This is my story… “The Shed”

The real-life story titled; “The Shed” by the young Haneen Nabil al-Qubba won the golden prize in the “This Is My Story” Competition launched by the Wathiqat Watan “Homland Document” Foundation in 2019.  In her story, Haneen depicted the facts of her life when she lived with her family in her village “Al-Mukharram Al-Fawqani” in Homs countryside in 2015.

The characters of the story as presented by the writer are the wife of a fighter in the Syrian Arab Army, the paratrooper lieutenant colonel named Nabil Isa Al-Qubba, (who is in charge of  the Ghazl checkpoint in the city of Idlib) an 8-year-old girl, Hanin, and a 6-year-old boy named Isa.

At the beginning of the story, Hanin reviewed her inquiries as a child about war, murder, and taking up arms and her father’s answer to her, “We are defending our land. They are the ones who came from all countries to attack us. We have never been aggressors against anyone. We have never entered countries other than our own. We did not steal the dream of their children, they came to kill everything beautiful in our homeland, so we face them and sacrifice our blood and souls to preserve the pride and dignity of the homeland.”

Haneen continued: “at one moment, I was awakened by my mother’s tears that fell from her eyes as she said goodbye to my father for the last time.

My father kissed us and wiped my mother’s tears as his shadow faded in the fog, heading to his military unit in the city of Idlib, which has become a part of us, what makes it happy makes us happy and what hurts it hurts and saddens our hearts, because our dream and hope was in, there, she added.”

The events that her village was exposed to were the scope of Haneen’s story, where she said, “Our hearts were saddened by the sound of explosions coming from the sites of the militants in Jabal al-Bal’as and Jabal Jarrah.After a while we found out that the shells had targeted our school. No more studying!  Especially after we learned that some students were martyred, and others were injured. In those days, time overlapped with events and we no longer knew the beginning from the end.”

Haneen pointed out that despite the approaching sounds of explosions and the horror that spread among everyone young and old, the residents of the village decided to stay and hold out because this land is theirs, and they will not leave it to strangers and will defend it to the end.

The events of the “shed ” accelerated when Haneen talked about her mother’s absence for a short time to return with pills from the pharmacy and a bottle of juice which she hid  at the top of the closet. Haneen expected that her mother was preparing a surprise for her and her brother as usual on occasions. But the second day the streets were crowded with cars of the departing and fighters. Her mother went out to get some available food, while the little girl was looking for some clothes, she found a message written by her mother.

Haneen said, “My mother wrote on that paper, “if the gunmen arrive at the house, ‘they won’t enter unless they walk over my dead body. I will give the little ones a sleeping pill, you will find them in the shed hidden among the luggage and things for fear of them,” explaining that she wrote a message on her father’s cell phone with the exact words to come and rescue them. The phrases of the letter were concentrated in the depths of Haneen’s memory, which prompted her to write her story with all its details.

Haneen went on to say, “when we were informed that my father was injured at the Ghazl checkpoint in Idlib after thousands of Turkey-backed mercenaries attacked it, the crowds of visitors began to increase around their house, and the noise increased to be a prelude to declaring the martyrdom of her father and all the fighters who were with him. A wooden box wrapped in a Syrian flag was brought into their house, where her father lay smiling, as if to say to her, as she put it, “in Idlib, I defended Homs and all of Syria so that you can live in peace”.

She explained that not a year passed that  her family did not present martyrs, where her uncle, Lieutenant Colonel Najd Al-Qubba, and her uncle, Lieutenant Rami Al-Qubba, were martyred. Her grandfather, Isa Al-Qubba, became” Abu Nabil ” the icon of martyrdom and the sheikh of heroism in Al-Mukharram, where he was called ” Abu al-Shuhada”.

“Even today, when the lights go out, and people go to sleep, our house remains lit by three candles that sparkle as Abu Nabil prays and blesses the martyrs, and in the sky, three stars illuminate the paths of the village to a bright tomorrow baptized with the blood of the martyrs which will guide its children towards victory, “Haneen concluded her story.

As for the reason for participating in the “This Is My Story” Contest, Haneen explained in a statement to SANA that she wanted to document the suffering of the war and its harsh consequences on them, which did not allow them to live the details of their childhood, which was forcibly stolen from them.

Haneen participated in a competition held by the Ministry of culture for the sons and daughters of martyrs in 2022 and received the first prize for her age category for the story “ Confession of Waves.”

Amal Farhat