<\/p>\n
Would Laila need a jacket in Damascus?<\/span><\/p>\n Damascus. What was the weather like in Damascus? Laila looked at the weather app on her phone. Sixteen degrees. What would it be like to feel the sun on her face? She looked out the window. It was four in the afternoon and already pitch black in Stuttgart, the freezing December air whistling into the crevices of the broken window that the landlord still hadn\u2019t fixed. Every time she called him, he muttered that she should really be speaking to him in German by now. Every time she tried to speak to him in German, he complained that her German was terrible.<\/span><\/p>\n Damascus. Laila never imagined that she would be packing to go to Damascus. Somehow, during the ten years since she\u2019d last tasted her mother\u2019s waraa\u2019 \u2018inab or smelled the jasmine flowers that spilled over the balcony in the springtime, the entire country had turned into a black hole in her mind.<\/span><\/p>\n Over the years, she\u2019d convinced herself that she didn\u2019t need Syria. Why not reinvent herself? Omar certainly had. Shortly after she\u2019d arrived in Germany, he\u2019d gotten a scholarship to study engineering in the United States \u2014 and it seemed that he\u2019d never looked back. Now he had a blonde wife and three children \u2014 she knew that because she stalked him on Facebook whenever she had a little bit too much to drink.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n A wife and three children weren\u2019t the only things he had acquired since moving to the United States. He also had a gut. It didn\u2019t match her memories of his bare chest, firm under her hands, the athletic build of someone who could run just as quickly from bullets as he could nimbly dodge the sniper\u2019s aim. Laila remembered watching him at the demonstrations, his chest held high, as if daring the bullets to try to pierce through his courage. So young, so stupid, so full of hope.<\/span><\/p>\n Now, she looked at her belongings strewn out across her bed. The winter coat that had become part of her body in Germany was probably far too warm for sixteen-degree weather. It seemed so real, so concrete \u2014 each of Hadi\u2019s tiny outfits neatly folded, ready to be placed in the well-worn suitcase that had followed her from Damascus to Stuttgart, ten years earlier.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Hadi. What would Hadi think of Damascus? She looked at the sleeping child on the mattress next to hers, his long, feathery eyelashes fluttering in slumber. If she ever needed proof of how long it had been since she had last seen Syria, she had a ten-year-old child to remind her. Every day, he looked a little bit more like Omar, those big, dark eyes burning with curiosity about the world around him. But Hadi had never been to Syria. He had never had to stop going to school, because suddenly a sniper was looming over the end of his street. He could enjoy fireworks without crouching behind the sofa. He had never been afraid of the knock on the door that could take away everyone that he loved.<\/span><\/p>\n Would Omar be in Damascus, too?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The last time she\u2019d seen Omar had been the night that they\u2019d spent lying next to each other, right before he left to Beirut. At the time, she thought she might follow him there. Even though she longed to stay in Damascus, she knew that it was becoming more dangerous every day. Dozens of their friends had been arrested by the regime \u2014 it was only a matter of time before they were picked up, too.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSomeday, we will be back and we won\u2019t be afraid anymore.\u201d Omar brushed a piece of her long, black hair behind her ear. She didn\u2019t know if she believed him, but she felt comforted as he pulled her closer to him, kissing her gently at first, then deeper. She could feel the layers of their love for one another mingling as their bodies came together in what felt like a promise that whatever happened they would always be there for one another, no matter what the future might hold.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n She just never imagined it would be one in which they hadn\u2019t spoken in ten years. OMAR BOUGHT THE TICKET WITHOUT TELLING KATHY. It didn\u2019t feel like he was buying a ticket to another country. It felt like he was buying a ticket back in time, back to the days he\u2019d spent chanting in the street with Faris, the nights he\u2019d spent tracing his fingers across Laila\u2019s body, bathed in moonlight.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Laila. Laila was the only one who had ever truly understood him. Laila had felt the same infectious pulse of the revolution in her veins, the invincible feeling of running faster than they ever imagined their legs could carry them, their bodies alive with the knowledge that they had once again defied death.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Did she have to move on so quickly? It was less than a year after she arrived in Germany that she posted a picture of a baby\u2019s hand on her Instagram, before disappearing all over again. Who was this person who had so suddenly swept her off her feet? It almost felt as if that last night they had spent wrapped around one another had meant nothing to her. Laila was annoyingly private on social media, posting just enough to remind him that she was still lurking, but not enough to give away any meaningful information. It was infuriating.<\/span><\/p>\n Now, Laila was the only person that he wanted to talk to. Had she also stayed up every night for the past five nights, watching first Hama, then Homs and finally, Damascus, be liberated? At first, he hadn\u2019t believed it. \u201cWho cares?\u201d he told his brother, who called him feverishly when the rebels started moving towards Aleppo. He had stopped watching the news from Syria in 2016, when the regime had surrounded Aleppo and every last shred of hope he had ever felt had vanished. From that point onward, he\u2019d fully committed to his life in the United States. He threw himself into his studies. He downloaded a dating app. If Laila could move on, so could he. He went through the laborious process of answering asinine questions \u2014 \u201cone thing that\u2019s non-negotiable for me is\u2026\u201d and \u201cwhat\u2019s on your bucket list?\u201d Would anyone understand what he had been through? Most of the conversations went nowhere, but he was determined to swipe until he found someone that pushed Laila \u2014 and by extension, Syria \u2014 out of his mind.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Just when he thought he might be ready to give up on girls who liked long walks on the beach (but only with guys who were at least six feet tall) and brunch on the weekends, he came across a picture of a girl with blonde hair cropped into a neat short bob and a kind smile. According to her profile, she enjoyed boating and waterskiing on Lake Michigan. Visiting Hawaii was on her bucket list. She didn\u2019t seem to have a problem with the fact that he spoke English with an accent, or that he was only five-foot-nine. Her name was Kathy.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been wanting to try the new Lebanese restaurant on Packard Street,\u201d she replied, as soon as he mentioned that he was from Syria. He breathed a sigh of relief \u2014 he never quite knew how people were going to react, especially with Trump\u2019s promises of a Muslim ban.<\/span><\/p>\n Besides, he had been missing good shawarma and the halal cart next to the university didn\u2019t quite cut it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDo you want to check it out together?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The restaurant advertised itself as a \u201cMediterranean Grill\u201d and was nothing to write home about, but Kathy was smart and funny. Her unusual skills included being able to water ski while blindfolded and name obscure world capitals. Her non-negotiable was that she wanted to have a family \u2014 and quickly. One after the other, one, two, three children, in quick succession until all of a sudden Omar was a father of three, trying to keep up with the mortgage on a three-bedroom house in the suburbs of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Even though he had a degree in chemical engineering, he got a job driving trucks for Kathy\u2019s father\u2019s trucking company, moving construction materials from Ann Arbor to Chattanooga, Tennessee and back. He dreamed of owning a fleet of trucks himself, sitting back and being the boss, like his father-in-law.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Now, he was watching the young men in Umayyad Square as they rifled their way through the presidential palace and broadcast it all on YouTube. What did it matter, how many trucks he owned or how much money he made? Suddenly all of these considerations seemed trivial. He should be there, pissing on the remains of the Assad regime.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAre you coming back to bed?\u201d Kathy looked bleary-eyed in the door frame. Omar felt guilty. Kathy already got so little sleep as it was, and his nocturnal schedule over the past two weeks was hardly grounding.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry, honey, I will soon.\u201d He closed the laptop. Tomorrow. He would tell her about the ticket tomorrow. EVERY DAY HADI LOOKED MORE LIKE OMAR, with those long, thick eyelashes that made his big dark eyes seem even bigger. Would Omar know if he saw him? Sometimes Laila fantasized about telling him. \u201cHi. It\u2019s Laila. You have a ten-year-old son now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Every time she typed out the Facebook message, she stopped herself from sending it. Ten years had passed. Omar seemed like he had a successful business and three beautiful children, who called him daddy or baba. Why tell him now what she should have confessed from the start?<\/span><\/p>\n Instead, she focused on Hadi. Imagining a future where Hadi would never be afraid to speak his mind gave Laila the strength that she needed to jump through the hoops of German bureaucracy. Even though he looked like her \u2014 well, Omar, really \u2014 he spoke German like the blonde-haired children in his school. Watching his childlike mind soak up the language like a sponge was magical and mesmerizing. She imagined him as a chameleon, fluently moving between worlds that had always felt foreign to her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Still, she wondered how much he understood about where he was truly from. How would he ever know if she never told him? Even though she longed to tell him about what was happening in Syria, she struggled to find the words to make sense of such evil \u2014 and the scale of loss and grief \u2014 for herself, much less a ten-year old.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOnce upon a time, there was a little girl who lived in a beautiful country,\u201d she began, wondering if it would be any easier to tell as a children\u2019s story, one in which a hero vanquished the enemy, where good and evil were clearly defined.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBut it was so beautiful that an evil monster took over, and was so obsessed with staying in power that he didn\u2019t care how many people he hurt.\u201d Somehow describing Bashar al-Assad as a monster both distanced her from him and felt more accurate than any newspaper account that she had ever read.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHe was like the bullies at school?\u201d His eyes grew wide in recognition. Even though he spoke German just as well as his classmates, they were still startled when they heard him speaking Arabic to his mother. One of them had even called him habibi \u2014 but as an insult.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYes, but even more brutal,\u201d she said, carefully measuring her words. \u201cIf anyone dared to question his power, he would snatch them up and take them to his dungeons.\u201d Hadi\u2019s eyes grew big and scared. What had she done? She wasn\u2019t telling her precious child the story of a far-off land \u2014 she was giving him a very thinly veiled account of the very nightmares that she was trying to escape.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOne day, the little girl and her friends decided that they were going to stand up to the monster.\u201d She could feel herself scrambling for a protagonist \u2014 and suddenly, it came to her in the form of her, Omar and Fares, linking arms in the street, a sea of bodies, calling for the regime to fall.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cEven though they were scared, they knew that they were stronger together.\u201d Laila paused for a moment. How could she tell him about the joyous days of the revolution without the brutal years of the civil war? If she wasn\u2019t careful, barrel bombs were going to start playing a role in her bedtime stories.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDid the monster have green scales?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYes,\u201d she laughed. A monster with green scales was far less terrifying than one with steely blue eyes. \u201cHe had green scales and would spit enormous balls of fire at the little girl and her friends. It got so dangerous that the little girl had to take a long journey, far faraway.\u201d She wondered if a little part of him knew that she was the little girl, holding her stomach on a tiny boat, terrified of the inky black sea, not yet knowing that he was growing inside of her.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cEventually, she made it all the way to a new kingdom, where she knew that the monster could never reach her. And she started a new life, happily ever after.\u201d He nuzzled into her and Laila stroked his hair, wishing that they could stay like that forever.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m happy for her, but I hope she gets to go back someday.\u201d Laila hoped that he didn\u2019t notice her trying to blink back a tear.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cMe too.\u201d \u201cCAN YOU REMIND ME TO CALL THE CREDIT CARD COMPANY?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t unusual to hear Kathy up and about as early as seven-thirty in the morning. Long before Omar\u2019s morning coffee had settled into his veins, Kathy was often already checking off items from her never-ending to-do list, often with at least one child clinging onto her.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d he asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee. Even though Omar had always been nocturnal, keeping up with Kathy and the pressures of fatherhood had demanded that he become an early riser. His recent late nights meant that he barely slept at all.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI got a call telling me that there\u2019s a $2,000 charge to Lufthansa.\u201d She effortlessly bounced Meghan on one arm, her cell phone in the other. Children had only made her more efficient, organizing schedules around breakfast times and bath times, school lunches packed in color-coordinated insulated lunch boxes, somehow double-checking that all of their bills were paid while simultaneously making sure that everyone was eating their vegetables.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cLufthansa. Some German airline, or something.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Lufthansa. The flight he\u2019d booked the night before went from Detroit to Beirut by way of Frankfurt. Of course it would come up as a fraudulent charge. It was far more money than they typically spent on anything. He cursed the success of the Syrian revolution. Why couldn\u2019t he have simply paid a smuggler in cash, like the good old days? He should have included her in his decision. Even if fantasizing about traveling to Syria made him feel like he was ten years younger, an airplane was no time machine. He had responsibilities now \u2014 responsibilities to Ryan, Kristen, Meghan and Kathy.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt was me,\u201d he confessed. \u201cI bought a ticket to go to Beirut.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He watched as his words registered on her face. First, her soft, pale brow that had only recently started to reflect her age furrowed in confusion. Then, she set Meghan down in her high chair and looked at him again, her ordinarily kind blue eyes narrowing.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s to go to Damascus.\u201d He cautiously took a sip of coffee. He should have included her in his decision. Who was he to say that she wouldn\u2019t understand that he wanted to see his homeland for the first time in a decade, that she wouldn\u2019t want to share in his excitement? She might have given their children American names that he could barely pronounce, but surely she would understand his desire to return home for the first time since he fled Syria.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe airport still isn\u2019t open, but you can fly into Beirut and take a taxi from there.\u201d Why couldn\u2019t he stop talking? \u201cIt\u2019s only about two hours.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSo I\u2019m supposed to just stay here with our three children while you run off to a war zone?\u201d Whenever Kathy was angry, her voice became low and quiet, rumbling ever so slightly but never into a roar. It was so different than Laila, who would rant and rave about something as benign as a difference in political opinion. He wished that she would lose her temper, that she would scream at him and break plates without caring whether their children saw her lose it, or not.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt isn\u2019t a war zone,\u201d he protested. This was the problem with Americans: no matter what happened in the Middle East, they could never see it as anything but a war zone. The same way all the talking heads on CNN were now confidently predicting that Syria would be \u201canother Libya or Iraq,\u201d as though \u201cliberation\u201d itself were the problem, and not the hands that delivered it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful place, where I spent the happiest days of my childhood.\u201d For a moment, Omar imagined what it would be like to watch his family grow in Damascus. What would it be like to raise his children around dozens of aunties, uncles and cousins? Even if they couldn\u2019t speak Arabic yet, it wasn\u2019t too late to learn. Perhaps he could speak to his children in the language of his heart.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cWe could go \u2014 all of us, together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Instead, Kathy pursed her lips.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNow you\u2019ve really lost your mind.\u201d \u201cWHY ARE YOU CRYING MAMA?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Laila hadn\u2019t noticed that Hadi had stirred awake.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Ordinarily, Laila didn\u2019t let herself cry \u2014 especially in front of Hadi. But ever since the regime had fallen, it was as if something inside of her had burst. How could she explain that these were not tears of sorrow \u2014 they were tears of joy, of disbelief, tears that had been trapped in her body for so many years, that she had no idea where they were coming from?<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDo you remember the story that I told you about the evil monster who would never give up his power, no matter how many people he hurt?\u201d She abandoned her packing to crouch down next to him, a smile spreading across her face as she realized that the story hadn\u2019t been over, after all.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHe had green scales and used to spit balls of fire at the little girl and her friends.\u201d Hadi had an attention to detail unlike any that she had ever seen \u2014 it must be Omar\u2019s talent in the sciences and mathematics that he somehow inherited. Whereas she spoke in metaphors and allegories, Hadi always challenged her in just how literal he could be.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cExactly,\u201d she smiled. \u201cEven though the little girl was happy, life in the new kingdom wasn\u2019t always easy.\u201d Laila looked over at the German grammar book that she had furiously studied when she first arrived in Stuttgart, hoping she might one day master the language. Now she would settle for someone not correcting her mid-sentence. \u201cShe had to learn a new language and she had to figure out how to be a grown up, all by herself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDid she make a lot of mistakes?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYes, but she was trying!\u201d She playfully swatted him with a pillow. \u201cThe little girl never thought that she was going to be able to go back to her kingdom \u2014 and she was so worried about her friends who still lived around the monster.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBut her friends never gave up the fight.\u201d Now she felt the tears streaming down her face \u2014 and for the first time, she didn\u2019t do anything to try to stop them. \u201cEven though it was too dangerous to go to protests, they didn\u2019t stop dreaming of the day that they would harness enough magic to be free from the monster.\u201d How was Omar explaining this to his children? She wished that there was some kind of blueprint, a manual to explain the unthinkable \u2014 and then, the unimaginable \u2014 to a child. And just like that, it came to her: magic.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOne day, they all got together once again, but this time they felt a surge of power and knew that they could fight the monster.\u201d At first, she had ignored the news alert that rebels were moving towards Aleppo. But after a few hours, she couldn\u2019t stop refreshing the Al Jazeera live blog, sleeplessly watching the rebels take Hama and Homs, wondering what would happen if they reached Damascus.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThey gained back their kingdom from the monster and his minions, one little bit at a time.\u201d Within a matter of days, she found herself scrolling nonstop through videos of prisoners running free, ninety-second clips of pure, ecstatic joy. Magic truly was the only way to explain it.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThey went to the monster\u2019s dungeons and zapped the locks with their magical powers.\u201d One particularly joyful video showed two brothers who hadn\u2019t seen one another in seven years embracing. She watched it on repeat, wondering if Omar would go back and try to see his brothers, too. \u201cSuddenly, everyone who had ever tried to fight the monster was running free through the streets of our kingdom.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat did the monster do?\u201d Hadi cocked his head and looked at her. Did he know? He had to know.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHe tried to snarl at them, to spit fire at them once again, but when he snarled, nothing came out!\u201d Waking up the morning after, Laila had felt a lightness she’d thought she’d long left behind, and wondered if Omar was feeling it, too. \u201cHe was so embarrassed that he ran away.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe monster is gone?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Laila pulled him close, wrapping her arms around his chest, wondering what he would think of their beautiful kingdom. \u201cThe monster is gone.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How do you talk about war and exile with your child, when all you want to do is protect him from the truth?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":208,"featured_media":36364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,2995,4278],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1893],"class_list":["post-36361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-short-stories","category-tmr-49-love-war-resistance","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/white-spacer.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
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