He slips his small hand into hers, tugging for attention.
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“Not back up the hill, Safaa,” he says in his funny cracked little voice. “Please.”
Safaa picks Amin up. She murmurs to him. She
turns to us as he clings to her. “We’ll come with you.”
But Baba is clear about one thing.
“We won’t travel with your gun,” he says. “Leave
it here.”
Safaa looks uncertain. For a moment I think she
might change her mind and retreat into the barren
hills with her brother. If she does, Amin will not
survive, and Safaa might not either. Maybe the same
thought runs through her head. She’s angry and defi-
ant and dangerous, but she is smart. She looks at me
briefly. As though reading my thoughts, she makes
her decision. She crams her gun in a crack in the
wall of the ruined house, with her belt of bullets. She
packs small stones and rocks over the hiding place.
“My gun will be here for me,” she says. “Or for
someone else.”
Amin can’t walk far yet, so we rearrange our
luggage. Baba carries him. In return, Safaa carries
the water keg—which is now empty—and her own
bundle. The rest of the bags are shared among us.
Eight of us walk out of the ruined house toward Tal
Al Karama.
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9
The road is longer and harder for all of us on our
third day walking. The luggage feels heavier, which
makes no sense: we’ve eaten most of the food, so our
bags should be lighter. My muscles are stiff and my
feet ache. I didn’t expect to walk so far and so long.
All over Syria, people use microbuses, minibuses, and
shared taxis to get around, and buses for far-off cities.
Since we left the minibus on the outskirts of Aleppo,
I’ve only seen a few shared taxis. It seems this war has cleared the roads of almost everything else.
So much walking is especially hard for Alan.
“My leg is tired,” he says after we’ve been on the
road for no more than half an hour.
“It’s too early to be tired, Alan,” Baba says.
Dayah massages Alan’s weak leg like she used to
do when he was a toddler struggling to balance and
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walk for the first time. A physical therapist showed her exercises and stretches to help him. Safaa and
Amin stare at Alan now but say nothing.
Dapir finds the walking hard too, but for dif-
ferent reasons. Back home, it always takes a while
for her morning stiffness to wear off. In Kobani,
she sat on the sofa, watching the street, for an
hour or two in the morning, sipping her sweet
tea, before beginning her chores. But that’s not
possible here.
“I’ll take your bag, Dapir,” Bushra says.
Dapir is proud and independent—she never wants
anyone to do things for her. But now she hands her
bag over to Bushra. She presses her free hand against
her hip as though supporting it. In turn, I take one
of Bushra’s bags.
“How are your feet?” Baba says to me.
“They’ll be better when we arrive this evening,”
I say.
“I’ll dress them tonight. And when we get to
Tal Al Karama and get water, I’ll give you the same
painkillers you had yesterday.”
Unlike the rest of us, Safaa strides to Tal Al
Karama. She doesn’t speak to us, and not much more
to Amin, but focuses on the road ahead. Strong.
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Bold. I can’t stop looking at her, half afraid of her, half fascinated by her. She wears her sniper spirit
brazenly. In stark contrast, she also carries the deep
concern and gentleness I first saw yesterday in her
anxiety for her little brother. Today, she stays close
to Baba to hold Amin’s hand. She murmurs to him
occasionally in an unfamiliar language. Amin is still
and quiet as long as she’s close, but frets if she’s out of his sight. Her presence keeps him calm.
The road to Tal Al Karama is not entirely empty.
Military trucks speed by occasionally, raising clouds
of dust and spits of gravel. Rows of uniformed sol-
diers stare out at us, gun muzzles pointing upward
from between their knees. Sometimes a jeep rolls by,
and once we see a tank, which causes great excite-
ment for Alan and Amin but a spike of fear for the
rest of us. Pine trees trail over the hills around us and line the roadside. Burnt-out cars rust in the ditch.
Empty houses crumble into the dirt.
“No shortage of accommodation,” Bushra says as
we pass yet another abandoned ruin.
Tal Al Karama is a village of stone houses and
battle-damaged streets. We crunch over shattered
glass and bricks. Pass two churches and a mosque,
all of which show scars of bullets and explosions.
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Laundry hangs to dry on the flat rooftops of several houses. A child peers down from a broken window.
Safaa is familiar with the layout of the village.
Silently, she leads us through narrow streets, turning
left and right. Two women pass, carrying containers
for water or fuel. They look at us but say nothing.
Some of the houses have their doors open to the air
and I glimpse hens, a cat, a couple of men, in the
inner courtyards. We arrive at a small square with
a few market stalls busy with local shoppers filling
their baskets. We lower our bags to the steps of a
large municipal building and sink to the cool stone
to rest and take stock. Baba puts Amin down gently
and checks how he is—peering into his eyes, taking
his pulse. Amin’s head wobbles but he smiles at Baba.
Safaa points to the far side of the square, where
a carved lion’s head trickles water into a moss-
green stone trough. While Dayah and Bushra buy
food at the stalls, Alan goes with Baba to fill the
water keg. Safaa walks Amin a little way into the
market while I sit with Dapir and the luggage.
Within half an hour, we’re fed and hydrated and
have enough food to keep us going for the day.
Baba gives me painkillers, and encourages Amin
to drink a little more. As we gather up our bags to
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move on, Safaa looks uncertain, in contrast to her earlier demeanor.
“Will you stay here, or come with us?” Baba says.
Safaa looks at each of us in turn, stroking Amin’s
hand as she does so. Her eyes linger on Alan, and
then on me, which sends a shiver up my spine. One
part of me wants her to leave my family. To stay here
in the village with her brother. That’s the safer thing
to do. But a bigger part of me is a little excited she
might come with us. She’s interesting and a bit scary.
“We’ll come,” she says.
A little thrill sparks in my belly as we walk out
of Tal Al Karama and take the road for the border.
“How far, Baba?” I say.
“We should be there by early afternoon. We’ll
take the quiet road and meet up with main traffic
routes closer to the border.”
The quiet road leads through mostly undamaged
farmland. Goats graze around scrubby bushes. Local
farmers tend to their olive trees in stony fields. Trav-
elers like us tramp along, weighed down with bags
and babies. The countryside is scattered with Roman
remains from centuries past—blocks of carved stone
and broken columns and foundations—overgrown
with vines and brambles. We pass a cemetery where
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I stare at dozens of fresh graves, most without even grave markers on them. On a steep slope, a paved
road runs parallel to our route, bordered with pines
and a stone wall. Limestone slabs rimmed by thick
moss and grasses glare whitely in the sun.
“Must be the Roman road the shopkeeper’s wife
mentioned,” Baba says.
As the day passes, I notice Alan too is drawn
to Safaa, even though he can’t keep up with her
determined pace. Whenever we take a break, he sits
close to her, watching her interactions with Amin.
And for her part, she tolerates him better than she
does any of the rest of us, even breaking off some of
her bread to give him at lunchtime. Bushra sees me
looking.
“Keep Alan away from that sniper,” she says.
“I don’t think she’ll hurt him.”
“She’ll poison his mind with her talk of guns and
shooting.”
I turn to Baba. “What language does she even
speak?”
“Sounds like Armenian,” Baba says.
Shortly after lunch, we arrive at a junction where
four roads meet. “The main road to Bab al-Hawa,”
Baba says. The Turkish border.
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We buy sweet tea at a makeshift café and cool it with our breath, standing with a dozen other travelers. The road is busy with vehicles and walkers, all
heading in the same direction.
The line of traffic begins long before Bab al-Hawa
is even in sight. Trucks, vans, and buses line the dusty highway winding through the brown hills. Nothing moves. Engines idle, filling the air with fumes.
Other vehicles sit silent, doors and windows open for
air. Whole families are squashed inside the few shared
taxis in the line, bags and bundles packed around them.
They stare out at us as we pass. Truck drivers circle their vehicles, getting onto their hands and knees to check
around the axles. One climbs up to inspect the roof.
“What are they looking for?” I say.
“Checking that nobody has sneaked on to cross
the border,” Baba says.
“What would happen if they did?”
“The trucks would be turned back from the bor-
der and fined. Maybe even banned from crossing.”
I look at the drivers. Sweating, greasy, they
frown at anyone who lingers near. “Would they take
us across if we paid them?”
“We would have to pay a lot,” Baba says. “More
than we have.”
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“But would they? If we did pay enough?”
“Maybe,” Baba says. “It’s a big risk for them.
They might lose their jobs, maybe their families, if
they got stuck on the wrong side of the border. Or
their lives if they ended up back in Syria.”
“What would happen if we hid on a truck?”
“Border guards have guns, Ghalib. Their job is
to secure the border to Turkey. They’re not going to
care what happens to people hiding illegally.”
The hot metal of the trucks, the reek of diesel
fumes, the smoke from the drivers’ cigarettes, all
mingle in the thick air. A headache throbs behind my
eyes. My burned feet sting me. I want to rest, but Baba
is determined to reach the border before we stop.
“We’ll have time to rest later,” he says.
Dapir has slowed down. The endless walking has
finally tired her out. She doesn’t complain—Dapir
never complains—but she trails at the back with
Dayah, holding Alan’s good hand. Her slower pace
suits Alan. His gimpy leg slows him as it swings and
kicks, swings and kicks. Bushra walks in front of
them. She’s not saying much today, which is new for
Bushra. She carries Dapir’s bags.
In contrast to Dapir, Amin seems stronger than
before. He eats everything he’s given and Baba makes
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sure he drinks lots of water. He walks for a little while alongside his sister, his comfort scarf clumped
in his fist, then climbs into Safaa’s arms like a little monkey. She scoops him up without a word. They
hardly speak, even to each other. They have a way
of communicating that doesn’t need words: a look, a
gesture, a poke—mostly from Safaa to Amin. She’s
figured out a way to carry their belongings and her
brother without breaking the rhythm of her walk:
she ties her roll onto her back in a complicated way
with a long woven scarf so that she can carry it and
him at the same time.
I walk in front with Baba. We will lead the
others across the border into a new country. Into
a new life.
A cluster of low buildings straddles the highway.
It halts the stream of people who spill off the road to
fill the stony land on either side like a stain stretching across the brown earth. The countryside beyond the
low buildings is mostly empty: a few figures and a
handful of vehicles move along a bare highway.
“Will we cross tonight?” I say.
“I don’t know when we’ll cross,” Baba says.
I imagined we would cross before sunset, reach
whatever town lies beyond the hills, and find a
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guesthouse. I imagined we would begin our new lives tomorrow.
“Why stay in Syria when we’ve come this far?”
Baba’s face is grim. “We don’t have the right
papers. The government stopped issuing passports
months back.”
“Because of the war?”
He nods. “Another way to control people.”
Fear slices through me. “Why come to the bor-
der if we don’t have papers?”
“You know why we came,” Baba says. “I don’t
need to tell you.”
“But we might not get out.”
“We have to try,” Baba says. “If it takes a lifetime
to cross, if we get separated, if we’re unsuccessful, we still have to try.”
I stare at the crowded border with its milling
people. Its endless lines of vehicles. Its armed bor-
der guards. I think of Baba’s words: things I’ve never
considered. Frightening things. I look back at Alan
and Dapir. At Safaa and Amin. They don’t question
where we’re going. They don’t ask why. They just
follow us to the border.
“Could it take a lifetime to cross?” I say. “Could
we get separated or be unsuccessful?”
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“We’ll think positively,” Baba says. “We’ve made it this far. We’re together. Let’s keep those things in
our heads and in our hearts.”
A smile breaks across his face, but it looks like he
had to dig deep to pull it up.
&nbs
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10
A large two-story building dominates the border,
with a flat-roofed canopy straddling the highway. It
looks new—its concrete bright, its paint fresh.
Turkish and Syrian flags flutter on its roof.
Stretching as far as I can see are double rows of shiny
barbed wire fixed to tall metal posts. The height of
three men, they keep the countries separate. They
keep Syrians out of Turkey.
We arrive among the heaving crowds who can’t
go farther. Men and women push forward. Babies and
children cry and howl. The sweeping crowd grows
thicker and stronger. It seethes and surges. It mur-
murs and shuffles. We no longer walk the highway
among a stream of people. Instead we’re swallowed
up by a heaving throng. The energy in the midst of
this chaos feels different. Threatening somehow.
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“Stay together,” Baba says.
He says something else about watching each
other, but his words are swallowed up in the calls of a
hundred people merging to become the voice of any
father, any mother. We can no longer talk and be cer-
tain we’ll be heard. Dayah and Dapir link arms. Alan
lets go of Dapir and wriggles through the masses to
my side. He clings to my leg. I grab him and check
that Safaa and Amin are close by with Bushra.
Baba gestures with his arm and moves off the
highway. We follow, pushing and weaving through
distracted people, stepping over spiky shrubs cling-
ing to the dusty earth. The frantic swell and shouts
are behind us. The crowds are looser here. People
move more slowly. Some even stand still, staring like
they don’t know where to go or what to do.
We pick our way to a place where people sit in
groups among scrubby bushes. Men squat in circles,
smoking. Women and children and old people sit
or lie on the gravel. We follow Baba past crying
babies and toddlers, past mothers with bundles and
bags. Children snooze on spread-out blankets. Old
people rummage in plastic bags. Packages and bags
and tied rolls and bundles are heaped everywhere.
An old woman sleeps in a wheelchair. Some groups
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have fashioned shelters with rugs and sheets of plastic draped over sticks poked in the ground. The ground
is littered with torn food packages, babies’ diapers,
empty water bottles and spent cigarettes, dirty
tissues, plastic bags. The stink of human waste and
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