Free The Boy from Aleppo Who Painted the War by Sumia Sukkar

I drop the plate of rice on the ground. I see the whole family curled towards the wall with dry blood on them and a pool around their bodies. They are all dressed well and the women have headscarves on their heads. That means that they were getting ready to go somewhere. The smell reaches deeper into my mind and I can almost smell their fear before all of this happened. I walk a little towards them to see their faces and they all have their eyes closed apart from the mother whose eyes are still open. I run out. Her eyes poured the colour pink. I pass by the spilled rice and for a split second see a shadow come from the other room. I freeze. What if someone is waiting to kill me too? I don’t want to die. I scream so loud but my legs aren’t carrying me away. I always wake up in tears when I can’t move in my dreams. But now this is reality and tears won’t do anything. I breathe in and out silently and tiptoe out of the house. As soon as I see the daylight from the door I run through it and without realising I look down to a shirt full of vomit.
    â€˜Adam.’I hear a whisper behind me. I run to Yasmine in the kitchen.
    â€˜What’s wrong Adam, what’s wrong?’ Yasmine shakes me. I can’t catch my breath or find the words. I can’t even move.
    I vomit again.
    *
    I wake up to the neighbours’ youngest son’s face. Everything comes back to me and I don’t understand how he is here. Maybe I imagined everything. I really hope I did.
    â€˜You passed out again.’
    I get up and look at Yasmine in the corner of the sofa, her face so pale.
    â€˜Yasmine, what happened?’
    Yasmine looks over at Ali, our neighbour.
    â€˜I’m sorry you had to see that,’ she says. Yasmine used to call me Habibi and always explain things to me simply, but now she doesn’t even look at me when she has something to say.
    â€˜What happened to them?’
    Ali starts telling me everything like it didn’t even happen to his family. Ali is two years older than me, which means he is 16.
    Apparently the army came into the house and started swearing at them and calling them names and they lined them all up and shot them. Ali was hiding under the bed. Even though he is 16, he looks ten and he can fit under anything. This happened yesterday and Ali did not move or run out till I went into the house. It was him that I heard move and whose shadow I saw. After I passed out, Tariq and Yasmine went to the neighbours’ house and saw everything. They found him and brought him back here.
    â€˜Is he going to live with us as well Yasmine?’
    â€˜Adam! Don’t be rude!’
    â€˜I’m asking, I’m not being rude.’
    â€˜Yes he is.’
    Everyone is moving in with us. Our family is falling apart. I didn’t know how disgusting a war could be till now.
    â€˜Are we going to bury them?’ I ask Yasmine. I won’t be able to sleep knowing there are dead bodies in the next house.
    â€˜We can’t move them out, we don’t have enough money for four coffins.’
    â€˜Are you going to leave them there?’
    â€˜Yes for now.’
    I don’t want to have dead people as neighbours.
    â€˜We want freedom, we want the regime down! We want freedom, we want the regime down!’
    Yasmine gets up and slaps Khalid on the face as soon as he walks in and starts chanting.
    â€˜What the hell?’
    I run behind Yasmine.
    â€˜If you want to chant you do that outside, don’t bring your opinions into this house, understood? I don’t want a revolution here as well. It’s bad enough as it is. We are all losing our minds and people are dying for no reason and you’re asking for more!’
    I have never seen Yasmine speak that much or get that angry.
    Khalid storms out and Yasmine swears after him.
    â€˜Calm down Yasmine, you can’t control everything that happens in this house,’ Baba tells her.
    â€˜WELL THEN LET ME LIVE MY