A Disappearance in Damascus by Deborah Campbell

Author:Deborah Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2016-09-13T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

THE DISAPPEARANCE

THE DAY BEGAN LIKE any other. Awakened at dawn by the call to prayer, I fell back asleep for another hour. When I woke again I felt along the wall for the light switch, scanning for cockroaches before stepping barefoot to the kerosene stove, where I struck a match to heat water for coffee. I was glad to be back in my old Kuwaiti Hotel room, sized to fit my needs. I took a quick shower, since the water in this part of Damascus was not only undrinkable but in short supply, then pulled on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that covered my arms to the wrist—there was no need to stand out any more than necessary. Descending the empty stairwell I entered the marvellous cacophony of a perfect late-spring day.

The morning light ignited the gold dome of the shrine. The rattle of taxis, motorcycle carts, vendors rolling up the metal shutters on their shops. Already the Internet cafés were filling up with Iraqi boys who spent all day playing first-person shooter games, pretending to be American soldiers on urban combat missions in neighbourhoods that must have reminded them of home. Outside a storefront, a swarm of happy little schoolgirls in uniform were lined up to buy sweets, giggling and jostling. A boy swerved past on an adult-sized bicycle, weaving precariously on through the gathering crowd.

As I turned past the shrine and crossed the busy main street, dodging taxis that slowed or honked at the sight of me, I realized that I would be leaving here soon. Worried as I was for Ahlam, I couldn’t be here forever, and I had to earn my keep. With a few more interviews I could write another story. I stopped to buy a packet of cigarettes for her from a sidewalk stand, handing the boy exact change without being asked. I needed to go home, to my real home, and deal with my own reality.

As I wended my way through the alleyways towards Ahlam’s apartment, I thought I felt something. A pair of eyes, a man standing next to a motorcycle, staring intently. The sense of being followed occurred to me but I abandoned it like a whim. After years spent working undercover in places where journalists were unwelcome, my radar could be oversensitive; as the only Westerner in the neighbourhood, I shrugged off curious stares.

By nine a.m. we were drinking tea alone at Ahlam’s apartment—the teaspoons of sugar dissolving into a glass, my notebook as usual on my lap, reviewing Arabic verb conjugations from yesterday’s lesson with Umm Sally—when a man knocked at the door. Ahlam went to answer it and stepped out into the stairwell. I could hear them speaking but not their words. Nevertheless I felt an immediate shift in the atmospheric pressure of the room. Without getting up I looked around, wondering where I might hide my notebook, estimating how long it would take to find something that had been concealed in here. Not long.

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