The Stray Cats of Homs

by Eva Nour

  ‘All right,’ Sami said. ‘I hope you have a good time, then.’

  ‘I’m sure we will.’

  Sami rocked back and forth on his heels and grabbed the straps of his backpack. Yasmin moved closer to Haydar, who smiled and laid an arm around her shoulders.

  ‘I think I’m going to stay here for a while,’ Yasmin said. ‘But I’ll see you tomorrow, right?’

  She said it breezily and naturally, as though there were a tomorrow.

  An oily strand of hair fell into Sami’s face. When he walked across the schoolyard and out through the gates, he felt both more watched and more invisible than before. From that day on, three was apparently a crowd, the answer to all questions was two, and one felt lonelier than ever.

  4

  ONE TIME IN school, when they were hiding from the rain under the tin roof of the cafeteria, Haydar told them about a girl at the school he’d gone to before. The girl had snuck into the headmaster’s office one morning and taken over the PA system. Instead of the usual chorus, a phrase like ‘death to the enemy’ or the Baath Party slogan, she had sung a song she had composed herself about the will of the people. An informer must have reported it because the next day the secret police, the Mukhabarat, came to their school to talk to the girl’s teacher. The teacher was fired the same day.

  ‘That’s terrible,’ Sami said.

  It reminded him of a time in first grade when his dad had realized that Sami had doodled on the portrait of al-Assad in his school book. The slap came without warning, a searing pain that left a red mark on his cheek. It was a moment that split reality in two: one half in which his dad never flew off the handle, and another in which his dad could get upset, frightened even, by doodles in a school book. It was the first and only time Nabil hit him. It was also the first time Sami truly sensed the power of the president. He secretly began hating the pictures of the serious-looking man in military uniform.

  ‘I think it was fair,’ Yasmin said about the dismissed teacher. ‘They watch us because they love us.’

  Sami was willing to agree that love was about being seen, but he felt it was also about acceptance, whatever one’s flaws. Their country would not tolerate any defects or mistakes. He watched the pouring rain, how it formed gutters and ponds on the schoolyard. Yasmin sat between the boys and Sami felt the warmth from her body.

  ‘Want to borrow my jacket?’ Haydar said, and Sami regretted that he hadn’t asked first.

  ‘Nah, it’s OK.’

  There were informants and members of the secret police everywhere, that much they knew, but Haydar had more detailed insight into how they moved and behaved. Taxi drivers were almost always members of the secret police, he claimed. They might say something along the lines of ‘Isn’t al-Assad just terrible for this country?’ and if you agreed, you were in trouble.

  Informers were ordinary people with no conscience. They were rarely recompensed directly, but they gained contacts that might be useful in the future. Your best friend might have been an informer for years without you suspecting. Neighbours, colleagues, relatives – you could never be sure.

  Aside from the secret police and informers, there was the Shabiha, a criminal syndicate headed by members of the al-Assad clan. Blackmail and the smuggling of luxury cars, drugs and weapons were their specialities, according to Haydar.

  ‘Isn’t it weird how he knows all that stuff?’ Sami said, which made Yasmin inexplicably angry. ‘What? I just said it was weird.’

  After that rainy day, Yasmin became even more meticulous about following the rules. Even when they were alone, she would hush him and say, ‘The walls have ears.’

  It was safer to follow the rules, Sami agreed with her on that. But what if you didn’t know the rules? Sometimes you thought you knew something was true and it turned out to be false. Just take all the things grownups knew and passed on like truths. That watching too much TV would make your eyes square. That you could drown if you swam straight after eating. And then there were the truths passed between students in the schoolyard, often about dangers so dire you couldn’t ask the grownups about them.

  Like the man with the goatee and the cane. All the children in the area knew he was a sorcerer. Unsuspecting young boys were invited into the man’s house, hypnotized, then sliced into ribbons. The gate to the low house was usually wide open. The man would sit alone by a table in the courtyard, next to a babbling fountain, cutting thick, fatty pieces of meat.

  One day, they were kicking a ball around after school and Haydar took a long-range shot. They watched the ball sail in an arc from the tip of Haydar’s shoe, up over the rooftops and down into the old man’s courtyard. They stood in silence, Yasmin’s the deadliest of them all. Within seconds, they were fighting about who should ring the gate and fetch the ball.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ someone said.

  They all stopped and looked around. Who was going to do it?

  ‘I will,’ Sami heard himself say again. ‘I’ll ring the bell.’

  When he pressed his finger against the doorbell, it didn’t feel too bad at first. The old man stepped aside and showed him the way in. At that point, his legs started trembling and it grew worse with each step. It was like moving through quicksand, as though he might at any moment sink through the stone floor into an underground cave. He pictured a dark cavern with bats, damp walls and long shadows.

  When he stepped back out into the sunny street with the ball under his arm and his belly full of hot tea, the others surrounded him and cheered. He looked for Yasmin but she seemed to have left. Haydar was gone too.

  ‘What happened, what did he do? Why were you in there so long?’

  Sami smiled and threw the ball in the air. The old man’s air of mystery seemed to have rubbed off on him and, for the rest of the week, everyone wanted him on their team.

  Being in the know could be an advantage, but there were things he wished he had never found out. Like how there had been a catastrophe in Hama five years before he was born.

  Hama was a neighbouring city, further north on the Orontes river, known for its beautiful norias used for watering the gardens. However, as it turned out, the flowery front hid a dark secret. The catastrophe, or the event, as it was usually referred to, was not talked about. Not at home and definitely not at school. Sami caught on anyway, because certain topics and words opened up a black hole of silence in which all conversation died.

  ‘It never happened,’ Nabil said.

  Samira, who was pouring a glass of water, spilled half the pitcher over the table.

  ‘We don’t need to talk loudly and protest,’ she said. ‘But at least don’t lie.’

  ‘What never happened?’ Sami asked.

  ‘You’ll understand when you’re older,’ his father said.

  He nagged his older brother Ali until he told him, but it was so unfathomable it couldn’t be true. He then asked a classmate from Hama, who punched him on the nose and ran away with wet cheeks. When their teacher wanted to know what was wrong, they both sat in silence, unsure what would happen if they revealed anything.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know,’ Sami mumbled to his classmate.

  ‘Didn’t know what?’ the teacher said.

  Neither he nor the classmate replied. What he knew but would never utter aloud outside the home or conversations with close friends – since the walls had ears – was that a long time ago, the army had gone into Hama in search of enemies.

  ‘Is it true?’ he asked his mother after school. ‘What happened in Hama?’

  She was making one of his favourite meals, vine leaves stuffed with silky rice. Samira dried her hands on her apron and pulled him in tight.

  ‘I know your father doesn’t want me to tell you, but sometimes it’s safer to know what you shouldn’t know.’

  Her braid rested on her shoulder; her big hands were warm.

  ‘It was in 1982,’ she said, lowering her voice.

  Certain Islamist groups who had previously supported the Syrian regime
formed a united resistance, and President Hafez al-Assad decided the rebellion had to be put down. The army was sent into Hama to identify dissenters. During two weeks in February, the streets were black with regime soldiers and tanks. It was a bloodbath. At least ten thousand people were killed, probably tens of thousands more. It was not the first or last massacre by the regime, but it was the most violent.

  Samira told this to Sami, but chose other words.

  ‘After the events in Hama, there were school classes where all the children had lost their fathers.’

  It struck Sami then – an insignificant detail, but still – that their religious studies teacher, who when stepping out into the schoolyard in full view of all those blind windows had transformed into someone else and shouted commands at them, had probably felt as alone and watched as everyone else.

  5

  THE BLUE NIGHTS were long and fragrant in the late spring, with gentle breezes cooling the outdoor serving areas, which were full of people drinking tea and smoking shisha. But their father Nabil rarely stayed out late. He often went to bed around eight, never later than nine, in order to get to the train station before the first commuters arrived in the morning.

  In the early evenings he liked to watch a black and white western, preferably alone and in silence. His children, however, interpreted his solitude as loneliness he should be saved from.

  ‘Could you at least be quiet?’ Nabil sighed from the black leather sofa as he reached for the remote control. ‘And stay away from the TV screen.’

  ‘We just want to keep you company, Dad.’ Malik’s bright four-year-old voice was muffled by the chocolate candy he was eating.

  Sami took the right-hand corner of the sofa and leaned back, unconsciously imitating his father, who sat with his arms crossed and his long legs spread, like one of the cowboys in the movie.

  ‘The one who finishes his candy first, wins,’ Sami said, glancing at his little brother. His voice had just started to get deeper but sometimes made involuntary high sounds.

  Malik immediately ate all his sweets like a hungry puppy, and afterwards looked jealously at Sami eating his one by one. Meanwhile Hiba had entered the room, still dressed in her high school uniform, and pushed herself in between Nabil and Sami.

  ‘Why are you so mean to him?’ Hiba said.

  ‘What? You did the same to me.’

  ‘My sweetheart Malik, you have to stop listening to your stupid older brother.’

  Malik frowned and reached over his father and sister, trying to steal some chocolate, but Sami pulled it away.

  ‘Sami. Just give him a piece,’ Nabil said tiredly.

  ‘But they’re mine.’

  ‘Be kind to your little brother. If you are big, you have to be extra kind.’

  On the TV, a cowboy was chewing on a straw and peering at the horizon, where the desert continued into infinity. Sami thought the movie was too dramatic but his father loved everything about it, as did Malik. His little brother wanted a Stetson hat like that. A vest like that. A neckerchief bandana. And, of course, those high boots with spurs. The camera zoomed out until a shining dark horse was visible. The animal breathed heavily, widened its large nostrils and stood up on its strong hind legs.

  ‘Oh, Dad, I also want a horse like that,’ Malik whispered.

  ‘What have we said about getting more animals? How do we get it up on the roof?’

  ‘It can be parked outside on the street.’

  ‘Parked?’ Sami snorted.

  ‘Quiet now. All of you.’ Nabil hushed them.

  A stranger showed up in the scene and challenged the lonesome hero to a quick-draw duel. Malik hid his face in his hands and peered between his fingers.

  ‘Dad …’

  Nabil sighed. ‘Yes?’

  ‘How do you know which of the cowboys is the good one?’

  ‘Whoever wins,’ Nabil said. ‘The good ones always win.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Hiba said, and laughed. ‘If the good always won, Sami would never win in chess.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Sami dug an elbow in her side.

  ‘Come on, move your legs.’

  ‘Do. Not. Fight. What happened to all the kind children I used to have?’

  Malik looked up with big eyes. ‘I’m here, Dad. I’m kind. Do I get a horse if I’m really kind?’

  ‘Maybe if you are all silent and let me finish the movie …’

  The scene changed and now showed a young woman stepping out of a saloon. She had a well-defined nose and dark freckles and deep, serious eyes that showed she had seen too much already, and she just wanted some peace and quiet without cowboy duels in her backyard. This was their father’s favourite part, Sami could tell, because Nabil smiled and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.

  ‘That’s how your mother looked when I met her. Proud and beautiful.’

  ‘Where did you meet her?’ Hiba pulled her feet up in the sofa.

  ‘Well, I came by on a white horse and saw her carrying a stack of books, and I asked if she wanted a ride.’

  Malik looked thoughtful. ‘Where did you park it?’

  ‘Outside school,’ Samira said, who had appeared in the doorway. ‘And it was not a horse, but a motorcycle.’

  ‘It was white though?’ Nabil raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Once upon a time, maybe. Your sweet dad followed me for several days in a row, as if I wouldn’t notice. The rusty motorcycle was as quiet as a coffee maker on the boil.’

  ‘What time is it? Nine already! Time to go to bed …’

  Samira crossed her arms and smiled, and Nabil stood up and kissed her gently on the cheeks, while Hiba rolled her eyes.

  ‘Please, get a room.’

  Their older brother Ali still lived at home but he was mostly out at work, or in his room until late evening. As soon as Nabil’s gentle snores could be heard, Ali crept into the hallway and stuck his hand in their father’s coat pocket. Within minutes, the engine of the grey Volvo rumbled to life. From his bedroom window, Sami watched the car roll out of the garage and disappear down the illuminated street.

  His mother, sister and little brother were still sitting on the leather sofas in front of the TV – too absorbed in reruns of Kassandra to notice Ali’s nocturnal excursions. The theme song of the Venezuelan soap opera had sent the entire population into a trance when it aired in the 1990s. If you missed an episode, you were hopelessly excluded from conversation the next day. It was even said burglars used the Kassandra hour to break into houses.

  The first time Sami asked his brother if he could ride with him in the car, the answer was clear.

  ‘Not a chance,’ Ali said.

  But after nagging and threatening to tell on him for using their father’s work car, Ali gave in. The spheres of light around the streetlights were sucked up by the darkness like lumps of sugar in a cup of coffee. But the surroundings were not particularly interesting to Sami. Instead, he watched how smoothly Ali shifted from first to second, then into third and fourth on the main road into the city centre. When they ended up behind a lorry, Ali gently pushed the brakes, leaned out the window and took a drag on his Alhamraa cigarette, which made the glow crackle and creep closer to the filter. The packet of cigarettes had been another find in their father’s coat pocket.

  When Sami had turned eleven, he was allowed to sit in the driver’s seat and start the engine. The first few times, he just started the car and touched the buttons and switches, and at one point Nabil mentioned how clean the windscreen always was. When he was twelve, he tried the different gears. When he was thirteen, he slowly drove forward and reversed inside the garage. When he was fourteen, he rolled out into the driveway, continued down the street, turned and drove back. And now, at fifteen, he was a confident driver.

  When Ali finally bought a car of his own, Sami took his place at the steering wheel of their dad’s Volvo. As soon as the Kassandra theme music came on, Sami got up and went into the hallway. Rumour spread among his friends and they all asked
for a ride. They rarely had anywhere to go so they drove into the city centre, talked to some girls who worked at an ice cream café and drove back.

  One day after returning the car to the garage, Sami noticed a scratch all along the back. After dialling the wrong number a couple of times out of panic, he heard Muhammed’s drowsy voice.

  ‘What shade of grey?’ Muhammed said, as though he were waiting in his teenage room with a palette of greys, poised and ready to swoop in and buff up unexpected scratches on people’s fathers’ cars.

  ‘How should I know? Do you have more than one?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Khalas, then why are you asking?’

  Within the hour, Muhammed knocked on the garage door. He let out a low whistle, shoved his hands in his pockets and studied the scratch. In that pose, he looked thin and lanky like a weathervane, aside from his mop of curls. He hunched down, licked his finger and pulled it over the scuffed paint.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Prepping. The water has a healing effect.’ Muhammed stood up straight, pushing his glasses up his freckled nose. ‘It’ll cost you,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll let you drive it,’ Sami replied. ‘And as a bonus, I’ll buy you Pepsi.’

  ‘I prefer Coca-Cola,’ Muhammed said.

  ‘Deal.’

  They shook on it and Muhammed opened the jar of paint. He was the one who usually found them a way out of trouble. The one thing Muhammed didn’t like was being stressed, so Sami kept a few steps back, listening for footsteps at the garage door. Only when Muhammed had finished and wiped away a couple of paint splashes from his glasses was Sami allowed to examine the result.

  Sami slept fitfully that night. In his dreams, grey, viscous raindrops started falling. The sky rumbled with thunder and the ground shook. Sami opened his eyes and realized it was his dad, shaking him.

  ‘My son, what have you done?’

  ‘I was sleeping.’

  ‘You know what I mean. Yesterday I had an accident with the car. I drove too close to our neighbour’s mailbox and scratched the back. But now the scratch is gone!’