The Stray Cats of Homs

by Eva Nour

  The video camera panned back and forth. When Sami watched the clip back he could hear himself sob, even though he didn’t remember crying. He filmed it even though it felt pointless. But it had to be illegal, according to some international convention or higher law. He didn’t think about revenge or justice, only this one simple thing: that there’s a limit to what you can get away with. That life couldn’t be allowed to continue as if nothing had happened.

  A girl, no more than five years old, had been shot in the forehead. The flesh rose from the miniature crater like a flower, while the back of her head flowed out like a flaccid balloon.

  As dawn broke, they began the work of burying the bodies. People joined them and cried with horror and shock. Sami regretted having been unable to take the bodies inside to spare them this sight. At the same time, they now had help carrying. Most of the bodies were buried next to a mosque, others in a nearby garden. Others still were collected by relatives.

  Later that day, Sami undressed and rinsed the blood off his hands as rumour of the massacre spread and the mass exodus from Homs began.

  24

  THEIR CITY WAS being taken from them, imperceptibly at first, then more conspicuously. The army shot at the buildings where the Free Syrian Army were said to be hiding, but most of the victims were civilians. In one day, Sami counted forty rockets raining down on them. There were holes in streets and buildings where the metal points had driven themselves in and remained.

  Sarah went back to her family outside Damascus. Sami encouraged her to go.

  ‘You’ll be safer there,’ he told her, not knowing if it was true.

  ‘I need to be with my family.’

  ‘I understand, don’t think about it.’

  ‘I’ll return to Homs soon.’

  Soon, he thought, when was soon? They lived one day at a time.

  One morning, Sami’s dad put the radio under his arm and announced they were leaving. His mother packed a few changes of clothes. There was no talk of fleeing, no, they were simply going to leave town for a few days until the regime came to its senses. They would stay with a couple of relatives in the countryside. Hiba had already left with her husband and two children. Ali had hung up a handwritten sign on his computer shop: closed for vacation. He was wanted for military service again and had decided to stay hidden. Sami only knew he was staying somewhere in the al-Waer neighbourhood on the outskirts of Homs. Malik filled his backpack with comics instead of school books; the spring term exams had been cancelled anyway. As he helped his parents and little brother pack up the car, Sami said he would join them soon.

  ‘They’ll give up in a few days. Somebody has to look after Grandpa Faris.’

  Because Grandpa Faris had decided to stay. Nabil and Samira had tried to persuade him to come but, in the end, they realized it was futile to ask Grandpa Faris to leave the city where he had lived and worked all his life, where he had met and buried the love of his life.

  ‘Water the plants,’ Samira said and kissed Sami’s cheeks. ‘And don’t forget to feed the turtle on the roof.’

  Sami didn’t sleep at all the night after they left, only finally dozing off when morning had already broken. When he woke up, it was to a new kind of noise: the deep whistling of rockets being fired by the regime’s artillery from the hill that was home to Homs’ ancient citadel. This was different from the shoulder-mounted rocket launchers. Every strike vibrated for miles. Fire and black smoke billowed above the rooftops.

  That first day on his own he called Muhammed, who had also elected to stay. Together they went out into the neighbourhood to see if there were any old people who had been unable or unwilling to leave.

  Grandpa Faris stayed in his bedroom, where he complained about his aching legs and chain-smoked in bed. After three days, his costume was rumpled and his oil-combed hair dishevelled. The room was stuffy with sweat and pipe smoke. Sami noted the artillery fire seemed to be intensifying. In the silence between the launches he could hear the tapping of Grandpa Faris cleaning out his pipe. Then Edith Piaf’s husky voice from the gramophone on the nightstand.

  ‘The little sparrow from Paris,’ Grandpa Faris said and drummed his fingers against his leg. ‘That’s one of the cities I’ve always dreamt of visiting. The elegant cafés, theatres, boulevards … Paris seems like a Damascus in the heart of Europe.’

  ‘When this is over, we’ll go there,’ Sami said.

  He sat down and stroked the brown, marbled cane that stood propped against the bed.

  ‘Walnut,’ Grandpa Faris said.

  ‘From Aleppo, I remember.’

  ‘Would you be a good boy and fetch my tobacco?’

  The tendrils of smoke rose through the air, giving the room an air of normality, as did the floral bedspread and the gramophone. Sami was reluctant to tell his grandfather but he couldn’t hold off any longer. He was going to call his cousins.

  ‘They’ll come and get you as soon as they can.’

  Grandpa Faris didn’t object, just nodded and said there is a season for everything.

  ‘Don’t forget your bottle of hair oil,’ Sami said.

  ‘You don’t want to keep it? I remember you used to like it.’

  ‘I don’t have much use for it any more.’

  He stroked the closely shorn hair at the back of his head, one of the habits he had picked up in the military. They listened to Piaf’s raspy voice, Non, rien de rien, and the distant booms, Non, je ne regrette rien, blending together.

  ‘I know you and your father don’t always agree,’ said Grandpa Faris. ‘But you know, parents have a different job from children.’

  Sami jutted his chin out and shook his head, mostly to himself. ‘They could have protested when they were young.’

  ‘Some did and paid a steep price. Others tried to protect themselves and their families by keeping quiet, but it didn’t always help. There is something you need to know,’ continued Grandpa Faris. ‘Just after the massacre in Hama, before you were born … did you know that the secret police searched thousands of homes looking for people who might have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood? One night, they broke into your home.’

  ‘Our home?’

  ‘Yes, your older brother was still a baby.’

  Grandpa Faris coughed and took a couple of deep breaths before he started smoking again.

  ‘Your mother tried to push past the soldiers to get to Ali, who had just started sleeping in his own bed. She was stopped and pushed back on to the bed while your father was pulled out of the blankets. By streetlight, Nabil was dragged outside. He was taken behind a car, in nothing but his underwear, and surrounded by soldiers aiming their guns at him.’

  Grandpa Faris held up his hand and looked in the palm as if it was a mirror.

  ‘The general studied Nabil in the rear-view mirror. Then he waved his hand and your father was released.’

  Sami blinked and tried to take that in. His dad, dragged into the street.

  ‘I don’t understand … did he have anything to do with the protests in Hama?’

  ‘No, nothing at all. Your father was always eager to do right. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  ‘Sami,’ Grandpa Faris continued, ‘I could tell you that you will never be able to save yourself or anyone else by keeping on the right side of things. That the only thing that can save you is to fight for what’s right. But it’s more complicated than that. How do you know, at any given moment, what the right thing is? Even just talking about this and showing signs of hesitation would be seen as treachery by the regime.’ He waved his hand through the air, scattering smoke. ‘Yes, I know, the walls have ears and all that. But they’re still our walls and our home. Right?’

  Grandpa Faris smiled but it looked forced. He leaned back into his pillow, stretched his legs out on the bedspread and sucked on his pipe.

  The next day, Sami’s cousins came by and took Grandpa Faris out of the city.

  It’s going to be over soon, Sami thought, and every morning it continued unabated.
But there was still water in the taps, still food in both fridge and pantry, and his photography gave him a reason to get out of bed. He shortened his walks and avoided the regime checkpoints. He spent most of his time at home. He watered the house plants. Played the gramophone and was soothed by the crackling tones. Grandpa Faris hadn’t wanted to take the gramophone – that would be tantamount to admitting he wasn’t coming back.

  Sami flipped through the comic books Malik had left behind. He found a whole box of pictures of his brother as a young boy and surprised himself by feeling jealous. Malik would always be a child in their parents’ eyes. The child who was conceived at the eleventh hour, possibly not planned, but deeply wanted. Maybe Sami had been wrong about his little brother. Maybe all his joking and talking wasn’t a way to please and be loved, but a sign that he already was loved.

  He tested out the chair in Nabil’s study. On the desk a marble ashtray, a fountain pen engraved with his father’s name, a portrait of Samira. He spun the ashtray around and discovered a small, flat key underneath. He held the key in his hand; it weighed almost nothing. It reminded him of the keys Hiba had used for her diaries when they were little, the diaries Sami was strictly banned from reading. He read them anyway, and realized with disappointment that she only wrote pointless nonsense about boys in the other class in school and who had the coolest trainers.

  Sami looked around and pulled out the desk drawers at random. In one he found a silver flask with a couple of coffee beans next to it. He already knew Nabil drank on the weekends sometimes, that he preferred to do so alone out of respect for Samira.

  None of the drawers contained anything the key might be used for. He opened the top drawer again and there, under a stack of papers, he could feel a sharp corner. He pulled out a box and put the key in the lock. It fitted. Inside was a collection of letters tied together with yellowed string. Sami touched the paper but snatched his fingers back as though they’d been burnt. These letters must be very important to his father, so much so that he kept the key to hand, yet hidden. Sami felt embarrassed for his father. Another woman, could it be that banal? Someone at his work, since he was always home early and never travelled. Whatever his secret was, Sami didn’t want to know. Even so, he untied the string and picked up the first letter.

  Dear Nabil, it started. Sami’s cheeks flushed, but he forced himself to read on. You have no idea how much I appreciated the book of poems by Qabbani. I know my parents don’t want me to write to you any more, but I can’t possibly stop myself …

  A young girl too! This was too much. Sami read on and his cheeks turned redder. She wrote about his hands and lips, even complimented his sticky-out ears. Your moustache, she wrote, is the most handsome one I’ve ever seen on a man. When he turned the page, he saw the name. It was signed Your Samira, for ever.

  Sami smiled to himself, still embarrassed but for a different reason now – for catching a glimpse of his parents as young lovers. He tied the string around his mother’s love letters and locked the box. He wondered what kind of person his father had been back then, when Nabil met Samira and tried to get her attention with poetry, the oldest trick in the book for the infatuated. He thought about who he had been a few years later, when they were married and his older brother was a baby and the secret police had forced their way into their home. When they pulled out books, opened drawers and toppled furniture. When his father was dragged into the street and his fate was decided by a glance.

  Sami put the key back under the marble ashtray. You could get used to most things, even the whistling sound of incoming rockets and missiles. But maybe not the knowledge that everything can be taken from you.

  The next morning, his cousins called again, this time with sad news. Grandpa Faris had passed away during the night. Not from a rocket or a bullet in the back of the head, but peacefully, in his sleep, of age or sorrow.

  25

  SAMI’S BLOCK WAS now right in the line of fire. He had tried to ignore the obvious but the black fire clouds kept coming closer. In a short time he had learnt to sleep despite the anxiety. It fired his dreams instead; he would wake up with a jolt and hit the wall.

  On a warm spring night, Muhammed called and said Sami couldn’t wait any longer. Sami reluctantly packed a bag and went, by the light of his phone, to his friend’s house a few streets over. He hesitated at first, when he thought of the bodies they had carried there before burial. But it wasn’t like Sami had many other places to choose from.

  Muhammed’s mother and three siblings had all gone now, to the al-Waer neighbourhood on the other side of the river. Their old house had now been transformed into a teenage lair with empty bags of crisps on the tables and pillows on the floor.

  ‘I thought you’d cleaned the place,’ Sami said.

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ Muhammed said apologetically. ‘I told Anwar to pick up his things.’

  ‘The bookkeeper boy!’ A large figure got up off the sofa and it took Sami a second to recognize him. As a chef he had always been impeccably dressed, rolled-up shirtsleeves, starched apron, but now Anwar looked like he had gone with whatever was at the top of the laundry hamper. His trousers were too short and his pale gut peeked out from under his shirt. But he still wore a black bandana, as a reminder of the smooth kitchen master he had once been.

  ‘Anwar, I can’t believe it’s you.’

  ‘And I, for one, didn’t believe you would ever grow up.’

  Sami embraced him and kissed his cheeks.

  ‘How is Abu Karim? And the restaurant?’

  ‘We had to close,’ Anwar replied. ‘Abu Karim said it was the rent but everyone knows it was because we handed out food to the protestors.’

  Sami shook his head. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘You can take the other sofa,’ Muhammed said and picked a few pillows up off the floor. ‘If it drags on, we’ll carry the beds down to the basement.’

  Although Sami had known Muhammed since they were young, he had only been to his best friend’s house a few times. In the beginning he had asked more often but Muhammed would say they had guests that day, or that his mother was cleaning, and another time would be better to visit. Sami assumed he was ashamed of the crowded space but he didn’t mind. On the contrary, he felt at home immediately.

  They had lived on one floor with a small kitchen, a living room and a bedroom for Muhammed’s mum and one of the children. The basement consisted of another room, which Muhammed shared with two of his little siblings – the room lacked windows and had dark damp roses on the ceiling.

  Muhammed’s mum rented the apartment and basement from an elderly woman who lived on the top floors in the same building, who only asked for a low rent in exchange for helping her clean, shop, and care for the front yard. Sami had met the old woman once and remembered her friendly smile, a visible golden tooth, her wrists rattling with shiny bracelets. The old woman had left now but Muhammed occasionally went up to her apartment and cleaned, in case she came back. He watered the rose bushes until they had to save on water, and they saw the dark red petals fall to the ground.

  A few days after Sami moved in, a pressure wave broke the windows. They taped black bin bags over where the glass had been. But that first night, Sami lay awake in the gentle darkness, watching the stars come out. If he listened carefully, he could almost hear the plough being pulled through space, the star-glazed wood cutting through the heavens. When he fell asleep he did it safe in the knowledge that he still had a home. But the next morning, his home lay in ruins.

  Muhammed held up his laptop. A grainy mobile phone video was playing.

  ‘There, see?’ Muhammed said.

  ‘Recognize that house?’ Anwar said.

  Sami sat up and frowned. Projectiles whistled over the rooftops and then plumes of smoke started rising. He watched the clip again, the dot speeding across the sky and the explosion that followed. Muhammed took off his glasses and polished them. The crack was still there. Anwar put a big, sweaty hand on his shoulder.
r />   ‘Lucky you came here when you did.’

  Sami couldn’t help it; it bubbled up from some unknown cranny, like that time in the bank manager’s office. He started laughing. Muhammed and Anwar exchanged a glance but he couldn’t stop. It rose up from deep inside him, a convulsive sound that took over his body.

  ‘You need to eat. I’ll cook something,’ Anwar said. ‘Wait, where are you going?’

  Sami had already got off the sofa and was tying his shoes.

  ‘Let him go,’ Muhammed said quietly.

  Outside, the air was dry with dust and the smell of smoke. It was just a house. The main thing was that he and his family were alive. That was the most important thing, right? Yes, it was. Being alive was the most important thing. Just a house. He said it out loud, even though there was no one else around.

  At first Sami had a hard time identifying his house among the others. The missiles had hit the façade on the street side. It was like looking into a dolls’ house. The rooms were exposed, except on the top floor, which had folded flat like a cardboard box.

  Sami had to climb over debris to get in. Twice he got stuck and had to wrench his foot free. The staircase was intact apart from a large hole halfway up. The unharmed and unbroken was as strange as the demolished. It was as though two photographs had blended together, underscoring the contrasts between before and after: on the one hand, bricks and debris littered the kitchen floor, the backs of the chairs were broken and the table snapped in two. On the other hand, the fridge was untouched, though without power. On the one hand, dust and shattered glass covered the floral bedspread and the black Singer sewing machine lay on the floor with a broken needle. On the other hand, the gramophone had come through virtually unscathed.

  For every step he took, it felt as though someone else took a step behind him, another Sami. The one who had moved through these rooms before and was unaware that his childhood home lay in ruins. He had an urge to clean up and set things right in case his parents came back. He picked up things that lay in his path: the silver sugar bowl, the remote that had slid out of its plastic cover.