Bayan - A Short Story

Bayan

by Shadya Radhi

James couldn’t stop staring at the tiny pink bundle wrapped up in his arms. She was perfect. He jumped slightly as he felt a hand brush the small of his back as his wife Amy leaned over his shoulder to look at their new baby daughter. ‘You should probably put her to bed’, she whispered. James slowly set the baby down in her new bassinet and they both quietly backed out of the door leaving it slightly ajar.

James followed his wife back into the living room where once again she settled behind her laptop surrounded by newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and books. As Amy typed away at her laptop James felt the tiny pit of doubt he experienced earlier resurface. He sat down next to his wife, ‘aren’t you happy she’s here?’ he asked quietly. Amy looked up with surprise, ‘of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?’ James looked down at the table, ‘you haven’t held her once since she got here. All you’ve been doing is working on the laptop. Are you having second thoughts?’
Amy sighed softly closing the laptop lid and refusing to meet James’ eyes, ‘I’m not having second thoughts. I’ve just been feeling guilty. We’ve taken her away from her mother, her brother, and her home. I’m overjoyed she’s here; I just can’t stop thinking about her mother. To go through all of that just to have your daughter taken away … ’ James grabbed Amy’s hands from across the table stopping her mid-sentence, ‘we didn’t take her away,’ he said, ‘her mother specifically asked you to take her, to give her a better life’.

Amy pulled her hands back giving a James a look he couldn’t read and went back to her typing. Trying to change the subject James asked, ‘what are you writing? Another article?’ ‘No,’ said Amy, as she clicked away at the laptop. ‘I’m writing Bayan’s story so that we won’t forget any detail when she’s old enough to read it. She has to know everything about how she came to be here, what her mother did for her’.

The story went something like this:

Once upon a time there was a small family that lived in Marea Syria. It was a beautiful place to raise a family. From the day they got married in a small mosque with shiny blue tiles in the village center, Fatima and Hassan dreamt of raising their children in the land of their ancestors.

They talked for hours while sitting in their small back yard as the scent of Jasmine wafted in the evening breeze about how they would teach their children the values of waking up to the call for prayer in the morning and performing the morning absolutions. How they would teach them how to differentiate between the fragrant spices and herbs that wafted through the village every afternoon as the mothers and grandmothers cooked the afternoon meal. They discussed how they would demonstrate to their children the value of the evening family and neighbor gatherings for a night of storytelling and gossip. They wanted their children to grow up in the Syria of their childhood. A time when there was no Sunna, Shia, Christian, Muslim, Arab, or Kurd. A time when all people belonged to Syria.

However in the span of a couple of months, and with the rise of the Syrian revolution, a country that was once one became divided. Not by outside forces, but torn apart by its own people. Fatima watched as a gulf formed between her neighbors, dividing not only friend against friend, but even family against family. She silently watched as the buildings of her childhood over the course of the fighting were maimed and destroyed until they were left unrecognizable. The Syria of her childhood was gone and with it her dreams of ever raising her children in the safe, loving, and magical place of her childhood.

So when Fatima found out she was pregnant she had mixed feelings. Hassan however was ecstatic. He promised Fatima that he would still give his children a loving home even if it meant leaving Syria. Although Fatima’s heart ached at the thought of leaving the town of her childhood she knew it was the right decision, the doctor had informed her that she was going to have twins, and a war torn country was not the ideal place to raise one baby let alone two. So they set a plan. They would head towards the Turkish border and ask for sanctuary.

The night of their departure Fatima couldn’t sleep, she had the strangest feeling that something wasn’t right. While the small town slept, the Free Syrian Army bombarded them with shellings. It was just by chance that after the first explosion Fatima fell off the bed and having rolled under it, was trapped by a fallen bookshelf. She called out to Hassan but she got no reply. Each time she tried to move from under the bed anther swarm of shelling would start up again. Finally dawn broke and as Fatima tentatively crouched out from beneath the bed she already knew what was waiting for her. Hassan was lying on the bed, the white sheets soaked in blood, his eyes vacant.

Fatima grieved, she wailed, she lamented the loss of her husband, her family, and her home, she mourned the loss of everything that made her who she was. It was at the peak of her despair that she felt it. Two tiny kicks in her stomach. Her children were still alive and it was then she decided. They were going to have a better life than this.





This story was inspired by a news article I read a couple of months ago about a Syrian mother who while pregnant with twins made her way to cross the Turkish Syrian border. After surviving shellings and starvation on her mission to cross the border, she was only allowed into Turkey to give birth and then sent back to a refugee camp in Syria. I would like to stress that although this story is inspired by a true event all events portrayed in this story are fictional.