"A Wedding in Aleppo" by M. K. Martin

We are having a wedding in our restaurant. Allmorning, my younger brother, Hamid, has been scampering like a skinny,tail-less monkey, hanging lights in our cypress trees. We have the laststanding cypress trees in Aleppo, so says my father. Baba spent the morningmoving tables and chairs, dividing the main dining room so the women can be onone side and the men on the other. I help by hanging flowers and streamers fromthe walls. I hang stars and moons and suns from the ceiling. They’ll look downon us and bless my best friend’s marriage. At least they’re happy for her.

Mara’s two years older than me, sixteen now. She’sbeen coming to our house since the local girls’ school was bombed. My mothercan’t teach at the university anymore, so she teaches in our backyard and thedining room of the restaurant. Every day, even when the shelling is very close,she conducts lessons. Mara came for school and she and I became best friends.She’s like a sister. Better than my sisters.

She told me she was getting married when we wereworking on our math exercises three weeks ago. We sat together on a cushion inthe corner of the restaurant dining room while my mother listened to my sister,Fatima, recite her history lesson.

“My father met with Samir’s family,” Mara whispered,her eyes sparkling.

“He’s probably just going to join the fighters.” I bitdown on the end of my pencil until the eraser popped off in my mouth. I spit itinto my hand and rolled it back and forth, watching the slim trails of salivashine and then dry in the heat.

“No, he won’t. He’s working in his father’s shop.”

“Are you going to go live in that junkyard when you’remarried?”

Mara laughed. “It’s not a junkyard, habibti. It’s a repair garage.”

“What about school?” I said.

She nudged my shoulder with her head. “We’ll still seeeach other all the time.”

“I know.” I pulled up my cheeks into a smile. “I’m sohappy for you.”

This morning, Fatima, who is two years younger thanme, dances in the open space in the dining room. She’s supposed to be helpingme. When I was her age, I always helped Omi with her housework. Fatima doesn’tcare. She twirls and sways, her hands flutter up like sparrows, her fingerssnap to the music. She’s still getting used to wearing the hijab and sheconstantly fidgets with it, tucking and pulling, dislodging strands of hairuntil it’s puffed around her face like a flower’s petals.

A car horn honks from the street, two bleats.

“The lamb!” Fatima spins to a stop and rushes for thefront gate.

“Fatima.” Baba’s voice is sharp. He drops the stack ofchairs he’s moving, and they clatter across the floor, plastic legs twistingtogether. My father leaps them in a stride and catches Fatima by her wrist. Sheyanks to a stop, her face clouding up, confused and hurt.

“You don’t open the gate.” Baba shakes her shoulders.“Ever.”

Great shiny tears pearl in Fatima’s eyes and her lipquivers. Baba pulls her to his chest, her hijab falls back as he strokes herhead and kisses her dark, curly hair.

“Don’t open the gate, yes?” Baba takes her chin in hishand. He is still in his white t-shirt and American basketball jersey, hisfavorite clothes when the restaurant is closed. He pulls off the jersey anddons his conservative button shirt, the color of dust.

Fatima smears her knuckles across her face and nods.“Yes, Baba.” She hiccups.

My father looks at me. Of course, it’s my fault fornot watching her. Fatima never gets in trouble. My shoulders sag. “Fatima, comehelp me with the balloons.”

“I want to help with the lamb.” She pouts.

“We have some with sparkles.” I try to tempt her.“Where should we put them?”

“Help your sister, sweetheart.” Baba pauses at thedoor to shake a finger at Fatima, but he’s smiling a little as he turns back tothe front gate. It is painted like a sunset on the inside. At the bottom theslats are pale yellow, then orange and pink fading to blue and at the top it isblack and spangled with stars.

Once, when I was very small, my mother took me out ofthe city at night to see the stars. We drove up into the hills and stopped in afield. Omi gave the shepherd some money and he took his flock away a little sowe could spread our blanket and lay down to see the heavens. The night wascool, the winds down from the hills smelled of terebinth trees and olivegroves. Underneath us, the ground was still warm. It felt like climbing intoBaba and Omi’s bed in the morning just after they’d gotten up for the day. Ofcourse, that was back when they shared a bed.

“Do you see that star, just under the moon?” Omipointed. “It’s the planet Jupiter.”

“Is it a star or a planet?” I asked.

“We used to think it was a star, but now we know it isa planet,” Omi said. “Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi, the Persian astronomer, wasobserving the night sky while people in the West were all dying of the BlackPlague.”

When I was little, I thought my mother kneweverything. She was a university professor. She taught history and she washappy. That night under the stars she was the mother of two girls, Noor andFatima, and one boy, Hamid. She was carrying another boy, but he never got aname. My other brother died before he was born. After him there was anothernot-quite-brother and by then Omi and Baba slept in different beds. Omi hungtheir bedspread across the room. It was red like poppy flowers, embroideredwith gold thread patterns of birds and soft waves like dunes in rows. It waspart of my mother’s bride price, so why should it be surprised to hang foreverbetween husband and wife as if it was always their wedding day but never theirwedding night?

Before the war, when Omi was still a professor, weused to gather in our parents’ room. I sat on the floor with Hamid, rolling aball between us. Fatima sprawled on our mother’s bed, sorting buttons. Omi satat her desk and worked on her computer.

“Omi, why do you have a curtain between you and Baba?”Fatima asked.

“Because if your baba sees me, he might want to makemore babies with me,” Omi said. Her back was straight and she didn’t turn orlook at us. I knew she still cried about her dead boys. She typed fast for aminute, then said, “We don’t want more babies.”

The curtain didn’t keep Baba from seeing Omi becausejust before the protests in the Sakhour district she told us she was pregnantagain. We were in the restaurant kitchen, stuffing leaves with rice and spicedgoat meat for yabraq.

“Maybe this time it will be a girl,” Fatima said.

“Sons are a mother’s glory.” My mother ran a hand overher stomach, still flat and cozy. My sisters baked inside my mother like loavesin Baba’s oven. Outside Aleppo baked in the heat of more protests and rallies.Angry people spilled out of the demonstrations in Saadallah al-Jabiri Squareand blew down our neighborhood’s streets like a storm from the desert. Baba hadto close the restaurant. “Just for a short time,” he said, but there were moreprotests and then the markets started closing. The restaurant stayed closed;the big clay oven went cold for the first time in my life. That was almost morefrightening than the rumors of fighting because it was in our own home, changein a place that had always seemed eternal and safe.

The twins, Yana and Rima, were born between the carbombs at the Military Intelligence Directorate and the one in the Sulaiymaniyahdistrict. Omi’s leave of absence from the university for Yana and Rima’s birthextended on and on. It was too dangerous to cross from one side of Aleppo tothe other. In the west the rebels might sell you to Daesh. In the east thesoldiers might take you away for being a rebel.

Three months after the twins’ birth, we stood in thebackyard, watching Baba clean out the oven. The restaurant had been closed forweeks and Baba joked that it gave him time to finally do all the projects he’dbeen too busy for. He knelt in front of the oven and scraped out its insideswith a wire bristle brush and a handful of twigs gathered from under ourcypress trees. Omi fed Yana while Rima slept in my arms. Fatima squatted nextto Baba, watching him closely, while Hamid lay on the grass, staring up at thecloud shapes. I don’t remember smoke that day, so there must not have been anybombings close by. At night sometimes we’d hear the thump and roar of them.“Pretend they’re earthquakes,” Omi had told us, but I didn’t see how that wouldmake the feeling of our house shaking around us any better.

“I’ve been thinking,” Omi said. Baba sat up and pushedhis hair back. His hand was covered in black and gray ash, like he’d beendigging through rubble instead of our restaurant’s oven. He left a dark streakacross his forehead.

“Have you?” Baba smiled so Omi would know he wasteasing only, but she was looking over the wall and didn’t see him.

“I have a lot of time to think since they’veofficially suspended classes.”

“It’s official now?” Baba leaned back on his heels andFatima picked up the wire bristle brush and ran her thumb across it, flickingash everywhere, like dirty snow.

Omi looked at him then, frowning. “Yes, I told you.”

Baba held up his hands. “Ah, yes. I must haveforgotten.”

“Are you going to open the restaurant again soon?” Omiasked.

Baba sighed. “For who? No one can come now, and wehardly have anything to cook with the blockades.”

“I want to open a school then. We can use the diningroom space.”

“None of your students can make it here,” Baba said.“Besides, what about the babies?”

“After Hamid, I was back teaching after only twomonths. The girls will help. They need to learn to change diapers anyway.” Omididn’t remember that I changed the twins’ diapers by myself already. “And theschool won’t be for university classes. It’ll be for our girls and anyone elsein the neighborhood who wants to send their girls.”

Baba looked at her quietly for a little while, then hepoked Fatima with the bundle of twigs and took the bristle brush away from her.“Anything for our girls.”

“Thank you, Baba. I’ll be Omi’s best student!” Fatimagiggled and hugged him.

But Fatima wasn’t the best student or even one of thebest. Mara was the best student. She started coming after the first month. Atthe time, she was 13 and I was 11, but she had been out of school for longer,so we shared lessons. When the shelling was very bad, she stayed with usovernight. If the bombs woke the twins, Mara helped me soothe them while Fatimaslept carelessly, her arms and legs thrown across the bed, taking up all thespace we were supposed to share. On the nights Mara stayed, I slept on themattress on the floor with her. Mara never kicked me in her sleep.

Today, Yana and Rima run shrieking across thebackyard, trying to strangle themselves in the cords of the electric lightsHamid is wrapping around our cypress trees. The lights are red and blue andgreen, white and yellow. They blink in a sequence, first from top to bottom andthen they all flash at once.

“Don’t pull down Mara’s lights, you little dervishes,”I call to the twins. Yana waves at me and Rima sticks out her tongue.

“Noor,” my mother calls through the open space betweenour house and the restaurant. “Mara’s mother just rang. They’re on their way.Go make sure her dresses are ready.”

“Watch those two,” I tell Fatima. She should knowthat, but she’s busy winding a pink streamer into a rose in her hand. I tug theend of the streamer as I walk past her and the rose unravels.

“Noor!” She pouts.

I snap my fingers and point out to the backyard.“Watch the twins. I’m going to help with Mara’s dresses.”

“Oh, I want to see her dresses.” Fatima somehowmanages to stick her lower lip out even farther.

“Omi said for me to.” I glance over at Baba. He’spreparing the lamb on the cement countertop between the brick oven and thesink. He’s not looking at us. I reach out and pinch Fatima’s big fat lip andtwist it. “Stop being a baby, Fati. People are dying all over Aleppo and you’rewhining. For shame.” I walk away before she can say anything back.

For four years, since the bombings started, my motherhas kept our windows closed, curtains drawn, and shutters locked. Maybe it willprotect us from barrel bombs, or maybe she just doesn’t want to see themcoming. Today, Omi has opened up our house. The breeze blows through filling everyroom with light and air. The gauzy curtains, green as the first leaves ofspring, flutter and stretch. They are happy to be moving after so long instillness. Omi has been dusting and sweeping, mopping and polishing like a demonall day. Some of Mara’s relatives arrived this morning to help her. They areall clustered in the living room, drinking sweet mint tea and admiring Omi’sframed diplomas and certificates. There are photos of my mother shaking handswith other professors.

“Such a famous family, Noor.” Mara’s aunt, Asil,smiles as I make my way through the women. The room is full of the smell offlowers, mostly roses. Each woman is her own blossom, gilded in her ownmarriage jewelry and trailing a cloud of perfume.

“Yes, Auntie.”

Asil turns back to my mother. “Remember when thoseAmerican journalists came all the way here just to have a bowl of ful?”

My father’s fava bean soup is famous throughout Aleppo. People would travel across the whole city and wait for hours to have it for breakfast. Today he’s managed to get the ingredients and outside a pot is bubbling – a special wedding treat.

If my father were less well known, less connected, wemight not be able to have Mara’s wedding, but when people heard there was to bea wedding and that Abu Hamid was going to open his restaurant again for onlyone day, they brought over what they could spare.

“Just a little something for the bride.” A sack ofAleppo red peppers and some eggs from their surviving chicken.

“We can’t use all this before it goes bad.” A kilo offlour and a bottle of oil. Of course, this is a lie, but Baba accepts andinvites them to the feast after the wedding. And of course, they’ll come. Whenwas the last time we celebrated anything?

So all week food has arrived like a slow, steady raina few drips at a time until we have what seems like a feast. The most food thetwins have ever seen at once.

“I can’t wait to get married so we can have anotherfeast,” Yana says.

“I’ll get married, too, and we can have two feasts.”Rima claps her hands.

All week Mara and her family had been bringing overher dresses. She has five. It’s a good amount, respectable, especially during awar. Five dresses and a white wedding dress like a Western girl with a veil anda tiara. I check that each dress is still wrapped in the long plastic bag fromthe tailor.

“When Samir sees me in this, he will want to make somany babies with me.”

I peeked around the rack of dresses. Each one is likea beautiful bird, something you’d see in the zoo with little signs that sayAmazonia or India or some tiny island far from all land. Mara could live on atiny island. Her face is like a heart and her hair is heavy dark silk. Shecould be one of those girls in a grass skirt with little white flowers in herhair and falling over her body.

“He will.” I agree.

Mara reaches out and runs her hands across therustling plastic bags. She looks at the white dress. “When I take this dressoff, I’ll be a wife and…” She bites her lip and looks at me under her lashes.

“Do you know about sex?” I ask. Mara pulls down thewhite dress and holds it up before her as she faces the mirror. She shakes herhead just a little, her cheeks rosy.

“I know about sex.” I unwrap the first dress. It’screamy peach with white lace and buttons. It looks like baklava dusted withpowdered sugar.

“Of course, you do. Your mother’s very modern.” Marais nearly naked and she holds up her arms for me to pour the dress over her.

“Does Samir know?” I ask. Mara laughs. Samir is 25. Ofcourse, he knows. He was studying economics before the war and now he repairsdiesel engines in his father’s shop. That way he can stay in the back of AbuSamir’s shop and doesn’t have to join Assad’s loyalist army.

Behind us a door opens and the women descend upon us,bearing make-up and curling irons. They swarm Mara and I’m shuffled out, alittle girl with no place among the women.

Baba directs Fatima and Hamid setting out the food andplates, the heavy serving dishes and the boxes of scented tissues for thewedding guests to clean their fingers. Yana and Rima slither under the trestletables and steal figs and fingerfuls of pistachio paste when they think noone’s watching.

In the house, Mara will dress and change, dress and change every hour to show off her new wardrobe. At Samir’s house, his friends will be a quiet arada, the troop of men that comes to take the groom to his bride. They can’t risk carrying Samir through the streets, singing and drumming, so they will celebrate in his father’s garage.

Night comes and the feast is ready. Meat with mint,green olives with pomegranate molasses drizzled over it, spiced lamb with sweetcherry sauce, seven kinds of kibbe, andnine kinds of hummus. There’s sweet mint tea and sugared coffee and all kindsof soda. Baba even keeps some cold bottles of beer and two bottles of wineunder the counter. It’s not halal,but it’s a wedding in the middle of a civil war, so people shrug.

“It’s time,” Fatima cries.

Mara stands in the doorway from the house, the flock of women behindher. She’s like a cloud hovering inches from the Earth. She takes a deep breathand smiles. Smiles at me. Outside, there is a knock at our starry gate and hergroom arrives.

My father opens the gate and lets the men in. They mill around in thefront yard, while Samir approaches Mara alone. He wears a traditional robe andoffers her a pillow covered in a folded silk cloth. Mara’s wedding jewelry iswrapped in the silk. A gold necklace with linked hearts. Gold drop earrings setwith pearls and lapis lazuli from Afghanistan. Three rings, one gold, and twosilver.

Since we can’t risk traveling through the streets, the men of the aradaraise Samir on their shoulders and tour our yard while the women swoop in toexamine Mara’s wedding jewelry and silks. Mara ducks her head as her motherfastens the necklace and kisses her. The gold looks strange against her chest.It looks like it would be cold.

“Noor, come help with the food,” Baba calls from the restaurant. I turnaway from Mara and hurry to fetch the warm lakhma,fresh from the oven.

“It smells different without all the ash,” Baba says. He hands me a pileof the flat bread and pats my shoulder. I slip through the curtain from the kitcheninto the women’s side of the dining room. Mara is seated at the head table,surrounded by her family and by Samir’s sisters and female relatives. Shedoesn’t notice me as I lay out the food.

From the men’s side, someone starts singing and then a drummer joins in. Fatima grabs Rima’s hand and they dance around, weaving through the small spaces between the tables and women. Yana wiggles into Omi’s lap and fills her mouth with halva. Sesame paste and crumbs are already smeared across her cheeks.

Outside the lights in the trees blink and cascade. The last time ourrestaurant had so many people was years ago. I close my eyes and listen to theclatter of dishes, the soft sop of bread on plates, and the chatter of people. Thisis a dream I could live in.

There’s a knock at the front gate – bang, bang, bang! I look at Omi. Allthe guests are here. She stands up. “Go get your father.” Rima runs to thekitchen. I look around for Fatima, but I don’t see her.

I hear the sound of the front gate opening just as Baba comes from thekitchen. Omi and I both hurry to the front of the dining room. The guests fallsilent, seeing our faces.

Our starry gates are open, my sister stands there and in front of her,three men with rifles. They wear the uniforms of the loyalist army. One is anolder man, a little fat, the second is short and thin, the third has a fancybit of gold cord on his uniform. Must be an officer.

“The famous Abu Hamid restaurant,” the officer says. “I always wanted toeat here but I never could afford it before the war.” He looks around. “Allthese lights and noise. It’s dangerous. The rebels might attack.”

“Noor, go get some food for our guests,” Baba says. He doesn’t look atme, just watches the soldiers. Omi grabs Fatima and pulls her away from thegate. Omi looks at me and her eyes are huge. Her mouth is a thin line.

“Come on, Fati.” I take my sister’s hand and lead her to the kitchen.

“I didn’t know it was soldiers,” Fatima says.

I lay out a tray with three bowls of ful,some bread, and several pastries.

“I thought it was guests,” Fatima says.

I pour three cups of tea and set a pot of thick, dark, wild honey besidethem.

“I was just trying to help since Baba was so busy,” Fatima says.

“And now there are soldiers and you let them in.” I hear mywords. They fly like stones. They could break my little sister, shatter herbones.

“What if they arrest Baba? What if they take Omi away for being a ladyprofessor?” I feel a rush of power as I look at her. She twists her fingers together,rocks from foot to foot. Her lip quivers.

“Do you want us to be war orphans, Fati? Maybe Mara could adopt us sinceshe’s married now. Should we ask her if she wants four children and one uselessdonkey?”

“I’m sorry.” Fatima ducks her head.

“Now you’re sorry. You never think until it’s too late.” I grab the trayand carry it out of the kitchen. At the door I have to turn to back out throughthe curtain. My sister stands in the middle of the kitchen staring at her dustyfeet. She’s wearing her best hijab, a pink scarf with blue and white roses. Itused to be mine. My sister doesn’t have new clothes to wear for a wedding and Ionce went with Omi to see the stars.

I carry the tray to the front of the restaurant where the soldiers wait. The officer and the skinny soldier are smoking. Omi has rounded up Yana and Rima and taken them inside with the other women. Our guests talk in nervous, soft voices, trying to pretend they’re not afraid, trying to be happy for Mara and Samir while my father buys off the soldiers with bowls of soup and cups of tea. It’s what we have. It’s all we have. It has to be enough.

Featured art: “Water Abstract” by Kevin Dooley

M. K. Martin is a Minnesota born and raised author and editor. Her novel Survivors' Club was published in 2017. Her short stories appear in 0-Dark-Thirty, Wanderlust Literary Journal, and in several anthologies. Currently, she is an MFA candidate in the Writing & Publishing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Between Minnesota and Vermont, Martin was an exchange student in Paraguay, joined the Army, got deployed to Afghanistan and to Iraq, got a BA in Linguistics from the University of Oregon, and developed a deep love of tea. You can find her at https://mkmartinwriter.com/

"Water abstract" is a photograph by Kevin Dooley. You can see more of his work here.