The Stray Cats of Homs

by Eva Nour

  ‘Who here has the best handwriting?’ said the sergeant.

  Sami was just about to raise his hand when the group thronged in front of him.

  ‘Me, me!’ one of them shouted and was given the notepad to write a sample.

  The sergeant raised his eyebrows and sent the pad on to the next volunteer.

  ‘Write in your neatest hand,’ he urged them, and one after the other, they were dismissed.

  ‘Please, try your best.’

  One of them tried so hard he broke the blue felt tip. When it was Sami’s turn, the pen was all but unusable. Did he have another? The sergeant shook his head. Sami wrote as best he could and tried to perfect all the fine lines, curlicues, dots and marks needed.

  ‘Which script?’ the sergeant asked, scrutinizing the paper.

  ‘Al-diwani,’ said Sami.

  ‘Do you know others?’

  He filled the page with sentences and words. For a moment, he was so engrossed in the familiar task – taken back to the writing competitions in school and writing signs for his siblings’ doors – that he forgot the officer.

  ‘OK, that’s enough.’

  During the following weeks, Sami and the other recruits waited to be given their assignments. If there was one silver lining, it was that their bodies slowly adapted to their trials. Sami suffered from constant sleep deprivation but was now able to do the drills without too much pain.

  They had a day and a half off every other week. When they rejoined the camp, they would have a potluck with the food brought back from home: bulgur balls filled with lamb and pine nuts from Aleppo, rich red wine from Suwayda and grainy, matured cheese from Homs, dipped in silky smooth olive oil from Afrin.

  Every morning, they ran out into the vast evergreen forest and back again. Whoever made it back first was given an extra day off. It was an almost unimaginable luxury. Yet even so, no one wanted to be the fastest, because that meant being added to the list.

  No one had seen the list but they all knew about it. The soldiers in the combat battalion had the hardest physical job and the list contained the names of the recruits assigned to it for the final part of their service. So they jogged at a leisurely pace, careful to return to camp in a group.

  Their drill instructor grew increasingly annoyed. Granted, they did follow orders and ran, but they seemed to have discovered a loophole in the regulations. An unspoken agreement. A collective resistance. Whenever someone felt impatient and wanted to sprint the last half mile, they reminded each other about the list.

  One morning they were shivering in the yard, in long, sleepy lines. The sunlight broke through the haze and their commanding officer began to speak.

  ‘Today, you will not be going for your regular run. It will be the same route but whoever finishes first will be given something extra.’

  He looked around and straightened up.

  ‘Nothing special, just a little bonus. Four days’ leave.’

  Waves now rippled through the formation. A confused din rose around Sami. Bill turned to Hussein, who for the first time raised his hand in the morning assembly.

  ‘Do you mean in addition to the regular weekend, the one we get every other week?’

  The officer nodded. Four days, an ocean of time. They would be able to go home, see friends and family. But they hadn’t forgotten the threat of being selected for the combat battalion.

  ‘I’d rather die,’ Sami heard someone say.

  ‘It’s a trap,’ whispered someone else.

  ‘I’d rather run with my legs lashed together than end up on that list,’ said a third.

  The officer clapped his hands and the din subsided.

  ‘Yes, and another thing. If I catch you coming back as a group, everyone will have their weekend leave cancelled.’

  An angry clamour surged through the group. Being offered something you had never had was one thing, having your privileges rescinded was another.

  They started to run in silence. A few people tried to talk but soon ran out of breath as the group cranked up the pace. Sami followed, still unsure if it was worth it.

  ‘Aren’t you already on the list?’ Hussein asked.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve been on the list since the first time we did target practice. But I see no need to push my name further up it,’ Sami replied.

  Or maybe it was worth it? He pictured driving the pink Beetle to the sea with Sarah, picnicking on the beach. Sitting in a café in Damascus, smoking the hookah, apple-and-mint flavour, maybe spending the night in a hotel. Without noticing it, Sami accelerated and left the group behind. The ground disappeared underneath his feet. Wet leaves, slippery. Two miles in, he considered stopping to wait for the group but he turned and set his sights on two runners up ahead. Only Hussein was keeping up with him.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Sami asked to flee his own thoughts.

  Every breath pressed against his ribcage. The rushing in his ears. He didn’t expect Hussein to answer.

  ‘I’m thinking about the sea,’ he said. ‘I’ve always wanted to know what it sounds like when the waves break against the shore.’

  They were approaching the densest part of the forest when they saw one of the runners trip over a root and fall. The guy behind him didn’t have time to swerve and so tripped over him. Sami and Hussein lengthened their stride, caught up and passed them. They were coming up to the final stretch. One of them was going to sprint. Sami sensed Hussein would win; despite his sinewy body, he was used to roaming across vast distances. They had found another rhythm now. His throat was burning and his chest pounding but his legs were light. They could keep running for ever and beyond, past the horizon.

  ‘What the fuck …’

  Just then, three people dashed out of a shrubbery. They must have hidden there on the way out and were completely rested. Hussein stopped and bent over with his hands on his knees and spat on the ground. Sami stopped, too, and felt his lungs heaving. They walked the last hundred yards to the finish line. Their instructor patted the first three runners on the back and congratulated them.

  The three winners laughed and Sami frowned at them, but Hussein put a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Let it go.’

  The four days of leave had just been a fantasy anyway. Military service was built around creating vanishingly brief moments of hope that were then instantly dashed.

  Living in the camp you had to hold on to the moments that kept your head above water, like the taste of fruity lip balm. On Saturdays, the soldiers in training were allowed visits. It was a two-hour window of brief happiness, which he could live on for a long time.

  Sarah came to visit Sami a couple of times, and neither time did they talk about the future or the past. In fact, they didn’t talk much at all, just sat on the bench behind the barracks, kissing.

  ‘Have I changed?’ he asked when they came up for air, but she was evasive.

  ‘What does it feel like to shoot a gun?’ she asked instead.

  ‘The recoil hurts your shoulder, but you get used to it.’

  ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘I don’t know, it feels strange … Like it’s a game.’

  ‘Well, you’ve always liked games. At least on the computer.’

  ‘That’s different. You know, sometimes we practise with the cold weapon, the bayonet, on dummies that look like humans.’

  He swallowed and didn’t continue but Sarah took his hand and smiled, like it wasn’t that bad.

  ‘Do you aim for the throat or the thigh?’ she asked. ‘I’ve heard a person’s brain is drained of blood in less than a minute after a stab wound to the thigh. That is, if the person’s standing up.’

  They didn’t have a minute, Sami told her. They weren’t knives for slicing bread or cutting firewood with. They were straight, pointy blades, part of the rifle, and with the enemy that close, you only got one chance.

  ‘So where?’ she insisted.

  ‘You stab at the heart, through the ribcage.’

  He didn’
t tell her he had dreamt of the crunching sound of ribs. That he had woken up clammy with perspiration and looked at his hands, relieved they weren’t red, that it was still training and make-believe.

  Soon enough, though, it became real. It started with the assignments being announced. Hussein’s shoulders drooped when he found out he was going to the combat battalion, as were the three runners who had cheated in the foot race. Bill was going to work in communications, which was ironic since he didn’t speak the language, but he was good with technical things.

  Then Sami’s name and assignment were called out. Several people in the assembly turned around and looked at him in surprise. Cartographer?

  Sami would be going to the military base outside Damascus, the heart of their division, to work as one of three cartographers among twelve thousand soldiers.

  17

  WITH SAMI’S NEW posting came two new roommates, Ahmed and Rafat, who were also going to be trained as cartographers. They shared a windowless room with three steel beds and a stove in the corner.

  Ahmed was from Aleppo and had two degrees, in philosophy and sociology, because he had tried to postpone serving by studying. In the evenings he read in bed, with thin frames at the tip of his nose.

  ‘Do you know when I really started losing faith in our country?’ Ahmed said and turned a page without looking up; his hands were long and fine for belonging to the tall body. ‘In the summer of 2000. When all the TV channels showed Hafez’s funeral instead of the European Championship.’

  ‘You can’t say that. Not here,’ Rafat said and shook his head.

  ‘Why? We’re all alone. Are you going to snitch on me?’

  ‘No. Not at all. I just think we should be careful.’

  Rafat frowned and put his arms around his legs. He was younger than them, a quiet teenager who bit his nails when he got nervous. He hadn’t been to university yet because he wanted to get his military service out of the way. His hands were narrow but scarred. His skin was tanned from working in his family’s olive groves in Afrin, a small town in the north, surrounded by red soil and blue mountains.

  ‘What are you reading anyway, the holy book?’

  Sami meant it as a joke, but Ahmed snorted. ‘If you consider Nietzsche holy.’

  Ahmed was one of the first people Sami had met who openly identified as atheist.

  ‘I’m fine with religion,’ he said. ‘As long as it doesn’t worship al-Assad.’

  Overall Sami was happy to have them both as roommates, apart from the slight downside of Rafat’s snoring at night.

  ‘It’s impressive, don’t you think?’ Ahmed said with a clear voice in the dark room. ‘A mouse who sounds like an elephant.’

  When certain recruits from basic training accused them of having bribed their way into jobs at the military base, Sami pointed to Rafat, who was a Kurd and would never have been able to get ahead through bribery. If bribes had been involved, they would have been placed elsewhere, where they weren’t in charge of maps or invited to participate in strategy meetings.

  In Homs, Sami had mostly spent time with Sunnis and Christians, but at the base everyone lived cheek by jowl. The army was a place where people from every corner of the country came together, irrespective of religion and ethnicity. Friendships were based on being there for each other, sharing your food and telling entertaining stories at night.

  It was during such evenings that he found out details of other parts of the division, such as that there was a group of North Korean teachers who taught martial arts to the commanders, and a chemical battalion in the event that the country was hit by chemical attacks.

  Sami also tried to ask about Younes, the electrician at his old IT company. But no one knew him or could say where he was. In the end, Sami gave up hope that his friend was still alive, even though he always kept up appearances when he talked to Younes’ parents. Sami thought back to another time, when they worked under swirling blue skies, and how the world looked slightly different from up there, on the rooftops, and how the happiness could suddenly give way to a feeling of wanting to jump. He must take care not to fall for those kinds of thoughts.

  Sami, Rafat and Ahmed worked in a dark room with grey concrete walls. The square glass drawing table was lit from underneath. Their pencils were the German brand Faber-Castell and similar to the ones he had used in school: sky blue, sand, light pink and grass green. One box was enough for about ten maps; the tips wore down and needed constant sharpening, the shavings scattering like confetti on the floor. After months of digging and shooting practice, Sami slowly got back into his old craft. War fronts and brigades materialized under his hands. Red dots denoted hidden armouries and tanks. Their task was to draw different scenarios. How would they counter, say, an Israeli airstrike against an important armoury? The maps showed five to eight strategic steps to follow, to show how the Syrian army would move its battalions and brigades.

  The brigade general who was in charge of the maps trusted Sami. There were two keys to the room with the codex maps and he was given one of them. It was one of the base’s most highly classified buildings. It was also the dustiest, with cobwebs in the corners, since no one was allowed in to clean.

  Sami’s new role came with certain privileges. All brigade generals were required to produce and submit a local map of their area every month. Since they were unused to drawing, they asked Sami, Rafat and Ahmed for help. In exchange they were given boots, fuel for the radiator and extra food. Whenever an officer of higher rank passed by, all the sergeants had to stand to attention. But Sami and Ahmed stayed in their seats during their breaks and smoked with their army-issue shirts unbuttoned. Rafat too, who started to relax in their company.

  When they crossed the line, they were sent to the clink, but it was nothing compared to the prisons Sami had been in. Sami had his own corner; the guards allowed him to smoke; someone always brought a guitar and played it. They were fed and not beaten. In fact, it was one of the few times he could catch up on sleep. He had a special blanket and pillow for the clink. In time, he became friends with the guards and could sneak in a toothbrush, water bottle, gum, cigarettes and sometimes even mosquito repellent. Some of the guards played cards with him.

  Sami was usually detained for minor infractions, like skipping morning assembly to get some extra sleep and have his coffee in peace. Or procrastinating on a time-sensitive map, handing it in a day and a half later than promised.

  ‘Six days in the clink,’ the general would declare.

  But Sami was usually let out after a day or two when a map needed to be completed because he was considered the best colourist.

  It was when he was under arrest that Sami got to know the shepherd Jemal, another regular in the clink. They were the same age but Sami had grown up in a major city and Jemal had lived all his life in the country. Every time Jemal was put in the clink, he declared himself innocent, saying it wasn’t his fault one of his goats had slipped away and trespassed on the military base. At the same time, he readily admitted the grass was better at the base. After a few days, the general would let Jemal out, confiscate one of his goats and say, ‘See you soon.’

  Sami wondered what his life would have been like if he had grown up in a different family, in a different part of the country. Maybe all change starts that way: with a simple question. You suddenly discern a possibility in what used to seem preposterous, unimaginable. What if your life had been different? What if society were different? What if you could actually change it?

  Everything would change that spring, 2011. Sami had almost completed his military service and was counting the days until he would be discharged when rumours started flying around the base. At first he didn’t believe them because they were so improbable. There was whispering about a demonstration in Daraa, a city on the Jordanian border.

  The police had caught some schoolboys writing on a wall, Ahmed told Sami when they were making a map together, something about the people wishing for the fall of the regime. Their families wer
e forced to hand the boys over to the secret police, who tortured them. The whole city was in uproar.

  The officers at the camp didn’t say a word about the demonstrations. They did, however, cancel all leave and announce that everyone in the military would have their service extended.

  ‘For how long?’ asked Ahmed and polished his glasses on the uniform, like all of this was normal procedure.

  ‘Indefinitely. Probably a couple of weeks, maybe months. This decision comes from higher up.’

  Sami swallowed hard. The buzzing in his ears intensified as though there were a wasp in his head. Indefinitely. After that, the rumours spread like wildfire. More demonstrations had been organized, it was said, in Damascus and Homs and Hama. Not Hama? Yes, even in Hama. The state news showed a sea of people marching through the cities, waving the Syrian flag.

  ‘They want to show their love and respect for the president,’ the reporter said.

  In later broadcasts, the demonstrators had switched to the revolutionary flag used to protest against French rule in the previous century. At that point, the reporter looked straight into the camera and said, matter-of-factly and without batting an eyelid, that the people taking to the streets were junkies and criminals. Only now did the officers start talking openly about the demonstrators. They were terrorists, armed terrorists.

  One day at the end of March there was an order to confiscate all TVs, satellite receivers and mobile phones at the base. It was to be done within twenty-four hours. The next day, the military police went through each and every room to make sure no prohibited equipment had been overlooked. The military base was allowed to keep one TV set that showed state and Lebanese channels.