DAY 951 - OCTOBER 15, 2013


As the bullets still clank off the tin of the building's walls, you ask Jeremy, in your simplest and slowest English, where's the exit? You both kneel and peek your heads over the couch, whereupon you see a dangling piece of corrugated tin that has been dislodged during the firefight. You point to it and you and Jeremy agree that if you can get there you can rip off the metal patch and expose a hole in the wall big enough for both of you to fit through. You and Jeremy hightail it to the loose metal patch, hugging the wall to try to stay as stealthy as possible. You haven't run like this since you lived with your parents in Salaheddine. Your instantly exhausted. Along the wall you, amidst the disorder, see Zaia on the other side of the room, standing over a freshly dead corpse. It's only upon closer inspection that you realize he is looting the dead rebel's body. Finally you reach the corrugated tin and together you put your hands on it. Then you count out loud one, two, three!  And you rip the metal sheet off of the wall, whereby you immediately jump through the newly opened lesion and into the cloudless Aleppo morning. 

Next.