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For every life I can’t save during my shift, one more drop of blood becomes a part of me. No matter how many times I wash my hands, our martyrs’ blood seeps beneath my skin, into my cells. By now it’s probably encoded in my DNA.
It didn’t matter that I was eighteen years old. It didn’t matter that my medical experience was confined to the words in my textbooks. All of that was remedied as the first body was laid out before me to be stitched up. Death is an excellent teacher.
Her voice, unlike mine, is strong with the promise of life. It’s a warm blanket cocooning me in sweet memories.
This is the land of your father, and his father before him. Your history is embedded in this soil. No country in the world will love you as yours does.”
“Don’t focus on the darkness and sadness,” she says, and I glance up at her. She smiles warmly. “If you do, you won’t see the light even if it’s staring you in the face.”
We held our heads high and planted lemon trees in acts of defiance, praying that when they came for us, it’d be a bullet to the head. Because that was far more merciful than what awaited in the bowels of their prison system.
huhuuw
The Arab proverb has never been truer: The worst of outcomes is what is most hilarious.
When I leave, it won’t be easy. It’s going to shred my heart to ribbons and all the pieces will be scattered along Syria’s shore, with the cries of my people haunting me till the day I die.
“Feelings give you hope, Salama.”
No matter what happens, you remember that this world is more than the agony it contains. We can have happiness, Salama. Maybe it doesn’t come in a cookie-cutter format, but we will take the fragments and we will rebuild it.”
“You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be happy here.
I ball my hands into fists. I’ve already died. I died the day Baba and Hamza were taken. I died the day Mama was murdered. I die every single day that I can’t save a patient, and I died yesterday when I held a little girl’s life hostage. Maybe in Germany some piece of me can be revived.
“It might be difficult at first. The world might be too loud or too silent. It might be neon bright or pitch black, but slowly, it’ll put itself back together. It will resemble something normal. Then you’ll see the colors, Salama.”
“The eldest child, all the responsibility on your shoulders. And instead of taking the safe route of studying medicine, which you could have, you followed your heart and studied what you love. Even after everything you’ve been through, there’s light in your eyes. You still laugh. So I can only imagine how you were before. I’d have felt self-conscious about how free-spirited you are. How you see the world in all its colors and shades of beauty. I’d have worried I couldn’t keep up.”
“That’s okay too, Salama. I know what you mean. Anything is better than nothing. I told you to find bits of happiness in Homs. Kenan is a happy moment.”
The sky is so beautiful after rainfall.”
“There’s still beauty, Salama. Still life and strength in Homs.”
The sunset is gorgeous, but it pales in comparison to him. He’s drenched in the dying day’s glow, a kaleidoscope of shades dancing on his face. Pink, orange, yellow, purple, red. Finally settling into an azure blue. It reminds me of Layla’s painting. A color so stark it would stain my fingers were I to touch it.
Omg this is so beautiful
He shrugs off his jacket and drapes it across my shoulders before sitting beside me. I close my eyes, breathing in the lemon scent of it, praying it’s enough to put the darkness back in its place. Minutes or hours pass, I don’t know, but he stays beside me on the broken steps, waiting.
“Salama!” he shouts again, hurrying down to me. “Are you all right? Oh my God, please tell me you are.” He crouches beside me, removing the cloth from his mouth, and I fill my eyes with him. His bright green eyes, his beautiful, honest face. “I’m fine,” I whisper. “Are you? Lama? Yusuf?” He nods quickly, his hands hovering beside my head, steeling himself before he takes them back. Still, I can feel their warmth, the blood gushing through his veins. “The attack wasn’t… it wasn’t near where we are, but I had to come here to make sure you’re alive,” he says, and as if the energy has suddenly
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Why is no one helping us? Why are we left to die? How can the world be so cruel?
And I realize the anger was always there, growing slowly and surely. It began long ago when I was born under the thumb of a dictatorship that kept on applying pressure until my bones fractured.
And now, it’s a roaring fire crackling along my nervous system.
“Insh’Allah, we will come back home. We will plant new lemon trees. We’ll rebuild our cities, and we will be free.”
“How do your eyes always shine so brightly?”
“When I first met you, I thought it was a trick of the light. But that isn’t it. This stockroom has horrible lighting, and they still look like melted honey.”
I see children on the cusp of their teen years, fear stripped from their expressions. There is no room for that here.
Fear dies here.
It’s unreal to think this has been going on for three hundred and sixty-five days.
Time moves differently here. Sorrow does that. Each day is a year, and as each one passes we hope tomorrow will be better.
“Every lemon will bring forth a child and the lemons will never die out.”
“I don’t know. I want it to be worth it. I want to know the grass growing over the martyrs’ graves will give life to a generation who can be whoever they want to be. But we don’t know when that will happen. It could be tomorrow or decades from now.”
I feel like I did something. That these people aren’t numbers. They have lives and loved ones, and maybe I helped them in the right direction.
If there’s one thing people are scared of, it’s being forgotten. It’s an irrational fear, don’t you think?”
“I want to believe it’s worth it,” I say. “The revolution, I mean. But I’m scared.”
“I think it will be.” Kenan smiles softly. “Empires have collapsed throughout history. They rise, they build, and they fall. Nothing lasts forever. Not even our pain.”
His words illustrate a universe of what ifs, mights, and maybes that feel possible. I want this universe so badly I feel its fire burning through me.
sedihh:((
All I know is that I love him and that even in the darkness surrounding us, he’s been my joy. In the midst of all the death, he made me want to live.
He bites back a laugh, but there are stars caught in his irises, and I can’t believe the absolute peace I’m experiencing here, at the hospital of all places.
I feel like I’m in a dream. Buds of hope begin to bloom slowly in my heart, petals opening to meet the sun.
When I look into my heart, I expect to find it in shambles courtesy of Khawf’s words and the military’s actions, but I don’t. Perhaps that was the case at the beginning, but now there’s a candle lit in the darkness, illuminating my path. It promises a life.
“I wanted so many things,” he says and rests his forehead on my shoulder. Melancholy drips from his tone. “But meeting you, loving you… you made me realize how life can be salvaged. That we deserve to have happiness in this long night.”
“Bury me before I bury you,”
Fear is a cruel thing. The way it distorts thoughts, transforming them from molehills into mountains.
“We’re only human. No one can expect you to anticipate everything.”
“Salama, love of my life. My sky, my sun, my moon, and my stars, would you grant this mortal wish of mine?”
“You’re a part of me just as you’re a part of everyone here.”
“And all those claimed by the sea. All those who have become bone and dust.”
