Everyone wanted to smash their mirrors. It was hard enough looking at other people’s faces without feeling miserable, let alone one’s own. They had heard about starvation from books and fairy tales, but now they were experiencing it for themselves, along with selfishness and a new lust for survival. People fought fiercely over a handful of herbs

Surrendering to one’s memories is the best way of escaping the wounds they preserve; constant repetition robs them of their brilliance and sanctity.

Fatima nodded without asking why this mattered. She knew how much he liked giving commands, and she generally liked to obey him. Taking up their old roles made them feel less afraid, and they would go through these motions as often during their journey as they had—without ever understanding why—during their childhood.

In the final months of 2013, the city had begun to feel a new pressure that no one could explain. In rare moments of clarity, Bolbol would say to himself that it was due to the idea of revenge, pure and simple, taking alarming root in the regime; it no longer wanted to win so much as to punish.

Bolbol stopped caring about new ideas, and day by day he became a model employee—scared of everything. What frightened him most were those perilous situations in which he found himself agreeing with Lamia when she spoke of necessary change; she would declare loudly that the populace had reached the last stages of servility and that revolution was

The siblings’ identity cards came in handy here, at last; Anabiya was an influential region, and many of its sons were fighting in the Free Army, based in the countryside north of Aleppo.

Taking his father’s body to his friends in S would have been easier by far. They had fallen into Abdel Latif’s trap. As well as their burden his body was now their only means of escape—because it did still stir up some sympathy, sometimes, and it was the only justification they could point to for their being together on the road at such a time.

The living have a harder task ahead of them than the dead; no one wants to see their loved ones rot. They want them to look their best in death for that final memory that can never be erased. The last expression worn by a loved one necessarily comes to epitomize them. When the facial muscles of a suffering man slacken in the midst of his pain, his

The officer looked at Bolbol coldly, used to the blandishments of those who had fallen inside his trap. As far as he was concerned, all these people hated him and wouldn’t have any mercy if their situations were reversed. The roles of executioner and victim were eternally being exchanged, were they not?