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Mahmoud’s father stopped their Mercedes station wagon for gasoline at a little roadside station north of Aleppo. Waleed and Mahmoud sat in the car with their mother while she nursed Hana under a blanket. Fatima had put on a black long-sleeved dress and a pink flowery hijab that covered her head and shoulders. She and Youssef had agreed she should cover up more than she usually did in Aleppo, in case they ran into stricter Muslims outside the city. In some places, women were being stoned and killed for not covering up their entire bodies, especially in areas controlled by Daesh—what the rest of the world called ISIS. Daesh thought they were fighting the final war of the apocalypse, and anyone who didn’t agree with their twisted perversion of Islam were infidels who should have their heads cut off. Mahmoud and his family planned to stay as far away from Daesh as possible, but the radical fighters were coming farther and farther into Syria every day.
Mahmoud looked out the dusty car window as a jet fighter streaked by high above them, headed for Aleppo. A mural painted on the side of the gas station showed President Assad, his dark hair cut short and a thin mustache
underneath his pointy nose. He wore a suit and tie in front of a Syrian flag, doves of peace and yellow shining light surrounding him.
A jagged line of real bullet holes bisected Assad’s face. Mahmoud’s father got back in the car.
“I’ve got a route for us,” Mom said. She finally had a signal, and got Google Maps to open on her iPhone. Mahmoud leaned over to see. This route crosses a country border, Google Maps told them, marking the alert with a little yellow triangle. That’s what they wanted—to get out of Syria using the fastest path possible. Dad started the engine, put the car into gear, and they were off.
An hour later, they were met on the road by four soldiers waving for them to stop. Mahmoud froze. The soldiers might be with the Syrian army, or with the Syrian rebels. They could even be Daesh. It was hard to tell anymore. Some of these soldiers wore camouflage pants and shirts, but others wore Adidas jerseys and leather jackets and track pants. They all had short black beards like Mahmoud’s father, and wore head scarves of different colors and patterns.
But each of them had an automatic rifle, which was really all that mattered.
“Your hijab,” Dad said. “Quickly.”
Mahmoud’s mother pulled the end of the scarf up over her face so that only her eyes were showing.
Mahmoud sank to the floor of the old Mercedes station wagon and tried to disappear. In the seat beside him, Waleed sat up straight next to his open window, unmoving and unfazed.
“Everybody stay calm,” Dad said, slowing the car down, “and let me do all the talking.”
One of the soldiers stood in front of the car, his rifle aimed loosely at the windshield, while the others walked around the sides, peering in through the windows. The soldiers were silent, and Mahmoud closed his eyes tight, waiting for the shots to come. Sweat ran down his back.
“I’m just trying to get my family to safety,” Dad told the men.
One of the men stopped at the driver’s-side window and pointed his rifle at Mahmoud’s father. “Which side do you support?”
The question was as dangerous as his gun. The right answer and they lived; the wrong answer and they all died. But what was the right answer? Assad and the Syrian army? The rebels? Daesh? His dad hesitated, and Mahmoud held his breath.
One of the soldiers cocked his rifle. Chi-CHAK!
It was Waleed who spoke up. “We’re against whoever is dropping the bombs on us,” he said.
The soldier laughed, and the other soldiers laughed with him.
“We’re against whoever is dropping the bombs too,” the soldier at the window said. “Which is usually that dog Assad.”
Mahmoud breathed again with relief. Waleed didn’t know it, but he’d saved the day.
“Where are you going?” the soldier at the window asked. “North,” Dad said. “Through Azaz.”
The soldier opened the back door of the car and slid inside, pushing Waleed into the back of the station wagon. “No, no, you can’t go through Azaz anymore,” the soldier said. “The Free Syria Army and al-Qaeda are fighting there now.”
The door next to Mahmoud opened, and one of the soldiers nudged him up from the floor and into the back with Waleed. Two more soldiers crammed themselves into the backseat, and the last one joined Mahmoud
and Waleed in the back with their backpacks. He was dusty and smelled like he hadn’t had a bath in months, and the heat of the road radiated off him and his rifle like a stove.
Apparently, they were all coming along for the ride.
One of the soldiers in the backseat snatched up Mom’s iPhone and looked at the route.
“Use Apple Maps,” another soldier said.
“No, you idiot, Google Maps is better,” said his friend. “See here,” he told Mahmoud’s father, “you’ll have to go over to Qatmah, and then north through Qestel Cindo. The rebels and the army and Daesh are all fighting here,” he said, pointing to places on the map. “Many guns and artillery. And the Kurds hold all this territory here. Russian airstrikes have hit here and here in support of that Alawite pig Assad, and American drones are attacking Daesh here and here.”
Mahmoud’s eyes went wide. Everything the soldier was describing stood between them and Turkey.
“Go back south,” one of the soldiers told Mahmoud’s father. “You can let us off at highway 214.”
Dad turned the car around and drove.
The soldier with the iPhone scrolled up the map to see their destination. “You’re going to Turkey?”
“I—I went to engineering school there,” Mahmoud’s father said.
“You shouldn’t be leaving Syria,” said one of the soldiers. “You should stand up for your country! Fight the tyrant Assad!”
Between Assad and Daesh and Russia and America, Mahmoud thought, there wasn’t much of a Syria left to fight for.
“I just want to keep my family safe,” Dad said.
“My family was killed in an airstrike,” one of the soldiers said. “Maybe when yours is too, you’ll take up arms. But by then it will be too late.”
Mahmoud remembered the horror he’d felt when his apartment building collapsed and he’d thought his mom was still inside. The fear he’d felt when they couldn’t reach his father. If his parents had died in the airstrike, would he want revenge on their killers? Instead of running away, should Mahmoud and his father join the rebels and fight to win their country back? Mahmoud’s dad kept driving. They were almost to the highway when gunfire erupted nearby—tat-tatatatat! tatatat!—and bullets pinged into the car. Mahmoud screamed and dropped to the floor as broken glass sprayed him. One of the back tires exploded, and the car swerved wildly and screeched as his dad fought to keep control of it. Mahmoud and Waleed
went tumbling, and the soldier in the back rolled on top of them.
The soldier had a hole in his head.
Mahmoud screamed again and pushed the man away as the car skidded to a stop. Bullets whizzed by, then caught the car again—ping-ping-ping— and Mahmoud’s dad threw open the driver’s-side door and pulled Mom and Hana out with him. “Get out of the car!” he cried.
The soldiers in the backseat kicked open the door on the left side of the car and spilled outside. More bullets whizzed by overhead, and soon the rebel soldiers who’d been riding with them were returning fire, their automatic rifles booming in Mahmoud’s ears like he was in a barrel and they were beating on the outside of it with hammers.
All Mahmoud wanted to do was curl up into a ball and disappear. But he knew if he and Waleed stayed in the car, they would end up like the dead soldier beside them.
He had to get up. Get out. Move. His heart was pounding so hard he thought it would burst right out of his chest, but Mahmoud found the
courage to grab Waleed by the arm, drag him over the seat, and dive headfirst out the door. They tumbled into the ditch beside his parents. Hana was wailing, but Mahmoud almost couldn’t hear her over the sound of the gunfire.
Mahmoud’s dad waited for a pause in the gunfire, then scrambled back up the ridge for the car.
“Youssef, no!” Mom cried. “What are you doing?”
Mahmoud’s father dove back into the front seat and yanked the iPhone and the charger cord from the Mercedes just as bullets ripped into the car again. He tumbled and slid back down into the ditch.
“Had to go back for the phone,” he told them. “How else am I going to play Angry Birds?”
He was joking again. Mahmoud knew they needed their phones to help them get to Turkey. Without the maps, they’d be lost.
Mahmoud’s father waited for another lull in the shooting, and then they all hurried away from the car, leaving everything else they owned behind.
