Zain and Qashim were challenged by a group of armed men wearing filthy fatigues. They gave their names and address, produced their papers but Zain saw these soldiers wanted more.
“You two brothers look plenty old enough to fight,” one man said. “Particularly you.” He stared at Qashim.
Zain gulped.
“We’re not brothers,” Qashim said. “Our mothers and fathers are dead. We look after our younger brothers and sisters. This is food for them. I have four younger brothers, Zain has two sisters.”
“Names of your sisters?” another man asked Zain.
“May and Rima.”
“Age?”
“Seven.”
“Both of them?”
“They’re twins.”
Zain’s heart was hammering. They asked Qashim the same questions and he made everything up. Zain had to remember the names Qashim used in case they questioned him again.
One of the guys stepped so close to Qashim their noses were almost touching. “Are there rebel soldiers in your building?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you a rebel?”
“I’m a student,” Qashim said.
“Do you support our president?”
“I support who I’m told to support.”
Zain’s heart verged on stopping but the soldier laughed.
As they stood waiting to hear their fate, another man was pulled up at their side. When he was asked if he knew where rebel soldiers were hiding, he said yes. Zain wondered if he’d have dared to kick him if he’d been closer. But that warning kick could have cost him his life. By the time the man realised he’d chosen the wrong side and that these soldiers were the rebels, it was too late. Zain and Qashim were told to go and take their food with them and they walked away to the sound of the guy screaming behind them. It seemed to Zain as if every day brought a new lesson in what not to do.
“Don’t turn around,” Qashim said with a quiet laugh. “Another one going to bayt khaltu.”
To his aunt’s house. What they said when people disappeared and were never seen again. It wasn’t funny.
“We’ll go and get rice from the aid station,” Qashim said. “Maybe pasta.”
After standing in line for two hours, Qashim collected pasta and Zain the rice. There was water available too so they each carried as much as they could. A well had been dug in the neighbourhood but the water tasted wrong. Zain didn’t like to think about why. Same as he didn’t like to think about the food people were growing in their gardens because when there was nowhere left to bury the dead, gardens were the obvious choice.
Windowsills that used to be bright with flowers like roses, geraniums and jasmine were now planted with tomatoes, aubergine, mint and parsley. Boxes and cans had been turned into mini gardens and when seeds were available—once you’d bribed your way to get them—even his mama, who claimed she could kill a cactus, had produced peppers, courgettes and green beans.
Everything was expensive. Not all of the aid agencies gave food for nothing. Some sold it. There was no meat, milk or yoghurt. Bread was hard to find. Everyone was hungry, including pets who’d been deserted or had escaped when their family died. Zain worried about the animals in the zoo. But what could he do?
It was Qashim who kept the family fed but Zain felt guilty when he ate because he knew what Qashim brought back was not always taken from deserted homes as he claimed. Then Zain looked at his sisters’ happy faces, his mother’s relieved one and his father’s grateful one and he didn’t have the heart to be angry or a stomach that could refuse food.
Three years into the war and the misery grew worse. Qashim never wanted Zain to go anywhere on his own. Every time Qashim went out, he made Zain promise not to leave the flat. Zain always promised and usually he kept that promise. Being outside frightened him. Sometimes he glimpsed…something in Qashim that frightened him even more, a look on his face that Zain didn’t understand. So he stayed inside and either played with his sisters or read one of his father’s medical books. But one day, a bright sunny day in August, Zain slipped out after Qashim had left, wanting space to breathe. In a twist of fate, he ended up in an area that had been poisoned the week before by gas, but it had been stripped of anything useful.
Zain made his way home in a daze remembering what his father had told him about the gas victims who’d been brought to his field hospital. He’d come home full of horror stories and begged his wife to forgive him for not getting them out of the country sooner. Zain’s mother had said there was nothing to forgive. That they were family and Syria was their home. Zain wished it wasn’t his home. Not this Syria. He loved the old Syria. The one where no one cared what religion you were, no one even thought to ask. This Syria had destroyed itself from the inside out.
He was walking in the middle of the street and he didn’t care. He didn’t even hurry home. He didn’t want to die but this life was killing him. He walked past broken buildings where people were living in makeshift tents, finding ways to keep existing. He was a few blocks away when he heard the sound of a bomb dropping and he shuddered at the explosion, the ground juddering beneath his feet, unbalancing him as dust filled the air. That was close.
The thought caused his heart to beat in a different way and his legs carried him faster. When he reached his street, his building wasn’t there. For a long moment, he didn’t believe what he was seeing. He must have made a mistake. This couldn’t be what remained of his home.
But it was.
He climbed onto the concrete and began to tear at the rubble with his bare hands. All that came from his mouth were the names of his sisters and his mother, repeated over and over again until he was screaming them louder and louder. He couldn’t stop looking. They might be alive, might be trapped in some small space. Might not have been at home.
But they were always at home.
Men helped him. They told him to stop making a noise and listen. They were right. Zain hadn’t been thinking. But the only sounds were of the remains of the building shifting, settling. When the men left, their hope extinguished, Zain kept going until he was too exhausted to lift another piece of stone. When night fell, he lay down on the graves of his family and wept for the life they’d once had.
That was where his father found him. They cried together.
The next morning, they worked side by side until Zain found his mother’s shoe. It was covered in blood.
“Should we stop now?” he asked his father.
“I think we should but if you want to keep going, I’ll be at your side.”
“We’ll stop,” Zain whispered.
Qashim never came back and Zain thought he must be dead too. Maybe he’d come home and been with Zain’s mother and sisters. The thought brought him comfort because Qashim would have fought to get them free.
Zain went with his father to the hospital, now in a converted school. Bodies in white shrouds lay piled outside, waiting to be taken away and buried, flies buzzing around them. Some of the wrapped bodies were very small. Smaller than his sisters.
His father put his arm around him. The breath caught in Zain’s throat as he went inside, and he put a hand over his mouth and nose. The smell was awful; disinfectant and blood. There was blood all over the floor. He walked past a mother clutching a limp baby to her chest, a boy with an ashen face who had only one arm. People were crying out and moaning. Some were deadly silent. He wanted to be anywhere else but here. But here was the only place he could be. All he had left in the world was his father.
“See the lights on the wall?” his father asked. “Blue means a strike nearby, yellow a possible threat and red an immediate threat. You only need to react to a red light. Run, if there’s time.”
Within moments, his father was called to help someone in a room down the corridor.
“What shall I do?” Zain asked.
“Be brave. Be kind. Pray with those who wish it. I won’t be far away. I’ll come and find you when I can.” He kissed Zain’s head and hurri
ed off.
Zain wondered how his father could stand this. There were injured people everywhere, lying on trolleys in the corridor and on the blood-stained floor, some with their family beside them, some alone, everyone white-faced with dust and fear. Zain took his hand from his mouth and nose and walked through the entire building taking everything in, the horror of a war on civilians. And he understood how his father could stand this because this was his job, because he cared, and if Zain wanted to be like him, he had to stand it too.
He finally reached the side of a boy who looked about ten years old who had a bandage around his head and a drip in his arm. There were injuries all over his chest, shrapnel pockmarks and a dressing on his right side that seeped blood. He saw Zain staring at him and his lips twitched in a smile. You smile through all your pain? Zain thought his heart was going to break.
He crouched down. “I’m Zain.”
“Abdul.”
What was he supposed to say?
What happened? He knew.
How are you feeling? He could guess.
Where’s your family? What if…
Zain gulped air. Be kind. Be as brave as this boy.
“Been going to school?” Zain asked.
“Not for a while.”
“We’ll all go again when this is over.”
“Inshallah.” God be willing.
“Inshallah,” Zain repeated.
“My family is gone,” Abdul whispered. “My mother, father, sister, brother, grandparents. I’m the only one left.”
My heart! Zain reached for the boy’s hand and gently squeezed his fingers. “My mother and my sisters died yesterday.” The pain in his heart almost stopped him breathing. “The only person I have left is my father. He’s a doctor here.”
“You’re lucky.”
He didn’t feel lucky but then he looked at the boy and saw the truth. “Yes, I am lucky. Do you like football?”
“Go The Red Castle!” Abdul said.
“I’m looking forward to seeing them again.”
“I want to play for them.”
“Why not?”
“My dream.”
“Then hold tight to it no matter what.”
Abdul smiled again. “You too.”
Zain left his side when he fell asleep and as he went back into the corridor there was a sudden noisy influx of people. He heard someone say it was a mass casualty event, a bomb had landed on a crowded market. All markets are crowded. People carried those with injuries, some arrived on makeshift stretchers, one on a rug, his severed leg resting on top of him. Zain shifted out of the way as medical staff rushed to assess who needed help the most.
He saw his father treating a young man and he called Zain over. “Put your hand here. Press hard.”
Blood was pouring from the man’s leg. Zain did as he was told. The guy was conscious, anxious eyes flicking between faces.
“You’re okay. You’re at the hospital. Don’t worry,” Zain said. “My father’s helping you.”
But after a few minutes, the man’s eyes closed and Zain’s father sighed at his shoulder. “You can let go now.”
An older man pushed to their side. “My son.”
“I’m sorry. He’d lost too much blood.”
Zain looked at his blood-stained hands and wanted to weep. When he later learned that Abdul had died, he did weep.
Every hour bought more of the same. More wounded. More death. More misery. Hysterical fathers carrying children in their arms. Wailing mothers. Unaccompanied children. Babies. Zain stopped feeling bitter that he’d lost his family because no one could escape unscathed from this catastrophe. Thinking about Qashim made a lump form in his throat. No matter what Zain really thought about him, Qashim had done so much to help them. Maybe given his life. Now he lay somewhere unclaimed, unloved and that broke Zain’s heart all over again.
He and his father slept in a building close to the hospital alongside other volunteers, including dentists and a veterinarian. There was a camaraderie, a resilience of spirit Zain admired, though he felt an intruder. When he told his father that, he’d hugged him and said that sometimes human touch was more important than medical help. He didn’t have time to hold a patient’s hand, so if Zain could do that, he was doing a good thing.
Someone had brought food in for all of them and pressed by his father, Zain ate a little. They slept together on a mattress, under a single blanket, his father’s arm wrapped around him and Zain felt…not safe, not happy, but loved.
His father was exhausted. He moved from surgery to surgery, patient to patient. He never stopped working, so neither did Zain. He talked to people of all ages, comforted them and their families when he could. It stopped him thinking about his own family. He’d always thought he’d known how to care but he learned how to really care. He came to see how much a gesture of kindness meant to those in pain, whether that pain was mental or physical and he understood what his father had told him. How a hand held or a prayer spoken could carry someone into the next world with less fear in their heart.
He watched staff leave the side of one person to help another who had more chance of survival. They made that decision every day. Who might live, who would die. Zain lingered with the ones who’d been abandoned, talked to them about Jannah, paradise, stayed with them as they took their final breaths. He learned to do some medical things. Take out shrapnel with tweezers. Wash and stitch wounds. Even how to insert an IV. He helped his father when he was operating and wished he was skilful enough to be a more useful pair of hands.
They had very basic painkillers, a small amount of antibiotics, not enough anaesthetic. Sometimes they had to operate without it. The idea filled Zain with horror. Everything was in short supply. Zain stopped wishing the family had left the city long ago because how could his father have grown old in comfort while his fellow Syrians died for lack of medical treatment? How could he have sat back and watched his country fall apart?
Everyone working in the hospital remained calm and unflustered no matter what they were faced with. And some of what they faced was beyond imagining. Zain thought he’d never seen anything as terrible in his life and yet at the same time anything so inspiring.
His father found another medical book for him to read and a backpack to keep it in.
“Still want to be a doctor?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“To train in London like me?”
“Of course. My dream. I won’t let it go.”
The smile on his father’s face warmed Zain’s battered heart.
“You need to gather a few things in case we need to leave,” his father said. “It’s possible everyone will be forced out of the city. If we have to go, we could do with some clothes, blankets, food, water. You want to see what you can find? You and Qashim were good at uncovering all sorts of gems.”
Fear surged in Zain’s chest at the thought of leaving his father, but he did as he was told and spent the day scavenging. When he returned, he left the things under their mattress in the house next door and went to find his father. He was amputating a woman’s leg and as Zain left the room, he caught a whiff of chlorine above the usual stench. He told his father.
Then there was a mad dash to get as many people down to an inner room in the basement as could be moved. Patients and staff. Zain carried a child down, was on his way back for another when he was stopped and the door closed. He only felt like taking a breath when he saw his father down there with them. He worked his way across the room to him.
“A gas attack?” Zain whispered. “They do that to a hospital?”
His father hugged him. “They want us gone at any cost.” He pushed money into Zain’s pocket and hung a plastic wallet around his neck, tucked it under his shirt. “American dollars and euros. And a passport. It’s real. I bought it for you.”
“Why?”
“If we get separated, you need money. If I survive—”
“Don’t,” Zain begged.
His father’s eyes
twinkled. “Don’t survive?”
Zain mock-glared but every hair on his body stood on end.
“Listen to me Zain, my heart. It’s a miracle we’re still alive. I don’t know what tomorrow holds but I can hope for the future. That hope is my strength. I hope you become a doctor. I hope I will be there to see you graduate. I hope I get to meet your wife and children. I hope Syria will one day be the country we know it to be. But you need to be prepared to make that journey to the future on your own. If you get to England while you’re still seventeen, they will help you, take care of you. You’ll be able to go to school and university.”
“You want me to leave you?” Zain’s heart fluttered.
“No. I want you to be ready for me to leave you. Be brave, be kind, be true. Be happy. Promise me.”
Zain clutched his father harder. “Don’t leave me.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
And three days later, when Zain stood over the body of his father, killed when the hospital was destroyed by an airstrike, his heart finally broke. There was nowhere to bury him. No one to help bury him. Zain couldn’t lift him. No matter what the rules of Islam, there was nothing he could do. So he kissed him goodbye, washed his face, wrapped him as best he could in a shroud, said prayers over him and walked away with his heart crying.
How could he survive without his father? Who would comfort him when he was afraid? Who would smile at him? Who would understand him? His family was gone. Zain was no longer a son. Who would love him now?
Chapter Three
Now
London
Zain lay on his side staring at his backpack. Not the same one he’d carried all the way from Aleppo because that had eventually fallen apart. This blue one had been bought for a pound in a charity shop. He’d never given up the habit of keeping a packed bag close at hand in case he needed to leave a place in a hurry. Several times that piece of advice from his father had saved not just his possessions but maybe his life.
Whatever It Takes Page 4