Escape from Aleppo

by N. H. Senzai

  Nadia stared into the darkness, and her heart began to race.

  “Don’t worry,” Ammo Mazen whispered. “We’ll only be here a little while.”

  Nadia nodded, and grudgingly followed Basel, who loped down the stairs, his curiosity sparked. Ammo Mazen paused a moment to shift back the wooden panel behind himself and then followed. Past the last step, Nadia found herself standing on an uneven concrete floor. Before her was a wide hall lined with metal doors. Rasheed shuffled ahead of them, stopping at the last one. He peered back, making sure they were all together, before pushing open the door.

  Open sesame, Nadia thought wryly, as warm air and the cacophony of voices rushed from the room.

  Chapter Eighteen

  October 11, 2013 12:03 a.m.

  Come in, come in,” said Rasheed.

  Nadia stumbled in beside Basel, Ammo Mazen behind them. Light sparkled from the ceiling, powered by a small generator humming in a corner. People rushed to and fro carrying boxes and bags, or sat hunkered over a line of tables that stretched the length of the room. A group of dusty statues with missing heads, arms, and legs stood in one section, paintings in another, stacked carefully.

  “Pretty,” muttered Basel, bringing Nadia’s attention to a three-legged bronze stag he was examining. Propped next to it lay a jewel-toned mosaic of a man wearing a laurel wreath on his dark curls. Basel moved to take a closer look at how the small glass tiles had been cleverly put together to create the lifelike image.

  “Rasheed, I thought you were staying home tonight,” called a birdlike woman with silver hair, hurrying toward them. “Brother Mazen, salaam, what a wonderful surprise!”

  “Walaikum assalaam, Sister Laila,” said Ammo Mazen with a weary smile.

  “You have lost weight since we saw you last,” she said, examining him with concern. “Have you . . .”

  Ammo Mazen gently cut in. “Yes, I have. Food is scarce after all, and there is so much work to be done.”

  “Yes, yes, you are right,” said Laila, a frown on her lips.

  “It was lucky indeed that your husband was home and brought us to your new location,” said Ammo Mazen, smiling.

  “We had to move,” sighed Laila. “We learned from sources that the old location was to be raided. Months of work would have been lost.”

  Ammo Mazen’s face darkened. “Thugs, our country has been overrun by ruthless thugs. From every side.”

  “Yes, sadly, I must agree with you,” said Laila, turning toward Nadia and Basel. “And who are these young guests?” she asked.

  “As we know, life moves in mysterious ways,” replied Ammo Mazen. “This is Nadia and Basel, and they have been put in my care. And in turn they have been a great help to me.”

  Laila winked. “You are lucky you found our ever-resourceful brother Mazen.”

  Nadia glanced at the old man, wondering again who he was. She also felt a tinge of resentment for having been used as a shield back at the checkpoint. At least it worked, she conceded grudgingly.

  “What is this place?” Basel burst out.

  Laila laughed, eyeing his fatigues. “My young soldier, this is the place where we are fighting a great battle. Our network of helpers collects historical treasures so that we can protect them before they can be destroyed, stolen, or carted off to be sold on the black market.”

  “This,” said Ammo Mazen, great affection in his voice, “is Professor Laila Safi. She ran the archaeology department at the university and is now leading a heroic effort to preserve our history.”

  “And I am her assistant and husband,” said Rasheed, smiling.

  “Assistant indeed,” admonished Laila. “You are the proprietor of the most successful bookstore in the city.”

  “Those days are past,” sighed Rasheed. “The bookshop is gone.”

  “Insha’Allah, God willing, they will come again,” said Laila, squeezing his hand. She turned to Ammo Mazen, her face grave. “I’ve heard news that forty percent of the city’s ancient landmarks have been damaged or destroyed since the war began.”

  Forty percent? thought Nadia, shocked. That’s nearly half!

  “Most of the museums in the country, and all six of Syria’s World Heritage sites, have been affected in one way or another,” she continued. “It makes the work we are doing all the more important.”

  “The one blessing in this catastrophe is that the mutual love for our history and art has both sides of the war working together,” said Rasheed. “We just learned that rebel-friendly archaeologists and the locals of Idlib brokered an agreement with the army to put valuable artifacts behind a thick layer of concrete in the local museum, sealing it off.”

  “Good news indeed,” Ammo Mazen said, nodding.

  “Were you able to get the items we were after?” Laila asked.

  “Yes, my contact in the Syrian army told me where to recover most of them,” replied Ammo Mazen. “Except for the Aramaic scrolls. They were taken by thieves before I could get a hold of them.”

  Nadia stared at him in surprise. Contact in the Syrian army?

  “That is too bad,” sighed Laila.

  “Everything else is in the cart. With some help, I can fetch them,” said Ammo Mazen.

  “Jamal,” Laila called out to a bearded young man packing up a crate with hay. “Please help Sir Mazen.”

  “I’ll be gone a few minutes,” Ammo Mazen whispered to Nadia before leaving.

  “How is Ilyas?” Rasheed asked his wife as he moved toward a large cardboard box sitting a few feet away. The box, Nadia noticed with surprise, was swaying from side to side.

  Laila shared a worried look with her husband. “He’s okay as long as he’s in there with his books.”

  Nadia inched closer, Basel at her heels. Suddenly, the box began to shake.

  “Would you like something to eat?” asked Laila, bending over the box.

  A dark head popped up, accompanied by a loud “No.”

  It was a boy, Nadia realized, older than her, maybe fourteen. She caught sight of curly hair, tanned cheeks, and round, dark eyes. The head disappeared when a book came up to hide it. It was a copy of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. “ ‘Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ th’ Tiger,’ ” he kept repeating, over and over again.

  “Is he okay?” asked Basel.

  “Yes, dear,” said Laila. “This is our grandson. He has had a very rough time of it since the war started. He doesn’t like loud noises and interruptions to his routine, which are now common with the war. Being in the box with his books makes him feel better.”

  As the professor turned to speak with her husband, Nadia pulled Basel back, wanting to give them some privacy. Finally, she let Mishmish out of his bag so he could stretch his legs. A girl, barely a teen, gave them a smile as she passed, carrying stacked old newspapers to a table. Basel grabbed Nadia’s hand and pulled her down an aisle. She was just as fascinated by the activity around them as he was. They paused at a table to watch a woman in a paisley scarf open an old shoe box with gloved hands. Beneath strips of newspaper inside lay a reddish-brown rock. The woman’s eyes widened and she pushed aside the remaining paper. “Ya Allah!” she cried, causing a lull in the steady hum in the room.

  “What is it?” asked Laila, hurrying over.

  “I think . . . I think it’s one of the Ebla tablets,” she whispered.

  Ebla, thought Nadia. She’d seen them before, at the National Museum of Aleppo, while on a field trip with her class.

  “You’re right,” said Laila, as others piled around.

  “Priceless,” whispered a bespectacled man with thinning gray hair.

  “It looks like a piece of dried dirt,” muttered Basel, elbowing through to peer at it more closely. “Why’s it so special?” Nadia poked him in the back, mortified by his rudeness. “Ow,” he muttered.

  “A very good question,” said Laila with a smile. “This tablet, one of thousands, was found in the ancient city of Ebla, just south of here. The Sumerian text provides evidence t
hat nearly five thousand years ago, a rich civilization flourished here, perhaps the first recorded world power, equal to that of Egypt or Mesopotamia.”

  “But these were housed in the National Museum near the Old City,” said the woman.

  Laila pursed her lips. “Last I heard, the staff at the museum had locked up the building and taken up arms to protect whatever remains. Many items were taken to Damascus for safekeeping . . . but things probably went missing.”

  Nadia wanted to hear more, but Basel had dragged her to another table, where a woman used a set of tweezers to delicately pluck bits of straw from a strange-looking device that resembled a clock.

  “What’s that?” Basel asked, staring at its intricate metal designs.

  “It’s a mariner’s astrolabe,” she said. “Sailors used it to figure out the positions of the stars and sun, to help navigate at sea.”

  “Wow,” murmured Basel. “Like Sinbad the Sailor.”

  Nadia rolled her eyes, but the woman laughed. “I’m sure he used one just like this.”

  As the woman chatted with Basel, Nadia peered over at a man examining a handful of coins. “Head of Seleucus, general under Alexander the Great, Greek in origin,” he muttered, nudging the coin to a corner. “Zenobia, Palmyra’s third-century Syrian queen, who revolted against the Roman Empire,” he mumbled.

  Wow, thought Nadia, squinting down at the next coin and seeing a familiar aquiline profile, stamped in silver. “Salaheddine,” she whispered. “It’s Salaheddine.”

  “Very good,” said the man, looking up at her. “There is one just like this on display in Room 34 at the British Museum in London. I saw it when I was there many summers ago,” he added sadly.

  “Is it rare?” asked Nadia.

  “Very,” said the man, handing it to her. Nadia cradled it in her palm, the cool metal warming as it touched her skin. “Whenever I hold such ancient things, I get the sensation that they have a spirit and a soul. Losing them is like losing a person.”

  A shiver ran down Nadia’s spine as she read the date, “Eleven eighty-four.”

  “Two years after Salaheddine entered Aleppo, after conquering most of the Middle East,” he said. “But unlike our leaders today, who loot, pillage, and kill, he was a true, just ruler. When he drove European Crusaders from the holy city of Jerusalem, he did not kill Christians or Jews. He allowed them to leave peacefully or stay, while preserving their places of worship.”

  Nadia stared at the image of the warrior king, befuddled by the myriad of emotions rushing through her. She’d heard about the looting of artifacts, but this was the first time she’d seen it firsthand. She had lost so much because of the war: her old life, her family, the luxuries she’d taken for granted. She hadn’t thought of what Aleppo, her beloved city, had lost, and was losing. “Can we help?” she asked.

  The man grinned. “Of course. We need packaging material.” He showed her and Basel how to rip strips of newspaper and crumple them so that they could be used to cushion the artifacts in their boxes.

  • • •

  They’d built up a pile by the time Ammo Mazen returned, perspiration beading his forehead as he carried books from his cart. His bearded young assistant stacked them on a table across from Nadia and Basel. Understanding dawned within Nadia as she examined the book titles: Kitab al-Tasrif by medieval Arab surgeon Abulcasis, Katib Chelebi’s seventeenth-century Islamic atlas, and other rare books of poetry, history, science, and mathematics. They’re not just old books, they’re priceless treasures. She stared at the old man. He’s not just a book repairer.

  “It breaks my heart,” said Rasheed, caressing the cover of a faded volume. “For centuries Aleppo was a center for literature—the first Arabic novel was printed here: Ghabat al-haqq, ‘The Forest of Truth.’ ”

  “Now, that is an irony,” the bearded young man laughed, without humor. “The author, Francis Marrash, wrote about liberty and freedom—both of which Syria lacks.”

  “Well, does it matter?” muttered Rasheed. “No one reads anymore. All they do is watch those silly soap operas and play games on their phones.” Nadia blushed and ducked her head. “Once there was a bookstore on every other street, offering the latest books from Beirut, Cairo, and Damascus.”

  “And now they’ve been converted into mobile-phone shops,” said the bearded young man, earning a grimace from Rasheed.

  “Sadly, you’re right,” wheezed Ammo Mazen, before collapsing on a chair, face ashen. From his pocket, he extracted the familiar brown bottle, but when he tipped it over, nothing came out.

  About to speak, Rasheed stopped short when he spotted a tall, slim book with gilded edges. “Oh my goodness,” he exclaimed. “Is this really Alef Layla?”

  Startled, Nadia paused in the middle of ripping paper and looked up at them.

  Ammo Mazen nodded. “The very one. I believe it’s a copy of the fourteenth-century manuscript that Antoine Galland based his French translation on.”

  “My goodness, this is quite a find,” said Rasheed, flipping it open.

  “We’re lucky you got a hold of these books before they ended up in Jordan, Turkey, or London, sold off to the highest bidder, lost forever,” said Laila, joining them, carrying a glass of water for Ammo Mazen.

  As the men talked, Nadia eyed the book that had kept her company over the past day, a sense of loss spreading through her. Don’t be stupid. It’s just a book, echoed a mocking voice in her head. Her eyes met Ammo Mazen’s and she looked away.

  “Where are you taking the kids?” asked Laila.

  “The girl to Turkey and the boy to his grandfather,” said Ammo Mazen.

  “And you are well?” she asked, her voice falling an octave.

  “As well as can be with old age and war constantly on our heads,” he replied.

  Chapter Nineteen

  July 19, 2012

  A red-stained bandage covered Jad’s shoulder. His skin was a pasty gray from all the blood loss. Hand trembling, Nadia wiped her brother’s forehead with a cool towel, as she’d been instructed by Khala Lina, to keep his fever down. Her aunt had removed the bullet from his back, and now he battled to keep a life-threatening infection at bay.

  “How is he?” her mother whispered from the doorway.

  “The painkiller seems to be working,” replied Nadia, biting her lip. “He’s been out for over four hours.”

  “I still don’t understand how he and Malik ended up at the mosque across town for Friday prayers in the first place,” grumbled her mother, for the hundredth time. She stared down at her eldest son. “What were they thinking, getting caught up in that demonstration against the government?”

  Nadia stayed silent. She had no answers for her mother, at least none that she could share. It seemed everyone had their secrets these days, and Jad and Malik had been spending an awful lot of time on the computer and having hushed discussions.

  “Thank Allah, Malik had the sense to carry Jad back home on Jad’s motorcycle,” mumbled her mother.

  Nadia sighed. The events of the last few months, buzzing on the Internet, jostled inside her tired mind. All across the country, government forces and shabiha were slaughtering innocent civilians, cleansing Sunni Muslims from Alawite areas. In retaliation, Sunnis were butchering Alawites. Despite the bloodshed in Deraa and other cities, the situation in Aleppo had remained mostly calm, punctuated by sporadic demonstrations. But since February, things had changed. Rebel groups that opposed the Assad regime bombed military and police sites, killing twenty-eight and injuring hundreds of others. Further clashes left large swaths of the countryside under rebel control, while news flooded in of more and more senior Syrian army officials defecting to the rebel side. The number and size of protests had grown. It was at one of these demonstrations that Jad had been shot by Syrian military forces.

  Eyes and ears open, picking up news and clues, Nadia realized that the war had changed. She’d seen video clips of horrendous battles where rebels from the Free Syrian Army and the al-Tawhid Br
igade, with its many subgroups, fought Assad’s forces. Newer clips showed young men with long beards and strange clothes, speaking Arabic in unfamiliar accents, as well as English, French, and Farsi. These were foreigners, flooding into the country, many with extremist religious beliefs, linked with groups such as Al Qaeda and those who called themselves the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS, and carried a black flag. As if that weren’t complicated enough, money and arms were flooding in from Europe, America, and rich Gulf Arab states to aid Syrian rebels, who were mainly Sunni Muslims. Meanwhile, Iran and Hezbollah forces from Lebanon, who were Shia, flocked to support Assad, as did Russia, which sent military aid. Christians and other minorities were caught in the middle.

  “You should eat something,” said her mother, interrupting Nadia’s thoughts. “Nana made a pot of soup. It’s on the stove.”

  Nadia wearily handed her mother the towel and slipped into the hallway, catching the scent of cumin and cinnamon bubbling away with something meaty. As she neared the kitchen, a heavy thud echoed in the distance, followed by a shake. Startled, she grabbed onto a chair and looked out the sitting room window. It was well past nine o’clock in the evening, and the sun had disappeared long ago. But now a ball of orange blazed in the distance.

  “Nadia.” She heard her mother running up the hall toward her. Her father followed, a look of fear on his face as the staccato burst of machine-gun fire sounded nearby.

  “Cover the windows!” he cried, as the entire apartment complex erupted in commotion.

  • • •

  Nadia huddled beside her bedroom window, watching the flickering lights of fires still burning at the edge of Salaheddine. Word on the street was that rebel troops had taken control of the district and set up checkpoints. A small candle flickered in a window down the street, in an apartment building she’d visited days before. With a heavy heart, she’d watched Ms. Hussain, her music teacher, and her family frantically load suitcases into their car after her last singing class. They were leaving for Amman, Jordan, to stay with relatives until the situation in Aleppo improved. There would be no more music lessons to take Nadia’s mind off what was happening around her.