Only one thing was missing: the ability to cry out at the top of my lungs, so that someone, anyone, might hear me.

For ever since I came to be, I have had no power over anything except the lowering of my eyelids whenever someone places me on a bed, a table, or any horizontal surface. And the moment someone lifts me vertically in their arms, you will see me, involuntarily, open them.

Three years ago, I was resting on a shelf in a toy shop in Beirut. A man and a woman walked in back then, with their eyes wandering over the toys displayed before them on the shelves, hoping perhaps to choose a suitable gift for their son, who was turning five.

That much I gathered from their conversation with the shopkeeper.

The vertical position I was in on the shelf allowed me to see everything happening, though not with complete clarity, for I was leaning slightly backward, which caused my eyelids to remain half-closed.

Shadows moved before me, and a creeping fear stirred within, perhaps because the prospect of ending up in the hands of a small child did not appeal to me; a child who would fill my heart with his incomprehensible talk and stories, and who might smash me in a fit of bad temper.

While I was turning all of this over in my mind, the shopkeeper picked me up and set about persuading the parents to buy me, describing how I would sing if their son were to gently press my belly, turning me over in his hands so they would notice my eyes, which open and close automatically; a trick that left me terribly dizzy and desperate to throw up.

You may well wonder about all these details I am sharing, and it is highly likely that one of you is asking: How can a doll possibly feel dizzy?!

Well, it doesn't matter, as long as you are still reading, convinced that a puppet is capable of recounting its own story.

I am not a small doll as you might imagine; my size is no less than that of a two-year-old child. I can sit steadily and stand as well. I was fashioned in the likeness of a baby boy, with short, curly, golden hair made of braided wool yarn, and fitted with joints in my hands and feet so that the child who would own me could move me however he pleased, and even my head could rotate in every direction.

The parents were eventually persuaded to buy me. Amidst the haggling and bargaining over my price, I understood that the road ahead was long, and that I would spend the coming days with a family that had come from the Syrian city of Aleppo to Beirut to treat their autistic son.

The father told the shopkeeper: "I don't care how much I pay for it, so long as I can hope that this doll makes it back home with us without being stolen, for the road to Aleppo is choked with military checkpoints."

When the shopkeeper asked about their boy, the mother replied hesitantly that he was asleep in the car.

We left the shop, the mother carrying me in her arms like her own child, while I was eager to catch a glimpse of their son; the one who might shatter my head at the first opportunity when anger struck him.

Yet, when we reached the car, there was no one inside. I waited, apprehensive, for the mother’s frantic dash to search for her child, and the father’s panic, but they remained astonishingly calm.

They got into the car, and the mother rocked me in her lap while her husband told her, quite casually, that he was hungry.

The journey to Aleppo was long, with me resting in the woman’s arms. At times she would flip me upside down to watch how my eyes open, at other times she would lay me flat in her lap to tell her husband that her new baby was dozing off with such quiet innocence, then she would press my belly to hear an incomprehensible song that came from my depths, and occasionally she would kiss my sleeping face; to the point where I initially thought that the therapy sessions were meant for this grieving woman, who seemed from her actions to be barren, longing for a child even if it were only a doll.

Upon our arrival at the house in Aleppo, things were not as I had imagined. As the days passed, the woman grew accustomed to placing me in a small bed that must have belonged to a child, as evidenced by the toys scattered around it and the stories I grew used to hearing from the mother every night before sleep. She treated me like her own flesh and blood, as if I were real, whispering to me about her son who had died in her arms from a fever during the days when the city was under shelling and mortar fire, when she could not get him to a doctor.

Often, she would dress me in her son’s clothes and seat me at the dining table while her husband tried his best to soothe her grief. He, too, was in no better state; his mind was entirely consumed by the thought of leaving the house and fleeing a city balanced atop a sheet of fire.

I began to grow accustomed to life in that house, but what terrified everyone was the sound of gunfire and shelling for the country was at war. The situation worsened dramatically during the final year I spent with this family, to the extent that a barrel bomb dropped by aircraft onto the residential quarters fell close by, destroying neighboring houses, shattering our doors and windows, and setting off live-fire skirmishes in the adjacent streets. This drove the couple to gather their essentials, abandon the house, and join the caravans of families fleeing their homes in their car.

I was among the most precious items the mother insisted on bringing along. Throughout the journey, I heard nothing but the wailing of women, the muffled sobs of men forced to abandon their hearths, the crying of children, and weeping that never stopped.

To ensure my safety, the wife laid me horizontally inside a suitcase and zipped it shut tight. Word had been passing among the people of a single, desperate option: stepping out of the cars and crossing the border between Syria and Turkey on foot. That path was the sole remaining crossing for survival, and dozens of human smugglers were waiting for the fleeing crowds.

Before being packed away, I tried to store up as many sights as I could to recount to you later, for I had a persistent, unshakable feeling that once I entered that suitcase, I would never come out again. I know not whence that sensation arose; all I knew was that I felt nothing else.

Among those sights were three women clad in black dresses (Abayas), each carrying a bag upon her head while dragging her children behind. A little to the right, near a large boulder, sat an elderly man, barefoot, using the corner of his (Shumagh) to wipe a tear escaping the corner of his left eye. A masked young man stood atop a stone, surveying the crowd before him, shouting that they must pay money to secure safe passage, urging them to hurry along behind him and carry the children on their shoulders because the path was choked with thorns and terribly rugged.

The last thing I heard before being plunged into the suitcase and before the voices faded away into a muffled distance, was the smuggler's voice saying:

"Those who do not wish to come with me can stay right here and let the hyenas eat them."

As for here, from inside this suitcase, I heard nothing but the sound of stumbling footsteps marching in a rush, and the smuggler’s voice every now and then cursing the travelers, hurrying them on and hushing the children so the border guards wouldn't notice.

More than eight hours passed in this manner. I gathered as much from the man carrying the suitcase, urging his wife to hold on, that only a little way remained. Meanwhile, inside the suitcase, I would occasionally open my eyes when the man hoisted the suitcase onto his back in a vertical position, and close them whenever he carried it horizontally between his hands.

Once, when the man dropped the suitcase heavily onto the ground so his wife could sit and rest, her full weight pressed down upon my belly. The incomprehensible song burst from my core; though no one seemed to notice, for a volley of heavy gunfire erupted at that exact moment, filling the air.

The border guards must have noticed the people crossing; women shrieked, the panic-stricken running grew frantic, and men begged, pleading that there were children among them. But the gunfire refused to quiet down.

No one had any choice but to abandon their bags and flee behind the smuggler.

A short while later, I could hear nothing at all except the howling of distant hyenas, the whistling of the wind, and an eerie, heavy silence.

I am lying on my back inside the suitcase, my eyes forcibly shut. I know not what comes next. I ask myself in the quiet of my mind: Have they abandoned me?

Could it be that they are dead?

I only wonder, never pausing even for a moment to seek an answer, for I discovered that time moves faster the more questions I ask. Honestly, in a situation like this, nothing serves me better than making time pass more swiftly.

You may find it strange if I confess that my greatest wish right now is for someone, anyone at all, to come along, turn this suitcase upright, and set it upright. For one of the most agonizing things in existence is your utter helplessness in opening your eyes at the very moment you need them most.

I do not know precisely how much time has passed, but it is not insignificant. Most likely, a full year has slipped away since I was left there inside a suitcase in the open wilderness, abandoned upon the border between two nations.

And I don't know how I ended up here...

Resting on the shelf in a bookshop belonging to a Greek fisherman, who tells his friends whenever they ask about me that he found me tangled in his nets during a fishing expedition off the shores of the Aegean Sea, with eyes wide and vacant, as though they had witnessed a massacre.