City of Jasmine

by Olga Grjasnowa

  So the secret service has found her. Amal knows she has to act quickly. A few of her friends have already been summoned to interrogations that went on for days. She knows she has to either leave the country or find someone who’ll put in a good word for her with the regime. That someone will be expensive, though, and hard to track down.

  She goes to her father’s office; he’s now running a construction company. He values his position and his office, which is in an expensive part of Damascus. Most of all though, he loves hunting down new prestigious building commissions, which is why his children rarely see him these days – or that’s how he explains his constant absences. Here in the air-conditioned, sunlit rooms, which have a sense of luxury rather than elegance, the latest addition to the décor is a portrait of Bashar al-Assad. A huge photograph in a heavy, mahogany frame. Amal looks at the picture for a long time. She jumps when her father puts his hand on her back. He smells of cigars and disinfectant.

  ‘I though photos in the office were a distraction?’ say Amal, adding, ‘At least that’s what you always used to say about putting up photos of us.’

  ‘This is different,’ Bassel explains coldly as he puts his arm around Amal’s shoulder. ‘Did you just happen to be passing?’

  ‘I’ve got a problem.’

  He raises his eyebrows and then asks quietly and in Russian, ‘Is it something we should discuss outside?’

  Amal hasn’t heard Bassel speaking Russian since Svetlana’s disappearance. She’s unsettled by it now and tries to read his expression. Bassel guides her out of the room.

  The two of them go down to the garage and get into his car. He turns on the radio and then gestures to Amal to speak. She takes a deep breath and tells him about the phone calls.

  ‘You’re going to get a summons,’ says Bassel.

  ‘I know,’ says Amal.

  A few days later, Bassel has chased down a high-ranking government official with whom he studied in Moscow. In return for a generous sum, he is to get hold of a secret-service officer to make sure nothing happens to Amal in the event of her being summoned.

  A week later, Amal receives a message on her new prepaid phone from ‘caller ID blocked’, instructing her to report to the Air Force Security Service headquarters the next morning. That same day, Bassel hands the official an envelope stuffed full of dollar bills, in exchange for the promise that Amal won’t be arrested.

  The Damascus headquarters are known as the ‘Holocaust’. There are several secret services, in fact, and each of them has at least one branch office in every part of every town, down to the tiniest village in the country.

  A roadblock has been set up outside the entrance. Several police cars and a tank flying a small Syrian flag guard the building. The tiny forecourt is made of concrete, the high walls wrapped in barbed wire. Masked guards cradle primed machine guns on every corner, and the various men in grey suits with guns slung loose around their hips are impossible to overlook.

  A young soldier leads Amal and her advocate along endless corridors with tattered carpet and yellowed wallpaper. The walls are dotted with identical portraits of Bashar al-Assad. The soldier rushes ahead so fast that Amal has trouble keeping up with him without breaking into a jog.

  In the end he stops outside a solid iron door. It creaks loudly when he opens it with some effort. Inside the general’s office, where power reaches its zenith, a deathly silence reigns. An unpleasant smell has lodged itself in the upholstery. There are no photographs of the president here, not even behind the general’s desk. He now clears his throat for the first time. At that very moment, Amal feels an irrepressible need to go to the toilet. The advocate has left the room again in response to a gesture Amal wasn’t able to interpret.

  ‘Were you at the demonstration outside the Libyan embassy?’ the general asks through his huge moustache, with no pretence of an introduction. He stands there with his legs apart and his belly extended, puffing greedily on a cigar. The smoke quickly fills the small room.

  Amal is suddenly reminded of how her mother used to say the size of a man’s moustache was a measure of how often he hit his wife.

  ‘Yes, I was,’ Amal answers.

  ‘Why?’ His eyes wander to her long fingers, bearing neither wedding nor engagement ring. ‘Has Gaddafi done anything to you?’

  ‘I thought it was authorized.’

  ‘Who gave you permission to think?’ The general looks her firmly in the eye and Amal tries not to evade his stare. ‘How did you get the idea the demonstration might be authorized?’

  ‘Because so many people posted it on Facebook. I thought it couldn’t be illegal.’

  ‘Well, we all make mistakes. I won’t hold it against you. What happened then?’

  ‘The demo was broken up,’ says Amal, pressing her thighs together.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I went home.’

  ‘But before that you went to another demonstration, didn’t you?’ The general doesn’t wait for her response, instead opening up an outmoded laptop on his desk and playing a video for Amal, showing her holding a banner and singing a revolutionary song, clearly recognizable. The general has a slight air of a boa constrictor about him.

  ‘Did you take a wrong turn on your way home?’ he bellows.

  ‘I was on my way back from the other demo and I happened to see this one. It was on my way home.’ Amal shrugs and tries to keep her voice free of any emotion.

  ‘Aha.’ The general raises his left eyebrow without further comment and then plays another two videos of Amal demonstrating.

  Amal says nothing and neither does the general. His face is only inches away from hers. His eyes are bloodshot and his chin trembles. Amal has the feeling saliva will start running down the trembling spot any minute now. She smells his cigar and his aftershave, which must consist of a combination of heavy woody notes and cheap alcohol, and beneath that she smells vodka. After a while he says, ‘Young lady, there’s one thing you have to understand. We’re not going anywhere, even if Bashar goes away. We’re staying. For ever. And if we have to, we won’t just burn your kind, we’ll burn down the whole country. And now go, and tell your little friends their child’s play won’t get them anywhere. Tell them we’re staying. For ever.’

  He calms down again and makes a note in large, childish handwriting on shiny paper headed with the words ‘Arabic Republic of Syria, Air Force Security Service Department’. Then he dismisses Amal. She now has a file.

  Hammoudi orders kebab and a large portion of rice – the revolution makes him hungry. The owner brings his food over in person. Her hair is blonde and elaborately curled, the skin around her eyes and the corners of her mouth sown with fine wrinkles, her lips full and neatly painted. Her eyes are brown and warm and as she puts the blue plate with Hammoudi’s squarely arranged food on the table, it’s as though her whole body were flirting with him. She spent ten years married to a deeply patriarchal man before he died of a heart attack last year. Rumour has it his death might actually have had other causes.

  ‘Enjoy your meal,’ she says, smoothing her dress over her hips.

  Hammoudi nods his thanks and reaches out for the cutlery. The meat is juicy and he can clearly taste the rosemary, although the rice is a little plain. He washes it down with Coke. Underneath his bill, he finds a piece of paper with a hurriedly scribbled address, a time of day and a name – Samira.

  More out of curiosity than lust, Hammoudi finds himself outside Samira’s front door at the arranged hour. As she opens up she clicks her tongue suggestively. A loose dress flatters her figure.

  In the hall, an embarrassed Hammoudi takes off his trainers. Samira asks him if he’d like a coffee and signals for him to sit down on the sofa. The room has seen better days – the ceiling is low and bears the brownish cloud formation of past water damage. The windows are covered by heavy curtains. The electric light is dimmed, the furniture worn and even the family photos – Samira in various poses, usually beaming and surrounded by several children;
one picture of her arm in arm with a corpulent man – must have been taken more than a decade ago. Hammoudi would like to ask about the man but he refrains.

  She returns a few minutes later with a small tray holding two cups of coffee. How can a person signal neediness and confidence at the same time, Hammoudi wonders.

  ‘Thank you,’ he says.

  Samira lowers her eyes coquettishly. It’s been a long time since Hammoudi slept with a woman. Samira takes his hands and puts them on her hips. As he runs his hands up to her waist, she closes her eyes and backs expertly onto the sofa. Hammoudi suddenly feels infinitely lonely. The sex is mechanical. Once it’s over he lies down next to Samira but the sofa is too small for them both. Samira gets up and goes to the bathroom, and Hammoudi soon hears the shower running. He pulls on his trousers and sneaks out of the flat.

  After he leaves Samira’s house he’s plagued by a guilty conscience, despite not having heard from Claire in ages. Both of them have grown increasingly taciturn over the past few months, gradually reducing their contact. It’s clear their relationship is over but still Hammoudi wishes he’d found the courage to talk openly to Claire. He’s shocked at how quickly they’ve drifted apart.

  The demonstrators want to march through Old Damascus, starting from the majestic Umayyad Mosque and ending at the bustling Marjeh Square, with its hotels and restaurants and the incredibly ugly bronze pillar wrapped in wires, meant to commemorate the first telegraph connection to Mecca. As if it were that easy to get hold of God, Amal thinks, and takes the SIM card out of her phone to be on the safe side. She’s decided to keep protesting despite the secret service’s warning, and she’s far from the only one. Regardless of the arrests, the tear gas, the snipers, the shabiha militiamen stabbing or beating demonstrators, more people come to the marches every time. Their revolution is becoming the only conceivable solution.

  A few metres away from Amal, a woman is marching in a bright white blouse, black jeans and a white headscarf, filming the demonstration on a handheld camcorder. She turns briefly to Amal, their eyes meet and then she falls to the ground. Amal thinks at first she’s stumbled and she takes a step towards her to help. But then she sees the woman’s blouse colouring dark red and she kneels down beside her. The woman gasps for breath, no longer sounding human. Blood is spilling out everywhere, from her mouth and nostrils, an absurd amount of blood. It sticks to Amal’s hands, clothes, shoes. A young man calls the woman habibi, darling, and tells her to stay awake. Amal props her up so she can spit out the blood. Her eyes roll, her right arm twitches, she loses even more blood, and then her eyes suddenly turn inwards, their light extinguished. Her body is still warm. Amal is overcome by a feeling of absolute pointlessness. She abandons the lifeless body to the crowd now gathered around her and leaves. She doesn’t walk, she runs, not even thinking about where she’s going – as long as she gets away.

  At the next crossroads, two men grab her by the hands. She has no time to react to their assault as she feels a hard jab at her back. Searing pain instantly floods across her lower back and down her legs. Then the leather truncheon descends on the back of her knees. Amal collapses onto the ground. Her cheek hits the dirty paving stone. Another blow. She stays down, curling up and gasping for breath. Then she lifts her arm to protect her head. The men laugh, grab her beneath the armpits and drag her to a white Opel Omega Estate, where they bind her hands with a cable tie and lock her in the boot behind a dividing grille. Although the engine’s running, the car is empty apart from the driver, who immediately begins screaming the most vulgar insults at Amal. Up to now, Amal didn’t even know most of them existed in Arabic.

  Over the next quarter of an hour, four more women are thrown into the boot. They can hardly breathe, let alone move. They feel the pressure of one another’s bodies. Now three shabiha men get into the car and one of them turns straight to the women and starts administering electric shocks with a taser. He’s tall and muscular, his face relaxed. He enjoys the procedure the same way he’d enjoy swimming in the sea or eating pistachio ice cream. He aims the taser at the same part of the body every time. The pain swiftly becomes unbearable; Amal hears herself whimpering.

  The car speeds through Old Damascus. An air freshener tree with the scent of ‘new car’ sways to and fro above the dashboard. The owner of the taser describes in great detail a group rape, getting the driver so turned on that he stops looking at the street, his eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror. This man is stocky and bullish, with a fat neck. When he turns around suddenly, the man in the passenger seat grabs the steering wheel and yells, ‘A curse on the cunt you crawled out of, are you trying to kill us all? Don’t you think three men are enough to deal with these whores? Stick to driving before we all die!’ He slaps him around the head and the other shabiha men hit out even harder, as if to prove they really have got the women under control.

  The car brakes abruptly and Amal is thrown against the grille. One after another, the women are dragged out with their tops pulled over their heads. The worst thing for Amal isn’t the pain, it’s the humiliation of standing somewhere in the streets of Damascus with her body exposed.

  Kicks and punches drive the women on. They’re taken to some branch office of the secret service; the prisoners aren’t supposed to know where they are, which is why Amal’s top is still over her head and her hands are still tied behind her back. She shivers and shakes, although the temperature inside the building is subtropical. Amal feels a hot, rough hand on her ribs and smells a sour, solid body next to hers. More hands grab at her waist; she tries to evade their grip but she can’t; someone holds her in place from behind. Now someone kneads Amal’s breasts like a butcher clutching a piece of cheap meat, tuts and suddenly throws her against a wall. As she recovers consciousness she’s being pulled up, her top is torn off her head and she herself is driven semi naked down a long corridor by blows from sticks, chairs and belts. Fluorescent lights hang from the ceiling, mercilessly illuminating the corridors. People are chained to pipes on either side, many of them no longer conscious. They lie closely packed like cobblestones. Their bodies are strewn with deep wounds, their clothes and skin covered in blood, some faces no longer recognizable. It smells of urine and faeces and screams sound out from all sides.

  A bullish man orders Amal to beat the bodies lying on the ground. Amal shakes her head. She can’t do it.

  ‘You don’t want to, you whore? You think you’re something special? Just wait, I’ll show you how to do it!’ the man yells and shoves Amal aside. The baton in his right hand lands repeatedly on the back of a young man standing in the corridor, leaving red welts. The man screams. His face is a mass of raw flesh, his eyes so swollen they’re barely recognizable as such. Amal realizes she’s crying.

  ‘Still don’t want to?’ The guard is in full stride now, his voice getting hoarse.

  Amal refuses again and the man starts beating the man hard on the stomach. His victim now utters only an animal moan. Amal can’t take any more and calls out, ‘I’ll do it!’

  The guard grins and hands the stick to Amal. She tries to hit the man as gently as possible but she’s still hitting him, and she’s disgusted with herself.

  Minutes later, Amal is shoved into a cell. The space measures two by three metres and holds some twenty-five women. There’s a hole in the floor that functions as a toilet. For fear of rats, the women let the flush run all the time, although flush is an exaggeration – it’s nothing but a hose with water trickling out of it. The building has never been ventilated. There’s no room to lie down; the women take turns to sleep. Two of them step aside to let Amal rest for a while.

  One of them kneels down to her and says, ‘You’ve survived the worst, the worst thing is the drive here.’ But Amal knows that’s not true. She knows everything depends on the secret service’s goodwill. She knows only her father and his money can help her, but he warned her he’d need to find out about her arrest in order to save her. Amal’s only hope is that one of the officers will call her f
ather and ask for money, and that she’ll still be alive by then. Suddenly she collapses. She can hardly breathe, she retches and whimpers and can’t stop. The women don’t try to help her – they have more important things on their mind: their own survival.

  They aren’t tortured but they can see through a hole in the wall, presumably made deliberately, as the men in the next cell are beaten. Amal trembles at their screams. The bright fluorescent light is left on at night and she soon loses all track of time. None of the women has been charged with any crime, some are only here because of a picture on their phones, others because their fathers and brothers have been languishing in Syrian jails for decades.

  The next morning, Amal and half a dozen other women get their hands and eyes bound. They are shoved into the yard and the security officers order them to say their last prayer before their deaths. Amal sees nothing but the dark fabric of her blindfold; an icy wind brushes against her bare shoulders and knees but she doesn’t feel the cold. Some of the women beg for their lives, others are already speaking the shahada, testifying to their Islamic faith, and then they are forced to stand in a line. Amal is shoved roughly into the right position by someone who smells of cold sweat and oud incense. The shabiha men load their weapons and fire. They laugh and someone from the group of condemned women joins in the laughter. Amal thinks they shot up in the air. She wants to believe that, very much so. She hears no screams of pain, at least, and doesn’t smell blood either. The men load their weapons again and pull the triggers. Once the shots have been fired, Amal tries to ascertain whether she’s still alive. Then she tries to locate any pain, mentally scanning her toes and her feet up to her calves, knees, thighs, hips, belly, ribs, chest, shoulders, upper arm, lower arm, fingers, to the other arm, shoulders, neck and up to the top of her head. She decides she must be unhurt. She doesn’t know whether the soldiers fired in the air or executed someone next to her; she can hardly remember the faces of the women she was incarcerated with. She doesn’t know whether she’s still alive by chance or there’s some kind of deliberate plan behind it. The weapons are loaded again, shots fired. Amal’s blindfold isn’t removed until she’s back in the cell. When the officers let go of her she staggers.