Without Refuge: Chapters 1–4

I squeeze into the shadow of rubble heaps and ruined buildings.

Before I follow, I stop at the gable end of a bombed-out block to wait for my little brother.

Shopkeepers come fast if they see us snatching damaged goods, but airstrikes come faster, screaming out of the sky to pulverize everything.

When the road is blocked with fallen masonry from a collapsed building, Hamza scrambles over the scorched bricks.

I shove Alan against the scorched wall beneath an overhang of bricks and crumbling mortar.

A shuddering rumble passes through us, beneath us. The deep earth itself convulses.

Then comes a brief silence—the familiar stillness after a strike. It rushes in, hot and insistent. It crams my throbbing ears.

We need to get moving before the bedlam that always follows an airstrike tears the place apart.

We clamber from our makeshift shelter, brushing down our jeans and sweaters.

Dayah drops to her haunches and snatches Alan to her.

As soon as we heard whispers of ISIS coming to Kobani, he gathered up a group of men from our neighborhood and traveled to the industrial center on the outskirts of the city.

They bought a dozen electricity generators and drums of diesel with the utility allowance from the city council, brought them home in a convoy of minibuses, and locked them into the storage sheds behind the mosque.

“I didn’t lose them,” I say. “They were collateral damage.”

“There are unexploded shells. And snipers. And ISIS. Not to mention Protection Units everywhere—they’re not going to just let us get away with snatching stuff.”

We skirt the bright courtyards around the mosque, avoiding any light that might expose us.

Even Hamza is silent and swift as he sidles past.

Light from cooking fires in derelict buildings softens the dense dark.

Firelight shines behind him. I can’t see his face: only his silhouette.

I look at him to answer, and my heart stops as he slinks behind me.

They can hardly see Hamza because my swaggering cousin has shrunk to almost nothing behind me.

Even though it’s dark, even though his face is in shadow, it seems that his eyes glow with red fire like the tip of his smoldering cigarette.

A deafening roar engulfs the dark city streets.

He races from the blaze of brightness and the deafening racket.

Violent gusts blast my ears and face. Clamor and chaos slice my blood and heartbeat.

My lungs scald in the burning air.

I look around from where I sit on top of hot rubble and broken brick. It shifts and slides beneath me with the sound of broken crockery.

I clamber to my feet, seeking something to steady me.

I crouch next to where he’s sprawled on his back, blasted among the charred debris.

Hamza’s legs give occasional lurches, strange spasms that ease his dead weight in my arms.

I see a black oblong shape through the heat-shimmer: an open doorway that might lead out.

Grazes and burns cover my body.

When she touches my blackened feet, I scream. What I thought was dirt turns out to be charred blisters.

“We can’t stay in Kobani.” Her voice is brittle. “Not after today.”

Baba says nothing. The quiet, broken only by my wheezing, reminds me of the brooding in the burning building before it crashed down.

Look at Ghalib—he almost got killed today. Hamza is critically injured.

My heart is scarred by raw terror. Heavy with remorse. Frightened Hamza will die.

My feet are still bandaged and though I can’t walk properly outside, I hobble around the house.

He pulls his hand from his mouth and looks at his chapped thumb.

Alan stares at the ghostly squares left behind by the rich tapestries on the walls.

“I have savings put aside,” he says today. He smears on cooling antiseptic cream with his fingertips. “For university education for the three of you. For Bushra’s dowry. For surgery on Alan’s leg.”