Thread by @JamieMcIntosh

“Daddy. Why do they do it?”
The question filtered thick and suffocating like the dust particulates swirling in the basement air.
“Why do they bomb us? Did we do something wrong?”
Moussa clutched his little Eliana close to his chest. He stamped a protective kiss onto the 1/64

blonde, flattened curls at the crown of her head, the faint impression of his lips silhouetted by ash. Settling concrete dust was starting to encase their huddled figures in a tombstone shade of grey.
“No my sweet. We did nothing wrong.”
“Then why daddy? Why are they so 2/64

mean?”
His eyes searched the room as if the answer might have fallen somewhere amidst the rubble.
“Should we be mean to make them stop?” Eliana continued.
“Well sweetie. You know we try to protect ourselves — and even tear down their weapons as we can. But when you 3/64

have a cut, it doesn’t get better by cutting someone else. You know this, yes?”
“Yes...But it might stop them from cutting you!”
He didn’t know what to say.
He wanted the bludgeoning, the bloodshed to stop. Desperately. And he’d lost count how often he’d returned the 4/64

torment unleashed on his own household right back upon his assailants’ heads. At least in his dark imaginings.
“I guess, little one. But...I suppose would rather try to help heal what it is in them that makes them want to hurt us. You know, like how Mommy would as a 5/64

psychologist — a special kind of heart doctor. Or like the doctors who tried to save mommy. You know they even help the people who try to kill us when they get hurt.”
“That’s silly. And rude. Well, I guess it’s nice too...But then won’t the bad guys just have more chance 6/64

to hurt us?”
“Probably they will try. But they won’t kill what’s inside of us. And that’s what’s most important of all.” Even as he said this he fought back the bile and blinding lust for revenge rising in his throat.
“What’s most important, Daddy? Being alive, right?” 7/64

“Kindness.” He more told himself than her. “Kindness?”
“Yes. Kindness. It lives forever.”
“You mean like being nice?”
“Like being nice. It’s more than that. I think it’s like treating people — all people — as if they are your own ‘kin’ or ‘kind’. Like family. Like your 8/64

closest of friends.”
It was a choice, daily. And perhaps even harder than the choice to survive. But if he let the hatred in, he knew it would consume the remaining fragments of innocence and good. And there had been too much destruction for him to stomach any more. He 9/64

couldn’t allow it to penetrate his soul. Letting the dragon of hatred in would captivate him, and make his heart it’s lair.
“You mean like how you take care of me, Daddy? And how Mommy does?”
“Yes, sweetie. How I try. More like Mommy though. Like how Mommy took care of 10/64

us.”
“Takes! Mommy still takes care of me, you know? She makes me feel safe at night.”
“Really? I suppose she would.”
“Does she still take care of you?”
“She must. We’re still here. Even with my cooking.”
“See,” she said without thinking of sarcasm. “She keeps us alive.” 11/64

“But Daddy,” she returned to the subject like a bee to its hive. “Why don’t they treat us like family? Aren’t they Syria too?”
“Syrian? Yes. They are Syrian too. We all are.”

BOOM.

It wasn’t a direct hit today, but enough to jar the wall to the south side and kick up 12/64

remnants of what had been crushed that fateful day four months earlier. With the disturbance of debris, the acrid scent of death rose with the ashes. Like some distorted Phoenix: Death, not life, rising from below.

Ashes to ashes. Layers of death’s dust upon layers of 13/64

death. The frequency in Syria was such that death and bombs displaced minutes and hours in marking bodies, buildings and time. Trapped within the rubble were countless stories and souls lost amidst the intimate atrocities of war.

The scent of the debris ripped Moussa’s 14/64

imagination alert, hurtling him unwillingly backwards in time. It was like an aircraft carrier launch cable — gear in reverse at blinding speed — dragging him mercilessly back four agonizing months. Dragging him to his personal circle of hell. Right in this very room. In 15/64

their own home in Eastern Ghouta.

That fateful day Jasmine, Eliana’s mother, had had no chance when the stairs from the level above had imploded under the ordnance.
Jasmine, newly pregnant, had been following Moussa’s lead down the stairs, with Eliana in her arms. 16/64

Eliana had reached back crying for her dolly that’d jostled from under her protective wing, in the scramble down the stairs.
“Mimi” was the lightly stuffed cloth doll Eliana’s grandmother had sewn when she was a but a girl herself. It was the inseparable companion that 17/64

Eliana carried throughout the quiet and chaotic moments of war. Jasmine, a child psychologist familiar with trauma, knew it was more truly the other way around.

With a mother’s instinct Jasmine handed Eliana down to her father who had dumped his armful of supplies. 18/64

Like a tacking catamaran catching full sail, Jasmine turned to ascend the steps to rescue the capsized little doll.

Just as the obscene bomb screamed down.

That damnable moment. Collapsing the staircase from the levels above onto Jasmine’s graceful form.

Their 19/64

precious, irreplaceable Jasmine. Her body, and with it Moussa and Eliana’s very souls, trapped in an instant crypt amidst the smouldering rubble.

With chunks of staircase still dangling overhead, Moussa leapt across the room, tearing through the stony sea of debris 20/64

with frantic hands.

Furiously, he dug and hurled, and clawed, and scraped.

Furiously.
Fiercely.
Then, tremblingly, as the adrenaline surged and horrific observation that the blood of his shredded fingertips was mingled with far too much of Jasmine’s own.

The 21/64

impact had been fatal. Its illicit verdict, final.

Not even the little cloth doll had been spared. A shard of concrete had severed Mimi’s legs from her tiny torso — even as the savage blast severed mother from daughter, wife from husband.

As he thought of what the 22/64

attack had done to Jasmine’s strong yet delicate frame, Moussa turned his head violently to vainly ward off a neural shockwave that would forever replay the scene. He banged his skull backward, hard against the stone wall, cursing himself for the thousand-thousandth 23/64

time.

Why hadn’t he scrambled for the doll? Why hadn’t he gotten them into the basement moments sooner? Why hadn’t he gotten them out of Ghouta when perhaps he had the chance?

Why. Always why. Always there to mock any attempt at a reply. When the word erupted in his 24/64

head, most often like rockets flaring in the dead of night, it came with accusing scorn and burning regret. Yet it was at its most searing when mouthed through the parted lips of his daughter’s innocence. “Why, Daddy? Why?”

Last month — on her 7th birthday, Moussa had 25/64

given Eliana two small presents. The first was to reunite her with her beloved, bedraggled Mimi, whom he had resurrected from the rubble after some time had passed to lovingly restore by hand. The stitching was amateurish, overdone. But Moussa was determined the dangling 26/64

legs would be forever attached.
The second gift was a pretty outfit for Mimi. Like with the dolly, Moussa had felt nervous — self-conscious, even — about his rudimentary effort at fashioning such a thing from Jasmine’s favourite headscarf. He had had to overcome 27/64

internal resistance to cut the glowing azure cloth. It was like synchronized surgery at once on his own soul and on his dearly departed lover.
For weeks he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The rest of Jasmine’s things remained undisturbed, each item enshrined in its 28/64

natural resting place. Each resting in a reverent shroud of dust. As if by lying untouched he could pause the passage of time and defy the passing of his sweet angel.
Yet the dress was the most meaningful present he could think to offer. The doll was Eliana’s prized 29/64

possession before. Now, it was her entire world. Wrapping her in Jasmine’s scarf became for him a sort of loving sacrament. It brought something of Jasmine back into their lives. Like when in their Orthodox Sacred Mysteries, the body and blood of Christ become real.
30/64