Amal crosses the road. On the traffic island, the policeman she’s seen every morning for years smiles at her and asks where her car is. Amal replies that she’s sold it; too many checkpoints, not enough parking spaces and petrol’s too expensive. She takes a taxi now when she needs to. She checks for the boy again but he’s gone.
Amal goes into Café Pages, where her friend Raajai is sitting with crossed legs in the far corner, flicking through a newspaper. Two buttons of the collar on his snow-white shirt are undone. Raajai studies classical music and plays the harp, which prompts many young men to make false assumptions about his character. Amal puts the curtains in their plastic bag on the table, greets her friend with kisses on each cheek, and sits down.
‘How are you?’ Amal asks, looking at the dense crown of his eyelashes. She feels a strange tenderness for him, something she can’t explain to herself. Maybe I’m in love with him, she thinks.
‘Fine,’ he says with a smile.
Amal passes him her keys. ‘I won’t be home till this evening.’
‘Thanks,’ says Raajai as he pockets the keys. He uses Amal’s flat now and then to meet his boyfriend undisturbed. They’ve been together six months but Raajai frequently complains the relationship is barely progressing.
‘Watch out for yourselves!’ says Amal, and the two of them stop talking as the waiter approaches. They order two coffees and Raajai laughs out loud while the waiter leaves them. He’s an Iraqi; he’s known these precautionary measures since the days of Saddam Hussein.
‘Are you okay?’ Raajai asks, lowering his voice.
‘Someone’s following me.’
Raajai raises an eyebrow and shakes his head of dense curls. His face is a picture of deep concern, which Amal immediately wants to wave away. She shrugs and says as nonchalantly as possible, ‘He doesn’t look dangerous.’
‘Maybe he’s a fan,’ says Raajai, and Amal laughs.
As she says goodbye she takes his hand and tells him, ‘I’ll see you later. You two have a good afternoon.’
‘Look out for yourself,’ says Raajai. His tone is serious.
‘There’s nothing I can do anyway.’
Amal crosses a tiny square in the shape of a star and then the Al-Assad Bridge. She looks over at the Flower of Massar, a gigantic construction project on the riverbank, spearheaded by the First Lady. Next to her, a woman is pushing a sleepy child in a buggy and Amal tries to catch a glimpse of the baby, but it’s so tightly swaddled she can only make out a dummy between two rosy cheeks. On her right are the former presidential palace and a five-star hotel. Then come the new generals’ club and the secret-service headquarters, exactly opposite Amal’s institute. A concrete wall is being put up around the headquarters; protection from terrorists is the official explanation from the great leader, whose face Amal has seen about a hundred times on her short walk. Walls are being erected around all the city’s secret-service buildings and military facilities, roads changed so much that not even the taxi drivers know their way around Damascus. The regime is preparing for a siege.
Amal heads into the institute through the opera entrance and the secret-service men let her pass; they know her face by now. The nervousness only leaves her once she’s safely inside. When she leaves the building after a strenuous afternoon of conflicts with her Russian professor, the man who’s been following her for two days is back again. He is pressed against a wall, smoking. His face is pale and tired. He looks more like a peeping tom than a secret agent, Amal thinks, and she walks up to him. As he catches sight of her, his face reflects several kinds of panic. She takes up position next to him.
‘What do you want from me?’ she asks, her voice calm.
He stares at her mutely and his gaze harbours longing and loneliness. Amal dislikes him immediately.
‘I’m Nidal,’ he says. His voice trembles.
‘So?’ says Amal.
He looks at her, uncertain.
‘What do you want, Nidal? Tell me!’ Amal decides to act as aggressive as possible to get rid of him more quickly.
‘Nothing,’ says Nidal with a shrug. The light in his eyes is extinguished. Now he looks at the pavement and says, ‘Would you have a coffee with me?’
Amal nods and at the same time fears she’s fallen into a trap. But something about his posture makes her feel slightly more warmly towards him, even though he’s far from having won her over.
In the café, Amal immediately lights a cigarette. ‘I’ve seen you before,’ she says, slightly less hostile now. His face is not attractive but not ugly either. The unpleasantness is probably down to how average he looks – his eyes and skin are pale brown, almost the same shade, and his hair is boring and straight as it covers his forehead.
‘You’re my sister,’ Nidal says.
Amal puts her elbow on the table and corrects him. ‘Half-sister.’
They hold the silence as long as their nerves permit.
‘What was he like to you?’ Amal asks in the end.
‘Who?’
‘Our father.’ Amal tries to sound ironic, but fails.
‘Strict.’
Amal is visibly surprised.
‘A narrow-minded, conservative arsehole who loves no one but himself. Domineering and moody,’ Nidal continues.
‘Bassel?’
‘Yes, your Bassel.’
The waiter comes over. Amal orders a coffee and a glass of water. Nidal orders nothing.
He speaks as if in a dream, still not looking at Amal and seeming to expect no reaction from her either. ‘I was a soft child for him. My sister and my older brother are normal and nice. Maybe that’s why he loves them so much. They don’t want any more out of life than to get married, doesn’t matter who to, as long as it’s soon. My mother is jaded and withdrawn. She hates her husband, she won’t let him sleep in her bed and yet she plays the virtuous wife in front of the neighbours and her own children. She makes me so angry! She doesn’t believe in God and yet she still covers her hair, she loves gossiping over tea and pastries but she acts devout and self-righteous, and there’s a poster of Bashar al-Assad in our house even though she hates politics.’
‘Sounds like a perfect family,’ says Amal, not without satisfaction.
She’s annoyed with Nidal’s dogmatic speech, and most of all she’s angry that he’s burst into her life like this.
‘What happened after I left?’ she asks.
‘Nothing.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He went on exactly the same as before. Didn’t say a word about it, no sign of remorse, no insight and certainly no regret. He didn’t even admit to knowing you, actually. He refused to answer my questions so I thought I’d come and look for you. Maybe get to know you. My mother must have known everything for years; she wasn’t at all surprised by you turning up.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘It wasn’t hard. I went to the registry office and they gave me your addresses. If you can do it, I can do it.’
A long, uncomfortable silence follows. Amal stirs her coffee and looks out of the window. Then Nidal leans across the table. ‘I went out to your house. To your villa. You know, I had no idea Bassel was rich.’
‘Seems like all of us were being kept in the dark one way or another.’
‘I don’t understand why his entire fortune has gone to his illegitimate family.’ He speaks in a tone that demands agreement. Suddenly he pauses. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s just not fair. Your side has a villa and apartments in the city centre, while I’m condemned to living with my mother and doing military service.’ Nidal’s voice rises.
‘He’s sending you to the military?’ asks Amal, putting her arm on the table. Nidal reaches for her wrist but Amal pulls her hand out of his grip.
‘As I said, I guess he was much more liberal with his secret family. I’ve had a lot of trouble with him.’
Amal feels steadily more uncomfortable. ‘I’ve got to go. All the best, Nidal.’
‘Will I see you soon
?’
‘I don’t think so.’ She stands awkwardly, drops her bag, picks it up again and dashes out.
Amal is waiting for her father in an elegant, black lace dress in the restaurant above the luxurious Hotel al-Sham. She had written him a long email and asked to meet, and he’d sent a long and warm reply – without mentioning his other family.
Amal’s lips are painted red and her face is powdered white. The restaurant itself is not far from her apartment, and most importantly it’s expensive. It rotates above the building, commanding an overwhelming view of the city at war. You can even see the explosions on the edge of town. The décor is nondescript, the waiters wear livery and gelled-back hair despite the circumstances, the male guests are in dark suits while the ladies flaunt daring necklines or bare shoulders.
Bassel is late.
Amal orders red wine and plays through the various scenarios in her mind. He’ll apologize. He’ll say it was a misunderstanding. She’ll shout and scream and perhaps lash out. She wonders why her father has lived his life this way – is he a pathological liar or simply a bad person? Might he have had other reasons Amal doesn’t yet know? The waiter tops up her glass as night settles over Damascus.
Amal imagines the conditions under which she might forgive her father. She tries to summon her favourite childhood memories, the way her father sang Umm Kulthum songs in the kitchen, very quietly so that no one would notice he was singing. She remembers Bassel taking her to school when he wasn’t on one of his extended work trips and gently neatening up her military uniform, which all schoolchildren had to wear at the time.
Bassel doesn’t come.
The regime troops approach the city an hour before sunrise. Nidal is on the back seat of the military jeep, his rifle upright between his trembling knees. He has pulled his helmet low over his face. The driver drums his fingers nervously on the steering wheel. The other two check their Brownings again.
Nidal’s unit has been transferred to Deir ez-Zor in the east of Syria, close to the Iraqi border. In Damascus they were told they’d be fighting terrorists but it looks very different on the ground; the order is not to attack bearded men and to concentrate solely on the Free Syrian Army. Several of Nidal’s comrades have already defected but Nidal can’t make the break. He doesn’t want to join the Free Army. He doesn’t want to join the Islamists. He doesn’t want to fight at all but he has no choice.
The tanks forge ahead and destroy everything that gets in their way: traffic signs and streetlamps, shops and houses, statues, schools and libraries, even the street surface. The army approaches the city from three directions simultaneously and blocks off the streets. Nidal watches the thin orange strip on the horizon.
Then the killing begins. The regime snipers spread across the roofs and shoot at everything, even cats. People try to run from death in their slippers. In a matter of minutes, the streets are strewn with wounded and dead. Some utter desperate screams of ‘God is great’. What a lie, Nidal thinks. He looks into the faces of the frightened people and is afraid himself.
His unit is radioed commands to get out of the vehicle and assemble with the others at the entrance to the city centre. The jeep stops, the soldiers jump out and line up against a wall, standing to attention. Then they march at the double from house to house, kicking down doors, ransacking homes and taking the men prisoner. They drag them out onto the street, line them up and shoot them. The snipers cover them. Nidal is scared of being killed and scared of killing. He can no longer trust his own senses; he tries to block everything out.
Facing a mother and her two daughters in a squalid living room, Nidal’s commander – a tall man with a face pockmarked by acne scars – changes his strategy spontaneously. The mother weeps and wails and says her sons have long since left for Lebanon and her husband, may God bless his soul, died a decade ago. The commander drags one of the daughters away from her mother, shoves her into the bedroom and throws her on the bed. He calls the mother a whore and pushes her against the wall. Then he orders the soldier next to Nidal to rape the girl. She’s not even fourteen, so thin that Nidal thinks he might see through her. The soldier too looks like a frightened child. He’s only a few years older than the girl. Now he turns his head slowly to his superior and his face betrays perhaps even more horror than the girl’s grey eyes. He says nothing, merely shaking his head. The commander, equally silent, aims his gun at the boy’s head and pulls the trigger. The girl screams. Blood splashes onto her dress. The commander nods at Nidal now, sweat running down his neck to his back. He doesn’t know whether he’s ready to die. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do or what he’s capable of. At that moment, the commander receives radio orders to pull back his unit. For the first time in half an hour, Nidal dares to take a proper breath. As he leaves the room he doesn’t turn back to his comrade’s body. He hears the echo of the girl’s sobs for a long time.
By the time Hammoudi leaves the field hospital shortly before sunrise, the smell of decay is already spreading across the city. The dead are lying on the streets, their bodies beneath makeshift shrouds of sheets. Most of them were killed by single shots to the head. The sheets are brightly coloured, blue, red, yellow-patterned – coated in the thinnest layer of sand and stiff with dried blood. Flies whirr through the air; they’re larger than usual, Hammoudi notes, as though they’d eaten their fill. Deir ez-Zor has become a ghost town. Some 40,000 people have fled since the previous day, in buses, cars and trains.
Hammoudi’s parents’ living room is packed full of bags. They can’t decide what to take with them so his mother and youngest sister are running around the house, stuffing clothes into cases, unpacking them again, throwing photo albums, books, shoes and medicines into plastic bags before they realize they might need towels and bed linen as well. Hammoudi wipes the sweat from his brow – the fans on the ceiling are at a standstill.
Hammoudi’s father, a gaunt man with thick, white hair, raises his voice; it’s obvious he’s not used to doing so. He says they have to leave in ten minutes, tells the women to put the bags by the front door and he’ll load them into the car, and not to forget water.
Once the ten minutes are over they are all actually outside. Hammoudi’s mother wraps a thin, white shawl around her shoulders and embraces her son.
‘Come with us,’ she says and strokes his cheek tenderly. Hammoudi shakes his head and inhales her scent, wishing he could break it down to its chemical components so he could call it up later whenever he wanted.
‘You’re just as stupid as your brother,’ says his mother with a sigh. ‘God punished me with two mules instead of sons.’
‘Come on, it’ll be over in a few months and then we’ll dance on Assad’s grave,’ his father says, with an unconvincing show of confidence.
Hammoudi can hardly resist the temptation to get in his parents’ car and simply leave everything behind him, but he’s the only doctor left in the besieged part of the city. So he helps his father load up the car and says goodbye to his family. His little sister clings to him. Her whole body trembles. As he kisses his mother’s cheeks he can taste her salty tears.
There’s so much Hammoudi would like to say to her but he says nothing. If he allowed himself to speak the only thing that would cross his dry lips would probably be ‘Take me with you’. Only now does he notice how much his parents have aged in recent years, his mother’s face haggard, his father’s back crooked, their eyes embedded in dark shadows. They look tired and frightened and Hammoudi doesn’t know whether that’s the work of the past few weeks or the years he spent in Paris. There, he always remembered them as cheerful and alert; two people who had been happy together for decades.
‘We have to go,’ Hammoudi’s father says and sighs.
‘How will you get through?’
‘We’ve bribed the soldiers at the roadblock,’ his mother answers, her voice cracking.
‘Can you trust them?’
‘Naji took care of it all but he won’t be able to come to us,’ says
Hammoudi’s sister. She puts on a headscarf; it’s the first time Hammoudi has seen her like that. It makes him sad, but it will mean it’s easier for her to get away.
‘Look after Naji,’ Hammoudi’s mother tells him. ‘I don’t think what he’s doing is a good thing.’
‘At least he’s doing something,’ says Hammoudi’s father.
‘That’s exactly the problem! He’s joined up with some idiots and now he wants to fight!’ Hammoudi’s mother fires back.
‘What other option do we have?’ Hammoudi’s father asks, but his voice sounds questioning rather than assured.
Hammoudi stays out of the argument; he doesn’t understand how it has come to this in only a few weeks – his family refugees, his brother an insurgent and he holding out in a makeshift hospital and operating without pause.
The last word of farewell has been spoken. His parents’ car turns the corner and Hammoudi sets off back to the hospital, walking slowly at first. When a bullet hits the ground before his feet and whips up a cloud of dust, he remembers the snipers and runs and runs as fast as he can across the open junction. An elderly woman shouts at him from her window to be careful. He feels infinitely lonely. He wonders whether Claire is still on her own.
Amal’s brother comes early in the morning to say goodbye. He’s in a better mood than he has been for a long time. The sky too is cloudless and blue, oblivious. Ali has brought her a little gift, which he enjoys presenting. A tiny box that she doesn’t open.
‘It’s a necklace, not necessarily beautiful but it’s heavy and it’s gold, so you can sell it whenever you feel like,’ Ali says, and Amal thanks him and is surprised that her departure seems realer to him than to her.
‘Where’s your luggage?’
Amal points at two wheeled cases, a black travel bag and a plastic carrier bag filled to the brim.
City of Jasmine Page 10