The Trap: terrorism, heroism and everything in between by Alan Gibbons

Author:Alan Gibbons [Gibbons, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781780622460
Publisher: Hachette Children's Group
Published: 2016-09-08T04:00:00+00:00

SPRING, 2014

The hospital wasn’t what Majid expected. He walked along a corridor with pockmarked walls, glancing up at the flaking, whitewashed ceiling. A strip-light was missing. Everywhere he looked, there was dust. A hot wind blew through windows without panes.

‘Not quite the NHS, is it? We try to clean, but the dust keeps coming back. It’s the bombing. It covers everything with this dust.’

He turned to see a doctor in her late twenties. Shaima was beautiful, with almond eyes and dark hair, tied in a bun. She went uncovered, something that surprised Majid. He had believed all the women here donned the niqab.

‘Did you work in the UK?’ he asked. ‘Your English is great.’

‘I studied there,’ she answered. ‘Five years. My big brother still lives in London.’

They stepped into a ward that was as bare as it was shabby. Majid saw a little girl lying on a bed with her mother by her side. Both her legs had been amputated. The stumps were wrapped in bandages.

They walked from bed to bed and exchanged words with people torn apart by war; at least, Shaima did. She had to translate for Majid’s benefit. They reached a woman in late middle age. Her eyes were those of somebody older.

‘This is Noura,’ she told him. ‘The army came to her village. They tortured her son and burned him alive.’

Majid nodded. ‘It is stories like hers that made me come to Syria.’

Noura said something.

‘What was that?’

‘He was barely more than a boy: seventeen. You remind her of him.’

Majid didn’t know what to say.

‘Tell her … tell her I am sorry for her pain.’

Shaima spoke, and Noura nodded.

‘Shukran.’

Thank you.

Majid met Shaima’s look. They made their way outside.

‘So you came to heal?’

‘That was my idea, yes. I only completed two years of my training.’

‘You will learn more in a month here than a year at medical school.’ She brushed some of the ever-present dust from her coat. ‘You will have to learn quickly.’

Shaima wrapped the white coat around her.

‘You came with Yusuf, didn’t you?’

‘That’s right. Why do you ask?’

‘I don’t see you as friends. He talks like an Islamist. You don’t.’

Majid dropped his eyes.

‘Why are you really here, Majid?’

He laughed.

‘I am starting to wonder that myself. I listened to a man. He seemed to have all the answers.’

‘And he talked to you of jihad?’

‘That’s right. How do you know?’

Shaima laughed.

‘You’re not the first. You won’t be the last.’

Shaima’s lips parted then closed as she thought what to say. Finally, she spoke.

‘We called this our democratic revolution. It started with such hope. With joy. There were marches that filled the streets and stretched as far as the eye could see.’ She faltered. ‘Look how they answered the people’s call for freedom.’

Before them, there was a scene more like a moonscape than a modern town. There were collapsed buildings, houses that had been pounded to dust, minarets that had bent like a giraffe’s neck. There was graffiti on the remaining walls, but it had faded. Shaima read the Arabic script for him.

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