Haifa did not remember that they once had air conditioning, or a Chevy parked in front of the house, or childhoods of nothing but play and school. Why, Hana often wondered, had she not appreciated school back in Syria? In Mabrouka, Hana never had to miss school to work — she never worked at all, although sometimes, her dad would give his children some loose change if they brought him a cold drink.

They left that life in the spring of 2012. Hana said she understood little about the political situation that kept her far from home. The protest movement started in Syria in 2011, with the uprising of citizens opposing President Bashar al-Assad’s oppressive government. By the following year, occupied with the uprising elsewhere, Assad’s security forces started withdrawing from rural pockets of Hasaka, the province where Hana’s family lived, and parts of the area quickly felt unsafe: Roaming armed gangs, whose loyalties were not always clear, were extorting farmers, like Hana’s father, for the right to farm their own land. Hana’s family began to hear about clashes between the Sunni Arab opposition and the government. Hana’s father, who had already started working in Lebanon to make extra money, told her mother it was time for them to leave. Hana wanted to bring all her toys, all her dolls, but her mother told her no, there would be toys where they were going. Hana and her siblings had visited their father in Lebanon before, and she did not realize she would probably never return to that house again.

They left for Lebanon by bus. When they reached the border, traffic was at a standstill. Many of the people left their cars, playing cards and picnicking by the side of the road. Her family did the same, relaxing and stretching their legs. Hana heard gunshots; maybe some soldiers near the border were doing some drills, she thought. The mood was almost festive — she was going to see her father soon, for the first time in months. She thought she should look nice for him, so she ran to the bus to find her comb. From the bus, she heard more gunshots and looked outside. She remembers seeing men firing back and forth with Syrian soldiers. Then suddenly she was in the bus driver’s arms, and he was running, carrying her away from the bus with its full tank of gas. Outside, bullets were flying, and before she understood what was happening, she was climbing into a giant cement pipe along with two of her siblings and her mother, all of them cramped in the dark, unable to move, everyone howling or sobbing. “It would have been better to die in our home than die like this,” she screamed at her mother. “Why did you bring us here?”

They ran to an abandoned building to wait out the shooting; how long it lasted, she could not say. Eventually they got back on the bus. That day, her life as a refugee began. She entered a new world, and she never stopped wishing she could return to the old one.