Son of Syria

by Schafer, Ben

  For a few seconds, no one spoke. It was Omar who broke the silence. “Who’s first?”

  Hashim’s little hand shot into the air. I smiled. “Sorry, kiddo. Maybe next time.” I glanced at our little bridge, which rattled with every gust of wind. If we could get someone to hold down the other side, it would go a long way toward stabilizing the platform. The thought of plummeting to my death almost made me hyperventilate, but I couldn’t ask anyone else to bear that risk. Once I crossed, if I managed to survive, the others would have a much easier—

  Azima raced forward and practically flew across the bridge. Every footfall made the light wood dance, but she made it all the way across before I had realized what happened. Her feet touched down onto the roof and she spun to face us, a radiant smile on her lips. “That was fun!”

  I let out a sharp breath of air. “It seems you haven’t lost your touch,” I shouted to her. “Or your insanity.”

  “You say ‘insanity,’ I say ‘fun!’” she countered. She held down her end of the plywood, and the worst of the vibrations subsided.

  “All right,” Nadir said. “Who goes next?”

  Hashim raised his hand again. “You promised that I could do it next,” he pleaded.

  “If somebody says ‘maybe,’ then it’s not a promise, kiddo,” I told him. Hashim, master of rhetoric that he was, simply stared at me with big puppy-dog eyes. It was a persuasive argument. “All right, fine. Might as well get him across before we strain the plywood with anyone heavier.”

  “Hey!” Khamilah interjected.

  I ignored her. “Omar, go with him. Hold his hand, but spread out your weight. If this thing breaks-”

  “I get the picture,” Omar said. “Come on, Hashim. Nice and easy, now.” Unlike Azima who had raced across the gap, Omar and Hashim took slow, deliberate steps.

  “I wish they would hurry,” Khamilah said.

  “Would you rather they fall?” Jamil asked.

  “If it would clear the path for the rest of us,” Khamilah shrugged, leaving the thought unfinished.

  “Khamilah!” Nadir scolded her.

  His wife waved her hand dismissively. “Relax. You know I was only joking.”

  “Yeah, you’re about as funny as rectal cancer,” I said. Omar and Hashim stepped off of the board and quickly scurried away from the ledge. “There you go. All yours.”

  For all her whining, Khamilah took the longest of the whole bunch. In her defense, the wind had increased in intensity. An image flashed in my mind of Khamilah’s long robes catching the wind and turning her into a human kite. The thought brought a smile to my face.

  Once Khamilah was clear, Jamil went across. His much higher body weight, combined with the uptick in wind, made it a lot more difficult to maintain my grip on the plank. Nadir looked at me, and I nodded. As soon as Jamil set foot on the opposite rooftop, Nadir released his grip on the board and began to cross. I was afraid that I would lose control of my end, but Nadir was much lighter than Jamil and holding the plywood steady proved simpler than I feared.

  Nadir took over for Azima when he arrived on the other side. She rose to her feet and waved for me to make my way over the bridge. Only then did I realize that there would be no one left to hold on to this end. I had to make it across quickly, but not so quickly that I caused the plywood to slide loose.

  I put my feet on the plywood. I was acutely aware that if the board slipped only a few inches in either direction. I would be taking a one-way elevator to the street below. I had an uncomfortable vision of the jet returning for another pass, sweeping me to my doom in its exhaust.

  “Baby steps,” I whispered to myself. “Baby steps. Slow is smooth, smooth is—Whoa!” The board began to oscillate and I flailed my arms to maintain balance. When I had steadied myself, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Slow is smooth,” I resumed as I slid my foot gently across the plank, “smooth is fast. Just take it one step at a—”

  Crack.

  I didn’t have to look down at my feet to know what was happening. This material was not designed to bear this much weight. Even going one at a time, we had strained the plywood to the breaking point. I could feel the tension loosen under my left heel as the board began to splinter.

  I tried to gauge the distance to the other building. Maybe I could just take a running leap and see where that got me. But my vertigo-warped vision showed that the ledge was too far for such an attempt. I pushed onward, treading carefully as if walking on thin ice. The only difference was that, if my support collapsed, I had a much further plunge awaiting me.

  A subjective eternity later, I reached the halfway point. I heard Khamilah moan, “And I thought the child was slow.”

  “You’re not helping,” I said through grinding teeth. I took another step and a long, thin split appeared in the wood. “Oh, crap,” I muttered as almost a foot of plywood separated from the rest of the board and crashed to the pavement. Because things weren’t bad enough, now I had to do my best impression of a tightrope act.

  For a moment, I thought that I might pull it off. Then I put my foot down and felt the world collapse around me. The already weakened plywood could take no more stress and snapped.

  The universe went into slow motion. I felt the assurance of solid matter beneath my feet vanish like a vapor. It was only sheer reflex that saved my life. I leapt with everything I had, sure that I was still too far out to land safely on the other side.

  And I was right. Sort of.

  I slammed face-first into the brick facade of the building I had tried to reach. My fingers clawed in a desperate search for a handhold, but I found only air. Maybe if I was lucky, there would be a balcony somewhere along the path to lessen my fall. In a best-case scenario, maybe I’d only shatter my femur instead of my skull.

  As it turned out, I had ignored one other scenario. As I began falling, I felt two hands wrap around my wrists. One was delicate but had a strong grip, while the other was thick and muscled. Working in concert, the two mismatched hands yanked me out of the void and dragged me onto the rooftop. I rolled over onto my back and decided that I would like to stay that way for the rest of my life.

  I’m pretty sure that I passed out. When my eyes flickered open, I saw Azima and Jamil standing above me. “There he is,” Azima’s mouth spread into the most beautiful grin I had ever seen.

  “Welcome back.” Jamil’s smile wasn’t as pretty. He had cabbage in his teeth. That observation disturbed me even more when I realized that he had not eaten cabbage in the entire time I had known him. How long had that been in there?

  I groaned and propped myself up on my elbows. “This? This is why I hate heights.”

  “You only say that because you keep falling,” Azima quipped.

  I rolled my eyes and climbed to my feet. “We need to get moving.” I looked over the ledge. The plywood splintered into a thousand pieces upon impact, a fate I would have shared if not for my companions. But I didn’t see any soldiers in the swirling chaos left in the wake of the powerful explosion.

  “We should be safe now,” Omar said. “The army has withdrawn.”

  “This is only temporary.” Nadir pointed to a spot a few blocks away. “The army will press the advantage as soon as they reorganize. The good news is they should be past us quickly.”

  Jamil nodded. “Yeah. Unless they decide to clear each building first. In which case we’d have a problem.”

  “Let’s get out of here before that happens,” I said. “We need to find a way down and—”

  “We already have,” Jamil interjected. “Omar found an unlocked stairwell while you were recovering.”

  “Okay, then,” I clapped my hands. “Let’s get out of this nightmare.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CROSSING the front lines was surreal. The destruction was much greater on this side of town, the result of skirmishes earlier in the day. Despite the devastation, it was almost peaceful. There were a few other people milling around, clearing debris from the streets or
digging through rubble for survivors. I kept a close eye on anyone we encountered, fearful of army patrols.

  Mosab’s garage stood apart from the other buildings in the neighborhood. For one thing, it was primarily a residential area. Other than the auto shop and a coffee shop on the corner, the street was lined with cinder-block houses and squat two-story apartment complexes. Unlike the places near Sharif’s compound, there were no iron bars in the windows. The yards, though not elaborate, were neat and trimmed. From all appearances, it was a pretty decent area of town.

  Or it had been, before war came to Rastan.

  Many of those well-kept yards were marred by craters and scorch marks. The windows of the whole block were blown out, either from the detonation of a nearby artillery shell or another airstrike. Glass and soot blanketed the whole street, still drifting from the sky like a macabre snowstorm. Huge chunks of buildings had collapsed or were missing altogether, giving those homes the appearance of cut-away models that showcased the interior of an object.

  In this way, Mosab’s garage was also unique. I don’t know if he had reinforced his shop like Sharif had done with his compound, but here were no holes in the walls and the windows were cracked but intact. The black and green paint job seemed fresh and all but untouched by the chaos that surrounded it. Even the ever-present dust was absent from the premises. For once it looked like we got to walk into a building that wasn’t the ugliest piece of real estate in town.

  The others noticed the difference, as well. “Wow,” Jamil grunted. “Nice place.”

  “I’d expect to see a shop of this quality in Damascus,” Nadir observed.

  Khamilah sniffed derisively. Or maybe some soot had gotten in her nose. I don’t know. Everything she did seemed condescending, so it was hard to tell. “Why would he bother to maintain such standards in a town so insignificant?”

  A pair of booming explosions in the distance rattled the windows. The fighting may have pushed past our position, but the artillery shells and bombs were still landing too close for my comfort. “It seems Rastan is significant to somebody,” Omar muttered.

  “Let’s get off the street before we attract the wrong kind of attention,” Azima suggested.

  Omar pulled the key from his pocket. “Already on it.”

  It was a straightforward setup. A thin row of windows rested above two large roll-up doors, presumably the repair bays. To the left of the garage itself was a small office space with a single wooden door flanked by a pair of square windows. Through the left window I could see a basic waiting room, but the window on the right was spider-webbed with cracks and I couldn’t distinguish any details on the other side.

  Omar’s hands were trembling. It took him a couple of attempts to insert the key into the door. He paused. “Here goes nothing,” then twisted the doorknob. Omar gave the door a gentle push and it swung open without a sound.

  The interior of the shop was clean and well-lit. Now that we were inside, I had a better view of the waiting area. It was an open, square space with a short hall leading to restrooms directly across from us. A handful of mismatched chairs had been placed along the far wall beside the hallway. On the left side of the room was a plastic table with some old magazines as well as a water cooler beside a sleeve of paper cups.

  The wall to our right had an open doorway at the far end. Other than that empty space, the rest of the wall was covered in automotive posters, some in English but most in Arabic. Unlike the posters I associated with such shops in the United States, there were no pictures of scantily-clad models posing on or beside sleek sports cars. Instead, these posters featured advertisements for parts and services that Mosab offered as well as some generic action shots of cars and trucks on the open road.

  There was a television with an old “rabbit ear” antenna tucked neatly into the corner where it would be visible to anyone in the waiting room. Mosab would have little trouble leaning back to catch the images through the open door to what I assumed was his office. The television was turned off, and the only images on the screen were our reflections as we passed.

  “Mosab?” Omar said in a hoarse whisper. When there was no response, either from Mosab or from soldiers lying in wait, he repeated it with more force. “Mosab, are you here?” He started walking down the hallway. “It’s Omar. Sharif sent us.” Silence was the only reply. A moment later, I rounded the corner into the office and discovered why.

  There was a man, tall and thin with a lopsided face that sloped down toward his left shoulder. He didn’t have a beard so much as the stubble of a man too busy to remember to shave every day. The man, who I assumed was Mosab, was slumped back in the overstuffed chair behind a spartan aluminum desk. He was facing the window, and from this angle I could distinguish a pattern to the cracks. There were two holes in the glass about the size of a quarter each, the result of shots from a high-powered rifle. Corresponding wounds in Mosab’s chest and abdomen stained his overalls a sickly brown color. From the smell, he had been dead for hours.

  I turned to the rest of the group as they started to enter the office. “Azima, get Hashim out of here.”

  “Yeah,” she nodded without asking for an explanation. Azima led her son to the table and picked out a magazine. I don’t know if he could read, but Azima just flipped through the pages to let him look at the pictures. It brought to mind my own experiences in the waiting room back in Malta.

  Nadir took one look at the body, then turned to face me. “I thought you said that we would be safe here,” he snapped.

  I stepped forward and examined the body. “From the looks of it, he’s been dead for a while. Probably before we woke up this morning. If the shooter was still out there we would have been much easier targets when we were outside. I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”

  Jamil put a hand on Omar’s shoulder. “I am so sorry,” he whispered.

  “The last time I saw Mosab was when I had just returned from university,” Omar confided. “He offered me a chance to work here in his garage.” He smiled sadly. “I never had the heart to tell him I hated this place.”

  “What do we do now?” Jamil asked.

  “The plan remains the same,” I answered. “There is bound to be a vehicle of some kind in the shop, otherwise Mosab wouldn’t be here.”

  “And what if none of the cars in the garage are functional?” Omar asked.

  I looked to Jamil. “You’ve got mechanical expertise. Do you think you can lend a hand?”

  Jamil shrugged. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “That’s all I can ask,” I replied. “Omar, where did Mosab keep the keys to vehicles he was repairing?”

  The young man couldn’t look away from his friend’s corpse. “Uh, look in the top drawer on the right. He kept them in separate envelopes.”

  I slid open the drawer. It was filled with pencils, rubber bands, and promotional calendars. It took some digging, but I managed to find a single envelope. I shook it to ensure that there was something inside the envelope, then opened it. There was a single key with a paper tag that read Mr. Sayeed. I hoped that Mr. Sayeed would forgive us for taking his vehicle, but it was a matter of life or death.

  “Jamil, you wouldn’t happen to know what type of car this key unlocks, would you?” I asked.

  He took it from my hand and examined it. “Not off the top of my head. There can’t be too many options, though. And it’s not like we have to worry about time.”

  I felt troubled about leaving Mosab’s corpse like that, but we weren’t really in a position to do much about it. We left his office and continued down to the end of the little hallway. Just past the bathrooms was a solid steel door marked Employees Only.

  I pulled the door open to find the garage shrouded in darkness. I turned to ask Omar where the light switch was located, but he was way ahead of me. He flicked the switch and the garage was filled with artificial light.

  The facade of Mosab’s building gave me a false impression as to the size of the garage itself. I
hadn’t taken into account how far back the building would go. It was cavernous, large enough to fit the Douglas DC-3 Cuvier and I took when we left Afghanistan. I couldn’t believe that Mosab ran this place all by himself. No wonder he wanted Omar to work for him. Sweeping the floor alone must have taken hours.

  Omar was right. There were cars here. And a couple of trucks. And a moving van. Altogether, I counted eight different vehicles parked in this garage. Jamil whistled at the sight. “This,” he started counting the cars, “could take some time.”

  I sighed. “Yeah. Go ahead and get started.” Jamil nodded and began inserting the key into each vehicle in turn.

  Hashim was wandering around, staring in wide-eyed fascination at the extensive tool collection. Unfortunately, he wasn’t watching his step. He stumbled over the car-lift and started to fall. His mother was there, however, and intercepted him before he could hit his head on the cold concrete. Hashim scraped his knee, but he was otherwise just fine.

  My attention was so focused on the boy that I was caught by surprise when one of the rolling doors began to move. I still couldn’t see outside the shop. It occurred to me that someone could have been keeping an eye on the place and sent someone in to investigate the new arrivals. I reached for my gun, but it wasn’t there. I cursed my stupidity. Despite my warning to Walid, I should have demanded that Sharif return my pistol before we left. I felt exposed without it.

  Omar’s head popped up from behind a purple 1971 Plymouth Road Runner. “Who hit the button?” he asked.

  I looked around, but none of our group was anywhere near the door controls. “Wasn’t us.”

  “Somebody must have gotten to the external override,” Omar explained.

  “All right,” I whispered. “Find some place to hide and stay there.”