Category : Books-Fiction

Sub Category : Horror

In an ocean of blood where there is just concrete skeletons, and what else? Just killing, killing and killing, bodies and graves, this is my home. It is under siege, it’s bombarded, and it is Aleppo.
Most of the apartment blocs I was responsible for maintaining lay decimated by shelling, its ruins a testament not only to urbanicide, but also fratricide. We survivors looked half dead with an intense sorrow hung over us from witnessing this devastation that surrounded us no matter where we looked. 
I lived in a half shelled-out building with Abdullah, who still had not accepted the death of his wife after she was shot in the head. He carried on as though she was just badly injured—dressing her, feeding her, and nursing her. Last Friday, at the time we usually prayed together, he screamed for a full hour. His wife at this stage was rotting. His screams were answered by the shrill of live ammunition.

I continued drinking my cup of Arabian coffee. In this hellhole of rations and degraded quality of life, it’s my secret how I managed two cups a day, fed myself, and stayed sane. I am even too afraid to tell that to the piece of paper I am writing on.

The only other man who had remained in this half-ruin loved his wife; believe me, his was true love. He worshipped the ground she walked on and loved her, the very same as on the day they first met back in Raqqa before they moved to here. He told me he only bothered to work hard for her; otherwise working did not interest him.

I know he was not mad. When we looked into each other’s eyes, I saw only sorrow. Five minutes later he started crying like a child. I cradled him in my arms. He wept and moaned, “Ahmed, she really is dead!”

It shocked me how his mind had fooled him until now into not registering the actuality of her death.

“Everything will be okay. I will fry us some bread and eggs. Food always makes people feel better.” My response was all too typical of me. Once  food would become unavailable, I, too, would lose touch with reality. 

I felt realising she was dead, this was a release for Abdullah. I was relieved that we would finally bury his wife. When I returned with his meal he had gone. I buried his wife in a backyard garden, as respectfully as I could manage. With so many of us crushed or blown to pieces, who worried about how the dead might be commemorated? No one even called the living to prayer anymore.

 In a place so recently full of hope for reconciliation, it was mad to consider isolation splendid, and folly to assume safety. Why did these Jihadists want more blood, especially mine? What is one more drop of blood in an ocean of it?

Although partly destroyed, my building was still inhabitable. The bombers likely considered it a job only half done, since their solution demands full destruction. I thought of the people who had lived here. No one returned as of now. Some have died in the protracted conflict, but surely others have made it across borders.

I walked past the shell of a nearby apartment whose former occupant had fled his debtors before the current war broke out. Addicted to gambling, and having lost his wife to this addiction, he still had not reached rock bottom, until he placed a wager that caused certain dangerous people to go after him. In a way his last gamble was lucky.

 

I sat on the seat of one of the public toilets in my building within the wilderness of urban deterioration. I had a view of the all-encompassing urbanicide. A city scape, where home after home, business after business, and even our holy mosques, had been destroyed. I felt like the world was ending the way we had all been warned down through the ages. Those who wage war will not stop until the last nails are pounded into peace’s coffin. High on methamphetamines, speed, and LSD, they rape, decapitate, commit genocide, and find novel forms of cruelty to use on their own brethren.

I wiped and flushed. I listened to water flowing slowly in the pipes and the tank filling up behind me. But I had not yet pulled up my trousers to leave, when I thought I heard voices. Disturbed for the first time in my life by the sound of speech, I almost hoped they were ghosts. Nobody had come here for six months. No one who left returned. The past was debris strewn across the city whose future lay buried under fallen grandeur.

People, not ghosts, walked the hall outside my refuge. I carefully listened. Hyper, they did not sound like anyone authorized or contracted to come here. Had insurgents finally entered this part of the city? Those voices were aggressive. What their kind wanted was never good, and I was badly outnumbered. I feared the scent of my waste might give me away. My stomach was upset.  I was sure I could be detected. 

They were running and shouting! “Should we set bombs here?” Asked one.

Quickly, I pulled up my trousers, closed and sat on the toilet seat lid, and lifted my feet onto it. My ears rang when shots were fired. I heard shards of glass falling as bullets hit walls, windows, and doors. Then it was quiet. I listened for cues of what they might do next. 

 

My heart started racing. I had seen bombs crush people under rubble or leave them to die in unbearable pain. Some people can cope with pain, but not people like me.

They continued negotiating, but I couldn’t quite make out their words. Was it about where to place bombs for optimum destruction? If they blew up the building I might die quickly. Yet, if they were prepared to squat here, how would I ever get out? If they found me they would torture me.

I opened the toilet cubicle door, and, gently, opened the window. They could easily have overheard me, and might enter and shoot me in the back. I placed my hands on the ledge and lifted my knees up.

Outside on the window ledge, looking for a way of escape, I judged the distance to the ground below. If I fell, I had no idea how I would survive, but I was going to have to drop. I didn’t like the idea of falling, but liked less the idea of staying. I saw a drain pipe that should support my weight, but might snap, and drop me too quickly, too far. 

As I was about to slide over the ledge and grab the drain pipe, I realized my sweaty hands had no decent grip. I needed gloves. I stayed on the ledge, then heard and saw a van drive up to the building.

“Get out—out!” One of four angry, armed men shouted.

I saw what I presumed to be a man in a black hood taken from the back of the van. I left the window ledge, crept to the door, and peeked through the keyhole. I did not want to let them catch me alive, but chances for escape were slim. I had to try, or risk being tortured, mutilated, and left for dead. I did not want the terrorists to cut me into pieces. Either in death or life, I wanted to stay whole.

“Did you bring your camera?” I overheard one of them say.

“Why?”

“We are going to film, and then broadcast, our prisoner’s ordeal.”

“I will film everything.”

From the keyhole I watched as they vacated the floor I was on. I slowly turned the key in the door and removed my shoes. I went on tiptoe and opened the hall door. Intent on getting out of the complex alive, I tiptoed all the way back to my apartment. 

I studied my apartment. I did not hear a sound or see evidence that the door to my apartment had been forced. So I approached the door, kept looking behind me, and slowly opened it.

I kept an AK 47 under my bed. I have never fired a bullet from this gun, there is always a first time. I got the gun, sat down, and cradled the gun in my hands as I had Abdullah. I could hear the insurgents walking up the stairs. I heard them speak on loudspeakers, and looked outside. 

Something wrapped in a black bag hurtled past my window. The object thudded to the pavement. I waited; sure they were going to blow up the building. I didn’t know when, but imagined they would do a thorough job. Mercy was not in their creed. As far as they were concerned my building was empty.

I kept watching and waiting for what seemed like forever, determined to leave this cursed city. I heard a louder thud just after a larger object flashed past my window. I heard trucks stopping outside. Were more invaders coming? If so, I would be discovered, and, if I couldn’t shoot them all first, I would be either dead or tortured to death.

I heard feet clambering down the stairs, and then saw what I presumed were all the insurgents getting into their trucks, turning on their engines, and driving away.

I waited twenty minutes before I left my room. I decided to check every floor. Had bombs on timers been set? Had some insurgents remained? What had been dropped from the floors above me?

I checked the top and middle floors of the building, but didn’t find anything. When I went downstairs and walked outside, there lay a decapitated body, its bagged head beside it. I figured that there must not be bombs attached to the dead body because they would have exploded when they hit the ground. I picked up the head and placed it on a round steel table people once used for outdoor dining, and opened the bag. The head was my neighbor’s. I refused to dwell deeply on this discovery.

I dug a hole near his wife’s grave and placed Abdullah’s body minus his head into the ground. I kissed Abdullah’s head just to prove that the world was not totally loveless. I said goodbye to Abdullah as I placed his head in the ground. After covering his remains with soil and flowers, I walked away.