The Boy from Aleppo Who Painted the War (22 page)

I run to Baba's room and jump on the bed and start telling him to wake up quickly. His eyes are still half closed when he starts speaking to himself.

‘Don't kill me please, I have a family, I have a wife!'

‘Baba! Wake up!'

Baba jumps up and wipes the drool from his mouth.

‘What is it?' he slurs.

‘There are bombs outside, we need to hide!'

I try to help Baba up when Ali and Amira come in and start going to the other room.

‘Quick Baba!'

Baba starts walking faster but he is still very slow. The cupboard isn't far from the bed but it feels like we have been walking for five whole minutes. I don't know if that's true or if I'm just nervous. Yasmine and the boys still haven't come. I'm really scared.

‘I need to go to the toilet.'

‘Not now Baba, we don't have time.'

Baba makes a face and we quickly go into the room. I hope we are protected here.

‘Yasmine!' I shout from the top of my lungs.

‘Coming!'

We sit inside and start praying. The bombs start to get louder and the shaking more violent. I hold onto Baba's arm and squeeze it. I have never liked roller coasters and now I am living on one. My heart is beating fast. I want to vomit from the fear.

‘Yasmine quick!'

I close my eyes and try to think about the girl with the chocolate eyes. Whenever I think about her I feel better. But this time my heart is pounding too fast and I can hear it loudly. I can't keep my mind off it. Yasmine comes in with Khalid and Tariq and we close the door quickly. We can hear the bombings and feel the impact on the ground. I cuddle next to Yasmine and feel her breathing in and out. Khalid doesn't say a word: he just looks down at his lap. I look down at my hand and fiddle with the bandage Yasmine put on it for me. My hand sometimes hurts me when I remember what happened but I try to forget. Yasmine said I was lucky to be alive so I shouldn't complain about my hand. I am so lucky it isn't my painting hand. Baba is breathing in and out heavily. There is a weird sound coming out of him like something is stuck in his throat. Nobody seems to mind the sound but the room is too silent and Baba's breathing isn't in the same rhythm with my mind. I want him to stop but I can't stop him from breathing. Now that I think about the small space we have and how many people are all squashed sharing the same air I start to get sick. I want to get out. The more I think about it the more I feel like the walls are closing in on me. No! I need space. Give me space!

‘Adam, stop fidgeting!'

I open my eyes and realise that I was hitting Yasmine by accident.

‘How long do we have to stay here Yasmine?'

‘Please don't start with your questions Adam.'

I just want to know how long we are staying here, my chest is tightening up and I don't think we have been here for more than ten minutes. The ground shakes again and we hear a bomb go off. It sounds like it is just outside our door. Could it really be? I really want to go out and see what is happening but I don't want to get hurt.

‘Did you hear that Yasmine?'

‘Yes, keep praying…'

Tariq starts praying out loud and we all repeat after him except for Baba who is making his own prayers.

Another loud bomb goes off and the ground shakes. It feels like there are falling angels. Dust starts falling from the ceiling and I start wondering if we are going to survive. I want to ask Yasmine so many questions but my heart is shaking out of fear. There is another shake and bricks fall down around us. One falls down on Ali's leg and he starts screaming. Amira and Yasmine turn to him and try to tend to his wound. His scream sounds like a whale's cry and with the echoes of this small space I feel like I am drowning in hopelessness. I feel my body give up to death. Dust keeps falling down and whenever I look up I get some in my eyes and mouth. I start rubbing my eyes in pain and spitting the dust out. My eyes are burning and they feel red. I don't need to look in the mirror to know that. Bomb after bomb goes off and I stop counting because I feel the look of death on me. There's no space to breathe and there's blood under me from Ali's leg. The biggest bomb of all hits and shakes us all and we all duck down as the bricks fall one by one. That's it. I know it's the end. As every brick falls, it feels like I am being stoned with coal pieces. I can feel my back itching from the blood trickling down. Then everything stops. No more screams from outside, no more bricks falling on us and no more shattering bombs. We all lift our heads slowly and look up. I'm alive! We are alive! We all have blood on us. I can't see myself but I can feel the hot sticky feeling on my back. It feels like a snake is slithering down my body. It makes me shiver.

Yasmine says she thinks it's safe to get out but I'm not sure. Tariq slowly pushes the door open. We can't see his head any more so I guess he is looking around.

‘Oh my God! Oh Lord!' Khalid starts calling out for God. What happened? Are dead bodies surrounding us? Yasmine helps Khalid up and goes up herself. I go up next because I can't breathe any more. I need fresh air. When I reach the top I see Yasmine on the floor in Baba's room with her hands slapping her head and yelling God's name. She is crying like the women I saw in the hospital.

I look up and see Baba's bed in place but nothing else is. I can see Yasmine's room from here. The walls have collapsed and everything is gone. Our house is in ruins. Our house is gone. My eyes dart around trying to figure out where to begin. Is there any way we can get out of here? It looks like we are stuck between rubble and heavy bricks. I can see one of my paintings amongst the dust, bricks and cracked plates. I climb over some bricks and try to pull it out delicately but it's gone. My painting is gone. You can't even see the colours any more: it's all grey. I run around trying to reach my room and get my paintings. I need to find them, I can't go anywhere without them. Yasmine calls me back telling me it's not safe but my paintings are more important. I can see my easel broken in the dust and rubble. Navy-blue spiders start climbing my heart again. I feel the anger boil inside me. I pick up the pieces of the easel but there's no hope. I go around and pick my paintings out of all the mess. I have to save them. I find my painting kit lying by one of the books that Isa gave me. I pick the book up. Its pages are partially ripped out and it looks like an elephant stepped on it. All the pages are flat out like a fan. I can't even read the title any more. Why did they have to do this to us? Where else are we going to go? I pick up all the remains of my paint and paintings and all the brushes I can find. The blood I collected is spilt over my duvet. I have no bed to sleep on now, no cover from the cold, no food, no water, no hope and my healing fingers start to bleed again.

We all sit on the rubble and rock ourselves back and forth. Everyone is following a rhythm of their own, but we are all sharing the same pain and fate.

*

The city is in ruins, we are now stripped of everything and the only things surrounding us are Pillars of Faith. Yasmine said that to me. Every night we look for abandoned places to sleep in and rest our heads. When the bomb hit I found Liquorice after hours of searching. I am happy I didn't lose her. Sometimes she sleeps on my stomach and sometimes I lie on hers. She doesn't say anything. Everyone's face looks like they have rubbed themselves in dust and dirt. We have no clean speck on our bodies. Our clothes are ripped and we have no others and we walk the streets every day looking for help. I have no shoes on and the soles of my feet are starting to crack. It really hurts when we walk for a long time looking for a new place to stay. Yasmine says we have to be careful where we go. She said some places are filled with people from the free army and some places belong to the government army. People have already taken the rest of the places that were free. Before yesterday we asked a family if we could stay with them. Yasmine told them we have young ones and old ones who can't walk any more and I think that's what made them say yes. We had to share the same covers with them that they found in the bins. I wanted to itch all night. I couldn't sleep. I kept playing scenarios in my head from books I've read. I wanted to get up and paint but I had nowhere to paint. We were all rolled up under one cover like sardines. If someone had come in and seen us they might even have thought we were dead. Nobody moved and hardly anybody breathed.

There is no more colour in Aleppo. Everything is grey, even we are. Everybody looks like they are dragging every limb of theirs with as much strength as possible and still we are having so much difficulty. Especially Baba, I think he has forgotten everything. He doesn't even know we are in a war. He thinks we are travelling to see his mother. Whenever I ask Yasmine a question about Baba she gets annoyed. She ends up shouting at me and telling me that he lost his memory. I don't think he remembers who I am. I don't know how he can forget me. The only name he keeps on repeating is mama's name to Yasmine. He doesn't even notice the rest of us. His eyes are certainly cloudy, it's not just something I think I am seeing. We are walking down the road far from home. We left days ago and every day we walk for a bit. I don't even know if we are still in Aleppo, I think we are though. The ground is really hot today. It's really sunny and sweaty. We have no water and the sun is hitting us right on our heads. We have no shelter. I can't even open my eyes properly; the sun is really powerful. The soles on my feet are burning because they are cracked and the heat on the ground isn't helping. We walk and I bite all my nails off and chew on them until I get all the taste and swallow them. I am so hungry.

Liquorice runs in front of me but I don't have the energy to run after her.

‘Liquorice… please!'

I try to run after her but nothing in my body is helping me. I have no energy. Liquorice turns a corner and I have no choice but to push my legs that extra mile and run after her, I don't want to lose her.

‘Liquorice!'

I look back at my family whose shoulders hang down as they drag their feet. Khalid is literally dragging his feet on the ground. I look down and he has blood on his toes. I don't know if I should tell him or not, I don't want to scare him. Tariq is carrying Baba because Baba can't walk any more and Yasmine and Amira are holding onto each other. Ali and I are the only ones who are kind of okay. I turn the corner to find Liquorice and see her rummaging through a bin. My heart skips a beat out of joy and all the grey I am surrounded by slowly turns into pink. There's hope.

‘Quick guys, there's a bin here!'

I laugh at how everyone's face turns pink as well. I can even see a slight smile on Yasmine's face. I am so grateful to Liquorice. Thank you God for helping us out. I wait for Tariq to put Baba down on the ground so he can help me tip the whole bin up. Liquorice finds a lot of bones and cakes and cheese. How can people throw these away? How do people even have food? How can they afford it? I ask Yasmine and she tells me it's probably from Damascus and it's the soldier's food. When she says that she realises we might be sitting in an area where government soldiers are around. It's not safe. She tells us to collect all the food and carry it in a bag we found inside the bin and walk somewhere else. We all walk quickly this time. I feel happy again, maybe there is hope. Thank you God.

*

We all sit down and start eating and even laughing. We have the energy for it now. I always wondered how people lived during a war when I used to watch TV and how they used to laugh, weren't they too depressed? Now I understand, there's always a reason to laugh.

Yasmine is starting to look ruby. I can see the pink becoming darker and turning into ruby, which makes me very happy. The colour is very faint but I can see it. Everyone's eyes look like they are starting to close and mine are too. Eating for the first time after so long makes you want to go to sleep. This time we are sleeping happy, not sleeping because we need to curb our hunger. It feels really good. I start humming a Chopin tune in my mind. I don't know the name of the song but mama always used to listen to it when she was happy. It's been a while since I thought of mama because I have had no energy to even think, I have just been dragging my body. The melody I'm humming is starting to sound like a buzzing in my mind because I am too tired so I just close my eyes and let sleep take me to a happy place.

I wake up to the loud sound of a man speaking through a speaker that is used at the top of a mosque where they usually call out for a prayer. What is he saying?

I rub my eyes and look around. The sun starts to go down a little but it's still there. Everyone else starts to get up and listen to what is being said. This is unusual, what is going on? My legs have pins and needles and I slowly get up and shake them off. I have marks on my arms from the stones that were poking into my skin.

‘Ahh it hurts,' I say as I rub my skin and kiss it so I can make myself feel better.

‘Shh Adam, let's hear what they're saying,' Tariq whispers.

We all look up as if the sound is coming from the sky and listen quietly. There's something peaceful about looking up at the sky and hearing a loud voice giving you a message of hope. I want to paint the sky.

The speaker was saying something about Turkish aid but I stopped listening once I thought about painting the sky. I start to take my painting things I rescued from the bag but Yasmine stops me.

‘What are you doing?'

‘I'm going to paint the sky.'

‘Did you not hear what they said Habibi?'

‘No Yasmine.'

‘We need to walk back before others get there, there's help that came for us, we will have food and shelter at last Adam!'

‘Really Yasmine? Really? Let's run then!'

She laughs and holds my hand and we start running. The others are running behind us. I look back and can see Tariq behind us all trying to run with Baba on his back. Is this really the end? Are we safe now? I pray to God that we are saved. I don't want to walk on the hot ground any more and eat from bins. I wonder where they will take us. We get to the place where they told us to go and we already find a queue of people. How did they get here so fast? I guess they were closer. There are three red-and-white vans and there are men giving out things from inside. They're giving a box to everyone but I don't know what is inside it. The men look red. They're speaking a different language to us. I wish I understood what they were saying. I wish I understood all languages. I used to daydream that I would hear people speaking different languages and I would understand and they would be shocked. But nobody speaks anything but Arabic around here. Khalid said that in Damascus people speak other languages. I want to go there. We are nearly at the front of the van. There are six people in front of us now. I can't wait to get to the front and see what is in the box. It feels like it's Eid. Who are these people helping us? They don't speak the same language even though they kind of look like us. Are they good people? They must be good if they're helping us. No one else is.