The Doctor of Aleppo

by Dan Mayland

  She recalled the smell of sugared black tea stirred with a cinnamon stick, and the way her father used to call her the Princess of Aleppo, and eating baby eggplants drizzled with pomegranate molasses for breakfast . . .

  After slipping into the back seat of Muhammad’s car, she asked, “This other clinic. Where is it?”

  “Aleppo,” said Muhammad.

  Hannah didn’t answer. Yes, that was certainly farther south, she thought, knowing her mother and sister would be livid if they knew she was even considering it.

  “It is underground, deep in a basement,” added Muhammad. “No ISIS. In a district protected by al-Tawhid. Of course, now they call themselves something different.” He shrugged. “I can show you the way.”

  Hannah still didn’t answer. After leaving Aleppo she’d taken a job with Bonne Foi thinking she’d just help out with the relief effort for a few months. If she’d known that two years later she’d still be working for them, having only been able to afford to go home once in the interim, she wondered whether she would have ever accepted that first job offer.

  But she had stayed, and one thing had led to another—an illiterate Syrian woman had needed help filling out the applications for an asylum process that promised to drag out for half a year, a family of five that had been swindled by their landlord and needed help navigating the Turkish legal system . . . More recently, a seven-year-old Syrian girl had become separated from her family during a botched illegal border crossing and had needed someone to escort her back from Turkey to the now-destroyed medical clinic in Azaz where her mother had been recovering from a bullet wound. The common thread had always been that Hannah felt needed.

  “My brother was treated there,” said Muhammad, interrupting her thoughts.

  Hannah recalled that Muhammad had a younger brother whose lungs had been badly burned in a chlorine gas attack several weeks ago.

  “He is still at this clinic?”

  “No, he recovers at home. I am not asking for him.”

  “It would be okay if you were.”

  “He needs antibiotics.”

  “I have no antibiotics. Just anesthesia. And vaccines and dressings.”

  “I know.”

  Hannah was under no illusion that her little medicine runs were changing the world or the course of the war. Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, the Syrian American Medical Society, the Red Crescent, Direct Relief . . . those were the organizations really supplying the aid.

  But they could only do so much and were hampered by the fact that they were responsible bureaucracies, unwilling to put the lives of their employees and volunteers in too much danger. Whereas Bonne Foi was run by a collection of French Syrians who had proved far more willing to take risks. As a result, she was in a position to fill in a few of the gaps.

  “Checkpoints?” she asked.

  “Four, maybe five, I think.”

  “Who controls them?”

  Muhammad listed a few rebel factions and claimed all were at least loosely affiliated with the Free Syrian Army. Hannah recognized some of the names, others she didn’t.

  “Will we have problems getting through?” she asked.

  “No. Criminals used to control a checkpoint on Castello Road, but they were driven out months ago.”

  “These other groups. Will they steal the medicine? Or demand payment for letting us pass?”

  “There is a chance, of course,” said Muhammad.

  Hannah knew she could hand the medicine over to Muhammad to deliver on his own, and she wouldn’t be faulted for it. But it might jeopardize her ability to make future deliveries if she couldn’t personally guarantee the chain of custody. No donors liked to think they might be funding criminal enterprises.

  She calculated: it was six thirty now, and Aleppo wasn’t far, but with the checkpoints, it could take a while. Would her car—which was really Bonne Foi’s car—be safe parked in the Syrian border checkpoint lot where she’d left it? The border soldiers knew it belonged to an aid group and would keep an eye on it during the day, but the crossing closed at night.

  She could always go back to the border and take her own car to get to Aleppo, but that would be a violation of Bonne Foi’s policy. They didn’t want their cars getting shot at, ruined by potholed roads, or commandeered by ragtag army units at internal Syrian checkpoints, so they forbade their workers from using them past the border.

  “Can you get me back by tomorrow morning?”

  “I have a cousin in Azaz,” said Muhammad. “We go to Aleppo, come back to Azaz, you sleep at her house tonight, then early tomorrow I will take you back to the border.”

  “Okay,” said Hannah. “Then we do it.”

  And so it was that, nearly two years after leaving Aleppo, Hannah found herself going back.

  chapter 28

  Regime-held Aleppo • The next day

  Rahim Suleiman opened his eyes at four thirty in the morning—a full fifteen minutes before he needed to get up. As a courtesy to his Iranian roommate, who lay snoring on a cot across the room, he reached across to the end table next to his bed, grabbed his cell phone, and clicked off the alarm.

  A few minutes, he told himself. He could rest for a few minutes longer. To guard against falling back to sleep, he removed the earplugs he used to make the Iranian’s snoring more bearable and placed them on the end table that stood next to his bed.

  As a few minutes turned into ten, he did briefly drift back to sleep, but then heard what might have been coughing coming from his living room. Not wanting to cede the moral high ground of being the first to rise, he quickly swung his legs out of bed, grabbed his Makarov service pistol from the end table, and hobbled into the hall in his imitation-silk pajamas.

  Upon placing his pistol on the kitchen table, he used the toilet, dusted himself with talcum powder, then ducked his head into the living room and confirmed with satisfaction that, in addition to the Iranian captain with whom he was sharing his room, the Iranian intelligence officer in the living room was still sleeping. As were the two bunked in what had been his daughter Zahra’s room, before she and his wife and all the rest of his relations had fled to Beirut.

  For fourteen days the Iranians had been living with him and for fourteen days he had risen before they had. This despite the fact that he was older than all of them. Surely, he considered, they must feel some shame.

  Rahim made himself tea, ate a piece of stale flatbread topped with lukewarm yogurt, and checked the time. Sunrise in an hour.

  He stood—slowly, so as not to pull out his back—then trudged into the living room and opened the window shade, revealing the Citadel looming above a dark gray haze in the far distance. The sight of the impregnable fortress, perched atop the same hill upon which the prophet Abraham had milked his cows, always cheered him. Held by the regime since the beginning of the war, her thick ramparts and crenellations had protected the city since the time of the Crusaders. Surely, he reasoned, she would not fall now.

  On the eastern horizon, he perceived a hint of light, and it made him feel a little less lonely.

  Rapping his knuckles on a glass-topped coffee table and speaking loudly, he said, “The sun will not wait!”

  The eyes of the Iranian closest to him snapped open then narrowed.

  Rahim had no sympathy. When the Iranians had first moved in, he had made it clear that despite their religious differences—they were Shia, he Sunni—regular dawn prayers would be observed. So they had been warned.

  Turning to a twenty-year-old who likely would spend his day reconnoitering rebel positions in the bombed-out innards of the al Madina souk, he said, “Get up, Mahdi! God calls.”

  As the young man groaned, Rahim wondered if his son, Adel, would have exhibited such indolence, were he still alive. Rahim didn’t think so. Unlike Zahra, who had been born lazy and still was, Adel had always been an early riser.<
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  Rahim performed his ablutions at the kitchen sink, then retrieved his prayer mat, feeling invigorated by the hot tea in his belly and the cold water evaporating on his face. He unrolled the mat in the living room so that it was facing Mecca, then waited for his Iranian guests to join him. They soon did, leading Rahim to suspect that none had been particularly diligent in performing their ablutions.

  Over the sound of the resumption of war, and as the Iranians each placed clay turbahs at the head of their mats, Rahim began to pray.

  When he got to the bowing part—Subhana rabbiyal adheem . . . Glory be to my Lord—he felt the muscles of his lower back stretch ever so slightly, just enough so that there was a pleasant release.

  The Prophet, peace be upon him, had been no fool when mandating prayers. To exalt God and stretch in the morning at the same time, this was genius, he thought.

  Hundreds of checkpoints had cropped up all over Aleppo, on both the rebel- and government-held sides. Just to get to Military Intelligence headquarters later that morning, Rahim had to pass through five.

  He did not mind the inconvenience. There were rebel spies and sympathizers all over the city. If the checkpoints meant that the government caught just one of them, and the counterintelligence division had indeed caught eighty-seven within the past week, then they were worth it.

  Upon arriving at headquarters, he was displeased to note that the file containing his subordinates’ prior-day intelligence summaries was not on his desk.

  “Aisha!” he called to the secretary that had been assigned to him when he had been promoted to major. “I need—”

  “It is under the al-Jalloum report.”

  “What?”

  She repeated herself.

  “I am not speaking of the al-Jalloum report!” snapped Rahim. Lazy and defiant this one was, just like his daughter. “As I have explained—every morning, without exception, I need the end-of-day collection reports for—”

  “Look under the al-Jalloum report, Major.”

  Rahim, suddenly understanding, did. “I see,” he said.

  “Will you be needing anything else?”

  “At the moment, no.”

  As a rule, the twenty-two intelligence officers Rahim commanded relayed actionable intelligence immediately, but less urgent matters were addressed in end-of-day reports. Rahim picked up those reports now and began to read. According to a sixty-two-year-old butcher who lived in rebel-held Aleppo but who had a son fighting for the regime, the rebel group Jaish al-Mujahideen had set up improvised hell cannons near the Huzeivh Mosque in the Bustan al-Qasr district. Meanwhile, in the rebel-held Sukari district, a mother with a daughter being detained in Aleppo’s central prison reported that the rebel group Jabhat al-Islamiya had recently taken over two checkpoints that had previously been manned by the Free Syrian Army . . .

  Rahim flipped through the pile of notes quickly, making notations of his own so that he would remember how best to distribute this raw intelligence to the appropriate air force targeteers and military commanders on the ground.

  It was only as he was nearing the end of the pile, that he saw it. A single photo of a woman’s face. Blurry, as though shot surreptitiously with a poor-quality camera phone.

  It was face he was sure he recognized but could not recall from where. He felt he should be able to recall, though, because while he looked at hundreds of photos over the course of any given week—of rebel commanders, troop positions, artillery placements—rarely were they of women.

  And this woman . . . There was something about her. Slender nose. High cheekbones. Understated beauty. She wore a paisley headscarf that covered all but a wisp of black hair.

  Rahim closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Well, it would come to him eventually, and he began to read the file. The photo had been taken at the Maqam Gate checkpoint in rebel-held Aleppo. The woman, who had been carrying a Syrian passport had been identified as Hannah . . .

  Rahim squinted as he tried to make out the last name. Johnson?

  A Syrian? Named Johnson? Hannah Johnson? Rahim stared at the photo again.

  And then he remembered. Adel’s room at the hospital! The girl, the one who had told him about what had happened to Adel. But she had not been Syrian, she had been American! Seizing the report now with both hands, Rahim read as fast as his brain could process the words. The girl and her driver, a man named Mohammad Atwan, had passed through the checkpoint on their way to a medical clinic in the Sheikh Saeed district. They had been carrying medical supplies.

  An American. Making runs into rebel-held Aleppo.

  Rahim very much doubted she was only there to deliver medicine. Was she CIA? Delivering money perhaps? Or messages?

  And then his mind veered toward darker thoughts. She had also been in Aleppo just days before the war broke out, had she not? Her excuse was that her boyfriend—she had been a loose woman, he recalled, sleeping with a man out of wedlock—was hurt, but had she really been there to scout the city? Had she known the rebels were about to attack? Could she have had anything to do with Adel’s death? That had been the doctor’s fault, of course, but she had been in the room. Had she known Adel was a member of the shabiha?

  Rahim pounded his fist on the table.

  “Major?” asked his secretary, looking up from his desk. “Everything is okay?”

  He checked the file and noted which one of his officers had collected the information, and how.

  “Is Sergeant Nassar at the prison today?”

  Aisha leaned into her computer screen, typed for a moment, then said, “I believe so.”

  “Tell him I will be joining him shortly.”

  The Aleppo Central Prison lay north of center city at the edge of an industrial zone. Its imposing perimeter fence was topped with barbed wire and stained with rust, its multistory concrete form broken up only by the narrowest of window slits. Above it loomed a massive watchtower.

  As guards waved Rahim through the front gate, he made the mistake of leaving the window of his UAZ 4x4 open and caught a whiff of something putrid, like a dead mouse rotting in a closet—the bodies they had buried in the east yard, he feared, slowly decomposing. He held his breath and rolled up the window, but the smell was already in his nose. Why they did not simply burn the bodies was beyond him.

  From a 1970s-era office in the administrative wing of the prison, the deputy watch commander paged Sergeant Nassar. Twenty minutes later Rahim stood to the side as the sergeant and two prison guards dragged a naked prisoner out of a cell packed tight with bodies.

  The prisoner’s feet were purpled and bruised. Both of his front teeth had been shattered, and his testicles were grotesquely engorged, as though they, too, had been beaten.

  The whole prison block smelled of urine, feces, vomit, and malnourished bodies afflicted with what Rahim had been warned was tuberculosis and typhoid.

  Acting on Rahim’s orders, the prisoner was deposited in an empty cell at the end of the hall, in which there was a small cot and a pit toilet.

  Rahim produced a photograph of a young man dressed in a Free Syrian Army uniform and held it in front of the prisoner’s face.

  “This is your brother, no?” he asked.

  The prisoner began to cry.

  “Stop that,” ordered Rahim. “For inshallah, you will come to cherish this day. I have been told that as a result of your brother’s concern for your wellbeing, he has been providing us with certain valuable deliveries of information?” When the prisoner didn’t respond, Rahim turned to Sergeant Nassar. “This is true?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Speaking to the sergeant, but for the benefit of the prisoner, Rahim said with a flourish, “Then I am issuing the following order—this prisoner shall receive no less than two hundred fifty grams of flour every day for the next week!”

  Rahim paused, giving the prisoner an opportunity
to express his thanks. When none were forthcoming, he turned back to Sergeant Nassar, “Fortunately, an opportunity exists for this man and his brother to provide an additional service. This woman”—Rahim handed the photo of Hannah to Sergeant Nassar, who handed it to the prisoner—“was photographed by the prisoner’s brother passing through the Maqam Gate checkpoint yesterday. She is of great interest to me.”

  Turning to the prisoner, Rahim said, “If your brother encounters her again, and can provide additional information regarding her location, you will be rewarded. And if your brother can capture her and deliver her to me, then upon my word of honor, you will be set free.”

  “Sir?” asked Sergeant Nassar, as though he might not have heard Rahim correctly.

  “I will be posting a general alert later today to all my officers,” said Rahim. “If this woman passed through the Maqam Gate once, it is possible she will do so again. And if this man”—the prisoner flinched when Rahim placed a hand on his shoulder—“successfully assists you in this matter, and that assistance leads to the capture of this woman, then he must indeed be set free. Is that clear?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  “And if my brother does not see this woman again?” whispered the prisoner, his voice barely audible.

  “Then you must trust to God,” said Rahim.

  chapter 29

  Rebel-held Aleppo • One week later

  The bomb had fallen in the center of the street, on top of a buried water main. Clear water now spilled out of a cracked pipe at the bottom of the resulting crater. Two boys were already splashing around.

  “Wow,” said Adam when he saw it.

  “Wow,” echoed Noora.

  Sami looked up to the sky for at least the twentieth time that morning. Still detecting no sign of fighter jets or helicopters, he said, “Let me go first.” He tugged gently on Adam’s arm. “Do you hear? You must wait until I give permission. And keep your shoes on.”