Broken

Chapter 1

”You can begin”, I said.

“My earliest memory of Aleppo is me and my friend Amira playing on balconies. My parents didn’t allow me to go out so we stayed in in and played. She on hers and me on mine.

Balconies are an important thing in Aleppo every house had one. If you walk down the street in the evening and look up you could see people sitting and talking and barbequing.

Barqueing is one of my favorite things. If you hate bbq you aren’t a true Syrian.

Me and Amira used buy grilled corn from the Ammo (uncle) who sells it. Me and Amirah from our balconies would yell “Ammo Ammo we are coming down” and buy corn and then go near the Umayyad mosque and eat them.

When I think about Syria another thing that comes to my mind is the beach. We would go to the beach every Friday along with Jidu.

Jidu is my grandfather. He always smiled. He was a tall man, quite fat but not too much. He always wore a stripped thobe and cap on his head. He also had Thasbih beads with him. He always used to let the beads fall through his thumb and  go on muttering things under his breath.

I miss Jidu not only Jidu, I miss ummi, baba and Hassan too. The day everything changed was the day I saw Jidu stop smiling and since that day never he smiled.

It was independence day, We all were gathered inside our home.Baba was telling was us a story.Jidu sat on the armchair as usual  and was muttering things under his breath.

Baba told something funny, ummi smiled, me and Hassan giggled loudly and suddenly we heard a loud sound.

I screamed as I thought it was  thunder. I was afraid of thunder.Baba assured us that is was nothing and probably a firework or drumbeat celebration. But Jidu looked serious, he looked different, for the first time I saw fear and tension in his eyes. “I fear this is the beginning of dark days” he spoke in a barely audible whisper and it scared me.

His prediction was correct we heard in the news that a bomb was blasted on a nearby city. Day by day deaths were increasing. Attacks were increasing. Fear and despair was common. Syria lost its beauty.

One day baba went out and he never came back as that funny and smiling baba I knew. A man whom I don’t know brought us baba’s body.It was covered in blood his face was lifeless and scared, that image still haunts me. It broke my heart and  what broke me more was ummi.The emotion, the expression on her face when she saw baba was terrible and it broke me I felt my heart shatter into pieces.

Hassan’s reaction was the worst he refused to believe that baba was gone. He was crying and asking everyone- 
“Where is my baba, this isn’t him he promised to take me to the beach and my baba never breaks his promise.”         

Jiddu stayed strong for us but I saw tears streaming down the moment the body was lowered into the grave.Jidu was in pain.

The next few days that followed were terrible Hassan refused to eat anything, ummi was only eating of sake of us and I kept close to jidu.I didn’t want to lose him.

Few days later Jiddu came and told us the war was getting severe and we had to leave Syria. I didn’t want to go,I didnt want to leave our home were baba told us stories and ummi made us yummy kibbeh (Syrian traditional food) but we had to    

   Jidu arranged a smuggler and all four of us along with several others were crammed inside a truck. It stunk badly and was very dark. We didn’t see light for a day and the next day when light hit my eyes the first sight I saw killed me.

My Hassan was dead. His eyes and mouth open. I snuggled closer to ummi and jidu .Tears were streaming down ummi’s eyes and I sobbed quietly into her lap and Jiddu patted my back ,his eyes stained with tears.

We buried Hassan’s body and we were separated into different trucks. I didn’t want to leave ummi and jidu but they said that it was for safety purposes and the final destination was same. But it wasn’t I never saw ummi or jiddu ever again.

I don’t know whether they are alive or dead or alive  wanted to die that day ,I couldn't live without my family but I didn’t because I wanted to help other people so that they never see their baba covered in blood and their own brother’s dead next to them because I know now it hurts and I never want others to go through it.

“Thank you Karima.I Know this was difficult but this is to let the world know your story”.
I said My heart aching for Karima . I am a social worker helping Syrian refugee and I was interviewing refugees for a TV program named “Broken".