The Boy from Aleppo Who Painted the War

by Sumia Sukkar

  ‘If you’re hungry I’ll prepare your meal, nobody else wants to eat.’

  We go to the kitchen and this time there is no fruit on the table and when Yasmine opens the fridge the first two rows are empty.

  ‘Why is there no food in the fridge Yasmine?’

  ‘Because everybody finished it Habibi, we’ll buy some tomorrow. Don’t worry and just eat.’

  Yasmine puts out some bread for me to eat. I know we don’t have food at home, but I don’t know why. I wish I could have some rice with red soup now. Mama’s rice and soup was the best.

  I can hear the boys come in with Baba. I sit down on the chair and have my bread. Khalid comes in and picks Yasmine up and twirls her. Yasmine giggles and hits him to put her down. He pretends he is going to throw her in the bin and she screams. I don’t like seeing anyone else make Yasmine happy, but it’s been a long time since she was my favourite colour ruby so I laugh with her too.

  ‘So what’s to eat?’ Khalid asks Yasmine as he puts her down. Yasmine doesn’t answer, she just looks at me and then Khalid does too.

  ‘Well I ate already so I was going to tell you there’s no need to make a lot of food.’

  Yasmine smiles and pats him on the shoulder. Isa and Tariq pop their heads into the kitchen too and then Baba joins us and asks why everyone is in the kitchen. I start laughing for no reason. I suddenly feel a surge of electricity run through me, and my laugh keeps getting louder. I have tears falling down my cheeks from my laughter and as I look around the kitchen everybody looks like they’re drowning in my eyes. Tariq starts laughing too. It feels like I have party poppers going off in my heart and I have to release all my energy.

  We all go and sit in the sitting room and Baba takes the Quran from the shelf and goes to his room to read. Mama said that when I was young I always used to sit next to Baba when he was reading the Quran and smile at him. He has a voice that flows like cool lemonade down my chest and makes me feel relaxed. The words of the Quran always comfort me and, even though it is so poetic and written in classic Arabic that I don’t completely understand, there is something about it that speaks to me.

  Tariq, Isa and Khalid start talking about what is happening around us. They don’t say the word ‘war’ once but their voices sound like bullets. The droning sound of their heavy words hurts my head.

  ‘Don’t say their name,’ Tariq whispers to Khalid.

  ‘Whose name?’

  They both look at me and tell me to go to my room but I don’t want to.

  ‘They can’t keep controlling us! I am fed up with this, we need a revolution!’

  ‘They have us in a corner, you know if you say anything they will kill all of us, be careful Khalid!’

  ‘I can’t live like this any more! I feel like a lab rat! Those kids that were burnt today for asking for freedom, why? How is that fair?’

  ‘You will be too if you’re not careful!’

  ‘I’ll die for freedom, I am not following any sects, I am just following my religion and they can’t keep messing around with it or my freedom!’

  ‘Assad,’ I say.

  They both look at me with a blank expression. I don’t know why I said his name or why I am now repeating it but it keeps rolling down my tongue like it enjoys the ride. Tariq tries to explain to me in a low voice that I shouldn’t say his name. But why shouldn’t I? It’s just a name, why should I be scared? I continue to say his name until all of a sudden Isa gets up and kicks the table and then storms off to his room. The sound freezes the name in my mouth and I have to swallow to get rid of the block in my throat. Isa’s face looked like a jigsaw puzzle. I don’t like what the war is doing to my family. I don’t know who to listen to, they all have opinions and the news has a different one. I don’t want to listen to any of them. I just don’t want my family and me to get hurt and I don’t want school to stop and I don’t want blood on the streets with people dying. I just want my normal life. I hate the war. I am still hungry but I don’t want to ask Yasmine for more food, she’s been in a bad mood lately.

  Baba is an orphan and he once took me shopping and told me that there were days when he would be treated badly by his foster-parents and they wouldn’t feed him and he would hide bread under his pillow and soak it in water for it to soften up and then eat it before he went to sleep. He said sleep made him forget about his childhood because he remembers the dreams he had and he thought he was living them. Baba then bought me a dessert called sahlab and told me the story about him running away from school every week to eat this dessert and get away from the scary school he hated so much. He used to always get into trouble but he said it was worth it because that warm dessert made his insides happy.

  A knock on the door and a loud voice calling Khalid’s name disturbs my thoughts. He gets up and opens the door to one of our neighbours who’s holding a platter of fried dessert. I can faintly hear their conversation but I know it’s going to end up with Khalid going out. I wish he would stay at home for a bit longer. I like company.

  Khalid walks back in and puts the platter on the table. The honey glazing on top is melting and my mouth is watering for it. Why do the neighbours have food and we don’t?

  ‘Want to walk down the streets with us?’ Khalid asks me. He never asks me to go out with him and his friends. I jump up and clap my hands and stand in front of the door ready to go. His friend laughs and we walk out. It is starting to get dark now and we walk past the cafés that used to be filled with men playing backgammon and drinking tea and are now half empty and some even closed. We pass by kids playing hopscotch and my heart feels heavy. I wish my neighbours would play with me. I feel sad when I hear kids playing outside and nobody rings on my door to call me out. That’s why I like Nabil, because he likes to play with me.

  The further down we walk, as they talk and I listen, the louder the sounds of people marching is getting. There is an echo of people chanting ‘Down with the regime’ and I can spot a flag being held up high. Is this the revolution that Yasmine has been telling me about, the one they went to? There is a strong smell of petrol coming out of Khalid’s friend’s mouth. I am not sure if I like him or not. I usually sense people’s auras but his is difficult to pinpoint. I don’t feel comfortable with that so I move away from him and stand by Khalid.

  Five minutes later it’s like we’ve entered a new world. There are buildings that are half-collapsed with rubble all around them. One of the buildings looks like a sleeping troll. The streets are packed with people chanting and holding flags. They look like a hungry army of ants going for attack. They also remind me of a scene from Braveheart. Many people are greeting Khalid and his friend. They seem to be well known here. Khalid is walking differently to how he does at home. His chest is pushed out and one of his eyebrows is raised. He looks serious. I didn’t know people change in different places.

  I jump on Khalid’s shoulders to see things from above but I think I am too heavy because he is breathing loudly. There is a rectangular box with the Syrian flag and flowers on top of it. I think it is a dead body. I feel sick. I hit Khalid on his shoulders and shout to be put down. He puts me down quickly and asks me what’s wrong but I just run to a pavement and vomit. I do it for two minutes and four seconds. All the violet in me is on the floor now. The pavement around me is violet. I look up and Khalid is violet too.

  *

  I wake up to Yasmine moving my hair out of my face. My hair has grown below my ears. I need a haircut. I don’t remember going to bed. The last thing I remember is the overwhelming sensation I got at the revolution. I sit up and look around and find three bags on the floor with clothes in them.

  ‘Yasmine, are you going somewhere?’

  She smiles and continues to play with my hair.

  ‘We are going away for a few days to the beach, would you like that?’

  ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!… Yasmine I saw a house… a house that is half gone and there were two kids looking out of the window. The half of the house had bullets all around it with t
he shape of a UFO. I had a dream that a UFO came and destroyed everything.’ I don’t realise I am crying until Yasmine tells me to calm down and stop crying. She continues to play with my hair because that’s the closest I will let her come to me.

  ‘Did you see that yesterday Habibi?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t go to the marches outside, you might get hurt.’

  ‘Khalid took me out, I get lonely at home.’

  ‘We are going to the beach to have fun, come on, get up!’ Yasmine pulls me up and pushes me to the bathroom. We both start laughing and I have energy because I made Yasmine ruby again.

  We all get ready in half an hour and I put my cap on for the sun, I love holidays. There is a taxi waiting outside for us and we all get in and start singing road songs all the way out of our city. The moment we leave, I can see the sun again and my heart feels like a blooming rose. I hope the sun lasts for the few days we are away. We stop at a petrol station on the way and I run around the car 17 times before I get dizzy and get back inside. I am already having so much fun. I wish things could always be this fun. The boys and Baba are smoking outside the window so I close it before the smell suffocates me and I am strangled to the ground. I put my hands around my neck and pretend their smoke is strangling me. I knock on the window with my elbow so they can turn around and see me. I love making people laugh.

  We get to the seaside in two hours and 23 minutes, southwest all the way. It’s warmer here.

  ‘Yasmine put sunscreen on me.’

  ‘Wait till we get to the house.’

  ‘Whose house is it Yasmine?’

  ‘Aunt Rana’s house.’

  ‘Is she going to be home?’

  ‘No Habibi, she lent us the house for a few days.’

  ‘Yayyy!’ I run to the house where Khalid is standing outside smoking and the driver and the boys are taking the bags into the house.

  The house looks very different to ours. The sun is shining on it and for a moment I forget there is a war back home. I run upstairs to look around the house. I decide to stay in the room that overlooks the beach. Then I change my mind. I don’t want to imagine sea monsters at night when I look down. I settle for the small room next to it. I can still hear the waves from here. The smell is like a shell mama once bought me when she came here to visit her sister. This makes me think of mama but I run downstairs and shake my head before I get sad.

  I tug at Yasmine’s dress and ask her when we are going out to the beach. She says we have to eat first. I can’t wait to go swimming. Baba used to take me to our neighbour’s swimming pool every week when I was young. I love being in the water, I feel so free. It’s the only time I can ever be myself and laugh till I can’t any more. The water on my skin reminds me of a story I heard about a prince who thought that the sea was a magical place. He built a palace on top of the water and learnt to live underwater because the water against his skin understood him more than any other person ever had. The water is my best friend because it plays with me for as long as I want.

  Baba goes to the shops around the place and brings us two roasted chickens ready to eat. After I have eaten I change into my swimsuit and run to the beach. The sand under my feet makes me shiver. It is hot but the sinking feeling makes a shiver run down my spine. I jump into the water and start clapping and singing a nursery rhyme mama used to always sing when we used to go swimming. The boys come running to me and all jump into the water at the same time. It’s like a waterfall of their perfume and water. The three of them come up from underwater with their hair soaked and stand around me. I feel like I’m drowning in a rainbow of perfume. All of them have different perfumes on and I can smell them all so distinctly. But when I’m not paying too much attention the smell attacks me as one perfume monster tries to drown me, fighting to push me down underwater.

  We start playing a game of ball and whoever drops the ball has to go underwater for ten seconds and the seconds keep rising the more the ball is dropped. I don’t mind going underwater because I know if I don’t have a house, I can live underwater like the prince. I don’t know if the story the teacher told us is real or not, but I know I can live underwater and even try to pretend I’m a fish. I wonder how fish think though. Will they know I’m human pretending to be a fish or will they think I’m a fish? We have one Spanish girl in our class who has been brought up in Syria and she thinks she’s Syrian but everybody else knows she isn’t. Is that how I am going to be underwater?

  After playing the game for long enough for all of us to get tired and our fingers wrinkly from the water, I sit on the sand and start to build a sandcastle.

  ‘Yasmine look, do you like my sandcastle?’

  Yasmine is sitting on a lounge chair with Baba under a parasol, she doesn’t like getting red, I love it though.

  ‘Keep going Adam.’

  I get up quickly to drink some water and suddenly a pain that I have never experienced flies through my body and I scream and fall to the ground. I close my eyes and everything turns purple. Did I press a purple button in my body by accident? Yasmine says I twisted my ankle.

  I spend the rest of the day sitting on the sand by Yasmine with ice on my ankle. There are many people around that are speaking a different language to us and look very different. A woman wearing her underwear in the water has purple hair. I didn’t know people could be born with purple hair. I guess she’s from somewhere far like America. Isa comes and sits by us after swimming. He puts some music on his phone and we all sing along.

  I see two kids speaking a fast weird language running up the beach and laughing and I get upset that I pressed a purple button in my body and now I can’t run around.

  Chapter Seven

  YELLOW

  WE HAVE SPENT three days away from home and the sun only went away today. The moment we get back into Aleppo a dark square rests on my heart, pushing it down. I don’t know if it’s because of the dark skies or because these three days have really changed our town, but everything looks like the shadow of a black angel. One of the buildings with a car parked outside resembles an angel with his head down. Maybe bad angels haunt our town, or maybe this is the bad angel’s town.

  I hold Yasmine’s hand for the first time. I whisper the prayer that Baba taught me under my breath. I feel a spider weave his web around the linings of my heart. I repeat the prayer under my breath waiting for a release of good thoughts. Our taxi isn’t far from our house. I can feel Yasmine’s eyes on me for holding her hand, but I don’t look at her. I am afraid I might notice something around me I don’t like. My feelings are usually right; I am hoping this feeling is nothing close to a bad premonition this time. Baba opens the window and lights a cigarette. I look at his hand reaching for the window and I don’t recognise the lines on it.

  I start to feel a little better after repeating my prayers. We arrive outside our house and as soon as the car stops I run. My ankle feels better. I speed down the small alley leading to our door on the right and to my surprise the door is open a little. I shout out to Yasmine to ask if someone forgot to lock the door before we left. Isa comes running, swearing he locked the door and checked twice before we left. He pushes the door slowly and walks inside, I follow him and run back out. I see a black angel running towards me, I run to Yasmine and tell her to come in and see. Yasmine follows me as I run. She walks inside slowly and sees Isa picking up our furniture from the floor. Yasmine screams and falls to the floor. I try to pick Yasmine up and Isa comes and helps me. We lie her down on the floor inside because all the furniture is either broken or thrown across the room. Isa looks up and says a prayer, asking God for forgiveness and for God to help us. Baba and the other two boys come in with the bags and drop them in shock. They all have the same reaction; they go around the room and say the same prayer. Isa has brought Yasmine water and is blowing in her face. I walk over to the chairs and start picking them up.

  Tariq sits beside me and asks me if I’m okay. I don’t answer but look down at the floor. He moves me
back slowly and puts his finger on his mouth telling me not to say anything. I stand back where he put me and wait for something to happen. I don’t know if I’m expecting the worst or hoping for the best. Either way, I am frozen in place waiting to be told what to do with my body. As for my mind, it is pounding like a drum with the song in the background muffled by my fear. Why is everything upside down and the door open? What happened? There was a war outside, and now a war started inside our house.

  Tariq tells me to go to the kitchen and get some fruit for Baba because his sugar level went down. I am watching my family fall one by one. I never thought this day would come. I thought that I would be the one who would always need help but now I am on the other side of the table and I don’t know how to deal with things. If mama were here she would know what to do. Mama was our wings; now we are hopeless without wings.

  I walk into the kitchen and to my surprise it looks like it hasn’t been touched. Everything is in place and I open the fridge and take out an apple and cut it in four and put it on a plate. Baba is sitting with his hand on his forehead and Yasmine is lying down with sprinkles of water dripping down her face. I have a painting in my room that resembles this very moment. I hold the plate tighter in my hand and feel sick from this realisation. Tariq calls my name and I run with the plate to Baba and put it on his lap. His face looks as white as a ghost. I have never seen a ghost but I have heard this simile many times so I am going to assume that a ghost is white. I sit on the floor by Yasmine and Baba and think about how we got to this place. Our lives had a perfect routine that I was so comfortable living in, and now, I don’t know who we are any more or what is happening. The war holds so much uncertainty above my head like a grey cloud waiting to pour and thunder down. I don’t want it to thunder on me.

  The doorbell rings and Khalid, who was fixing the furniture, goes to open it. If I don’t think about it, I can erase the memory and it will be like there was just a light earthquake. I have always wished a board and rubber would appear in our minds when we close our eyes so we could rewrite our memories or simply erase them. When I grow up I want to study the brain so I can come up with an invention like this.