The Stray Cats of Homs

by Eva Nour

  Sami didn’t know what to think. Before he handed in his mobile phone, he had read news from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya that the people in those countries were demanding freedom and democracy. But the demonstrators were said to carry weapons, which made him feel torn. An armed struggle? Led by whom?

  One of the generals showed Sami a video of a colonel supposedly shot dead by Syrian protestors. The film showed his bloody corpse and grieving family.

  ‘This is what the terrorists’ so-called fight for freedom looks like,’ said the general.

  Sami asked Ahmed about the murdered colonel. He told him there was a rumour that the colonel hadn’t been shot by protestors at all. No, he had been stopped at a checkpoint and refused to show his ID card, which led to him being shot by a member of a regime-friendly militia.

  Regardless of one’s opinions, it was safest to keep them to oneself.

  ‘Finally, the people are rising up,’ one soldier said during breakfast.

  Sami looked around to make sure he wasn’t the only one who had heard it. Even Ahmed, who usually didn’t hesitate to speak up, stayed quiet.

  The next day, the soldier was gone.

  Sami’s doubts soon crystallized further. From time to time, he was asked to take notes or send deliveries to other battalions. He was also good friends with Issa, a soldier who received messages from other battalions in a bunker. Issa had managed to hide a TV that received international channels, partly to follow the news, partly to watch soap operas to help pass the time. Sami immediately won his affection by humming the theme music to Kassandra.

  ‘I wish I was rich and could pay my way out of here,’ Issa said dreamily. ‘A bunker, seriously? If someone had told me that from the start, I would have been born a girl. No doubt. I would have stayed in my mother’s womb until my dick turned into a vagina.’ He quickly scrolled through the channels. ‘Ah, look at her! Gorgeous. And don’t get me started on the uniform. I need more colour in my life.’

  It was on one occasion down in the bunker that Sami saw a report about a demonstration that had been organized recently. Unarmed. Sami read the sentence over and over. There it was, in writing, in a military report: the protestors were unarmed. And the army had responded with teargas and bullets.

  Ahmed had handed over only one of his phones to the officer and hidden the other under his mattress.

  ‘God, you’re crazy,’ Sami said.

  ‘God is dead,’ Ahmed shrugged.

  ‘We can take turns to hide the phone if you sometimes let me use it.’

  In the evenings, when Rafat was out and they were sure to be alone, they took it out and listened to the revolutionary song ‘Ya Haif’. They listened to it over and over again, its lyrics and melody like a drug.

  In the mornings, the military speaker car would stop in the yard and regime songs would fill the air. Then the president’s voice came on, blaring out his message for the public. The demonstrators were a disease, he said. A virus to the body of their country. And the only cure was to cut off the sick parts.

  In April, thousands of people in Homs filed into the square around the famous clocktower for a peaceful sit-in. Sami watched it on the TV in the bunker with Issa. The minarets urged everyone to come to the square. Young people cut up their ID cards to show that they were not going to leave the country until the dictator was gone. Sami glimpsed people in T-shirts whose logos he knew all too well – they were from Abu Karim’s restaurant, his first place of work – handing out food to hungry protestors.

  As they watched, three words echoed out across the crowd: freedom, dignity, democracy.

  We are blossoming like an infatuation, Sarah wrote to him from Homs, texting Ahmed’s secret number.

  Sami read her messages and erased them, in case someone found the phone. Sarah seemed to have entered a state of bliss, as though she and the other protestors were in the process of writing their own future, their own history. Maybe it was the adventure she’d always been waiting for.

  We’re like a kaleidoscope, Sarah wrote. Voices and hands are raised in the square, a cascade of mirrors. We are glass, shards and fragments, and no matter which way you turn, twist and shake us, we overflow with colour, improbable patterns. We fit inside a single broken ray of light that contains the echo of every spring.

  Sarah’s next message came only an hour later. It was just one sentence:

  They’re shooting at us.

  18

  THE ARMY HAD opened fire in Clocktower Square in Homs and people had fled in panic. Sarah had sought refuge in an alley and heard the rifles’ crackle in the square, like heavy rain against a tin roof.

  The blood, she wrote to Sami. I’ve never seen so much blood.

  When he called her, he wasn’t sure it was actually Sarah who answered. Her voice sounded different and distant.

  ‘Were there many injured?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sami. I didn’t look. I just ran.’

  He listened to her breath and felt stupid because he wasn’t there and couldn’t hold her, and because he couldn’t even come up with anything comforting to say.

  ‘It is difficult to describe how it has been,’ she said. ‘All the feelings at the demonstrations. I really thought we could change something. I know it sounds silly but I didn’t realize what was at stake, but now—’ She stopped. ‘I should hang up, Sami. Talking to me must be dangerous.’

  ‘Wait, what do you mean?’

  ‘You’re with them now. You’re on their side.’

  Sami went to breakfast with a dizzy head and a lump in his stomach, the world turning faster with every footstep. Eggs and tea, tea and eggs, every day the same meaningless food followed by the same meaningless chores. He was stuck here when he should have been with her. Had there been doubt in her voice? Was she blaming him for what had happened? He sat down in the circle of soldiers and thought he would pass out.

  ‘Filthy dogs,’ one soldier said and spat in the grass.

  Sami assumed he was talking about the soldiers shooting at civilians and was about to agree, spill out some of the anger and confusion that was building up inside.

  ‘They have no respect,’ the soldier continued. ‘Blockading the square like it’s their living room. I’m surprised no one’s put their foot down sooner.’

  The soldier was holding an egg, breaking its shell with a spoon. White flakes fell on to his boots like big snowflakes. The egg yolk welled up, soft and creamy. Sami felt his gorge rising. He wasn’t sure what Rafat thought but after breakfast he pulled Ahmed aside.

  ‘What are we going to do? Can they order us to shoot at protestors?’

  Ahmed glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice.

  ‘Not us, but other battalions.’

  ‘So, what are we going to do?’

  ‘Nothing. We’re going to wait and see.’

  Ahmed’s response surprised him but he was probably right. They had completed their military service and should be discharged shortly, in one or two months, when the protests died down.

  But summer was approaching and the demonstrations continued all over the country. It was getting increasingly difficult to follow events from the military base. Ahmed didn’t dare lend Sami his phone more than necessary and Issa in the bunker, who had the TV with international channels, also pulled away. Sami understood. Reporting someone was easy and people had to protect themselves.

  Besides, Sami had his hands full with cartography work. The need for maps never seemed to decrease. They were still focused on potential Israeli attacks and Sami continued to draw possible defensive plans. He marked out combat vehicles and thought about the ones he had been in during training. You climbed down through a hatch and landed in a claustrophobic cockpit with a tiny reinforced window. From inside, the people on the outside looked like paper dolls, fluttering in the breeze. If a soldier wanted to signal to the driver, he had to stand off to the side of the vehicle and wave his arms about. From close up, you were invisible. It wasn’t real. Israel wasn’t going to
attack but if they ever did, his division would probably be annihilated.

  At the start of the summer, the brigade general came to them in a hurry with a rolled-up map. Sami was standing in the half light by the drawing table next to Ahmed and Rafat, slightly unfocused on account of the itchy mosquito bites from a recent visit to the clink.

  ‘What’s this?’ Ahmed said and ran his fingers over the paper.

  ‘I have a different task for you today,’ said the brigade general.

  He was a sinewy man in his sixties who wore his badge with the three yellow stars and eagle with pride. Furthermore, he wore a badge on his chest that showed he had completed parachute training. In his eyes, they were nothing but schoolboys, but schoolboys who held his reputation in their hands. Their work reflected on him and he scrutinized every map before passing it on.

  Now he rolled out the map, pointing and explaining. When he was done and had left the room, they stood in silence. This time, the task was not about practice scenarios, about defending weapons and vehicles. Instead, they were supposed to map out the quickest way for the army to enter a small city. From when the first troops reached the centre, no more than fifteen minutes could elapse before the last soldier was in place.

  But this wasn’t a strange city in a foreign country. It was a small city in northwestern Syria on the trade route between Latakia and Aleppo. The city had made a name for itself as a rebel stronghold ever since the 1980s, when resistance fighters torched a local Baath Party office. The regime brought in helicopters and crushed the rebellion, and hundreds were arrested and executed.

  Now, three months into the revolution, there was a rumour that armed gangs had killed over a hundred regime soldiers in the town. His friend in the bunker had made an exception and let Sami watch the news. Much was unclear about the deaths. Activists in the town claimed the soldiers had in fact been killed by the army, either for openly deserting or for refusing to shoot at civilians. Either way, the massacre was now being used as an excuse for the regime to attack the town.

  ‘What do you think they want?’ Rafat asked, even though they already knew the answer.

  ‘A takeover,’ Ahmed said quietly.

  They studied the map. There were fields and high mountains, and a couple of bridges that stretched across the river into the town. When the brigade general returned, they had barely put pen to paper. He gave them some choice words of warning and an extension until the next day. That evening, a light rain fell and steam rose from the ground, but inside the map room the air was close. They were sitting on the floor, their backs against the wall. Rafat was sweating heavily and suddenly got up.

  ‘We have to do something. If we don’t draw the map, it’s over.’

  Ahmed stood up too, and reached for the pencils.

  ‘You’re right. We have to do something.’

  ‘Are you serious?’ Sami said. ‘As soon as we draw the map the military will enter the city.’

  Rafat turned and looked at him, his chin raised and the sweat visible on his forehead. ‘It’s not like we have a choice.’

  ‘Calm down, I have an idea.’ Ahmed put his hand over the bridges. ‘We draw the map as you say. But with some adjustments.’

  ‘Leave me out of it,’ Rafat said. ‘I just want to get out of here as soon as possible.’

  It was risky, Rafat was right about that, but Sami sharpened his pencils and coloured in the fields with the greatest level of precision. It was going to be the best map he had ever made.

  The next few hours felt like walking on hot embers, and when the brigade general finally summoned Sami, Ahmed and Rafat to his office, he wasn’t alone. The major general, head of their entire division, was sitting behind the desk with his brow deeply furrowed, like a newly tilled field. He was staring straight ahead, making no attempt to meet their eyes.

  ‘I have only one question. Are you retarded or just regular idiots?’

  The air was thick with tobacco smoke and they could hear bangs from the shooting range.

  ‘Well? I asked you a question. A simple one at that.’

  Ahmed coughed and opened his mouth but the major general banged his fist on the table.

  ‘Did I say you could speak?’

  The major general lowered his voice and articulated as though he were speaking to imbeciles.

  ‘We didn’t ask for the long way to the city centre. If that’s what I’d wanted, I’d have asked my niece to draw the map, or a donkey.’

  The plan had been doomed from the start. Of course they would discover that they hadn’t put in the most important entry points to the town, the bridges. That they had instead drawn up a longer route and ignored the possibility of using armoured vehicles.

  ‘Have they caused trouble before?’ the major general asked, addressing their general.

  ‘Never,’ he assured him. ‘They’re normally very well behaved.’

  ‘We should send you all to Palmyra,’ said the major general. ‘Who’s responsible for this map?’

  For a moment, time seemed to stop and the world shrank to that one room, its walls and the two eyes watching them. Their fates depended on the caprice and ill-will of a single person.

  ‘I am,’ Sami said. ‘I’m responsible for the map. Rafat was on leave and Ahmed was working on other assignments.’

  The brigade general looked like he was about to object but then he closed his mouth. Perhaps it was better for his reputation if only one of his apprentices had screwed up. Maybe it could be passed off as a mistake and not a deliberate act of protest. The leather chair creaked when the major general leaned back.

  ‘Take him to the clink and I’ll think about it.’

  Sami breathed a sigh of relief.

  In the clink the mosquitoes were more numerous and eager than usual but now that the tension had been released, Sami fell asleep immediately. He woke up with his blanket pulled up over his face, his arms red and swollen with bites. He felt palpitations under his ribs, the feeling of harbouring something that was baring its teeth. He would have to be more careful. Another transgression would not be tolerated, especially now the major general had his eye on him.

  Sami was let out four days later. He almost expected Ahmed and Rafat to congratulate him but they were absorbed and barely looked up when he entered the map room. The light from the drawing table spread a halo around the brigade general’s back.

  ‘Ah, there you are.’

  The concrete walls seemed to warp and Sami’s field of vision narrowed. The map they had made was laid out in front of him. The general cleared his throat and straightened up.

  ‘We are behind because of you, and now time is growing short. You have until tomorrow morning to finish the job.’

  There was no need for him to deliver veiled threats or mention their families; they knew what was at stake. Their pencils lay where they’d left them. New paper had been brought in. The map table shone dully, white, like the new moon above the treetops in a dark forest. Ahmed and Rafat had been sketching out a new scenario that included the bridges. Sami just had to colour it in. He told himself it wasn’t hard, that it was like the drawings he painted as a child, but a string had begun to vibrate and left behind a dull reverberation inside him.

  The day after they submitted the map, Sami descended the steps into the bunker, which soon turned into an illuminated tunnel. The lights flickered and cast long shadows across the walls. The corridor wound ever deeper underground.

  Sami’s friend was normally always in the same room, eyes glued to a fax machine that at any moment could spit out a pivotal message from another division. How Issa was able to keep a TV that received international channels wasn’t clear to him. It likely had more to do with his commanding officer wanting to follow events than with an oversight. There was always a certain level of anxiety when they were down here, even though unknown footsteps would be heard from very far away. Hafez and Bashar’s eyes watched them from the walls. The kettle was sitting on the black iron stove. They normally drank mat�
�, a bitter green herbal tea, but this time Sami was unable to raise the glass to his lips. His hands were shaking too much.

  Sami remembered conversations they had had. Why them? Couldn’t they just refuse? The answer was always: if they didn’t do it, someone else would. But if they all refused, who would do it then? A system can only be perpetuated if people perpetuate it. The memory of voices, his own concerns and doubt, all the threads tangling together. The din intensified, drowning out all thought. Stop! It was too late, it made no difference. Not now.

  The blue light lit up the room and the newscast began. The reporter summarized the events of the past few days. Thousands of residents had fled to the Turkish border, where they were being housed in temporary refugee camps. The town was virtually deserted, an activist said. And yet the army claimed armed rebel groups were holed up in there.

  ‘Yesterday we could see the army lining up armoured vehicles and surrounding the town. Most of its residents have fled,’ the activist told the reporter.

  But far from everyone had left. Later, Sami would describe it as the moment a missile hits. When matter seems to lose its original form and firmness and contours dissolve. The floor swayed, the portraits stared at him, the kettle whistled, slicing through the sound of guns firing on TV. He didn’t notice his hands cramping until he felt the glass cut into his skin. Red blood dripped on to the concrete.

  Hundreds of people had been killed and arrested. With the help of their map, which he had coloured in. Just like he always did. Filled it with colour.

  Now the colours became reality, in the images that flickered past and blended together. The green fields and the shadows of the mountains, which surrounded the settlement in the heart of the valley. The water – wild swirls, deep streams – flowing past under the bridges lined with lampposts, where tanks and soldiers were pushing forward. Soon, black smoke rose over the rooftops.