by Eva Nour
It was there on the roof that Sami pondered his future and finally concluded that there was only one way out. The way he had already rejected. The way that had claimed Muhammed’s life: crossing the red line.
36
IT WAS THE biggest decision of his life. It was not only about escaping the siege. If he succeeded, he would also have to leave the country. To stay in the regime-controlled area would be too dangerous.
Having made his decision, Sami got in touch with a few people who might be able to help him: a distant relative, a childhood acquaintance and a woman he had got to know online through his work as a photographer. They in turn negotiated with people on the regime side.
While he waited, he found lentils. Sami ran his hand over the dusty kitchen counter and gathered them up: twelve pale red lentils. They were tiny, round discs, like miniature versions of doughballs before the baker rolls them flat. He put the lentils in his jacket pocket, scraping the last one from his greasy fingers and pulling the zipper closed. Not today, maybe tomorrow. It was easier to endure the hunger when it was voluntary, when he knew he could make a soup of water and twelve lentils whenever he wanted.
The question was whether he could have eaten if he had decided to make soup. As so often, his worries had lodged themselves in his stomach.
Then he was given the go-ahead, and told a time and a place. After midnight, at a certain corner of Bab Tudmor. The only thing Sami had to do was cross the six-lane motorway; a regime soldier would be waiting for him on the other side. It sounded easy but required high-level strings to be pulled both politically and militarily. Could he really trust that every last soldier watching from rooftops and through cracks in walls was aware he had permission to leave? And what was waiting for him on the other side?
After weighing up all possible scenarios, there was only one way to know for sure: to cross the road and trust that his contacts had done a good job.
Sami closed his social media accounts, put his laptop in a plastic bag and buried it outside the house. He texted his parents and siblings, without telling them what he was about to do. It had been weeks since they last talked; messages didn’t use up the battery so fast. He thought about calling them now but was afraid that his voice would give him away. He then wrote to Sarah.
Bahebik kteer. I love you.
But before sending the message, he erased it. It had been too long since they had used those kinds of words and she would only get worried.
I’m thinking about u, he wrote instead.
He waited for an answer but the phone remained silent. Finally he took the SIM card out and broke it. He shook out the sofa cushions and swept the rug, even though he wasn’t coming back. And at midnight he left.
The full moon hung high in the warm sky, round and so bright its craters were visible. It spread enough light to guide Sami without him needing a torch. At the same time, the moonlight made him an easier target. He stood in a doorway without a door and listened for strange sounds. Maybe in all of this destruction it was possible to see how the world had been when there were still no people in it. Once, all of this had been under water; once, there had been nothing but mountains and valleys under a scorching sun. Aside from the sound of gunfire and the airstrikes and the stones under his shoes, in the beginning there was only this: silence.
An empty tin can was being pushed along by the wind, rattling out into the road. Half an hour before the appointed time he moved to the front of the building, hiding behind a shot-up car but still able to keep an eye on the road. He had never been this close to the red line before. The car was practically in the line of fire and its metal body was scant protection – bullets would easily pierce it if anyone spotted him.
Sami stiffened. A creaking followed by a muffled curse came from diagonally behind him, up in one of the rebel positions. He hunched down behind the open car door and glanced up. He couldn’t see anyone but he heard footsteps receding. It was probably a patrolling FSA soldier. He had warned them he was leaving and hoped they would honour their promise of letting him go.
While waiting for the signal from the other side, he examined the road ahead. Before the revolution it had been one of Homs’ busiest thoroughfares, especially during rush hour. In the moonlit night it looked like a tsunami had crashed over it – car parts, tree limbs and blocks of concrete covered the asphalt like ancient beasts. Weeds grew out of every crack.
There were other shapes too: twisted, cramping. The bodies had reached various stages of decomposition. A few feet away lay a pile of what looked like clothes that concealed the skeleton of someone who must have been killed during the earliest days of the siege. Further on was a fresh body emitting a stench of dead flesh and excrement. Probably one of the FSA soldiers he had been told had been shot the other day, who, like Muhammed, had been unlucky or deceived in his negotiations for safe passage. Maybe the same fate awaited him.
Then he saw it: a light in the darkness. The dot was no bigger than the glowing end of a cigarette. He held his breath and stepped out.
Sami couldn’t make out the faces of the bodies he stepped over but he thought he saw Muhammed’s lanky frame, curled up in the foetal position, with red spatter in his dark curls and among the freckles on his forehead.
He saw the body of a fifteen-year-old boy, who he could have sworn had the same black eyes, bare feet and thin layer of dust on his downy top lip as his little brother.
There was the faint smell of fire and he saw around forty bodies belonging to men, women and children, a girl with half a head.
Further on lay an older man with a walnut walking stick, a pipe in the corner of his mouth and a red rose in the breast pocket of his suit jacket. Sami accidentally kicked a cracked gramophone. Passed a turtle with a broken shell. A grey kitten with a broken neck. He saw two schoolchildren, a boy and a girl, with a red bike between them. How could death, being so violent, give such a deceptive impression of innocence?
When Sami raised his eyes, it was as though the entire road had been transformed into a bridge under his feet. A bridge covered in blood and corpses, all turning their eyes on him. A tunnel with twelve men face down on the ground, with their hands tied behind them and bullets in the back of their heads.
With every step, he felt an overwhelming urge to stop, and with every step, he forced himself to carry on. The sound of his footsteps, creaking and crunching, was amplified and echoed in his ears, about as discreet as when the tanks rolled through the streets at the start of the siege. But if there was a sentry on duty that night, he must have dozed off.
Halfway across, he turned around. It was the first time he saw it from the other side; the houses seemed to be crouching in the darkness, turning their backs on him. In that moment, he understood why there were people who wavered and stood still one breath too long. Freedom – during the protests, they had shouted the word until they were hoarse, but now he no longer knew what kind of freedom he was looking for. During the siege, they had been prisoners of starvation and airstrikes, but also free to say and think whatever they wanted. Soon he would be able to eat his fill and fall asleep without hearing the distant sound of gunfire, but he would also be a prisoner once more.
There was still time to go back. The cats slunk in and out of the ruins. The snipers were on a break. He looked at his city, then turned his back on it, and as he did so the city turned its back on him. Sami would never see his home again, or what remained of it. He would never pass the playground where he once swung high on the swing and which had now been turned into a cemetery. He would no longer see the rebel soldiers play football next to his old school, divided into teams according to their battalions.
If he really did have several lives, he left one behind in Homs. Part of him continued to sleep on the cramped sofa, with his knees pulled into his chest. The glow from the stove would die out and the last heat leaving the room would be his breath.
He glanced back one last time and let his eyes linger on the house and the city that had been his hom
e.
Then he ran fast in the direction of the glowing point.
V
* * *
Coffee and cigarettes and a never-ending stream of cars on the Champs-Élysées. You always pay. You always roll one for me first. You smile and show me a picture of kittens you put a bowl down for in a ruined house, your home. Remember?, Facebook asks. You smile and remember the kittens.
After swapping memories and stories for almost a year, we become good friends. Then more than friends. Al-tafahum. You say that’s the most important thing for you in a relationship. According to the dictionary: mutual understanding. To be in agreement and exist in a context. Possibly that is the greatest kind of love: to be seen and to have your story recognized.
‘Does it matter that I’m a non-believer?’ I ask.
‘No. I have many friends who are atheists.’
‘Aren’t you worried I’ll go to hell?’
‘I think our actions determine what happens to us after death. And you can do good or bad regardless of faith.’
Later on, you tell me you don’t know what you believe. If there is a god, he’s on Bashar al-Assad’s side, which means he’s not your god.
I used to think believers had an easier time, that they held the answers in their hands and had faith. But I was wrong; you often seem to have more questions than answers.
‘Maybe you could talk to an imam,’ I suggest.
You smile again and brush the crumbs on the table into a pile, shake your head.
‘I’m sorry I tell you such sad stories,’ you say.
‘I’m sorry I ask so many questions,’ I say.
‘No, go on. I like it.’
‘OK. What do you do when you can’t sleep?’
You tell me that sometimes you imagine an old childhood friend, with freckles and a bird’s nest of curly hair, who picks you up and drives you through the spring night, through the Milky Way, down a deserted Champs-Élysées. Your lips close around the filter, you inhale. Your voice rises and scatters like smoke.
37
SAMI HAD AN impulse to touch his chest to make sure it was in one piece, that he wasn’t leaking from invisible bullet holes, that he hadn’t been turned into a sieve and that the man in front of him wasn’t the ferryman waiting to take him to the underworld. Maybe he had already crossed the black river. The regime soldier put a finger to his lips. A circus performer asking for silence, as though it were all staged, with an audience waiting on the other side, hidden behind the black velvet curtain of night. A shove in the back got him moving. The dot of light turned out to be a cigarette lighter with a built-in flashlight. That was when Sami realized he must be alive, because surely there are no lighters in the afterlife.
He was taken round the corner of a building that was almost identical to the one he had lived in for the past six months. The regime soldier led him through a doorway, gently but not particularly kindly, inside which three more soldiers were waiting. They searched him in silence, with a meticulousness that almost made Sami smile. How were they to know his most valuable possession was twelve red lentils in one of his jacket pockets.
Then began a long journey through hidden doorways and tunnels. After exiting the labyrinthine passages they stepped out on to a street, empty apart from a car with tinted windows. The night closed in around them and the moon hung over them, a fruit you could almost reach out for and pluck.
‘I can get by on my own from here,’ Sami whispered.
A gun was cocked and the hand on his shoulder tightened. One of the soldiers hushed him and raised his hand to calm the others. It wasn’t done yet; first he had to see the general.
‘Whatever you do, don’t look him in the eye.’
His tongue felt coarse and swollen. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen; the deal was that he was to be released immediately. If only there had been time to think, but there wasn’t. If only there had been somewhere to run, but there wasn’t. He was ushered into the car with the black windows and recalled other people who had climbed into cars and disappeared. Was this the last time he, too, would be seen?
The car slowed down in front of an enormous building Sami vaguely recognized but had never looked at twice before the war. He was brought into a bare room and placed on a straight-backed wooden chair. There was a chill draught around his legs even though a radiator was steaming in the corner and the air was warm and stuffy with tobacco, a hint of vanilla. The general greeted him and asked a few casual questions. Sami knew the type; it was the kind of politeness that people in power only deign to show when they want something in return. He straightened up and avoided looking the general in the eye, but still noticed the glass eye staring blankly at him. To his right: a short, squat man sweating profusely, his contact and the mediator of his freedom. His presence reassured Sami, but not for long.
A door opened and seven men in handcuffs were brought in and ushered to the other side of the room, which reinforced Sami’s impression that this was an interrogation. Even so, a modicum of relief. He didn’t recognize any of the prisoners and they didn’t recognize him, so he would be able to adjust his story a little whenever prudent.
Of course, Sami said in a voice he hoped exuded calm and confidence, of course he had completed his military service. He was honourably discharged, after a couple of months’ additional service.
Sure, he had sought out a media centre at the start of the revolution, he admitted it freely, but he had broken off contact with them when he realized they were traitors.
Yes, he had stayed in Homs when the shells started falling, but only to look after his gravely ill grandfather. What illness? Cancer, his lungs were black with tar, may he rest in peace. Then he had stayed in the besieged area, focusing on finding food and shelter – he only mentioned the practical, the harmless, the things that didn’t have anything to do with avoiding being in places where bombs were falling.
‘Mhm,’ the general said sceptically. ‘Fascinating story, truly.’
He looked to the left with his healthy eye and straight ahead with the glass one, then snapped his fingers at the soldier who had brought Sami in.
‘That one’ – the general pointed to an emaciated prisoner over by the wall, who had stuttered his way through a handful of questions – ‘and that one’ – the finger pointed at Sami. ‘Take them to Abu Riad tomorrow morning.’
Sami was led through the long corridors and put in a grey-painted cell with a steel bed and a bucket in one corner. His contact lingered by the door, like an impatient horse waiting for lumps of sugar.
‘That wasn’t so bad now, was it?’
‘Who’s Abu Riad?’ Sami asked and tried to keep his voice calm.
‘The interrogator. He has quite a reputation, sorry to say.’
‘This isn’t what we agreed.’
‘Yes, well. I’m sure it’ll work out,’ his contact said and wrung his hands. ‘There is just one other thing, a tiny detail …’
He cleared his throat when Sami showed no sign of wanting to continue the conversation, running his hands over his lapels.
‘Tomorrow morning, before your interrogation, a TV team will come here for an interview.’
Sami held his breath before asking: ‘What interview?’
‘The one where you admit to being a terrorist. A traitor. But that thanks to our benevolent leader Bashar al-Assad you have been pardoned and accepted as a citizen once more. To serve as an inspiration to your friends in the besieged area.’
Sami leaned forward and looked him in the eyes.
‘So they can arrest all of us later? Over my dead body.’
‘They have no other reason to let you go,’ said the man and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. ‘Did they let you borrow a phone? Try to sleep and we’ll see how it goes.’
The cell door slammed shut and Sami called his parents. Since the call was sure to be monitored he kept it brief, but the sound of Nabil and Samira’s fragile voices jogged something loose inside him.
�
�Why didn’t you tell us you were trying to get out?’
‘I didn’t want you to worry. What difference would it have made?’
His parents cried quietly and asked if he had eaten; he said he was being treated well, that it was just a matter of clearing up a few routine questions.
‘The battery is running low. I’ll call as soon as I get out.’
Sami lay down on the cot and closed his eyes, dozed off for minutes at a time, until his body finally gave in to sleep. He was an anchor at the bottom of the sea; light danced around the dark underside of a boat, high above, out of reach. He longed for it to be over: the interrogations, the mounting fear, the walls closing in on him. He made himself a promise that if he ever got out from here, he would go to wherever he could live freely.
He was woken up by a knock on his cell door and expected to be greeted by a bright white light, blinding cameras. Instead he saw the shadow of a guard and was taken to Abu Riad.
The interrogation room looked like a normal office. Abu Riad was several inches shorter than Sami, had grey hair and was dressed in black jeans and a moss green shirt buttoned all the way up. He smoked like they do in the old western films his dad used to watch, with his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, taking long, deep drags and blowing the smoke into Sami’s face. Abu Riad seemed to consider himself a gentleman but Sami had no doubt that when he left the neat office, it was to go downstairs to the basement where the torture took place.