Kenan continues to encourage his siblings to move and talk, to remember the past and to hope for the future, where new memories wait for them. He turns to me and raises my hand, and water droplets slip back into the sea.
“Salama, we’ll have that knafeh.” His cheeks are wet, and I know it’s not just from the sea. His lips brush over my scarred knuckles. “If not in Germany, then in Heaven.”
I swallow my tears, nodding.
We go back to talking, trying to focus on something that isn’t the cold. We reminisce on our old life. Visualizing our Syria and painting a description of one we’ll never see.
A Syria we’ll never know.
An endless bed of green covers the hills, where the Orontes carries life into the ground, growing daisies along his banks. Trees bear lemons golden as the sun, apples firm and sweet, and plums ripe and glittering like rubies. Their branches are low, coaxing us to pluck the fruit. Birds sing the song of life, their wings fluttering against an azure-blue sky.
The countryside slowly dissolves as pavement replaces grass and the sounds of people bustling around the market drown the occasional bird’s chirps. Merchants are selling satin dresses, rich, amethyst-purple Arabian rugs, and precious crystal vases. Restaurants overflow with families and couples taking advantage of a beautiful sunny day, platters of barbecued meat and bowls of tabbouleh laid in front of them. The athan rings loud from the minarets and people gather for prayer in the spacious, intricately designed mosques that have been standing there for centuries. Children run around our ancient ruins, reading the history of their ancestors woven between the limestone. They learn about the empires that once transformed their country into the beating heart of civilization. They visit the graves of our warriors, reciting Al-Fatiha for their souls and remembering their stories. Keeping them alive in their memories. They take pride in their grandfathers and grandmothers, who laid down their lives so they could grow up in a land where the air is sweet with freedom.
Caught in the haze of hypothermia, I dream of that Syria.
A Syria whose soul isn’t chained in iron, held captive by those who love to hurt her and her children. A Syria Hamza fought and bled for. A Syria Kenan dreams about and illustrates. A Syria Layla wanted to raise her daughter in. A Syria I would have found love and life and adventure in. A Syria where, at the end of a long life, I’d return to the ground that raised me. A Syria that’s my home.
The day passes and I lose track of time. Darkness finally settles and I have no energy left, and my lips stop moving. The cold has invaded every nerve. I don’t know if Kenan has stopped talking as well or if I’ve lost the ability to hear. It takes everything in me to remember where I am and that I need to breathe.
Somewhere in the distance, a glow of light suddenly appears. I blink, its harshness hurting my pupils. I blink again.
Am I dead?
APALE LILAC BLOOMS ON THE HORIZON AS THE SUNslowly breaks through the darkness. September dawn in Toronto takes on many shades of the spectrum, but nowadays it seems to favor skipping from lilac to a bright blue while the stars quietly disappear.
I’m on the balcony, bathing in the soft glow and gazing at the corner I’ve transformed into a small garden. Daisies. Honeysuckle. Peonies. Lavender. I’ve grown them all myself, tending to their tiny roots and petals with care, murmuring words of love.
“You’re so beautiful,” I coo at a baby daisy shyly splaying out her petals against the scars on my hands. “I’m so proud of you.”
A light breeze coaxes me to pull my blanket more tightly around my shoulders. Even though I’m in wool pajamas, the cold of the Mediterranean hasn’t melted.
Kenan and I have been in Toronto for four months, and I still haven’t gotten used to the chill. It’s so different from Berlin, but both have the same kind of quiet on a Saturday morning: one that’s occasionally broken by the faint rumblings of a plane flying above. It took Kenan and me two years not to go sick with fear at those. And sometimes we still forget, the trauma coming back to us in the form of shaking hands and panic-filled eyes.
“There you are,” Kenan says, shuffling outside with two mugs of steaming zhoorat tea.
I glance at him, smiling.
He’s become more resistant to the cold and is dressed only in simple pajama pants and a white T-shirt. His hair is disheveled from bed and his eyes are still traced with sleep. It took a while and a lot of hard work, but both of us are now a healthy weight. I eye his biceps, feeling my cheeks warm up as he hands me my mug.
“Thank you,” I whisper, not wanting to disturb the peace.
He sits beside me. I adjust the blanket so it’s wrapped around us both and lay my head against his shoulder.
“You woke up early,” he says quietly. “Bad dream?”
There are times when the nightmares trickle through our sleep like belladonna’s poison. They startle Kenan awake; he gasps for air, sweat running down his forehead. They fill his head with paranoia, convincing him that Lama and Yusuf are trapped in Homs or drowning in the Mediterranean. Only when he calls his uncle in Germany to talk to them does he calm down. Only when I hold him to me and play with his hair, whispering “something good,” does he relax and finally falls back asleep on my chest.
And while Khawf has disappeared from my life like a fever dream, the nightmares have picked up where he left off. Their poison paralyzes me, and I’m trapped in my mind, screaming. At times, it takes Kenan a while to wake me, to convince me I’mreallyhere, but his arms are always there to hold me steady—to bring me back.
Kenan laces his fingers through mine and kisses the side of my head. “We promised we’d talk to each other, Sheeta.”
I turn to him, eyes softening. We did. And when we don’t know how to find the words, we have others to help us. A quiet room with a sympathetic woman looking at us over her round glasses. She smiles kindly, and the way her eyes twinkle reminds me of Nour. When the conversation becomes difficult, all I need to do to ease the heaviness is remember the way she used to say “ther-a-pee.”
As soon as Kenan and I settled in Berlin with his aunt and uncle, the shock of what we went through slowly melted into a pain that became more difficult to talk about with each passing day. Layla, Mama, and Baba are buried in Homs. For a while I forgot how to breathe through the agony over Hamza’s life in Syria.
I absently touch the scar on my neck. While the one at the back of my head is covered by my hair, this one isn’t easy to ignore. It looks like a choker, and when my thoughts become dark, I can almost feel it tightening around my throat. Kenan looks at it, realization creasing in his eyes.
He sets his mug down before lowering his head to kiss the scar. I link my arms around his shoulders, hugging him close.
