The Doctor of Aleppo Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by Dan Mayland

  E-book published in 2020 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover design by Kathryn Galloway English

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental

  and not intended by the author.

  Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-982622-25-1

  Library e-book ISBN 978-1-982622-24-4

  Fiction / War & Military

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  Then he will say also to those on the left hand, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you didn’t give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you didn’t take me in; naked, and you didn’t clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.”

  Then they will also answer, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and didn’t help you?”

  Then he will answer them, saying, “Most certainly I tell you, because you didn’t do it to one of the least of these, you didn’t do it to me.”

  —Matthew 25:41-45,

  World English Bible

  In the spring of 2011, protests erupted throughout the Middle East.

  Governments were overthrown in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen.

  In Syria, the regime of Bashar al-Assad shot, beat, and tortured

  protesters, but instead of crushing the opposition, it sparked a civil

  war. By July of 2012, that war had breached the walls of Syria’s capital,

  Damascus. But to the north by the border with Turkey, in what was

  then Syria’s largest city, an uneasy peace still held . . .

  Author’s note

  Although a work of fiction, every effort has been made to depict the war for Aleppo in a way that aligns with the actual history of the conflict. To that end, the major combatants and institutions I portray should be assumed to be real—except, however, for the European Development Service and aid group known as Bonne Foi, which are my own creations.

  2012

  prologue

  Aleppo, Syria

  At the members-only Club d’Alep, as women wearing cocktail dresses and pearls played buraco at baize-topped card tables, a waiter in the back of the club paused before a wall of freshly laundered linens.

  He looked left, then right, then slipped a black tablecloth into his leather satchel.

  Minutes later, not far to the south, a sixteen-year-old girl stood poised on the threshold of a silk shop in the souk, anxiously observing a young salesman as he wrapped a brilliant red scarf around his neck with theatrical flair.

  Her hand trembled as she let her backpack slip from her shoulder. Her mouth was dry.

  “Come, come,” said the salesman when he saw her, welcoming her in with a wave of his hand and speaking loudly to be heard over the clatter of sewing machines. “I have your mother’s order.” Turning to a customer behind him, he added, “This will only take a moment.”

  And a moment truly was all it took for him to hand the girl a package that had been wrapped in brown paper and tied tight with twine.

  “Only green and white,” he whispered.

  Across town, in one of the Kurdish districts, a young mechanic slid out from underneath a Hyundai sedan.

  “Done,” he said. Although it was only two in the afternoon, he had finished his last oil change of the day. Business had been slow of late.

  “No later than seven tomorrow,” said the garage owner without looking up from the car engine he was repairing. “We paint the Kia.”

  “Six forty-five,” promised the boy, then he stripped off his coveralls, hung them on a peg, and exited the three-bay garage via a door in the rear. Before starting off down the garbage-strewn alley that paralleled the back of the building, he reached his hand into a bald truck tire that lay near the door.

  The boy felt some shame that the small Nescafé tin he pulled from the tire was only half-filled with red paint, but it was all he could steal without raising suspicions.

  Facebook and regular phone lines were monitored by the government, but Skype was not, so that was how everyone knew to take their packages to a middle-class neighborhood on the western side of the city and hide them inside a white bucket, on the periphery of an overgrown garden.

  At three that afternoon, a fifteen-year-old boy named Adel retrieved the packages and snuck them up to the attic above his third-floor condominium. There he rolled out the fabric, pulled a needle, thread, and scissors out of a dry water tank, and began to cut the cloth into strips.

  The sewing part took him a long time, and he was unsatisfied with his inconsistent stitching, but he felt a bit of pride at the way the painted red stars turned out.

  “Where are you going?” demanded his mother after he had crept down from the attic and was running out the door.

  “The mosque.”

  Which was true in that he did walk straight to the nearby silver-domed Rashid Mosque. And he even made a show of praying with the rest of the congregants—of which there were hundreds more than usual that evening.

  But when the imam finished his service, an uneasy silence settled over the crowd until a lone voice shouted a single word: “Takbir! ”

  “Allahu Akbar! ” Adel roared in unison with all the others who had been waiting for this moment. Then he pulled his orange T-shirt up over his nose so that it covered his face like a mask and ran for the exit.

  As the congregants spilled out, Adel unwrapped his five homemade flags from around his waist and began to give them away.

  It was the green, white, and black flag of independence, marked in its center by three red stars. It was the flag that Syria had flown when the French had finally left sixty-six years ago, and it was the flag that Adel was determined to see flying from the Presidential Palace in Damascus when the dictator Assad was gone.

  “Get out, Bashar!” he cried as he handed out the flags.

  “Get out, Bashar!” cried a gap-toothed boy as he grabbed the last of Adel’s flags.

  Side by side, the two boys raced to join the throng of protesters who were already marching in the street, chanting, “The blood of the martyrs is not cheap. Pack your things and get out! Get out, Bashar!”

  When the Mukhabarat attacked moments later, firing bullets and tear gas into the crowd, it was as though they had been lying in wait. As though someone on the inside had tipped them off.

  Adel sprinted to an alley down the street. Just before ducking into it, he glanced over his shoulder and saw two men in black, backlit by the sun, batons arcing high over their heads, pummeling the gap-toothed boy.

  chapter 1

  Monday, July 16

  The clinic lay just a short walk from the University of Aleppo Hospital.

  Its wide glass entrance doors proclaimed the doctor’s name—Samir Hasan, MD—and opened to a carpeted waiting area where the air was cool, the seats upholstered with leather, and the glass coffee tables cluttered with bowls of Turkish delight and sugar-coated chickpeas.

  The doctor sat at a pedestal desk in his office. Behind him, diplomas in gilded frames hung from the wall. In
front of him, the deputy minister of irrigation, who had just flown in from Damascus, was wedged into a wingback chair. They were discussing the minister’s knee.

  “You suffer from osteoarthritis,” Sami announced as he leaned back in his swivel chair and zoomed in on a digital X-ray image on the laptop in front of him. “In a young person, the femur bone is separated from the tibia by a cushion of cartilage we call the meniscus. In your case, the cartilage has deteriorated to such a degree that in your right knee, bone is grinding against bone. That is the source of your pain. The joint should be replaced, of course.”

  Ordinarily, Sami might have turned his laptop around to show the patient an X-ray image of the knee in question and pointed out where the meniscus had deteriorated. He might also have brought out a skeletal model of a knee joint and specified exactly what would be replaced. But Sami harbored no love for government bureaucrats and made a point of doing as little as possible for them without giving obvious offense.

  “Does that mean—”

  “There is also the matter of your weight,” Sami interjected.

  The Damascene minister exhaled loudly through his nose and shifted in his seat. Sami caught a whiff of rosewater perfume.

  “I do have large bones.”

  “Your bones are neither larger nor smaller than they should be. The issue is that you are obese.” Sami steepled his fingers on the top of his desk. “This is a clinical observation,” he continued, “based upon your height and corresponding weight. Your obesity is relevant because it has doubtless contributed to your underlying condition, and it will certainly affect your recovery and the durability of the implant. I recommend you lose thirty kilos.”

  “Thirty kilos! But that could take a year to accomplish!” The minister raised his eyebrows and made a small tsk sound.

  “At a minimum. Either that, or you must be prepared for a suboptimal—” Sami paused, interrupted by knock on his office door. “Yes?” he called, annoyed, thinking it was probably someone from the minister’s security detail, asking for some special privilege or another. As if clearing out his clinic during prime business hours wasn’t privilege enough.

  His receptionist, a twenty-five-year-old brunette, who also happened to be his second cousin, poked her head in. The minister diverted his eyes to his lap.

  “I asked that we not be disturbed,” snapped Sami.

  She smiled weakly. “The hospital is on line two, Dr. Hasan. One of your patients has suffered a setback.”

  Sami frowned. “Dr. Issa is on call. Surely he can handle it.”

  “They said it was an emergency. And that they just need a minute of your time.”

  “Surely—”

  “Please, Doctor.” She gestured with her eyes that it was important Sami comply.

  “My apologies,” said Sami to the minister. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a model of a knee that had been fitted with an implant. “Evidently I must offer a quick consultation. In the meantime, this might interest you.”

  As soon as they were out of earshot of the minister, the receptionist thrust the phone into Sami’s hand.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  She placed a hand on her heart and gestured to the phone. “Tahira will explain.”

  He stepped into an empty exam room, closed the door behind him, and listened as his wife, who was in tears, explained that her sister’s eldest son, Omar, had hurt his arm—badly—while working at the soap factory owned by Tahira’s family.

  “So bring him to the clinic,” said Sami calmly.

  “No! You must come to the factory.”

  The deputy minister of irrigation had shut down the whole street outside the clinic. As a result, Sami was already running an hour and a half behind schedule for his evening appointments. He would make the time for Omar, of course, but the boy needed to be brought to the clinic. He told Tahira as much.

  “Sami, think for a moment. Why would I ask you to come to the factory?”

  “I have no time for riddles, Tahira.”

  “Sami, please!” she cried. “You know Omar. You know he has these ideas . . .”

  Her voice trailed off.

  And then suddenly Sami understood, or at least thought he did.

  “His leg is injured too,” whispered Tahira. “And there is bleeding.”

  Sami cursed under his breath then looked at the ceiling.

  “Give me twenty minutes,” he said quietly. He wanted to ask questions, but the government could be listening. Especially with the deputy minister inside the clinic.

  After hanging up and standing dumbfounded for a moment, he gave the phone back to his receptionist.

  “I need to leave,” he said quietly.

  They stared at each other without speaking.

  “Please reschedule the rest of my evening appointments,” he added. “On Wednesday we will remain open for an additional hour. More, if need be.”

  “What should I tell him?” She gestured with her chin to the office.

  “Leave him to me.”

  “I suggest we schedule the operation for October,” Sami said, addressing the deputy minister. “In the meantime, here is the name of a nutritionist I have used in the past, who may be able to help with the weight loss.”

  “Doctor, thirty kilos—”

  “Is ideal,” Sami said briskly as he transcribed the name, “but all I ask is that you do your best, okay? You lose as much as you can before the operation, the rest after.”

  He recited the bare minimum of information regarding what could be expected in terms of recovery after the operation, then handed the minister off to his nurse for blood work.

  Once Sami heard the minister laughing with the nurse in the next room over, he opened a series of cupboards in his outpatient operating room and hastily filled a soft briefcase with supplies he thought he might need: bandages, scalpels, latex gloves, liquid bandages, a suture kit, a small bottle of Betadine antiseptic, a cautery pen, an assortment of syringes and needles, two flexible splints, and anesthetic drugs—fentanyl and ropivacaine.

  Moments later he was racing out the back door of his clinic, his satchel bouncing on his hip with each long stride he took toward his Honda scooter.

  The midday heat was stifling, and the city smelled of car exhaust and burnt dust. His forehead was covered in sweat before he even reached Saadallah al-Jabiri Square, where he observed a collection of young soldiers lounging around a canvas-topped Ural transport truck, AK-47s slung across their shoulders, some of them staring at traffic, others at their phones. They were just kids, he knew that. But they were kids with the power to search him, and if they were to do so, and question him about the contents of his satchel . . .

  He was too tall for this kind of deception. He stood out, always had.

  As he made his way from the wealthy neighborhood that surrounded the University of Aleppo and into the walled old city, the roads grew narrower. Upon reaching the periphery of the central covered market, he nosed his scooter down a narrow, stone-walled service alley, then parked and ducked through a low doorway.

  Tahira was waiting for him. She wore stretch jeans, gold flip-flops, and a loose-fitting white blouse that accentuated her bosom. Her black hair was uncovered, her eyelashes long, and her face lined with worry. Gold bracelets jingled on her wrists. Florescent lights hung from an arched ceiling.

  She grabbed his hand.

  “Was he protesting?” demanded Sami as he allowed Tahira to lead him to one of the arched alcoves where a pallet of pastel-green soap, partially illuminated by an open skylight near the apex of the arch, lay drying.

  “Of course.”

  Sami cursed.

  “Aya came to me,” pleaded Tahira. “What could I do?”

  “Who knows he is here?”

  “Only Aya. I
think.”

  Sami was not reassured. What if, in the days to come, his sister-in-law, Aya, or her son, Omar, were to be arrested and questioned? Of course, neither would willingly confess that he had provided treatment, but when the interrogations turned violent—as they inevitably would—and loved ones were threatened, what then?

  He recalled the medical student whose mutilated remains had been found in a burnt-out car, and the dermatologist who had been found dead on the side of the road with half his bones broken. Both had been accused of aiding protesters.

  Aya was seated behind the pallet of soap, where the sweet smell of laurel-leaf oil was being fouled with the chemical, bleach-like smell of tear gas residue. Four years older than Tahira, she was a slight woman, with slender arms and high cheekbones. Her shoes were missing, revealing socks with holes in them. One ear was bleeding where an earring appeared to have been pulled off her lobe.

  In front of her, on a tarp, lay her son. His nephew.

  Sami dropped to his knees beside her. “Hello, Omar!” he said loudly, even though the boy’s eyes were closed. “It is your Uncle Samir! I have come to help you.”

  He gently tugged on Omar’s ear, and the boy’s eyes briefly fluttered.

  “How long has he been unconscious?” he asked as he leaned down, ear to his nephew’s mouth. The boy was still breathing.

  “Unconscious? No, he is not unconscious, I just told him to close his eyes and to save his strength for when you got here. Omar!” she called. “Your uncle is here. Tell him where it hurts.”

  Sami placed a hand on Aya’s forearm.

  “For now, leave him be.”

  “We were walking by the Rashid mosque,” Aya said, crying. “And Omar saw the flags, he heard the chanting. I tried to stop him, but he ran from me, and then we were both . . . they beat him . . . I tried to stop them, but . . .”

  She bit down on her bent index finger, unable to continue.

  Sami assumed she was lying. The Rashid mosque was nowhere near her home. She had gone there to protest and had brought her son with her. Stupid.