“Any plans today?” I murmur.
He breaks away, cheeks pink. “I’m meeting Tariq to make sure everything’s going okay with our university acceptance.”
“Of all the futures I envisioned for us, living and attending university in Toronto was not one of them.”
He grins. “Not a bad plot twist.”
It’s all been made possible by one of Hamza’s friends. Shortly before the revolution started, one of his close high school friends moved to Canada to study medicine. Now a Canadian citizen, he offered to sponsor our move to Toronto. Help us continue our education, find jobs, and live a good, safe life. We connected after I revived my Facebook account in Berlin, where distant family and friends extended all sorts of help.
When Tariq reached out, Kenan and I sat down and studied it from all angles. We know more English than German. In terms of animation, Canada has more options, and I instantly fell in love with the university’s pharmacy program. Yusuf and Lama were adapting well to their German schools and life, their aunt and uncle stepping in like they were their own children. It would just be Kenan and me leaving. For now. We’re too young to care for two children. And I know it breaks Kenan’s heart every single day to be apart from them. But being a refugee limits our options, and I also know that our situation is far better than so many other Syrian families because we have Kenan’s aunt and uncle. Families with no relatives living in diaspora are usually torn apart, scattered over a few countries depending on which accepts them.
Kenan hasn’t changed his phone’s lock screen from Lama and Yusuf, though the background is him and me. He calls them every single day and has been planning how he’ll be able to fly to Germany to see them.
“I can’t believe university starts in a week.” I shake my head. “I can’t believe we’re sitting here drinking zhoorat three years later.”
“I can’t believe you’re with me.” He kisses the wedding ring on my finger, then kisses along one scar sliced into my wrist. “How did I score someone so out of my league?”
I chuckle. “You seduced me with all your Studio Ghibli facts.”
He grins. “Miyazaki doesn’t use scripts in his movies. He comes up with the dialogue as he goes along.”
I act all flustered, fanning myself. “Oh my God!”
He laughs and we finish up our tea. As soon as the sun’s light has engulfed the sky, we go back inside.
It’s a small one-bedroom apartment but it’s home. A few boxes still clutter the floor. Tariq and his friends furnished the apartment for us, and I had to hide in the bathroom to cry from gratitude for a solid ten minutes before I could face anyone.
Sprawled across the dining table are Kenan’s sketchbooks, all filled with drawings of our stories. Next to them is a half-empty knafeh pan. The charcoal portrait he drew of me at the Brandenburg Gate is enclosed in a wooden frame, hanging over the couch in the living room. The walls are a canvas for our imagination, and we’ve splashed the white with different shades of blue. One wall hosts Kenan’s ongoing work of a map of Syria, while I etched a Nizar Qabbani poem along the surface of the other because it turns out my calligraphy is better than his. It’s one I saw at the revolution’s anniversary protest.
“Every lemon will bring forth a child, and the lemons will never die out.”
We place the mugs in the sink, discussing the various elements of storytelling used inPrincess Mononoke. I open a cupboard to take out a breakfast bar. Each cupboard is stocked to the brim with bags of rice, freekeh, canned hummus, and kashk. I finish up the whole bar, not even leaving a crumb, before throwing the wrapper in the trash.
Kenan takes a chicken out of the freezer to let it defrost and I find myself marveling at the fact we have awholechicken.
While Hamza doesn’t.
Daily, I scour Facebook and Twitter pages that post regular updates on the prisoners in the Syrian detention facilities that have been released, as well as those that have information on prisoners still inside. I look for Hamza’s name until my eyes cross, but he never shows up. And in my heart, I pray he’s become a martyr. I pray he’s with Layla in Heaven, far away from this cruel world.
I glance away and feel Kenan’s hand on my cheek.
“Hey,” he whispers, knowing what’s on my mind. “It’s okay.”
I shudder in a breath, nodding before walking into the living room. To distract myself, I contemplate whether to read a pharmaceutical book or work on a new video. After arriving in Berlin, Kenan picked up where he left off with his activism and, after a few more videos, he began to garner the world’s attention. I practiced my English by joining him, writing articles and making videos about what we faced in Homs. I threaded our stories together, and at first it was difficult. I’d burst into tears five seconds into a monologue, remembering the feel of a corpse’s cold body.
Kenan catches my arm, spinning me around, and I fall against his chest, surprised.
“Whoa!What are you doing?”
He smiles, holding up his phone. An English song I don’t know croons out. “Dancing with my wife.”
My eyes burn. We weave distractions between the bouts of agony. Reminding the other we’re still here.
He drops the phone on the couch beside his laptop, swaying me with the music.
“I’m in my pajamas,” I mumble, pressing my forehead to his collarbone.
He shrugs. “So am I.” He twirls a finger through a lock of my hair, now cut short to my chin. “You’re beautiful in your pajamas.”
