Through a Mother’s balcony in Aleppo

    Much has changed in the scenes they have been watching through their large balcony in the fourth floor in the district of Aziziyeh in Aleppo. 
He is still visiting her once or twice a week, piercing her loneliness with daily phone calls. And Friday remains the perfect day for the visit as it’s his day off. He goes on his on but on some occasions, his children accompany him to enjoy some of their grandmother’s warmth. They take with them bags filled with fruits or homemade sweets. According to deeply-entrenched social tradition, they cannot visit their grandmother empty-handed. As soon as she hears her footsteps climbing the stairs, she rushes to open the door. By now, she knows the time of their arrival and waits for them to nurse her painful loneliness. 
She asked her son, after putting the key on the table: “Why don’t you take the key and make a copy of it?” He couldn’t reveal to her his eternal fear, that someday he might open the door and see her dead on the bed or on the floor, due to a possible heart attack. Instead, he told her: “I love knocking on the door and seeing you open it to me.”