The war

« Outside, malak almawt hovers over the streets of Aleppo, the Angel of Death flapping his mighty wings like a shroud caught in a strong wind. He touches down often, so that death, instead of rain, falls from the sky. Death stains every household, every soul. Each arrest, each detainment, each rape, each death is the snuffing out of a candle. The land is going dark, and soon there will be nothing here at all. »p105

"“Slogans, in precise Arabic lettering, take up all available space— “One, one, one: we are one,” “Death before humiliation,” “Your bullets kill nothing but our fear.”p106

"“children scream slogans drilled into them for years at school, Yasqut, yasqut, yasqut! and Who created you? Where have they come from? How do you teach a child to hate? Do they know what it is they shout? »p106

"« A deep buzzing sound passes over the building. A warplane, and we, all of us—in the room and in the street and in the heavens and all the hiding holes of the earth—hold our breath until it passes. »"p106

« Yes, I think, leave the man alone to kill everyone until there's nothing but an empty country to run. »p130

"“And outside, in our neighborhoods, jinn, themselves sometimes haunted, dangled from street lamps…and occasionally they would plunge into the heart of a passing baker on his way to open a shop he couldn't afford to close no matter what dropped from the sky. They unman him, those jinn, striking icy daggers of terror into his breast. They silence children, excising the tongues of boys who follow where the men go and girls who scurry across rubble and ash clutching chickens to their chests. »p133

«Children explode into red mist. The air is full of wails that taste of blood. Metallic. Electric. We pick up body parts until more rescuers arrive. We pick them up with our bare hands—a foot, an arm, fingers, laying them on blankets and sheets because we can’t stomach the idea of bin bags. »p149

“It never seemed cruel when I saw street cats chase their quarry down the alley, but maybe that’s just because I never thought about it from the mouse’s perspective. We are mice, scurrying out of buildings, pink noses twitching as we sniff out where Death will land next. »p149

"The silence has cracked, and Syria, now, is all noise. Every death and every blast blots out more of the sun, blinding the world with distorted images and blackness. Until there is nothing left but souls . wailing in the dark. »p155

"Those bombardments of hell that lay waste to your home, your corner shop, your school, and scatter to the wind thousands of people into a hundred thousand infinite parts. Snipers on the roof of your mother’s or father’s workplace. Prison guards with iron rods that they use to beat submission into your wet skin. Smugglers and traffickers and desperate men. These are the things that kill you." p190

inhumane.”p216

“For us, there is detention. Military basements. Hanging naked from the ceiling like lamb at a butcher’s shop. Blood. Electric cables and iron rods on wet skin because it hurts worse that way. Anything to drive out revolutionary thoughts. Shit and piss. Holes in the head. Whatever is worse than monsters. Strange voices screaming for help, for mercy, for Allah. Desperation. Darkness. Whatever goes beyond terror. »p216

« For us, a protest isn’t a measured expression of discontent. It’s a reckless flinging of ourselves headlong into a future whose dimensions we just cant get to stick.”p216

."I dream of neighbors taken in the middle of the night, sharp wails and useless pleas. They never return. I dream of friends shot on their way to work—because, of course, they need to work— their lives ending in a pool of blood on streets they've walked down their entire lives. I dream of babies going to school and bombs falling from the sky, and they really shouldn't have been going (page 242) to school at that point. I dream of rubble and people trapped for days and hospitals that can no longer help and a world that DOES NOT CARE. Desperate voices in dark basements. Confined spaces. A river that is more blood than water. So thin, your body begins to eat itself. Ahmed, tiny hands bound, eyes and mouth taped shut, a bullet in the head. Ahmed in the Queiq, Qashoush in Orontes—that rebel river—his brave and terrible chant ripped from his throat to take flight, finally free, like a bird, across Syria. Cold, hungry, always thirsty—when was the last time the shower worked, Baba? »p241