Syria

We were being held captive inside the Great Mosque’s courtyard. The sky above us was an eerie pitch-black. We had been locked up by a one-eyed ogre that seemed to have sprung up from a squalid dungeon in hell. It beggared belief how much terror he had spread. He had decapitated innocents, and as the fine necromancer he had proven to be, he had managed to sow corruption in the Levantine territories. He had driven dozens of people to the brink, but not us, because we knew that we had God on our side. We had begged Him to send us one of His warriors to gouge out the demon’s only eye and free us from him.

We knew our prayers had been answered when we saw a knight descend from the sky enveloped in a halo of light and riding a creature that looked like an angel. The knight placed his hands over the angel’s wings to bring it to a halt. The crowd inside the mosque had never ...Read more →

Any resemblance to reality is decidedly intentional.

1

Diab visited me in my dreams and asked me to cook him a fattoush. Thus, I called Sami’s mother to help me prepare it.

2

The two women started to make the dish for the boy, who had died two months before. That afternoon, Sami’s mother wrote on her Facebook wall, “I have been thinking of late of all the guests for whom we lovingly cook, write songs, and dance, and who, however, never end up showing. Not only do they turn their backs on us, but they also foist their crude absence on us. Today I recalled the features of the poetry about absence and presence that I once studied. Then I plugged away at putting the fattoush together for Diab, a boy whose acquaintance I never made. I know how he died though, as well as what he looked like by virtue of the two pictures I have seen of him. One hangs on the wall of his house; the ...Read more →

I have always wanted to be called a hero at least once in my life. My city is a den of criminal activity. One time, I saw a bunch of kids beat up a smaller boy just because he had briefly interrupted their match as he passed by them. On a different occasion, I saw some grown-ups picking a fight. A potbellied dude tried to break up the altercation. Unfortunately, things got heated real quick and one of the men ended up with his head bashed into the pavement. The culprit immediately disappeared into the throng that had clustered around the brawl and yelled, “What an outrage! What a disgrace!”

However, even as the blood started staining the pavement, the crowd’s general hue and cry veered toward a new subject; people began singing the praises of the potbellied man who had stepped in to try and salvage the situation. “You are our hero!” they shouted in unison.

Once, at the souk, one of the merchants grabbed me by the arm. He had decided that ...Read more →

Second prize holder of the “One Thousand Nights and Awakening” literary contest

I didn’t know the bus was going to drive by Abbassiyyin Square. I had been trying to avoid the square for the past two years, but the elderly driver had decided to round it, heedless of the anguish it might cause passengers to cut across an area loyal to the ranks of the Front.

The bus approaches the entrance to the square bordering the Zabaltani district and drives past some big rubber tires scattered on the side of the road. Despite my stress-induced alertness, at that moment I fail to curb the tide of memories flooding back and drowning my brain. We take a right turn in front of the big sports center named after the square: Abbassiyyin International Sports Center. I had spent hours in front of that building over the last few years, waiting for any means of transport to arrive and take me home to the inner part of the Eastern Ghouta suburbs.

We hadn’t called it Eastern Ghouta back ...Read more →