Sisters of the War

The three sisters-Lojayn, Hanin, and Jawa-knew they lived in a special place, an ancient city where history wasn’t confined to books; it was alive and all around them. The Syrian capital, Damascus, was one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, a place that countless generations had called home for many thousands of years. The girls-ten-year-old Lojayn, eight-year-old Hanin, and Jawa, who was almost six-didn’t live in the capital’s fancy parts, in its rich neighborhoods or historic districts; they lived on its fringes, on a hill in an overcrowded slum called Mezzeh 86. Still, they were proud to say they were from Damascus, even if their sliver of it was its poorer outer edge.

Relative to the grand old capital, with its long, rich history, Mezzeh 86 was practically brand-new. It had sprouted up in the 1980s, a chaotic burst of concrete not far from the Presidential Palace. It was a messy maze of cramped buildings so close their thin outer walls kissed. The proximity and cheap building materials meant neighbors could sometimes hear conversations in other homes. It was noisy, with potholed streets that puddled in the winter, the plonk, plonk, plonk of raindrops falling on tin roofs setting off a symphony of sounds. Honking drivers navigated narrow, sharply sloping two-way streets that were barely wide enough for one-way traffic. Too many people in too small a space, but to the sisters, the bustle made it feel more alive.

The family lived in a small four-room apartment off the busy main road. Their first-floor home had only one bedroom, which their parents used, so Lojayne, Hanin, and Jawa all slept in the living room on thin mattresses that doubles as floor couches during the day. The young sisters all had full rosy-red cheeks and brown eyes. They all wore their curly brown hair short but still long enough for the colorful clips and headbands and ribbons they loved to wear. They had a new baby brother, Wajid, just a few months old, who filled the small house with joy (and screams and wailings). Wajid’s arrival meant Jawa was no longer the youngest child. She wasn’t overly jealous or resentful of her changed status (perhaps just a bit), but she felt she’d outgrown being the baby of the family. After all, she was about to start school later that year. She looked forward to September, when she would join her sisters on the curb outside their home every morning as they waited for the minivan that would drive them to and from classes.