A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea(16)

Hanaa breathed a sigh of relief, thinking only of the groceries she would finally be able to bring home to her hungry family. But Shokri was outraged by the announcement. Touching women was considered unacceptable in Islam. He felt that this order to search women was an attempt to provoke the men of Daraa in the government’s desperation to control the population.

“I will never let them lay a hand on you, as long as I live,” Shokri said incredulously, refusing to let Hanaa leave. But she was adamant; the children were growing thinner by the day and Ayat’s young children were constantly crying from hunger.

“We have to feed our family. There’s nothing left in the house.” Hanaa pleaded gently, meeting her husband’s eyes. “If I have to suffer the indignity of being searched, I will.”

Shokri looked around at his frail family and reluctantly agreed.

When Hanaa finally stepped outside her home, she found that the neighborhood was completely occupied by soldiers, tanks, and weapons. Just a few hundred meters from the house, she saw a group of more than one hundred officers sitting around long tables laden with food. She realized that while her family and the other citizens of Daraa had starved, the soldiers had been feasting just outside their doors.

Hanaa tentatively began to cross the street toward the bakery. But before she’d taken more than a few steps, she could feel the weight of the soldiers’ eyes watching her. It suddenly seemed as if every soldier on the street were staring at her. Panicked at the idea of being searched, Hanaa couldn’t move forward. Trembling in the street, she quickly decided to return to the safety of her house and hurried back inside.

Moments later, there was a knock at the door. Shokri answered it, tentatively cracking the door open.

“Who is the woman who just left this house?” a man’s voice asked through the opening. “I want to speak to her.”

Shokri summoned Hanaa, who came to the door and found a tall, stern-looking army general standing there with his machine gun strapped to his side.

“It was me, General. I wanted to get bread for my family.”

“So why did you suddenly turn back?”

“I was too scared, General.” Hanaa kept her eyes lowered respectfully. “There were too many men in the street.”

As he listened to her, the general’s eyes showed a glimmer of sympathy and his voice softened. “I insist that you get food for your family. But you need to go now, while there aren’t any snipers. They’re never out between noon and four.”

Hanaa and Shokri were stunned that this man seemed to be helping them. “Thank you, General, thank you. Allah ma’ak [God be with you],” Hanaa replied, collecting her shopping bag and following him outside. He returned to his group of soldiers, but watched as Hanaa disappeared into the store, then later emerged with her allotted six loaves of bread. When she passed him on her way back to the house, he asked gently, “Did anyone bother you?” She shook her head, keeping her eyes lowered. “Good,” he said. “You should get home now.”

Hanaa quickly made her way home. Back in the kitchen, she remarked, “There is humanity left in people,” as she unpacked the bread and the family gathered for a simple feast.

As the siege wore on, Doaa’s family slowly discovered that many young soldiers were not out to hurt them. Four soldiers in particular—dark, handsome Ali; green-eyed Bahaar; short, boyish Nero, and tall Abdul Aziz—who were all stationed outside their house, were always kind to the family. Ali was nicest of all, often slipping Hanaa a loaf of bread and a few tomatoes with a shy smile while on duty. House searches conducted by these young men were performed halfheartedly, as they usually moved through the rooms quickly and left the shelves untouched and the drawers unopened. Sometimes they lingered inside the house, charging their mobile phones, chatting about the news of the day, or playing with Ayat’s toddlers. On a couple of occasions, they even gave Shokri money for food. Doaa and her sisters felt strangely protected by them and didn’t grip their knives in the same way they did when other soldiers entered their home. Doaa saw clearly that those kind, young soldiers didn’t want to be there any more than her family wanted them there.

One day there was a desperate knocking on their door. Prepared to face yet another raid, Doaa was surprised to find a young man in his early twenties, shaking in fear. He was carrying a gun and had his face covered with a kaffiyeh, a checkered black-and-white scarf.

“Help me!” he pleaded. “I’m with the FSA and the regime is after me. The soldiers are going to kill me!” Doaa had heard that many men who were part of the demonstrations had now joined together to form an armed opposition to the government and named themselves the Free Syrian Army.

“Come inside,” Doaa responded immediately, looking up and down the street. While she couldn’t leave him out there to be killed, she also couldn’t be caught sheltering an FSA soldier. So she quickly came up with a plan to hide him. She and Saja took four cardboard boxes and got the young man to sit against a corner of a room that was crowded with mattresses and small tables. They arranged the boxes around him and covered them with a blanket to resemble a chair. It looked lumpy and a little awkward, but they thought it might work if the sympathetic soldiers conducted the next raid.

They waited an hour before the inevitable knock came. To their relief Ali was standing at the door, but just behind him they saw an officer they didn’t recognize, and they began to panic.