I hadn’t heard from Ahmed in the past week, so I texted him to see how he was doing. I had seen that Saraqeb had been attacked again, but I hoped that no news was good news.
“Hi Ahmed, how are you?”
“Thanks for asking, but this has been the worst week of my life. My wife and I were on the verge of getting a divorce. Since the missile hit our house, something snapped, I think. ”
“It’s no problem if you want to write this down. I don’t want really want to talk about it, but maybe it’s good to tell you that we’ve decided to stay together. With the war going on outside, the worst thing that could happen is that their parents are at war with each other.”
“It’s very tough here. Nobody’s doing anything anymore. The only thing we do is when a bomb has fallen somewhere, we rush to the place to see if there are relatives or friends among the dead and wounded. We do this every single day. Just yesterday in Ariha. A friend lost his mother and three of his children. Can you imagine what that would be like? It feels like they want to destroy us — everyone who lives here ”
“I hope I can recover. I know we have to be strong for the children.”