They had spent too long with the body. They were in no shape to continue. When they first set out from Damascus, they had been reasonably optimistic that they would eventually deliver their father’s body as promised and were relatively united in their common goal to defend it. But after the first night, holding on to their own selves had become a goal that couldn’t be ignored. The corpse was no more than a pretext. Deep down, all three thought that they couldn’t sacrifice themselves for anyone. Holding on to their lives, despite the misery of them, was the real goal that everyone harbored.
Hussein walked off, down yet another empty road, and left the square. He came back a little later, climbed into the van, and took them to a house where a gaslight was burning and the door was open. Clearly he had spoken to its owners. He left his siblings in the vehicle and went into the single room left undamaged. An elderly woman came out and beckoned to Bolbol and Fatima to enter. Bolbol considered staying where he was, but Fatima took him by the hand and led him out. She kissed the old woman, thanking her for her generosity in hosting them.
Their father’s body stayed alone in the minibus. Bolbol thought that if the dogs managed to find a way in they would tear it to shreds and that he wouldn’t lift a finger to defend it; after it was over, he would pretend that he hadn’t realized what was happening and that in any case protecting the corpse wasn’t his responsibility alone. The others were also Abdel Latif’s children and had an equal obligation to guard his remains.
The room was warm. The old woman’s husband was inside. The old man and woman had to be about eighty. It was clear that they couldn’t hear very well; they couldn’t make out everything that the siblings were saying. Fatima behaved like the hostess, making tea and then warming some extra water in the kettle. She bathed her brothers’ injuries, which had stopped bleeding. Bolbol saw that Hussein’s eye was swollen, and in the large mirror hanging on the wall he saw his own face was full of bruises. They relaxed in the warmth and understood from the old woman that planes had bombed the village a dozen times. Its inhabitants had fled, and only two families remained. They had been waiting to die for many years now.
Gravely, Bolbol asked the old woman if it would be possible to bury their father in her village’s graveyard. She was astonished at the question and said that there had been three hundred new graves in the graveyard in the past year alone. The Free Army had entered the village the year before, but hadn’t been able to hold on to the territory for more than a year. Three of her grandchildren had fought alongside them, and after the great battle more than a hundred bodies had been strewn over the roads and fields. The villagers who were still alive had buried them before traveling to the camps in Turkey.
When the old woman mentioned the village’s name, the siblings realized that they had gone in the wrong direction. The old couple was delighted they had come, however; it had been a long time since they’d spoken to anyone else. They told the story of death, bombardment, and battle with relish, before falling silent and asking the family about Anabiya. In his unadulterated country accent and using old-fashioned words, the man told stories about the time he went to northern Aleppo. He had bought straw there that day, but couldn’t remember the name of the person who had sold it to him; the vendor had been determined to host him, as the hour had gotten very late. Although this had happened sixty years earlier, he spoke about his trip as if it had been yesterday and spent considerable time trying to remember the location of the house in case they knew the name of the person who had sold him the straw. The siblings couldn’t bring themselves to care. Hussein stretched out on an ottoman and dozed off; when the old woman covered him with a worn blanket, he curled up like a child. The old woman led Fatima to a small larder to prepare some food for them. Bolbol felt warm and relaxed; there were only two hours until sunrise, and he spent them in a short, fitful sleep while their host went on trying to remember the name of the man who had sold him the straw.
They had to settle the matter. If they buried their father here, everything would be over. Fatima had regained some energy and, taking the kettle full of hot water, tried to clean her father’s body. It was impossible to master the lethal smell, and the body’s remaining fluids were oozing out of even more cracks in the form of diarrhea-like pus.
For the few hours they had spent in the warm room, Bolbol relaxed. Without preamble, he informed Fatima that their father had married Nevine and was shocked at her indifferent reaction, as if he hadn’t said anything at all. She just laughed and carried on drinking tea. Hussein heard what Bolbol said but also made no comment. He reflected that the news given to him by his friend Hassan, who had been able to leave S during the siege, had been true. The marriage hadn’t been a whim; it was the perfect story of a late love that had healed the wounds of his father’s isolation and loneliness.
One day, Abdel Latif had gone with Lamia to the home of his old friend Najib, which was now the local field hospital. He was surprised to see Nevine with a strip of cloth bound around her head, and she seemed like a trained nurse as she cut and sterilized strips of muslin. She was assisting her first-born son, Haitham, the doctor, who was trying to save the wounded strewn throughout every room in the spacious house. Three other doctors, also from the town, had offered their help. The torpor of the mourners, of everyone, had transformed into inflexible rage.
Every family in the town had flocked to the field hospital after the Mukhabarat prevented the state clinics and hospitals from admitting any of the wounded. Everyone offered what they could: staggering quantities of medicines and muslin cloth were collected from houses and pharmacies, medical equipment was transferred in secret from the clinics, and a makeshift operating room was equipped in the basement after it had been cleared of provisions and the old dresses Nevine had carefully packed away ten years earlier after her husband died in a road accident on his way to Beirut.
Nevine was past sixty, still beautiful; there was a proud look in her eye that had sharpened during her marriage, which had been spent in never-ending battles with her husband’s family. Haitham had graduated from medical college a few months before the revolution, and her younger son, Ramy, twenty-two years old, had graduated from business school the year before and gone straight into military service. Nevine couldn’t bear the loss of Haitham after he was arrested at an air-force Mukhabarat checkpoint—they were notorious for their excessive cruelty—which had caught him leaving the town. When Nevine heard he had been arrested, she was struck with a terrible foreboding. Haitham hadn’t known that treating the wounded was a grave crime in the eyes of the regime. In perfect innocence he acknowledged treating them in his family’s house, and a week later a telephone call came for Nevine. A high-ranking Mukhabarat officer asked her to pick up her son’s body from the military hospital in Mezzeh and then hung up on her.
No one slept in the small town that night. Police and Mukhabarat officers withdrew from the town, and the young people were ready to burn down any building belonging to the regime: the police station, the council building, the houses of informers who were individually known to them, supporters of the party. More than twenty thousand men, women, and children protested and raised their fists in the air in rage while they waited at the town gates for the bodies of Haitham and three of his friends, all murdered under torture in a Mukhabarat facility. One member from each family went to sign a receipt for the body of its son, who had officially died in a car accident or as a result of some mysterious illness.