“SO AM, OUT OF THE KINDNESS OF HIS HEART, AGREED to one thousand dollars and a gold necklace?” Layla leans against my doorway with her arms folded. “For the both of us? Like a ‘buy one get one free’ kind of deal?”
I shrug. “What can I say? I told him about your swollen feet and how you’re starving. You’re an excellent bargaining chip.”
“So he knows I’m pregnant?” she says, still staring suspiciously.
“Shouldn’t that cost more or something?”
“Yes, he knows,” I reply. “And no he didn’t say anything about a pregnancy costing more. And I’m not going to be dumb about this, Layla.
I’m giving him five hundred dollars tomorrow and the other half plus the gold necklace when we’re at the boat.”
She blows out a puff of air. Her hair slips from its bun, auburn wisps falling to her shoulders. Her freckles are nearly invisible in the dying sunlight of my room. “I don’t know, Salama. I’m worried. I mean, we know the stories about the refugees on boats. We know they get scammed and they dr—drown. You know there are sharks in the Mediterranean, right?
This feels like a trap.”
I chew my tongue. “It’s not.”
“How can you be so sure? You, the most paranoid person I know.”
I sit on my bed, putting on my warmest socks. The cold evening has already seeped through the cracks in our walls and into our bones. “I’ve seen proof of the survivors. He has photos and videos of them in Europe.
It’s not a scam. If everyone were dying then no one would be taking the boats.”
That’s not true and I know it, but I’d rather Layla believe the lie.
“I still don’t like it,” she says stoutly.
“Neither do I, Layla, but we need to leave,” I repeat weakly. Because if
we don’t, then what I did today was for nothing. I shattered my Hippocratic oath. Muddied my moral compass and snapped its arrow. Samar’s and Ahmad’s faces flash in my mind. I can’t stand seeing another broken child.
The scars on my hands begin to tingle and I rub them. This is all just in my mind. I know it. The guilt is manifesting into a phantom pain.
“I want to leave,” I add quietly. Low enough for Layla to pretend she doesn’t hear me. But she does. She takes my hands in hers. Her touch is soft, and the pain vanishes.
“I can’t save them,” I continue to whisper, staring at our joined hands. In my room, I feel safe spilling my thoughts. There’s no one to judge me. Only my sister is here. “I couldn’t save a little boy. I couldn’t…” I shudder in a breath, pushing down a sob. “Everyone is dying. Nothing I do works. My brain hurts. I haven’t slept well in over a year. I feel like I’m screaming into an abyss that just swallows everything up. Soon enough it will swallow me too.”
I look up and Layla lets go of my hands to brush my hair back. She shakes her head, smiling gently. “It won’t swallow you.”
I give her a watery smile. “You have more faith in me than I do. Layla, I miss doing nothing. The days when I would just lie in bed watching movies.
Or when we’d talk on the phone for hours. Remember those?”
She nods. “The dictatorship aged us all even before the revolution started. But now I feel like I’m about ninety years old.”
“Wish I felt ninety. I look about a thousand,” I scoff.
Layla gives me a pointed look. “No you don’t.”
I shrug and fiddle with my sleeves. “So which necklace do you want to give him? I’m thinking the one with the bow in the middle.”
Her nose wrinkles. “I don’t care about the necklace. Choose whichever you want. Nothing is worth more than you and Baby Salama.”
Her tone drips with sadness. I don’t like it. I want to bring back some of the easiness we’re owed; an escape from the ever-creeping melancholy. So I say, “Kenan walked me home today.”
She gasps. “What? And you didn’t lead with that!”
Bingo.
She holds my face in her hands, forcing me to look up.
“Kenan,” she says solemnly, staring me in the eyes, and my face instantly becomes hot.
“Ha!” she exclaims. “You like him!”
I wrench away from her grasp. “Excuse you? I have never in my life— wow, you—like you even know—shut up!”
She falls on my bed, grinning. “Look at your face! It’s a ripe tomato.”
“It’s not,” I retort, running to the mirror all the same. I look petrified but not in an I’m-about-to-die way.
“I’ve never seen you so nervous.” She laughs, letting her hair fall from her scrunchie completely and running a hand through it. “Even at university with that cute guy from dentistry.”
I groan and flop onto the bed beside her. She looks down at me with a twinkle in her eyes.
“No, wait, I remember his name. Sami.” She taps a finger against her chin. “He liked you.” She rests her head against her palm. “And you quite liked him. But not like this, young Salama. No, your heart was waiting for Kenan, wasn’t it?”
I hug my pillow over my head, and she laughs.
“Embrace the feelings,” she sings.
“Even if I had them,” I say, my voice muffled against the pillow, “nothing would happen. He wants to stay here. I want to leave.”
I feel Layla getting up and peek under the pillow at her. She doesn’t look troubled at all. Instead, there’s a knowing look on her face.
“A lot can happen between now and when we leave.” She twirls around the room. “A lot of what ifs and maybes and mights.”
She stops and clutches a hand over her heart. The dusk throws shades of orange and pink on her and she looks ethereal in the soft glow. Like she has one foot in the afterlife and one foot here.
“Feelings give you hope, Salama.” She smiles. “Don’t you think we
could use a bit of that now?”
I nod.
“So.” Her blue eyes are luminous. “Do you like him?”
I play with the hem of my sweater. “The circumstances aren’t exactly
screaming romance, Layla!”
She flicks my nose.
“Ow! What did you do that for?”
“What did I say?” she demands. “I said, feelings give you hope. There’s nothing wrong with finding comfort amid what’s happening, Salama.”
I rub my nose. “Say I did like him. Our choices are limited. Where would we go, Layla? Stroll around the destroyed market? Or maybe go outside Old Homs, dodge bullets to the Orontes River, and have a picnic by its bank? Plus, we don’t have a chaperone! My parents and Hamza aren’t here.”
She bites her lip before laughing. “Chaperone!”
“What?” I say indignantly.
She wipes her eyes, still chuckling. “Nothing. You’re so cute.” She sits beside me, tucking her feet under her, and says, “Tell me more about him.”
I fidget under her gaze. “He’s… honest. With everything. His thoughts, his expressions. He’s kind. It’s a rare kindness, Layla. I’m sure he still dreams. Maybe he’s the only one in this whole city who still dreams at night. And when he looks at me, I feel… I feel like I’m being seen, and there is… there is a tiny bit of hope.”
She grins and links her hand through mine. “That right there,” she whispers. “I want you to hold on to that. 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.”
My bruised heart twinges.
“Salama,” she continues, and her hold tightens. “You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be happy here. Because if you won’t try it in Syria, then you won’t try in Germany. Getting to Europe won’t solve your problems.”
I pause. I’ve never thought of this before.
“Promise me you’ll look for the joy.” She smiles sadly. “The memories are sweeter that way.”
In her words lie the coping mechanism she’s been using ever since Hamza was taken. That she met the love of her life when they were children and had a lifetime with him. That the memories of him are what’s keeping her upright or else she’d have collapsed in on herself from the pain.
“I… I promise,” I say, the words heavy on my tongue.
When the sun sets, I tuck Layla in on her couch, securing the blanket firmly around her so the cold doesn’t bite. She drifts off to sleep after a couple of minutes, smiling at me, and my hands drop to her bulging belly. My niece is on the other side and, if I concentrate hard enough, I can imagine her pressing her tiny palms against the placenta right under mine. Now that Layla is in her third trimester, Baby Salama’s brain and neuron development are in full effect, but no doubt, being as malnourished and underweight as Layla is, her kidneys will be affected. Baby Salama wouldn’t survive a harsh winter in Homs. I curse myself silently for three months of doubting whether or not we should leave. How could I have been
so selfish?
No.
How did we come to this?
Layla snores softly, and I mourn silently. Even though I’m here, she’s alone. It’s as if it were yesterday: Layla and Hamza coming back from their honeymoon, their eyes glowing like the Ramadan lanterns.
Layla rested her head against Hamza’s shoulder where they sat on the balcony in our home. His face went a deep shade of pink but he looked pleased with himself.
I was in the living room watching the intimate secrets traded between them that only my daisies in their pots were able to hear.
Layla caught my eye and waved me over, her auburn hair falling across her shoulders. Hamza immediately brushed it back so he could stare at her.
“You two looked deep in conversation,” I said, smiling and stepping out onto the balcony. The warm morning breeze was a welcome after months of
winter. “Didn’t want to bother you.”
They shook their heads in unison.
“Bother us?” Layla laughed and pulled me to her. “My sister is never a bother.”
“Tell me about the Dead Sea, then,” I said, wedging myself between them. Hamza gave me an exasperated look. He scooted to the end but kept holding Layla’s hand, their fingers intertwining right in front of me.
“Very salty,” Layla declared instantly.
“Itchy. Burned a bit too,” Hamza said, and Layla laughed.
“Yes, someone stayed too long in the water.”
“I was floating! In water! Without any effort! Of course I had to stay.”
“Everyone was staring at us because Hamza was acting as if he’d never seen the sea before,” Layla whispered in my ear. “I had to pretend I didn’t
know him. It was so embarrassing.”
I laughed and Hamza rolled his eyes.
“If you’re going to act like this at my art exhibitions,” Layla said loudly, “you’re not invited.”
Hamza raised her hand to his lips, brushing a kiss over her knuckles, and I stared at him incredulously. I was sitting right there, but he had eyes only for Layla.
“I’ll be much worse, my love,” he said softly. “If you think I’m going to be anything but incredibly proud and very loudly showing you off to
everyone, then think again.”
Layla blushed, but she was beaming.
“Oh, Salama.” She shook her head. “What am I going to do with him.”
I sigh and walk into my room, pushing that starry-eyed girl who didn’t survive from my mind. Mourning her doesn’t help me. It won’t feed me and it won’t get me out of Syria.
Khawf is already leaning against the window in my room, smoking. His head is turned away from me and I ignore him, kneeling in front of the dresser to pull open the last drawer. Tucked underneath the old clothes in the far right corner is Layla’s gold and the rest of the money we have. I take out five hundred dollars and choose one necklace, putting it aside. Hamza gifted it to her the day of their Al-Fatiha. It’s a thick, intricate rope and feels heavy in my hands. A lump forms in my throat, and I tuck the necklace back in before the tears spill.
“You did good today,” Khawf murmurs, and he blows out a cloud of smoke. “It went far better than I thought it would. You have no more reason to stay here and let your blood-soaked hands heal the sick.”
I clutch at my ears, shaking my head, and focus on Layla’s words to me.
Hope. Finding love and happiness beyond the misery.
Khawf rolls his eyes. “If it gets you on that boat, you can believe in unicorns for all I care, but come on, Salama, hope? Let’s be realistic.” He curls his finger, beckoning me toward him, and I oblige. “Look outside.”
The city is painted black under a gray huddled sky. The moon’s light is trapped behind the clotted clouds, just as we’re trapped in Old Homs, unable to pass through. The buildings in front of my window are ghosts, no
flames flickering from any of them. If I close my eyes and let my hearing take over, I can catch the muffled voices of people protesting neighborhoods away. They’ve never stopped, not for a single night, and with the uprising’s anniversary a month away, their spirits are only growing stronger.
“Tonight you might not die from the airplanes,” Khawf says, standing right next to me. “The skies are thick with clouds.”
“Lilacs.” I take a deep breath. “Lilacs. Lilacs. Lilacs.”
“Salama,” he continues, but he isn’t looking at me, rather staring at the same horizon I am. “What happiness can you find in this wasteland? Hm?
There’s nothing for you here. Your family is gone. And Kenan will only bring you heartache if you continue to develop feelings for him. He won’t leave. There’s no happiness to scavenge from the wreckage. But Germany holds possibility and”—he finally looks at me, and his eyes remind me of frozen lakes in winter—“it’s better than staying here. Layla alive is better.
And being away will dull your remorse for what you did to Samar. This place is nothing but reminders of your failures and the inevitability of your death.”
I fiddle with my fingers. “But Layla said—”
“Layla?” he repeats, then flicks his cigarette; and it disintegrates before hitting the window’s glass. “Let me show you Layla.”
He snaps his fingers and my grief-stricken city disappears from in front of the window, replaced by a memory. For a second I’m taken aback, because this isn’t the memory I expected. It isn’t riddled with pain, but one
very near to my heart.
Layla and Hamza’s wedding.
It’s as if I’m watching a movie, but it doesn’t stop me from pressing my hands against the cold glass.
It’s held outside at my grandparents’ farmhouse, between the gardens under the lemon trees. We have the place covered in fairy lights and music is blaring from the speakers. The female guests are scattered all over, talking between themselves or cheering for Layla as she dances in the middle of the dance floor.
Layla’s face bears no agony. She sways in her off-white, princess-cut dress that flutters with every movement she makes. Her laugh, true and full, reaches my ears and fills me with warmth. Life colors her exquisitely. Her
long auburn hair is in soft curls cascading down her back, with the white roses and baby’s breath I picked out for her woven between the tresses.
Mama stands beside her in a sparkling purple abaya, waving her arms joyously, and I push harder against the glass, needing it to disappear.
Needing to run to Mama and throw myself into her arms. Needing to turn back time. Khawf has never shown me Mama like this before. Healthy and
alive.
“Mama,” I choke out.
“This is Layla’s happiness, Salama,” Khawf says beside me.
Suddenly the women all rush to wrap their hijabs around themselves as the prerecorded DJ announces Hamza’s arrival. I stifle a whimper at the sight of my brother, who’s smiling bashfully as he walks up to Layla. His gaze only on her, his eyes shining like the stars in the sky. When he reaches her, they embrace despite her dress’s full skirt, and Layla’s flustered giggles echo against the window’s glass.
Baba, dressed in his finest suit, laces his fingers with Mama’s, and my knees weaken with longing. I want to hold them all so badly, I cry out.
My eyes wander all over, drinking in this memory like a parched man in a desert. Mama’s graceful way of twirling her hands when she speaks, Baba’s gray-peppered hair, which he keeps pushing back, Hamza rocking back and forth with Layla clutching his arm to keep him steady. My eyes finally fall on a woman who’s perfectly manicured from head to toe. A bit of her dark brown hair peeks out from the top of her hijab against her forehead. Her face is beautiful, with soft wrinkles around her eyes. She’s wearing a forest-green abaya that matches her eyes. Hazel green. I gasp. I know those eyes. I have seen those eyes before. On a tall boy with messy chestnut-brown hair.
Is this how it all started? At a wedding? How very Syrian. I nearly smile at the thought.
“Salama,” Khawf says, trying to draw my gaze to him, but I refuse to let go of this beautiful illusion and be faced with his unforgiving stare.
“Salama, you can’t live in the past. I’m reminding you what true happiness was. This doesn’t exist anymore. This isn’t something you’ll find here.”
“No,” I growl, holding on to what Layla told me. Life here is more than the horror. “No.”
He sighs and snaps his fingers again. The wedding slowly dissipates,
molecule by molecule, shifting into a terrible memory. One I never want to revisit for as long as I live.
My heart feels like it’s been wrenched from my thoracic cavity and I moan in pain.
Layla, sprawled against the hallway of our home in July. Her mustard- yellow dress bleached of its vibrant color and crumpled uncomfortably around her body. Her ocean-blue eyes are vacant. Tears streak two lines down her cheeks and her hands are trembling, but she doesn’t do anything
about it.
This was the day Hamza was taken.
She sat there for three days, not eating, barely breathing, and never responding to me when I tried to talk to her. Her hair clung weakly to the sides of her cheeks, thin and brittle like straw. She sat there and cried silently until her eyes were swollen and red, and by the end of the third day, suffering from mild dehydration and shock, she turned to the side and vomited. Later we realized it could have also been due to morning sickness.
And in front of me in the dimly lit hallway sits that Layla, a hollowed shell of a girl. A broken doll. Nearer to death than life. The familiar sickening feeling of helplessness takes hold and I scratch the window’s glass with frustration.
“That”—Khawf taps a long finger against the glass—“is what you have in Homs. It was a miracle that Layla pulled out of her depression.”
I bite my fingernail.
He doesn’t wait for my reply. “I think Layla realized you’re her last family, aside from the baby. She decided to pick herself up and be strong for her family. Just until you’re all safe. She knew succumbing to the pain would hurt you, so she bottled it up.”
“She’s fine now,” I say through gritted teeth.
Khawf rolls his eyes. “The Layla you know now isn’t fine, Salama.
She’s shoving down all her suffering. Layla will wither away until she’s in Europe. Whether the both of you are happy there or not doesn’t matter.
You’ll be alive and you’ll have fulfilled your promise to Hamza.”
His words crawl over my skin, dissolving through the pores, and I face him, slowly comprehending his existence. I think I’ve always known he’s here to ensure my survival, but now I can see it. He isn’t promising me happiness or closure. Germany is not the answer to a life of guaranteed joy.
It’s not home. But it’s safety. And that’s what Layla and I need now.
He snaps his fingers one last time. Old Homs gazes back at me with her haunting eyes. The air is heavy with dead souls and the weight of my sin.
“Leaving means you leave behind what you did here,” Khawf whispers.
My heart is in my throat. “For the rest of your life, you’ll never achieve peace of mind with what you did to Samar. It’ll eat you from the inside like a cancer. It’s already started. At least in Germany, you’ll be miles away from the reminders. At this point, Salama, all you can hope for is survival.
Not happiness.”
