It was November 2012, one year and eight months since the violence in Syria first began. Though figures vary widely depending on who is counting, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the death toll in the conflict, estimates that over forty-nine thousand people had been killed by that time. It was impossible to know how many had disappeared or were behind bars in government prisons. The war would only become more deadly, and by its fifth year, according to UN estimates, over 250,000 people would be killed and over 1 million injured. Meanwhile, 5 million Syrians, such as Doaa’s family, would be forced to flee across borders, while 6.5 million would be internally displaced, often forced to move several times to other parts of the country where they could find pockets of safety. By 2016, Syrians would become the largest displaced population in the world.
As Khaled steered his vehicle to the Nasib border crossing, the family saw what must have been two hundred cars lined up for entry into Irbid, the border town in Jordan. They inched forward, watching as some cars ahead moved across the border while others were turned back. As they got closer to the front of the line, Doaa saw the tension growing in her mother’s shoulders and the tightness in her father’s jaw as he stiffened in the front seat. Doaa had been sitting still in the car for so long that she wanted to scream. Finally, when they reached the border control, the official told Shokri that crossing would cost ten thousand pounds per person. Shokri had only seven thousand Syrian pounds and three hundred Egyptian pounds left to his name. He tried to negotiate with the border guards, but to no avail. The officers just folded their arms and shook their heads. Doaa wished she could shout in their indifferent faces. The family was ordered to turn around. Khaled suggested that they park the car off to the side for a moment to think up a new plan, and Shokri and Hanaa wearily agreed. They had left home that morning at nine, and with all the checkpoints and the lines of cars trying to leave, by that time it was almost midnight. They pulled the car over and stepped out, shivering in the cold November air and trying to formulate a new plan.
Doaa couldn’t sit still another minute crammed in the backseat with her siblings. As soon as they pulled over, she climbed out of the car and stretched her arms over her head, her tight muscles aching after the long ride. As she walked around the parking area, she saw row after row of cars full of people trapped as she was. They were all refused entry to Jordan, but no one wanted to start their engines to turn back. Among the crowd she heard women crying and babies howling. Men and women wandered among the parked cars, asking for help and desperately trying to find some way to get across the border, while children sat on the ground too exhausted from the long journey to play. It looked as if half of Daraa were stuck at the border. Doaa surveyed the scene, wishing she could be anywhere but in this crowded, despair-filled parking area. Then all of a sudden, to her amazement, she spotted her uncle Walid, Hanaa’s brother, sitting at a rickety table displaying a stack of newspapers. He was once an engineer, but had lost his job when the war started and had now resorted to selling newspapers at that very border crossing! For a moment, Doaa just stared at him, not believing that it was really him. Then, she rushed over. Intent on his reading, he didn’t notice Doaa until she was standing right in front of him. Walid looked up from his paper, startled, then a smile of delight and recognition crept across his face at the sight of his niece. Doaa immediately began explaining what had happened, speaking as quickly as she could and pointing to the car. Walid’s face grew more serious as he listened to her story, then he took both her hands in his and pulled her close to him. “Go back to the car and wait,” he instructed her. “Don’t go anywhere.” Doaa rushed back to the car and told her parents what had happened, and they did as instructed. Within an hour, the Al Zamel family was on a list of people allowed into Jordan. They assumed that Walid had paid a bribe that set them on their way into exile as refugees.
Doaa and her family were lucky. Crossing the border was known to be fraught with danger and difficulty; it took bribes and several attempts to make it. As the war raged on, crossing would become much more arduous. Refugee numbers swelled in Syria’s neighboring countries Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, as well as in Egypt and Iraq, and finding refuge would become increasingly difficult. Neighboring countries, concerned about security and wary of the numbers of refugees in their care, began to tightly control their borders, allowing only severe humanitarian cases to cross.
The Al Zamels were indeed lucky to leave when they did. Crossing into Jordan, they headed to the border city of Irbid, where one of Shokri’s brothers lived. He was there to pick them up as they arrived. They piled out of Khaled’s car and said a grateful farewell to him, as he had to return to Daraa. The family spent the next three days in Irbid, waiting for their ferry to Egypt. Shokri was the most anxious of all of them to leave; after his time in prison, he was leery of spending any time in Jordan.