September 24th, 2014 10.15am
He sits on the comfortable sofa and assesses his surroundings. He is in a spartan, minimally furnished room on the second floor of a nondescript Syrian apartment. There is a lamp-shade to his left, and a small coffee table in front of him, on which there is a bowl containing some dates. Somebody has tried to insert some signs of civilization, and he appreciates this. Outside, staccato gunfire is the false fire-cracker sporadically popping in the distance. The automatic bursts have an industrial sound quality, as if the trigger-happy fanatics shouting their devotions are contractors hired to destroy the city incrementally by hosing it with their bullets, and their RPG rounds.
“You want?” asks one of his swarthy captors unable to develop the question any further, because of limited English.
She sat in the chair waiting. Let it come, she thought. I am prepared for every eventuality, and when it comes I will not be surprised. Nonetheless, she was tense, apprehensive, alert, and when the doorbell rang her blood froze. Now, she would say. Here it comes. She tried to hide, inside the room, inside herself, but still she heard the sound of the doorbell like someone screaming in her ear. She tried to make herself smaller and smaller and sometimes even fled to the farthest corner of the room. The farther away she was the less she felt the threat. Sometimes she turned her face to the wall and began to count, ring by ring, and if the ringing did not stop began to mumble words of entreaty or supplication.
literally stories 