(See part one, posted yesterday)
2. Sham
October 1975 – March 1982
I am Born
How should I tell it? I don’t remember any of it … but I can say that come October 1975, I came into the world in the usual way, in the hospital down the street from the house where Woodrow Wilson was born, a normal birth unspectacular in any way … and a seven and a half pound baby girl was taken home and nursed by her mother and watched by her father … and sometimes I wonder, what would have happened if I had been switched at birth? What if instead of writing down on my birth certificate “Amina Abdallah Arraf”, they’d written something more usual for that hospital on that day, something like “Amanda Lynne McClure” that would never have looked odd or been strange … and would I be anything like myself? Does what we inherit in our blood make us who we are? Or is it what we inherit in other ways from our parents and all the rest in that mountain of names that came before? Would I be writing this, would I be happier or sadder or more confused or less confused if I’d been that Amanda?
Amanda, in my mind, that twin that isn’t, would have long golden hair and bright blue eyes … not hair that’s wavy and dark and was always out of control or eyes that are dark. I was the darkest child of my parents; Aisha got brown hair and almost hazel eyes while the two you haven’t met have green eyes and the youngest is really blonde … but life is unfair and, maybe, if I had looked more like my mother’s folk than my father’s, I would have been stuck forever somewhere where those marked me as an oddity.
Syria
But my memories haven’t yet begun before I leave Virginia for the first time; I’m less than a year old when we leave and go to Damascus.
There’s a tradition that, when he was leading caravans north, Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) refused to enter Damascus for he said that it looked to be tooo much like paradise. Back then, the city must have been just the old city, a sort of gem of a city in the midst of an immense oasis, blooming green in all directions. And, then, the oasis simply stops and desert takes over.
That oasis comes from the Barada river, flowing down from the Lebanese mountains and losing itself in what must once have been marshes. If you are coming into the city from the west or the south, you come up over the mountain of Qaisouyan and suddenly … you are looking at the city. Nowadays, it’s not the wondrous oasis Muhammad must have seen; urban sprawl has eaten up most of the oasis and is even spreading out into stretches of what were once desert. Out that way, the city runs out in poor, refugee camps built for the Palestinians and working class suburbs and, beyond those nowadays, more dusty slums for Iraqi refugees … but I get ahead of myself.
How can I describe Damascus? In some ways, it is almost like writing about how your own mother looks; you love her and see perfection but could you describe her to the police? Sham is like that … smell of jasmine in the summer, stone walls blankly looking out on narrow, twisting ancient streets of the old city, new quarters beyond ….
Our house opens on a narrow alley, in the heart of the Old City, where the sounds of the minarets of the great mosque roll through like gentle breeze. Once, this was a neighborhood full of the Old Families in their great houses; most of the rest long since moved out to more modern homes in newer streets as have many cousins, But my grandfather was stubborn and wouldn’t leave, staying on as neighborhood drifted from former wealth to creeping poverty, now turning the wheel again as houses like ours become hotels and restaurants.
Oranges grow in the courtyard; the scent of orange blossoms and the sound of splashing are my first memories. Around that courtyard and its fountain rise the open rooms of the house, seeming endless to the child. Some were long forbidden to me, like the men’s diwan where my grandfather in ancient days heard his clients complaints or had iced glasses of whiskey served up when his Christian and Druze friends came to call – one must always be hospitable, my father will tell me whn I ask about that, and Sheikh Atrash was Jiddu’s closest friend and ally … and who in their right mind would want to offend him? – while others were empty save for broken furniture and dust. Kitchens, baths, pantries seeming within out end stretch off and pile on top of each other. Electricity clearly came late; the wires are outside the walls, while indoor plumbing is modern.
Narrow cobbled street outside the heavy steel reinforced wooden door leads with twisting bends to the endless covered suqh and its stalls going one way, to the other, our alley leads to a Street Called Straight.
Circling birds rising on warm air seem to drift on the notes of the muaddhan, coming from the minaret that, for our roof, seems almost close enough to touch. Someday, they say, Jesus will come back and arrive there; we will, we joke, be the first tto greet him. Coffee? Tea? Cigarette? And when he’s refreshed, off for the War of the End of the World …
Birds of Passage
And maybe that war has long since begun; sometimes when I cannot sleep when I am older and in America, I’ll watch late night programs where a man with eyes that don’t blink explains that, Hallelujah!, we are living in the End Times and Jesus is Coming … because of events that week in June 1967 when ‘ammi was killed on that hill.
Maybe, maybe a clock was started. Certainly, the course of events that took us back to Damascus began then. After Amr died, my grandfather mourned the death of his sweet son. So did Amr’s brothers and sisters. But Amr’s next brother, Omar, he started to wonder why. And, like those TV preachers, he found answers in scripture.
In the Year of the Elephant, when Abraha came up from the south and invaded the land of the Two Cities, his forces were everywhere attacked and harased by the much smaller and weaker forces of Quraish and all the other Arabs. All that is except the Banu Thaqif, a people utterly without honor. Abu Righal, a man of Banu Thaqif, revealed to the advancing army the way to Mecca. When Abraha was at last overcome, his people were disgraced and his grave was ever afterwards pelted with stones.
Omar read that and thought, A-ha! The new Abu Righal and the Banu Thaqif that live up in the mountains by the Sea, they did this treason.
When first he proclaimed this to his father, Jiddu nodded his head and clicked his tongue, “Omar, don’t be a fool, the Arab are still waking up … and to say that the Minister of Defense would conspire with the Enemy and sacrifice his own men is madness.”
But, while the awakening did not come and Abu Righal grew in power, Omar and his circle became more and more aghast at the crimes down by the Banu Thaqif. When the Palestinians called out for promised aid in 1970, Abu Righal stabbed them in the back and seized power in Sham for himself. And Omar began meeting more and more often late at night with his fellows, or sitting for long hours discussing hadith and Quran crosslegged on the carpetted floors. Something, something must change, no more shame of a nation, but honor, no more rule by worshippers of idols …
1975, when I was in womb, over the mountain, they said, the revolution was beginning in the streets of Beirut; majority rule would soon come to Lebanon and a new age might dawn. And if the Muslim no longer was second class in Lebanon, how long before the Muslim of Sham came to have rule in his own home? How long before the Muslim of Jerusalem and Jaffa?
Abu Righal, of course, could read these things as easily and feared that the next corrective movement would truly correct things. So, before the people of Syria could be inspired, Abu Righal sent his forces into Lebanon on the side of the separatists, Zionists, and Crusaders, and savagely attacked the National Movement just as it seemed on the verge of victory.
Omar and his companions looked out in the streets of the cities of Syria and in the villages and saw that from one end to the other, there was disgust and outrage at Abu Righal. Now, they thought, was the time to riseup and return the governance of Syria to its people, to establish a governmant based, not on imitating the Christians but on our own Islamic heritage. So, in 1976, they announced that they had been on their knees too long, now it was time to arise.
And arise they did.
But again, Abu Righal and his people were clever. No one would cast them aside so easily. A long and bitter war began between Abu Righal and Abu Ridwan, between, as they saw it, Islam and Ignorance, the People of the Example against the Polytheists and Atheists. And, when those first attacks occurred, the Security Services began snatching up the men they thought were leaders, for they were trained by the East Germans and knew infiltration well.
Omar was one of those and, when he was snatched up, a call was placed halfway around the world,
“Please come home, you are the third son but your oldest brother is dead and the second one may be soon.”
So, we went back, heir of the house, foreign bride and two half-breed baby girls …
Child’s Eyes
Memories of my own start to emerge when I am five or so. Before that, there are only incoherent bits and pieces; Rania and I sitting baby Amr down in front of us and pretending he is a doll, dressing him, tickling him, Rania pointing out that he is misshapen and has a little ‘finger’ growing from his stomach; playing in the garden and the street; not knowing where Uncle is nor picking up that we should be worried.
I remember running through the house on a summer’s day, finding pots as tall as we are filled with oil and dropping pebbles into them and laughing when it splashed, drawing in chalk on the walls of a room where old things go and saying that I have written words, though they are only scribbles …
And, then, I go off to school; Rania is too little, she can’t come with me. I remember telling her that was because she was a baby and had to stay with the other babies, Amr, Alia, Reem, and Ramzi: I am a big kid, so I will go to school with the other Big Kids, Aisha, Ridwan and Raghad ….
Rania is jealous … and I am smug, even as I struggle along behind my older sister and cousins …
I learn my letters and I teach Rania: alif, baa, taa … going over and over with her. She is a slow student, I tell her …
I like school, like my teacher, Miss Su’ad, like my classmates … Zeyneb, Salma, Randa, I remember now and wonder if they recall me at all …
Life seems happy enough to me.
Winter comes; it is gray and cold and I recall it raining and raining; I wonder if the sky is falling. I hear noises at night that scare me.
I walk out of our room; I can hear my parents talking, talking in the way they talk when they don’t want to be understood, in the secret code I think I am beginning to follow.
Something about leaving, my mother’s aunt, Uncle Omar, other things that make little sense to me …
My father opens the door and sees me cowering in the light.
“Have you been spying on us?” he asks, almost smiling but I can see something is wrong.
“No, daddy,” I shake my head, “but why must we leave?”
He looks at me strangely, then at my mother. Now, they both stare at me.
“You heard us talking?” my mother asks.
I nod.
“And you can understand?”
I nod again.
“Amina, Amina,” my father shakes his head, reaches for me and picks me up, then speaks to me in the way he only ever talks to my mother, “you are a clever one. How long have you been listening to us when we talk like this?”
“As long as I can remember,” I say.
“And can you speak like this?” he asks.
“No, sir,” I shake my head.
He and my mother look at each other; they are speaking without words now, I think.
“Amina,” my mother says and strokes my hair, “would you like to go somewhere where everyone speaks like this?”
My eyes grow wide; I can’t imagine such a place where everyone talks in code.
“Yes?” I offer, frightened.
“And meet your other cousins?” she asks.
“Yes?” I offer again. I am scared.
And my father sings to me a song about a gazelle and he carries me back to bed and I fall asleep, thinking it was a dream.
But, the next day, is even stranger. Uncle Omar is back again after his last absence … but he is changed. I can’t tell where he has been and no one will tell me. He has bandages around his eyes and he is thinner … he talks strangely …
None of us go to school; I complain and see this is an injustice. It is Saturday, I insist, so I must go to school. I am told to be quiet.
Then, uncles Hamza and Hani are around and everything becomes more confused. We children are shunted off and are given candy even though we haven’t had a meal. Uncle Omar kisses everyone except my father, my father does the same, then they leave. Aunt Saffiyah starts crying loudly; my mother hugs her. Hamza stands uncomfortably.
“So many children,” he keeps saying and I don’t understand why, pacing and looking at no one.
My mother and aunt watch him.
“We go,” he says.
And, in minutes, we do; I know they have gathered up papers but little else, just a few bags. I look around and I am confused. The adults herd us like animals as we go down our little alley, out to the street called straight. There, Hani has found two taxis, cars made in Europe before my mother was born, for us; I am put in one with my mother, my siblings, in the back, Hamza sitting by the driver. Aunt Saffiyah is with Uncle Hani and her children in the other.
Uncle Hamza talks rapidly with the driver, shows him something, something I should know later must be a lot of money. We leave. My mother, I notice, is crying. I don’t know why. Hamza tries to tell jokes but they fail.
Farewell to That
I have never seen my mother smoke and I will only see her smoking one other time the rest of my life, but, today, she is smoking, furiously. My father’s youngest brother is also smoking furiously; so is the cab driver. And, in the back seat with my mother, I am getting choked along with my infant sister, my toddler brother, and my older sister.
I can barely stand it. All three adults are barely speaking. I complain about the smoke loudly as we go down an almost empty street. Stores have drawn their doors closed. No one is about though it is Saturday.
My mother waves me to silence.
My uncle suggests another route.
The driver nods, takes it. I am scared and I hate this cold, damp, smoky air.
We go down a street, empty like the others. The car stops.
The driver says something I don’t understand then. My uncle repeats it softly. My mother says, ‘Shit,’ the first time I’ve ever heard that word; I guess from her expression that she is upset.
I think now I can get out of the smoky car. No one notices at first; my mother says my name in warning but I ignore her; I am excited to get out of the car.
Instantly, I wish I hadn’t: there is a powerful, pungent stench in the air, a smell that reminds me of Alia’s diapers and rotting garbage only much, much worse. It is a smell that will stay with me forever, the smell of death, loosed bowels and putrefying flesh.
I look up.
At once, I wish I hadn’t. Hanging above the street, on a sign that probably repeats some Party slogan, are four men. Their clothes are bloody and torn; two are wearing stained robes, the other two western styles. Their bearded faces are broken and bruised. They are limp, lifeless. Three of them are barefoot, the fourth wears one shoe. Their feet are swollen. I stare at them in horror. One of them seems to stare back at me from his protruding, bloody eyes, his tongue sticking out at me in defiance. This will be the stuff of nightmares for years; their faces will never be forgotten.
Uncle Hani gets out of the car, grabs me, pushes me back in and gets in the front seat.
“DO NOT DO THAT AGAIN!” he says to me and I am more afraid; I feel like I have made these bad things happen.
The driver puts the car in reverse and we go backwards for a long way down the narrow street.
We turn onto another road and then another and then another. The tight-packed alleys give way to wider roads; we pass blocks of tall, hastily built apartment buildings. Still, hardly anyone is out.
Then, we begin to go up into the mountains and the City is behind us.
“Don’t look back,” Hani says to her, then recites, “Fanajaynahu wa ahlahu ajma ‘aina. Illa ajuzan fi al ghabirina.”
My mother looks at him and laughs, the first time today.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I don’t have any intention of being Lut’s wife!”
The driver laughs at that; the children are mystified.
And we leave Damascus.
Flight
That winter of ’82, I’ll learn later, was a terrible time in the Land of the Left Hand. Abu Righal, as my uncle would call him, or the Lion as he’s better known decided that he’d had enough of the Society of the Muslim Brothers and it was time to finally suppress them. Things had been getting worse for a while and my uncle was deeply involved.
The year I was born, the Lion of Jaulan sent the army into Lebanon to take sides in the civil war; against the Muslims, against the nationalists. At the Hill of Thyme in that land, Muslims were massacred for, so we believed, doing nothing more than trying to achieve equality in an Arab land. And the Lion of Jaulan had suppressed them on behalf of the splitters, the French speakers, the friends of the Zionists, the Christians …
So, Muslims in Syria began to agitate against the Lion and the rest of his tribe, began saying more loudly that an Arab nation with a Muslim majority shouldn’t suffer under the polytheists’ rule …
And my uncle was loud among them in the capital. So, he was picked up and jailed. And, when he was, my father decided it was time to return and care for the family, as he was now eldest brother. So, we’d gone back.
And my uncle had been released soon after but wasn’t able to teach at the University any more so my father stayed on and supported him and his children. And Uncle Omar worked for the brotherhood instead.
And he was jailed again, taken off to Palmyra for a longer time. There, they killed most of the Brothers in the prison. My uncle was lucky; we have a cousin who was well placed in the Party and, for his sake and for the memory of Omar’s father and brother, his life was spared, as he’d done nothing more than agitate. But he was tortured; he left an eye in Palmyra.
And they released him again in the days of massacre, when the law that all members of the Brotherhood would be killed. Laws are one thing; family another, so even a Renaissance Man like our cousin could be moved by ties of blood to let a kinsman go.
Omar returned … and he and my father and mother and aunt and uncles knew it was time to go. We knew we had hours only. So, we fled, fled with nothing but the clothes on our back and the papers and money on our persons.
This is how I left the seat of my fathers. This is how our clan’s diaspora began. Two brothers to America, a sister to Kuwait, a brother to Saudi Arabia, another to Denmark … wherever would take us. We go where we have passports and visas, leave the keys to the house with Hamza who will stay to take care of my grandmother and to tend the memories and keep the papers intact for the rest of us.
The Road From Damascus
I don’t remember ever being out of the city before that day; I have seen a photograph that shows a very young me picnicking somewhere in the Barada Gorge but I don’t recall it. So, everything is new and comes in a rush; I see cattle and sheep just standing in … emptiness. I can’t quite understand why the horizons are so large, why there are no buildings to hem us in. There are mountains that we twist and turn past.
We enter Lebanon, and cross the first of many checkpoints. Men with guns make us get out of the car, look all through it, everyone’s papers are in order.
“Americans,” I hear the Syrian soldiers who let us go towards Lebanon say.
I don’t quite understand why; the little that I clearly understand about Americans is that they live far away somewhere and give comfort to the enemy. Or so Miss Su’ad has told us, told us when she has us practice what to do if the enemy launches a new attack on us, for the enemy is filled with hate and greed and jealousy, hates us for what we have and wants to take it from us, as he has done so many times before.
Another checkpoint, it happens again …. Slowly I make a connection; I recall that Father brought mother from America. Maybe they mean us? I remember that Aisha and I were born outside the city, to our great shame.
I ask my mother, Are we going to America?
Yes, she says.
I ask, is America near the sea? I’d like to see the sea …
Yes, you will see the sea …
More checkpoints; Syrian army, Lebanese ones, the country is a crazy patchwork in the beginning of 1982 and the short ride to Beirut by car takes many hours, made even longer by crying children, hungry children, children who need to pee …
At last, we come into the outskirts of the city and still more checkpoints before, finally, we reach the docks and I see the garbage strewn oily water that is the Mediterranean, smell the rich funk of rotting fish and garbage and saltwater … and I am entranced … here is the Sea! If I’d known the words, I’d’ve shouted thalassa! Thalassa! Every time we glimpsed it coming down the mountain had I known it was there to glimpse.
We leave the taxi and hani goes and buys tickets on the ferry for all of us. The second taxi comes … I wonder where is Daddy? My cousins wonder the same but no one will tell us. We’ll see them soon, they reassure us.
Hani buys candy for us. I notice it is warmer here than at home. And then we arre made to line up, led over a creaking gangway onto a ship that’s seen better days.
A boat ride? I’m a little scared but excited. Rania is starting to cry in fear.
But somehow, we are all on the boat before too long, then off over what I suppose must have been a wine-dark sea to Cyprus as the sunsets, then nervous waiting crowded all in a single hotel room. My mother rushing around, taking charge of things a bit more easily now as her language is talked by many here … Aunt Saffiyah does more of the child-herding … Hani is still with us and he is rushing around too …
And, after three days of confusion, Hani comes back from the dock and thrills everyone; with him are my father and my uncle. They tell a story that makes little sense, mountain roads and backtracking, finally coming through a checkpoint into the Bekaa with Omar in the trunk and catching a ferry in Tarablus.
Yes, Hamza wil be able to get the car … if he can get to Tarablus. He has a key …
More days of stress and … tickets are ready for onet half of us;
Omar had said he’d go to Khurasan and join with the Black banners being unfurled there but my father convinces him otherwise; a camp in Peshawar is no place to raise a family … and many calls and much wrangling and somehow there are visas for Omar and his family so we will all go to America …
And we go to the airport … and we fly! First to Europe, then switching planes in some country where everyone looks sickly pale, then a flight that goes on and on and Alia is screaming most of the time from the pain in her ears … and I am running through the plane having the time of my life … until the mean lady in pale blue tells me I can’t anymore …
And we are landing; we six fly in to Dulles and hit the tarmac and walkout , pass so fast through customs … we carry so little, we are citizens …
And there, standing to greet us are faces that are bright and excited and happy and completely alien … someone who calls himself an uncle, two gangly giant boys, an aunt, someone who says she is my grandmother …
And they all terrify me …
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