by REBECCA MURRAY
Leila, 17, presses her hijab-clad head against the front door and strains to hear outside. “There’s nothing,” she says cautiously, turning towards her mother Rawda, the head of the household, in their quiet basement apartment. Along the brocade couch sit her two sisters, Mona, 19, Nadja, 15, and 10-year-old brother Khaled.*
This close knit family is paranoid, and for good reason. They fled Iraq’s sectarian violence to Damascus with the children’s father in 2006, only to find themselves on the run from him too.
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