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

A bullet strikes the debris directly to my left. They’re upon us. It’s too late.

Sitting on the swing, my head hangs low as I hold on to one of the chains with both hands. A few tears leave my cheeks wet as they roll onto my chin. I hear all the boys playing in the distance. With Salman sick, there were an odd number of us today when we were picking teams. Guess who was left out. None of the boys even looked my way when deciding who’d play. They just picked the teams and started without me as if I didn’t exist.

The school’s back wall is not even twenty feet away from me. Ms. Farooq is grading today’s exams right now, but I already know what my result is. We already got yesterday’s test’s results back. Everyone in the class passed… everyone except for one person. She read the scores out in front of the class. Ms. Farooq said my score the loudest, going on to say that scores like mine don’t make it into art school, let alone medical school. Why does she do that?

The tree’s shade does very little to protect me from the endless heat. This tree is just like the one in the park—the one Nabeel and I stand under when we are skipping stones. It’s been so long. I miss him… so much . I don’t know if he thinks of me, but I can’t think of anything but my brother these days. Wherever I go, Nabeel is on my mind. I can’t shake him off. I can’t—

“Zaid, are you alright?”

Recognizing her voice as it comes from behind me, I quickly wipe away the tears with my shirt’s sleeve. Can’t let her see me like this. Can’t let anybody see me like this.

Her footsteps grow closer. Taking a deep breath in an effort to hide my state, I slowly turn around to face Fatima.

She’s standing by the tree’s trunk. Her pretty, emerald eyes are on me. They seem… caring. “Why are you by yourself, Zaid?”

“I was… I was trying to—” I can’t even think of an excuse.

“It’s okay, Zaid.” Fatima takes a seat on the swing next to mine and gently takes ahold of either chain. Her gaze focuses on the ground in front of her. “It’s okay to want to be alone sometimes.”

“You’re never alone.”

“Sometimes… sometimes we’re all alone.” Fatima looks back at me. “Are you thinking about Nabeel?”

My gaze leaves her. “He’s everything I want to be. He’s everything anybody wants to be: brave, smart, fearless. I want to be like him—want to be just like him. I want nothing more than for him to be proud of me. I want to be all of those things… but I’m not. I’m last place in everything. Sports, school… I’m…”

“No, you’re not, Zaid.” Fatima pauses. “There’s one thing I know you have that nobody else does. Something I always see in your eyes.”

“What?” I meet her gaze.

“Hope.” She smiles. “Hope, Zaid. I see you dream bigger dreams than anybody else. No matter what, your hope never dies. People try and take it away from you. Sometimes it’s our teacher. Sometimes it’s the other boys. But you never let them. And hope is worth everything. It’s worth more than everything else combined. I’ve never met a bigger dreamer than you, and I don’t think I ever will.”

I don’t reply.

“You always talk about being a doctor—the best doctor ever. You always speak about changing the world, Zaid. Promise me you’ll never lose that. No matter what happens or what anybody else says, promise me you’ll never forget that.”

There’s a silence. A long one. Our gazes remain locked, and in that moment I feel a connection with Fatima that I’ve never felt before. There is a light in the darkness, a sliver of hope I never truly sensed until now: her. A smile creeps onto my face. “I promise.”

My body awakes with a jolt. But when it does, I’m no longer in the middle of the street. What am I on? It feels like… a bed? My eyes shoot open, finding themselves staring at a ceiling. It all hits me: the explosions, gunfire, screams, and helplessness. Instinctively trying to sit upright, a heavy hand on my chest keeps me down.

“Whoa there, kid. Take it easy.”

The words are Arabic, but the accent isn’t Syrian. I look at the strong hand. Then at the face it belongs to. It’s a fair-skinned man with black hair and green eyes—a darker shade of green.

“You took a nasty hit.” His face is a little grizzled, but he gives off a warm presence. He’s wearing a pair of rugged jeans and a black shirt over his well-built frame. The man keeps me pressed down for a long moment before lifting his hand off of me and relaxing back in his chair. “How are you feeling?”

I blink a few times without answering, trying to decipher if this is reality or not. One moment, I’m out in the middle of a battlefield. Then, I’m suddenly here with this stranger. I know it all really happened, still feeling all the pain of being thrown around by the blasts. I look down at the bed I’m on. It’s up against the wall with him on the other side. Outside of a small table, there’s no other furniture in the room. A blanket covers me from below my waist. The room is warm. I slowly sit up, wincing as I do. “…fine. I feel fine.”

“No lightheadedness or dizziness?”

“Just… soreness.”

He nods. “There are worse things than that.”

My eyes widen as more memories flood in. “There was a woman. She—”

“She’s safe. Her name is Saba.”

Hearing his reassurance, I calm down. “…what happened?”

“I saw you trying to save the woman. Some debris hit your head. You were unconscious by the time I arrived. I got Saba’s foot out from under there, but it was injured. She couldn’t walk. I carried the two of you over my shoulders and got you here.” He pauses. “Fortune was on our side. Two minutes slower and things would have ended much differently.”

“There was shooting. I thought we were going to get caught in it.”

“We lucked out.”

I look away, grimacing a bit.

“Hey, don’t worry, kid.” He pats my shoulder. “Everything is just fine.”

As silence falls between us, the entire ordeal replays in my head. I see it all as clearly as when it occurred, and the thing that races to the forefront of my mind is the explosion that started it all. My heart starts to race. Salman and Fatima were by my side. But, in the next instant, they were nowhere to be seen, and I was stumbling through the sickening, toxic fog. They disappeared. I didn’t even feel them anywhere. They’re…

“What’s wrong?” The man’s question breaks my thoughts.

“My friends… they were with me. They’ve been with me since this entire thing began. We were caught in a blast, and I—I couldn’t find them anywhere.” Uttering those words, I’m surprised that I don’t burst into tears. Maybe I’m still in denial. “Now, I’m afraid that they might be—”

“Don’t talk like that, kid. I’m sure your friends are someplace safe. They’re probably just as worried about you as you are for them.”

I don’t think even he believes his own words. Another awkward silence falls between us. Looking away from him, my eyes are drawn to the corner of the room. My supply sack is resting up against the wall. It seems untouched and exactly as I last saw it. There’s a window not far from it, showing the dead of night outside.

“What’s your name?” the man asks, bringing my gaze back to him.

“Zaid.”

The man slightly smiles. “I’m Ethan.”

I’ve never met an ‘Ethan’ before. A silence befalls us before I break it, but my next words are more of a statement and less of a question. “You’re not from Aleppo.”

“No. I’m a long way from home.”