The Stray Cats of Homs

by Eva Nour

  Sami left the house of the al-Nusra leader without waiting to see their reaction. Later, back at the basement, Tareq laughed and said Abu Omar had taken to task the person who had been spreading the rumours.

  ‘Abu Omar thought you seemed well read. Maybe we should recruit you.’

  ‘Over my dead body,’ said Sami.

  That would happen sooner or later, death, that is. But for the moment, he and Malik and Muhammed and Anwar were alive.

  They had moved the sofas into the basement of Muhammed’s house, even though it offered only limited protection against a barrel bomb. Barrel bombs were old oil drums filled with explosives and scrap metal, which scattered in the air like confetti.

  The regime had also released sarin gas over Eastern Ghouta, the Damascus suburb where Sarah had grown up. Sarin was heavier than air and sought out low points in the terrain, like basements. Because of that, the nerve gas was especially effective in areas where people had already moved underground to escape the airstrikes.

  We’re safe, Sarah wrote. But no word from my cousins yet.

  The longer time went on, the less Sami found the words to express what he felt. Maybe because he hardly felt anything any more.

  I wish I was there with you, he finally wrote.

  Sami, Malik and Muhammed had consulted the internet and made their own gas masks, even though they would make almost no difference in case of a chemical attack: sarin penetrates the body through the skin as well as the airways. Firebombs filled with napalm and other chemicals were also impossible to protect yourself from. They broke up like a rain of fire, like fireworks, in the pitch-black night.

  Sami studied Malik’s silent face as he built the gas mask. He tried to remember his little brother from before, sparkling with life, and realized he had adjusted to the situation all too fast, all too well.

  There was no room in their lives for the suggestive or ambiguous any more. That was one of the biggest casualties of the war: the grey area. There was warmth and cold, being full and being hungry, friends and enemies – but in between, nothing of any real importance.

  And then there was life and death. One day, his little brother was alive. The next, he was dead.

  32

  THAT OCTOBER MORNING Sami heard birds tweeting. He couldn’t remember when he had last heard the sound of birds and thought he was imagining it. But there, perched on a chair, was a sparrow. Sami tried to beckon it but the sparrow twitched its head and refused to budge. Then it spread its wings and flew out of the window.

  He didn’t know if it was because of the bird but he had a bad feeling that morning. He didn’t normally worry about his little brother, but when it happened, he knew. He knew it when the doorbell rang and an acquaintance was standing outside. He knew it when the acquaintance said Malik was injured and had been taken to the field hospital. And he knew it when he jogged towards the hospital in fits and starts, as though he both wanted and didn’t want to get there.

  A couple of volunteers had put up bunting in the street, the kind that had been used for parties and weddings before, to help people find their way to the field hospital. The green and yellow ribbons ran down ditches, into basements, through private residences where missiles had opened up holes in the walls, up staircases and over boulders. The acquaintance tried to keep up with Sami. Outside the field hospital, he apologized to Sami for not having told him the whole truth, then he leaned his hands on his knees and looked down at the ground.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Sami pushed past him, feeling no desire to be held up by this man when he could simply talk to his brother himself and find out what happened.

  Malik was lying on one of the hospital beds, next to Anwar and two other boys. His little brother’s body was less bloody than the others, but just as rigid. Anwar’s tall body barely fitted the stretcher. He had grown lean in the siege and no longer resembled the healthy chef he once knew.

  The heat drained out of the room and a white chill spread from Sami’s chest to the rest of his body. He fell to his knees wanting to scream but no scream came out. It was Malik and at the same time it couldn’t be him. Sami pulled himself upright again and stroked his brother’s cheeks. Flies were buzzing around his eyes, which were white as though his irises had vanished into his body in terror. Maybe this was death’s way: to freeze the features that had once made a body into a person.

  ‘What happened to you?’ he whispered.

  A medic came up to him and told him in a soft voice. Malik, Anwar and the two other boys had gone to a street in al-Hamidiyah to put up cloth screens to block the snipers’ view.

  ‘That was when the missile hit. They were crushed under debris.’

  Sami thought about his parents. They had thought he and Malik were safe here. At least here, the regime couldn’t get to them. Here they couldn’t be arrested, tortured or pressed into military service.

  But there were missiles, every day.

  A medic and two rebel soldiers helped him move the bodies. Sami carried his little brother and put him on a flatbed truck. He sat down next to him and held his hand, stroking his forehead. The truck drove a few blocks and then came to a stop. Sami looked over his shoulders, scanning the roofs for snipers, but all he could see in the sky was a pointlessly shining sun. The ashes and concrete only reflected its light.

  It was not easy to find an open patch of ground by the mosque. They had no shovels so they dug with whatever they could find, scraps of metal and bin lids. Sami took his brother’s ID card and searched Anwar’s pockets, but there was nothing in them to give to his family. Then he remembered the necklace with the gold ring, gently removed it from around Anwar’s neck, and carried on digging.

  ‘Do you mind if I take his shoes?’

  A skinny boy with streaks of dirt on his face was pointing at Malik’s feet.

  Sami stood still. Sweat was streaming down his face, or maybe it was tears, and the salt reached his lips. Then he bent down and pulled the shoes off himself.

  ‘Here, they might need to be polished.’

  When Sami’s grandmother died, Grandpa Faris said, ‘When there is nothing left, only rituals remain.’ But now, not even rituals remained, at least not in their ancient form. Before the war, an imam would have read verses or said a few words at the funeral. Before the war, a procession of cars would have driven through the city and out to the countryside, either the same day death claimed its victim or the next. The body would have been swathed in white cloth tied at the head and the feet. The family would have hosted a three-day reception, in their home or at a mosque, where friends and relatives could come to offer condolences.

  Now they had neither the time nor the ability to organize a procession or reception. The four martyrs – Malik, Anwar and the two boys whose names they didn’t know – were lowered into the ground and covered with sand and stones. Dusk fell quietly.

  Back at the basement Sami had half a can of water left but didn’t want to wash. There was blood on his arms and hands but it was his little brother’s blood. He sat on the basement floor, rocking back and forth. He was alone. Muhammed was out doing battle and didn’t know what had happened.

  When there was a faint but clear knock at the door, Sami was sure it was his brother coming home. He hurried upstairs and took a step back when he saw the three men in black trousers and kaftans. The man at their head was Abu Omar, the leader of the al-Nusra Front, who raised a calming hand.

  ‘We’re here to offer our condolences.’

  They greeted him with bowed heads, kissing his cheeks, without seeking eye contact.

  ‘I think it would be best if you …’ Sami was unable to finish the sentence.

  ‘Tea, my brother?’

  Abu Omar stepped inside and unpacked a basket on the coffee table. What persuaded Sami to let them stay wasn’t the thermos of tea, it was the glass jar full of honey.

  After a while, he almost forgot who they were, and that they had threatened to kill him after he published their names an
d pictures on social media. Abu Omar said that was water under the bridge. And when it came down to it, wasn’t a certain level of attention a good thing? It lent them credibility and made it easier for them to spread the word.

  ‘Let’s not dwell on the past,’ said Abu Omar and put a teaspoon of honey in Sami’s teacup.

  ‘Martyrs,’ he continued. ‘God’s sons and daughters who give their lives in the struggle for justice. Innocent teenagers who die for a higher purpose. Is it God’s will? Of course not. But things are the way they are.’

  The words blurred together. Abu Omar’s voice was almost as soothing as the honey.

  ‘Our country is at war and God has his hands full and we have to have faith, and to trust our faith to guide and support us in our darkest hour. Isn’t it better to fall in the struggle than to lie down without resisting?’

  Abu Omar stroked his beard and counted his prayer beads. His nails were strangely clean, neatly cut and manicured. Abu Omar and the others talked for hours, or so it felt, while Sami listened in silence. At midnight he almost dozed off, sitting on a cushion on the floor, but then he twitched and was suddenly wide awake.

  ‘So,’ Abu Omar repeated, ‘will you come tomorrow? We have plenty of beds and our house is safe.’

  ‘Yes, or I mean, let me sleep on it.’

  When the three men had left, Sami gathered up his things and sent Muhammed a message.

  I have to leave. Call u later.

  He packed only his laptop, camera and water can, and decided to come back for clothes and cooking utensils later, or find new ones.

  When he started to move through the city ruins, his heart eventually stopped racing and he was able to think back over the day before. His little brother hadn’t died, it was just a misunderstanding and a mistake. Malik would appear before him any moment.

  Had the three jihadists been a bad dream too? Sitting in his flat, talking about martyrdom? Rage surged inside him, caused in equal parts by them forcing themselves on him when he was in the throes of grief, and by it almost succeeding. After hours of talking and ingratiating voices, their words had got under his skin.

  Sami tried to conjure a parallel reality in which his little brother was still alive. He heard Malik’s voice, and went over the fights they had had and invented new endings, in which instead of standing his ground, he yielded and compromised. What had they even argued about? Silly things, like which movies to watch and who got the most attention from their parents. The stray dog that Malik had brought home to cheer up their mum. When he told Sami that he wanted to work in IT, just like his older brothers, and Sami had said it wouldn’t suit him, when what he had meant was that his little brother was too social, too loving, to be stuck in an office. When Malik had chosen to stay at the beginning of the siege, as if he wasn’t old enough to make a choice of his own.

  He embellished old scenes to make himself less of a big brother scolding and looking for faults, and more of a sibling his little brother could have turned to with questions and problems.

  He wished so desperately that he had been better at offering a warm embrace and a shoulder to lean on. But there was nothing in between, no space between the lines to rest in.

  33

  THE STREET IN Bab Tudmor was deserted. Even the cats had left. That was why he went there: no one would suspect the house to be inhabited. No sane person would ever consider settling there. There was no water or electricity, but the living room and parts of the kitchen and bathroom were intact, and that was where Sami set up camp after Malik’s death.

  Sami ran his hand over the cracked bathroom mirror and saw his brother. He stroked his brother’s cheeks and beard and saw his eyes well up with tears. The reflection trembled but he was still, completely still. He saw his brother lean on the sink and only then did he become aware of his lightheadedness and collapsed on the cool stone floor.

  When he woke, he saw the blood. He made a fire, boiled half of the water in his can, undressed and washed his clothes in a bucket. Scooped some of the water over his body and dried himself on a shirt he used as a towel.

  His new accommodation had only one major drawback and it was a fundamental one: the house, or what was left of it, virtually touched the red line. Which was to say it was right on the frontline between the regime’s army and the rebels. A six-lane motorway separated them; snipers shot at each other round the clock. He didn’t have to worry about airstrikes but the Free Syrian Army’s presence was weak. The regime’s soldiers could at any time sneak across the road to conduct a night raid.

  Sami decided to break his promise and buy a gun. Once upon a time Sarah would have been proud of him for daring to join the armed struggle; now it seemed not to matter. Her messages grew ever shorter and more sporadic. She apologized but claimed the power cuts were becoming more frequent, even in the countryside. In the end, Sami couldn’t get his hands on a gun anyway. The prices on the black market had soared and he couldn’t afford one. The irony was that food on the black market was even more expensive and hard to find.

  During the day he lived with the constant sound of gunfire. At night he woke up thinking someone was in the house. He crept round and checked the adjacent rooms and peered out at the nearby houses, but it was just the wind. He lay down on one of the sofas and saw the contours of the room slowly take shape in the dark. He pictured the six-lane motorway and the bodies on it, on the red line, where no one could retrieve them for burial. He didn’t believe in jinn, not really, but then there was the soldier who had met a talking cat. What if the spirits were feeling restless and looking for new homes? Maybe one had already taken up residence inside him; maybe he was one of the living dead.

  From now on, he was alone. It was too arduous and dangerous to make his way over to Muhammed’s or Leyla’s. He almost hadn’t been able to tell them about Malik’s and Anwar’s deaths because he knew that as soon as he said the words, it would be real. They would be gone. And when he did finally tell them, Muhammed cried, and it felt like he cried for them both.

  Sami spent most of his time inside his newfound house aside from short outings every other or every third day to fill up his water can and look for food and clothes. One time he found a fungus growing on a wooden door. He broke it off and put it in his backpack, pondering whether he dared to eat it. He did. He left it to his stomach to work out whether or not it was edible.

  Before, street names and addresses, maps and GPS had been used to navigate. But now the city had changed shape; it had turned into a maze and people had to find other signposts. He could go hours without seeing another person. The concrete had risen up like an iceberg and the city was shrouded in a blanket of ash and dust. Sometimes he had an urge to lick the wall of a building or grab a fistful of the reddish-brown, iron-rich ash and put it in his mouth. The whitish-grey ash, on the other hand, he associated only with death. He had heard it could be used as a natural disinfectant in lieu of soap but he couldn’t bring himself to try it.

  The dust got in everywhere. Even though he tried to brush down the sofa cushions and keep the rug clean of rat droppings, it was just as dusty again the next morning. The dust crunched under his feet and for a few hours that would be the only sound, aside from distant gunfire.

  Sami spent several days setting up a parabola, a satellite receiver and a generator, so he could use his laptop and phone. That autumn he read about a former systems administrator working for the American intelligence service, Edward Snowden, who had revealed the extent of the United States’ mass surveillance of its own citizens. Why all the fuss, he had thought at first. Of course the state spied on its citizens. How could it be otherwise? And then he understood. He had internalized surveillance. It had become part of being a citizen. That was the true extent of his government’s abuse of power: you monitored yourself even before the state did.

  In November 2013, the first snow fell, recalling a different time. The flakes swaddled the wounds of the city like cotton, filling its tears and cracks. It snowed outside the room a
nd the snow fell inside Sami. He was cut off from the world. The streets were empty. One morning he feared his hideout had been discovered when he spotted unknown tracks by the front steps. But then he realized it was just the rats smearing the sludgy ash of his own footsteps.

  He might have been the last person in the world. Civilization had been destroyed and the radio stations shut down in a larger war happening outside the one he was in. The Earth had been invaded by aliens or an epidemic had killed large parts of humanity, like in the time of the plague. A volcano had erupted and covered the planet in ash. Except right here, in Homs, where the ash was already so thick humans had learnt to live in the murky air.

  He moved through the ruins like someone shipwrecked. Even if he were the last person in the world, he would never know. He would live and die and, with him, humanity would perish, but the Earth would continue its journey around the sun for a little while longer, before it was sucked up by the masses that constituted the universe, leaving behind an everlasting black hole.

  The snow kept falling and he needed to find new, warmer clothes. He groped his way in the dark, pulled out dresser drawers and opened wardrobes. He had found two jumpers and a pair of jeans. He was reluctant to enter houses, even though they were abandoned and their owners would hardly mind their clothes and food being put to good use. But it was as though the houses themselves were people, empty and broken by grief. Would they ever be able to return to a time when you could have tea with your neighbour and exchange gossip while the sweet voice of Fairuz filled the background?