Almost a year ago, Victoria and her family fled their home in Aleppo, Syria. They now live in Beirut, less than 100 kilometres away from the borders of their homeland. But the land they grew up in remains so out of reach today. A land of great history, where more than 90,000 people have lost their lives in a brutal civil war that goes on, after more than two years. This is her story, her thoughts, her experiences.
It’s now more than nine months since I last smelled that old dust on the land. I still hear a mother crying from afar, behind the mountains that separate me from my homeland – Syria. Some cases are too deep to fit in a verse, or a single sentence. We sometimes choose to stay silent.
I don’t know if I will ever want to walk on that soil again, the land that took so many of my loved ones. It doesn’t feel like that feeling when we were kids, and we lose our favorite Lego piece, and cry over it for days. It’s not that same feeling as having a skinned knee while playing in the street without your mothers permission. It’s something else. You know when all night your left side of your chest keeps hurting and you feel that something is going to come out, but it’s just fighting your skin that’s covering it. You think about all the promises made once before. About how it’s going to be okay and we will meet again, laugh again, have a life again. It’s not working. Someone is just ruining everything, breaking all promises, and you can’t blame anyone.
I’m just one of the many, who think the same, who still dream of a better place, who still wake up every single morning with the hope of going home. But we all know it’s not going to happen any time soon.
I remember a lot of things that are just memories in my head, because at least one character of the conversation has left, to another place we cant go now.
I’ve lost nine people until now, nine people very dear to me. Nine innocent souls, nine promises of “we will meet soon, don’t lose hope”. Nine bodies in the past nine months, nine friends gone, nine smiling faces I will miss the most, nine pieces my own country took from me, so later one day I can go and step on it when it’s safe. Isn’t that selfish? Isn’t that inhumane? How am I going to walk in Aleppo’s streets, where each one holds a memory of one of the nine? How am I going to open the windows of my room to see the morning light, the same light all these nine saw as the last thing that shone to their eyes.
I met so many people who are exactly like me. Some in a better position, some in worse, but we all had the same sentence in the back of our heads “we will have better days”. “These are going to be over soon”. “We will go back”.
I ask all the time, what are these better days? A day when we wake up having a proper Syrian breakfast in front of our half-ruined Aleppo citadel, on a perfect sunny morning, remembering the people we lost, watching the traces of the past. The day I had to flee from that exact spot while I was sitting with friends, thinking it’s a calm day, right before I started hearing guns, screams, and people dying. I had to run to a point where I couldn’t feel my legs. Or the day when I was one block from a huge bombing. Or when I… a lot of them… a lot…
I ask, when is this going to be over? Our pain? Our memories that keep running in our heads? Why do we say its going to be over when we already got used to how reality is. What’s the thing that we don’t know? When is it supposed to be over?
I ask, where are we going back to Syria? When are we going home? Why are we saying we will go back to a place that ruined our lives? What’s the thing making us say this? Are we ever going to those streets again? Those beautiful streets of Aleppo. Those ones, those streets that each one of us knows no longer exist. They won’t look the same. They won’t feel the same. Why do we keep saying “back” while we know “back” means something that’s not the same? “Back” means somewhere we used to be. Nothing will be the same there. Why do we lie to ourselves? Why do we keep lying, while each one of us know none of these things we say are true? We’ve all lost someone, at least, we all have a ruined house, ruined street, ruined favorite place, ruined memories, ruined country.
We all think, saying this will make everything how it was before things got bad. Just like in the past. None of these are going to happen – we eventually return, new buildings will stand on our memories, new streets will cover the blood our loved ones shed. Even new people. We will try to make new things, so we have new memories. I’m just one of the many, who dream. I’m just one of the many who has unclear questions in the back of my head.
When I heard the death of my first friend, I was still in Aleppo. My last few days, right before I left my childhood piece of earth, he was on his way to take breakfast to his friends at the military, because he just finished his military service and wanted to make them happy, because he lived that life. He knew the life of a soldier – to have one single boiled egg and a tomato for five people. They bombed the building five minutes he entered, as he had with his friends. They found his remains after nine days of searching.
The second friend I lost. It was horrible. She was my friend’s aunt, who always cooked for us, who always had to work because her husband wasn’t able to work due to health issues. She worked even when it wasn’t safe to walk in the streets. A rocket hit a nearby building, and only one piece of shrapnel hit her in the head. That day, she couldn’t take food for her children and husband, who were waiting for her at home.
The third friend. I didn’t hear about him. He was kidnapped, and later his parents received a phone call from a hospital, saying: “you can’t see the body – it’s almost turned into ashes, but he has his military identification on him.” He was a student, who wanted to do his military service before graduation, so after his graduation he could begin a career – open a dental clinic and make kids happy when they visit a dentist. He bought his clinic before he went to “serve” his country.
Fourth, a friend who always worked hard. I used to buy my clothes from the shop he used to work at, then we became friends and I convinced him to continue studying after finding him a scholarship to study languages. He became so good at it, and did change his job, started translating texts for university students. He was sitting at his balcony when a rocket hit their building. After a week in hospital, he didn’t make it.
Fifth one, my best friend’s mum. The sister of the friend who used to cook for us, on a sunny Sunday. As a tradition, we would have a barbeque. So did they, they were in a safe area – they thought. They didn’t want to go on the roof to grill. They chose to stay in their home, on the balcony, on the third floor. She went out to the balcony, where her son-in-law was preparing the food, and her grand kids (also my former students) ages five and seven were playing outside, to tell the kids to come inside, because she was scared. A single sniper bullet killed her on the balcony. Hit her in the neck.
My sixth and seventh friends were my class mates. They were two beautiful sisters, and they chose to help people in the hospital. They lived in the university dorms, as they didn’t have a home. One morning, they didn’t wake up, it was the day rockets hit the University of Aleppo.
Eighth one, a friend who was working in Dubai after having to leave Syria. He heard about the death of his brother, at a bombing nearby his home, while buying bread. He decided to go back to Syria, full of revenge. He got trained to be a sniper, and after not hearing from him for five months, one day I saw his picture on the internet, a face that became cold, dead, lost it’s colour and wasn’t living. He lost the battle.
The last one was just a month ago. The ninth friend, another great friend, a true friend, who went to the military service three years ago, and they never let him go home. He was scared at the beginning – he wasn’t used to doing the things they forced him to do: killing people. He had serious problems, nightmares, he always talked to me about them, about how he was scared, how he wanted someone to kill him as a punishment of what he has been doing, of what he was forced to do. Slowly, it became normal, he got used to it. He started telling me other stories, he started telling me about the kids on the street, where he was stationed at a checkpoint camp. He told of how they used to come to him and ask if they can hold his rifle. He talked about how he started not caring if he had the bullet proof jacket or not. About how he missed his clothes and how tired he was of wearing the same clothes for three years. About how he missed to walk with his laptop – not the gun. He started talking to me about escaping, but it was a risk. I could feel the change in him – his fears, his way of thinking, slowly, as time passed. His text messages started to be less, but more emails, each one describes how his fear grew as each day passed. One of his last messages to me is the following:
Me: How are things?
AS: Killing, ana kteer tghayart, (I’ve changed a lot) out of my will walla (I swear to God). No more friends… family… girlfriend… No nothing… Nothing… How are you? Are you alone in there or with the happy family?
Me: Chill, I know it wont make a difference, but have good thoughts, it will be over soon, bedi shoofak hoon (I will see you here), then after few years you will graduate. You will see your parents soon. They wont let you go for few days again? Last time they let you was eight months ago. It’s been too long this time. I’m with my mom and sisters. We always think about you, you soldier shujaa3 ente (brave soldier).
AS: Ana mtawel ya (I’ll take longer), shakli (it looks like) I will stay here forever. They are not giving any hope. They are always shutting me up. I have to go, we have a mission again. Vica ana (I) decided khalas (enough). I want to finish this. I’m tired, scared, and I miss everyone.
The last message was at 11:45 in the morning, it was marked as unread. I saw it the following afternoon. I wanted to write something to cheer him up. Then I saw other posts on his Facebook. Things I didn’t believe. He always loved jokes and fooling people. But not this time. Not in this one. It was real – he was killed – shot – three hours after sending that last message, on Mother’s Day.
I still have two friends doing their military service. I haven’t heard from them for so long – neither do their parents hear from them. We don’t know, but have hope that they are safe.
I’m just one of the many, watching, and hoping for a better day. I’ve got used to it, but it still hurts, to be away from home, to have missing people, to have a home far away, and get used to the fact I will call the place wherever I am “home” just because I don’t have another choice.
