Ali helps her to carry everything downstairs and stow it in the boot of the taxi. Their goodbye is tense, especially as Ali’s face is so blithe and bright. Amal hugs him and tells him to look after himself and to come and visit her. Ali assures her he’ll come soon, and then the two of them stand silently facing each other, not knowing what to do next.
It’s hot outside, the air flickering. The taxi, an old 1970s Mercedes, has a squeak. The faded leather seats are torn, yellow foam spilling out of them. The driver, stocky with an impressive dark moustache, has agreed to take Amal to Beirut for a hundred dollars. They don’t say a word to each other on the way. The roads are narrow, winding and bare. Their sides are strewn with plastic bags and empty chocolate- and crisp packets, blown about by the wind. Amal is still thinking of Ali’s carefree face.
The radio plays Fairuz’s songs, again; for the first time, Amal can’t stand the sound of her voice. She’s about to ask the driver to turn off the radio when he brakes abruptly. There’s a military convoy ahead of them. Trucks, tanks and rocket launchers are crawling along the road. Soldiers’ heads stick out of the sides of the trucks. They have earnest faces, none of them smiling. Tons of steel that will soon be deployed against human bodies.
The driver switches off the radio of his own accord. Amal puts on her sunglasses so he doesn’t see her tears. They’re not allowed to overtake the convoy so they drive behind it for an hour until they reach the turn-off for Zabadani.
At some point, a text pops up on Amal’s phone: Welcome to Lebanon. She has heard nothing more from her father.
The end of September sees in the loveliest season in Deir ez-Zor. Temperatures fall to a bearable twenty-nine degrees and a gentle wind blows through the streets. Children have gone back to school, mothers can finally relax after the long summer holidays, and fathers plan the last family trip out to the desert for hunting and barbecues. These weeks are the most peaceful time of the year – usually.
Nidal’s unit has been relocated, now tasked with guarding the Deir ez-Zor military airport, and there’s nothing in the world Nidal cares less about than that airport. He spends most of his time alone writing letters to his half-sister; not emails but real letters, written on yellowish Syrian paper of inferior quality. He writes that their father is an arsehole and his mother a tyrant and he’s sorry he only met Amal so recently. But perhaps they can get to know each other now. They’re long, beautiful letters, which he keeps underneath his mattress and doesn’t send.
Nidal’s unit moves out again in the morning. They follow a long convoy of tanks. Nidal sits in an open jeep that races along the streets of Deir ez-Zor, hoping he’ll never have to get out. He doesn’t know what exactly he’s supposed to do. His palms are so wet with sweat they can barely grip his rifle. Nidal tries to look only straight ahead so as not to see any dead bodies but they’re everywhere, maltreated corpses of all ages, dotted with gaping holes. Their eyes, those that still have eyes, are empty and wide open.
The soldiers herd the people together outside their houses like livestock. The men are immediately picked out and lined up. Then they are shot before the panicked eyes of their wives, daughters, sisters, aunts, girlfriends and grandmothers. Blood pools on the road.
Suddenly, the vehicle in front of them explodes. Steel flies through the air and crashes to the ground. Nidal feels as though all his teeth are being pulled at once. He hears and sees nothing more. Dust everywhere.
He gets out of the jeep with the others. He stumbles, falls down and intuitively closes his eyes. Until he realizes abruptly that he’s making a fatal mistake. So he opens them again and presses himself against a wall with all his weight. He runs off and after only five metres he ducks and stands still and runs on as soon as the soldier ahead of him does so. Shots fall, several bullets landing right next to his boots. Nidal receives radio orders to shoot, so he raises his gun, which is miraculously still in his hand, and shoots. He sees his comrade’s chest getting hit by several bullets and watches the man collapsing to the dusty asphalt. Not thinking, Nidal crawls underneath the fallen man. Warmth escapes the dying body. After a while, once the shooting has stopped, Nidal gets up. He’s alone on the street. Out of his senses, he runs to the next house, the door is locked, he runs on, and at some point he finds himself outside a storage space. He smashes the window with a stone and climbs in.
It takes a while for Nidal’s eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. The stagnant air and damp walls feel like paradise on earth. He moves between the crates to the furthest corner of the room and crouches down, his head leaning against the wall. He’s dizzy. Several hours pass without change. The whole room is full of fat buzzing fruit flies. It’s muggy and the food rotting away in the heat gives off a foul stench. Nidal thinks he can also smell blood. Intense pain hammers at his temples. He hides behind a few crates, rolls up and waits. In the distance, he hears shots and bursts of dogs barking.
Not until the evening of the next day does Nidal dare to climb out. The street is abandoned, the streetlamps destroyed, and the power has been cut off. A little light comes from the moon shining through the narrow window onto the crates, and from the twinkling stars. Nidal leaves the top half of his uniform in the basement and moves through the city in a vest and camouflage trousers. He left his gun behind because he’d run out of ammunition. Every muscle in his body is aching. His mouth is dry as a bone and his stomach is cramping with hunger.
Walking is difficult so he supports himself against walls as he moves quickly along the streets. He wants to get out of the city, only he doesn’t know what direction to take. He dreams of fields and a babbling brook where he could lie down to sleep on the banks.
Something pushes him backwards. He staggers and a burst of pain runs through his left shoulder and then his right leg, his knees collapse, he sinks to the ground. All he feels is someone leaning over him.
Beirut is an ugly and violent city corroded by civil war, capitalism and corruption. On holiday as a child, Amal saw her first dead body here – dangling from a streetlamp above a main road, and no one took any notice of it.
Amal hates Beirut. She hates the gigantic SUVs cruising the streets like tanks; she hates the soldiers’ arrogant faces and the way their fingers seem to be melded to the triggers of their machine guns; she hates the modern tower blocks and the wasteland drowning in rubbish between them; she hates the deep holes in the roads, the Hezbollah, the rude taxi drivers and cultural functionaries. She stays with friends for the first two weeks but switches apartments several times, as they keep filling up with newly arrived relatives and acquaintances from Damascus, Raqqa or Aleppo.
Syrian children beg on the streets. Fortune is not on their side, they’re thin as rakes, their clothes ragged and their dusty feet in cheap, plastic sandals. Only a year ago, these children were at school and had a future ahead of them. Now they listen to their parents dreaming of returning home. Or moving to Europe. Everyone can recite the prices for smugglers by heart. But only a few manage to get away.
Not until she gets to Beirut does Amal understand she will never lead the life she dreamed up for herself. The life she spent so much time and effort preparing for. She hasn’t yet found an alternative to Beirut; sometimes she thinks she’d be better off in Cairo or Istanbul but she doesn’t know anyone there and she’s scared of being lonely.
She throws her energy into the nightlife. Supressing her feelings has always been her most effective tactic.
During her second week in Beirut, Amal goes to a small bar in the city centre. The music is loud and obtrusive and Amal is long since drunk. She talks to a guy she knows called Sami. He tells her he owns a restaurant and it’s doing very well. He’s looking for kitchen staff. Amal says nothing, just smiles and hopes she never has to take a job as a kitchen porter, but then she spots Raajai. Sami gets up and says a sudden goodbye. He asks Amal to give him her number and she types it hurriedly into his phone before she embraces Raajai.
‘I didn’t know you were here!’ she e
xclaims.
‘I only just got here today. But I can see you’re doing just fine here.’
‘Something like that,’ says Amal.
‘How’s things in Damascus?’
‘Not much different to here,’ says Raajai, and points at Sami’s phone, left behind on their table as if by accident. ‘I bet it’s recording,’ he says.
Amal nods.
They leave the bar and walk along the emptying streets. Amal links arms with Raajai.
‘What on earth do we do now?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.’
‘Are you planning to stay here?’
‘If I find a flat I’ll stay, if not I’ll go back to Damascus. I don’t want to stay and I don’t want to go back. Have you got a flat?’
‘A room.’
‘Can I stay with you?’
‘In my bed?’
‘Are you single right now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then in your bed. Where’s Luna, by the way?’
‘In Damascus.’
‘And your brother?’
‘Him too.’
‘Isn’t he afraid he’ll get drafted?’
‘My father’s paying.’
‘It must be nice to have a rich father.’
Amal doesn’t answer. She doesn’t tell him she has no contact with Bassel any more and her brother doesn’t even pick up the phone when she calls him. That he waits days before calling her back and when he does call at last, he only lets the phone ring once, not picking up when she calls back and only enquiring by text message how she’s doing, but not expecting an answer to his question. She’s tried to talk to him about their father but Ali blocks every conversation. Amal is angry with him, she’s furious because he’s left her and betrayed her too, but the worst thing is that she misses him. Yet she knows he’s fine, even when he doesn’t contact her, because he posts photos of himself and his intact little world every day on Instagram.
Raajai gives her a long look but she avoids his eyes, and then he simply puts his arms around her and holds her tight. They stand in a close embrace for a long time.
The inhabitants of Deir ez-Zor are still being massacred. Many of the corpses left behind on the edges of the streets are already bloated. People are found dead in their beds, kitchens, hallways, basements and front gardens, where they are hurriedly buried. The park becomes a graveyard. No one is buried according to Sunni, Coptic, Circassian or Armenian custom now. Instead, corpses and body parts are interred under cover of darkness. Hammoudi has vague memories of cemeteries in Paris that looked like parks, but a park turned into a cemetery has something monstrous about it, he thinks.
He has been operating without a break for thirty-six hours. The operating room is now in the basement of a former private medical surgery, provisionally adapted to provide basic care for patients. The higher floors are too dangerous because of the aerial bombardments. They’ve given up treating people in apartments; this cellar is their hospital now.
Hammoudi works with one male and two female nurses, a vet and a former circus performer known to everyone only as Little Man. Hammoudi’s brother abducted him from an Egyptian circus two years ago, when it came to Deir ez-Zor for a couple of weeks. Little Man’s job was to walk around the ring holding a cardboard sign between acts. He had the saddest face in the world. Hammoudi’s brother stared at him all evening, then watched the whole show again the next day and stayed on. When the lights went out, he and his seven best friends kidnapped Little Man. They put their unresisting captive in a car and drove him to the best restaurant in town, where they treated him to kebab and got him drunk on arak. Things went on that way for three more days, after which Little Man decided not to go back to the circus. The director had other ideas about his performer’s future, of course. He sent armed men after the ‘kidnappers’, which wasn‘t a good move, especially in a town like Deir ez-Zor. Follwing a minor knife fight with no serious injuries, the two sides came to an agreement and Little Man stayed.
The hospital staff are volunteers; at night they all sleep together on the first floor of the building, permanently on call. Exhaustion has taken possession of every fibre of their bodies, the exertion is perpetual, their energy is sapped, their feelings numbed. Whenever a bomb falls, and that happens often, so many patients are brought at once that Hammoudi constantly has to decide which life to try to save first. Always knowing that someone else will die as he does so.
Little Man comes in while Hammoudi is changing his shirt. Hammoudi raises his eyebrows and prepares for the next catastrophe. Little Man says Hammoudi’s brother has come to see him, and a moment later Naji is standing in front of him. He’s wearing black clothes and a black headband. He looks tired, his cheeks are hollow, his eyes ringed by deep shadows, his skin pale. The brothers embrace briefly by way of hello.
‘There’s nothing wrong with me, I just wanted to see you,’ Naji says with a broad grin.
‘It’s up to me to say whether there’s something wrong with you or not,’ Hammoudi replies. Naji laughs but immediately turns serious and says, ‘I’ve brought someone with me.’
Nidal is lying on the back seat of Naji’s car. His lips are dry, he’s pale and can barely breathe. Hammoudi flashes an unspoken question at Naji but his brother merely shakes his head and says, ‘I had no choice, he’s just a child.’ He pronounces his words like an apology.
‘We have to make sure no one catches sight of the uniform,’ says Hammoudi, pulling Nidal’s trousers off. Then they transfer him carefully onto a stretcher. Nidal is in a serious condition. Hammoudi operates on him and then leaves him under Naji’s supervision.
At dawn, Hammoudi comes into the sparsely equipped ward. Naji is still smoking, though he has now moved on to hash without tobacco. He has a lot to forget. He’s been away from Deir ez-Zor for the last few weeks, getting hold of weapons for the resistance in Turkey, or at least that’s what he led Hammoudi to believe. When the military surrounded the city, Naji headed back with a group of ten fighters. They spent twenty hours crawling through the oil fields. But they managed to remain unnoticed. Once they reached the city they began their assault. They were well organized and fully armed.
According to Naji’s tally, he killed at least seven soldiers. He thought of nothing as he killed them, felt neither bad nor good. He killed out of necessity – he knew it was war, man against man, and he didn’t intend to die, at least not yet. He refrained from unnecessary cruelty, or at least that’s what he tells himself. He killed twice with his gun and twice with his own hands; three men fell victim to hand grenades he detonated. Every dead soldier posed one less threat to him. Dead soldiers meant more civilians would live to see the dawn in Deir ez-Zor. He tells none of this to Hammoudi or anyone else. He’ll have to deal with it alone.
‘I don’t have any painkillers I can give you,’ Hammoudi says, looking at his brother’s upper body. He has several cuts that are deep but not otherwise cause for concern.
‘It’s alright, just sew me up.’
Hammoudi cleans the wounds and then he sews them with swift stitches. Naji doesn’t even grimace.
‘You’re getting better and better.’
‘I get a lot of practice.’
‘We always wondered why you wanted to be a reconstructive surgeon, but now I’m glad you did,’ Naji says, and Hammoudi grins.
Then he asks his brother in a whisper, ‘What’s with the black headband?’
‘What else can I do?’ Naji hisses. ‘We’re losing the war, we have too many fronts and not enough weapons. The clans are mobilizing too and I don’t want to know what side they’ll be on. There’s no other way to force Assad to his knees. And at least the al-Nusra Front is well positioned. I’m not interested in their ideology, but I do want to fight the regime. It didn’t go badly at all for us today. We could win this war.’
‘I thought we were staging a revolution, not inciting war,’ says Hammoudi.
‘Let’s get rid of the regime first
, and then we can see whether it’s a revolution or a war.’
‘Hand in hand with the Islamists? What the hell’s that going to achieve?’
‘Why not? Do you see any other option? We’re not ready for a world without ideology yet, and the fighters need some kind of common denominator, no matter how small. Everyone can agree on Islam, so why not?’ Naji takes a deep toke on his joint.
Hammoudi shakes his head. He remembers watching hours of footage of the fighting in Iraq with his brother as a teenager, and documentaries about al-Qaida, Saddam Hussein and the Russian–Chechnyan wars, the two of them sharing joints and talking about anything and everything.
Then Hammoudi says to his brother, ‘You’re taking money from the Gulf states!’ There’s no ignoring the despair in his voice.
‘And from Turkey. Do you think weapons come for free? Or your painkillers? The Free Syrian Army is going to join al-Nusra soon too.’
Naji notices that Hammoudi’s temples are beginning to grey.
Nidal dies at dawn, alone; no one will ever know his name. His letters to Amal are lost too. They’re still under his mattress at the Deir ez-Zor barracks.
Amal’s craving for success has been extinguished. A year ago, she thought a normal job and an average life would never be enough for her. What she wanted was to be seen, to live another life every night on stage, to make her dreams come true.
She’s now found a shared flat in Beirut for about a thousand dollars a month between them – with ancient wiring and no running water. Two rooms plus kitchen and bathroom, a small balcony, plaster crumbling off the walls, water stains on the ceiling and piles of rubbish bags in the building’s entrance.
The house is opposite a hospital that is only now being rebuilt. The construction work starts at six every morning with a loud drill concerto. Amal shares the place with two flatmates she knows vaguely from Damascus, girls she doesn’t like much, but the three of them manage to scrape the rent together and keep the apartment relatively clean.
City of Jasmine Page 11