slender woman, another limestone brick had to be dislodged with a pry bar before she was able to squeeze through.

  Finally liberated, she stood there, supported by one of the men in the white helmets, blinking and shielding her eyes from her rescuers’ headlamps. Her jaw was set, her prominent forehead thrust forward. Her face and every other inch of her body was covered with a thick layer of dust, rendering her ghostly pale except where she was bleeding from a small cut on her forehead. The blood had trickled down past her eye and dried on her cheek. Adam hugged her waist. Noora wriggled out of her father’s arms and hugged her legs. She hugged them both back. Sami stood before her, hands at his sides.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  They stared a
t each other for a moment.

  “I want to go home,” said Noora.

  No one spoke at first. Finally, Sami said, “We are going to a new home. Far away from here.”

  “Not a new home. Our home,” said Noora.

  “Come,” said Sami. “For now, we must go to the hospital.”

  chapter 55

  The bombing of Beit Qarah had been preceded and followed by a flurry of aerial attacks throughout the city. The M2 was in a state of chaos, the emergency room overrun, the staff rooms and doctors’ quarters occupied by patients.

  When Sami stumbled through the entrance, people called out to him, assuming he was there to work. But for the first time in his life he felt truly, physically incapable of working, even if he had wanted to.

  He searched for a quiet place where his children could sleep for the night, but even the sleeping rooms for the doctors were now filled with patients. Then one of the plainclothes Ahrar al-Sham soldiers who had reported to Ibrahim Antar, and who had accompanied Sami and his family back to the M2, said that there was a place nearby that they could use. He had already called Ibrahim.

  Sami accepted, and when he, Adam, Noora, and Hannah arrived at the small three-room apartment, they were given water, flatbread, and a small room to themselves. By four in the morning, they had all collapsed on the dirty, child-sized mattresses. Sami’s only accommodated his torso.

  Although blankets had been nailed to the molding above the one window, Sami woke up at dawn anyway.

  His thoughts were in turmoil, but what was really preventing him from sleeping was the pain in his hands. Upon stumbling to the bathroom, past an Ahrar al-Sham soldier who was smoking in the hall, he examined them.

  While most of the white-helmet volunteers had been wearing gloves, Sami had not. His hands, at that point, had been the least of his concerns.

  They were a big concern now. Both were swollen. His fingers felt like fat, stuffed kibbe balls, and it was painful to bend them. But it was the bruises and lacerations on his palm and the undersides of his fingers that really worried him. He had known he’d been bleeding as he dug—that the shards of limestone, glass, and tile were sharp—but he had not realized how deeply and badly his hands had been cut. Last night he had been in pain, but too tired and distraught to care.

  A few of the cuts were deep enough that, had he seen them on a patient, he would have advised stitches. But even with the right tools and equipment, he was in no condition to perform such delicate work.

  He could at least wash his hands, he thought. Upon discovering that the faucet was dry, he prevailed upon a soldier in the hall to bring him a pitcher of water, then did his best to clean out the dirt and gravel, gritting his teeth and willing himself not to cry out.

  “I must go to the hospital,” he informed the soldier when he was done, speaking sharply because he was still in pain. At the M2 he could sterilize and dress his wounds. And he felt duty-bound to tell his colleagues in person he was leaving Aleppo. There was a chance he would return—in a month or two, if he could find Aya and Tahira’s mother in Jordan, and they were able to care of the children. But for now, the M2 would need to make do without him. “Should they wake up, you will tell my family I will be back shortly?”

  In the small kitchen behind the bathroom, he observed another soldier, bearded and with stringy long hair, heating water on a stove next to a sink filled with unwashed dishes. A box of noodles had spilled on the counter. The door to the kitchen had a hole in it. No decorations adorned the walls. Save for several prayer mats, the living room was bare. The whole apartment smelled of body odor. Sami assumed some of it was his own.

  The soldier in the hall ashed his cigarette onto a ceramic saucer. “I will find someone to take you,”

  “That will not be necessary,” Sami snapped. “I need only that you tell my family where I have gone when they wake.”

  “Wait.” The soldier pulled a phone out of his pocket, dialed, and ducked out of the apartment.

  Sami had no intention of waiting, so he gently roused Hannah.

  “I must go to the M2,” he said. “But I will return shortly. When I do, we make preparations to leave.”

  Upon exiting the bedroom, another soldier said, “Okay,” and gestured to Sami with his gun. “We go.”

  “Get out of my way,” said Sami.

  At the M2 Sami ignored the greetings and shouted entreaties and headed straight to a supply room where he opened a bottle of Betadine antiseptic. After trickling it over his wounds, some of which began to bleed again, he informed Dr. Wasim and the nurses he encountered on the ground floor that he was leaving Aleppo for at least a month, maybe more.

  The news spread quickly; so quickly, in fact, that as Sami was striding past the sandbag-reinforced chemical decontamination tents, he was approached by the plainclothes Ahrar al-Sham soldier who had escorted him to the hospital.

  “Doctor,” said the soldier, sounding anxious as he struggled to keep pace. “I must inform you that Commander Antar, he requests that you wait.”

  Sami ducked around a man who was using a wheelchair to transport boxes filled with saline solution.

  “You know the Commander, I believe?” pressed the soldier.

  Still walking, Sami asked, “You refer to Ibrahim?”

  “Yes, yes. He requests you wait.”

  “That is not possible.”

  “He arrives shortly.”

  “And yet, I must leave now,” said Sami without breaking stride, knowing that Ibrahim would try to dissuade him.

  “I must insist,” he said.

  “No, I must insist,” said Sami.

  The Aleppo he had known had been a city of manners and civility, of hammams and hidden caravansaries, of universities and soccer stadiums. A city in which Sunni, Shia, and Alawite Muslims, along with Christians, Jews, Druze, nonbelievers, and everyone in between had lived together in at least relative peace. To walk through the souk was to hear languages from all corners of the world. But that city was dead, and the idea of forcing his family to watch the regime and Islamists like Ibrahim and ISIS fight over the corpse of the city he had once loved, filled Sami with revulsion. If he could, he would come back to do what he could to heal the people who were trapped here, but he would no longer force his children to be counted among the trapped.

  The soldier continued to trail him. When three more soldiers suddenly arrived, they seized Sami.

  He managed to rip an arm free and shove one man down, but the others tackled him and grabbed his legs and lifted him up. He punched one in the face, but then someone clubbed him in the head, and he was half carried, half dragged to an empty corner market where the shelves were bare, but the brightly colored sign above the entrance still advertised pineapple-banana fruit smoothies and Coca-Cola.

  They threw him into a defunct walk-in refrigerator in the back of the store and told him to wait. Sami cursed them. He reopened the wounds on his right hand by pounding on the locked refrigerator door.

  Outside, one of the soldiers began to sing a song about what an asshole Bashar Al Assad was. The others clapped to the beat and laughed at the lyrics. Sami smelled cigarette smoke.

  Hannah would be waiting for him. Wondering where he was. Worrying that he had broken his word and instead of leaving, had decided to resume work at the hospital. The children would grow anxious.

  He grabbed an empty fruit crate, flipped it over, and used it as a chair. After a minute, he stood, cursed the guards again at the top of his lungs, and kicked the crate at the locked door.

  He was genuinely incredulous. The regime targeted doctors all the time, but Sami had never heard of any rebels—ISIS excepted—treating one of their own doctors like this.

  Ibrahim yanked open the door a half hour later. He appeared to be unarmed. Sami had gone back to sitting on the fruit crate, using a wall as a backrest, but now he stood.

&n
bsp; Ibrahim closed the refrigerator door behind him. “You must have some understanding of our position, of course?” he said eventually.

  Sami stared at him with contempt.

  “You understand,” continued Ibrahim, “that this is a crucial point in the war? You may have noticed that the fighting has intensified.” Sarcasm had slipped into his voice. When Sami again declined to reply, Ibrahim added, “Perhaps I have misjudged the situation. Perhaps you do not fully understand our position because you have been so focused on your medicine. So let me explain it to you, Doctor. Aleppo is nearly surrounded. The city hangs by a thread. And do you know what that thread is?”

  Sami still remained silent.

  “Castello Road,” said Ibrahim. “That is the one remaining road in and out of the city. One road! Every day, we fight to keep it open so that we can continue to receive food to eat, weapons to defend ourselves, and medicine that you can use to heal our people. And every day, the regime tries to close it off!” His clenched fists trembled for a moment before he released them and ran a hand through his hair. “Inshallah, they will not succeed, but the truth is, they have taken the high ground above the road and people are worried. Even my fighters.” He lowered his voice so that it was barely above a whisper. “Some even talk of surrender. Now, if they see you, the famous Dr. Sami leaving, after staying for so long, what message will that send to our people?”

  “Even if I were to stay, I could not work.” Sami raised his hands.

  Ibrahim stared at Sami’s swollen and deformed palms for a moment, then his eyes narrowed. He exited the room, and when he returned, he was gripping a piece of narrow wooden shelving.

  He cursed, then swung the shelving at Sami’s midsection. The board wasn’t particularly heavy, though, and Sami absorbed the blow then tackled Ibrahim, pinning him to the wall and using his forehead to headbutt Ibrahim in the face.

  The other soldiers raced in. One of them clubbed Sami on the head with an AK-47. The rest kicked him.

  “So, the big doctor is not so strong after all!” one of them said.