On This Day…

…in 2012 I received news that my grandmother had passed away in Damascus. She had been the glue that held us all together and her passing away coincided with a time when our world seemed to be changing in ways we’d never imagined. A revolution and wars in Syria swept away our previous lives to the point where things would be almost unrecognisable to her today. This morning I woke up early to prepare the milk for Dani and get the coffee running. My wife had timed the washing to finish at around six am, and I proceeded to hang it to dry. At that moment, I remembered something about my gran.

Every morning in the winter, she’d wake up before sunrise to fire up our metal kerosene heater - called a Sobia, or soba - so that the house was warm when we woke up. She did that without fail for as long as I could remember. Snuggled up under the warm duvet, I could hear her slippers shuffling on the floor as she went about the house getting things ready and filling up the mazot from the massive barrel container we had in the back balcony into a plastic container. Then pouring it patiently into the heater before lighting a paper and dropping it inside it. The heater had a small porthole through which we could see the blue flame dancing about, and the metal groaned and clanked as the device burned into life. At night we would roast chestnuts and orange peels on the top of it and the house would smell amazing. Such mundane times and yet they feel so magical and remote in my memory.

Rest In Peace, Tete. I still remember you…