by Dan Mayland
Sami kicked the man’s the knee joint, sending him tumbling to the ground.
“Not the head,” said Ibrahim. Then, “Hold him.”
The soldiers did. Ibrahim punched Sami in the gut until Sami slumped over and Ibrahim tired.
Heaving from having exerted himself, Ibrahim shouted, “You think you owe nothing to us? You think it is coincidence that you are still alive? People like you are the reason for this war! People like you who think you deserve more than everyone else. People like the tyrant Bashar! You turn your back on God and live in your house when others have nothing. Are you even a Muslim, Doctor?”
Sami spit out a mouthful of blood. “I am a rationalist.”
“A rationalist. Meaning you think that because I am a Muslim, I am not.”
Sami did not answer.
“Meaning you think you can leave us whenever you wish, giving nothing back.”
“I have given plenty back, you fool. And after I bring my family to safety, I will return and give more. Not to you, but to my patients.”
“And you think if I let you leave, you will be free to take your children and go where you wish? Castello Road is under fire. You would take your children on this road? You would risk their capture by the regime? The regime will kill you in an instant if they capture you. Do you know that, right now, there is a man in the Mukhabarat whose mission it is to find you? You and your family are targets, Doctor. Even if you flee to the refugee camps or Turkey, the regime will worry that you will return, and so, you and your family will still be targets.” Ibrahim spit at Sami’s feet. “If you work hard for us, your American whore and—”
In the recesses of Sami’s brain, a warning signal had flashed. The hairs on the back of his neck tingled, and the pain in his stomach vanished.
“What Mukhabarat officer?” Sami demanded.
Ibrahim appeared surprised that Sami would care to ask. “He is a major. In Military Intelligence,” he said dismissively.
“I mean,” shouted Sami, “what is this man’s name?”
“You think I lie? His name is Rahim Suleiman.”
Sami put his hands on his knees to prevent himself from toppling over.
“And how do you know this?”
“Because we interrogated the man sent to capture your American whore last year, and then we interrogated another regime spy who was working at the hospital last week. Both men were sent by this major.”
“And you did not think that was important to tell me?”
“Tell you what? You know the regime targets doctors.”
“You did not think this Suleiman might find a way discover where I live? Might order a bombing?”
“That has always been a risk. For any of us. What would you have had me do, build you a new home to live in until we could be sure your old one was safe? This is what I offer you, Doctor. If you work hard for us, your children will be well cared for here in Aleppo. You will be allowed to see them—at least once a week. But if you try to leave with them, if you try to turn people against me and my men, I cannot guarantee their safety.”
“You disgust me,” said Sami.
“Guard him until you receive word that the children and the American have been moved,” Ibrahim said to his men. “Then bring him back to the hospital and see that he resumes his work. I do not care how much his hands hurt.”
chapter 56
Regime-held Aleppo
Rahim clicked on a file containing the post-action photos of Dr. Sami Hasan’s house.
Upon reviewing them, he slumped back in his seat, pressed his lips tightly together, turned his head to the ceiling as he closed his eyes, and clasped his hands together.
Alhamdulillah, he thought. Praise be to God.
The destruction was near total. The house lay in ruins. The courtyard was a crater, the vegetable garden that had mocked him, nothing but dust. After the war this house would not be rebuilt, it would be bulldozed.
Had anyone been inside—and why would they not have been?—they would have been incinerated in the blast.
Alhamdulillah.
He imagined the next time he spoke to his wife he would ask her whether she recalled the doctor who had killed their son.
“How could I forget him?” she would say.
Then, he would tell her what he had done to the doctor and his family.
Rahim considered calling his wife now but decided against it. He would visit her in Beirut. She would not want him to come, but he would make some excuse as to why the trip was necessary.
She would look at him differently. Even his daughter would. Her eyes would widen, and she would ask, “But how? How were you able to do this? How did you hunt this doctor?”
“What else could I do?” he would say. “After what he did to Adel?”
To be sure, it would reflect better upon him if he could tell them with certainty that Dr. Hasan no longer walked this earth. Indeed, it would be an affront to God and the memory of his son if the doctor had survived.
But not as much of an affront as it had been yesterday.
Not as much at all.
chapter 57
Rebel-held Aleppo • Two weeks later
Two hundred fifty thousand people, most of them civilians, were left stranded behind enemy lines when the regime captured Castello Road. The flow of supplies, already slowed to a trickle, stopped entirely.
Hannah knew nothing of the particulars because she was not permitted to know. But she could hear the bombs falling and see the daily allotment of bread diminishing. Every day of her captivity in a basement apartment somewhere in rebel-held Aleppo, she looked for a way to escape—and every day she concluded that the risk was too great.
Until the first of August.
That was the day when two things changed. The first was that, instead of the usual heavily armed soldier, one of Ibrahim’s many nephews showed up to stand guard. He claimed to be seventeen but looked closer to fourteen. Bowl-shaped haircut, crooked teeth, armed with a pistol instead of an AK-47. Only a bit taller than Hannah.
He began his shift by attempting to engage Hannah in conversation, speaking English with a heavy accent as he spoke about an uncle who had moved to New Jersey in the 1990s.
Hannah pointedly kept her back to him as she poured two half-glasses of milk, emptying the carton. But the boy persisted.
“My uncle, he drives a Chrysler 300. I have seen pictures. I think this is very good car?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“But you know the Chrysler? This is a good car?”
Feeling overheated and mildly dizzy, Hannah bent over and placed the back of her hand on her forehead. It must be the clothes, she thought. Even when she was inside, Ibrahim’s men insisted she cover herself with an abaya and bulky headscarf.
There was no furniture in the basement apartment, just a few mattresses and cushions and carpets. Nowhere, save the floor, to sit. In the adjacent room, Adam and Noora were arguing over Hajj, a dreary Arabic board game that attempted to teach kids about the pilgrimage to Mecca all Muslims were supposed to make at least once in their lives.
The boy stepped closer to her. “You are sick?” he asked.
Hannah had been around people who could eat garlic hummus by the bucketful and still smell like rosewater, but there were others whose bodies processed it in such a way that the garlic seeped out of their pores, giving off a sour and rancid smell. This boy was very much one of the latter.
She forced herself not to retch. “I’m fine,” she said.
“Can I—”
“You can leave me alone and let me make the children lunch. That is all I need you to do.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, laughing, either not grasping or not caring about the depths of her revulsion. “But first I must know what you think of the Chrysler. You must tell me honestly.”
&n
bsp; Hannah picked up a serrated butter knife that her captors had deemed too small and dull to pose a threat. She used it to cut a small piece of stale flatbread in two equal portions and said, “Perhaps you have heard that women are much different in America than in Syria. That we are much more forward. Especially in relationships.”
Hannah didn’t think that was true, but she assumed the boy would think it was.
“Yes, I—”
“For example, one American woman, when her boyfriend mistreated her, she cut off his . . . well, I don’t want to say the word, but it is the part of your body you use when you go to the bathroom.”
The boy’s smile vanished.
Hannah showed him the dull butter knife. “It’s true. She felt she was being mistreated, so when the man was asleep, she”—Hannah made a slicing motion with the knife—“cut it right off. Then threw it out. Doctors tried to sew it back on, but I don’t think it worked very well after that. I wish to say that I very much admire this woman. If a woman is being bothered by a man, even a young man, she should not tolerate it, don’t you think?”
“Ha ha,” said the boy soldier, sounding uncomfortable. “Maybe they should tolerate it a little.”
“Ha ha,” said Hannah. “Maybe not.”
The boy soldier retreated to a corner in the other room. He said he was going to practice memorizing a section of the Quran, but Hannah soon observed him tapping away at a video game on his cell phone.
Meanwhile, the children’s argument in the other room had devolved into a brawl. Noora had tried to bite Adam, and Adam had pushed her down. Now, both were shouting at each other.
Hannah knew she should go in there and break it up, that on some level that was what they expected and wanted her to do. Instead, she just stood there, both hands on the counter, bent over, unable to move.
Their lunches were ready. She just needed to feed them what little she could and get on with life, make it to the next day. Ibrahim didn’t appear to want to kill them or sell them to ISIS. Things would work out.
But just at that moment, she couldn’t see anything working out. The smell of garlic body-odor seemed to be everywhere, even in her lungs, choking her, making her lightheaded.
Her stomach felt bloated.
She slumped onto a dirty carpet that lay on the kitchen floor, toppling a vase of plastic flowers that should have sat on a kitchen table but instead had been pushed into a corner on the floor. She just needed to rest. For a minute or two, that was all.
God, what was wrong with her? Was it just the stress of captivity?
She exhaled deeply.
That was when it dawned on her. Of course. She recalled how sensitive her breasts had been that morning, when she’d been putting on her bra—further evidence of her condition. And should she really be surprised?
The calculus, Hannah decided, had changed.
Food was running short. She was losing weight at a time when she should be gaining it. Escaping wouldn’t get any easier given her condition.
The apartment consisted of two bedrooms and a kitchen from which everything had been removed save for a gas stove, dry sink, and a sliver of countertop between the sink and stove. The bathroom was a waterless pit toilet outside the apartment, at the end of long hall at the edge of a bomb crater.
In one bedroom, Adam and Noora had gone back to playing Hajj, having eaten their lunch and resolved their argument; in the other—which also doubled as an entrance hall—the boy was still tapping on his phone.
Hannah got down on her knees, crawled behind the stove, unscrewed the copper line that led from the stove to the small silver gas canister, then smacked her fist on the kitchen countertop.
“And what is wrong?” the boy asked.
“Nothing!” Then a minute later, “Dammit!”
“What is this problem?”
“Nothing,” she said, but a few seconds later she smacked the countertop again.
The boy entered the kitchen then stopped short, his eyes were wide. Hannah had let her headscarf slip to her shoulders.
“It refuses to start,” she said in Arabic, pointing to the stove.
The boy nodded and quickly turned away from her face. “And where is the lighter?”
“There.” Hannah pointed to where it lay next to the sink.
The boy lit the lighter and turned on the one burner that worked. Nothing happened.
“No gas,” he said.
Then he eyed the small canister that was wedged behind the stove.
“They changed it yesterday,” said Hannah.
“Yes, but it is not full, I think.”
“It was.”
“You check it is connected properly?”
“I would not know how to do this. Do you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then perhaps you should look at it.” Hannah’s palms were sweating. She’d never been a good liar. “I wish to make tea.”
The boy made his way to the back of the stove and slipped to his knees.
“It is connected correctly?” asked Hannah. She positioned herself directly behind him, taking short shallow sips of air and recalled feeling the same way once when she’d been teetering at the very tip of a high diving board, at a pool in New Jersey. She’d told herself that she was going to jump, so she was going to jump—and she had—but God, she hadn’t wanted to.
“Ah, I see the problem! It is not screwed in. I will—”
Hannah aimed for the gap between his buttocks and kicked with every ounce of strength she possessed.
There was no loud cry of pain, just a barely perceptible bleat followed by a rapid stiffening of the body.
A split-second later, she yanked the boy’s pistol out of his belt holster, confirmed that the safety was off—she’d learned a few things about guns in Syria—took two steps back, aimed and, speaking in Arabic, said, “If you cry for help, I will shoot you. Nod your head if you understand.”
The boy whimpered as he pushed himself out from behind the stove.
“I am waiting for a nod,” said Hannah. The gun felt absurdly heavy in her hand, but her head was clear. She was no longer lightheaded. “You have two seconds. One—”
The boy nodded, then fell to the ground in a fetal position, gripping his crotch.
“Sit facing the wall, hands extended behind your back.”
The boy sat, but—perhaps remembering Hannah’s story from earlier—kept his hands on his crotch.
“Hands behind your back!” whispered Hannah, adding, “I promise I will not hurt you if you comply.”
The boy slowly did as instructed. Hannah retrieved a clothesline that had been strung up between two nails in a corner of the kitchen. She put the gun on the floor behind her, so that if he tried to fight her, she could get to it before he could get to her, and then bound his hands.
“Why do you do this?” The boy cried, angry and indignant, as though they’d had an understanding and she had betrayed him.
“Because you were mistreating me and the children.”
“How did I mistreat you?”
“By doing what your uncle told you to do.”
“We were protecting you.”
“No, you were holding us hostage.”
Hannah finished tying the final knot, then she tied the boy’s hands to the handle of the stove door. It was a lousy attempt to restrain someone. Under two minutes—that’s how long she estimated it would hold him should he try to escape.
“The men outside, they will not let you leave,” said the boy, still facing the wall.
She took his cell phone and confirmed that she could use it without entering a password.
“If you tell them I am coming, or if you try to untie yourself and stop me, I will come back and shoot you. Right there.” She tapped the top of his head. “You understand?”
&
nbsp; He nodded, but her threat turned out to be unnecessary. Even though in the past there had always been someone—usually an older man with an AK-47 rifle—sitting in the hallway, today it was vacant.
She stepped out of the apartment then turned back, put a finger to her lips, and waved to Adam and Noora that they should follow.
On the floor above, she heard yelling. Instead of exiting the way she’d been led into the apartment days earlier, she grabbed both children by the hand and turned toward the pit toilets, worrying that at any moment the boy soldier would call for help.
“Eww,” said Adam, holding his nose.
Hannah whipped around, gave him a look, and put her finger to her lips again. They crept past the toilets and began climbing around the remains of a collapsed portion of the apartment building.
After picking their way down, around, then through the rubble, she saw a splash of white sunlight illuminating a partially blocked alley and hurried toward it.
The street was deserted. High overhead, a fighter jet roared. It wasn’t a coincidence that her only jailer today had been a young boy, she guessed. Everyone else must be off fighting. The end must be near.
“We have to go fast now,” she whispered to the children. “Can you do that?”
They both nodded, then Hannah began to run.
chapter 58
Because the M2 had suffered bomb damage and was undergoing repairs, Sami had been transferred to the M10 hospital in the Sakhour district, northeast of the Citadel. Established early in the war in a three-story, concrete-framed Ministry of Health building that had since been fortified and partially moved underground after its top two floors were bombed, it was now the primary trauma hospital in Aleppo.
There, he had bandaged the deep cuts on his hands and treated the smaller ones with an antibiotic ointment that had had the effect of rendering the newly formed scabs flexible.
The unbearable had become bearable. He had gone back to work. Supplies were running dangerously low, but they resterilized needles, washed surgical drapes that should have been thrown out, used nerve blocks instead of general anesthesia. When Hannah called, Sami was checking on a thirteen-year-old boy who had lost a leg to a cluster bomb munition and was recovering in the intensive care unit without the benefit of morphine or any other painkiller.
