Whatever It Takes

by Barbara Elsborg

  Chapter Two

  Syria

  Zain was fourteen when the trouble really started. The whole family, along with Qashim, who lived in the flat below but spent more time at their place than his, sat riveted in front of the TV. His father had May and Rima, Zain’s five-year-old twin sisters, tucked under his arms.

  In the south of the country, teenage boys had been detained for spraying anti-government graffiti on the walls of their Daraa school. When their relatives discovered the children had been beaten and tortured, they went to demand their release from prison only to be shunned and insulted. Protests broke out, not just in Daraa, and now four people had been shot dead by security forces.

  “See!” His mother turned to glare at Zain but the glare would have been better aimed at Qashim who was far more likely to get up to mischief, though he was never caught. “See what happens!”

  “It’s a long way from here,” Qashim said.

  Aleppo, where they lived, was nearly three hundred miles from Daraa.

  “You think trouble won’t spread?” Zain’s mother snorted. “This is just the beginning.”

  “Isn’t it what we wanted?” Zain whispered. “Freedom? Democracy? A voice?”

  That earned him glares from both his mother and father.

  “I whispered.” Zain glared back but speaking against the regime, even inside the walls of your home, was dangerous. He’d been warned often enough.

  “You think change will be easy?” his father said quietly. “That the government will just give in because that’s what has happened in other countries? They won’t. But nothing will be the same in Syria from now on. Be very careful, boys. Look out for each other.”

  “I’ll take care of him.” Qashim slung his arm over Zain’s shoulder and Zain held perfectly still though the weight of Qashim’s embrace made him want to sink into the floor. Trouble wasn’t just coming. For Zain, it was already here. Its name was Qashim.

  Demonstrations spread over the entire country and so did the crackdowns by President Bashar Assad’s forces. Patches of unrest turned into a full-scale civil war. Zain could hardly believe how quickly they moved from wondering what was for dinner that night, to wondering if they’d be alive to eat dinner the next day.

  The wealthier west of the city was under government control, the poorer east side run by the rebels. Zain’s parents had chosen to live in the east of the city because his mother had wanted to be near her parents and sisters. Zain’s father drove north to his job as a doctor in Al-Kindi hospital. A journey that became more and more treacherous as each day passed.

  Explosions, gunfire and burnt-out cars were part of daily life. Zain hated it. Qashim was excited by it, for him it was like living inside one of the violent computer games he was addicted to. Then Qashim’s father was killed in a car bomb blast and Zain had seen through the lie of sadness on Qashim’s face and known he was glad because now the beatings would stop. It was a reminder he didn’t need that Qashim could put on whatever face was needed.

  Zain had often lain in bed listening to the sounds coming from the room below; Qashim’s father’s bellows and grunts as he wielded his stick and Qashim’s gasps of pain. Qashim never cried out, never begged his father to stop. When Zain had once caught sight of the marks on Qashim’s body, he’d wondered how it could be possible to be hurt to that extent and not beg for it to end. He couldn’t be glad Qashim’s father was dead, but he was glad Qashim was no longer being beaten.

  The pair walked to school together every day because Zain didn’t have an acceptable excuse not to. While Zain jumped at any loud noise, his head constantly swivelling like a nervous deer looking for danger, Qashim never flinched. That was another difference between them. Zain existed in a state of constant fear while Qashim simply didn’t care. Except about Zain.

  Once, he’d saved Zain’s life. How Qashim had known the building was about to fall, Zain had no idea but Qashim had hauled him out of the way, put himself between Zain and the flying debris and Zain didn’t have a scratch on him while Qashim had to have stitches in his back.

  Qashim was not humble. He told everyone he’d saved Zain’s life, that one day, when Zain was a doctor, maybe Zain could do the same for him. Yet the next day, when Zain had failed to laugh at one of Qashim’s jokes, Qashim slapped his face and called him names. Said he was useless, worthless and Zain had to lie to his mother about the cut next to his eye.

  As the unrest continued to escalate, many people packed up what they could and left Aleppo, their belongings crammed into cars, piled on bikes, loaded onto flatbed trucks. They took their carpets, their furniture, their pets, along with their most valuable possessions. Others just walked with what they could carry on their backs and in their hands.

  Zain’s father refused to leave. But instead of continuing to drive north to work, he volunteered to help at Dar al-Shifa hospital, transformed from a private clinic to a field station where the wounded of both sides were patched up. If more specialised treatment was needed, patients were sent to the west of the city to better equipped hospitals. His father said eighty percent of those they treated were civilians, many of them children. How could he walk away from those he could help? How could his family ask him to?

  Barrel bombs devastated the east of the city, oil drums and gas tanks packed with explosives and lethal pieces of metal. If you were killed outright, you were lucky. Zain would have preferred that than to lose an arm or leg or have his body riddled with shrapnel. His mother wanted them to leave while they still could. So did Zain. His father still refused to go but asked her to flee with the twins and Zain. Now his mother was the one who refused. She wouldn’t go without his father.

  The relentless and indiscriminate bombardment by government forces and the retaliatory shelling by rebels meant nowhere was safe. No one was safe. News came that his grandparents had been killed as they walked to the market, and through Zain’s tears and grief, his heart had been glad they’d died together. The day after, Qashim’s mother was at the Crossing of Death, hoping to slip across the divide between rebel-held and regime-controlled areas at the same time as the Red Crescent team went through, only to be picked out by a sniper.

  When Qashim had come upstairs to tell them his mother was dead, it was Zain who cried in Qashim’s arms. Qashim’s cheeks remained dry.

  “All I have left, is you,” Qashim said. “You are my baby brother.”

  Zain had never felt colder.

  Zain’s mother embraced Qashim, took him into their home, but Zain knew it wasn’t her Qashim needed but him.

  Zain and Qashim still went to school. It was close to where they lived and had moved underground. Qashim was always at his side. A big, dark shadow Zain couldn’t shake off. Three years older than Zain and due to be called up for military service unless he stayed a student. So he stayed a student, and did little work.

  But Zain wanted to be a doctor, so he worked hard, especially in his English lessons because he dreamed of studying medicine in London like his father. His father talked so much about his time there and he was as eager as Zain that London was where he trained. The big dream kept them all going. Though as the conflict grew more intense and more confused with so many different factions vying for control, and areas changing allegiance on a day-to-day basis, Zain felt his hopes of any future sliding away. They all thought the West must step forward to help, particularly when chemical weapons were used, but nothing changed.

  Then Zain’s father’s hospital was hit by a government-led missile strike. The building was levelled and at least fifteen people were killed, including four of the volunteer medical staff. Not his father who was home at the time. It was horrifying to think anyone could consider a hospital a legitimate target, but his father said the reasoning was there was more value in killing one doctor than many rebel soldiers. His father soon found another place to work, still helping all those in need regardless of which side they were on.

  The family and Qashim moved to the lower floor of their building
, occupying a deserted home. It was safer because the lower floors were more likely to withstand an airstrike. The twins slept in the same room as his parents. He and Qashim shared a small curtained-off area on the far side of the main room. Zain had to resume his prayers because Qashim prayed. It wasn’t that Zain had lost his religion, but it had somehow gone missing in what was happening to their city, to their country.

  Syria is bleeding.

  His father spent more and more time at work trying to put people back together without the drugs and equipment he needed. His mother struggled to provide meals, fought to hold herself together, never wanted the twins far from her side. She worried all the time about everything. Her generosity and kindness were sinking under the pressure of the responsibility of holding her family together. But she couldn’t keep them safe no matter how much she wanted to.

  The electricity supply was off more than it was on. Zain powered the laptop whenever he could, but internet access was rare. They were fortunate to have a generator to power the fridge, but it was dangerous to use it for lighting at night. No illumination was safer. The slightest glimmer from a candle or flashlight could make them a target for a bomb or sniper. Only in the windowless room could they have light.

  He and Qashim were the ones who went looking for food. Zain’s father told them, based on what he’d heard at the hospital, that they should avoid being in a group of people because that might attract an attack. It wasn’t easy to avoid crowds when everyone was desperate to get anywhere there was food, or when many assumed they increased their chances of survival by staying in a pack. The bullet won’t hit me but someone else. That’s what Qashim’s mother had thought.

  But if the bullet had your name on it, then it was your bullet.

  In any case, Zain preferred to creep along the edges of the streets thinking that if there were snipers on the roofs, at least he’d halved the odds of being hit. Qashim walked down the centre of the road as if daring someone to shoot him. When Zain begged him to stick to the shadows, Qashim said, “Better that I’m hit than you.” Zain should have been touched by that but instead it infuriated him.

  Zain, along with the rest of Aleppo, became attuned to the new noises of the city. He was always listening for the constant buzz of scouting planes. They flew lower than bombers and warned an attack was on the way. Sometimes he didn’t even hear the jets coming, only felt and heard their bombs after they’d raced past. He learned to tell the difference between the sound of the Syrian jets and the Russian ones. The Russian were quieter, their strikes more accurate.

  His mother’s sisters and their families who lived only a block away, were all killed in one airstrike. Their small building concertinaed to the ground and yet, in a miracle, to one father’s joy, a child had been pulled alive from the rubble a day later. Zain thought something in his mother had died with her family. Years into the conflict, his father still refused to leave and his mother stopped asking.

  But Qashim was pressing Zain, whispering into his ear at night how they could sneak out of the city, walk or hitch a ride to Turkey, move on to Greece, from there go anywhere they wanted in Europe. Germany was a great place to go. No tuition fees to study medicine at university. An interest-free loan from the state. Money given for food and rent. They were refugees from a war. They had priority over those who just wanted a better life.

  Zain listened but his goal would not change. London was his dream and he would make it his reality.

  News got back to those suffering in Aleppo of how friends and relations who’d made a bid for freedom had escaped. Use this method. Use that. Look out for this. Look out for that. Germany was the best destination. But not for Zain.

  “Brother, if we stay here, we’ll die,” Qashim said.

  I’d rather die than leave with you, Zain didn’t say.

  Qashim frightened him. Zain couldn’t even count the ways that was true. Ever since Qashim’s family had moved into the flat below and Qashim had begun to attend Zain’s school, Zain’s friends had mostly stopped being his friends. Qashim was the reason. Qashim had no other friend but Zain.

  It might have been comforting to have someone looking out for him, someone determined he didn’t get hurt, that no one else hurt him or said unkind things about him, someone who wanted him to have whatever he needed, someone who had big plans for their future. But it wasn’t comforting. Qashim was obsessed with him.

  Zain had looked it up in one of his father’s books. Qashim was a control freak, an addict. Zain was his drug. Qashim needed to know where Zain was, who he was talking to, where he was going, what he was doing. All. The. Time. Zain sometimes felt he couldn’t breathe. He’d tried to tell his mother how he felt, but she treated Qashim as her son. How could Zain be so unkind as to complain about a boy who’d lost his father and mother and had no one else in the world? A boy who was so grateful and caring? And above all, generous.

  Qashim somehow managed to acquire food and most other items she wanted. He was polite and charming. He was a liar and a thief. But because Zain’s mother saw him as a sad, lost boy, Zain said nothing. His father wasn’t around much to talk to and when he was, Zain couldn’t bring himself to bother his exhausted baba with the story of a boy who cared for him too much, not when his father had to tell parents daily that their children were dying, that their children were dead.

  It wasn’t love Qashim felt. That was the biggest irony because Zain had a secret longing to be loved by a boy. Though never by Qashim. But I like boys. Even allowing that thought to enter his head made his stomach quiver with anxiety as if the truth could be read on his face. He hid the way he felt, buried it deep in his heart.

  Homosexuality was forbidden in Islam so he couldn’t be gay. When he was older—assuming he was still alive—a wife would be found for him and they’d have children. Whatever it was that he felt about boys was wrong and he had to make those feelings go away because it was too dangerous not to. The wrong look, the wrong gesture seen by the mukhabarat—the police and secret service were everywhere—and the result might be three years in prison.

  But the more likely punishment was death by mob, often sanctioned by family, sometimes carried out by family. Zain wanted to believe his family wouldn’t want him dead but the shame of having a son who liked men might be too much for them to bear.

  One day, he was with Qashim when they saw a blindfolded man being held at the edge of a roof. The group of people watching told them the man was homosexual and Zain’s heart thumped in his chest.

  “Let’s go,” he told Qashim.

  “Let’s watch.” Qashim wrapped his arm around him and kept him there.

  Zain cried out when the man came tumbling down. The fall didn’t kill him. When the bystanders threw stones, Qashim joined them and Zain ran home.

  When Qashim came back to the flat, the glee in his voice had chilled Zain. “He took ages to die.”

  Oh God. “That’s not the law,” Zain pointed out.

  “Your heart is too soft.” Qashim ruffled his hair.

  It was a relief Qashim’s feelings for him were not ones of desire, because that took away another possible issue Zain might have had to deal with. Though would Qashim want him thrown to his death if he knew what was in his mind? He had no idea.

  He found a label for Qashim: obsessive-compulsive sociopath. A term from one of his father’s books. Qashim might pretend to care about Zain but he didn’t truly care, at least not in the right way. Telling Zain he was great, that he made Qashim a better person, that Zain was brilliant, honest, beautiful (huh!) could in a moment switch to hissing he was a liar (he wasn’t), that he was hurtful (he wasn’t), that whatever bad thing happened was all his fault (it wasn’t), that no woman would ever want him (good).

  Qashim just liked being what he thought of as the strong one of the two of them. It made him feel powerful, gave him purpose and direction. He might not work hard at school but he was clever. They hadn’t been in the same class but now there were so few children, they were all ta
ught together. Qashim knew how to play people. He used threats or charm to get what he wanted.

  When he’d told Zain’s father about seeing the guy getting thrown from the roof, and had taken in the disapproval on his father’s face, Qashim had done an about turn and omitted his part in the killing. Zain had said nothing. Contradicting Qashim could only lead to trouble. Zain wanted to ask his father what he thought about homosexuals, but he was too afraid to even crack open the door.

  Checkpoints sprang up every hundred metres all over the city. Qashim still managed to procure food and fuel to cook with. The dirty diesel was bad for everyone’s health but there was no alternative. He and Qashim collected food from the kitchens run by local charities supported by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. Qashim always seemed to know where to go, who to speak to.

  Zain felt bitter that his family’s survival depended on Qashim, then felt guilty for that bitterness. His sisters loved Qashim. He’d come back with dolls and toys for them, then whisper to Zain he’d taken them from the arms of dead children. Zain wondered if Qashim cared whether they were living or dead. Then wondered if Qashim was only telling him that to get some sort of reaction.

  The shells, rockets, cluster bombs and phosphorus bombs were bad enough but now airstrikes destroyed whole apartment blocks. Even being on the ground floor wouldn’t help them. Their makeshift school was hit so that was end of that. Zain’s father had finally had enough. But not enough for him to leave, only for him to insist they go without him. But no one left, though they put bags holding all that was precious by the door, ready for when they ran. Zain stared at them every time he left the flat, wondering if that day would ever come.

  Then he and Qashim ran into trouble at a checkpoint. When frontlines shifted all the time, it was hard to tell which faction had control of a particular crossing point. And there were a lot of factions: Government soldiers, the FSA—Free Syrian Army or one of other groups, including IS—Islamic State. The men mostly wore the same gear, were equally frightening, equally deadly. They were all bent on destruction.