The Doctor of Aleppo

by Dan Mayland

  He looked up. Hannah was there, watching as she silently wept.

  “You should not have done this,” she whispered. She pressed her lips together and held back more tears.

  “There was no other way.”

  “There might have been. You should have waited. They will hurt you, Sami. They are horrible, horrible people.”

  “Shh,” he said, finger to his lips as he glanced down at the children. “We have little time, but I must know—did you tell Rahim Suleiman about his son?”

  “What does that man have to do with this?”

  “You have not seen him?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  “Whatever leverage you think you have, it will not work, Sami. These people—”

  “Shh,” he said again.

  “Baba,” said Adam. “I want to go home.”

  “And you will go home, my son. Not to Beit Qarah, but to a different home. Hannah is going to take you there.”

  A shot rang out. Hannah cringed. Sami glared at the cars.

  “They said not to stop,” said Hannah. “Noora, Adam, you must say goodbye to your father.”

  The children refused, instead clutching his legs tighter. Hannah moved to pull them away.

  Sami brought his hands to his heart. “I have presents for the children,” he said. He knelt, and the act of doing so, paired with the promise of a present, caused Adam and Noora to disengage from him.

  From the satchel that hung from his shoulder, Sami extracted the origami rhinoceros and elephant figures he had folded as a child.

  “Do you remember these?” he asked his children. “Your Mémère kept them in her room, on her dresser. I folded them as a boy. Now they are yours.” He gave the rhinoceros to Adam and the elephant to Noora. To Hannah, he gave the satchel. “There is water and bread. Some money. Head to the M2. They will be expecting you. I am sorry I could not do more. I wanted to get you to Turkey.”

  Hannah began to cry again. “Oh, Sami.” Another warning shot rang out.

  “There is also the original bill of sale for Beit Qarah. And my last will and testament. The children will inherit the house.” Sami held up his hand. “I know there is nothing to inherit, but maybe someday the land under the ruins will be worth something, and they can contest it if they wish. Keep all of this safe for them. Please. I have written the names of their relations on their mother’s side, I would be grateful if you could find my wife’s sister Aya, but I have also signed a document entrusting the children to your care. It will help that you bear their sibling.”

  Sami began to back away. Adam tried to follow him, but this time Hannah held him tight.

  “I am sorry, my little prince,” she said in English, speaking as much to herself as to Adam. “I hope one day you will forgive me for this.”

  “Come back, Baba! Come back!” cried Adam.

  Sami turned away from his son, put his hands on top of his head, and began the long walk to the cars.

  chapter 73

  From the moment Rahim saw Sami’s son and daughter, he wished he had not come. He had always liked young children, and he had fond memories of his own children from that age—when they had still looked up to him as their hero, when disrespect could be punished with a swat to the backside or by taking away a toy.

  Those had been simpler times. Better times.

  It brought him no joy to see Dr. Hasan’s children be deprived of that.

  Which is why, long before Dr. Hasan had said his final goodbye, Rahim had turned from the scene and slipped into the passenger seat of a sedan that would be trailing the prisoner transport van. He was only there as an observer anyway; although he had initiated the process and had pointed out that the doctor was an extremely valuable asset, a special operations squad was handling the exchange.

  Besides, he no longer had any desire to speak to Dr. Hasan. No desire to gloat. It was enough that God had arranged things as he had.

  Rahim sighed, thinking allah yisahellik. May God make things easier for those children. Outside the car he heard a flurry of footsteps and, “Both hands behind your back.”

  Two special operations soldiers opened the rear doors of the van that was parked in front of him. As Dr. Hasan was shoved towards the van, Rahim dipped his head, not wanting to make eye contact.

  He wished he had shot the doctor in the halls of the University of Aleppo four years ago. That would have been cleaner. More honorable. This thing, though, involving the children . . .

  “Major Suleiman! I have information for you. Look at me!”

  Rahim raised his head, not sure at first who was addressing him. Then he observed Dr. Hasan craning his neck over his shoulder, looking right at him. Rahim returned the doctor’s stare for a moment then turned away.

  “I can tell you how he died, Major! It is not how you think! Your son, Adel—he was murdered, but not by me! I can tell you who did it!”

  Rahim looked up again, now confused. The soldiers who had been stuffing Dr. Hasan into the van paused and looked to Rahim for guidance. Rahim suddenly felt self-conscious, as though he had been thrown upon a stage.

  He also felt tricked. It was as he had feared. The doctor’s claim that he was turning himself in solely so that his children and American girlfriend could be released had been a lie. There was some ulterior motive. The man was dangerous. Poison.

  Rahim licked his lips and glared at the doctor. He turned his attention to the soldiers holding the doctor.

  “What are you waiting for? Take him away!”

  But he had already been bitten by the snake. The venom was even then poisoning his mind. Rahim knew it, and he was certain the doctor knew it as well.

  chapter 74

  Regime-held Aleppo

  They bound his hands and chained him to the metal floor of the van.

  “Where will you take me?” asked Sami.

  The soldier who sat next to him clubbed him in the face with the butt of his pistol.

  After bouncing along a rutted road that cut through a long olive orchard, they popped out onto a paved road and began making their way north.

  Through the low front windshield, Sami could see well enough. As they skirted what had once been the bustling international airport, he recalled leaving from the very same airport on a trip to Dubai with Tahira, just before the war. Mémère had watched the children. He and Tahira had waited in line to ascend the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, and he pictured now that hazy point at which the skyscrapers of Dubai met the surrounding barren desert. He had bought a necklace for Tahira in the gold souk, they had stayed at the Four Seasons Resort, right on the Persian Gulf.

  The Shaykh Najjar industrial zone north of the airport, where six years ago Sami had toured the manufacturing facility of a medical device company, was now nothing more than a wasteland of pulverized rebel tunnels, flattened concrete, and chemical factories. The streets were empty save for soldiers, the palm trees in the weedy road median covered with white dust.

  When they pulled up to the Aleppo Central Prison, just past the industrial zone, it struck Sami as strange that he had lived his entire adult life in the city and had never really noticed the prison before. Yet it had always been there.

  They called it a welcome party. Three men. Car jumper cables. A battery. A hot pad used to warm tea plugged directly into a wall socket and applied to his face.

  He screamed and could smell his flesh burning. At the same time, he thought about all the work that would be required to properly debride his wounds. He wondered where, were he performing the restoration work himself, he would choose to harvest the graft skin. His buttocks perhaps. Or his right thigh, which they had left untouched.

  An interrogation session followed, during which an electric stun gun was applied to his genitals. Over several hours, Sami made up information about rebel positions i
n and around Aleppo.

  Either they did not notice his contradictions or did not care.

  More beatings followed. The pain was like nothing he had ever experienced. It was beyond pain, the equivalent of an eardrum-splitting, madness-inducing wall of high-pitched sound that never ended.

  Once he tried to run away, but he made it no more than a few cells down the hall. One of the guards shattered his right kneecap with a hammer.

  That night he was shoved into a cell packed with other prisoners, even though there were empty cells nearby. There was no room to lie down. He could sit only by pulling his long, bony legs up into his chest, but the pain in his right knee was so great that he instead stood on one foot most of the night, using the back wall as support. There was no bathroom, just a few plastic Pepsi bottles that were quickly overfilled with urine. The smell of feces and vomit and urine caused him to vomit. One of the prisoners, whose body was riddled with electric-drill holes that were weeping blood, died.

  Not long after, Sami considered his kneecap. It appeared to be a severely displaced fracture—he could slot a finger between the two main bone fragments—and the repair would have to entail surgery. To prevent his thigh muscle from pulling the upper fragment from the bottom one, he would do well, he thought, to apply a figure-eight tension band.

  Yes, that was exactly the way he would do it.

  The next morning, Rahim came for him.

  “You claim to have information about my son,” said Rahim in a nearby cell, sounding weary—and wary.

  “Yes.”

  Sami sat on the floor, his injured leg extended in front of him. Rahim stood in a corner, his hands folded across his chest. He wore green army fatigues and a canvas belt; a Makarov pistol hung from a holster on the belt.

  “And what is this information?” demanded Rahim.

  “I will need for you to arrange safe passage for myself and my family. To Turkey,” said Sami.

  “You seek to trade information about my son for this safe passage?” asked Rahim, sounding incredulous.

  Sami closed his eyes and swallowed. “Inshallah,” he said.

  “A man who has surrendered himself to God would not attempt to trade such information. He would give it gladly.”

  “Then evidently I am not that person,” said Sami.

  “Four years after my son dies—four years!—you come to me, not to apologize, but to bargain? No, I will not bargain. You can rot here, Doctor. And in a day or a week or a month, when your body has given out, I will give thanks to God that you are dead.”

  “I did not keep the truth from you four years ago,” said Sami wearily. “It was only recently that I learned it myself.”

  “And yet you would keep it from me now.”

  Sami did not answer.

  Rahim opened the door of the cell, let himself out, then locked it back up.

  “It was the Mukhabarat,” called Sami, as Rahim was walking away.

  Rahim reappeared. “What is this nonsense of which you speak?” he whispered.

  “It was the Mukhabarat,” repeated Sami. “Your own men. They found out that your son was a rebel spy, found out that he was spying on you. So they ran over Adel in the street, and when he survived, they forced a nurse to kill him. There was a Swedish patient sharing the room with your son. His name was Oskar Lång, and he was there when your son was murdered, he tried to stop it.”

  “No,” said Rahim.

  “It is true I gave him medication that he was allergic to but only because someone switched the labels. When the allergic reaction your son suffered was not enough to kill him, he was murdered by one of the nurses. I had nothing to do with his death. I thought I did—but we were both being lied to.”

  For a minute that felt much longer, neither man spoke. Sami listened to Rahim’s labored breathing. Outside the prison, someone was honking their car horn.

  Eventually Rahim asked, “And what was this nurse’s name?”

  “Farrah al-Mahmoud,” said Sami. He remembered her. Cheerful. Efficient, walked quickly down the halls with a wide-hipped waddle.

  “You had better not be lying to me now, Doctor, because if you are, hell would be a mercy compared to what I will do to you.”

  chapter 75

  Rahim called his daughter.

  “Is it true?” he asked.

  For a long time, all he could hear was music playing on the other end of the line. People laughing. An announcer encouraging people to dance.

  “Zahra,” he said to his daughter. “You must answer me! I must know!”

  He was standing in a squalid bathroom next to the prison cafeteria. It had been the only place he had been able to find a bit of privacy.

  “Yes,” said Zahra finally. “Yes, it is true.”

  Rahim moaned.

  “Adel believed in the cause!” added his daughter, sounding as though she were weeping. “He joined Freedom Torches after the father of one of his friends was murdered. He would make the flags for the protests. There is probably still some fabric in the old water tank. That was his hiding place.”

  Rahim slowly pounded the base of his fist against the bathroom wall as he looked up at the ceiling.

  “Did your mother know then?”

  “No.”

  “Does she know now?”

  “No.”

  “And you? Were you spying on me as well?”

  “Of course not, father,” she said, but in a way that made Rahim certain she had been and was now afraid to admit it. Afraid of what he might do to her.

  “Why do you call me with these questions?” she demanded.

  Because it was God’s will, of course, thought Rahim. It was all part of God’s will—his actions, and Zahra’s and Adel’s. Even the doctor’s. And yet while he thought this, still he whispered, “It was pointless what Adel did, what you did. Do you see that now? Do you see what has come of it? The rebels were never going to win. You only brought more death.”

  She hung up on him.

  Rahim drove back to what had once been his home but which for years he had thought of simply as barracks. Breakfast dishes were piled in the sink, it was brutally hot because there was no electricity for air conditioning, and it smelled of men. The kitchen table sagged where one of the Iranians had sat on it. But for a moment he was able to see past the grime on the walls and recall what it had been like to come back to a home smelling of spiced lamb, the laughter of children, and the sound of music drifting up from his brother’s flat below.

  By the time he reached the attic, he was breathing at twice his normal rate because of the heat and the exertion of climbing the narrow ladder. The rusty water tank sat in the corner, looking much the same as it had twenty years ago when he had stopped using it. Rahim and his brother had talked about polishing the interior and sanding down and repainting the exterior, but instead, they had gone in together on a smaller plastic tank.

  He unscrewed the cap on top, peered inside and saw his wife’s missing scissors—she had blamed him for their loss—atop a pile of green fabric. He quickly screwed the cap back on. He exited his flat without locking it and drove straight to the military intelligence headquarters building.

  His colleagues were nothing if not good record keepers. Because everyone lived in fear of being accused of being disloyal, the men of the Mukhabarat were careful to record their actions so that later they could turn to the records as proof of their fidelity to the regime.

  The nurse had a file. And in that file was a record of a payment of ten thousand pounds having been made to her three days after Adel had died.

  The payment had been recorded as hospital services: Adel Suleiman and had been authorized by a Major General assigned to the Aleppo division of Military Intelligence.

  So that was what his son’s life had been worth. Ten thousand Syrian pounds. Barely enough to buy two canisters
of diesel today, a piddling sum even back then.

  More payments for hospital services had been made to the nurse. But in 2014, she had been transferred to a prisoner hospital and in 2015 had been tried and put to death for smuggling out evidence of medical malpractice—a euphemism for torture—that had occurred at the hospital. As for the Major General who had signed Adel’s death warrant, he had been killed in 2015 by hostile fire near Damascus.

  So there would be no opportunity for revenge, even if he had been able or inclined to take it.

  Rahim wondered how many of his colleagues had been secretly laughing at his grief, the way his daughter doubtless had been. Had his secretary, Aisha, been in on the lie? Certainly, she had not seemed shocked, or even curious, when she had handed him the file.

  The world as Rahim knew it began to slip through his fingers, dissolving into air.

  Why had Adel done this to him?

  He remembered his son watching the news of the protests on television. And asking questions. Baba, what will you do to stop these criminals from protesting? And after a protest had been broken up at the university, and four students killed, Baba, what will happen to the students who were taken prisoner? Where will they be held? And when a general strike in Aleppo had been announced, Baba, what will be done to break this strike?

  Rahim had assumed the questions to be evidence that his son looked up to him. He had even thought Adel might have wanted a job working in military intelligence alongside his father.

  Breathing became difficult. His vision was impeded by drifting pockets of bright light. Outside his office, his coworkers chatted and laughed.

  Rahim was not even sure he would be let back into the prison. Sami was not his prisoner, and the interrogation division of military intelligence had questioned his need to be there earlier that day.

  But when he insisted that the doctor had information about rebel checkpoints that his operations group was monitoring, he was given half an hour. His identification was entered in the visitors’ log. The locks to the prison were opened.