It was a little after 11:30 P.M. when the first heart-piercing screech of incoming artillery crashed near the home where I was staying in the rebel-held city of Saraqeb, in the northern Syrian province of Idlib, in May. It was quickly followed by a second, then a third. Each seemed louder and closer than the last, amplified in a night that was black because of the lack of electricity in the neighborhood (it only comes for a few hours a day, if at all) and otherwise nearly silent, owing to the exodus of many families after a purported chemical-weapons attack on the city a few weeks earlier. When the fourth shell exploded, quite nearby, at 11.40 P.M., my hostess, Em Ibrahim, let out a shriek and, flashlight in hand, briskly ushered me and her fourteen-year-old niece Lama out of the darkened living room toward the basement.

For some two and a half years now, the sounds of war have become frighteningly humdrum in Syria, the overplayed soundtrack to the story of an ancient country that is coming apart, with at least a hundred thousand dead and its territory now a proxy battlefield for international rivalries.

But war for civilians in an urban environment has a particular cadence—a discordant, symphonic character—that Syrians have learned. While the regular rhythm of daily life continues, with some of the machinery of the city in motion, there is always a tense undertone, the knowledge that a single sudden event can upend everything. Even mundane tasks, like going to the market, are experienced at a heightened level, because they can be a matter of life and death. There is also the fear that you’ll stop fearing what might happen and become numb.

Before going downstairs, Em Ibrahim’s husband, Abu Ibrahim, cracked open the front door, in case any of the neighbors who were still in the area (especially those without an underground room) were seeking refuge. The matriarch of the family, Abu Ibrahim’s mother, was already in bed. A witty, hard-of-hearing octogenarian whose limbs have slowed with age, she was asleep in the room she shared with her equally plucky older sister. Her forty-something, single daughter Ayesha decided not to try and move them. There was no point; they always refused, out of a fatalistic stubbornness as much as anything else. If they were going to die, they often said, they’d rather do so in their beds or on the couch they occupied most of the day, not like rats cowering underground.

Hiss, whoosh, boom. Another three projectiles landed nearby in rapid succession, just minutes apart. What was the target? Many of the washed-out, low-slung, flat-roofed concrete homes in the streets around me already bore the scars of earlier encounters. There were no rebel bases among them. The rebels had been firing Grad rockets at régime forces all afternoon, but from just outside the city limits, along a stretch of highway they’d snatched control of many months earlier. The government’s strikes may have been retaliatory, except that word denotes a reaction to something; it implies a starting point. What was the starting point for tonight’s barrage? The Grads? The régime’s air and artillery strikes in the days and weeks before them? The formation of rebel groups in the first place? The decades of corruption and dictatorship that first propelled peaceful protesters out into the streets?

It is Saraqeb’s sad fate to be strategically located at the crossroads of two key national highways: the south-north M5 which links the capital Damascus to the northern city of Aleppo (the country’s former commercial hub), and the west-east M4, which connects Aleppo to the coastal city of Latakia, a stronghold of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite co-religionists.

Various stretches of road belong to either the régime or the rebels, and control of a certain patch of highway sometimes seesaws between the two. Both sides use the thoroughfares to ferry men and munitions, and Saraqeb is smack in the middle of the battle for Syria’s supply lines.

At 11.53 P.M. there was another loud strike, so close that it sounded as if it was just above us. The blast dislodged dusty particles from the naked cinderblock ceiling, which gently rained down on the five of us: Em and Abu Ibrahim, Ayesha, Lama, and me. “Dear God!” Em Ibrahim shrieked as she put her hands up over a multi-colored headscarf covering her ears. She was a nervous, jittery, big-hearted woman who could spiral into a panic by merely listening to a television-news report about a battle far away, much to the amusement of her many relatives, who sweetly chided her. Her consolation was that her two adult children were relatively safe. One was in Damascus, which had yet to be fully sucked into the war, the other was in the United Arab Emirates.

She leaned against a vertical concrete support beam. The light of several flashlights illuminated the dusty basement. It had been a bare space, but the ferocity and frequency of government strikes since the previous summer had prompted the family to install a bathroom, sink, and bench to serve as a kitchenette, as well as a few lights. Thin mattresses were neatly stacked in a pile against a wall, under a bunch of blankets. Insects ran across the untiled floor. The ceiling was about thirteen feet high—we were about four yards underground, with a single doorway as an exit, and two narrow slits of sturdy glass just below street level that were too small to crawl in or out of.

Ayesha prayed, silently mouthing the words. Abu Ibrahim tried to listen to the screechy messages being relayed by the rebels on a black walkie-talkie, but it was hard to discern any of the muffled words, such was the level of static and noise. Em Ibrahim wailed at every crash and thud.

“It’s not that bad,” Lama said, her voice sturdy but her hands shaking. “Remember that night when we stopped counting at a hundred and fifty? It’s not that bad.”

At 11.55 P.M. there was another hit, followed by ones in each of the next two minutes. Em Ibrahim wondered which of her neighbors’ homes that the mortars and rockets were landing on.

There was no outgoing fire, only incoming. It is a sound you hear with your whole body, not just your ears. Limbs and muscles and heart and mind tense as the fast, angry projectile rushes along its arc, a path you can almost picture in your mind’s eye as you hold your breath and wonder where it will fall. It crashes, you exhale, then feel almost guilty for being glad that it exploded somewhere else, perhaps on someone else. Muscles relax, and a moment later they tense again.

“Maybe we should leave the city tomorrow,” Em Ibrahim said. “I can’t take much more of this. What time should we leave? 5 A.M., 6?”

“Don’t worry,” Abu Ibrahim said gently. “Bashar’s pilots sleep in. We’ll have plenty of time.”

“Who is counting?” Lama asked. “How many is that now?”

There is something about the passivity of sitting in a concrete basement with only one exit, wondering if the next round of incoming fire will hit you, that is distinctly terrifying. It’s unlike being caught in a firefight, where you can dodge and weave and think that you have some semblance of control over your fate—choosing where to stand, behind what kind of a structure and with whom.