Ming Lauren Holden “I brought scarves and long sleeves,” I say. “I didn’t think I needed to wear them today. Would you prefer I put them on?” “No, no, we don’t mind,” says Mahrouz. “In fact we are thoroughly enjoying it.” Mahrouz, a Syrian cardiologist based in the U.K., has never met a vegetable he doesn’t like. He keeps dashing off when we’re walking to or from dinner in Reyhanli to buy or uproot one (or three). He tells me that our motley crew’s Muslim guys are lucky I don’t understand Arabic. He explains the Muslim afterlife thusly: “A river of wine! So many women, and the ugliest one is more beautiful than Angelina Jolie!” Mahrouz goes into Syria once every one or two months to deliver aid. His mother still lives in his village of Maaret Al Nouman. He and his brother Ahmed, who is the commander of Maaret’s Free Syrian Army unit, are carrying the village on their shoulders. Today in the upstairs portion of a prosthetic limb center in Reyhanli, where the families of amputees stay while their loved ones are fitted and rehabilitated and where we are all sleeping, Mahrouz hands me a passport-size photo of himself in uniform. In it his hair is darker, but he has remained handsome even in his middle age. The problem is, he knows it. When he hears I am undecided about crossing the border into Syria, he sits next to me and lowers his voice to a suggestive level. “You know,” he purrs, “once you go into the camp you might realize that you like it and are not as afraid as you might think. The feeling when you go further into Syria, with everything happening, can be…well, it can be exciting.” He raises an eyebrow, smirking. For perhaps the first and only time, he’s actually waiting for me to talk. I’m a creative writer and not a journalist, with no conflict zone experience and none of the street smarts required for it. I have no poker face and all the diplomatic discretion of Honey Boo Boo. Even to cross the border about fifty meters into Atmeh “Olive Tree” refugee camp is a technically illegal move, and as America cut diplomatic ties with Syria, my government could do nothing for me if I were captured. Even to cross the border at all is, technically, to enter a war zone. Outside, the voices of children, slow shifting of stalks. The glass of tea in my hand is translucent and amber, shaped like a woman. An hourglass. “I’ll think about it,” I tell Mahrouz.
162 u Crab Orchard Review