Refugee

Twelve-year-old Mahmoud Bishara is used to being invisible—it is how he survives. Getting noticed by the Syrian army or the rebels fighting them, he knows, is “just inviting trouble.” When the bell rings in school, Mahmoud finds his 10-year-old brother Waleed to walk him home. He takes a different way every day, trying to find a back alley or bombed buildings that could serve as shelter in case more bombs came.

Just four years ago, Aleppo had been a beautiful, bright city, until 2011 came and a wave of revolutions swept through the Middle East. The leader of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, made people who didn’t like him “disappear.” A man in Damascus was imprisoned for speaking out against him, and then some kids were arrested and abused for writing anti-Assad slogans on walls. Suddenly, tens of thousands of people poured into the streets, demanding more freedom, and within a month, Assad had turned his tanks and soldiers on his own people.

As Mahmoud and Waleed turn down an alley, they notice two boys beating another boy up in order to take the bag of bread he carried. Mahmoud remembers another incident, in which his friend Khalid, a Shia Muslim, was beaten by two older boys who were Sunni Muslims. Mahmoud had joined the fight to try and protect Khalid, and then he had been beaten up himself. That’s when he learned how valuable it was to be invisible—even to the point where he and Khalid stopped being friends. A year later, Khalid died in an airstrike.

As Mahmoud watches the boy getting beaten up, he wants to do something—he feels angry, indignant, and sympathetic toward his boy. But he knows better than to get involved and averts his eyes, trying to be invisible. He takes Waleed on a different way home.