by Eva Nour
During the summer, new battalions were formed within the Free Syrian Army in Homs, each with a couple of hundred rebel soldiers. Some were deserters from the army, others were civilians who wanted to take part in the armed struggle, and each battalion and each leader had their own opinions on how to conduct the struggle.
In order to achieve more cohesive action, a military council was established for the rebel groups in Homs. The Free Syrian Army also ran social charities for distributing food to families with children. In that way, a city within the city was created and people adapted to their new life under siege. No one could leave the fourteen city blocks the regime had surrounded, but within those blocks, everyone was free. They could speak freely, assemble and organize. Sami for his part continued working with the media centre for journalists and activists. They got their electricity from diesel generators, which were still available – most buildings had a back-up diesel tank on the roof, used for heating in the winter.
‘Why don’t you pick up a gun and join us?’ asked Muhammed, who had joined the rebel soldiers.
With a scarf around his head, the crack in his glasses and a nascent beard, his childhood friend now looked like a pirate. It was as though their roles had been reversed. While Muhammed was able to find a calm at the eye of the storm, Sami could feel stress gnawing its way out of his insides. He told Muhammed he was done with weapons and the military.
Instead, he, Anwar and a couple of other media activists started a photo blog on Facebook and Instagram.
‘I’ve never held a camera before,’ Anwar said, ‘but I need something to focus on.’
In a way, cooking and photographing had something in common, Anwar argued. Both were about capturing the moment. To create the perfect food or perfect picture, soon to be gone, was to live in the present.
‘As long as you don’t lose the battery charger,’ Sami said.
The everyday pictures seemed to fulfil an insatiable need. They had a hundred followers after one day, five hundred by the end of the week – then thousands. Before long, they reached one hundred thousand followers.
Activists in other cities copied them and started similar blogs under a shared name. The photographs spread and drew comments; international newspapers called for interviews or to license the images. Syrians in exile wanted to see what was happening on their streets and the world wanted to know what everyday life was like in the war zone. The only one who didn’t share or comment on his pictures was Sarah, who had also stopped mentioning the revolution in her messages to him. Her texts got shorter and maybe his did too.
Hayati, he wrote. Khalina nehki?
Can’t talk, Sarah answered. We’re moving again. More tension here now.
OK, be safe. Miss u.
He knew she was still in Eastern Ghouta, the area outside Damascus where they had lived until now. But all the other details that they used to share, from what they had eaten for breakfast to conversations with friends, fell like sand between their fingers.
While Sami and his Nikon lived under constant threat, he was still much safer than the activists who lived in the regime-controlled neighbourhoods, where they could be monitored and arrested at any moment. Sami thought about Yasmin and felt like a bit of the revolution had died with her – but then the media group declared it was safest to choose a new leader from among the besieged activists, and their choice was Sami.
He delegated but sought to make decisions collectively, often via online chats or video conferences. Sometimes this slowed down the work, but it was important to conduct their business that way, to create democratic micro-structures. If they were making a poster, what should its message be? And which campaign would be more effective, one that called for hunger strikes or one urging people to send letters of protest to their governments? A lot of it was satirical, partly because they themselves felt a need to laugh, partly because it was an effective weapon against power and powerlessness.
Sami had sporadic contact with his parents and older siblings but he was cautious on the phone. Ali was still hiding in al-Waer to avoid conscription, while Hiba lived with their parents at a relative’s house in the countryside. On occasion he felt a pang of guilt, but his mum assured him she felt calmer with him and Malik on the inside, protected by the rebels.
‘You’re the big one now, Sami. You have to look after your little brother.’
‘I will. Don’t worry about us.’
‘And how are Muhammed and his friends doing? I hope they are safe.’
There was a warm undertone to her voice when she talked about the Free Syrian Army, even if she never mentioned their name. Samira would never admit to supporting the revolution, especially not in front of Nabil, but she seemed to dream of a different future. To understand what they were fighting for.
‘I heard it’s been raining,’ she said, which meant the falling rockets.
‘I keep myself dry, don’t worry. Say hi to Dad.’
Sami didn’t tell his parents about the other dangers. You had to pay attention to details, say, the beginnings of chafing on your feet. Sami’s trainers were worn out and the sole was flapping loose, so Muhammed had lent him a pair of his shoes. Sami was so busy digging around the debris that he didn’t give the fact that the shoes were half a size too small a second thought. The chafing was nothing at first. It started with the skin being worn smooth and slightly wrinkled, like when you’ve been too vigorous with an eraser on a piece of paper, then it started to swell. The blisters grew and merged, blueish-purple and boil-like. Eventually they burst, oozing with bloody pus.
Sami paid no attention to that either. He was constantly on the move and simply slapped on regular plasters. But the plasters fell off because the wounds were wet, and only then did he notice his feet. The skin on top of them was stippled with holes that wouldn’t stop bleeding. He tore up strips of fabric and wrapped them around his feet, swapped his shoes for bigger ones, but they kept bleeding. The chafing didn’t heal for weeks. He asked at the field hospital why that was, and the doctor replied: vitamins. Or rather, a vitamin deficiency. That was the first sign of starvation.
Another sign was how challenging it was to think about anything other than food. It would have made sense for his body to forget about the hunger since there was nothing to eat. But his body refused to be reasonable, and he swallowed and thought about food to get the saliva flowing. He heard about a friend who tied rocks around his stomach to trick his body in thinking he had eaten, as though one weight could stand in for another. There were things the camera couldn’t capture; there were wounds that didn’t show on the outside.
28
AS THE MONTHS went by and the leaves started falling from the trees, the children learnt where the red line was – the invisible zone where the rebel streets turned into regime-controlled neighbourhoods – and played soccer and other games among the ruins. Sami saw one little girl who wore a necklace made of empty cartridges. He saw a little boy standing by the bare foundations of a building, red cheeks under his knitted cap, holding a plastic camera, the kind you might have bought at a carnival for nothing and change.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Documenting,’ the boy said without looking up.
‘That can be dangerous, you know. They might think you’re working for us activists.’
‘I don’t care, he’s a duck. Bashar al-batta. He destroyed our house and the whole world’s going to see it.’
Sami bent down to hug the boy but he kicked him in the shins and ran off. Sami stayed where he was, studying what was left of the house, when he spotted something bright red among the debris. He carefully moved closer and picked up a toy tractor, polished it with his sleeve and put it down on the wet ground, in case the little boy came back.
It was Leyla’s idea to start a school in the besieged area. Like Sami, Leyla was working at the media centre and was one of the activists who never seemed to sleep. There was always something more to do, someone to help. Leyla was a couple of years older than
Sami and reminded him of his sister, not least because she was so stubborn. And Leyla seemed to see a sibling in him, too.
‘I might adopt you as my little brother. Would you mind?’
Her face was serious and her eyes sad, and there was a scar on her left eyebrow that she never explained. Before the war started, Leyla had been studying philosophy and literature at the university, but her idea for a school didn’t come from a moral and ethical angle. She said it was for the children, that they were bored and had nothing to do. They needed something more constructive than playing among the ruins, where they were targets.
‘I don’t even like children,’ Sami said.
‘But you don’t dislike them?’
Underneath Leyla’s mild voice and gentle gestures was a core of pure steel. She put her hands in the pockets of her lined coat and fixed her gaze intently on him.
‘I don’t have the patience to teach,’ Sami said.
‘You could at least try, it’s only temporary.’
She wrapped her scarf around her neck and it was settled.
He didn’t learn much about Leyla or her family except that they were Druze and came from the Golan Heights in southwestern Syria, the area annexed by Israel in the 1980s. The Heights sloped steeply down towards the Sea of Galilee, which was one of the specific flashpoints between the two countries, in addition to the area’s general strategic importance. Syria wanted Israel to pull back from the shores of the lake, but it was one of Israel’s most important sources of fresh water.
Sami knew the Druze didn’t believe in predetermination. God had given humans the intelligence to choose and act freely, and it was their responsibility to shape their society and living conditions to suit the divine purpose. Maybe this was her way of doing it.
Sami would have loved to ask Leyla more questions but she disliked talking about herself and her background. Moving to a big city had been a way for her to have more freedom and room to act. Once she had told him all the choices we make are based on either love or fear. Sami pondered that for a long time. The Druze were not supposed to marry outside their religion. Maybe she had met someone her family considered inappropriate? He didn’t know her well enough to ask.
Instead, Sami told Leyla about Sarah, expecting a certain level of interest or curiosity on her part. He thought the two of them would have got on well, felt they had a number of things in common, what with their passion for poetry and pedagogy. But Leyla asked no questions.
‘So she left,’ was all she said.
Sami wanted to defend Sarah – it was the ones who had stayed who were being selfish. People like him, who didn’t think of how the separation would affect his family. Without taking into account that being apart from each other might be worse than any risk outside the siege. But Leyla didn’t see it that way. She was going to stay with the children until the last bomb had fallen.
‘First of all, we need to find a place to have the school.’
‘I’ll ask around,’ Sami said.
So far Leyla had been tutoring in people’s homes but she wanted to find a place where more children could participate. They found the solution with a man who distributed food rations to families. He offered to let them use his house in the mornings, as long as they kept it neat and tidy. Sami and Leyla printed up a couple of flyers and handed them out, and the man helped spread the news while he handed out rations.
The school was small but would do for now. It consisted of a big living room with a wood-fired stove that would keep the children warm. Sami and Leyla arranged the sofas in a semi-circle and put a big notepad up on the wall. Books, pens and notepads were collected from a bombed-out school nearby.
The day before the first day of school, Sami felt noticeably restless. He swept the thick carpets, even though this had already been done. Put books out on the sofas, gathered them back up and put them back out again. He opened the windows to air the room; a thin layer of powder snow had fallen in the courtyard, settling on the remaining leaves on the lemon tree. Leyla was sitting cross-legged, mapping out the week’s lessons. She was planning to review the alphabet and assess the level of the students. He had no plan other than the task Leyla had given him: to teach the children mathematics and English.
‘Would you calm down, please.’
Sami had reorganized his papers for the fourth time and accidentally knocked over a jar of colouring pencils. Much as he tried to suppress certain memories, the smallest detail was enough to bring them back. His breathing was shallow as he stood staring at the rainbow of pencils in his hand. The engraved letters: Faber-Castell.
‘What if no one shows up?’
‘They’ll be here,’ Leyla said calmly.
The next morning he shaved for the first time in weeks, and washed and combed his hair. The frosty streets were teeming with people. He was in a hurry and tapped a woman on the shoulder. She was holding a child in each hand, a girl with a side plait and a boy with an unruly fringe.
‘What happened?’
‘Something happened?’ The woman stopped dead in the middle of the road while the girl tugged her sleeve.
‘Mummy, hurry, we’re going to be late.’
‘I didn’t mean to scare you, it’s just so busy today.’
‘Oh, it’s the children, you know. They’ve opened a school in the area. Can you imagine? It’s been almost a year since my daughter last went to school. She had only just learnt to read and my son never even started.’
Sami thanked her and continued at a brisk pace to the school house. Leyla was already standing at the gate, greeting people. She held her hand out to the children first, then their parents.
‘Amin,’ said the little boy he had just met.
‘Mona,’ said his older sister with the plait.
In the end the courtyard was so crowded they had to ask the parents to leave. Come back at two, we’ll look after them until then. See you soon, sweetheart, be a good boy and make your parents proud. Just leave, Dad, I’m fine by myself. There, there, I’ll help you with your homework tonight. You are going to give them homework, aren’t you, sir?
Sami was taken aback but Leyla came to his aid.
‘There might be homework,’ she said. ‘But the most important thing right now is to build routines and encourage the children’s desire to learn. Don’t you think?’
When the parents had left, twenty-four children remained in the courtyard. Leyla started things off with a game where the children had to line up in order of age. Mona raised her hand.
‘But, miss, how are we supposed to know who’s oldest?’
‘I guess you’ll have to ask each other.’
So the children turned to each other and asked about birthdays and soon the ice was broken. After much laughter and giggling, they had formed a line, with the little boy called Amin first.
‘And how old are you?’ Leyla asked.
‘Five and three-quarters, miss,’ Amin said, with his arms pressed stiffly to his sides.
Leyla divided the children into two groups, with the youngest students, from five to eight, in one. The younger group went into the classroom with Leyla while the older students, from nine to twelve, stayed with Sami in the courtyard for physical exercise. In the afternoon, it was Sami’s turn to teach inside, first the older group, then the younger, by the heat of the stove.
We’ve started a school, he wrote to Sarah. The kids call me Mister Teacher, can u believe it?
For the first time in a long while, she texted a heart.
Mister Sami, it suits u. Bahebak kteer.
I love u too, he answered.
The next winter morning, there were thirty children in the courtyard. At the end of the week, closer to fifty. At first, Sami yelled at them when they fought or talked during class. But then he realized they were bored and viewed school as a break when they could see their friends. War was not constant battles, there were periods of tedium. At the end of the day, the children growing restless and playing was a good sign – better that t
han the apathetic look he had noticed in some children’s eyes.
Sami changed tactics and practised patience, giving them space to both play and learn new things. Mona and Amin were among the hardest-working students, shy but always helpful.
However, external circumstances made teaching more challenging. The regime’s airstrikes began with a couple of reconnaissance planes. Then the planes returned, circled above them and released their bombs. While the shells from mortars could weigh up to five pounds, the airdropped bombs were ten times bigger. The ground rumbled for miles. Smoke rose in mushroom-like clouds. During the airstrikes, hiding in a basement wasn’t an option; the bombs obliterated everything in their path.
If it was the Free Syrian Army the regime was targeting, the aerial assaults were not particularly helpful. The rebels cleaved to the red line, while the bombs were dropped over the city centre, where the civilians lived. Bombs aimed at the red line would have risked hitting the regime’s headquarters, since their strike radius was at least three-quarters of a mile.
Sami and Leyla continued to document events when they weren’t teaching. Leyla filmed and painted murals, believing art to be a way of reclaiming the city. Our hearts belong here, she wrote. We’re going to return. Sometimes she painted flowers and animals so the children would have something comforting to look at.
In an interview, much later, he heard Leyla describe her work. Body parts were the hardest things to film, she said. The man looking for a hand among the debris. The boy staring straight into the camera, in shock, not realizing he had lost a foot. The suffering of the animals was difficult, too. Limping pigeons and dogs without hind legs. The cats that gave in to hunger and ate human corpses. A porcelain cup could be devastating. Sitting on a table, waiting to be drunk from, no one coming to pick it up.