THE NEXT MORNING, I KISS LAYLA ON THE CHEEK and head to work. We never know if we’ll see each other again. Every moment is a goodbye.
“Talk to Am.” Her smile is warm, and I remember Hamza.
I nod, unable to say anything, and slip out the door, locking it behind me.
The hospital is a fifteen-minute walk from Layla’s house. It was a perk Hamza was looking forward to, seeing as he wouldn’t need to drive: a young doctor training at his neighborhood’s hospital. From the moment he was able to read, at three years old, Mama and Baba recognized that their son was a genius. He enrolled in school early, breezed through middle school and high school, and had his pick of universities. He chose the one in Homs to be close to our family. But I knew it was really so he’d be close to Layla and begin his life with her.
Now I’ve taken the job that was supposed to be his. One that’s way out of my field. Pharmacists prescribe medications—they don’t perform surgeries. I was supposed to graduate and be that. Or a researcher. I’m not a surgeon. I wasn’t made to cut into bodies, stitch wounds, and amputate limbs, but I made myself become that person.
The Homs surrounding me when I step out feels like something from the history books. The carnage in front of me has been seen in so many cities throughout the years. The same story but a different location. I’m sure the martyrs’ ghosts roam the abandoned homes and streets, their fingers running across the flags of the revolution painted on the walls. The living sit outside on plastic chairs, wrapped in coats and scarves. Today there are children playing with whatever they’ve been able to pull from the wreckage. An old woman yells at them to be careful of the carpets made from glass shards. When she sees my lab coat, she grins, a few teeth
missing.
“Allah ma’ek!” May God be with you.
I smile shakily and nod.
The hospital isn’t immune to the dictatorship’s disease, and the outside walls, discolored in washed-out yellow and red, show it. The dirt underneath my old sneakers is marred with blood of the wounded carried in day after day.
The doors are nearly always open, and today is no different. It’s bustling as usual, the groans and cries of the wounded echoing over the walls.
Surgery equipment and medications are at an all-time low, and I can see the effect of it on the sunken faces lying on the beds all around me. Lately I’ve begun using saline and telling the patients it’s an anesthetic, hoping they believe it enough that it’ll work as a placebo. I remember the articles I read about placebos during my first year at university that mentioned their success. Back when I would be tucked in the corner of the steps outside the lecture building with my thermos full of zhoorat tea, going over the notes I’d made in class. I would lose a few hours immersed in my studying until Layla would appear at dusk and flick my nose to get my attention.
Despite all our lacking resources, our hospital fares far better under the Free Syrian Army’s jurisdiction than ones in the regions controlled by the military.
We’ve heard stories of those captured by the military. The patients in the hospitals are dying not from the injuries they sustained during the protests but from what is inflicted on them inside the hospital. While we suffer from the siege, injured demonstrators there are blindfolded and tortured, their ankles chained to the beds. Doctors and nurses sometimes join in.
Here in our hospital, the beds are stacked one beside the other, with families surrounding the patients, so I have to squeeze between them to ask the patient how they’re feeling. Dr. Ziad hurries toward me, carefully stepping through the countless bodies of patients draped across the floor; those are all alone in this world with no families. Not even a bed. His salt- and-pepper hair is disheveled, the wrinkles around his brown eyes more pronounced. He took the job as head surgeon after the last one died in a raid. Before that he was an endocrinology doctor with hours he set himself, slowly easing into retirement. When the unrest started, he immediately sent his entire family to Lebanon, and the hospital became his home. Just as I
was forced to become a surgeon, so was he.
“Incoming. Reports of a bomb hitting Al-Ghouta. Twenty casualties.
The seventeen injured are being brought here,” he says. As head surgeon, he’s connected to the Free Syrian Army, which supplies him with any information they get that could help us save more lives.
My heart expands for one second with relief. That’s on the opposite side of my neighborhood. A half-hour car ride. Layla is safe. And then it shrivels up. Bombs mean anything could come through these doors.
Intestines out and looped inside themselves, burns, severed limbs… I wait by the entrance with Dr. Ziad, who’s whispering verses of the Quran that talk about serenity and God’s mercy. It calms the cold sweat trickling down my neck. Any minute now, the doors will slam open.
Any minute.
Khawf appears beside the windows in front of me. His suit gleams despite the hospital’s broken light, and his hair is swept back, not one strand out of place. He’s grinning at me. Khawf loves the hospital. He knows that my fear of Layla’s becoming the next mangled body I bury will wither my resolve to stay. That eventually I’ll want to leave Syria.
We hear the screams before the doors open, giving us a split second to ready ourselves. But no matter how many times I see it, no amount of warning can prepare me for the sight of a human struggling for breath. This is not normal, and it never will be.
“Salama, get to the children first,” Dr. Ziad says sharply, already running toward the patients. “Nour, you make sure none of them bleed out.
Mahmoud, don’t let them run out of bandages. Use the bedsheets if you must. Go!”
Five victims are transported on stretchers while the rest are carried by volunteers from the scene. There’s a huge crowd gathering around them, everyone screaming and shouting. Dr. Ziad continues yelling orders to the rest of the staff, and once again I’m grateful for his calm in the face of these atrocities. He’s the one who grounds us. The reason we’re able to save lives.
Khawf stands tall, watching the chaos unfold with a satisfied smile, and begins to hum a tune, one that ricochets over the din: “How Sweet Is Freedom,” the protestors’ anthem. But I don’t have time to tell him off.
Death doesn’t wait for anyone.
For me, bandaging patients, trying to heal them, comes with more challenges than just keeping them alive. Sometimes they see me and demand an older, more experienced doctor. At first I used to flinch, try to stop my trembling, and stutter an explanation of how all the doctors are busy. That I’m just as capable. But now, if anybody tries to cost me precious seconds, I just tell them This or death. That helps them reach their decision pretty quickly.
Working here has hardened and softened my heart in ways I never guessed it would.
As I’m bandaging my fifth patient, I spot someone looking frantic, carrying a little girl in his arms. He doesn’t look much older than I am. Late teens. The girl’s head has lolled to the side, and blood drips from her shirt onto the floor. My eyes follow the boy, watching the hospital’s flickering light bounce off his messy, tawny curls. He looks familiar. But before I can try and place him, Dr. Ziad calls me to help him with another patient. This survivor’s ulna is fractured, tearing through his arm. The sight of bone jutting from skin makes the acid in my stomach rise to my throat, burning. I swallow it down, feeling its descent as it melts my gastric mucosa instead.
And I set to work on returning the bone to where it belongs.
While I rest after three back-to-back surgeries, I spot Am passing. I have to talk to him. Today. And I feel Khawf’s gaze drill into the back of my
head, his threat echoing in my brain.
I will tear your world apart.
He’s adamant about my leaving Syria and would do anything to make that happen. In all the months I’ve known him, I’ve never understood his desperation. But today, a whisper echoes in my brain. A result of my conversation with Layla.
What’s the harm in asking? You’re only getting information. Just to know how much it costs. Do it for her.
“Am,” I blurt out, and he stops, turning toward me.
“Yes?” he says, surprised. He’s younger than he looks, but with everything going on, it’s no surprise that a man in his late thirties would begin to gray.
“I—uh… I was wondering about—” I stutter and chastise myself. I should have thought of what to say.
“You want a boat, Salama?” he says, cutting to the chase, and my face
becomes hot.
I clutch at my ruined lab coat, wrinkling the rough fabric. He thinks I’m a coward. Of all the people to ask him for a way out, it’s me. The last and only pharmacist in three neighborhoods.
“Do you?” he repeats, raising his eyebrows.
Hamza’s anxious expression flashes in my mind. “Yes.”
He turns to the side, checking if anyone is within earshot before saying, “All right. Meet me in the main hallway in ten minutes.”
I can spare a few minutes before Dr. Ziad or Nour come looking for me.
Dr. Ziad always insists I take a break. But still my palms break out in a sweat. A whole lot can happen in ten minutes. A sudden respiratory failure, cardiac arrest, another patient vomiting blood and bile. Anything. But I promised Hamza. Layla is my sister, my only family. She’s pregnant with my brother’s child. One he didn’t know of and will never meet. And I need to at least know if we can afford it. I don’t want to test Khawf’s limits either. If he makes good on his threat, today could be my last day working at the hospital.
“Daylilies,” I whisper as I walk to the main hall, training my eyes on the muddied floors. “Relax muscle spasms and cramps. Can cure arsenic poison. Daylilies. Daylilies…”
The main hall is filled with patients, and I understand why Am chose this place. It’s free publicity to anyone within earshot. They’d know who Am is, what he does, and what he’s promising them: a chance to live.
Am comes around to the hospital every day to look for people who might take him up on his offer. Payment in the form of a lifetime’s savings to sail away on a boat to another continent that many of us have only read about in books. Everyone at the hospital knows Am, even Dr. Ziad, who strongly believes more people should stay in Syria. Though he’d never stop anyone who chose to leave, seeing as he sent his own family away. As long as Am doesn’t get in the way of saving patients’ lives, he’s free to spread his agenda. And Am does just that. He stays away from all the doctors, focusing on the patients. He makes sure everyone knows about the successful passages by showing people pictures of those who finally reached European shores. No one would be willing to risk drowning without the assurance that this has worked. At some point. But then, perhaps, even without evidence a sliver of a chance at survival is better than
living at the mercy of genocide.
No one takes to a rickety boat on the sea if there is another choice.
Among the tired faces Khawf’s sticks out, with his gleaming eyes and a knowing smirk.
Maybe the reason he’s willing to break me in order to get me on a boat can be explained in a scientific manner: He’s a defense mechanism my brain has provided, trying to ensure my survival by any means necessary.
But still my stomach gnaws with apprehension at what horrors await me at his hands.
Within ten minutes, Am finds me in the main hallway. He wades his way through the sea of bodies until he reaches me by a half-broken window that’s covered with a flimsy sheet.
My nervous system is going haywire, zapping electric impulses all through my body that I can’t seem to calm down, no matter what methods I use. My paranoia over Dr. Ziad making an unexpected appearance is high, and I dig my hands into my pockets to hide their trembling. I don’t think I’d be able to go on with this conversation if he were to see me. I’m turning my back on my people.
“So, how many are you?” Am asks, and I snap back toward him.
“Two,” I say. My voice sounds distant.
He studies me for a second. “That’s your whole family?”
Chips crack from my heart, falling through my rib cage. “Yes.”
He nods, but his expression is impassive. It’s not out of the ordinary now to be a family of one.
“I’ll drive you to Tartus,” he says as if he’s discussing the weather. “The boat usually sails from there. About a day and a half through the Mediterranean Sea and you reach Italy. A bus will be waiting for you there to take you to Germany. The most important thing is to get to Italy.”
My heart flutters with every word he says. And despite his dry tone, I can see the journey unfold in front of me. The boat rocking gently over the blue sea, the water lapping against shores that promise safety. Layla, turning to me, an honest laugh escaping her lips that: We’re safe. Yearning rips through my stomach.
A baby cries, shattering my daydream, and the patients’ moans of pain are suddenly deafening against my ears. No. No. How can I think of my safety when I vowed to heal the sick?
But Layla’s pregnant, and I promised Hamza. Layla would never leave without me, and I can’t have her stranded alone in Europe when she barely speaks English, let alone German or Italian. Being a pregnant girl and all alone would make her easy prey. Monsters aren’t confined to Syria.
Indecision is a poison germinating in my blood vessels.
I clear my throat. “How much does it cost?”
He thinks this over. “Four thousand dollars. And there’s a line.”
I blink. “What?”
“I deal in dollars. Liras are weak. Four thousand dollars. Two thousand each.”
Blood drains from my face and my mouth is dry. That’s more than we have. Baba was able to withdraw six thousand dollars in the beginning, but most of the money has gone as the price of food has increased. We barely have three thousand left.
He notes the change in my expression and snorts. “Did you think getting to Europe would be cheap? Did you think it would be easy? We’re talking about smuggling two entire people to a different continent. Not to mention bribing all the soldiers on our way there.”
I’ve lost feeling in my legs. “You… you don’t understand. The other person, she’s my sister-in-law. She’s seven months pregnant. If she gives… The money will be needed for her to survive. I don’t have enough. Please.”
He considers me for a minute. “Four thousand dollars and I’ll let you jump the waiting line. That’s as far as my courtesy will extend. Don’t take too long to think about it. The boat doesn’t wait for anyone.”
And with that, he walks away, leaving me rooted to the ground while Khawf stares after him with narrowed eyes. I wonder what my brain will do with this obstacle.
