Marah

At the end of a dark night, dawn broke, and life came back to me. That was the moment my mother arrived to see us. She finally made it. I won’t even try to express how I felt, because there are no words to describe the feeling. What’s important is that my wish had come true: My family was together after I had almost given up on ever seeing my mom again. My sisters and I had struggled and suffered so much after we realized how important my mother was to us. We realized the importance of having her around, and how much she had taken on for us.

I can’t deny that dealing with her absence has been an exercise in character building and in developing the ability to make our own decisions, but we will never forget all the setbacks we faced because we felt lost and unanchored. We were all nervous wrecks. But all that is OK now, because she’s returned to us.

My sisters, mother, and I stayed at my aunt’s for two days before we started looking for our own place. We found that in the clinic of an expat doctor, which is close to my sister’s school where she is preparing for her government exams and often returns home late at night. The rent, though high, was still cheaper than other places we looked at. We immediately moved in, happy that we were together, ignoring the facts that it’s winter and the clinic is completely devoid of any furniture. My mother bought two blankets. We laid one out on the floor and are using the other to stay warm.

Our first night back with our mother was special. The warmth we had for one another overpowered the scathing cold that filled our little room. I held my mother’s hand and went to bed. We started tugging at the blanket, each of us trying to hog the covers in an attempt to keep warm. We were laughing, almost crying even, and I don’t even know why. Perhaps it was happiness, or perhaps it was us trying to conceal our true feelings. We woke up beaming, with smiles on our faces despite the bellyaches brought about by the cold.

Our happiness did not last for long. A week later, we found ourselves faced with a harsh reality. My mother wasn’t able to pay the rent and the bills and provide for us, because she is now unemployed. The school in the city doesn’t have open positions. How will our poor mother cope with everything? I thought long and hard about it, but I can’t leave my studies, as I need to finish and apply what I’ve learned. I am unable to work and go to school at the same time. I’m truly scared for us, despite my mother’s optimism. I know how worried she is, and she is often distracted. I don’t know how our lives will turn out to be when we live in the capital. It’s not as easy as we thought it would be, and it’s a lifetime away from anything I experienced in my hometown. Here, everyone is busy looking after their own interests, and no one cares about anyone but themselves.

Life is truly strange. Every day you encounter something new, and problems always seem to pop up. Fate made us leave our hometown and our big house to live in this small, simple room. I don’t know what the meaning behind it is. But I often wonder under what law, by whose order, and until when will our right to live with dignity continue to be ignored? ♦

Marah’s diary is produced in collaboration with Syria Deeply, a digital news outlet covering the Syrian crisis. It was translated from the Arabic by Mais Istanbelli.