From Aleppo Without Love

By Amir Darwish

The book is an autobiography of the British/Syrian--of Kurdish origin--writer and poet Amir Darwish. The scene for it is Aleppo, Syria where Amir was born and raised up to the age of eighteen. Amir finds himself in a contradicting, brutal to children, hateful and constantly violent familial milieu. As well as the personal account is given here, the book speaks of life in Aleppo in the 1980's and 1990's where Amir lived and experienced such world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781716582622

Book preview

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Preface

I don’t want to unshackle myself. Instead, I want to melt shackles and re-forge them into words. The book is the first of a three-volume autobiography. It has three main parts, to mirror the number of houses I inhabited in Aleppo. One main chapter for each house. In Al Mashhad house part, I choose events that are connected to me and to people who influenced and will damage my life later. These scenes are told by family members. To sit in the lap of reality, I have asked several members to confirm each incident.  Although young at the time, I still recall many glimpses, words, fixtures and small details, particularly the scene of Baba’s death, I remember it in fine detail.

I never write to avenge. I have used the actual names, because humans with these names were there when such horrific incidents took place. So, if it was John or Ahmed instead of Hussein & Marwan, then I would use John & Ahmed.  Nor is it my desire to attack any religion, society, culture, beliefs or whatever your inner impulses push you to title the book. I write because my sisters Shaza, Rana, Layla and whoever else identifies themselves in the book are hurt. That hurt keeps me and my sisters awake, persistently visit us, causing flashbacks, nightmares and fear inside our bodies. 

It would be mad to think that Shaza, Rana, Layla and I concocted events in this autobiography to present them publicly. I do not write to embellish. Instead, I recount what the five senses witnessed, attempt to strip the truth naked, bring it forth, then rape it with naked eyes. There will be those who disagree about the facts in here. Sure, they can, but they cannot determine how I felt then or feel now about the abuse episodes, as I remember and chew them over and over again. All said, it is about feelings, not traceable facts.

I have only written down scenes that come to me the most, as flashbacks of that dark past. Though I experienced much more of what is told here, it is these scenes I want to be out of my brain the most.  Plus, it is impossible to fit many years of daily abuse in single book. Why these scenes and not others? I am not sure. Perhaps a psychologist would know.

Lastly, there might be someone in the world who reads the autobiography and then says, Amir did that but doesn’t mention it here. To those I say: why shall I be fearful to share my story? Whatever you know cannot scare or hurt me more. Between suicide and a confessional autobiography, I chose the second. So, if what you know is greater than death, then tell it please.

Al-Ansari Mashhad house¹

(1983) "Baba now in Jennah."

Something is wrong as we enter the building. The entrance looks the same as every other time: the stained black door, the corridor dark, too dark even to see your own finger. The door is damaged with small holes, through them, sun arrows give me and Layla some sort of light to see and climb the stairs. Either the first or second step is broken. Our nursery bags are too heavy for us to carry and move our small feet upwards. I am almost six, Layla is right behind me on the stairs and in age. She is the last child. A year younger than me with straight brown hair, big light brown eyes, long eyelashes, thick eye brows, thick lips and thick skin which resist pain, as Marwan says while tortures her later.

Up the stairs, the seventeen-year-old Baccalaureate student Hasan has the darkest skin of all the siblings. He has curly black hair. He cries, slaps himself on the face and screams, "your Baba is gone Amir, your Baba is gone Layla. Baba is now in Jennah.²"

There is a big crowd of people. The doors of the flats are flung wide open. Baba owns the entire building. He wants all of the children to marry and live here as one big happy family. A Sheikh of Tarikah,³ Baba stabbed himself with BBQ skewers in the neck and pulled them out of the other side. He thrusts a knife into his stomach and removes it and no harm seems to come to him. He once left one of Mama’s bread tins on the fire until its handles were red, then lifted it high up with right hand until it was cold again. At some point, Baba claims to have a vision where his granddad Sheikh Sleem told him to stop hitting himself in accordance to the Naqshbandi⁴ way. He is the only child of a Bedouin mother and Kurdish father from Kobani.⁵ They urged him to produce as many children as possible to make up for his childhood loneliness. He obeys and produces seventeen offspring. Three die at birth, one falls off the roof (not long after Baba moves from Al-Bab⁶ to the current house in Aleppo) and thirteen survive.

My Maternal uncle wears Arabic Jellabiya⁷ with his salt and pepper beard. He calms Hasan down, stop it, that’s enough.

In the middle room of the apartment there is a coffin. Abdul Baset Abdul Samad’s⁸ voice recites Ayat al-Kursi from the Qur'an. The two flats are full of people with beards and Jellabiyas. There is a Qari⁹ at the top of the room on the sofa. It is strange that he is there while the Qur'an plays on tape!

Soon I realise the man is on a break when he urges everyone to exclaim in one voice, to Allah we belong and truly to Him we shall return, then resumes recitation himself with Al-Fatiha.¹⁰ Everyone stretches their hands to Allah, silently pray then wipe their faces with mercy. The scene is senseless, but I grow to realise that "Jennah" means no more Baba. He dies of a heart attack at the age of fifty-three.

The left side of the flat is the women’s section for grievance. The Arabian rug replaces furniture to make space for people. Everyone is in black. Mama is in black too. Like a chicken, she obeyed Baba’s orders to produce as many children as possible. The state gives her a medal for significant production of males, who can fight the enemy (Israel). Of Armenian mother/Kurdish father, Mama married at the age of fourteen after a long love story. Your Baba use to climb up roofs and jump buildings to see me Amir, you see how strong love is, she tells me, later, with tears and sighs.

In the salon, Mama bares her chest, lowers herself to the floor and presses her breast to the ground.¹¹ She looks at me, slaps her own face, scratches her cheeks to fill her nails then groans, "Baba in Jennah, Baba gone to Jennah, Amir."

My three young sisters and I also depart that day, but to enter slavery not Jennah.

Ever since, I have wished to be like Fredrick Douglas,¹² born a slave then tasted freedom, rather than being born free only to become a slave and spend life in search of freedom and love. I never found the two. I doubt I ever will find them. 

(1982) 1 Will check later.

The room is large enough to fit everyone in. A TV shows the state’s propaganda about the goodness of Hafez Al Asad. The hero of the people, they say, who defeats the enemy in Hama.¹³ Hama is shown on TV flattened to the ground, a song for Al Asad follows as he waves to the nation. There are two sofas and single Arabic rug in the room.

Baba in a dark brown Jellabiya runs and gets the scissors. He cuts Sabah’s hair then urges her brothers, come on, hit your sister, hit her. Rectify the slut’s moral code, I don’t think she has any.

Upon Baba’s command, eighteen-year-old Hussein, in military uniform, which symbolises membership of Al Baath party, pulls a gun to shoot Sabah. Blood and not honour, he screams, blood and not honour. The brothers stop him, pull the gun out of his hand. Reluctant to share the family house, Hussein gets a room alone in the upstairs flat to bring girls, indulge, make love.

Now he wants to kill Sabah for her heart desires the same. 

Mama walks through the grey veranda door, what has she done?

The shit was late from school, busy with a lover, yells Baba, "beneath trees they steal kisses. Indulge. Feel love and commit the haram.¹⁴ Daughter of a dog. I must be a bastard to have that bitch as my seed!"

There is blood everywhere from Sabah’s mouth. Baba slaps her over and over again. Hit her, you bastards, he says to everyone. Hit hard, give her morals. The slag has none. Wash her honour. Make her worthy to be Sheik Suliman’s daughter.

Forgive me Baba, please forgive me. I won’t do it again. It’s the first time and she swears on Allah it will