by Eva Nour
It fell to Hiba and Ali to tell him about what had happened since his last visit, while Nabil stroked his moustache and looked displeased. In July, a demonstration had been organized in Damascus and a number of famous actors, musicians and authors denounced the regime. One of the most powerful voices belonged to the actress Mai Skaf, who had subsequently been forced to flee the country. Ibrahim Qashoush, the man who wrote the popular revolutionary song ‘Yalla irhal ya Bashar’, was said to have been killed the same month. His body had supposedly been discovered in a river with its throat slit and vocal cords ripped out. In August, the well-known satirical cartoonist Ali Farzat had been pulled into a car by regime supporters by Umayyad Square in Damascus and had his hands and knuckles broken.
But the violence had crept in closer than that. Their cousin and a friend of the family had been killed at checkpoints controlled by regime-friendly militias. And regime soldiers had forced their way into their neighbour’s house and raped the daughter in front of her parents.
‘To dishonour the family,’ Samira said.
‘Isn’t the daughter’s pain worse than the family’s shame?’ Hiba said and stirred her cup violently. The child began to cry and Hiba took her back, rocking and shushing.
Samira told Sami about a newlywed couple further down the street. They had still been in their wedding clothes when they were stopped at a checkpoint and the man was told to leave his wife with the soldiers.
‘So, what did he do?’
‘What choice did he have?’ His mother lowered her voice. ‘They would have shot them both on the spot.’
Samira glanced at the baby. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to …’
‘Don’t worry, she’s too young to understand.’ Hiba kissed the child on the forehead, then turned to Sami. ‘Why aren’t you saying anything? Is this the kind of behaviour they teach you in the army? To act like animals?’
‘I’ve never heard anything like it,’ Sami said.
But he wasn’t really surprised. Not once had their commanding officer talked about protecting the civilian population. Ethics and good behaviour extended only to fellow soldiers and the leaders of the land, as fighters in Assad’s Syria. Every story intensified his shame at the army he was a part of.
‘Sleepwalkers without any will of their own …’
Sami looked up and met his little brother’s eyes. It was the first time Malik had opened his mouth since he’d come home. Sami was about to answer him but then Ali said he had to go.
‘Where are you going?’
‘There’s a small demonstration down the street before dusk.’
Sami looked again at Malik, who was tilting his chair back and staring out of the window.
‘I’m going with you,’ Sami said.
Hiba shot him a crooked smile and put a hand on his shoulder; his little brother stopped tilting his chair. Nabil shook his head, leaned on the kitchen table and stood up slowly. Samira asked if anyone wanted more coffee.
‘Me too,’ Malik said. ‘I’m coming too.’
20
IT WAS THE first time Sami moved in a group of his own volition. A group that was not ordered to line up in the schoolyard, in military formation or in mandatory manifestations of support for the president. A group that was not united behind a leader, but united nevertheless. Someone began to chant and someone else joined in. Then the shouts grew louder and the group found a collective rhythm.
‘Freedom!’ they shouted. ‘Dignity! Democracy!’
There were about a hundred of them in a small square, surrounded by residential buildings with revolutionary flags hanging from their windows next to flower pots and washing lines stretching over balconies. He remembered jumping rope with his sister here when they were younger, and old women ordering him to help carry their food bags.
‘Hey, boy, don’t be lazy. Do you want me to break my back?’
He smiled at the memories and looked in amazement at the transformation of the square. A couple of armed rebel soldiers from the Free Syrian Army kept a lookout, ready in case the military tried to break them up, but none of the protestors seemed to be armed. It was an intoxicating feeling to stand up as a group. They were naive and at the same time strong. Their bodies were the body of the people and their voices were the voice of the people.
On the bus to Homs, Sami had called Sarah, who had promised to try to make it into the city centre. Now she called back and Sami pressed the phone to his ear.
‘What did you say? I can’t hear …’
The shouting escalated, a stereo was turned on and the protestors joined in the singing.
‘… impossible to get past … completely surrounded …’
‘Sarah, I’ll call you in a bit, OK?’
He had never experienced anything like it. All the frustration that had built up inside him during his military service, all the punishments and days stolen from his life. All the stolen lives.
‘Yalla irhal ya Bashar,’ they sang. ‘Get out of here, Bashar.’
The demonstration lasted about an hour. Then the sky crackled with lightning; at first the rain fell in big, gentle drops but it soon turned into sharp needles. People scattered and smaller groups splintered off until only Sami and his brothers remained. They were brothers in a different way now, overcome with adrenaline, participating in something bigger than themselves.
‘What do we do now?’ Malik said, his big eyes beaming.
Ali put his arms around their shoulders.
‘Now, my brothers, we go home.’
They found their mother and father still in the kitchen, though they had swapped the coffee cups for tea glasses. The flame of the kerosene lamp made the shadows dance playfully on the walls but their parents’ faces were grey and furrowed. They clutched the gold-rimmed tea glasses like they needed something to hold on to. How did you endure it for so long? he wanted to ask them. Why didn’t you put your foot down ten, twenty, forty years ago? Were you really trying to protect us or were you simply clinging to your own comfort and security?
‘Our neighbour just stopped by,’ Nabil said. ‘The army is planning to go in tomorrow morning and arrest all suspects.’
So that was what Sarah had been trying to tell him. New checkpoints had been erected around the city. She hadn’t dared make her way to the centre, afraid somebody might recognize her from the protests. His father hid his face in his hands and Samira stroked his back.
‘You have to leave, my son.’
‘I have a travel permit. I’m OK.’
‘You have a counterfeit permit and you’re a soldier,’ Ali said.
He was talking to him like an older sibling again, an older brother, not as though they had just walked side by side, sharing their first demonstration. But Ali was right. At best the army would think he had tried to sneak out for a few days of leave; at worst, that he had deserted.
‘I’ll stay the night and get out in the morning.’
As he said it, something was extinguished inside him. He had seen this as a chance to stay. Not to take up arms like Ahmed but at least to leave the army. He hadn’t realized how much he missed his family until he had come back and felt the quiet everyday life in between the walls. The city was changing but his home remained. Now that the soldiers were poised to go in and search the houses, he wouldn’t even have a chance to escape. He would be arrested the moment he deserted.
‘You have to leave,’ Ali announced.
‘I’ll call the general. He can talk to the guards at the checkpoint so they’ll let me through.’
‘You really want to take that risk?’
He was annoyed at Ali for making it sound like a choice. It was midnight and the soldiers would start going door to door at dawn. It was already going to be complicated, if not impossible, to get past the checkpoints.
‘Call Muhammed,’ his father said and walked over to stand next to Sami by the window.
Nabil put a hand on his shoulder. That he had to reach up reminded Sami how much his parents had aged
over the past year, how they had deflated. The soft honey light of the streetlamps fell on young men with packed bags and cars. They were saying goodbye to family and friends. The people who were staying behind wiped their tears with handkerchiefs and went back inside.
His father was right. If anyone could get him out of this situation, it was his childhood friend who’d always been at his side, ever since the walks to school.
Muhammed’s familiar, languid voice exuded calm on the phone.
‘Pack your things, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,’ he said.
It took almost an hour, but then there he was at the door, his hair as unkempt as ever. Muhammed ran a hand through his fringe, pushed his glasses up with his index finger and politely greeted Sami’s parents.
Nabil took both of Muhammed’s hands in his. ‘Make sure he’s safe.’
‘Of course. I promise.’
Sami turned away, embarrassed, but Muhammed kept a straight face.
‘How did you afford this?’ he said when they had climbed into his car, a red BMW with the smell of pristine leather.
‘Borrowed it,’ Muhammed replied.
He scrolled through the radio channels until he found one playing classical oud music. The strings of the lute vibrated and darkness engulfed their vehicle, which was no longer a car but a javelin hurtling through the night. This was a different beast from the Pink Panther, which had long since drawn its last, rattling breath and stopped in the middle of a steep incline. They drove past their old school, the ice cream café they went to as children, all the well-known streets that had turned foreign. Muhammed explained that the regime still believed the rebels were mainly members of the lower classes; driving a car like this through the rich neighbourhoods minimized the risk of being pulled over.
‘But where did you get it?’
‘We have a couple of showroom cars at work. It just took me a while to deactivate the alarm.’
Once they had left Homs, Muhammed let Sami off at a bus stop. He rested his arm in the open window and gave him a wry smile.
‘Good luck, my friend.’
‘And you?’
‘I always get by.’
Sami didn’t doubt it. Moreover, Muhammed had completed his military service before the revolution began and was not in danger of being drafted. At least not right now. He had launched into a long monologue in the car, unusually long for Muhammed, the message of which was that their time had come. To make a difference, he meant. They were twenty-something and what had they really achieved in life? These were the years they were going to look back on. The tipping point people would say changed everything.
‘For the better?’ asked Sami.
‘Of course for the better,’ Muhammed said. ‘Of course.’
And so, less than one day after secretly leaving his division, Sami was back. He had failed to desert, but he had heard stories of the revolution, taken part in his first protest and fled from his own hometown.
Back on the base, the other soldiers swarmed around him. Were the demonstrators outside FSA really unarmed? Then why did the regime want soldiers to shoot at them? Was it true what they said, that the only thing they were asking for was freedom? Other soldiers turned their backs on him. The less you knew, the better. One sergeant threatened Sami in front of the others.
‘If you keep talking like that, this will be the last night you spend here.’
Sami realized he had to be more careful, that it was pivotal to learn how to tell friend from foe.
Sami let the black dog, who had found its way back to the base on its own, crawl into his bed and rest its heavy head on his stomach. Before, sleep had been an escape, but now he couldn’t get so much as a wink of it. The voices of the protestors echoed inside him. He longed for Sarah, to feel her body close to his. He listened to the dog’s sighing and counted the minutes until the first light of the new day broke through the window.
21
A NAME, WHAT was in a name? He remembered the signs he wrote with his siblings’ names on, his yearning to name the sparrow on the roof terrace, the pet names Sarah had whispered to him in the night. In the army, a name wasn’t worth much, only the stripes on your shoulders mattered.
‘Sergeant!’
Sami let the shout echo behind him and ran his hand over the bark. A thin layer of splinters and woodchips covered the ground. The knife he had used wasn’t sharp but it was still legible: his name and today’s date. More than two years had passed since he signed out his uniform and blankets. It was finally over. This was the day he was leaving this hellhole for ever. No more nights when he collapsed into bed with aching feet and a pounding headache. No more early-morning runs over frosty moss with the air stabbing at his lungs.
The brigade general looked through Sami’s papers and raised his eyebrows ever so slightly as though the documents amused or annoyed him.
‘This must be some kind of record,’ the general said. ‘On average, you’ve spent one week of every four in the clink. We won’t be sorry to see you go.’
‘The feeling is mutual,’ Sami said and saluted him.
The brigade general signed his name and handed back Sami’s military ID.
‘Get out of here.’
The same day, as he prepared to leave, Sami tried to find the black dog. He looked for it and had almost given up hope when he finally heard whimpering coming from a shrubbery behind the armoury. There it was, licking two newborn puppies. When she spotted Sami, she lit up; it was as though she wanted to apologize for disappearing. A third puppy had died and she had carried it away and covered it with a thin layer of sand: the wet tip of a nose and one paw were still visible. He contemplated bringing them home with him. But the dog was better off here, where she could roam the open fields with her puppies. The roof terrace at his parents’ house, where he was going, was no place for semi-wild animals. He patted the dogs, fetched his bags and snuck out of a back door.
As arbitrarily and randomly as the soldiers had been brought together, their groups were now split up and scattered across the country. Bill was even leaving the country. He had booked a plane ticket to Canada for the same day he was discharged and was planning to become a language teacher. Whatever else you might say about his time in the army, his Arabic had improved, at least as far as insults were concerned.
Rafat would return to his family’s olive groves in Afrin. He gave Sami a long hug in the windowless room they had shared, where the three steel beds would be filled by new recruits. They promised to be in touch if either of them heard from Ahmed.
Before Rafat left the room, he turned at the door and looked at Sami.
‘He was right, you know. We’ve stayed silent for too long.’ Rafat’s face seemed older and paler than when they first met.
Hussein was the only one who asked to stay on in the army. The salary was meagre but it was still better than herding sheep.
‘What about the ocean?’ Sami asked, and Hussein smiled and patted him on the shoulder.
‘It will still be there.’
On the bus home, a sense of freedom filled Sami’s chest. His body was no longer owned by anyone, he was free to come and go as he pleased. Outside, the landscape rushed by, the air had a new edge of cold and the evening sun dipped the trees in gold. He rested his forehead against the window and drew his name, once more, on the foggy glass. A constant that was him, unchanged.
Sami’s bus drove into Homs as night fell and the shooting intensified. His military ID got him through the checkpoints where Ali was supposed to pick him up, but his voice sounded distant on the phone and his sister took over.
‘Dad’s in the hospital,’ Hiba said.
The rest of the words flowed past him as though he were standing under a waterfall, catching only random words and sentences: something about numbness in Nabil’s face, dizziness and vertigo, collapsing in the kitchen.
‘Are you still there?’ Hiba asked. ‘We can visit Dad together tomorrow but it would be safer for you to come home right
now.’
He swallowed and asked if it was serious, and heard his sister take a deep breath.
‘They are doing everything they can. Don’t worry.’
That was answer enough. Sami asked in the bus car park and managed to find a taxi driver who, after inspecting his military ID, agreed to take him to the hospital.
The hospital hallways seemed endless. When he found the right door, he still wasn’t sure it was the right room. The body under the starched sheets was a shadow of his father, sunken and fragile, with a tangle of tubes connected to his body. His moustache was unkempt and bushy. Sami pulled up a chair. From close up, his father was even more birdlike.
‘My son,’ Nabil said with both tenderness and reproach. ‘It’s after dusk.’
‘How are you, Dad?’
‘I’m just fine. It’s your siblings I’m worried about.’
‘Hiba said you had a stroke.’
‘Just a little one. I’m fine now. My son, don’t let them drag you into their folly.’
‘You mean the demonstrations?’
‘Only petty thieves and other criminals would … would …’
Nabil’s lips continued to move but he couldn’t find the words. Sami tried to see if the corners of his mouth were drooping or if there was any other sign of the tiny explosion that had occurred in his dad’s brain. Weren’t stroke victims usually semi-paralysed, amnesiac and changed beyond recognition? He must have been lucky. That did nothing to calm Sami, since his dad might just as easily be unlucky the next time.
‘Can I get you anything from the cafeteria – juice or coffee?’
‘My only wish is for you to stay away from them.’
His father took his hand and they held on to each other for a long time; he couldn’t remember ever sitting like that before. He felt the warmth of his father’s body rise towards his face, like the fog on the bus window. As long as a person is warm, he’s alive, Sami thought. From the hospital window the streetlamps looked like waterlilies floating in the night.
His father was discharged a few days later as snow fell in big, airy drifts. Over the next few weeks Nabil quit smoking, or at least tried to wait to have his first cigarette until after lunch. He also tried to see to things he seemed to think had been neglected, like the fact that Sami and Ali were still not married and that Hiba didn’t visit as much as she used to since having children.