Life in Aleppo, Syria

Chapter Twenty-Three

• Ahmed lived in Aleppo, the biggest city in Syria
• Aleppo is very old and home to Jami' Halab al-Kabir, a famous old mosque
• Aleppo includes the most big market bazaar in world
• The vast tiled courtyard of the Great Mosque, its thousand-year-old minaret, and the Al Madina souk were familiar tourist places
• The Al Madina souk is thirteen kilometers of covered shops which sell everything from bolts of silk to nuts
• Ordinary rhythms of life include smells of jasmine while walking to school
• Other rhythms include cheering on the Red Castle, the city's champion football team
• The pomegranate tree by the playground, pigeons on branches, and helping his grandfather prune roses are fond memories
• Ahmed recalls watering pear and loquat trees at his nursery
• He remembers Ramadan nights, long Taraweeh prayer, and playing with his sisters and eating date-filled ma'arouk sweet bread
• His father used to take him through the twisting cobblestone alleyways of the Old City to listen to Sufi musicians

Life During War

• When the war started, Ahmed was eleven years old
• Rebels wanted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to take over eastern part of Aleppo
• The government army tried to take it back
• One morning everything was calm, next a bomb went off one street from Ahmed
• Baba ordered Ahmed and his family away from the windows and rushed outside
• A cloud of gray, chalky dust hovered in the air where his friend Hassan's apartment building had been
• Ahmed could hear cries and shouts from neighbors scrambling atop what remained of the building tearing with bare hands through the rubble
• The building was gone and Hassan, who Ahmed saw earlier carrying home a stack of bread, might have been gone too
• The sun was still shining, the summer air still scented with coffee, a motorcycle engine roared and Fairuz, the popular Lebanese singer, blared from a radio
• Ahmed saw a rebel soldier crouching with a gun in neighbor's orange tree
• More bombs and gunfire followed
• Many people took all they could in cars, buses, or motorbikes and left
• There was not enough petrol to leave the city this way
• Ahmed wished he could describe the exodus of people
• Families crammed together in the flatbeds of pickup trucks and other circus like scenes
• Even without petrol, Ahmed's family could have left but his father feared that the refugee camps forming

Conditions in Aleppo

• Grandfather has heart problem and mother does not want to leave him
• Mother worries about what would happen yo him if they left
• Electricity came back on for about two hours every day so mother could check her email
• She read news of roads north being closed and families stranded on the Syrian side of the border
• The Syrian side of the border had spoiled food, infested by lice and without toilets in the scorching heat
• Mother said it was better to die in Aleppo than the border
• In 2014, Ahmed's father started a secret school for his students, underground in a cellar
• Boys over ten years old were not allowed in the secret school because Daesh, the Islamic State, wanted them in Aleppo to fight
• Last winter was very hard for Ahmed's family since the heat only worked a few hours a day
• The bread lines grew longer, and people quarrelled to protect their spots
• Government planes were bombing schools and hospitals
• Rebels were executing entire families they suspected of collaborating with the government
• Daesh was killing civilians who didn't follow their strict religious rules
• Ahmed's father’s bag was packed while his mother wanted to wait until spring
• People lived in flimsy tents in the Turkish refugee camps, with no heat and very little food, and some reported it was even worse than being back home.

Life as a Refugee

• The area outside the city were still targets so they waited several days till the bombs seemed less frequent and the artillery fire more distant
• A few days later, it was quiet and they went home
• Many buildings fallen on ground, shops closed, few car on road
• Despite this, their home was still there
• It was only when they had stumbled inside, tears brimming in his mother's eyes, the girls almost giddy
• They realized that the TV, his father's desktop computer, the table and every single one of the chairs were gone, looted most likely by rebels
• A foul smell drifted from the kitchen and the food in the fridge had rotted after the power went out
• His sister Jasmine shouted that the toilet wouldn't flush
• Neighbors inspected the sandbags piled up at an intersection
• The electricity flickered on, a radio blared, a baby cried
• Ahmed and his family ate stale bread and fig jam on the floor
• They never made an actual decision to stay, though an emergency bag always remained packed, waiting by the door
• Some stores reopened and, with one of their remaining neighbors, they bought a generator
• This gave enough energy to power the fridge
• Ahmed helped his grandfather plant vegetables like squash and fava beans

Memories

• Ahmed and his siblings collected rainwater that the always-working taps supplied and brought containers to the large metal stations
• Ahmed invented dangerous indoor games for Jasmine, who was seven, and Nouri, who was only three.
• At the end of summer, he went back to school that was different since half the teachers and more than half the students were gone
• Some, like Hassan, had been killed, but most had fled to Turkey, Jordan or Lebanon
• Days became too dangerous to walk the five blocks to school, so his father taught him and Jasmine at home
• One spring, his school was bombed, but luckily no one was there
• When they heard the vacuum-cleaner sound of a government helicopter flying in overhead, they would run to the shelter in the basement
• If they heard a whizzing noise, even Nouri knew there was not enough time and to instead run to the bathroom, the safest place in the house
• They would all pile into the tub together, his mother and father on top of them and Ahmed's palms sweating
• One day a bomb hit his grandfather's nursery with his grandfather fortunately gone
• The nursery's destruction affected him almost as much as the death of Ahmed's grandmother several years earlier

Chapter Twenty-Four

• The day after the lockdown it ended, the missing terrorist was still on the loose
• Police claimed that he'd most likely left the city, but Max suspected that the government officials who had approved the lockdown were just as tired of being cooped up inside as he was
• An armed police officer not named Fontaine stood outside the entrance of the School of Misery
• Parents were no longer allowed inside the building which reassured Max's mother
• She gave him an extra-tight hug at the courtyard entrance
• Max said he was in more danger from the one Belgian kid than he was from the terrorist
• He regretted stating to his mom that Oscar was bothering him

Interactions with Oscar

• The garden was tangled, the bushes were overgrown and dried leaves littered the ground
• Bright-green birds twittered in the trees overhead
• Max pictured Ahmed in the wine cellar, as much of a prisoner as the cage man in the Magritte painting
• Oscar asked what Max was doing in a sharp tone
• Max hopped down to the asphalt, ready for trouble
• Oscar looked tired, like he had spent too many nights up late listening to the news
• Oscar taunted whether Max was scared and wanted to go back home but Max was not bothered
• Max thought about what his Mom had said about Oscar just wanting to be friends
• Max dismissed the thought since Oscar was probably just waiting for him to come up with another, angrier comeback so he had an excuse to take a swing at him
• Oscar couldn't upset him anymore
• Max calmly looked him straight in the face until Oscar walked away
• Max thought about finding a way to get Ahmed outside for a day

Max's Emotions

• Max was tempted to remind her that her experience with school was like a century old and something she couldn't possibly understand about a thug like Oscar
• Several kids, including Farah, were missing from Max's class and half the metro lines were still closed
• Max wished he'd asked Farah for her number so he could text her about how weird school felt after the lockdown
• Every time there was a police siren or a loud noise outside, everyone froze, even Oscar, and looked as if they were deciding whether to duck under their desks
• Max realized how Ahmed's experiences were nothing compared to Claire and his mother
• Imagining a bomb blowing up Claire and his mother was too horrible to think about, even before he reminded himself that Ahmed somehow lost his father too
• He figured it was better to let Ahmed tell him when he was ready
• It was unfair that Ahmed experienced one one-hundredth of the sorrow and tragedy that he had already experienced
• Thinking about this made him angry and made him want to change things for Ahmed

Ahmed from Aleppo, Syria recalls his childhood. He remembers the Great Mosque, the Al Madina souk, and the city's champion football team. He remembers watering pear and loquat trees at his nursery.