by Dan Mayland
Elsa?
Oskar had a brother named Nils, and his mother’s name was Marie. He’d never mentioned anyone named Elsa.
Goose bumps broke out on her arm. Her throat constricted. Close it out, she told herself.
She kept reading.
The emails were written in Swedish. But between what little of the language she’d picked up from dating Oskar, Google Translate, and the English-language links to an Airbnb apartment in Paris—with only one king bed—she was able to piece it together well enough.
Oskar hadn’t been planning on going on a family trip to celebrate his mother’s sixtieth birthday. He was seeing someone else in Sweden. And evidently had been for some time. And until he broke his leg, he’d been planning on vacationing with her in Paris.
Biting her lower lip, Hannah looked up at the ceiling, then down at her hands. They’d only been dating for five months. No permanent commitments had been made. But still.
That son of a bitch, she thought. That selfish, cowardly, lying son of a bitch.
chapter 17
Treating facial wounds was not Sami’s specialty. But there had been no other surgeon available, so he had numbed the wound with a local anesthetic, irrigated it, and was about to attempt to remove a piece of windshield glass that had nearly severed the facial nerve of a Syrian Army soldier.
“Remain still,” he ordered the soldier, who was still conscious and had a face that, even if it had not been marred by a laceration that stretched from the base of his right ear to the underside of his lip, would have been considered ugly.
The soldier mumbled that he was remaining still.
“No, you are not,” said Sami quietly. “Speaking involves moving. And if you ever want to smile again, you will stop speaking.” Sami adjusted the loupe magnifier that was affixed to his surgical glasses.
The last time he had seen the buccal branch of the facial nerve was when he had been doing his residency in Damascus.
“Wider,” he said to the nurse who was holding the sallow, fatty tissue underneath the soldier’s cheek open with a pair of retractors.
She pulled the cheek open wider. Sami identified the masseter muscle and parotid duct.
“Stop breathing,” he said to the soldier.
The soldier did, remaining perfectly still, so that even his ear hairs stopped quivering. Sami used forceps to extract the glass fragment. It clanged when he deposited it in a stainless-steel bowl.
“Is it out?” asked the soldier.
“I told you not to—”
When the door to the operating room burst open, Sami looked up. Observing one of the emergency room intake nurses, he scowled beneath his mask.
“They are here for you, Dr. Hasan,” she whispered.
As Sami stared at her, his annoyance morphed into concern. “Who?”
“Two men. They have ID. Military Intelligence. One is a lieutenant. They say they want to speak to you.”
Sami inhaled sharply. He considered running, but to run now would consign himself to running forever. No, he would face them and let the truth be his defense. He was no rebel. Yes, he had treated Omar, but would they not have done the same for a member of their own family?
“I need twenty minutes. Tell them.”
“They will not wait.”
“They will have to!” Sami gestured to his patient with his suture needle. “Because I am busy.”
“I can finish,” said the nurse who stood next to him.
Sami clenched his jaw then sighed. “There was some intraoral penetration,” he said, “so make sure you prescribe him cefazolin.” Turning to the emergency room nurse who was still standing in the doorway, he said, “Have them meet me in the cafeteria in five minutes.”
It was too late.
From behind the emergency room nurse, two black-clad Mukhabarat officers pushed through a set of double doors. The one in the lead wore a tactical vest stuffed with ammunition magazines. He had an assault rifle slung across his back and a pistol lodged in his belt holster. Although his face was sweaty and smudged with dirt, Sami recognized Rahim Suleiman.
“Go!” whispered the nurse to Sami.
But Sami held his ground. The Mukhabarat had not come to question him about treating Omar, he realized. This was about the boy, about Adel. Somehow Rahim had found out about the medicine mix-up.
He would speak to him, Sami resolved. As one father to another. He would tell him the truth about his son, as he should have done the day before. And maybe—if he were brave—he would even mention Omar, that perhaps the Mukhabarat should spend less time killing other people’s sons.
He handed his suture needle to the nurse as Rahim pushed through the door.
“Mr. Suleiman!” called Sami. “Please wait outside the operating room.” Hand on heart, he said, “I beg of you, this is a sterile room, I will join you shortly.”
A stainless steel instrument table clattered to the floor as Rahim threw it out of his way.
Sami stepped back from his patient. Before he could remove his surgical glasses, Rahim shoved him.
Shocked, Sami teetered backwards. Rahim, who was a bit shorter than Sami but far broader, kept barreling forward. He shoved Sami again. Hard.
“Calm yourself!” Sami stammered, attempting to hold his ground. He had never been a fighter. But to be challenged like this in front of the hospital staff was untenable. “We must talk.”
“I do not want to talk, Doctor.”
“It was a mistake,” said Sami. “And one that was quickly addressed. I will—”
Rahim shoved Sami again, only this time it came so quickly, it knocked the wind out of him. “A lie is not a mistake!”
Struggling to breathe, Sami said, “I can understand—”
Rahim threw Sami back against the hard tile wall of the operating room then pummeled him in the head. As Sami lost his footing and slipped to the ground, Rahim produced a pair of plastic zip-tie handcuffs.
“Help me with him,” Rahim called to his associate.
The second Mukhabarat officer entered the operating room but hesitated because the patient on the operating table was partially blocking his path.
Then Sami noticed the scalpel.
Along with a few other tools that had scattered when Rahim had overturned the instrument table, it lay within arm’s reach. As Rahim glanced over his shoulder to see what was holding up his associate, Sami grabbed it.
He could have plunged the scalpel into Rahim’s inner thigh, right below the groin, perhaps severing his femoral artery—a wound that, even when inflicted in a hospital, could lead to death. Instead, he thrust it straight forward, into the meat of Rahim’s thigh, directly above his kneecap.
The scalpel was sharp and went deep. Rahim roared as he stepped back, colliding with the second Mukhabarat officer.
Sami ran out of the operating room and into the staff prep rooms, throwing chairs and hazardous waste bins into his wake. He heard shouting behind him, then a gunshot. When he came to the door that led from the imaging hall to the lab rooms, he locked it behind him and sprinted through the pediatric intensive care unit, into the cafeteria, and out through the loading dock in back.
He had a Mercedes C300 sedan parked in the employee lot but did not dare retrieve it. The scooter he used to get to and from work was behind his clinic. He left that too. When he got to the Omar Abu-Riche thoroughfare and heard gunfire behind him, he forced himself to keep sprinting for a bit longer.
His house was southeast of the hospital, but he could see plumes of smoke rising from near the new soccer stadium to the south, so he headed straight east, hoping to skirt the many raging, amoeba-like battle lines that were advancing and retreating all over the city.
At the nearby al-Razi hospital, out of breath and dripping with sweat, he stripped off his bloody surgical gown, shoe booties, and hair net and thre
w them into a garbage bin. Dressed now only in his green scrubs and dress shoes, he walked at a fast clip through the public park.
It all seemed so normal. Water still arced from fountains, the palm trees were as green as ever, cars in the expansive Saadallah al-Jabiri Square just south of the park still honked their horns. One street vendor was selling grilled corn cobs, another cotton candy.
Sami recalled the crazy popcorn vendor who camped outside the medical school library every evening—everyone knew he was Mukhabarat, was it the same with these vendors? Were they watching him now?
The fast food shops that bordered the park were still wrapping calorie-bomb döners packed with French fries and mayonnaise for customers. To the east, outside the Club d’Alep where his mother liked to play cards on Saturday afternoons, two BMWs and a yellow Hummer were idling. They couldn’t all be Mukhabarat.
Upon reaching one of the Christian districts in the old city, he took a hard turn to the south and for the next fifteen minutes, bobbed and weaved through crowds and narrow alleys, skirting the Great Mosque and cutting straight through the covered alleys of the al Madina souk where the spice shops were still open.
He didn’t have his keys, cell phone, or wallet, but his wife always left spare keys for her extended relations under a loose cobblestone in the stone-walled entrance corridor that led to their home.
He retrieved them. One opened the tall, solid-steel gate that he had paid to have installed the year prior. The other opened the original four-hundred-year-old oak entrance door.
Sami slipped through both, locking the deadbolts on each as he shut them back up tight. His chest was heaving. God, he was out of shape, he thought. He wanted to slide down to the cool marble tile floor in his foyer, but instead, he leaned his back against the stone wall and took a few deep breaths, collecting himself.
Sweat dripped from his brow to the floor. He took a few steps forward and forced himself to sit down on the tulipwood foyer bench.
As he swapped out his shoes for slippers, he reminded himself that the eyes of his family would soon be upon him. The eyes of his children. He could not let them see him rattled.
Minutes later—he wanted to wait longer, but they would have heard him come in—he entered the sunny courtyard.
Tahira’s sister, Aya, stood with her two remaining young children underneath the two-story-high pointed iwan arch that overlooked the courtyard. His own mother sat behind them. In the middle of the courtyard, by the marble fountain, his brother-in-law Rafiq appeared to be using the fountain water to perform his preprayer ablutions. Tahira’s mother was resting on a nearby bench, veiled, back arched, lips pursed in disapproval as she clicked through her prayer beads.
They turned to him as one, their collective alarm evident.
He was still a bit out of breath. His scrubs were stained with sweat and—below the knee, where his surgical robe had ended—blood. His right eye was throbbing from where Rahim had punched him; he suspected it was swollen.
“Baba, Baba, Baba!” called his daughter, Noora, as she toddled over to him. She wore a frilly pink dress and the gold earrings Tahira had bought her for her second birthday.
Sami ran his hands over the top of her hair, as his mother and Tahira’s relations continued to stare.
Straightening himself to his full height, he greeted his relations and told them they were welcome, more than welcome, to take refuge here at Beit Qarah for as long as they wished—there was plenty of room. And now, if they could just excuse him for a minute . . .
“But surely this man will find you here!” gasped Tahira, when they had retired to the formal reception room and Sami explained what had happened.
“Will he? I receive my mail at work. Yours comes to the factory.”
“Sami.”
“There is also the issue with the title.”
When they had purchased Beit Qarah—which was what the house was called, having been built by a spice merchant by the name of Qarah some four hundred years ago—Sami’s lawyers had said it would take years for his and Tahira’s clear title to be recognized by the government, if it ever was. The real law was that occupancy equaled ownership. Even the utility bills they paid every month were still in the name of the prior owner.
“Sami, for a smart man . . .” Instead of finishing her thought, Tahira said, “I will call the hospital and try to fix this. Give me your phone.”
“What will you tell them?” Sami asked just as Adam, his four-year-old son, walked into the room.
Tahira, looking frustrated upon seeing Adam, sighed, then brushed a lock of hair out of her son’s eyes as he climbed onto the leather couch and rested his head in her lap.
“Things that a young boy would do well not to hear,” said Tahira. “Where are Rima and Maysoon?”
“I have no idea.”
Sami’s understanding was that his receptionist and nurse both worked elsewhere on their days off from his clinic, but he was not so familiar with their lives that he knew where.
“I must coordinate with them. If they are questioned . . .” She held her hand to her throat, then shook her head, looking deeply distraught. “Either way, we must tell the hospital something that they can tell to the Mukhabarat and this terrible man.” She bit her lip. “Something that will give us time.”
“Time for what?” asked Sami.
“God knows, not I.”
But they both did know, and Sami suspected Tahira was being circumspect only because she did not want to frighten Adam.
“If we were going to do it, we should have done it last year,” he said, as he regarded the reception room. It was marked by little alcoves filled with incense burners, dried flowers, and his mother’s old china plates. A seventeenth century brass scale that may or may not have been used by the Qarah family. His father’s medical books, and his own, sat inside bookshelf niches with glass doors. A backgammon set inlaid with satinwood, mother-of-pearl, ebony, and camel bone lay on a marble-topped table next to his father’s bronze nargile water pipe. The painted shutters that framed the lower-level courtyard windows had been painstakingly restored, as had the poplar ceiling beams and the tulip-and-pomegranate-themed wood panels that lay between the beams. Pillows had been arranged around the century-old hand-knotted Persian carpet.
They had purchased the house nearly two years ago, before the troubles had really started, and had put too much into it since to just pick up and leave.
Besides, reasoned Sami, while staying was not a safe option, neither was trying to flee the country with two young children and an entire extended family in tow. Fighting was raging across the city and, evidently, at the border crossings. They had no relations outside of Syria to turn to. He had no savings to speak of—it had all gone to pay for the house and renovations and bribing the historic preservation inspectors, and he had not been able to sell or rent out his old apartment in New Aleppo because of the protests. A permit to work in Lebanon or Jordan or Turkey would have been difficult to get a year ago; now it would be close to impossible.
And what was to say the house would not protect them if they stayed? It had survived earthquakes, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the French occupation, World Wars I and II, the push for independence from France, and the wars with Israel. Plus, it was hidden. There were no windows that looked to the street. A winding alley, too narrow for cars, led to a single entrance. By design, everything faced inward. From the outside, there was no hint of the luxuries that lay behind Beit Qarah’s thick stone walls. It had protected its previous owners, and it would protect them too.
“Then we stay,” said Tahira. “At least for tonight. But you must hide until we are sure they are no longer looking for you, and we must be prepared to leave quickly if we need to. Rafiq’s mother in Jarabulus called when she heard of the fighting, she has room for us.”
Sami nodded, then he stood.
“Where are you goin
g?” demanded Tahira.
“To talk to your sister.”
As he reentered the courtyard, he put his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun.
“Aya!” he called sharply, addressing her from across the courtyard. She turned, looking wary. “Your protester friends—yes, I know you are one of them—some of them have connections to the Free Syrian Army, I assume?”
“I do not need to hear your accusations now, Sami.”
“I am not accusing you. I ask because I need your help.”
“What help?”
“I need for you to take a message to the Free Syrian Army—to tell them that I am willing to work for them. Heal their wounded and train their medics. But in exchange, Beit Qarah and my family will be protected.”
The courtyard was silent for a moment. Up by the roof, a pigeon cooed. Then Sami’s brother-in-law threw up his arms.
“Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! ”
No one joined Rafiq in the call. But Sami’s four-year-old son spoke the words.
“Adam, no,” said Sami. “You diminish yourself with such talk.” Then turning to his brother-in-law, “I can assure you that my conversion regarding this matter has nothing whatsoever to do with God.”
chapter 18
Hannah ran to the Pullman Hotel, but the taxis were all gone, so she bought bottled water and the last three quince-and-pomegranate-stuffed kibbe patties at the hotel restaurant and began walking north. In the wealthy neighborhoods that bordered the University, Christian and Muslim housewives stood on their expansive balconies, sipping coffee and gazing south as though watching a display of fireworks. Some pointed with excitement when fighter jets buzzed the highland Kurdish district of Sheik Maqsoud and shook their heads with disapproval when the bombs dropped on Salaheddine.
Regime soldiers and armored cars were assembling around the Air Force Intelligence building on Nile Street. New graffiti had been spray-painted on buildings: Assad or we will burn it! Support the president and the regime, or we will burn Syria to the ground.