Ammar Habib - The Heart of Aleppo - A Story of the Syrian Civil War

The army is here.

My eyes shoot open and look at Fatima. She’s in the same position as me. So are the two brothers. Salman is coming out from under the table, and I hastily follow him. The propellers are so loud now. They must be drawing nearer to us.

“Those are military helicopters!” Excitement fills my voice. “We—we need to flag them—”

Salman stares me dead in the face. I’ve never seen that look in his eyes before. “No.”

What? Did he really just say that? “They can help us.”

“I said ‘no’ , Zaid.”

He must be outside his mind. I take a rushed step past him. “I’ll do it then if—”

I’m roughly slammed and pinned against the wall. My back has a sharp jolt of pain shoot through it. The wind is knocked out of me. Salman’s forearm is pushing up against my chest, keeping me there. His gaze looks… deadly. “We’re not flagging anybody down, Zaid. We’re staying here.”

I glance over at Fatima. Then Faisal and Amaan. None of them make a move to get him off of me. Have they all gone crazy? I look back at Salman. I try to move, but he’s too strong. The helicopters are getting fainter now. They’ve passed us by. We’ve missed our chance.

Staring at Salman, the same wretched feeling I felt when watching my parents disappear in the distance washes back over me. There’s nothing I can do. My heart sinks as something heavy comes onto it. What has Salman done? Within a few moments, the propellers have fallen silent. They’re gone now.

He finally lets me go. Without a word, he turns around and leaves.

What has Salman done?

The last blast obliterated the building right across the street from us. When I woke up this morning, I saw it standing tall. Now, it’s as if it never existed. It looks like just another pile of meaningless rubble.

Any peace that came over the city at night has vanished. The shells descend from the heavens. They always start off faint, barely audible, but they quickly grow louder until it seems that they’ll fall right on top of us. It’s followed by the explosion, the thunderous detonation. The buildings and walls tremble so hard that I think they’re going to collapse at any moment. How much more can they take? The deafening blast echoes through the street. Sometimes, I hear screams as people outside witness them firsthand. I smell the odor of the eruptions as they kick up so much dirt and leave a cloud of smoke behind.

None of the blasts are as close as the one that hit across the street. Some of them hit the neighborhood, destroying anything they touch. I feel the heat of the closer ones, and when I look out the window, I see the destruction as buildings topple down or go up in flames. There’s more black smoke rising. It’s an endless barrage. The heavens themselves have begun to rain down bombs and missiles.

After a while, as the day continues to grow longer, I hardly hear the falling shells and blasts. My mind blocks them out. In the end, there’s nothing I can do to outrun them. Even if are falls right on top of us, I will not be able to avoid it. We’re just sitting here, sitting and listening to the world around us burn down. Sitting and hoping that the next bomb doesn’t fall on us.

I remember reading about The Massacre of Ayyadieh during the Third Crusade. I always wondered what it must have felt like for those men, women, and children to be helplessly led outside the city of Acre and to that small hill, knowing that they were walking to their deaths. I suppose I’ve found the answer. I now know what it is to helplessly sit and know your life and death are in the hands of a stranger.

Outside of the falling bombs and raucous explosions, there is nothing else. I don’t hear the beautiful call to prayer ringing through the streets of the city. I don’t hear the sounds of merchants and buyers. I don’t hear blaring horns or loud engines. I can’t even sense the familiar smell of oil that was always soaked into the roads. All the things that made Aleppo feel like home are nowhere to be seen. The city seems naked without them.

If I didn’t know where I was, I would not recognize my city.

After the incident in the dining room, we all keep to ourselves. Faisal and Amaan are in one room with Salman. The radio softly plays behind the closed door. Fatima is somewhere else. I know Salman ordered nobody to go near the window, but after being cooped up in a dark room for so long, I am beginning to not care about what he has to say. He may have very well forsaken us by hiding from those helicopters.

The hours pass in solitude. Sometimes I stand by the window and watch the bombs descend. Seeing them fall reminds me of a post-apocalyptic movie, the ones where the world has ended. Any one of those bombs could be the end for us. We’d never even see it coming.

When I’m not by the window, I lock myself away in a room. I keep thinking of what could have happened if those helicopters noticed us. I wouldn’t helplessly be watching this destruction. I could have easily flagged them down. They would have taken us. I know it. That was our ticket out, and Salman threw it away! He threw it away like it was his right to do so.

Ever since this nightmare began, Salman has acted as if every call is his to make. From the time Jari walked out those doors until now, Salman’s word has been final. But now he’s gone too far. Just the thought of it makes my blood begin to boil.

The shelling ceases late in the afternoon. A part of me hopes it is the end, but I know better than to hold on to any hope. I arrive at the broken window I fell asleep in front of. The shattered glass is still there. Looking outside, I see the deserted streets. Countless structures are now piles of debris and smoking ash, overrunning onto the walkways and roads. The neighborhood looks just like any other street I’ve seen: wrecked. But one thing catches my attention. Right by a scorched vehicle, a pair of still and stiff legs comes into view as they lie on the road. The rest of the body is hidden behind the truck.

Two birds are circling it: vultures. They’re going to—

They both swoop down behind the truck and onto the body. I can’t see them, but I know what they’re doing. The same thing probably happened to Bilal and Jari. I just wasn’t there to see it. My grip around the wall tightens as I watch the scene unfold.

For all I know, I may end up like that. All it would take is one bomb or bullet. As terrifying as that image is, there is one that strikes even more fear into me: could that be my family?

Leaving the room, I run into Amaan in the hallway. He politely smiles when he sees me. I mean to return the gesture but don’t.

“Salman said not to go near the windows, Zaid.”

“I don’t care.”

“Don’t be hard on him. You don’t know what he saw.”

My gaze compels him to explain.

“He went out early morning. You were sleeping at the time. He thought he heard somebody crying. I told him not to go, but he went anyway. I didn’t know what he saw, but there was sudden gunfire. When he came back, he was different. It took him an hour to tell us what it was.” Amaan glances down for a moment. “He says he saw a rebel take two civilians hostage as they tried to scare the security forces into backing off.”

“What happened?”

Amaan pauses. I can tell he’s debating whether or not to answer my question. “The soldiers… they just shot through the civilians to hit the rebel. They gunned them all down.”

I blink several times. There’s another silence as I try to run his words through my mind. I can’t imagine this. First Faisal and Amaan were claiming soldiers shot at them. Now Salman.

“Just thought you should know.”