DAY 803 - MAY 20, 2013
Pro-Assad hacker group, the Syrian Electronic Army, breaks into the Associated Press Twitter account and tweets about a bomb detonating in the White House, causing a stock market free fall to the tune of $136 billion. Internet videos emerge depicting a Syrian rebel commander eating the lung of a dead government soldier. The cannibalism stunt is used by anti-war advocates around the world as justification to avoid arming the Syrian opposition. France and England believe they have proof that Assad has used chemical weapons on his own people. Israel uses this information as the catalyst to perpetrate a second bombing inside Syria, this time on Bashar Al Assad's most advanced weapons facility, which many think is used to manufacture biological weapons. Two car bombs go off across the Turkish border while the Syrian government commits massacres in Baniyas and Al Bayda, calling it an act of sectarian cleansing. The UN puts the death toll at 80,000 since the start of the conflict, as 4.5 million people are internally displaced within Syria's borders and one million refugees are displaced outside.
You arrive in Amman, Jordan's capital city, on a small private aircraft operated by the Jordanian government and headed by a special Jordanian emissary. No one on their side has seemed to figure out that you are not, in fact, a Jordanian citizen at all. Then again, neither you nor Emad nor Yara are carrying a passport from either country, so technically you could really be anyone. Or technically, without identification you could also be no one. There is the possibility you could become a depersonalized mother who disappears without a trace. No questions asked. You wonder what happened to the real prisoner that the Jordanians were expecting to receive. You wonder if she was tortured to death in Tadmor or someplace even worse. You wonder if that's possible, to have a worse prison than Tadmor. It isn't until the diplomatic debrief that they realize you aren't who you have pretended to be. They threaten to throw you into a windowless jail in the desert but you plead with them, saying that you have just come from a dark prison across the border and you will die if you go back. You feel the remnants of the UTI flare up for a moment while you say this. Eventually they allow you and your children to go to the Al Zaatari refugee camp, where there are over 100,000 other Syrians living in destitution. Despite being open for less than a year, the camp is already closing in on being Jordan's fourth biggest city. You have little say in the matter. The camp is horrid and you live in complete squalor but everyday you are able to see the sun while Emad and Yara sit on your lap, just happy to see you. Everyday you quietly express your gratitude out loud to no one. You are just happy to still be alive to see this.