Thread by @JamieMcIntosh

1/168 “Daddy. Why do they do it?”
The question filtered thick and suffocating like the dust particulates

2/168 swirling in the basement air.
“Why do they bomb us? Did we do something wrong?”
Moussa clutched his

3/168 little Eliana close to his chest. He stamped a protective kiss onto the blonde, flattened curls at the

4/168 crown of her head, its faint impression silhouetted by ash. Settling concrete dust was starting to encase

5/168 their huddled figures in a tombstone shade of grey.
“No my sweet. We did nothing wrong.”
“Then why daddy?

6/168 Why are they so mean?”

His eyes searched the room as if the answer might have fallen somewhere amidst the

7/168 rubble.

“Should we be mean to make them stop?” Eliana continued.
“Well sweetie. You know we try to

8/168 protect ourselves — and even rip down their weapons as we can. But when you have a cut, it doesn’t get

9/168 better by cutting someone else. You know this, yes?”
“Yes...But it might stop them from cutting you!”

He

10/168 didn’t know what to say.

He wanted the bludgeoning, the bloodshed to stop. Desperately. And he’d lost

11/168 count how often he’d returned the torment unleashed on his own household right back upon his assailants’

12/168 heads. In his dark imaginings.

“I guess, little one. But...I suppose would rather try to help heal what

13/168 it is in them that makes them want to hurt us. You know, like how Mommy would as a psychologist — a

14/168 special kind of heart doctor. Or like the doctors who tried to save mommy. You know they even help the

15/168 people who try to kill us when they get hurt.”
“That’s silly. And rude. Well, I guess it’s nice too...

16/168 But then won’t the bad guys just have more chance to hurt us?”
“Probably they will try. But they won’t

17/168 kill what’s inside of us. And that’s what’s most important of all.” Even as he said this he fought back

18/168 the bile and blinding lust for revenge rising in his throat.
“What’s most important, Daddy? Being alive,

19/168 right?”
“Kindness.” He more told himself than her.
“Kindness?”
“Yes. Kindness. It lives forever.”
“You

20/168 mean like being nice?”
“Like being nice. It’s more than that. I think it’s like treating people — all

21/168 people — as if they are your own ‘kin’ or ‘kind’. Like family. Like your closest of friends.”

It was a

22/168 choice, daily. And perhaps even harder than the choice to survive. But if he let the hatred in, he knew

23/168 it would consume the remaining shreds of innocence and sparks of good. And there had been too much

24/168 destruction for him to stomach any more. He couldn’t allow it to penetrate his soul. Letting the dragon

25/168 of hatred in would captivate him, and make his heart it’s lair.
“You mean like how you take care of me,

26/168 Daddy? And how Mommy does?”
“Yes, sweetie. How I try. More like Mommy though. Like how Mommy took

27/168 care.”
“Takes! Mommy still takes care of me, you know? She makes me feel safe at night.”
“Really? I

28/168 suppose she would.”
“Does she still take care of you?”
“She must. We’re still here. Even with my

29/168 cooking.”
“See,” she said without thinking of sarcasm. “She keeps us alive.”
“But Daddy,” she returned to

30/168 the subject like a bee to its hive. “Why don’t they treat us like family? Aren’t they Syria

31/168 too?”
“Syrian. Yes. They are Syrian too. We all are.”

It wasn’t a direct hit today, but enough to jar

32/168 the wall to the south side and kick up remnants of what had been crushed that fateful day four months

33/168 earlier. With the disturbance of debris, the acrid scent of death rose with the ashes. Like some

34/168 distorted Phoenix. Death, not life, rising from below. Ashes to ashes. Layers of death’s dust mounting

35/168 upon layers of death. With such surreal frequency in Syria that death and bombs displaced minutes and

36/168 hours to mark the time. Trapped within were countless stories and souls lost amidst the intimate

37/168 atrocities of war.

The scent of the debris ripped Moussa’s imagination alert, hurtling him unwillingly

38/168 backwards in time. It was like an aircraft carrier launch cable — gear in reverse at blinding speed —

39/168 dragging him mercilessly back four agonizing months. Dragging him to his personal circle of hell. Right

40/168 in this very room. In their own home in Eastern Ghouta.

That fateful day Jasmine, Eliana’s mother, had

41/168 had no chance when the stairs from the level above had imploded under the ordnance.

Jasmine, newly

42/168 pregnant, had been following Moussa’s lead down the stairs, with Eliana in her arms. Eliana had reached

43/168 back crying for her dolly that’d jostled from under her protective wing, in the scramble down the stairs.

44/168

“Mimi” was the lightly stuffed cloth doll Eliana’s grandmother had sewn when she was a but a girl

45/168 herself. It was the inseparable companion that Eliana carried throughout the quiet and chaotic moments of

46/168 war. Jasmine, a child psychologist familiar with trauma, suspected it was more truly the other way

47/168 around.

With a mother’s instinct Jasmine handed Eliana down to her father who had dumped his armful of

48/168 supplies. Like a tacking catamaran catching full sail, she turned to ascend the steps to rescue the

49/168 capsized little doll.

Just as the obscene bomb screamed down. That damnable moment. Collapsing the

50/168 staircase from the levels above onto Jasmine. Their precious, irreplaceable Jasmine. Her body, and with

51/168 it Moussa and Eliana’s very souls, were trapped in an instant crypt amidst the smouldering rubble.

With

52/168 chunks of staircase still dangling overhead, Moussa leapt across the room, tearing through the stony sea

53/168 of debris with frantic hands.

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

54/168 Fiercely. Then, tremblingly, as the adrenaline surged and horrific observation that the blood of his

55/168 shredding fingertips was beginning to mingle with far too much of Jasmine’s own.

The impact had been

56/168 fatal. Its illicit verdict, final. Not even the little cloth doll had been spared. A shard of concrete

57/168 had severed Mimi’s legs from her tiny torso — even as the savage blast severed mother from daughter, wife

58/168 from husband.

As he thought of what the attack had done to Jasmine’s strong yet delicate form, Moussa

59/168 turned his head violently to ward off a deeper shockwave of neural activity that would forever replay the

60/168 scene inside. He banged his skull backward, hard against the stone wall, cursing himself for the

61/168 thousand-thousandth time.

Why hadn’t he scrambled for the doll?
Why hadn’t he gotten them into the

62/168 basement moments sooner?
Why hadn’t he gotten them out of Ghouta when perhaps he had the chance?

Why.

63/168 Always why. Always there to mock any attempt at a reply.

When the word erupted in his head, most often

64/168 like rockets flaring in the dead of night, it came with accusing scorn and burning regret. Yet it was at

65/168 its most searing when mouthed through the parted lips of his daughter’s innocence.

“Why, Daddy?

66/168 Why?”

Last month — on her 7th birthday, Moussa had given Eliana two small presents. The first was to

67/168 reunite her with her beloved, bedraggled Mimi, whom he had resurrected from the rubble to after some time

68/168 had passed repair lovingly by hand. The stitching was amateurish, overdone. But Moussa was determined the

69/168 dangling legs would be forever attached.

The second gift was a pretty dress for Mimi. Like with the

70/168 dolly, Moussa had felt nervous — self-conscious, even — about his rudimentary effort at fashioning such a

71/168 thing from Jasmine’s favourite headscarf.
He had had to overcome internal resistance to cut the glowing

72/168 blue cloth. It was like synchronized surgery on his own soul and on his dearly departed lover and friend.

73/168 For weeks he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The rest of Jasmine’s things remained undisturbed, each

74/168 item enshrined in its natural resting place. Each resting in a reverent shroud of dust. As if by lying

75/168 untouched he could pause the passage of time and defy the passing of his sweet angel.

Yet the dress was

76/168 the most meaningful present he could think to offer. The doll was Eliana’s prized possession before. Now,

77/168 it was her entire world. Wrapping her in Jasmine’s scarf became for him a sort of loving sacrament. It

78/168 brought something of Jasmine back into their lives. Like when in their Orthodox Sacred Mysteries, the

79/168 body and blood of Christ become real.

Eliana was singing softly to Mimi as she cradled her close.

“Oh

80/168 Lord! Help Mimi Sleep, May she become sleepy
May she grow loving to pray and to fast
Oh God Make her

81/168 healthier each day...”

It was a lullaby Jasmine used to sing when Eliana was first born. But he had only

82/168 heard her sing it those first few months — before the war clouds darkened their sky.

“The one who loves

83/168 you shall kiss,
and the one who hates you will go away”

How did Eliana know the lyrics? How could

84/168 she?

Eliana’s tiny fingers had fallen into their new routine — a calming rhythm as they traced the

85/168 silken threads that now appended Mimi’s tiny legs. It was as if Eliana was playing a minstrel’s harp as

86/168 she sang.

Suddenly she stopped, both her singing and caressing, and turned her face to look up into her

87/168 father’s brooding eyes. She was the angel of her mother’s radiance.

“Why Daddy? Why are they so mean?

88/168 To take Mommy. I would never steal theirs!” She said this both wistfully and with a shocking

89/168 sternness.

The relentless question stung the air like sarin gas. It came more often than the bombs.

90/168

His eyes burned. His throat tightened, burning too. He simply had no words. Nothing left to offer. The

91/168 well of his heart that watered the garden of his mind had run bleached-bone dry.

The siege had cut him

92/168 off even from the fading resources of consolation. Recent weeks had been agonizing for Moussa,

93/168 progressively stripped of the dignity of providing ample food to keep Eliana from knowing hunger.

94/168

“Daddy, why?”

“BOOM. BOOM.” A fresh round of bombs. Mercifully, the percussion blasts broke the

95/168 suspended silence of his absent reply.

Unable to answer his daughter and give her a fair measure of

96/168 long-deserved peace, Moussa realized now that his last flicker of hope had been extinguished. Its once

97/168 vibrant flame snuffed out with violent force, in the same broken basement that had stolen his wife only

98/168 months before.

He had lost his grasp on hope — perhaps it first slipped his grasp in those moments his

99/168 hands were unable to unearth his wife and their unknown babe from the brimstone hurled from the hateful

100/168 sky.

In hope’s place were only angry wisps of smoke. Noxious. Ethereal. Insubstantial. Yet disturbingly

101/168 real.

He had wanted so urgently to comfort his daughter. To fill the air with answers. To fill her

102/168 eyes once again with light.

As he knew he could no longer fulfil this elemental responsibility, a dark

103/168 epiphany arose: perhaps now it was their time to join his wife.

He fell into a trance-like state,

104/168 racing frantically in the labyrinthine dungeon of his mind, seeking an exit that never materialized, an

105/168 answer to the question “Why?”

Lulled into sweet darkness with the drum line cadence of bombs in the

106/168 distance, his calloused fingers scrounged in the dirt until they wrapped around something cold and

107/168 jagged.

A long, twisted piece of metal rebar, still half-wrapped in concrete. It was as if the bomb

108/168 had broken into their basement, left unspeakable carnage, turned it into a prison, and left behind a

109/168 hand-forged shank to finish the job.

The haunting symmetry arose in Moussa’s mind. He’d unearthed this

110/168 vile artifact — which would be the end of them — as a dark gift from the very force that had taken his

111/168 wife to the grave.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

Moussa’s arm rose slowly in the darkness. Eliana

112/168 lifted her head from leaning against his chest to nuzzle Mimi — all covered with dust and her mother’s

113/168 love. Suddenly she heard strange sounds from her father’s throat. This, just as hot moisture dripped

114/168 onto the strands of hair where her father had kissed her perhaps an hour before.

As her cheek grazed

115/168 Mimi’s azure dress, Eliana felt more warm splotches.

Alarmed at both the guttural sounds and the

116/168 unexplained dripping, Eliana’s head upturned to see the source.

She saw the anguish on her father’s

117/168 contorted face. Carving through the dust on Moussa’s cheeks and beard, were raging twin torrents of

118/168 tears. His empty hands were at the sides of his face as if to hold his head from taking leave. Eliana

119/168 had never heard nor seen him cry. He was sobbing convulsively.

Just then, a gust of wind and shimmer

120/168 of light rushed through the unrepaired hole where the staircase had been. It was as if Jasmine herself

121/168 had twirled through the room. It was the scent of her fragrance, escaping the fabric of Mimi’s dress and

122/168 glinting of its brilliant hue. The remnant of her relentless love and consoling presence was summoned

123/168 forth by Moussa’s release of tears fused with Eliana’s tight embrace.

So sparked flickers of hope and

124/168 whispers of wisdom: “Moussa, my heart, hold what you have, my love. Dare to make the world anew. As with

125/168 your gentle mending of the doll, the dress — and our darling daughter — you will learn just how. Simply.

126/168 Steadily. Stitch by loving stitch.”

The whispering wind slipped away as fast as it had come. But its

127/168 reverberations lingered in Moussa’s relieved face and lightened heart.

As did the pure scent of

128/168 Jasmine.

Light spilled onto the path ahead. Their future began to clear.

When the bomb had fallen

129/168 and taken out much of the staircase, Moussa had hastily crafted a makeshift ladder out scraps of wood,

130/168 electrical wire and metal from a toppled filing cabinet and garbage canister. Stacked on top of a mound

131/168 of rubble, it was wildly unsafe, but sufficed to bridge the gap so he could crawl up with Eliana, and

132/168 the doctors could descend to attend the scene.

This is how his ladder of hope — hope corroded through

133/168 the relentless onslaught of the siege — would be recycled from the wreckage. With whatever bits he found

134/168 lying around. On the strength of the goodness of heaven yet left on earth they would clamber together

135/168 out of the pit of the unanswerable “Why?”

He needed the rugged frame of reference Jasmine’s wisdom

136/168 provided. No longer would they lie trapped in “Why this evil?” Instead, their hearts would learn to be

137/168 trained upon “How, some good?”
Like refastened legs, relentless kindness would brace them ever stronger

138/168 for the sojourn ahead.

Yes rung by rung and stitch by stitch they would rebuild their broken world. He

139/168 swore the my would. He owed his daughter, his wife — and himself, and his land — at least this.

Moussa

140/168 held Eliana closer than ever.

Moussa also realized then that Jasmine had lived and died true to the

141/168 flower of her name: Stretching forth from broken earth to blazing sky. Unfurling fragrant offerings of

142/168 lovingkindness. Soaring upon hostile winds to freely rain the scent of peace across inhumanity.

143/168

Indeed, though he was no longer asking or being asked the question, “Why are they mean?” his wife had

144/168 slipped him the answer. “It gives us occasion to love — which always must be learned. For isn’t that

145/168 what our time on earth is for?”

Hints were also tucked deep into the doll Jasmine had selflessly leapt

146/168 to retrieve.

“Daddy. Why do I love my dolly so much — even though she got broken?”

“Well. I think

147/168 sweet Mimi reminds you of Mommy. That’s the best reason of all.”

“Do I remind you of Mommy?”

“Yes,

148/168 dear. Beautifully. Her courage dances in your eyes. Her wisdom in your honest questions. And her love in

149/168 your care of little Mimi — and of me.”

“And, Eliana, you know what?”

“What Daddy?”

“If I listen

150/168 closely — I think I hear her singing through your heart.”

“Daddy.”

“Yes dear?”

“Mimi likes that you

151/168 are so kind. And that you are good. She says it makes her feel safer than a hundred guns.”

“And

152/168 Daddy...”

“Yes, my little one.”

“Sometimes I forget just what Mommy looks like. But it’s ok ‘cause

153/168 Mimi never forgets. She tells me Mommy looks like love.”

“She absolutely does, Angel. She absolutely

154/168 does.”

“I want to look like Mommy when I grow up.”

“You already do, my child. And, you know what? In

155/168 my own way, I want to look like that too.”

“Daddy. You already do. I’ve seen it in your smile. And now

156/168 in your tears.”

She returned to singing.

“I will take you on a little trip, to place where there are

157/168 prunes under the apricot tree
and each time the wind blows, I will pick an apricot for Mimi
Hey Lina,

158/168 lend us your kettle and your bowl
So that we wash the clothes of Mimi and hang them up on the jasmine

159/168 tree.”

He returned to crying. Tears of rising hope and defiant joy.

And he cleared his throat to

160/168 sing.

“Our loved ones have left home
Gone away without saying goodbye
When I went by their place one

161/168 morning to salute the Mulberry tree
No one was there to invite me in
All I found was a crying

162/168 bird
Regret stopped me short and pinned my feet to the thorny ground
I sought in vain to learn what had

163/168 become of them
From the houses in which they once lived
Alas my tears stained the walls of their

164/168 buildings

Oh cavalier of the caravan, if you come across them
Let them know that I still cry for

165/168 them
Tell them my loving eyes haven’t yet closed in sleep
The good nights are gone that should have

166/168 lasted forever
Do tell our loved ones who’ve moved away
That for anyone, hardship never lasts

167/168 forever
Hardship never lasts forever
Hardship never lasts forever”

Eliana was cradled in her Daddy’s

168/168 arms, sleeping sweetly, with Jasmine in their dreams.