Son of Syria

by Schafer, Ben

  I saw her, but I was anything but comforted. Another masked man, this one wearing a dark green ski mask and an ugly mustard yellow sweater, clung to my mother in a way that would suggest intimacy between the two to anyone walking past. His arm was draped with casual ease around her shoulders which put his hand near her neck. My mother’s expression was a mix of fear and fury, but she made no protest. I thought it was weird for her to stay silent. Then I saw a glint of metal that was pressed against her throat. The man, like his colleague, had veiled all but the very tip of a weapon from view, in this case a wicked-looking blade.

  The man green mask whispered into my mother’s ear. I was directly beside them and could hardly make out the words. Anyone beyond our little circle would be oblivious. “Scream and your kid dies. Run and your kid dies. Try to contact your husband, make an attempt to wave down the police, make any communication with anyone beyond nodding or shaking your head—”

  “Let me guess: my kid dies, right?” my mother asked with obvious disgust in her voice.

  Mr. Green leaned in so close that his tongue brushed against my mother’s earlobe as he spoke. “You’ve got the idea,” he leered. My mother shuddered but didn’t say anything. “That’s a good girl,” Mr. Green said with sadistic glee. “You and I are going to be spending a lot of time together.” He ran his other hand down one of her cheeks. “Maybe if you’re good, you might even enjoy it. I know I will.”

  I bit the hand that was clamped over my mouth. Mr. Black withdrew it with a muttered curse and I shouted, “Leave her alone!” I’d like to think that I was being brave or staring down the threat of death without blinking or something heroic like that. The truth is that it seemed like the thing to do, and I acted without thinking about the consequences.

  Mr. Black flipped his injured hand back and forth, then looked at his comrade as if seeking permission to shoot me for my outburst. Mr. Green shook his head, then slapped me across the face with the back of his free hand. The force of the blow sent me tumbling to the ground.

  I may have acted without thinking, but my mother’s actions were planned and deliberate. Seizing her sliver of opportunity, she grabbed Mr. Green’s wrist with both hands and pushed the blade away from her throat. Without releasing his arm, she swung out from under his grip. She wasn’t a professional fighter, but she had gone through plenty of self-defense training from the State Department. Something in the man’s wrist popped and the knife clattered on the cobblestones.

  Mr. Green let out a shriek of pain and my mother looked at me. Her expression is seared in my memory, pain and fear and a desperate hope that somehow we would survive this. She yelled, “Kyle, run!”

  Then a single gunshot echoed through the souq.

  I was vaguely aware of someone screaming. It wasn’t until my throat ran raw that I realized that the primal noise came from my mouth. My mother grunted in pain and a dark red stain began spreading across her blouse. She lost her balance and fell to one knee.

  Mr. Green began marching toward me with menace in his dark eyes. I tensed and tried to curl up into a defensive ball, but the expected blow never came. Instead, Mr. Green slapped Mr. Black with his good hand. The impact was much harder than it had been when he struck me, and it twisted the ski mask around Mr. Black’s face. The knit fabric did little to muffle his cry of surprise and pain.

  “You idiot!” Mr. Green thundered.

  Mr. Black straightened his mask. “Relax,” he said as he rubbed his jaw. “We still got the kid.”

  Mr. Green glanced at the crowd surrounding them. Because of the echoes, it was difficult for the crowd to determine exactly where the shot had originated. Still, the would-be kidnapper knew that his cover was blown. He had to act now or risk losing everything he wanted.

  I stood frozen in terror and indecision. If I wanted to escape these men, I had to make a dash while they were still arguing. But I couldn’t abandon my mother to die on the street with no one to comfort her.

  My heart broke as I looked at my mother. She had fallen on her side and a trickle of blood ran from her mouth. She seemed so small, so broken. The light in her eyes was dimming, but when she met my gaze her jaw set in grim determination. She put a hand under her and tried to push herself off the ground. But she didn’t have the strength. Her arm collapsed and she landed hard, clacking her skull against the cobblestones. Her eyes were still open, still watching me.

  She stopped moving.

  I wanted to go to her side. I wanted to yell for a police officer or an ambulance. I wanted to break down and cry. I did none of those things.

  I ran.

  I ran blindly at first, my vision blurred by tears. When I heard the two men shout, when I heard their heavy footsteps pounding after mine on the cobblestones, I found a whole new definition of speed. But it didn’t matter. Mr. Green and Mr. Black were gaining. Speed wasn’t enough. If I wanted to survive, I had to think.

  I didn’t want to think. I wanted to scream. I wanted to mourn. I wanted to run forever and never look back. I knew if I ever looked back, I would see the look of despair on my mother’s face as I abandoned her to die alone.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered, swiping away tears with the heel of my hand. “So, so sorry.”

  Then I passed the pistachio stand, and an idea clicked into place. I turned with a burst of speed that almost sent me sprawling into the wooden displays. The old man rose and shouted at me, but I didn’t care. If I was lucky, my pursuers would not be able to match the maneuver. Then again, if I was lucky, none of this would be happening to me.

  Hope surged when, as I dared to take a quick glance behind me, I saw the two kidnappers barrel right past me and into the crowd. Maybe I did have a chance, after all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  MILES west of the city, we started to round a small hill. I pounded on the window that separated the cab from the bed of the truck. Azima jumped in surprise, then turned and slid it open. “What’s happening? Are we in trouble?”

  I shook my head. “Jamil, do you think we can take this truck off-road?”

  He thought about it for a moment. “The area’s rockier than the loose sands to the east. We should be all right. Why? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that Omar needs a proper funeral.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Nadir scoffed. “We’re running on borrowed time as it is.”

  I glared at him. “What did I tell you about keeping your mouth shut until you could be helpful? Omar was our friend. He deserves to be treated as such, even in death.”

  “Where did you want to do it?” Jamil asked.

  “I was thinking the crest of the hill would be a good spot. We’ve still got these shovels back here.”

  Jamil pulled off the road and started ascending the hill. He stopped the truck a short distance from the top and jumped out. I tossed him a shovel, then grabbed one for myself. Jamil pressed the ground with his boot. “This should do the trick,” he said, standing on a bare patch of dirt.

  I swung over the side of the truck. “This shouldn’t take too long,” I reassured the others.

  It turned out that my estimate was optimistic. I never realized the amount of back-breaking work it took to dig a grave. My spine was killing me by the time Jamil and I finished the hole. It wasn’t the customary six-feet deep, but the rocky soil prevented us from going any farther.

  Once we were finished, Nadir helped us move Omar’s body and lay it in the grave. We placed him facing west, out toward the sea, even though it wasn’t visible from this point. I decided that it would be better than turning him toward the hometown that had abandoned his principles even as it burned to the ground.

  It took far less time to fill the grave than it had taken to dig it. When we were finished, it occurred to me that we had no way to mark Omar’s final resting place. There weren’t even any sticks that we could lash together to make a crude cross.

  It was Azima who came up with the answer. She took the lug wrench from the back of the t
ruck and partially buried it in the ground near Omar’s head. It stuck up from the hill like a short chrome crucifix.

  We stood there on the hilltop, listening to the wind and the occasional round of thunder from Rastan. I noticed everyone was looking at me. I guess they expected me to have something profound to say.

  “I’m going to disappoint you all,” I told them. “I don’t have any answers. I don’t know why Omar had to die. I can’t tell you what God’s plan is in all of this. I can’t see the positive side. All I know is that a friend is dead, and that I failed him.”

  I almost choked on those words. I straightened my spine and declared, “But I will not fail again. We have come too far and survived too much to allow Omar’s death to break us apart. He wouldn’t want that.”

  “It’s tragic,” Azima whispered as she looked down the hill at the fires burning in Rastan. As she spoke, another jet roared in the distance. “Omar risked his life building the rebel movement only to have it betray his ideals at the very end. He wanted freedom and only got death.”

  I shook my head. “No. Omar’s movement may have failed him. His brother may have disowned him. His childhood friends may have forsaken him. But Omar didn’t need any of those things. He found his salvation through Christ. Through Him, Omar was able to experience a freedom that no protest movement or rebellion can give.”

  I looked down at the grave. “Omar is finally free of his burdens. He is free to be happy in heaven for eternity. No earthly revolution could offer him more than that.”

  “Amen,” Khamilah mumbled.

  Despite my words, Omar’s death twisted something in my soul. At the end, he died abandoned by his family and surrounded by strangers. Omar had left this world with nothing. He left no wife or children. Beyond this group of travelers, Sharif would be the only person to truly mourn Omar’s death.

  It triggered an awful resonance with my own life. If I died on this journey or the one after it or the one after that, who would be left to care? Miriam would grieve, but I was no longer a regular presence in her life. My absence would hardly impact her at all. Cuvier would mourn, but he had lost men in combat before and would likely do so again after I passed. He would move on to the next mission, the next Knight who needed his leadership. I grimaced as I realized that my sister and my boss were the only people I could call my friends.

  That wasn’t quite true, I corrected myself. I looked at Azima, who was stroking her son’s hair and singing him a quiet little song. The song was calm and comforting, but there was an edge of tension to it. It struck me that Azima was just as lost as I was, in her own way. She found Christ, but she had not yet found peace.

  In that moment, I made up my mind. I couldn’t keep risking my life like this. I had tempted fate for too long. I had seen too much suffering and lost too much to continue. If I kept going, I was afraid of what would happen to me. Not just the mortal danger. I worried about the risk that my heart would grow calloused and hard from the horrors I’d witnessed and the sacrifices I’d been forced to make.

  I wanted a change. I wanted a life of happiness and peace, not heartbreak and violence. Once we were safely to our destination, I would tell Cuvier that I was out. If Azima would have me, I would join her as she started life anew. I would follow her anywhere.

  But first, we had to make it out of Syria alive.

  After another minute of introspection, I shattered the silence by clapping my hands together. “We need to get moving. Nadir had a point about our limited time. It’s past noon already. The longer we keep our ride waiting, the higher the chances that something could go wrong.”

  Everyone started to pile back into the truck and Nadir shot me a triumphant look. I tapped Jamil on the shoulder and held out my hand. “Do you mind if I drive?” I hooked my thumb toward Nadir and Khamilah. “I can’t stand the thought of having to ride with those two all the way to Tartus.”

  Jamil was clearly not excited at the prospect, either, but he placed the key in my hand. “Sure, Kyle.”

  I patted his bicep. “You’re a good man, Jamil.”

  “Well, I try.” There was hesitation in his voice. I guess he wasn’t accustomed to kind words.

  As I watched the others pile into the truck, I noticed Nadir lingered by Omar’s grave. While the others weren’t watching, he knelt down and said, “I’m very sorry, my boy. You deserved better than this.” That phrase, more specifically the way he said it, triggered something in my memories. Something troubling . . .

  “Nadir,” Jamil shouted. The sound snapped me out of my contemplation. “We need to move right now.”

  I started the truck and took off down the hill. I was careful to avoid any difficult terrain so the people in the back would be able to stay in the truck. Soon we were back on the road, leaving Rastan and its legacy of death in our wake.

  We rode in silence. Omar’s death weighed on each of us, and none of us were ready to talk about it. If there was a silver lining, Hashim had taken advantage of the quiet and was cuddled up against his mother in the passenger seat, peaceful and content. The others clung to the side of the truck bed. As I glanced in the mirror, I saw that none of them moved into the empty space where Omar’s body had been.

  I understood. Despite the dangers we faced over the past two days, it had seemed like we were untouchable. Omar’s death changed that. It brought the grim reality of our situation into sharp focus. It was only logical that we would avoid anything that would direct our attention to that fact.

  I remained on the back roads until we had gotten a good bit of distance between us and the warzone we had fled in Rastan. I didn’t know this area and Jamil’s expertise was with city driving, but together we managed to navigate in the right direction. We passed through acres of farmland and grassy pastures without seeing anyone walking or tending to livestock. The fact that there were few cars on the road only increased the sense of isolation.

  The side roads were safer but they also took up a lot more time than I had anticipated. A couple miles outside of Rastan I decided speed was more important than stealth. To that end, I moved away from the winding back roads and onto Route 43, a major artery that ran from the south near the Lebanon border to the Mediterranean Sea in Tartus. It was the most direct path to our destination. The sooner we put this God-forsaken country behind us the better we would be.

  The back roads consumed something else as well: our gasoline. The old Arena was hardly the model of fuel efficiency. Without making a quick pit stop, we would not have enough gas to make it to Tartus.

  “Azima,” I said softly, not wanting to wake Hashim, “can you check the glove compartment for a map?” She nodded. After a few seconds of searching, she pulled out a folded square of yellowed paper. “What’s the next town along this highway that would have a halfway decent gas station?”

  Azima unfolded the map and examined it. “Uh, we’re only a few kilometers north of Kafroun. That should work.”

  Sure enough, it was only a few more minutes until a suitable option presented itself. When I turned off the main road, I heard someone tapping on the rear window. I slid it open, and Jamil leaned into the cab. “Hey, what’s up? Why are we stopping?”

  I glanced over at Hashim who stirred and rubbed his eyes. “We need to get some more gasoline if we’re gonna make it to Tartus.”

  Jamil surveyed the dilapidated station as we approached. “Do you think anyone is even home? I don’t see any cars in the lot.”

  “People in Damascus are waiting for hours to get a tank of gasoline,” Nadir added. “If there is no one here, chances are that the tanks are dry.”

  “The lights are on,” I observed. “Kafroun is not a big city like Damascus. Maybe the demand isn’t as high out here. Traffic has been pretty light.”

  “I don’t know,” Jamil shrugged. “Something doesn’t feel right about this.”

  “Nothing about the past two days has felt right,” I replied. “We might as well get gas while we have a chance.”

  “Okay,
” Jamil said. “You pay, I’ll pump. That way we can get moving.”

  I pulled the truck to a stop beside the pump. “Sounds like a plan. Just get eight or ten liters. Enough to get us across the finish line.”

  The dust on the windows was so thick that it was difficult to see anything or anyone inside the store. Other than the lights, there were no signs of life. Despite my assurances to Jamil, I was more than a little surprised when I pushed on the door and discovered that it was unlocked.

  The interior of the station was a cozy little setup. There were four rows of various items that could interest potential customers, from snack foods to basic auto supplies like jumper cables. The shelves were bare, but a few items remained. Apparently, the shortages that plagued the country had not yet wiped out this station’s supplies. I hoped it held true for their gasoline, as well.

  To my left sat a long gray-green counter that stretched out for almost the full length of the store. A newspaper stand stood in front of the counter, and only a few outdated periodicals remained. I noticed a distinct lack of political literature of any kind, probably the only way such an isolated store could avoid becoming a target for any side in this conflict. A small television set rested on a shelf on the far wall behind the counter and displayed some kind of new broadcast in grainy black-and-white.

  A middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair stood behind the counter. His dark blue jumpsuit was coated in grease, which was weird because the station had no garage. He gave me a nod of acknowledgment, then focused his attention on the television. Between the low volume and poor reception, I couldn’t make out what was being said. Judging from his reactions, though, the attendant understood it.

  There was one other man in the shop, a little bearded fellow with an armful of sodas and snacks. I hadn’t noticed another car outside by the gas pumps. Maybe he had parked on the far side of the building. Maybe he lived in town and just decided to walk here because this was where he shopped for groceries. Maybe.