Silk Road, where traders would travel from Egypt and Europe and China. Afra was talking about Aleppo like it was a magical land out of a story. It was like she’d forgotten everything else, the years leading up to the war, the riots, the dust storms, the droughts, the way we had struggled even then, even before the bombs, to stay alive.
The dead man’s phone flashed again. Someone was desperate to speak to him. A hoopoe bird was sitting in the narenj tree, its inky eyes shimmering. The bird opened its wings, and black and white stripes caught the phone’s light. I became afraid of the light. I knelt down and peeled the phone from the man’s stiff fingers and stuffed it into my rucksack.
The clock struck twelve. From the distance, the soft rumble of an engine. Afra straightened up, her face full of fear. A Toyota took the bend, lights off, wheels churning the ash. The driver got out, rough features, bearded, bald head, black T-shirt, army boots, army trousers, bumbag, handgun at his waist. He was a replica of a regime fighter: he’d shaved his head, his beard too. A trick in case he got caught by Assad’s Shabiha.
He stood there for a moment, inspecting me. Afra moved her feet in the dust, but the man didn’t look at her.
‘You can call me Ali,’ he said finally, and he smiled, a broad smile, so wide that his whole face creased into folds. But something about his smile made me uncomfortable; it reminded me of another smile, a windup clown that Sami’s grandmother had bought him from the market. The smile suddenly faded and Ali’s eyes now darted around in the darkness.
‘What is it?’ I said.
‘I was told three people.’
I gestured to the man on the ground.
‘Too bad.’ There was an unexpected tone of sadness in Ali’s voice and he stood for a moment over the man’s body, head bent, before he knelt down and took a gold wedding band from the dead man’s finger, placing it neatly on his own. He sighed and looked up at the clock tower, then at the sky. I followed his gaze.
‘It’s a clear night. We are in a dome of stars. We have four hours before sunrise. We have to make it to Armanaz by three if you’re going to get across the border by four.’
‘How long does the journey take?’ Afra said.
Ali looked at her now as if he was seeing her for the first time, but he replied with his eyes fixed on me, ‘Just under two hours. And you’re not going to sit with me. Get in the back.’
There was a cow in the back of the pickup, the floor scattered with its faeces. I helped Afra in and the driver instructed us to sit low so we wouldn’t be seen. If we were caught, the snipers would shoot the cow instead. The cow stared at us. The engine started and the Toyota moved as quietly as possible through the ash streets, bumping over rubble.
‘There’s a phone ringing,’ Afra said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I can feel it vibrating on my leg, in your bag. Who’s calling us?’
‘It’s not my phone,’ I said. ‘I switched mine off.’
‘Whose phone is it then?’
I took the phone from the rucksack. Fifty missed calls. It rang again.
Zujet Abbas: the Wife of Abbas.
‘Who is it?’ Afra said. ‘Answer it.’
‘Give me your hijab,’ I said.
Afra unwrapped the hijab from her head and handed it to me. I covered my head with it and answered the phone.
‘Abbas!’
‘No.’
‘Where are you now, Abbas?’
‘No, I’m sorry, I’m not Abbas.’
‘Where is he? Can I talk to him? Did he get picked up? Did they pick him up?’
‘Abbas isn’t here.’
‘But I was talking to him. We got cut off.’
‘When?’
‘Not long. About an hour. Please let me speak to him.’
Just then the pickup stopped, the engine was turned off, footsteps approached. The driver pulled the hijab off me, threw it in the back, and I felt metallic cold between my eyebrows.
‘Are you stupid?’ Ali said. ‘Do you have a death wish?’ He pushed the gun into my forehead, his eyes gleaming. From the phone the wife of Abbas was saying, ‘Abbas, Abbas …’ again and again and again.
‘Give me that!’ the smuggler said, and so I handed him the phone and we set off again.
We were heading to Urum al-Kubra, about twenty kilometres west of Aleppo. We meandered through the ruins of the old city; the western neighbourhoods were held by government forces, the