During my short time with her, she tried to uncover my most tragic emotional scars. Every night after sex, she’d bring about tales of hardship. Then it would be my turn to talk. She would recount the stories of her ordeals in third person narration, as though it had happened to someone else. She had a term for it. God’s narration was what she called it. It was like the marks her agonising past left on her were war scars. She was proud of them as though they were medals of honour. For her, surviving them affirmed how lucky she was. I admit that it felt weird having to pour out my personal tragedies as bedtime stories. For in me, it was like that lyric in which the singer describes the emotional walls he used to cover all his vulnerabilities. I have no idea how to describe it, but witnessing her willingly expose herself brought forth in me a desire to break down my walls, stripping myself of all armour. After all, I had my share of depressing tales. I’d follow the narrative style she employed. I’d thought, this will distance me from my emotions. I was wrong.
Part II
Chapter 7
Our Values
When he woke up in the common room in the cold of a grey early morning, Adam rose, pushing off the thick edge of a neatly sewn blanket. “Good morning mama,” he yawned, placing the palms of his hands over the sides of his slack-jawed face, like Munch’s Scream painting. At that sight, sullen Warda’s pale doleful face transformed into a grin, though it still didn't manage to hide her wan eyes. “Good morning son,” she said. Adam's older brother, Fadi was still sleeping peacefully. Warda pulled the blanket off him and gently touched his bruised cheek as though casting a healing spell on him. Fadi opened his eyes to see his brother eagerly waiting for him to get up. Through a grungy scratched wooden door, Warda walked the two shivering children across the brown soil of the side courtyard that bleak winter morning. Warda sensed her children’s fear as they stared at the ghastly frosted water tap.
Their house reflected poverty; it would have made the most unfortunate character of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables pity whoever resorted to it seeking shelter. It was old and unpainted. The roof was made of thin transparent plastic sheets that were covered with rusting tin sheets. These were placed over the top layer of the walls’ concrete bricks. Some large bricks were placed on the top of them to hold the roof from falling when wind blew. Looking down on it, it resembled one of those Sumatran houses in the aftermath of the 2004 Christmas tsunami. It had only two small rooms facing the tiny side courtyard where an unfinished, roofless bathroom and toilet connected the parents’ room with an unfinished concrete brick wall. Through surface wiring, each room had a plug and two switches fixed to their right walls. A bulb in each room dangled from the ceiling. There were no luxuries, not even a chair. For sleeping, Adam’s family shared three thin mattresses and two blankets. They were six in all.
The rusty, unpainted front door split the full-length wall. There were two metal windows, one for each room. They were made for seeing the yard, not the outdoors. The only water tap emerged from the wall that linked the bathroom and the toilet.
Warda filled a plastic red kettle and handed it to Fadi. “Go to the toilet,” she instructed. Meanwhile she’d stood with Adam on the square metre of unpolished concrete that covered the ground under the water tap. While waiting for Fadi, she washed, then dried Adam’s face and hands with a faded blue towel that was placed over her left shoulder. Warda rubbed her cold pink hands against each other and looked at Adam’s light brown shivering face, “It’s too cold, go inside son.” As Adam ran toward the common room his brother walked out of the toilet.
A heavily built, herculean middle-aged man, with arms like sledgehammers emerged from the parents’ room, making his way toward Warda and Fadi. Hazem had a receding hairline, an angular tanned face, and a Greek nose. Hazem bent toward Fadi until his five o’clock-shadowed face was a breath away from his eldest son. Fadi pursed his lips with a gracious smile, “Good morning father.” “Good morning son,” he replied as he kissed both his son’s cheeks. His piercing black eyes caught a glimpse of Warda’s almond-shaped, brown, sorrowful eyes. "How are you feeling," he muttered. “I have been better,” Warda mumbled. He leaned against the toilet wall, near the water tap, and lit a cigarette. He sucked on it as if it was his only source of oxygen. Inhaling deeply, he waited for Warda to finish washing Fadi’s face and go back to the common room.
Warda picked a pair of jeans and a burlywood school uniform shirt from a clothes stand hanger. She dressed Fadi. “Go be seated next to Adam,” she instructed after she’d finished fixing his hair. Fadi turned the TV on before he sat close to his brother. Their black and white set was placed over a large, blue plastic fruit container. Through the door, into the room, Warda carried a metal kettle and walked toward a steel table with a stove on top. The stove was connected to a gas cylinder below via a black hose. The children and their mother were barefoot. The ground was unpolished concrete and partially covered with plastic outdoor mats.
Adam was only five years old. It was the first time he’d seen graphic scenes on television. It was Channel One of Syria’s state television. The anchor reported that a Palestinian man bombarded himself in a bus, killing eleven Israelis. Adam and his brother sat by the old small stove to witness the scene of the paramedics treating the injured. Meanwhile, the anchor had kept chanting, “Victory!”
Warda came back with a large chrome tray on which she carried a kettle of tea, empty glasses, a plate of yogurt, jar of olives, and few loaves of bread. Then she put the tray on the ground. “Kids stop watching that horrendous bloody scene and come to eat,” she instructed.
“In a second,” Fadi replied.
“Right now!” she insisted.
A few minutes later, Fadi was eating. After several minutes of observing his brother, a confused Adam wondered, “Do Israelis have children?”
“Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“Yes they do.”
“Do their mothers feel sad when they die?”
“I don’t know.”
“All parents love their children,” a frowning Warda replied.
“They are sad. Is killing people wrong?”
“But Israelis always kill Palestinians,” Fadi interjected.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, my teacher says Israelis should be burned.”
“Don’t Israelis and Palestinians have children?”
“What is confusing you Adam?” Hazem queried while exhaling the smoke.
“The anchor said ‘Victory’. A Palestinian killed by Israelis. Why?”
“Son. The killing of innocent people is in no way good news. It is terror, no matter who commits it.”
“What’s an innocent person?”
While breastfeeding her youngest daughter, their mother yelled, “Adam that’s enough! Go play with your sister. Fadi it’s getting late, you should be going to school.”
Hazem looked at Warda and told her that Adam was a special kid. “This boy will bring us a lot of troubles,” he laughed.
“What a life!” Warda sighed deeply, after Fadi and Adam had left and continued, “It is such a cold long winter. Adam wears Fadi’s old sweater and jeans. My mother bought Heela a jacket. She has been talking about what a burden we’ve become. She never fails to stress her philanthropic deeds. Such a bitch! And I don’t know how to describe your mother. The other day, she told Fadi how useless both of us are. She told him that she gave us three tomatoes. She is something. She asked a seven-year-old why doesn’t he find a job? Despite all of her trashy jewellery, she couldn’t get over three tomatoes. You need to get a job and stick to it. It is not fair that you still support your younger brother’s studying expenses, let alone the monthly bribes you’re paying to get your mother the weekly visit to your imprisoned brother. Your other two brothers are working in Saudi, saving their money, buying houses, and cars. Nobody appreciates what you’re doing. Your brothers always get the credit. And for what? They do shit, yet they are the saviours. Somebody has to teach your imbe
cile family that giving is not equivalent to lending. I’ve been ill for months and everybody knows. What the fuck is wrong with people, a visit won’t cost them anything. I’m a villager and no matter what, I will always be an outcast to them!”
Hazem listened, smiled demurely, and kissed Warda on her forehead the moment she’d finished venting her fury. Her eyes were watery on the brink of dissolving into tears. Warda raised her hands and looked up. She sniffed, cursing, “God where are you? God tell me in which casino you will be having your orgy. In the name of whores, what for? Why? A sadist bastard, that’s who you are! Just tell me where are you? Son of a bitch.” Warda kept going on. Hazem waited until she had stopped swearing, before he wiped away the tears that were coursing down her cheeks.
“Fairness is a childish concept,” Hazem preached. He took a cigarette out of his shirt pocket, tapped it against the lighter, put it in his mouth and lit it. He continued, “Not everybody has the stomach to do honourable things. It might seem unjust. I might look like a waste of human sperm.” He inhaled the smoke deeply, paused, and looked at Warda. As he exhaled, he affirmed, “We are damned poor. This is not a place to call a home. We live in a shelter. My kids slept hungry yesterday and my wife has been ill for a while. It kills me to see you suffer, it really does. However despite this, I cannot abandon my young brothers. I have a code. My other brothers might be selfish; might get all the credit. They might be laughing at us. But I want my children, our children to live by this code. I want Fadi and Adam to be men of dignity and honour. They will be, you will see. They will sacrifice anything for one another. They will be spoken highly of by everybody. They see me, they will learn. I know they will. I don’t want my mother, your mother, my brothers and sisters to spare them the belittling of their parents. I want them to learn that in the worst situation, they have to be principled. I want them to take care of one another. I don’t want them to seek recognition. I want them to help and stand by each other because it is right. Because they are family. Not in name only.”
Hazem put down the tin can that he was holding and smashed his cigarette into it. He lifted Warda’s pale, soft face with his rough hands. “Look into my eyes, honey.” Her pink eyes reluctantly rose to his.
Hazem said, “Smile my love. We will be okay, we will be fine.” He kissed her dry lips. He placed the palms of his hands on her thighs and rubbed them, whispering, “Our values must always be immune to unfairness. We must not allow any force to hijack our endeavours to do the right thing. Because if we surrender without a fight, what’s the point?”
Chapter 8
The Orange
“I need books,” a sobbing Adam pleaded to his mother.
It was the autumn of 1990, the year Adam turned six. Warda was breastfeeding Solaf. The whole family was sitting inside the common room, in a patch of light from the open window, on an outdoor plastic rug.
“Please try to understand… I cannot go to school without books,” Adam tried to make his case.
“Today I will go to the public book store but don’t do it again,” Hazem harangued as his eyes glowered with anger.
Four days earlier, Adam had gotten his weekly allowance of one pound. On his way to school he bought an orange from a street vender. At the time, he thought he was in love with his teacher’s daughter. Amira was very kind to him. In fact she was the first girl to sit beside him in the last row. Adam’s face was as weather-beaten as a construction worker’s in a hot and dry country. He had short black hair, an oblong face, and brown heavy-lidded oval eyes. He had his father’s nose with a pointed tip and narrow nostrils. He was not the kind of kid found in unbought picture frames. He more closely resembled the face of an anti-child labour campaign. Amira was a classic Syrian cutie. She was as beautiful as a Disney princess. She had light brown, wavy hair, an oval face, a button nose, and large close-set green eyes. She was allowed to wear jewellery and dresses to school. Her favourite colour was pink.
“I got you an orange,” Adam grinned, “I got you the biggest, the sweetest, the most juicy.” With both hands Amira took the orange as the upper corners of her thin-lipped mouth quirked upward. Looking at her, the euphoric Adam couldn’t help but blush.
“Silence! Be seated. You in the back, sit down!” Khadeja, the teacher yelled announcing her entrance to the classroom. “I am quite tired. Kids place your foreheads on your desk,” she instructed as she took her seat.
After resting for several minutes, Khadeja asked the students to sit in a so-called ergonomic position. Half way through the math class, a younger teacher escorted Amira to her mother. “She’s so beautiful,” the younger teacher graciously smiled, kneeling to kiss Amira. “Thank you Farah, you didn’t have to do that,” Khadeja grinned.
“Do what? Oh you mean the orange. I did not, it’s from one of your students,” she smirked as she made her way out. From his front row seat and perhaps urged by the Syrian snitching genetic disorder, Mazen shouted, “It is Adam! I saw him stealing it from Abu Saleem. The street vendor was selling some to me when Adam stole it.”
“Adam! You dirty boy, come here!”
With his head held down, Adam walked toward the front of the classroom. With a face full of shame he glimpsed his angry teacher. “I bought…” Adam tried to explain as he received the first slap on his face. She slapped him several times; each time harder than the last. She yelled, “Take your orange. A dirty thief, that’s what you are.” It was a shoot-first-ask-later kind of a situation. Adam couldn’t take the humiliation any longer. In a brittle tone, he broke in “I bought it, I bought it, I really did. I love Amira!” Gratingly Kadeja lectured the little boy, “You will never be her equal, dirty boy! I know your family. Coming from that neighbourhood, what will you be? A waiter, maybe a thief. You’re already there, little thief. Dirty boy, pick up the papers in this littered class; you might earn a career of it one day, if you’re lucky.”
The mortified little boy carried the trash bin and did what was asked of him. He sat silently until school time ended. Once the headmaster rang that reverberating bell, he sprinted away as fast as he could.
Chapter 9
The Thief
The summer of 1991 was quite hot. School holidays had started in early July, a month before. It was the year Adam turned seven. On that Tuesday morning, Hazem and Fadi had to leave home early. Adam’s daily duty for several months had been to go to the bakery at the earliest hours of dawn to get the bread. Occasionally, Warda would ask her boy to shop for thick lamb yogurt. Not on that day though; they had some left over. Adam would wake up early to avoid fighting his way through the melee of rude, heartless adults. Some bakeries in Ar-Raqqah managed to coax their crowds to line up through fixed steel barriers. This method was not employed in any bakery in the immediate vicinity of Adam’s neighbourhood; the closest on foot, was around forty minutes away.
Zain, the neighbour’s kid, had been his journey companion; they had been friends for two years. Zain’s father had always gotten his family the bread. He worked in a barbeque restaurant. Whenever he’d finished work, he would get it from the central bakery. Zain didn’t need to join Adam on that long walk, but he usually did.
Adam was asleep beside Fadi. Adam was an early bird. He woke up at half past five. He was wearing shiny blue athletic pants and a white tank top. The pants were made from polyester. Adam raised himself and anchored his elbows, looking at Heela to his right and Fadi to his left. His mother had given him fifteen Syrian pounds before he'd gone to bed, so he wouldn't wake her up.
Adam pushed open the wooden door of his father’s room and tiptoed toward his sleeping parents. Hazem’s arm was over Warda’s shoulder and his left knee was just above her right thigh. They both were snoring in rhythm; a duet of some sort. Adam tapped Warda on her shoulder and repeated, “Mama, mama, mama…”
She yawned and mumbled, “I told you not to wake me up!”
He stared at her for few moments and enquired, “Can I get a pound?”
His mother fell back to sl
eep and he studied her face for few seconds before he reached to her arm again. She muttered, “What do you want?”
He nagged, “I want a pound. Just one pound! Please mama, just one.”
Irritated, she impatiently she ordered him, “Go and get the bread. I’ll give it to you tomorrow.” She fell asleep in few seconds. Adam stared at her and muttered, “That’s what you said yesterday.” As the sound of his mother’s snoring rose, he made his way to the water tap in the centre of the courtyard.
After washing his face, he walked toward the other room to fetch his football shoes. He was very fond of them. His mother had got them from a thrift shop. They were red. Adam shuffled out of the house and to the right. He stood by the steel door of their second neighbours and shouted, “Zain, Zain, Zain, Zain…” He kept going on for several minutes until his friend came out. Zain’s clothing style was almost identical to Adam’s. They both wore blue athletic pants and white boys’ tank tops. Their shoes were different brands, but both were red.
Placing a ball the size of a tennis ball under his right shoe, Adam excitedly announced, “On three we shall start! One, two, three!” He took the lead for couple of minutes until Zain brilliantly tackled him and gained possession of the ball. Zain juggled the ball from one foot to the other, as he was running, then passed it to Adam. While for the most of it they played against each other, they also practiced some team-based techniques. Their game lasted for almost half an hour. Zain was more skilled than Adam. He had even attended a number of matches between local teams with his father. Zain had often played with the older kids. Of the five-against-five street matches, he was the first to be picked and thus, players of the rival team sometimes bargained for six players to have a fair match. He was by far the most talented of the neighbourhood kids. Zain had acquired an obscure position on his team. When the match started, he was a defender, midfielder, and striker. On penalties he often became the goalkeeper. For the neighbourhood matches, football rules were meant to be broken. There was no referee. Zain earned the right to pick some of the players; especially, with the younger teams. Adam, against other players’ desires, was selected by him.
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