Writer's Tears

The city of Damascus was asleep on its pillow of expectation and fatigue. The days of famine had ended, but the whole region was turning a new leaf. It was 1919.

On that night without a moon, the neighborhood was silent as a graveyard. A seemingly dark ghost's steps began to crack the glass of that silence. The ghosts were only the shadows of two young men who were wearing torn green military uniforms

They knocked on the only green door. Almost everyone was awakened by the sound of the horse-shaped door knocker. Within a few minutes, this silence turned into a celebration of two young men returning from the big war, the one that few survived.

As I awoke, I was surrounded by the corpses of our soldiers and those of our enemies. The air was filled with the smell of death. In order to ensure that the battles were over, I was hiding. There was no moon in the sky that night. I waited for the sun to rise. Light demonstrated the ugliness of the situation. There were ponds of blood that became solid and thick. No one was alive. I counted more than 200 dead. Snow began to cover the corpse and blood as if the hand of a baker covering the table with flour. Out of the blue, I saw Ali sitting under a cypress tree. He was slightly injured in his hand and head while with tears rolling down his cheeks. I talked to him. He tried to talk but no words came out. We were the only survivors of our Balkan war." That was what Sami commented about his survival with his friend Ali, the brother of my grandfather.

Thousands of Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Kurdish…etc young men were part of Seferberlik (a huge movement of forced conscription effected by the Ottoman Empire). Those men were taken to fight in the Balkan War( 1913) and in the First World War( 1914–1918). Sami and Ali passed through a sticky patch for more than 6 years moving between countries, pains, and battlefields. Ali was 16, a teenager with an innocent hairless face when the Ottoman soldiers knocked on their door and took him amid the tears and shouts of his mother. When the mother opened the door that night and saw Ali, a man with strong eyes, sunburned skin, and an enormous beard, she did not recognize him.

No one knew exactly what had happened to Ali. They tried everything: herbs, prayers, shrine visits, and even the only hospital in the city. The reason for this man's aphasia was unknown.

Ali returned to work. He was a skilled weaver. He selectively chose the highest quality threads of gold, silver, and silk and passed them through a loom with patience, skillfulness, and forbearance to produce an incomparable brocade fabric. He worked in a small shop just across the street from the shop where Queen Elizabeth's wedding dress was woven many years later, particularly in 1947.

After returning home every day, he used to lock himself in the attic. Behind the door, his mother, sisters and later his wife could only hear him wailing. He left the room always with a cheerful face and a smile, maybe the only smile during the day. No one could enter the attic even in his absence. The only key was always with him. he kept it as a precious secret.

On a winter night without a moon in 1940, Ali died with his eyes open and full of tears. In his pocket, they found the key to the attic. The attic was surprisingly full of piles of paper. It was impossible to read many pages due to the tears he shed while writing.

Ali apparently wrote a whole memoir in that attic. The only sound effect that accompanied him was the noise in his head, the echo of the memories and weeping. The wife did not know that her whole life was hidden in those pages. They got rid of the majority of this human treasure and threw this " mirror" that Ali made to reflect the time of war and craziness.

Three pages survived. The last time I saw them was before fleeing Syria during the Syrian civil war. I remembered a sentence that I adore from those pages. Ali wrote " Although the war finished, its clamor continued. I wish I could shout and scream. For now, only tears and words can cleanse my spirit"