Everything unrolls in front of me in slow motion.
I watch young children grabbing the sides of their protectors, howling with anguish. I see entire families lying beside one another, holding hands, hoping when they ascend to Heaven they will still be entwined. I walk slowly, training my eyes on the exit door. I need air. I need to breathe something that isn’t chlorine.
“Salama!” Nour grabs my arm before I open the front door. “What are you doing?”
“Outside,” I rasp. The sarin from treating the patients has finally absorbed into my skin and is beginning to close my throat.God, it burns.
“Not without this you’re not.” She shoves a surgical mask in my hands. “It won’t do much, but it’ll help.”
It won’t do anything. But how would we know? We weren’t ready for a chemical attack. Are normal doctors even prepared for this?
I collapse on the hospital’s steps, shivering from head to toe. Hours have already passed without me noticing and now it’s late afternoon. Death steals the seconds away from us. Oxygen slowly creeps back into my lungs, and I finally begin to remember my family.
“Layla!” I spring up, looking in the direction of our home. She’s safe. I know she is. Because none of the victims were from our neighborhood, which is a fifteen-minute walk from the hospital. The sarin didn’t reach the hospital, which means it didn’t reach my home either.
My next thought latches on to Kenan and his siblings. My stomach twists on itself with terror. I have no idea if he came in today.Oh God, please don’t let his neighborhood be affected.
I take off the mask, fiddle with it, and pace around, trying to summon rational thoughts.
If they were affected, they would have been brought here. But… what if they died as soon as they inhaled the gas? Oh God. Oh God!
I breathe in deeply and decide I should leave right now, check on Layla, and then immediately head to Kenan’s house to make sure everything’s fine.
“Salama!” a voice shouts behind me, and I whirl around to see Kenan standing in front of the hospital doors, holding a makeshift cloth to his face. Alive. He lets out a deep breath I feel inside my soul.
My knees go weak with relief and I collapse on the steps.
“Salama!” he shouts again, hurrying down to me. “Are you all right? Oh my God, please tell me you are.”
He crouches beside me, removing the cloth from his mouth, and I fill my eyes with him. His bright green eyes, his beautiful, honest face.
“I’m fine,” I whisper. “Are you? Lama? Yusuf?”
He nods quickly, his hands hovering beside my head, steeling himself before he takes them back. Still, I can feel their warmth, the blood gushing through his veins.
“The attack wasn’t… it wasn’t near where we are, but I had to come here to make sure you’re alive,” he says, and as if the energy has suddenly been siphoned out of him, he all but collapses beside me. He smells of smoke and remnants of the gas and lemons. My legs shake with weariness, my arms ache, and all I want is to lie here on these chipped steps and sleep forever.
The faint voices of the injured seep through the cracks in the hospital walls and I close my eyes, unable to hold their pain in my heart without folding into myself and crying myself to death. Why?Whyis no one helping us? Why are we left to die? How can the world besocruel?
I hug my knees, propping my head between my arms. “I’m exhausted,” I whisper.
“Me too,” Kenan replies.
I shake my head. “No. I’m exhausted from all of this. I’m exhausted we’re suffocating and no one gives the slightest bit of a damn. I’m exhausted we’re not even an afterthought. I’m exhausted we can’t even have basic human rights. I’mexhausted, Kenan.”
I feel his eyes on me, but when I lift my head, I stare at the sky’s horizon peeking through the demolished buildings instead. At the blue and gray.
“I’m also angry,” I continue.
And I realize the anger was always there, growing slowly and surely. It began long ago when I was born under the thumb of a dictatorship that kept on applying pressure until my bones fractured. It kindled into a small flame when Mama and I held hands and prayed as the protestors’ throaty voices ricocheted off our kitchen walls. It fused with my bones, its flames licking through my myocardium, leaving decayed cells in its wake, when Baba and Hamza were taken. It built and built and built with each body laid in front of me. And now, it’s a roaring fire crackling along my nervous system.
“Tomorrow’s the revolution’s anniversary,” I say, and Kenan shifts. “I want to go.”
Those four words fall from my lips, and I wait for the familiar feeling of terror to rip through me, souring my wish. But it doesn’t happen. No. Enough isenough.
Khawf appears in the corner of my eyes, but I refuse to look in his direction, knowing I won’t find support there. This is my choice, not one governed by him. Instead, I glance at Kenan, whose eyes are heavy with emotion.
“Are you sure?” he asks, and I almost smile.
