Syrian Dust by Francesca Borri

Author:Francesca Borri
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Syria, civil war, Aleppo, refugees, journalism, middle east
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2016-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

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3 Paul Wood, “Face-to-face with Abu Sakkar, Syria’s ‘heart-eating cannibal,’” BBC News Magazine, July 5, 2013.

4 The lyrics are from “La collina.”

5 Remarque, op.cit., 122.

SUMMER 2013

We’re running. We’re running quickly between the houses in Salaheddin, now in ruins, these houses that are nothing but rubble and rats, nothing but caked blood, we’re running, quickly, from house to house, through the breaches in the foundations, the ones the snipers use, through gaps in the walls, from room to room; we’re running, quickly, running through these apartments that are like dig sites, strewn with objects still intact, still in place, except they’re all grimy now, covered in dust, and we run and run, from room to room, from floor to floor, staircases that, suddenly, jut out of thin air, because everything has collapsed, all gone, just these stairs there, now, you turn around and there’s nothing left anymore, abruptly, only rubble, just more rubble, and so we run, turn back, run quickly, this chopper over our heads, the clatter getting closer, and there are mortars, all around, bullets, nothing but mortars and bullets and we’re running from house to house, running quickly, running in the midst of these charred bodies, these intact charred bodies, an entire family at supper, completely black, and everything is normal in the room, everything in its place, the chandelier, the sofa, the china closet, the dinner plates, everything intact, the clock, only it’s all grimy with dust, and these six bodies, at the table, composed, fork in hand, still chatting, these six charred bodies, eyes wide, sockets empty, these skeletons, and us running, running, the helicopter slinking low between the streets, hunting for us, hunting for the last ones still alive, while everything, all around us, explodes, explodes and collapses, and there’s only this helicopter hunting us, only we are running from room to room, floor to floor, quickly, and we can’t stop, because if you stop, before turning, before taking another flight of stairs, if you stop to make sure that there are no snipers on the other side, someone grabs you from the rubble, grabs you by the ankles, pulls you to the ground, these bodies, pleading, “Water, water,” they beg, gripping your ankles, pulling you to the ground, but the chopper is over our heads and it’s hunting us, it’s seen us, it saw us and we have to run, just run, fast, because there’s also a plane now, a jet, and it goes into a nosedive, the plane, spins into a nosedive, it saw us, it rushes at us and . . .

Brightness.

Brightness.

3:37.

It’s 3:37. Only 3:37 a.m.

A pine tree. A pine tree outside the window. A swing set.

The swing, the hills.

Ramallah.

Ramallah. Back again.

Ramallah.

For months now I haven’t slept.

For months now I wake up at the same time.

“I like starting with a word,” Federico wrote me, “and following with other, freely associated words.” He wrote: “Weightless, Spontaneous, Airy, Vibrant. Soaring.”

He wrote to me from Newcastle, where he teaches at the university.

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