Taken just two days apart, the trip to leave Raqqa was as heart-pounding as the one to enter. But Tareq and his family were lucky. They left mere weeks before Daesh closed off the city, after which the only way to leave would have been through smugglers.
Musa’s neighbors sent their two older daughters, Shams and Asil, with Fayed. Their parents were afraid that Daesh would try to marry the attractive sisters to fighters. To save them, they said goodbye. “We will meet again,” their parents said through tears. Those words would become another broken promise.
Having the young women along worked well for Fayed and his family. Traveling with women made the checkpoints somewhat easier—especially when the girls gave their brother’s ID to Musa, making him their chaperone. Fewer questions, less harassment.
They decided the safest bet was to go through the Aleppo countryside. A trip that used to take two and a half hours would now take them twenty-four, passing eight checkpoints along the way. Fayed left his car with his brother, and they instead shared a beat-up white minibus carrying other passengers.
“What happened there?” Asil asked the driver as they passed the charred skeleton of a similar vehicle.
“A mortar shell,” he answered, unblinking and unfazed.
“Who was in it?” Her voice began to shake.
“People who were trying to go to the border.” The driver looked at her through the rearview mirror. “Passengers like you, with a driver like me, and a talisman like this.” He tapped his hand on the holy verses hanging from his mirror before pulling out a cigarette from his front pocket. “Most of them are dead.” He shook his balding head. “They feared a death at home; instead, they died searching for life.”
Following those words, one of the passengers decided to get off the bus at the next town and find his way back home. “If my fate is to die, I will die in my own house with my family,” he said.
Their hearts raced at every checkpoint.
The government ones were the hardest for Fayed. Despite passing areas of conflict and shelling, his chest would thump the loudest when he thought about their money being taken again. It’s all he had to take care of his children and Musa until he could find work.
Little relief came when they reached the border. Hundreds of people were there, also trying to cross. Many had longer and more difficult journeys, spending nights in stables, in fields and inside dilapidated factories—wherever their smugglers would take them. But they all arrived exhausted. And now it was a waiting game to see if the Turks would let them in.
Syrians have cumulatively spent millions of hours at crossings like these. Forced to endure the elements—the blazing sun, relentless rain or blistering cold. Waiting, only to wait even more. If it wasn’t the weather, it was the fear of not being allowed through—and the wrong customs agent could cost you your freedom and possibly your life. Racial and religious profiling intensifies in wartime, and this war was no exception.
Tareq attempted to ignore the faces around him. They upset him. Every face had a story, a family, a struggle. Instead, he fixed his eyes on the landscape. Soaking in Syria one last time. He whispered his goodbyes to the vegetation, the red dirt and the olive groves that surrounded them.
Their wait was only three hours because they had their passports. Far shorter than the days it could take the others who’d left their IDs behind.
They just missed the bus to the Turkish side of the crossing, so they took the mile-long trek by foot. A silent walk with other families carrying bags, belongings and regrets.
With each step, Tareq knew this was another permanent goodbye. No matter how he tried to deny it. There was no coming back. He thought of the country, the cities and the people he was leaving as he walked between the fences that held signs warning of land mines. He thought of his family, forever a part of Syria’s land where they were laid to rest. What kind of person abandons his family? he thought as he looked at the wires lining the top of the concrete walls. And as a droplet of sweat trickled down his eyebrow and into his eye, he suddenly saw a misty vision of Salim standing beside him. The little brother he was abandoning.
“I don’t want to leave you,” Tareq said to his brother’s visage, glancing around to see if anyone else could see him. But he knew he was alone. This was all in his head.
“You have to. Think of Susan. You couldn’t save us, but you have to try and save her . . . and Baba. They need you more than I do.”
“But . . . I don’t want to leave our family,” Tareq whispered, not wanting to look crazy to those around him but also grateful for the hallucination.
“You mean our dead family? What can you do for the dead?” Salim raised his brow.
“I’d rather be near them.” A tear fell from Tareq’s eye. “I’d rather die near them.”
“This isn’t your time to die.” Salim rolled his eyes. “Always trying to take what I got.” He smirked before looking at his big brother. “I will take care of them. But you take care of our father and sister. Promise me.”
“But . . .”
“Promise me.” Salim’s hazel eyes glistened through the hazy apparition.
“I promise.”
It was a promise Tareq intended to keep. If the world allowed him to.
Salim’s smiling mirage disappeared just as they approached another building, one bearing the pockmarks of AK-47 and DShK fire. The duty-free stores lay abandoned with pictures of Syria’s past luxuries for travelers—perfume, candy and alcohol. Nonessentials to today’s traveler. All the shops contained now were shattered glass and a broken past.
Dozens of little boys ran toward them with wheelbarrows and pull carts. They were persistent and pushy, competing for two or three liras to take back to their starving families.
When they passed the third and final check, Tareq and his family took a deep breath despite the insolent treatment from the Turkish officers. Walking forward, they saw a line of yellow taxis ahead. Anxious families were waiting for their loved ones to arrive, some desperately approaching arrivals and asking if they’d seen their relative make it through customs. Syrian money changers chanted out offers of Turkish liras for the Syrian pound. Others offered Turkish SIM cards for their phones. And not far from where they were standing, they could see Turkish armored vehicles on patrol looking for Syrians trying to cross the border illegally.
They had made it. They were in Turkey. Legally. Tareq couldn’t believe that the steps it took to make it past this crossing were all that was needed to escape warfare.
But relief was short-lived, and they had to say goodbye again. This time to each other.