by Dima Alzayat
Yes. God keep you. Listen. When my father was released it was to a hospital and when he came home it was in the middle of the night. For many weeks we told the neighbors he was ill, that he had caught a strange flu at the border. They nodded. Not to say they believed, you see, but that they agreed it was a good story. In all that time he stayed in his room. My mother alone kept us fed and warm. To this day I cannot tell you how. She fed us in the mornings and sat with him until lunch. We stood at their closed door and held our breaths to hear what we could, but we never heard even a word. It was like they too were holding their breaths.
With time he did, if only to sit in the garden. But it felt like our name was no more. Even our closest neighbors stayed away. Of course, we understood. My father understood best of all. He stayed home, where no one could see him, inside or in the garden. But not because he was afraid, understand. It kept those who would have spoken to him, the people who might feel they had to greet him, safe. God have mercy on him.
He grew quieter. Shorter, somehow, without his uniform. It was strange to see him in civilian clothes, but we grew used to it.
We did, yes. But only many years later. Long after he and my mother had both died and were buried side by side, God have mercy on them. It was then one of Nader’s daughters came to ask our forgiveness. But there was nothing to forgive. The mistake was mine as much as it was hers. It would have been like blaming the wood that makes the hammer’s handle, or the yarn fed through the spinner’s wheel. Do you understand?
Good, because I need to explain, so you might know, because I like that you are not silent. You are loud.
You are, I tell you. They say the pen is one of the two tongues. In the essay you are loud.
Listen. I beg you! You wrote it makes you sad that Syria might be no more. It is sad, yes, but there is more to it. On the television, in the newspapers, they speak of countries like they are no more than lines on a paper. We had names, I tell you. And while we sat in classrooms, and exchanged notes, and asked our mothers for coins to buy treats from the peddler on our street, people in places we had never seen were busy making borders and drawing lines between our names. Listen. I sent that woman away that day, with her children behind her, because I thought I was better than her, an Iraqi, a peasant, a refugee. That is what I called her. I no longer had my name but I was Syrian and I was better. Do you understand? I did not draw the line but all my life I followed it.
Please listen. I am almost finished.
What do you want to know?
Yes, we stayed. There was nowhere else to go. My father would not have been allowed to leave.
Like I said, I never had many. But yes, most of them stopped speaking to me. I thought of them as my friends still. I understood.
Oh, yes, he did. Ziad was different. It was not that he was braver than the others, no. I did not understand then, but now I know he needed to. It was his way.
His way to apologize.
No, not just for what had happened to my father. More than that. I cannot explain. But when his parents were out he would come to our garden and sit until someone noticed him and called for me. If my father was there the two of them greeted each other quietly. With time, things got better. My father died, then my mother. God have mercy on them. People pretended to forget.
Pretending is the same as forgetting, I tell you. It made it so we could leave. Listen, those people who protested.
It is for more than your essay. Please. Those people, who protested, they went out on the streets with nothing but their clothes, they kept going even when the snipers shot at them, killed them, even. This was not to change a president or to find a democracy. Write what you like, but please know it is not the whole of it. The government took fifteen children. They placed them in cells and whipped them like cattle for writing words on stone. It was not the first time or the worst time, but it is the drop that makes the dam overflow. People spilled onto the streets and for the first time in fifty years they did not whisper. They shouted! They sang! They heard the sounds of their own voices. How were they to be made quiet again? It was impossible, I tell you. Even here, so far away, we shook from shock, not fear. It was like hearing that what we thought was the sun was only the moon, that the sky we believed to be blue was in fact red. Please understand! Who can count if what was gained is more or less than what was lost? Who would dare try? My heart grieves for them.
Yes, I am all right. God keep you. You are good to listen.
No, Ziad never left. Even when there was still a chance, even when so many did. I grieve for him too. He was my friend.
We did, yes. After I left he sent me letters. The final one came not long after the first protest. It had only one line.
‘I wish it had not taken me so long to find my voice.’
Yes, but he did not mean only that. I know you do not understand. I am not sure I can make you.
I do not know how to try.
I am fine.
I do want to.
Listen. Listen so I can try. Ziad’s sister liked to play house. She would be the husband. I would be the wife.
Yes, yes. I’m okay.
Her the husband. Me the wife. She made Ziad pretend to be our son.
Please, listen, while I can. She would make me the wife. Tell me to cook the pretend meals. Stuffed zucchini, green bean stew. She helped Ziad with pretend homework. She was the husband.
I am, please listen. She would close the curtains in her room. Heavy curtains, curtains that made it dark like night even in midday. Time for bed, she would say. She would put blankets on the floor of her closet for Ziad then shut the door. That was his pretend room. Then she would get into the bed and tell me to get in with her. I did not want to but I did.
Do not be upset. Listen, what can it matter now?
He did not, no. He did not open the door once. He was good, he stayed quiet.
Yes, he knew. But we never spoke of it. What would we have said?
We did not have these words.
Who would I have told? Theirs was a heavy name, much heavier than ours.
No.
No, I say.
I will try. For you only.
Zaynab. Her name was Zaynab. That is enough now. There is no more to say.
I am fine. Don’t be upset. Please, I am. I will be. It feels good to speak. Listen, I am no longer sure one story is worse than the other.
I am saying her, and Nader, they are the same story in the end. You say this even in your essay.
You do, I tell you. I understand now.
You wrote about what has happened to Syrians, about the Iraqi woman and me. I see now they were also the same story. You and I, we are telling only one story.
You will understand. I know this now. God bless you. It is a good essay, God protect you, I hope you are always this loud.
Listen. Do you know my mother took her name with her to her grave? She was the last of her family to die, God have mercy on her, and there were no grandsons in that family to carry the name. One of my uncles did not have children. Another had only girls. A third died as a child. Why did I not mourn her name, my own mother, the way I still mourn ours?
Yes, yes. You are right. It is her father’s name. I do not know the answer. God keep you, I think you might find another way. Already you are. But so many names are gone. Killed or moved, spread across the world. What they mean will change. I thought this was only bad and now I cannot say. I do not know what they will become, what I will become with them. You will decide. When I answered the door to that woman, I was Syrian. This is not right or wrong. But I beg you, what do they call me now?
Nadia L.
Ms. Sheehan
English 2H
The Syrian Refugee Crisis
Syria is a country that borders Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, and Israel. Before the civil war, Syria’s population was 20 million people. Now it’s half of that. From 1516 to 1920 Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1920 Britain and France divided it into different countries
that include Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and part of Jordan. France controlled Syria until 1948. In 1958 Syria formed a country with Egypt, but that ended in 1961 because the Syrian people did not want to be controlled by Egypt. The Ba’ath Party and the al-Assads have controlled it since then.
The civil war began in 2011 because the Syrian people tried to overthrow the president. They wanted democracy and freedom and they were inspired by revolutions in other Arab countries. The president’s family had controlled the country for almost 50 years. It can be hard to understand why the people in Syria allowed this to happen but I think they were afraid of being killed.
My father is from Syria and he moved here before I was born. He came with his family as a kid because his dad got a job in San Francisco and also because his dad’s sister was already living here. When my dad watches the news about Syria he gets angry and sad. He is mad at Russia and Iran and al-Assad for killing so many people and making so many refugees. But he is mostly sad at the rest of the world for not doing anything to stop it. I feel sad for him that he might not be able to go there ever again and that Syria might not even be a country one day.
Because of the war many Syrians have escaped and gone to other countries. There are about seven million Syrian refugees in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan and one million in Europe. Most countries do not want refugees because they’re afraid they will take their jobs and cause crime. In Psychology we learned that people are more likely to help people who are like them. For example, if they are the same race or gender or speak the same language. My mom thinks that if people thought of Syrians as more like them then they might want to help. She makes a point to tell people that I’m half Syrian or that she is married to a Syrian. I think it will take more than that. When I was little a woman came to our house with her children when my great-aunt was babysitting me. She spoke to my great-aunt in Arabic and even though I don’t speak a lot of Arabic I could tell she was asking her for money. I felt bad for the kids because their clothes looked old and they were really quiet. My great-aunt did not give her money and sent her away. I think what this shows is that even speaking the same language is not enough sometimes.
A lot of research has been done on what refugees can cost a country and how much they can also benefit a country. In my opinion, this research is strange because when a person is born, we don’t add up what they cost or how much money they’ll make later in life. In the future I would like to do something that helps refugees from not just Syria but from all over the world. What should be important is not where people are from or how much money they have. All that should matter is that they are in danger. It is up to us who are not in danger to help.
A GIRL IN THREE ACTS
I
Girl’s grandfather died inside his wife. Her uncle died inside a woman who wasn’t his wife. Her dad died inside Mona. Girl had her door closed and earphones in, but she still heard Mona scream. It was different from her usual screams about Girl’s too-loud music or the dad’s too-much smoking. She didn’t sound angry, just scared, and when Girl walked into the bedroom Mona shared with the dad, she found Mona wrapped in a sheet and yelling into a phone. Girl’s dad was on the carpet beside the bed, and Girl couldn’t tell if Mona had pulled him there or if he had slipped off. She’d never before seen him naked and it was strange to sit down next to him like that, but she did. She pulled his head onto her lap, ran her fingers through his hair and asked him not to leave. That’s when Mona stopped yelling and moaned, ‘Oh, Mom, oh, Mom,’ into the phone. It made Girl wish she could do that, take all the sad she felt and tell it to someone else.
After Girl’s dad died, she was sent to live in a youth home. She’s been there for two years now and she likes it well enough. What she doesn’t like is the logoed minibus that takes the girls in the home to school each day, because it means she has to answer questions from other kids, those who get dropped off in SUVs and sedans or even walk to school because that’s how close they live.
**
‘Today we’ll start a new book,’ Mrs. Adler says. ‘The Witch of Blackbird Pond.’ Girl’s in the eighth grade and Mrs. Adler is her homeroom teacher. She wears Birkenstocks and silver-turquoise jewelry and makes Girl sit in the front row because she says she needs to keep an eye on her. ‘You always look like you’re plotting something,’ she said once. Girl has tried to tell Mrs. Adler that it wasn’t really her who pulled the fire alarm last year, or stinkbombed Mr. Ludwig’s car, or put fish in one of the sixth-grade lockers, or hid Mr. Ludwig’s glasses in one of the toilets right before his big speech on parent assembly night. But Mrs. Adler refuses to listen.
‘This looks dumb,’ Lien, who sits beside Girl, says as she hands Girl her copy. On the cover is a girl alone in the woods at night, and even though she’s looking away so it’s impossible to really see her face, to Girl, she doesn’t look like much of a witch. Her hair is too pretty and so is her dress. When Girl flips the book over, she’s careful to not look at the summary but lets herself read the sentence above it. THERE WAS SOMETHING STRANGE ABOUT AMERICA, SOMETHING THAT THEY ALL SEEMED TO SHARE AND UNDERSTAND AND SHE DID NOT. It makes Girl remember something her dad used to say, about being in the West and how the Arabic word for west was connected to the word strange. Isn’t that something? he would ask. Girl now wishes she had asked him what he meant. Isn’t west a direction? Doesn’t it depend on where you stand?
During lunch, Girl sits with Lien and Marcy and picks at the food on her tray. Each day the cafeteria serves meals from a different culture: Italian, Mexican, Chinese, and American. Girl knows the food is in fact the same soft noodles, that only the sauce changes. Today is Italian and the sauce is red and lumpy and tastes like ketchup. She stands up, carries her tray back to the counter, and hands it to one of the lunch ladies. ‘What’s wrong with it today?’ the lady asks.
‘I don’t eat pork,’ Girl says. The lady shakes her head and dumps the food in the trash.
At the table, Lien and Marcy unwrap homemade turkey sandwiches and open snack-size bags of cheesy chips and chocolate-dipped cookies. Marcy reaches over and hands Girl a few chips. Lien gives her a cookie. She eats them and pretends to not want the other things they offer. As she eats she thinks about her dad, who made fajitas and lasagna and curry, served big portions and ate his quickly. A few times Mona asked why he never made Syrian food and he said he didn’t know how, or that it was too hard. Girl could tell Mona didn’t believe him. A year before he died Mona looked up recipes and made an entire Syrian dinner. Girl doesn’t know what it was because she refused to eat it, but she had sat with them and watched how for the first time her dad ate slowly and carefully, and she couldn’t tell if it made him happy or sad.
After lunch Mrs. Adler announces a lesson on World Religions and no one pays attention. Marcy braids Lien’s hair and Girl tries to not watch Ryan Delaney flirt with Isabelle Henning. She can see Isabelle’s hand in his, and him drawing something on it with a red pen. Ryan always draws things on Isabelle, and Girl wonders if she likes it. She also wonders how long it takes Isabelle to wash it off each night and why she never draws on him. Mrs. Adler shouts Girl’s name. A few students laugh and Girl can feel their stares. ‘I asked,’ Mrs. Adler says, ‘if you can tell the class what you know about Mohammed’s ascent to heaven?’
Ryan stops marking Isabelle and twists in his seat to face Girl. ‘Come on. No one can go all the way to heaven on a horse,’ he says. ‘How stupid.’ More kids laugh, and when Isabelle crosses her arms, Girl sees Ryan’s name written across the back of her hand. She feels her face grow hot and when she looks at Ryan chewing on the red pen and looking at her, she knows she’s close enough to lean in and shove it straight back into his throat if she wanted to.
‘Do you want to disagree with that?’ Mrs. Adler says. When Girl shakes her head, Ryan laughs and turns to Isabelle so she laughs too. Mrs. Adler tells them both to be quiet. ‘I knew you weren’t paying attention,’ she says to Girl. Girl feels her face get hotter and she wants to say so
mething but has no idea what, tries to remember anything she’s ever heard about a winged horse or a trip to heaven or even Mohammed, but can’t.
**
From her dad Girl learned that her grandfather had spent over a decade preparing for priesthood. When he was twelve, his parents had caught him stealing a bottle of arak – booze only better, Girl’s dad said. He also said Girl’s great-grandparents loved arak and music and parties, and that’s how Girl’s grandfather began drinking in the first place. But, of course, he couldn’t tell his parents what he’d done was their fault, so he blamed it on the devil. Satan himself had tricked him, he swore, and he couldn’t be sure it wouldn’t happen again. Girl’s great-grandparents didn’t want their only son to go to hell, or worse, prison, so they sent him away, to a boarding school, then a seminary so he could live a holy life. What about them? Girl asked. They stopped drinking, her dad said, for a while anyway, and sprinkled their house with holy water.
Girl wanted to know why her grandfather didn’t just admit he’d lied. It turned out he liked it, the Bible, the stories, all of it. He thought it would be nice to one day become a bishop and wear the red velvet capes and gold tassels and have people bow before him at the altar. But just before he was about to become a priest, Girl’s dad said, her grandfather saw the woman he would marry. She wasn’t dressed up or trying to catch a man, Girl’s dad wanted her to know. No. She was in a house dress and standing just outside her family’s courtyard, yelling at a neighbor who’d said something lewd to her younger sister.
In under a week Girl’s grandfather left the Church, became a Muslim, and asked to marry the woman who would become Girl’s grandmother. Of course, his father had a heart attack and died from the scandal, and his mother disowned him. She saw him just one more time, Girl’s dad said, years later, when she was dying. She refused to receive the sacrament of the sick from anyone but him, and he agreed. Girl found that part of the story the saddest, that for so long her great-grandmother probably missed her son but had come to believe it wasn’t okay to say so.