City of Jasmine

by Olga Grjasnowa

  After walking aimlessly around the city, unsure of how to fill the time before sleeping together, they both look up at the sky, now full of stars. Amal looks for a lighter but can’t find one. Youssef holds his out to her.

  ‘Thanks,’ says Amal.

  The silence grows uncomfortable, the tension increasing.

  ‘Shall we get a drink somewhere?’ Amal asks.

  Youssef nods, a little disappointed.

  They go to a small, crowded bar close to Amal’s flat, a place used mainly for buying and selling drugs. The dance floor is small and no one has cleaned it in years.

  Youssef pulls Amal onto it anyway. He’s not a bad dancer but Amal still thinks a new relationship with someone from the Institute would be a bad idea. After half an hour, he goes to the bar and returns with two glasses. Exhausted, they drop down onto a sofa and their bodies slide closer to one another. There are people coming down from drugs on the floor near the toilet. Youssef and Amal are sipping their drinks through straws when the news comes that the demonstration has been violently broken up, with a number of arrests.

  ‘Shall we go?’ Amal asks.

  ‘I’ll walk you home,’ says Youssef.

  Walking towards her house again, Amal tries to remember how tidy she left her flat. As soon as they get there, Youssef takes off his shoes and glances around the living room while Amal switches on lamps and clears away the clothes scattered across the furniture. Youssef stands and looks at her bookshelves to give Amal a little time.

  ‘Is this your mother?’ Youssef points at a photo on the top shelf.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s beautiful. Are you very close?’

  ‘The last time I saw her was just before my eleventh birthday.’

  Youssef drops the subject.

  Amal sits down on the sofa and takes her shoes off too. Her feet are hurting; the straps of her sandals have left bright red marks. Youssef sits down opposite her and massages her feet. She relaxes, closes her eyes and only opens them again when Youssef goes to the bathroom. His breath smells fresh on his return.

  ‘Did you use my toothbrush?’ Amal asks.

  ‘My finger,’ answers Youssef.

  ‘You can stay,’ says Amal.

  The next morning, Amal makes pancakes, wafer-thin crêpes served with labneh and red caviar. It’s mainly Youssef who eats them, Amal content to watch him and drink a large cup of tea.

  ‘I’m going to marry you,’ says Youssef.

  ‘But then you’ll have to make me breakfast!’

  Youssef wakes Amal shortly before four the next morning. It’s still dark outside, only the moon and a few stars alight in the sky. They haven’t left the flat for more than twenty-four hours.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Amal asks, drowsy, and turns on her front.

  ‘Do you want to come? We’re doing an action,’ Youssef answers.

  ‘What kind of action?’

  ‘No big deal.’

  ‘Then at least have the decency to make us coffee first,’ says Amal as she stretches, slowly and clumsily. She’s sure she doesn’t want to be part of any political ‘action’, she doesn’t even want to go to any more demonstrations, but then she doesn’t want anyone to accuse her of not doing her bit; she’s said the same too often herself.

  Youssef brings her a generously sugared Turkish coffee. Amal mumbles a word of gratitude, even though she can’t stand Turkish coffee. She only drinks Italian espresso, which she gets friends to bring from Europe and stores in her freezer. Her visitors always help themselves and use up her supplies, so she keeps a large tin of Turkish coffee next to the stove for them but never uses it herself. She hasn’t reached the point of telling Youssef that yet, though.

  They drive to a square full of cars not far from the presidential palace, designed by a Japanese architect and bathed in pale blue light. A squat building with marble walls enthroned upon Mount Mezzeh. It resembles a genuine tyrant’s palace, cold, dark and above all out of reach.

  Youssef stops the car and asks Amal to park it on a side street, where she waits for him with the engine running while he and two friends distribute hundreds of ping-pong balls over the usually busy road. Amal turns on the radio. She ought to be concentrating and alert to every sign of danger, but she’s nervous and the music calms her down. Two minutes in, Youssef throws himself onto the passenger seat, slams the door and yells, ‘Let’s go!’ His friends make their own getaway. Amal stalls the car and Youssef slaps his hand on the dashboard. She tries it again and now they drive steadily away from danger.

  Later, back in Amal’s living room, via several cameras installed by a friend of Youssef’s the day before, they watch security men in dark suits and aviator shades chasing after the balls in an attempt to collect them up. Amal laughs long and loud, the first time she’s breathed easily since the beginning of the revolution. Youssef and his friends edit a video and upload it onto YouTube. Later, Amal cooks desert truffles brought from Deir ez-Zor by a friend at the institute. She boils them carefully, slices them and standing eats four of them dipped in salt, with Youssef by her side.

  The eighteenth of March 2011 is a hot day. The air shimmers with heat and aggression; the sun is at its zenith and beating mercilessly down on thousands of demonstrators pushing their way to the football stadium. The Al-Fotuwa team from Deir ez-Zor was supposed to play against Tishreen today; the team belonging to the president and trained by one of his cousins. But by the time Hammoudi and Naji arrive at the stadium the Al-Fotuwa Ultras have already set light to the other team’s bus and two police cars, so the match can’t take place as planned.

  Not without reason do the Al-Fotuwa Ultras claim to be the worst ultras in the world, worse than the Galatasaray fans. They follow their team everywhere, travelling in dozens of buses made for fifty passengers but each carrying two hundred. They cling onto the roofs and get ready for their ‘fun’. Their team’s last win was twenty-six years ago.

  The worst night in Deir ez-Zor is Friday night, when families wait to find out whether their sons will come home alive; deaths are not uncommon at away games. The fans die either in traffic accidents or knifings. Once they do get home in one piece, the punishment begins. Whole streets band together, with twenty-five fathers lashing out at forty sons, their neighbours all too happy to help out. Hammoudi’s brother has often been among the young men beaten on Friday evenings.

  Now, though, the throng of football fans has mobilized a demonstration against the regime. Hammoudi marches in their midst, full of conviction; it’s the regime that has cheated him out of his own life. Several neighbours pat him on the back; almost all of them are out on the streets. Hammoudi is wearing the team’s shirt, enthusiastically loaned by his brother, and is in the midst of the group. There are so many people around him that he can’t even make out their separate faces. His muscles are tense and his neck is wet with sweat, but at the same time he feels more alive than he has for a long time. He knows this moment might make him a son of his city. Perhaps for the first time in his life.

  Deir ez-Zor is facing a turning point and everyone knows there’s no going back now. Hammoudi has caught fire. He chants slogans not dictated by the regime, and it’s the first time in the past few months that he decides his own actions. He feels himself regaining control of his life and he never wants to give that up again. Perhaps this is freedom, he says to himself.

  A few older men throw their sandals at the blockish, larger-than-life statue of Assad looking down at the masses from the stadium entrance. The sculptor gave the statue a strangely fixed stare more fitting for a drug addict than a president. But power is a drug too. Hammoudi takes a photo of the sculpture to send to Claire later. The young demonstrators follow his lead, taking out their phones and filming each other. They’ll upload the material to YouTube later on. Fists are raised, someone yells ‘Alahu Akbar!’ – ‘God is great!’ Someone else calls out, ‘A curse upon your soul, Hafez!’ and then everyone chants together: ‘The people demand the end of the re
gime!’ Their anger sparks the same feeling in Hammoudi. He’s angry at being subject to the regime’s whims, at this country holding him prisoner, at Claire not even being willing to visit him in Syria. At last he can vent that anger.

  By the evening there’s nothing of it left, only resignation. Hammoudi takes a last look at the photo he took for Claire and deletes it.

  Amal drops her bag by the front door as she enters her father’s house, kicks off her shoes and throws them over to the bag. Her brother’s on the sofa in the living room with a laptop on his thighs, watching Al Jazeera at full volume.

  Amal casts a glance at Ali’s screen. They’re showing footage from Deir ez-Zor. Men dancing in rows, yelling at the tops of their voices and demanding the end of the regime. The commentator’s voice cracks with excitement and euphoria.

  Ali has the same delicate features as his sister and curly black hair that he keeps short. He’s younger but a whole head taller than Amal. When they were smaller and Svetlana had just left them, Ali would crawl into Amal’s bed every night and she’d stroke his hair until he fell asleep. She came up with fairy stories for him when he was afraid of the dark and she checked under his bed for monsters. She baked him birthday cakes, she sang for him when their father was on one of his business trips and she read to him from children’s books. Later, she was the one who checked his homework and reminded their father it was time to buy new winter shoes for him.

  A few years ago, Bassel came into a great deal of money by means of murky deals with the regime and moved into the high-end neighbourhood of Yafour, about forty kilometres west of Damascus near the border to Lebanon. The area is populated mainly by generals, high-ranking officials, thieves and gangsters – people with money and power. Their villas come with swimming pools embedded in lush, green lawns, the walls inside studded with bad but expensive art and stolen archaeological artefacts from Palmyra. The inhabitants protect their possessions with gold Kalashnikovs à la Saddam Hussein. Amal likes coming home nonetheless – she enjoys the luxury and often invites friends to extravagant pool parties on the weekends when her father’s away.

  She joins her brother on the couch, sinks back into the cushions and drapes a woollen blanket over her feet. It’s a large room, the walls decorated with colourised photos of their grandparents, with old books and Bohemian crystal gathering dust behind glass in bulky cabinets. One reminder of their mother’s existence is the Red October piano, made in the early sixties and shipped from Leningrad to Syria by complicated means. The piano has been standing proud and lonely in the salon for years, neither used nor tuned. Above it hangs a photo of Amal and Ali’s Russian grandmother, a woman with earnest features, hair combed tightly back and large earlobes showing off two fake diamond studs. She survived the Siege of Leningrad, which earned her Bassel’s respect. The photo is his only other concession to his children, the only proof of Svetlana’s existence.

  ‘Revolution’s going to break out,’ Ali says without emotion.

  Amal tries to read his face but his expression appears absolutely indifferent. She doesn’t know what her brother thinks about revolution; there are lots of things she doesn’t know about him. Two years ago, he distanced himself from her with the cold cruelty only a teenager can muster.

  ‘Will you make me a coffee?’ Amal asks.

  ‘Sure.’ Ali gets up and slouches over to the kitchen. Amal picks up her brother’s laptop and clicks her way through Facebook. A lot of activists have posted photos and videos of Daraa. Schoolchildren were tortured there for writing critical slogans on walls. Other towns are also staging demonstrations; almost a million people have confirmed their attendance. This time something really big is happening, Amal thinks.

  ‘What shall we make for dinner?’ Ali asks. It’s an old family tradition – the two of them go to the market every Saturday and then cook together.

  ‘What do you feel like?’

  ‘Fatteh,’ Ali answers, as he does every time.

  They drive to the souk in the next town. Amal moves at an easy pace along the cool streets and inspects the crates of fruit, vegetables, pistachios and the heaps of spices. The shopkeepers sit on plastic chairs outside their stores, drinking tea and passing prayer beads between their fingers. There are no crisps in Amal’s world, no stock cubes or packet sauces, everything is made from scratch. That’s why she doesn’t like supermarkets; she needs to touch the products and smell them.

  Ali walks a pace behind Amal, carrying the shopping. They hear snatches of conversation everywhere they go, almost all of them about Daraa. A photo of the president on the front page of an old newspaper lies crumpled up outside a shop. Ali picks it up carefully, knowing that some of the shopkeepers spy for the secret service and could have him put behind bars for not respecting the photo.

  They’re back in the kitchen half an hour later. Al Jazeera is still reporting on the demonstrations; they turn the volume down. The small table between them is covered with piles of mint, basil, coriander and parsley on plastic trays. Clumps of earth are still clinging to their roots. They pick the leaves and put them in salt water, then they wash the vegetables and start chopping them, Ali not forgetting to tease his sister as usual as she loses her temper every time her system of different chopping boards for herbs, vegetables, onions, garlic, citrus fruits, fish and meat is messed up. As they work, the voice of the singer Fairuz fills the room. They’ve had enough of the news.

  ‘Do you remember our mother?’ Amal asks suddenly, in the middle of a chorus.

  ‘Barely,’ says Ali, adding after a while, ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘No idea.’ Amal shrugs and lights a cigarette. ‘I’ve just been thinking about her a lot recently.’

  ‘I can’t even remember what she looked like.’

  ‘She was beautiful.’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘And then she left us,’ Amal says and puts out her cigarette. A few days ago, she sat at a piano for the first time in years. Her mother had hired several different tutors to come to their house every afternoon and teach Amal piano, music theory and music history, composing and singing. After that Amal had to practise for two hours, with her mother correcting her playing. Amal can’t remember why Svetlana was so obsessed with teaching her to play. But when she saw a piano in Youssef’s living room she couldn’t resist. The piece she played, a Chopin nocturne, sounded awful; her fingers had forgotten their technique.

  Bassel deposits his briefcase in the hall, removes his jacket and puts it neatly over a coat hanger on the coat stand. Once tall and slim, Bassel’s body is no longer immune to time’s passing – his hair has gone grey but at least it hasn’t fallen out like most of his contemporaries’, his belly has grown soft and visibly convex, and his back is no longer strong and straight. A slipped disc a year ago came as a rude reminder of advancing age.

  He notes with satisfaction that the table is laid and the mezze already served. He shuffles into his slippers and goes to the kitchen, where his children are standing side by side at the stove.

  ‘Good evening.’ Bassel kisses each of them on the cheeks. ‘What are you cooking?’ he asks, lifting the saucepan lid as he speaks. Food has always brought him joy. Now he burns his lips on the hot spoon.

  Amal wags an admonishing finger at him and laughs.

  ‘Fatteh,’ Ali answers, and Bassel nods. Then he pours himself a glass of wine and sits down at the kitchen table. There’s a beguiling scent of saffron in the air.

  ‘How are things at the Institute?’ he asks Amal.

  ‘Fine,’ she says, bored. ‘We’re rehearsing Wannous.’

  ‘All that stuff about the Palestinians again?’ Bassel sighs.

  ‘What else?’ Ali comments.

  ‘It’s perfect right now – they say there are Israeli agents on the streets stirring up the public,’ says Amal, barely able to rein in her excitement. Her cheeks are aglow. She expects her father to agree.

  ‘And I very much hope you two are staying away from the demonstrations.’

>   Ali and Amal stare at their father.

  ‘You think it’s romantic but there’s too much at stake, we’re not ready for a revolution. We don’t have political parties or civil society. Our civil servants are corrupt and ineffective.’

  ‘It can’t be stopped now,’ says Amal.

  Ali listens without comment, crunching on a piece of carrot and waiting for the storm to pass.

  Bassel waves his arm to dismiss Amal’s words and lowers his voice. ‘Oh, yes it can! They mowed everything down in Hama in 1982 and after that no one dared to raise their voice. It’ll be just the same this time.’ His voice has a touch of irritation to it.

  Hama has become a code word, conjuring up memories of the last uprising and intended to curb this one. The Hama rebellion was launched by the Muslim Brotherhood. To consolidate his position in power, Hafez al-Assad sent in the military and had the entire city demolished. People were put up against the wall and shot, raped, thrown out of windows, run over by tanks and slaughtered in the hospitals. This punishment went on for three weeks, with entire neighbourhoods reduced to rubble. No one spoke about the events in Hama, no one reported on them, no one documented them. Even today, no one knows exactly how many people were murdered there. But they know what price the regime was prepared to exact to stay in power.

  ‘Society could reorganize itself, on a democratic basis,’ Amal says, trying to stand up for her ideas again. ‘We could learn.’

  ‘You’re too old to be that naïve,’ Bassel replies as he lights a cigar. ‘And anyway, that’s not how I raised you.’

  Bassel glares at his daughter with patriarchal fervour. Amal withstands his gaze.

  After her rehearsal, Amal finds one hundred and sixty-three calls to her phone from ‘caller ID blocked’. When she picks up the one hundred and sixty-fourth call, a rough voice says: ‘You whore, do we have to call you a thousand times before you answer?’

  Amal hangs up before the man can say anything else. The phone rings again immediately and she slings it against the wall, shattering the casing. She fishes out the remains of the SIM card and flushes it down the toilet. She sends Youssef a warning from her computer and then deletes her Facebook account.