A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea(4)

The family knew that the prison conditions could be terrible and were fraught with worry. They imagined him sleeping on the floor of a crowded cell, hungry and unable to wash or exercise. They couldn’t afford a lawyer, so the family was uncertain about how they could navigate the complexity of the Jordanian justice system.

As the days passed, their concerns mounted. Not only were they worried about Shokri’s well-being, they also couldn’t afford to live without him. They barely scraped by on the money he brought home, and now they had no income. Hanaa’s family stepped in, giving them food and whatever extra money they could. As a poor family, the Al Zamels had no connections to influential people in the government who might be able to help, and they didn’t dare alert local officials to Shokri’s imprisonment in Jordan, fearing that it could cause him further legal problems upon his return.

The family was not permitted to visit the prison or talk to him on the phone. So they received news of Shokri sporadically from contacts living in Jordan, but it was mostly confusing and only made them more anxious about his treatment. Doaa and her sisters cried every day, and at night, after the girls were asleep, Hanaa wept as well, wondering if her husband would ever come home.

The whole extended family came together to find a way to get him out. Four months after Shokri’s arrest, a friend of his brother’s named Adnaan paid a well-connected lawyer in Jordan ten thousand Syrian pounds (the equivalent of $500) to help Shokri. The lawyer was familiar with the Jordanian legal system and knew the prison officials and the judge who would need to be bribed if Shokri was to be released.

With the ten thousand pounds, the lawyer bought the purest Syrian olive oil—worth two hundred pounds a kilogram—for the officers in charge of the case and the finest cuts of meat for the judge. He persuaded the judge that Shokri had been tricked by the factory owner and was just a simple man trying to support his family. The bribes worked and Shokri was finally released from prison.

Doaa and her family almost didn’t recognize the thin, heavily bearded man who arrived at their doorstep late one night. Once they heard his familiar voice, the girls ran to him, screaming with delight and throwing their arms around him. After four months, Doaa had her father back, and she never wanted to let him go again.

Normal life resumed quickly after Shokri’s release. He went back to his days at the barbershop, while Hanaa continued to cook the family meals. Together they continued to pursue their dream of having a home of their own. Eventually they found an affordable apartment in a cheaper section of Daraa, and they packed up the girls and moved.

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Doaa’s second home was a three-room apartment in the underdeveloped, conservative, and poor neighborhood of Tareq Al-Sad. It took Shokri and Hanaa months to find the dingy, dirty apartment, which was in ill repair. But here they didn’t have to worry about upsetting aunts and uncles, and the children could run freely and be themselves. The girls quickly set out to help their parents clean up the rooms and make them cheerful. Doaa’s sisters immediately took to their new home.

Doaa, however, had trouble adjusting. She hated change and she missed her cousins. She especially missed her old school. It had taken her a long time to open up around her teachers and classmates, and now she had to start all over again. At her new school she hung back shyly while her sisters made new friends. She often feigned illness so that she wouldn’t have to attend class. But Doaa was the kind of child that attracted kindness from others, and over time she slowly made friends and began to enjoy her new environment.

In 2004, the family celebrated the birth of Doaa’s little brother, Mohammad, nicknamed Hamudi. At last, the family had a son. The girls adored him and fought over who got to take care of him. Now that there was a boy in the family, Doaa’s aunts and uncles invited them to move back into the family home, but Hanaa refused. They were now settled in their place and had put down roots in their new neighborhood.

But when Doaa turned fourteen, the news came that the owner of the apartment they had come to love needed it back, and the family had to move yet again. Doaa, who despised change, would have to uproot her life once more.

Finding a new home on Shokri’s modest salary seemed an insurmountable challenge. More people were moving to Daraa to find work, and rents were rising. But after a three-month search, Doaa’s family finally found a place beyond their expectations: a modest three-room apartment in the leafy El-Kashef neighborhood with a small light-filled kitchen and a roof lined with grapevines. Shokri and Hanaa had their own bedroom, and the girls slept in a room that doubled as a living room during the day. By then the eldest daughter, Ayat, had married and moved in with her in-laws.

Doaa, though, saw no promise in their new home, just the irretrievable loss of the friends she’d made in the old neighborhood and the people who understood her without having to try. Once again in a new environment, she was overcome with shyness.

She refused to speak in her new school and her grades fell. At first, she resisted any gestures of friendship. No matter how much her older sisters Asma and Alaa urged her to make friends, Doaa retreated, showing them that no one could force her to do anything she didn’t want to do. Both her shyness and her ferocious stubbornness protected her, allowing her to control unfamiliar situations. It took Doaa a long time to trust people or to allow anyone to see who she really was.

But slowly over time, as in the other neighborhoods, Doaa’s walls began to come down, and she eventually came out of her shell. Doaa made new friends and often went on walks with them through the neighborhood, and they visited one another’s homes to study, gossip, and talk about boys. They frequently went up to Doaa’s roof—her favorite place in her new home—to bask in the sun. At dusk, they would move inside to play Arabic pop music and dance in a circle, singing along with the words in unison.