Escape From Aleppo

Escape From Aleppo

Juvenile/YA Fiction
"'They're pushing out another bomb,' cried Khala Lina. 'We have
to go.'
'She can't be dead!' came her mother's anguished wail.
'We can't leave her,' sobbed Razan.
'If we stay, we're all going to die!' shouted Khala Lina.
Nana's strong voice rose above the rest. 'I don't believe it--
she is alive...Find her!'"
Before you read more of this review of N. H. Senzai's Escape
From Aleppo try a little exercise. Picture the places that figure
prominently in your daily life: your home and neighborhood, your
school or work place, your library or place of worship, the stores you
patronize. Picture all that is easy to take for granted. Now
imagine, due to bombings and civil war skirmishes, the whole landscape
is pretty much trashed. Most buildings are reduced to rubble.
Anything edible has been stripped from the ruins of stores. Hunger
and fear are your constant companions. The fighting between
government forces and various rebel factions is going on. There is
nowhere safe. Someone who could take your life could be around any
corner.
That's the nightmare Nadia, Senzai's protagonist, is trapped
in. It's the wee hours of the morning. She and her extended clan are
fleeing their family compound. Helicoptors are dropping bombs. One
knocks her down a flight of stairs, separating her from the rest. (If
you're a parent, can you imagine her mom's plight?).
When Nadia is able to extricate herself from the rubble, unable
to find any family members, she sets off for their intended rendevous
spot in a city where all landmarks are gone. At one point she talks
to children who are watering a patch of dirt, hoping a shady plant
will grow over where they've buried their mother. When she finally
gets to the designated place she finds a message that her folks have
had to move on. Her father will wait for her at the border of Syria
and Turkey.
Luckily she is not alone. Her faithful ginger cat, Mishmash,
finds her. She joins forces with Mazen, a mysterious man with a cart
pulled by a donkey named Jamilla. Two boys from an abandoned
orphanage round out their crew.
Escape From Aleppo touches on a lesser known tragedy of war--the
destruction of irreplaceable antiquities like books and works of art.
Unlike America, where anything predating the first revolution is
ancient, these treasures can be thousands of years old. Nadia
encounters some of the people who are valiently striving to keep them
from being destroyed or stolen by private collectors.
Although Nadia is fictional, her plight sadly isn't. As Senzai
reminds us,
"Reeling from six years of war, Syria is a fractured, broken
country, its cities in ruins, its people deeply traumatized. The
numbers are simply staggering. Since the conflict began, more than
450,000 Syrians have been killed, more than 1.8 million injured, and
12 million--half the country's prewar population--displaced from their
homes as refugees."
Senzai wrote the book to help put a human face on those
staggering numbers so more people would care enough to help. I
reviewed it for the same reason. What can you do?
On a personal note, I went on a Goodwill run yesterday. I lucked
out. I found a ceramic Santa driving a toy truck bank, a musical
snowglobe with two skating snow people, and two of my signature cat
shirts. They don't call me queen of the cat shirts for nothing.
A great big shout out goes out to the wonderful Goodwill workers who
make shopping at their stores such a positive experience.
jules hathaway


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