The Inferno Hours
It’s 2012 in the war-torn city of Homs, Syria and eleven-year-old Rasha Abadi is in turmoil. Constantly feeling isolated and in fear of the impending war, she begins to see people that aren’t there. As the war rages on, tensions mount in her family’s apartment. Her parents burden her with adult responsibilities which include caring for her younger sister Milana. Only Milana — who is young, care free, and has plenty of friends in their apartment building — fills Rasha with jealousy. It isn’t long before Rasha lashes out and makes a mistake that will haunt her for years to come.
Eleven Days to Inferno
It was the last time the children would play together before their world burned.
Eleven-year-old Rasha Abadi watched from the staircase of their apartment complex as her younger sister Milana played tag with Aimar. Aimar, a stumpy boy with a perpetually mischievous grin, was the middle son of the Hassan’s from apartment nine, one floor below theirs. Aimar and Milana were besotted with each other but, because of their strict Islamic upbringing, they couldn’t play alone and so Rasha was often coerced into minding them.
Rasha glared at them, mouth pursed. Every time Rasha cared for them she felt she was giving up her childhood; that she was sacrificing hers so that Milana could be a kid. It was one of the many tasks that their mother Haya had bestowed upon Rasha as of late. She knew why; she was approaching her teenage years — and in the eyes of many, becoming a woman — and so that was what Haya was doing, building her up, shaping her like a tough clay, as Haya had been; and her grandmother before that.
I will not be shaped, she thought.
She looked down at her feet, twirling the hem of her hijab in her fingers. Her life was far beyond her control. The Syrian war was encroaching upon their home city of Homs. It was why the children were forced to play inside, on the poky landings of their apartment complex, rather than the courtyard outside. It’d been two months since the last time they went to school; fifty-nine days since Rasha had social interaction with people her age. Not that she’d ever liked many people in her class.
Not that many kids in her class liked her.
She’d been gathering a reputation. ‘Wild’ her cohorts’ parents were often quoted, whilst her teacher Miss El Din said that her mind wondered. It was never her mind that wondered: it was her eyes — wandering, glancing, following, people. People, to use the term loosely.
Because they weren’t really there.
She’d started to see opaque shadows skirt the edges of her periphery. When her class practiced air raid drills, or when she saw a rebel’s armoured truck trundle down the street, she would see them more often. It was if she was looking at a flurry of dust through the lens of an ill-focused camera. Indistinguishable shapes. Certainly humanoid.
Perhaps they were people once.
Milana screamed. A cacophony of gunfire cracked through the still air. The three children froze, colour draining from their faces. Milana and Aimar had their wide eyes set on Rasha, waiting to be told what to do. Outside the landing’s barred window hysteric shouting ensued, and the hum of vehicles.
The war had come.
Rasha jumped from the staircase.
‘Home!’ She barked at Aimar in Levantine, their mother tongue.
As Aimar took the stairs, Rasha grabbed Milana’s hand and raced into their apartment.
More gunfire. Screams of horror.
Ghostly shapes emerged around her.
Four Days To Inferno
The Abadi’s neighbours began to flee the city one by one. Two weeks before Independence Day apartments two and eleven rushed through the halls in hushed whispers and light footsteps. Rasha wouldn’t have known at all if she hadn’t heard someone drop a suitcase on the landing whilst she was headed to the kitchen for water. She threw herself on the hallway floor, peered through the crack beneath the apartment door, and witnessed a coat tail whip out of sight down the next flight of stairs.
A week to that day, the Abadi’s awoke to a letter on their hallway floor. Seemingly slipped under the door, the letter was written on the back of recipe torn from a cookbook. Rasha and her siblings gathered around Haya as she unfurled it. It was a juvenile scrawl, and with a smile that Rasha could only describe as one part sadness, one part amusement, Haya announced it was for Milana from Aimar.
‘Let me read!’ Milana pled, not that she was old enough. Haya read it out instead:
‘“Milana. We are going. I don’t know where. I never said bye.”’
Milana wailed and buried her face into Haya’s legs.
‘Gone?’ She cried. ‘Gone where?’
Rasha couldn’t help but smirk. What did a seven year old know about love? What had it been about Milana that drew Aimar in? He was closer to Rasha’s age than Milana’s, and Rasha had many more stories to tell and games to play.
‘Where has he gone?’ Milana continued.
‘Somewhere safe,’ Haya replied.
‘Then let’s go there, let’s go!’
Yes, Rasha thought, let’s go.
Their valuables had been collected to barter safe passage to Europe. Their father slipped out most evenings under the cloak of night, returning to Haya to have long conversations. As they spoke — sometimes shouted, sometimes cried — they pointed to a map sprawled out between them in the light of their kerosene lamp. The plans were in place.
So why haven’t we left? Rasha thought. What’s holding us back?
The more they had waited, the worse things had gotten. Their father had torn apart most of their expendable furniture and nailed them to every window. The water in their pipes ran brown from dust and sewage. Electricity came and went, and market stalls and shops ceased to exist. They’d lived off of bottled water and tinned food the last few days, eating in the darkness.
That night Milana took ages to settle, sobbing as quietly as she would in the bottom bunk. Rasha didn’t often find sleep, scared that the war outside would climax and she’d never wake again.
On the top bunk, Rasha rolled onto her front and peered over the edge at Milana. Milana had buried her face into her pillow, Aimar’s crumpled letter laying beside her. What was it about the spidery scrawl that kept her looking? He hadn’t said he’d loved her, or that he’d missed her. Or maybe she was reading it, between the lines of “I never got to say bye.”
Rasha pushed her blanket back and lowered herself on the bedroom floor. She knelt beside Milana.
‘Look, you’re never going to see him again,’ Rasha whispered.
‘Don’t be mean!’ Milana roared.
‘‘You have to forget about him. The more you think about it, the more upset you’ll be.’
‘I never will!’
Rasha grabbed the letter from the pillow and ripped it to shreds. Milana leapt from bed, scrambling to collect the pieces together.
‘Not my letter, not my letter.’
‘There,’ Rasha said. ‘Now you’ll forget.’
Milana jumped at her and bit her arm. Rasha tossed her aside.
‘You’re horrible,’ Milana cried. ‘You’re horrible, and that’s why you don’t have friends. That’s why no one will miss you.’
Rasha slapped Milana. Both girls stood rigidly, the shock of it, the sting on Rasha’s hand, the pain etched on Milana’s face. Milana dived forward and sunk her teeth into Rasha’s forearm — harder, with intent to hurt. Milana, only seven herself, had many of her milk teeth: it felt like she was bitten by a small dog. Rasha wrenched Milana from her arm and pushed her to the floor.
‘You’re horrible,’ Milana cried. ‘Horrible, horrible, horrible!’
She scrambled to her feet and fled from their bedroom. Rasha chased after her, down the hallway, almost slipping on the patterned rug, and grabbed her sister’s hair from behind. Milana screamed — a feral roar. A wild streak ran through both of the Abadi sisters that night.
Their father bounded into the living room from his bedroom.
‘Don’t be so nasty to your sister!’ Rasha’s father shouted, tearing Rasha apart from Milana. Milana buckled to the living room floor, clutching her head.
Rasha thrashed against her father’s outstretched hand, trying as hard as she could to reach Milana.
‘What is this in name of?’ Their father asked.
‘She bit me,’ Rasha said.
‘Rasha tore my letter!’ Milana squealed, and from the pockets of her dungarees paper shreds snowed to the ground.
Their father called to Haya. She had been in the kitchen preparing their Independence Day mezze with whatever scraps were left in their pantry. Leaves of dried parsley were stuck to her apron.
‘Take Milana to bed?’ Their father asked Haya.
‘Come here, my stars and moon,’ Haya cooed. She scooped Milana in her arms, eyes sharp on Rasha. They sauntered off to the girls’ bedroom.
Their father took Rasha’s face in his hands. His hands were cold but she couldn’t tell whether they were clammy or if her face was hot with embarrassment — either way Rasha started to cry.
‘Do you know what jealousy is, Rasha?’ He said. ‘It’s a disease of the soul. It tears families apart. It ruins countries.’
‘I just wanted it to be me,’ Rasha said.
‘And ruining it for Milana makes you feel better, does it?’ Rasha hoped that was meant to be a rhetorical question, for her father wouldn’t have been pleased if she had truthfully answered yes. ‘Put yourself in her shoes. How would you feel if you were bullied?’
‘I’d fight them until they stopped,’ Rasha remarked.
Rasha’s father turned her face to the boarded windows.
‘Has that helped, out there? Adding fuel to the fire?’
She hadn’t seen beyond the window in months but feared that, if she ever did, her hometown would look unrecognisable. She shook her head.
‘There’s already a war outside,’ her father said with a conclusive tone. ‘You’d do better than bring it into our home. Understood?’
Rasha nodded. She was his eldest child but felt like the smallest. Her father released her from his hands and Rasha skulked off to bed, not uttering a word to anyone that night, in fear that she would cry if she did.
Inferno Day
Relentless gunfire and explosions had rained around their apartment complex for twelve hours. It had grown nearer and nearer until the Abadi’s could no longer ignore it. They had to hide.
‘I don’t want to hide with Rasha!’ Milana cried. ‘She’s mean. I want to hide with you!'
‘There isn’t room for you with us,’ Haya said.
Rasha knew that was true. What little valuables the Abadi’s had left were stowed safely under their parents’ bed. It was all they had to barter themselves safe passage from Homs.
‘Take Milana,’ her father demanded Rasha. His face was as ridged as the sandstone around them, but his hazel eyes dilated with horror. What did he know that she didn’t?
‘Can’t you hide with us?’ Rasha asked. Her heart rattled in her chest; something was different that night and her parents were keeping it from her.
‘There won’t be room,’ he said.
Gunfire popped in the streets below. Milana stopped screaming. The gunfire had never been so close. Now, more than ever, an escape seemed impossible.
‘Go!’ Rasha’s father shrieked. ‘Beneath your bed.’
Rasha hauled Milana into the air. With her sister’s wet face nuzzled against her neck, Rasha lumbered through the hallway into the girls’ box room. Things were certainly different. Her father’s friend, who was a double agent for the rebels, had delivered a message that morning in rushed whispers. Haya had collected their valuables together that afternoon and Rasha had supposed they were planning to flee the city.
They must have been relayed faulty information.
They had been too late.
Gunfire ricocheted in the street below. Milana whimpered in her arms. They crossed to their bunk beds, hauled Milana’s various toys and Rasha’s craft supplies from beneath it. With amicable space, the girls crawled under the bottom bunk.
Crammed together, Rasha looked at Milana’s face, screwed as she tried to stop her tears. Rasha had made Milana cry like that. Now monsters, in the name of independence, did so with guns and worse. That was when Rasha thought, am I no more than a monster? Their father certainly thought so: why else had he compared her actions to those of men that waged war right outside their windows?
The echoing gunfire grew louder. A flickering orange light tapered around the edges of their window. Their father had nailed the narrow awning with the surface of their old coffee table. The day after their fallout, Rasha had drawn a mural of what the view had once been: rows and rows of apartment blocks, the blue sea twinkling in the distance, the pearl-shaped roof of Al Salamiya mosque a few streets away. Her father had told her to do it, to make it more homely for Milana. An act of kindness considering you’ve been so cruel to Milana, he had said.
There was a slit between the barricade and the sill, and orange light flickered across the far wall. It was nighttime; only fire could give off light like that. The last time she had set eyes on the city the destruction had only been on the horizon. Now it was right outside the apartment building.
She diverted her eyes. A positive mind seeks light, Haya often repeated.
'Stay here,' Rasha whispered to Milana.
'Don't go,' Milana plead.
'I'll be right back.’
Rasha crawled out from underneath the bed, shaking off Milana's grip. She wasn't sure if it was morbid curiosity that drove her to the window. Jealousy, that's what her father said, it was jealousy that tore the city in two. She wanted to see what monsters thought was acceptable as her family cowered in fear of their lives. How deep the jealousy’s poison could fester; the evil that it could breed. She crossed the room, pressed herself against the wall, and peered through the gap in the barricade.
Their third-floor Homs apartment overlooked a market street below, and two roads over the mosque peeked over the rooftops, thankfully whole. On the horizon, broken buildings loomed like jagged teeth and fire ravenously consumed what little was left. The destruction that befell the northern Syrian city was worse than Rasha had comprehended. Never had she felt so small; so without agency.
She was just a helpless girl in a terrible situation.
The gunfire faltered, and there was quiet, no shouts of rebels or crumbling buildings. Rasha turned to the boarded window, ears pricked. There was a steady beat, growing louder, getting closer, a sound that knifed her heart with fear.
'Planes!' Milana cried. 'Rasha, planes!'
That only meant one thing.
Missiles.
Milana was suddenly at her side, tugging and pulling Rasha's sleeve with her all her might. Rasha snapped to, took Milana by the hand, and stepped towards the bunk bed —
The world was upturned. A roar ravaged her ears as if some almighty beast had erupted from the depths of the earth. The walls caved in.
The last thing Rasha thought as darkness descended, and dust smothered her nostrils, and fire torrented around her, was that Milana wasn’t hiding in her safe space. She was exposed. Unprotected. In danger.
It was all Rasha’s fault.