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The afternoon adhan from a nearby mosque echoed through the bombed- out streets of Aleppo, the melodious, ethereal voice of the mu’adhdhin praising Allah and calling everyone to prayer. Mahmoud had been doing his math homework at the kitchen table, but he automatically put his pencil down and went to the sink to wash up. The water wasn’t working again, so he had to pour water over his hands using the plastic jugs his mother had hauled from the neighborhood well. Across the room, Waleed sat like a zombie in front of the television, watching a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon dubbed into Syrian Arabic.
Mahmoud’s mother came out of the bedroom, where she’d been folding clothes, and turned off the TV. “Time to pray, Waleed. Get washed up.”
Mahmoud’s mother, Fatima Bishara, held her pink iPhone in one hand, and in her free arm she carried Mahmoud’s baby sister, Hana. Fatima had long, dark hair she wore up on her head, and intense brown eyes. Today she was wearing her usual around-the-house attire: jeans and a pink nurse’s shirt she used to wear to work. She’d quit the hospital when Hana was born, but not before the war had begun. Not before coming home every day with horror stories about the people she’d helped put back together. Not soldiers
—regular people. Men with gunshot wounds. Women with burns. Children
with missing limbs. She hadn’t gone nearly catatonic like Waleed, but at some point it had gotten bad enough that she just stopped talking about it.
When he was finished washing up, Mahmoud went to the corner of the living room that faced Mecca. He rolled out two mats—one for him and the other for Waleed. Their mother would pray by herself in her bedroom.
Mahmoud began without Waleed. He raised his hands to his ears and said, “Allahu Akbar.” God is the greatest. Then he folded his hands over his stomach and said a brief prayer before reciting the first chapter of the Qur’an, the most holy book in Islam. He bowed and praised Allah again three times, stood and praised Allah again, then got down on his hands and knees and put his head to the floor, praising Allah three times more. When he was finished, Mahmoud sat back up on his knees and ended his prayers by turning his head right, and then left, recognizing the angels who recorded his good and bad deeds.
The whole prayer took Mahmoud about seven minutes. While he’d been praying, Waleed joined him. Mahmoud waited for his brother to finish, then rolled up their mats and went back to his homework. Waleed went back to watching cartoons.
Mahmoud was just starting a new equation when he heard a sound over the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song. A roar like a hot wind rising outside. In the second it took for the sound to grow from a breeze to a tornado, Mahmoud dropped his pencil, put his hands to his ears, and threw himself under the kitchen table.
By now he knew what an incoming missile sounded like.
ShhhhhHHHHHH—THOOOOOOM!
Mahmoud pulled himself up out of the rubble and saw the building across the street in raw daylight, like he was standing in midair beside it. He blinked, still dazed, and then he understood.
The entire outside wall of Mahmoud’s apartment was gone.
