by Eva Nour
When he reached his parents’ bedroom, his arms were full of objects that had lost their former significance. How was he to judge what was worth saving, which memories were significant to them? He let all of it fall to the floor and stopped moving.
He studied the pile he had collected, found the box with his parents’ secret correspondence and put that in his backpack, even though the key was gone. He filled the rest of the bag with tins and dry goods.
Once again, he felt as though someone was right behind him. Not a shadow. There really was something watching him. He froze. A faint rustling, followed by a faint squeaking. He turned around and squatted down. There they were, underneath the sofa. Four newborn kittens the colour of mustard. They meowed and showed their pink tongues, climbing over his hands. There was no sign of the mother. Sami opened the unharmed refrigerator and put out a bowl of yoghurt. The kittens immediately lost interest in him and hungrily lapped up the tart whiteness.
Just a house. Sarah was always telling him he closed up instead of expressing his feelings. Maybe it was a way of protecting himself, or of protecting the people around him. He didn’t want to put his troubles and worries on others. But just now, some form of venting would have been good, like crying uncontrollably or running himself ragged. Instead he walked around what had been his childhood home and felt the heat rise in his eyes and had no way to express his pain. Laughing didn’t work any more, nor did crying or running.
The kittens meowed and blinked, and he wondered if they could see or were still blind. He picked one up; it squirmed around his hand, resisting, until it resigned itself and started purring. This innocent tenderness, this trust towards a living creature who had fed them, was enough for now. There, there, tiny kittens. Your mum will be back soon. He decided to return the next day or when the bombing had slowed.
There was still lettuce in the fridge. Sami took a green leaf and climbed up on the roof terrace, what was left of it, but hard as he looked he couldn’t find the turtle. Maybe it had been crushed by a brick. Maybe it had seen a chance to live free and escaped. From the roof, he saw the utility pole next to the house and once again thought of his dad. One of the few transgressions Nabil had allowed himself, possibly the only one, was that he tapped the powerline out on the street to lower the family’s electricity costs. Now the pole had snapped in two, the top half dangling limply.
Sami’s eyes stung again. Just a house. What gave him the right to grieve when others had lost their entire families? It was just concrete, bricks, thresholds, wallpaper, door jambs, moulding. It was just a place he had lived for most of his life, his first and only home. He walked away without turning back.
26
IN MAY, WHEN the sun was warming the broken roofs and the Arab League monitors were allowed to visit Homs to inspect the damage, the blockade was temporarily lifted. People who had fled returned, but only to pack up things they had left behind.
Sarah wasn’t among the ones coming back. Sami called her and her voice sounded distant, as though something had shifted during the past few days.
‘I heard people are leaving,’ she said.
‘Not everyone. Some choose to stay.’
‘And you, are you staying?’
He closed his eyes and saw her face in front of him, remembering how she used to raise her voice during the meetings and speak for arms.
‘We’re fighting for our future, remember? You always said that. You said we’d never give up.’
‘But we can’t fight if we’re dead,’ Sarah sighed.
‘I know the army inside and out. I know what kind of people they are. When the rest of the world realize they’re shooting at civilians, they’ll be forced to withdraw.’ He continued, though he wasn’t sure she was listening. ‘The whole thing will be over by the end of the week. By the end of the week.’
‘Is this it?’ she asked quietly.
‘What do you mean, is this it?’
‘Well, this, us.’
‘I told you I’ll be there in a few days.’
‘Yes, so you said.’
Her voice sounded remote. He preferred it when she hurled arguments and opinions at him, when she spoke loudly and intensely, rather than these unspoken undercurrents of disappointment, or maybe anger, or grief. She had returned to her city; surely she had to understand he didn’t want to abandon his.
‘What are you reading?’ Sami asked.
He wanted to talk about something that reminded him of everyday life, of what life used to be like when she would read her favourite passages out loud to him. If she could be made to remember that, she would remember the rest.
‘Nothing,’ Sarah replied. ‘I don’t read any more.’
The silence swelled and surged as though they were standing on opposite beaches, trying to persuade the other to cross the sound in between. They listened to each other’s breathing: his slow and light, hers heavy and rapid.
‘We’ll stay in touch. We’ll write every day,’ he told her.
‘Sure.’
‘Every day that there’s not a power cut.’
‘Look, I think I have to go now.’
The call ended before he could say the most important thing. Normally he had no difficulty expressing his affection and love, but now it was as though words of that kind would have underlined the sense of an ending. And maybe this was the beginning of the end. He had a gnawing feeling one of them was right and the other wrong. He just didn’t know who.
Sami’s parents came back to their ruined house for a few hours. Nabil kept blowing his nose into a handkerchief, while Samira mechanically moved bricks and swept the broken staircase. Sami helped, even though the wind soon covered it with dust and dirt once more. His mother packed carrier bags full of photographs and clothes. Nabil walked around aimlessly, searching for his razor and putting the gramophone under his arm.
‘This time you’re coming with us,’ Samira said. ‘Come and see Malik and Hiba.’
‘I promise I’ll join you in a few days.’
‘My son,’ his dad said and shook his head.
Samira had to call out three times to Nabil before he left the house, or what was left of it, and walked slowly to the car. His father got in the passenger seat and looked straight ahead, one hand on the glove compartment. Sami watched as the car left. How could he make them understand? Homs was his home. No matter what happened, he wanted to see it with his own eyes, to bear witness. Especially since he had missed the start of the revolution. He had so many lost months to make up for.
A few days later Sami heard a familiar knock on Muhammed’s door and, when he opened it, his ears filled with sound, like water seeping into a sinking ship, imperceptibly at first, then rushing in from all directions.
‘What are you doing here?’
Standing on the front steps was a lanky fourteen-year-old boy. His little brother, who had grown up without him noticing.
It must have happened overnight, no, over many nights, years even. Malik, who followed his every step and listened to every word he spoke. Malik, who was disappointed with Sami for not deserting, for not joining the rebels, when he was trained to handle weapons and all. But then Sami had chosen to stay behind and that had made that possible for Malik too. Why hadn’t Sami noticed that his little brother took after him, even when they disagreed? Now moments like this made it painfully clear.
‘I’m staying,’ Malik said and pushed his way into the room.
‘You are not, you’re too young.’
He understood all too well his little brother’s frustration. How infuriating to see through the contradictory behaviour of the adults and still not be considered an adult yourself.
‘Really, you’re too young.’
‘Everyone’s needed in the revolution.’
Malik glared at Sami. The words sounded too big for his mouth.
‘How did you get past the checkpoints?’ Sami sighed.
His little brother jutted his chin out and pulled himself up straighter.
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br /> ‘It doesn’t matter, that route is closed now.’
‘I’m serious,’ Sami said.
‘So am I,’ replied Malik.
He didn’t want to think about what his parents would say when they discovered their youngest child had left them. Sami and Malik were of the same build and people said their eyes were identical. Do you see what I see? he wondered. Do you see yourself with your arms crossed and your chin in the air, ready to be as old as the situation requires? What did the situation require? Neither one of them knew yet.
‘There’s another thing,’ Malik said, his eyes darting this way and that, as though he had just remembered something he had been trying to forget. ‘It’s about Yasmin.’
Sami hadn’t heard from Yasmin in a week, which had worried him, but at the same time sometimes it was necessary to lie low, or there could be practical obstacles to communication. The last time they talked it was about the next issue of their newspaper. Now Yasmin’s brother had asked Malik to relay what had happened.
‘Come in,’ Sami said. ‘Tell me everything.’
Malik followed him but was too restless to sit down. Yasmin had been arrested but granted bail, he told Sami. When her brother arrived at the military detention centre, the officer had asked if he would like a cup of tea. Yasmin’s brother realized he had no choice.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’d love some tea.’
They sat down in the office and soon after, there was a knock on the door. She entered the room, naked, carrying a tea tray.
‘Serve your brother first,’ the officer had told her.
Sami didn’t want to hear the rest, and Malik was stuttering and didn’t seem to want to keep on speaking, but he did.
‘They let her go,’ Malik said. ‘After she had served them tea. The money was on the table and everything.’
‘Yes?’
‘But then Yasmin asked if she could have her camera back. And that was when … well, her brother tried to stop them …’
Malik sat down on the sofa now, exhausted, and looked at the floor.
‘The officer gave Yasmin’s brother her clothes back, after he shot her.’
Sami stood in the middle of the room and felt the walls disappear. The wind swept in and carried with it the smell of Yasmin’s cigarettes, the pens they had used to make the placards, the sweet scent of low-hanging oranges from their school years. Once upon a time she had been his first love. Later on, along with Sarah, Yasmin had been the one to help him find a place and a role in the revolution. Now she didn’t exist. Sami had an urge to tell Yasmin herself what had happened, to plead with her to go into hiding. The numbness started in his fingers and spread through his body but it was too soon to call it grief.
Malik took off his backpack and dropped it to the floor. The same backpack he had once used to carry his school books in. Sami remembered the stray dog Malik had dragged home and the olives he had thrown while he sat at the breakfast table, all the times he had reprimanded his younger brother.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Malik said, ‘but this is the way it is. I’m staying.’
And Sami knew it was Malik’s decision to make, just like he had made his.
IV
* * *
In the beginning, while we are still learning to sleep together and share a duvet, you sometimes wake up in the middle of a scream and hurl yourself out of bed.
‘Was it the checkpoints?’
Sometimes, it’s prison corridors with hunting dogs. Sometimes, your nightmares are about the lack of tobacco. It’s almost never what I imagine would be the worst of the worst. We drink tea with honey, interlace our fingers and decide you should sleep on the outside of the bed, away from the wall.
You tell your story and simultaneously translate it. Partly by using another language than your own, partly by dressing your bodily experiences in words. What happens in the translation and interpretation and description, to us and to the story? What disappears and what is gained? I would like to think something is gained.
Describing trauma is always overwhelming – powerfully emotional memories that don’t slot into our constructed narratives. Events and fragments we can’t fit into the rest of our experiences, and which therefore break through like uncontrollable flashbacks. It’s only when we can deal with the trauma and intertwine it with our memories that the story can become whole, and we can become whole as humans.
But does telling the story always help? When you return to certain events your throat goes dry. You clear it and drink more tea. Your eyes look different. Your irises grow big, dark and shiny, as though you can see what’s happening. I put a hand on your arm to remind you you’re not alone. Afterwards, we talk about something lighter and return to the present. That is my promise to you: after following you into the dark, I also have to follow you back and show you the light.
27
THE MASS EXODUS entailed new concerns, like what to do with family pets. Some took cats and dogs with them; some left aquariums with neighbours. Others set their animals free, hoping they would survive over the summer.
The pigeon owners had the hardest time letting go. They handled their domesticated birds as tenderly as if they were relatives, stroking them and feeding them sunflower seeds and giving them names, but their cages were too much of an encumbrance. Before the war, you would see the doves flying above the rooftops of Homs in well-orchestrated formations. The birds had been a natural part of the city. That the sky was now devoid of the fluttering of wings was a clear sign life had changed.
May usually smelled of jasmine flowers, now it smelled of dust and fires. A couple of thousand civilians remained in the city centre. Many were elderly people who had been unable or unwilling to flee; others were families with young children who had not managed to get out while the roads were open.
Sami and his little brother stayed at Muhammed’s house, as did Anwar. After a lot of persuasion, they managed to buy a pigeon coop from a reluctant seller. Of the twelve birds, they ate four, which Anwar turned into stew by cooking them with herbs and stock cubes. A couple escaped or were stolen. The rest were killed by alley cats or giant rats – the rats were the worst since they didn’t even bother to eat what they killed.
Sami and his friends went around the other houses, scavenging for food. At first they only took food that wouldn’t go bad, like rice and flour and tinned goods. They returned for the food they had passed over the first time, then a third and fourth time, until not a trace of rice or shrivelled chickpeas remained. When Sami remembered that some families saved chocolate Christmas decorations, he collected them and gorged himself until he had a stomach cramp.
From time to time, they’d spot a dead turtle with its shell covered in ash. They had once lived in fountains or ponds in people’s courtyards. Muhammed, who was as solution-oriented and patient as always, showed them how to use a rock to crush the shell. Sami cringed, thinking of the turtle that had once lived on their roof terrace. Then Anwar took over and cut out the green cartilage and connective tissue on the inside, as carefully as he once rolled a sandwich. After boiling it for a long time, slimy lumps formed, which they ate in silence.
‘Doesn’t taste that bad, does it?’ Muhammed said, trying to cheer them up. ‘This would be a delicacy in the old times.’
‘I’d prefer a burger and fries,’ Malik muttered.
‘I’ll have your share then,’ Sami said and raised his chin.
‘No, never mind.’
When Sami was too dejected to take pictures of the destruction, he turned his camera on everyday life. The young children filling water cans on the street. A middle-aged woman breaking wooden chairs into smaller pieces for her fire. The dog man in his wide-brimmed felt hat and white beard, sitting on a wooden chair in the sun, talking to the passers-by. Before the siege, he ran a kennel and would only agree to sell a puppy if the new owners promised to visit occasionally so he could see how the animal was doing.
‘Mind if I take a photo?’ Sami asked.
‘Only from the right.’ The dog man turned his head. ‘It’s my photogenic side.’
Sometimes the camera lens was helpful. It became a shield against reality, something to hide behind. Sami stepped into private rooms he was both part and not part of. One time he saw a missile strike a building and an elderly couple burst out of it at a run. They were covered in grey dust from head to toe. But when they saw Sami and his camera, the woman stopped in the middle of the street and pointed. She wiped her forehead and beamed, because she was about to be photographed and tell the world her home had just been destroyed.
It was the shock, of course. But also a sign of the camera’s power. He remembered when, at the start of the revolution, a Japanese photojournalist was lifted up and carried aloft by the protesting masses. Someone from Japan in Syria – it was taken as proof of the world’s interest in their plight. Now the images would spread and the world would support the Syrian people.
He had a nebulous feeling the images might not have had the effect they imagined. Or rather that the world chose to see some images but not others. Among the most widely distributed and commented on were the ones showing injured animals. Two horses with flared nostrils and their legs in the air. A cat undergoing surgery for a bullet wound in a field hospital, getting a bandage around its tummy.
A woman wrote to Sami and asked him to follow up what had happened to the poor cat.
Yes, he replied. I will try to shoot some more.
No! the woman had replied. We must save the cats, not shoot them.
I meant shoot more pictures, Sami wrote.
Before the roads were closed, the activists had managed to smuggle in satellite equipment. Through it, Sami maintained contact with the rest of the world, where life seemed to carry on unchanged. He was primarily interested in news that could affect Syria. In the same spring that Homs became under siege, 2012, Vladimir Putin was re-elected president of Russia and François Hollande became president of France. Every day, new deaths and massacres in every corner of Syria were reported. The outside world talked about a red line that was supposed never to be crossed, but somehow that line was always moving. A little further away, a little more blurred with time.