Homes by Abu Bakr al Rabeeah & Winnie Yeung

Author:Abu Bakr al Rabeeah & Winnie Yeung
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Freehand Books
Published: 2018-04-20T04:00:00+00:00

11

FEBRUARY 2014

Winter

Four months after the terror of that explosion at the weapons depot, a very odd thing happened: a vicious winter storm swept through most of Syria and the Middle East. One December morning, I woke up to see our birdcages and chicken coops covered in inches of snow. Of course, snow during the winter months in Syria was not totally unheard of, but it normally melted within hours of falling. This year, the snow just kept falling. I ran outside to bring my birds in and I was surprised at how quiet the world was. The bombed-out shells of buildings were blanketed by snow, the buzz of Homs muffled and silent. It was almost beautiful.

After the snow finally melted, the last winter months remained bitterly cold. On the morning of February 9, Grandmother phoned me in a panic. Soldiers were raiding their apartment building, looking for weapons or suspected rebels. The sounds of boots kicking open doors and muffled shouts drifted up to the top floor. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Please, Abu Bakr, come get me.”

When I arrived, I waited around the corner to make sure the army had moved on to the next building. No sounds. No shabiha. I sprinted up the stairs and had barely tapped at the door when it swung open and there she was, trembling, eyes glazed. Her clammy hand gripped mine. “Alhamdulillah, Abu Bakr, praise God you’re here…”

I took her by her shoulders as gently as I could but I was shocked by how tiny she felt next to me; my grandmother had never felt small before. She was pale and kept stumbling and I couldn’t wrap my mind around how changed she was. Just last week, she had been kicking our feet off the couch and nagging us to help her start cleaning up the garden in preparation for spring. Now as we shuffled home together, we had to stop for little breaks every block so that she could catch her breath, even though she never seemed to be able to.

When we finally got to our apartment, Abeer and Mother rushed out to greet her. Mother’s eyes widened with worry, just for a flash. Those short moments of the army raid left my grandmother a hollow shell of who she used to be.

I settled Grandmother onto the couch with a blanket while Abeer brought her a bowl of lentil soup. Blankly, Grandmother stared at it for a long time before she finally waved it away. Abrar bounced in with an orange and a paring knife; she loved to watch the way Grandmother could peel the entire orange in one long, winding strip. “No, little one, I’m not hungry. My stomach hurts,” Grandmother whispered. She barely spoke a word after that, other than mumbled prayers.

That’s what terror does to you. It weakens you. It deflates you, as it did my grandmother. We hovered around her for the rest of the day and it was decided that she would stay at our place until she recovered her strength.

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