By the hem of his garment

He watched his wife’s back strain at a final weed pulled from the cracked ground. She examined the unruly creature and tossed it in the broken wheelbarrow. Even with her face weathered and her last remaining headscarf long stained and worn, he saw a glowing queen of a land whose soil he used to wash off her precious hands, hands which healed his deepest wounds with their touch.

The sigh which reached his ears was the world’s heaviest rock. At that moment he drowned under it. He decided then: enough. It was time to buy the ticket.

Later, squeezed beside her on a thin foam mattress on the desert floor beneath the sky’s many winking eyes, he gifted her the words he knew she dreaded to hear:

“Lina my love, I heard the station doesn’t sleep.”

“Ahmad, I don’t want you to go alone. It’s not safe.”

“Don’t do that, my love, don’t let your head take you to the unknown. I’ll be okay. Do you think I’d let anyone take you? We’ve tried our hardest to hold out. Now we need to think about the children. I need to make the journey. It’s not giving up, or selling out, or… it’s just survival. Their survival.”

Her breath shook and so he squeezed her to him and waited for the howl of a wolf to quiet.

“Hmm, alternatively,” he began, “I could follow our furry neighbours for a day to find out how they are surviving…”

“Ya furry friends,” her warm breath whispered in his ear, “I smell a foolish two-legged neighbour close by. Let’s show him how we stay alive and feast on his tasty skin and bones for breakfast!” His wife giggled and pinched the loose skin of his arm.

Once he heard her breathing steady he heaved himself off the mattress and headed to the house of Mustafa, his last remaining neighbour.

Mustafa answered his door at the first knock. Perhaps he saw Ahmad arrive from his window.

“Asalam alaykum akhoi,” Ahmad said.

“You’re leaving?” Mustafa greeted.

“You’re not?”

As a way of explanation Mustafa gestured to the backpack in the hallway behind him.

Ahmad stared. “How did you do it, pack your entire life and the lives of your ancestors? How did you pack your culture, your faith, your country, in a single bag?”

“What do you want, Ahmad?”

“I’m going tonight. To town. To the station. I need you to stay until I am back. Please, Mustafa. I wouldn’t ask unless I had to. Stay and look out for Lina and the children. There’s no one else left to ask.”

“The last time you asked me for something it cost me everything. It cost us all.”

Ahmad tried to suppress the memory of failing his family, his people, his town, all those months ago.

“They promised they’d fight with us, the other towns.”

“We should have known they would sell out, the cowards,” Mustafa spat. Then he set his haunted eyes on Ahmad. “Every day I ask myself, if fighting no longer works, how can I defeat them? How can I be free?”

“Promise me you’ll watch over them.”

“Promise me you’ll be back before dawn.”

It was tight, but possible. What other option did he have?

The desert road into town - if you could still call it a road - was empty. It had been dug up by bulldozers so long ago that tufts of dried spikey grass peeked between the broken tarmac and bit through Ahmad’s old sandals into his feet.

Gradually small stone houses and gardens were replaced with streets of bombed out residential apartment blocks. Glass crunched under Ahmad’s feet as he walked past lines of looted shops and stores and in the moonlight Ahmad thought he sometimes saw shapes lying facedown inside.

The only person he had seen was an old woman sitting in an armchair on a pile of rubble and staring at the stars. She’d ignored his attempts at communication, but she was harmless enough.

Gradually the streets filled with ghosts. Hungry Ghosts, Lina called them.

He saw one woman pushing a man and hitting him fearlessly with her bare hands while the man screamed into her face.

He saw another - a boy surely not yet in his twenties - rocking on the floor with his legs tucked under his chin, talking to himself while holding his hands over his ears with a pained expression on his face. As if sound hurt.

Fear, or bravery, or cowardice, pushed him past.

As he walked on, Ahmad was distracted by a woman following him. He clutched his jacket closer to him and felt his pocket for assurance. If the papers were stolen, his family’s last chance of escaping the town was lost.

Ahmad stopped in his tracks to take in the scene before him.

Men were sitting on the floor in a neat line in only their boxers with their hands tied behind their backs. Ahmad saw a man in uniform strolling casually beside them, carrying a rifle slung over his shoulder. What was going on? Why were The Army of the Marked - “the tammies” - here in town?

“Psst, get over here, quick, or you’ll be joining them!”

In the distance, a round of automatic fire broke the silence. Ahmad leapt in the air and dashed for the shadows. Where the stalker was waiting.

She said: “They’re rounding men up, arresting them.”

“And the gunshots? Are they killing…”

The stalker looked away. Then: “Where have you come from?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your eyes. You’re not a Hungry Ghost. You’re sober. And, if you were living in town, you wouldn’t be surprised to see tammies around.”

“So… the tammies are still having to stay and fight for territory? Is that why they are here? Are some of our brothers still fighting?” A dim spark of hope.

The stalker scoffed. “Fight? What fight? It’s over, the town is as good as taken. Everyone who remains here is either a ghost, or a hired spy for the tammies.”

Ahmad didn’t trust the woman, but he also needed to know where to go, since his way to the station was blocked.

“Can you take me to the station?”

“The station? …Wait, do you want to buy a ticket?”

“Can you take me or not? What’s your price?”

“Easy. I want the keys to your house. I mean, if you are planning on getting the next train, what do you need them for? While I can’t go anywhere. There’s no ticket waiting for me. So help a girl in need…”

Deena - the stalker - didn’t move carefully or stick to the shadows like Ahmad. She dashed from shadow to shadow, building to building, and street to street, as if nowhere was safe for her to stay for too long, as if the shadows themselves would bury her.

She led him up and down crumbling steps, between lines of burned out cars and trucks and across holey rooftops. At one point Ahmad saw spotlights in the sky in the distance.

“The Marked. While tammies send over rockets, their families come to watch the fireworks display of the town under siege from the safety of the mountains.”

As they walked through the playground of a trashed school, Ahmad smelt something impossible: barbequed meat.

Deena explained: “there is a place where food is readily available, brought in by The Marked’s snitches and distributed to their buddies. But nothing is clean. Sorry to disappoint.”

Deena led Ahmad to an abandoned house - a short cut, she said. He was about to ask when-

A thunderous weight hit the back of his head.

Ahmad first thought he had been hit by a rocket.

When he came to, his boots were gone, as were the precious papers he’d hidden inside them.

Deena was gone.

Outside, a wind had picked up and dust was filling his eyes and mouth. He could barely breathe. Wrapping his shirt around his face for protection, Ahmad stumbled on blindly.

At last, as the sky began to change shade, he reached a large sign which read in English “this way to the station”, pointing into the desert.

Asking others who stumbled in the same direction, Ahmad quickly found out that the station, in the absence of many ticket purchasers remaining in town, had transformed into a food distribution site.

When he arrived he was stripped down to his underwear. The fenced yard - the cage - they guided him into had no way out. Trapped.

Ahmad elbowed through the crowd and tried to stay standing upright against the tide of pushing. When he got punched he punched back. He floored two people. Someone bit his ear. At one point he fell and began to get trampled on by others. Crying out in pain, he struck out and clung to a man’s legs. He pulled the man down in order to pull himself back up.

All dignity was gone. Dignity didn’t feed their children. Dignity didn’t still the gnawing shrunken bellies of a nation starved and under siege.

People began to climb the fences and a crack of gunfire hit a little girl who fell back into the crowd. Screams. More people surged forward desperately.

Ahmad realized he was going to be crushed and suffocated alive by a stampede.

And then he saw her: Deena. She was sitting on the shoulders of a man and trying to grab the attention of one of the tammies in desperation. No one else had noticed, but she was waving papers in the air.

His papers.

With a renewed urgency, Ahmad pulled at shirts and hair, squeezed in between others and threw the weakest to the ground. He felt hands grab at his ankles but he didn’t stop. He couldn’t, if he wanted to survive.

When Ahmad was close to her, he hesitated and then decided to help her get the attention of one of the tammies instead.

He took off one of the ill-fitting shoes he’d stolen from a corpse, and threw it over the fence.

The tammy closest to the shoe paid attention and spotted Deena and the paper.

This was Ahmad’s moment.

He pressed himself beside Deena and the man as they were led away. Ahmad grabbed the tammy by his collar and shouted into his ear: “those papers that woman is holding are mine. They were stolen!”

The tammy looked at Ahmad, confused.

Then he nodded and pushed Ahmad in front of him.

Out of the cage, the tammy led the three of them into an old hotel, now taken over to be the tammies’ barracks for managing the station.

As she walked alongside him, Deena whispers into Ahmad’s ear: “tell them I’m your wife. Please.”

He was taken into a different room from the other two. A man who introduced himself as Dan, and his colleague as Amer, told Ahmad to sit down.

He sat.

“Name?” Dan asked politely.

“Ahmad Abu Akleh.”

“ID?”

“Here.”

With embarrassment, Ahmad carefully unthreaded it from his underpants, where Lina had sown it neatly earlier that evening. Smart girl.

“Saved by the hem of his garment, it seems,” Dan quips. Dan and Amer shared a snigger.

“Do you know the other two who came in with you? Are they relatives of yours?”

“No.”

“Fine. Please confirm these papers are the original deeds to your property?”

“Yes.”

“And the property contains four acres of farmland and one farmhouse?”

“Correct.”

“Any fruits or vegetables grown on your farm?”

Ahmad stared at the American, flabbergasted. Even Amer was forced to stifle an awkward cough.

Dan prompted: “Did you not understand the question? Are you cultivating horticulture on your land?”

Was he mocking him? Or did he really not know?

Through gritted teeth Ahmad finally replied: “three months.”

The American blinked.

Ahmad continued: “Three months The Marked have barricaded our town, burnt our lands, and thrown at us 2,000 tonne bombs. Not a single drop of clean water has been allowed in. The town’s piping has been destroyed. You have prevented any food from entering in-”

With a straight face the American interrupted: “That’s not true, we have an aid distribution point. You are at it now.”

“Do you know why we call them the Hungry Ghosts? Because they can never quench the hunger you gifted them. One taste of your food and they’re addicted for life. Their souls are gone. The food you so generously allowed in - in its limitations - all these months, is tainted. Unclean. Drugged. Laced with narcotics. And whatever other diseases you pumped into it. It’s psychological suicide if you even taste a bit of it, never mind if a child were to eat it.”

“Nonsense. What you are talking about is nonsense. Senseless rumours spread by the rebels.”

Ahmad couldn’t stop himself.

“Do you not see the state of the people you are holding in the cage? Do you not know what the people who you are working for - The Marked - are doing to us?”

Dan’s mouth is slightly open as he tries to think of a reply. Amer shuffles the land deeds silently behind him before tossing them into an office drawer.

And then it hits him: gone. The land, his land, his father’s land, is gone.

“Dan. We had trees. We had olive trees and lemon trees. We had bomali trees. Have you ever tasted a bomali? We had plums and figs and dates and clementines and lettuce and…”

“What happened?”

“No water. They were starved. Which meant we were starved. Which is why… you find me here today, selling my father’s land for a piece of paper.”

Without a pause Dan went on to clarify:

“That piece of paper allows you to board a train and be relocated. You are very lucky to have the opportunity. Now, to be clear: you do not currently grow fruits and vegetables on your land?”

“No.”

Dan scribbled something down on a paper. Amer then left the room for a minute. When he came back he pressed two items into Ahmad’s hands.

A raw potato and a McDavid’s bottle of ketchup.

“You must know we have nothing left to cook potatoes with anymore. No oil. No gas to light an oven. No lighter to start a fire.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way,” Dan interrupted abruptly.

“And the tickets?”

“Firstly I need you to sign this form here… to confirm you received the aid package.”

Ahmad dragged his heavy eyes over the form.

“Please tick the box next to the items you received.”

After a minute, Ahmad replied: “they’re not there.”

“Of course they are.”

“They’re not.”

With a tut of frustration Dan said: “well you can’t have your ticket until you’ve signed the form.”

Ahmad ticked a few items at random and signed the form.

Dutifully, Dan gave him an envelope. The envelope was embellished with many miniscule flags of different countries and a big logo in the middle reading “A Generous Gift For A Safe Future From The Global Affiliates United for Peace”.

Inside was one ticket.

As Ahmad was leaving, he paused at the door and asked Dan: “why do you care about the fruit trees?”

“They’re not allowed.”

Ahmad watched the tammies from behind the bin. He could see all the lights in his house were on and three tammies were in his lounge necking back bottles of wine in celebration and ecstatically jumping across his sofas with their boots on.

No longer caring that he was without clothes or shoes, he banged relentlessly on Mustafa’s front door, a large stick in hand.

His son opened.

Their hug was long and silent. Then his daughter joined. Finally, his son mumbled into Ahmad’s bare chest:

“Mama’s gone. They took her.”

Lina? It couldn’t be true. Not his Lina. Ahmad pulled his son away and whispered: “Who? What happened?”

“When the men arrived, Uncle Mustafa told us to go and hide in his house, in a secret room, while he and mama stayed at our home and spoke with the men. Then the men killed Uncle Mustafa. Baba, we heard the shots…” His son’s voice faltered and so the boy’s sister continued.

“We saw from the window mama being dragged away by The Marked and put in the back of a hilux. She was screaming. We wanted to go and help her baba, but Uncle Mustafa had told us not to leave the house until he got back. Under no circumstances. Please don’t be angry with us, baba.”

Ahmad hugged his children close to him and let them lead him upstairs to the special room where they had been hiding. Mustafa had always been the smarter brother, Ahmad thought fondly - the door in the wall wasn’t visible unless you knew to look for it.

What was inside wasn’t what Ahmad expected.

“What is this? What are these?”

“Seeds, baba. Uncle Mustafa told us to look after them if he didn’t come back.”

Seeds. Mustafa had been secretly storing a seed bank and growing plants in a secret nursery.

And look baba, there’s water.”

“What?”

“Down here.”

Ahmad followed his children down a ladder into a basement he’d never seen before, despite the many visits he’d made to his brother and his family before the war and the siege.

Sure enough, there, hidden from sight, looking up at the stars, was a metal lid in the ground. Not daring to believe his ears, Ahmad took a small stone and threw it into the well.

Seeds, a last gift from his brother who had sacrificed his life to protect his nieces, and who had found a way to be free from invasion and occupation and siege. Clean food, at last. And clean water, gifted to the land from the skies.