38. Marley
THIRTY-EIGHT
MARLEY
When my head hits the pillow that night, I have no trouble falling asleep. I do dream of Bennett, though. Well, the dogs more so than Bennett. I’m still in that shell of a town in Syria, and this time there is a pack of dogs. Yogurt leads them through the rubble, smelling, playing, and barking at each other. I watch them from the outskirts and laugh. They look so happy, and I begin taking pictures because it’s not a place that has seen happiness for some time. A movement to my right draws my focus from the dogs, and Bennett steps out from behind a crumbling wall. He looks at me, and I wave. I can tell he sees me, but he doesn’t smile or wave. He doesn’t look too pleased to find me there. Then I notice that the dogs have gone silent. When I look back at them, they’re all staring at me too, and then they charge, teeth bared, fur on their backs sticking up. When I look at Bennett, he’s walking away, and I yell his name, hoping he’ll come back. He doesn’t slow his pace, doesn’t look back, and I think I should run but my feet don’t seem to want to move. I can hear them getting closer, and Bennett seems to be disappearing into the distance. I look back at Yogurt leading the charge, and accept my fate.
“Marley.” Someone is saying my name, and I can feel gentle pressure on my shoulder. “Marley. Wake up.”
My eyes snap open, and I’m looking directly into Naomi’s blue ones. I blink a couple of times, erasing the image of the charging dogs. “I’m cold,” I say, slowly sitting up.
“You’re covered in sweat, no wonder you’re cold.” She hands me a bottle of water and then gets up to grab a towel from her pack. “Here.”
I drink then use the towel to dab at my damp skin before murmuring a thank-you and laying back down.
“Is Bennett the guy?” Naomi asks, sitting on the edge of my cot.
I swallow and nod.
“Do you dream about him a lot?”
I shake my head. “I hadn’t dreamt about him at all, actually.”
“Was he okay? In your dream, I mean?”
“He seemed fine.” I laugh nervously. “Me on the other hand, I was about to be mauled to death by a pack of rescues.”
“Rescues?”
“That’s what Bennett does, he rescues dogs. He runs a rescue from his property. They’re actually the ones who found me with the sprained ankle.”
“Before we leave this place, Marley Cunningham, I want to hear that whole story. But right now let’s try and get some more sleep.”
This afternoon, the four of us and Nizam are heading to a town about an hour east of here that’s still at the heart of the conflict. The land is the knot at the middle of a tug-of-war, and we’re hoping to meet up with a local journalist who is risking her life to cover how fighting between the powers that be impacts the lives of everyday citizens.
I close my eyes, but I don’t fall back to sleep. Truthfully, I’m not sure I want to. I don’t want to see Bennett’s back as he walks away from me again. I don’t want to imagine a different scenario where the pack did in fact maul me to death. Instead, I pull out my phone and look at the picture Sophie sent. That’s the Bennett I want to remember. Frankly, that’s the me I want to remember too.
When we say goodbye to the doctors, they barely look up from their work. I recall a time in this country when that was all of us. When we didn’t have time to acknowledge the normal pleasantries of life because we were too busy working. So far this has almost felt like a vacation compared to that.
Nizam tells us that we need to keep our heads on a swivel in the town we’re heading to now. We’re going to meet the local journalist at a café, but she has asked that we appear as normal as possible. That means no helmets, no press badges, no flak jackets.
“Dominic is going to be pissed about this,” Connor says quietly to Naomi. “If something happens to us, he won’t get the insurance money if they find out we weren’t in our protective shit.”
“Shut up, Connor,” Naomi hisses. She’s damn good at her job, but in hostile territory sometimes it doesn’t matter how good you are at your job. Being good at your job won’t shield you from a bomb blast. We’re all uneasy about removing these things that we wear for different levels of protection. But we also understand. We already stick out as Westerners, and drawing more attention to ourselves could be dangerous for those we meet with. Protecting a source is paramount to Simon and Connor, and it’s a reason they’ve been as successful as they are .
Karima is not what I was expecting at all. She’s young, and yet she comes across like someone who has been doing this for longer than any of us. Tea is already set out for us at a table towards the back of the cafe as well as a plate of various Syrian desserts.
“Welcome to my home,” she says, holding her cup up.
“Thank you for inviting us,” Naomi says, copying the action.
Simon doesn’t waste time with pleasantries. He knows how valuable time is when you’re in a place like this and so he jumps right in.
“Karima, how old are you?”
“I am twenty-five.” I do some quick mental math. She would have been around twelve when the conflict started.
“And you graduated from The London School of Economics and Political Science a year ago?”
“That’s right. My family had fled Syria a year after the war began. We first went to Turkey, and then we were able to move in with my uncle’s family in London.”
“What made you want to return?”
“This is my home.” None of us will likely ever know what that is like. To choose to leave your home is one thing; to be forced to leave in order to survive is another thing entirely.
Simon and Connor both ask questions about being a woman in Syria in general and then apply that to being a journalist in the country.
“It’s one of the most dangerous jobs I could do. The extremists hate us, the people are afraid for us, and covering things is difficult. But nothing worthwhile is ever easy,” she says casually as she sips her tea.
“What does your family think of you being here?”
Karima laughs. “Oh, they hate it. But my father always says, ‘Karima will do what Karima wants, and if she wants to make Syria a better place, then she’ll do it.’”
“Having a vote of confidence like that must be nice,” Connor says, scribbling in his notepad.
“I’m blessed to have them as my parents. And their faith in me gives me the strength to get through the harder days.”
As Connor and Simon ask more questions, Naomi and I shoot photos. Naomi is focusing on the bigger picture of the scene while I’m cropping the scene up into smaller pieces. I aim for Karima’s hands wrapped around her tea. Her gaze, soft and intense at the same time. Her lips in a smirk that reminds me of Bennett. Karima’s confidence is contagious, and I hope she changes the fate of her nation, her home. I snap a couple of wide-angle images, the three journalists shrouded in a cloud of smoke in the somewhat busy cafe. It adds a certain atmosphere to the image that the more zoomed-in images don’t.
“I am one of many,” Karima is saying as I move to join them back at the table. “The SWFP is growing every year, despite the danger it poses.” I’ve heard of the SWFP, the Syrian Women’s Free Press, and I am in awe of their work. So many of the photojournalists were housewives or students when the war began. Their husbands fought for one side or the other, or they watched their family disappear one by one, but instead of turning their backs, they threw themselves into the frontlines of journalism. The amount of courage that takes is remarkable for anyone, but for women, it’s tenfold.
I think about how my passion for this work has dried up, and then I look at someone like Karima and feel silly. My privilege has been showing itself to me in a big way. Maybe I’m coming at this work with the wrong lens. It still means something to share what’s happening in the world. It means even more to support those like Karima to carry on doing work that will, hopefully, one day make Syria a safe place for their families again.
We finish our tea and treats, and Karima says she wants to take us on a walking tour of the town. This will be the riskiest part of our day in the town, taking in all we can without looking like we are building a story. We may have left the clothing that identifies us as press behind in the bus, but we still stick out. We put on tourist hats and do our best to look interested in the sights and smells rather than the stories hiding down alleyways and behind closed doors.
Unlike the abandoned town next to the hospital, this one has dogs wandering the streets, alone or in pairs. Most look like they’ve spent their entire life begging for scraps. I’m distracted by one I’d classify as a puppy, but it could be the shadows it keeps passing through and the malnutrition. It’s light brown with black splotches on its face and one white paw. I stop and squat low to take some pictures of it. I’ve never done this before this trip, taken pictures of stray animals. The puppy eventually takes an interest in me and approaches cautiously. I hold my hand out and try to coax it over more. The closer it gets, the easier it is for me to see that the dog is indeed very young and clearly hungry. I have an apple in my little day pack and pull it out, take a bite, and pull the piece out of my mouth as a peace offering. After a couple of sniffs, it gobbles it up and licks every essence of the fruit off my hand. I repeat until I have only a quarter of the apple left. I look around expecting people to be watching and judging me for feeding a stray, but when I gaze out I’m filled with dread. Everyone has stopped, and they appear to be listening for something. I do the same and that’s when I hear it, a high-pitched whistle off in the distance. People start to scatter and I know I need to move too, but my feet won’t budge. It’s like my dream all over again. I’m scared, terrified in fact, and my last thought before the world around me erupts is that if I die I won’t get to tell Bennett that maybe I want to try for something more.
I’m thrown back and hit the ground hard enough to have the wind knocked out of me. As I try to catch my breath, I’m sucking in dust and heat, and for a minute I think this is it. I pull my shirt over my nose and mouth and begin counting slowly to even out my breaths. Looking down, I do a quick check of my body and see I’m not bleeding from anywhere major. I’ve got some scrapes, but it’s nothing a Band-Aid won’t solve. I can taste blood and my tongue hurts a lot, so it’s safe to assume I bit it. As the dust falls and clears, I begin to see the world in front of me. Bodies are everywhere, but most are moving, albeit slowly. The building that had been at the end of the street is gone, smoke and dust rising from where it had stood, and I wonder if that was an intentional strike or just a casualty of someone flexing their muscles. My ears are ringing, and it sounds a bit like I’m underwater. When I look to my right, Simon is running towards me, yelling, but it’s hard to make out what he’s saying.
When he gets to me, he drops to his knees and begins checking me for wounds.
“I’m fine, Simon. Just had the wind knocked out of me.”
“Your forehead is cut, and you’ve got blood coming out of your mouth, Mar.” He’s panicking.
“I bit my tongue. Really, I’m okay. Where are the others?”
“They ran down the next alley. Karima said the building they hit was a known rebel safe house, although no one had been in it for a while.”
“So fucking dramatic,” I say, using Simon as an anchor to stand slowly. I am a little woozy as I get to my feet and clearly don’t hide it well.
“Whoa, steady there,” he says, holding onto both my shoulders. “Take your time, we’re in no rush. ”
“There was just an attack. I hardly believe we aren’t in a rush.” Then I realize that this is the perfect time for me to be doing my job.
My thoughts must pass across my face because Simon says, “Nope, don’t even think about it. Naomi is over there snapping away. Your wellness is my main concern right now.”
“You’re bad at your job then,” I joke. Then I remember why I was so far back from them and begin looking around frantically. “There was a little dog… Did you see it?”
“I’ve seen loads of dogs, Mar.”
“This one looked like a puppy, brown with black and a white paw.” I break away from his grasp and stumble towards where I’d last seen the dog.
“Nope, not right now, we need to get you to a doctor.” Simon grabs me as Karima and Connor run up.
“I’ve got a friend who can take a look at her. This way.” Karima turns in the direction we came from as Connor and Simon each take one of my elbows.
“What are you looking around like that for?” Connor asks, following my gaze.
“There was a dog, apparently,” Simon says.
“There are loads of dogs,” Connor replies, clearly confused.
“This one was a puppy, I think. Bennett… Bennett would…” I am suddenly feeling incredibly tired, and I’m not sure if what I said made sense. I catch the look on Simon’s face before everything goes black.