MY HANDS FLY TO MY MOUTH IN HORROR. MY MIND races through a list of medications, a list of anything to combat sarin, but I come up short. No one is ever prepared for a chemical attack.
“How—how the hell do I treat this?” I ask with nails in my throat.
“Atropine,” he yells so the rest of the staff can hear, as they move toward the victims. “Diazepam for convulsions.”
He looks back and sees me rooted to the spot.
“Salama!” he says sharply. “We need to act now! They’ll die within minutes, do you understand? An incredibly small amount of sarin is enough to kill a grown man. These are kids. Go!”
My mind activates and all fear shuts down, except that which will motivate my feet to run and my hands to work. Nour drops a handful of atropine syringes into my arms, and I make a break for it. We don’t have anything to protect ourselves against the gaseous nerve agents in the patients, so gloves will have to do.
I assess who needs to be taken care of first. The more they inhaled, the less time they have. I spring to a boy lying on the ground, shaking violently, and push his wailing mother to the side. I don’t have time to explain anything as I jam the needle in his vein, praying all the while. I don’t even check to see if he responds. Time is a luxury we can’t afford now. As soon as I get up for another patient, Nour takes my place and administers CPR.
Another girl with tears streaming down her face and foam at her mouth stares at me without looking, and I fear I’ve lost her. Intravenous injections work fast, I keep chanting in my brain. Her pulse is weak, and her eyes are slits. My breath hitches in my throat. I try not to look into her eyes as I grab her elbow and jab the syringe’s bevel in her median cubital vein. I move on to the next victim. Little Ahmad’s last words ring in my ears the whole
time, and I feel his ghost watching me move too slowly to save anyone. His eyes burn like hot coins at the back of my head, impatient with my sluggish hands that don’t inject the antidote fast enough.
I’ll tell God everything.
I lose count of how many I can’t save. Their eyes black, like a starless night, a frozen expression of fear and confusion forever inscribed on their faces. I realize I’m trembling when my hands helplessly clutch at a young woman’s frail shoulders, trying to shake the life back into her.
“No,” I say through gritted teeth. “Please, don’t be dead!”
Her breath doesn’t fog her breathing mask, and she stares lifelessly at me. The smell of bleach burns my nostrils.
Chlorine.
They didn’t just use sarin.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
The next bodies my hands touch are dead. No one’s alive. I’m too late.
They were right there, and I couldn’t get to them in time. I rise slowly to shaking legs and look at the catastrophe all around.
Bodies upon bodies surround me, and I stand in the center, watching them judge me. My hands are raw and red from the gas coating the victims.
The same story is repeated with different characters, but the ending is always the same. And yet, despite knowing it, the pain is great. Greater than I can handle.
Everything unrolls in front of me in slow motion.
I watch young children grabbing the sides of their protectors, howling with anguish. I see entire families lying beside one another, holding hands, hoping when they ascend to Heaven they will still be entwined. I walk slowly, training my eyes on the exit door. I need air. I need to breathe something that isn’t chlorine.
“Salama!” Nour grabs my arm before I open the front door. “What are you doing?”
“Outside,” I rasp. The sarin from treating the patients has finally absorbed into my skin and is beginning to close my throat. God, it burns.
“Not without this you’re not.” She shoves a surgical mask in my hands.
“It won’t do much, but it’ll help.”
It won’t do anything. But how would we know? We weren’t ready for a chemical attack. Are normal doctors even prepared for this?
I collapse on the hospital’s steps, shivering from head to toe. Hours have already passed without me noticing and now it’s late afternoon. Death steals the seconds away from us. Oxygen slowly creeps back into my lungs, and I finally begin to remember my family.
“Layla!” I spring up, looking in the direction of our home. She’s safe. I know she is. Because none of the victims were from our neighborhood, which is a fifteen-minute walk from the hospital. The sarin didn’t reach the hospital, which means it didn’t reach my home either.
My next thought latches on to Kenan and his siblings. My stomach twists on itself with terror. I have no idea if he came in today. Oh God, please don’t let his neighborhood be affected.
I take off the mask, fiddle with it, and pace around, trying to summon rational thoughts.
If they were affected, they would have been brought here. But… what if they died as soon as they inhaled the gas? Oh God. Oh God!
I breathe in deeply and decide I should leave right now, check on Layla, and then immediately head to Kenan’s house to make sure everything’s fine.
“Salama!” a voice shouts behind me, and I whirl around to see Kenan standing in front of the hospital doors, holding a makeshift cloth to his face.
Alive. He lets out a deep breath I feel inside my soul.
My knees go weak with relief and I collapse on the steps.
“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 been siphoned out of him, he all but collapses beside me. He smells of smoke and remnants of the gas and lemons. My legs shake with weariness, my arms ache, and all I want is to lie here on these chipped steps and sleep forever.
The faint voices of the injured seep through the cracks in the hospital walls and I close my eyes, unable to hold their pain in my heart without folding into myself and crying myself to death. Why? Why is no one helping us? Why are we left to die? How can the world be so cruel?
I hug my knees, propping my head between my arms. “I’m exhausted,” I
whisper.
“Me too,” Kenan replies.
I shake my head. “No. I’m exhausted from all of this. I’m exhausted we’re suffocating and no one gives the slightest bit of a damn. I’m exhausted we’re not even an afterthought. I’m exhausted we can’t even have basic human rights. I’m exhausted, Kenan.”
I feel his eyes on me, but when I lift my head, I stare at the sky’s horizon peeking through the demolished buildings instead. At the blue and gray.
“I’m also angry,” I continue.
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. It kindled into a small flame when Mama and I held hands and prayed as the protestors’ throaty voices ricocheted off our kitchen walls. It fused with my bones, its flames licking through my myocardium, leaving decayed cells in its wake, when Baba and Hamza were taken. It built and built and built with each body laid in front of me. And now, it’s a roaring fire crackling along my nervous system.
“Tomorrow’s the revolution’s anniversary,” I say, and Kenan shifts. “I want to go.”
Those four words fall from my lips, and I wait for the familiar feeling of terror to rip through me, souring my wish. But it doesn’t happen. No.
Enough is enough.
Khawf appears in the corner of my eyes, but I refuse to look in his direction, knowing I won’t find support there. This is my choice, not one governed by him. Instead, I glance at Kenan, whose eyes are heavy with emotion.
“Are you sure?” he asks, and I almost smile.
I nod. This decision clears my mind. I want my voice to join my people’s. I want to sing my sorrows away. I want to mourn our martyrs.
This may be the last time I’ll ever feel as if I’m a part of Syria before the boat whisks me away. I don’t want this fear anymore.
Kenan stands, looking away, and then he says in a rather rough tone, “You called it a revolution.”
I glance at my sneakers. “Well… that’s what it is.”
He fidgets with his jacket’s sleeve before turning to me. “Let me take
you home.”
I look up. “Your siblings?”
“Trust me. I wouldn’t be offering if I wasn’t sure they’re all right,” he says. “Insh’Allah.”
“Let me get my bag, then.” I pick myself up and move toward the doors, but my hand grips the handle tightly, my muscles freezing me. The anger is there, but it hasn’t erased the weight the dead leave on my shoulders.
“I’ll get it. It’s in the stockroom, right?” Kenan says softly. I nod. When he opens the door to slip inside, the coughs and soft cries of the injured make my throat constrict before the door falls shut, muting them.
Our walk back is filled with silence, and I allow myself to stare at him, taking notice of the way his shoulders are slumped. I sense a storm raging in his mind as well. What he’s seen today is quickly splintering his resolve to leave. But he must know that in this equation, there’s no right answer.
Leaving is the lesser of two evils. The outside world isn’t safe for his siblings to venture to on their own, and Kenan would be destroyed if anything happened to them. But I need to know—need to hear the words once more.
When we reach my front door, he leans his head against the bullet- riddled wall.
“You’re still coming with us, right?” I whisper, and he looks at me.
“Yes,” he says quietly.
He pushes himself off, runs a hand through his hair. There’s a glassy look in his eyes, and he kicks a stray pebble. It bounces away, clattering pathetically against some debris.
“I just—” he begins, blowing out forcefully. “Salama, I feel so helpless.
I’m leaving them behind. And after what happened today?” Pain sears in his eyes. “Syria needs me, and I’m abandoning her.”
I shake my head. “No you’re not. What our people are doing here—the protests? That’s beautiful and much needed, but whose minds are you changing here? You can do so much from the outside. You can physically reach the people leaving the comments on your videos. With your talent for
weaving stories, we need your voice to amplify those here. That’s how you fight.”
He stares at me, a faint pink blush dusting his cheeks.
“And we will come back,” I say, my voice wavering. “Insh’Allah, we will come back home. We will plant new lemon trees. We’ll rebuild our cities, and we will be free.”
I turn to look at the dying sunset and then up at the twilight blue eating away the light. Night approaches fast, but I know it’s not eternal. This blanket of darkness isn’t our forever. Their evil isn’t forever. Not as long as we have our faith and Syria’s history running in our veins.
“Salama,” Kenan whispers.
The way he’s looking at me makes the air vanish from my alveoli. It’s a look I’ve only read about in books and seen in movies. Never one I thought I’d experience in real life, and certainly not in these circumstances.
He comes closer, his fingers touching the edge of my lab coat, and everything stills. The dead leaves dancing beside our feet, the cold breeze, the chirping birds. Everything. Even my mind.
My heart migrates from its position in my chest cavity all the way up to my esophagus, and I stare at his long fingers grasping the top of my pocket.
“You’re right. We will come back,” he whispers, and I dare to glance up.
I’m intoxicated by the way he’s staring at me. So close, so kind, so beautiful.
A newfound need rises in me to touch his cheeks, to bring him closer and feel his stubble under my hands. To just forget all this pain.
His emerald eyes drop to my lips for a few seconds, and then he looks away.
“Salam,” he whispers, and then he’s gone.
Life comes back to the world, the leaves rustle. And I’m left yearning for more.
“So you’re going?” Layla asks quietly, and I lean my head against her shoulder, my arm linked through hers. We haven’t moved from this spot on
the couch since I came home, our limbs still slightly shaky from today’s
terror.
“You think I shouldn’t?”
She shakes her head. “Not at all. This is your path in life, Salama.
Besides, you’re Hamza’s sister, I’m not surprised. But what made you decide to go?”
I squeeze her arm, biting my lip. “I’ve been scared for so long. Of course I hate the regime, but a part of me—a cowardly part—thought that maybe if I didn’t go to the protests and, God forbid, the military won before we got on the boat, I wouldn’t be tortured. That they’d let Baba and Hamza out. But now… Baba is dead and Hamza…” I stop. “A part of me wanted things to go back to how they were. Back to living in fear. And I hate those thoughts.” I lift my head up to see the sympathy in Layla’s eyes. “I feel like a hypocrite.”
“Salama, it’s human to feel scared. And you’re not a hypocrite.”
“I hope so,” I whisper. “I would split a vein for Syria. If my blood could save her. If my death would bring our people their justice, I wouldn’t…
there’s no question about it.”
“I know.”
I close my eyes. “This is the closest I’ll feel to being—it’s my way of asking for forgiveness for leaving.”
Layla rests her cheek over my head. “I know.”
After a few moments of silence, I say, “I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. But if I don’t… if… please find Am. Get on that boat.
Live for me and Hamza. Raise Baby Salama.” I lean back and grab both her hands fiercely. “Promise me.”
She takes a deep breath, steeling herself. “Only if you promise you’ll do everything not to die. You will come back to me, insh’Allah.” Her voice turns soft—too soft. “Salama, please. Don’t be a martyr. Fight to stay alive.”
Her words fall like little stones at the bottom of a lake, and the back of my eyes burn. “I promise.”
Her hands loosen in my grip. “Then I promise too.”
Khawf waits for me by the window when I close my bedroom door.
“This is a mistake,” he says. He looks exasperated with me. “You’re so close to leaving. Why would you put yourself at risk?”
I sigh and sit on my bed. “I know you want me to stay out of trouble.
But nowhere is safe in Syria. I could be bombed right now.”
He stands in front of me, arms folded. “You’re a fool if you think they won’t be focusing everything they have on the protests tomorrow.”
I nod. “You’re right. And you won’t give me peace the whole time. So let’s make a deal.”
He straightens his back. He doesn’t exude a terrifying aura, only interest.
I stick my chin out. “Show me the worst-case scenario.”
He laughs. “Come again?”
“Show me the worst possible outcome. You’ve been showing me the past. Show me the future. Show me Layla’s pain. If I’m able to handle it, you’ll leave me alone the whole night. You won’t threaten me.”
He tilts his head to the side, his eyes gleaming. “Show you your arrest.
Kenan tortured. His siblings murdered. Everything to deter you from going tomorrow?”
Cold sweat breaks out on my forehead. “Yes.”
He studies me for a minute, then raises his fingers. “Don’t blame me if it leaves you destroyed. They might be hallucinations now, Salama.” He bends down, bringing his face closer to me. “But they are very real possibilities.”
My hands tremble and I fold them into fists. “Do it,” I say, my voice
wavering.
He smirks and snaps his fingers.
