City of Sparrows

by Eva Nour

  Sami was taken back to the cell where they played cards for a few more hours until the thirst and cigarette smoke gave him a headache, at which point he tried to get to sleep, to no avail. Eventually he did drift off and awoke when the cell door banged open.

  ‘Line up,’ the guard shouted, even though the faintest whisper would have reverberated in the cramped space.

  He was accompanied by three other guards, and Sami gasped when he saw their camouflage uniforms and red hats.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked one of the partygoers as he packed up the deck of cards. He must have still been drunk to dare to question the military police, and he was promptly dragged outside.

  ‘Now, silence!’ the first guard shouted, also seemingly nervous next to the military police.

  As they were ushered across the dirt yard, their heads lowered, Sami felt a warm breath against his cheek.

  ‘Boloni,’ the boy whispered to him. ‘They’re taking us to Boloni.’

  ‘Look down! I said eyes on the ground!’

  They were shoved into a minibus with a bulletproof rear window, through which they watched the streets of Homs and freedom rush past.

  All the emotions Sami had gone through during the day, which had raged and clawed at the inside of his chest, turned into desolation. Despite all the rumours and stories, he hadn’t believed it until that moment: that this was the truth of their country, that you could kiss your girlfriend goodbye in the morning, go for a walk and that same evening be sitting handcuffed in a military vehicle on your way to a prison, the second one of the day.

  13

  BOLONI WAS ONE of the military police’s prisons outside Homs. Dusk was falling when they arrived but Sami caught a glimpse of the building from the outside: a square block with armed guards on the roof. Chained together in pairs, they shuffled inside.

  They were received by new guards who told them to take off everything except their underwear. Then they were told to take that off too and squat down twice. Sami decided to be a model prisoner while he tried to think of a different strategy. He took off his jeans and the black shirt with the star-shaped leaf, folded everything and rolled up his socks. Pulled his underwear down to his ankles, squatted down twice and put his clothes back on. The partygoers did the same thing, serious now. The two well-dressed men followed suit, equally grave.

  The boy, on the other hand, stood stock still in his red boxers. One of the guards shouted at him to obey orders but the boy didn’t move. It didn’t seem deliberate. More like his mental machinery had ground to a halt, locking him in position with his legs inches apart and his arms hanging limply like a marionette’s. Then the guard punched him in the nose; it sounded like something cracked, and he landed two more blows. As the boy slowly collapsed on to the floor, he received two kicks in the stomach. The guards pulled him up and pulled down his underwear – blood was dripping from the boy’s member – and shoved him along.

  ‘Leave all belongings and loose items,’ the guard said, and pointed to their belts and watches. ‘Shoelaces too, so you don’t get any ideas about hanging yourselves.’

  The guard was still massaging his knuckles when it was Sami’s turn to hand over his things. Only then did the guard look up and scrutinize him.

  ‘My goodness, Sami, long time no see. How are you, my friend?’

  Haydar spread his arms wide and looked like he was about to hug him but froze mid-movement. He still wore a silver wristwatch, like he did when they were little and went to school together. His hair was greying and he’d lost some of his confident posture, but other than that he looked the same.

  ‘Here are my things,’ Sami said, looking straight ahead.

  ‘Whatever you need, you let me know,’ Haydar said. Then he looked away, as though embarrassed, or maybe it was just his knuckles hurting.

  When they had all been stripped of their personal belongings they were taken inside. The prison was built like a cube, as he had surmised from the outside, but with a traditional open courtyard. Inside, in the gloom, all he could make out were long rows of doors with narrow, barred windows.

  One of the doors opened and they were ushered inside, tripping over legs and feet before the prisoners who were already in there had time to shuffle out of the way. The first thing to hit him was the smell: a mix of blood, urine, sweat and excrement, some emanating from a toilet in one corner partly concealed by a yellowed shower curtain.

  During the first night, the skies opened and they watched the deluge through the barred window. They were so many that they couldn’t stretch out on the floor – they lay pressed against each other with their legs pulled up. It was early autumn but Sami was so cold he was shaking.

  The next morning, they were awoken by the sound of the cell door flying open and pieces of white cheese being passed in to them. Sami was unable to eat so much as a bite.

  In the light of day, he could see more of the cell. It was about 250 feet square and held close to fifty men. The previously merry partygoers were quiet and hungover. They had smoked all their cigarettes and were unlikely to ask these guards for more.

  Most of the prisoners had bruises and open wounds. Sami hoped they were the result of sharp elbows and feet during the night. He was soon disabused of that. Not long after breakfast, the cell door opened again.

  ‘Against the wall, against the wall! Idiots, are you all deaf?’

  Like sheep, they were herded to one end of the cell. Whoever was too slow got a beating from the guards. Sami kept his head bowed, but he noticed one of the guards had wrapped his rifle in a white scarf. Two of the prisoners were dragged out crying and screaming, then a long, agonizing wait followed. He counted to one hundred and then started over. Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine…The next time the door opened, the limp bodies of two prisoners were dragged back into the cell.

  Sami caught a glimpse of the guard’s rifle again. The scarf was now deep red.

  A man on the far side of the cell took his shirt off and soaked it in water from the toilet sink, and the rag was passed from prisoner to prisoner. The wounds on the two men’s swollen legs, which were like black and blue logs, were dabbed.

  Every hour and every minute until dusk, the torture continued. Sami was not called out to the yard so maybe his relative’s contacts had helped him. He didn’t see Haydar again, which was a small relief.

  * * *

  —

  The following night, the temperature plummeted and he started shaking long before midnight. This time he noticed the bedbugs; he had probably been too exhausted the previous night. As soon as darkness fell, his entire body, particularly his chest and stomach, began to itch violently. When the first light of day seeped through the window, he looked for the men with the battered legs. Their wounds were teeming with bugs.

  Breakfast consisted of white cheese again. Lunch and supper the previous day had been lentil soup and bread, with either bulgur or three potatoes each. When everyone was done, the guard came back and asked if anyone was still hungry and wanted more. Hawaiian shirt immediately put his hand up. Sami, for his part, only managed half a potato. He wasn’t attempting a hunger strike, it was just that his throat was so dry he couldn’t swallow.

  ‘You have to eat,’ Hawaiian shirt told him. ‘Rule number one in captivity: eat when you can, since you never know when you’ll be fed next.’

  Shortly after breakfast the guards started opening and closing cell doors. The prisoners were dragged into the courtyard in groups. Soon they could hear the dull thudding of boots and fists colliding with human flesh.

  ‘Still, this place is better,’ said Hawaiian shirt. ‘We’re still considered part of the army, even if we are traitors who need to be disciplined. In other prisons, like Saidnaya and Palmyra, prisoners die every day.’

  He listed the methods used to correct inappropriate behaviour: beating the soles of a person’s feet, electric shocks
and waterboarding. Palestinian hangings, where the victim was strung up with his wrists behind his back until his shoulders dislocated. Some of the guards were on drugs but the primary reason for the torture was another one: tedium. They viewed the prisoners as animals they could experiment on.

  ‘People aren’t born cruel but they learn,’ said Hawaiian shirt. ‘And they learn surprisingly quickly.’

  He told Sami they were most likely being kept a week or two in this prison, but he knew about a man who had spent many years behind bars.

  ‘Next to the cell door was a tiny hole he managed to conceal,’ Hawaiian shirt said with a low voice, ‘and through which he peered out from time to time. When a new guard arrived, he had a hard time looking at the corpses in the hallway after the hangings. He threw up and left that job to the other guards. But after a few weeks, he stayed on his post. He helped carry the bodies, and one day, he was the one joking around with a new guard: what are you, a weakling, can’t take the smell of a little bit of shit, eh? And as he said it, he’d be prodding one of the bodies with his foot.’

  Hawaiian shirt paused and looked down at his feet.

  ‘It’s something I’ve thought a lot about,’ he continued. ‘If it’s possible to learn evil, surely it also has to be possible to learn goodness. Don’t you think?’

  Sami didn’t reply, but that seemed not to matter. Maybe he was talking more to himself than anyone else.

  * * *

  —

  On the third day in Boloni, they were taken into the courtyard for inspection and a scolding from the prison director, a short, robust man in his forties with sun-bleached hair. He yelled as much at the guards as at the prisoners, and sometimes took part in the torture, which he seemed to relish. The prisoners were ordered to sit on the cold ground with their heads lowered.

  ‘Us too?’ said the man who used to wear a Rolex.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ replied a younger guard, glancing nervously this way and that.

  When the prison director noticed that the two formerly well-dressed men, now sporting rumpled shirts and stubble, were standing up next to the other prisoners, his face darkened. He walked up to them, grabbed one by the chin, then the other, and spat out the words:

  ‘Who do you think you are? Just because you’re judges doesn’t mean I can’t beat you to death. Sit down!’

  The two men sat down immediately, right next to Sami. They pushed the palms of their hands to the ground to keep from shaking.

  Sitting soon became the worst form of torture. The concrete floor was too cold to lie down on and the lack of space made it difficult to stretch out anyhow. No matter which way Sami turned, he felt like his legs were being worn down. His body was growing numb. Bruises appeared around his knees, calves and thighs where blood vessels had burst.

  * * *

  —

  After one week in prison, the gate opened and two guards entered the cell.

  ‘Which one of you is Sami?’

  His tongue froze and his throat twisted. So it was his turn to be dragged out in the yard, to be turned into a piece of bruised meat. One of the guards chewed impatiently and looked around in the cell.

  ‘Either show yourself now or you stay another week.’

  Hawaiian shirt put a hand on Sami’s shoulder, and the guards grabbed him under his arms. He felt like he was passing out but a sudden slap shook him back to life. Instead of being pulled into the yard, he was taken through the main doors, outside, where an armoured car was waiting for him.

  ‘Your lucky day,’ the uniformed driver said. ‘You’re going to the army’s recruitment centre in Homs.’

  * * *

  —

  It was like stepping into a parallel universe where people were neat, sweet-smelling and had beautiful skin with no lacerations or bruises. As he walked into the recruitment centre, Sami looked up to see his father, Grandpa Faris and Ali standing by the registration desk. It felt like it had been a year since they last saw each other.

  ‘My son!’

  Sami walked slowly forward and his dad met him halfway, embracing him and kissing his cheeks. Grandpa Faris stroked his hair and Ali put a warm hand on his back. Sami breathed in their scents: oud and soap and clean, perfectly clean, skin.

  ‘Sarah wanted to come too,’ his brother said, ‘but her bus was late and we didn’t dare to wait for her.’

  They were smiling but it looked forced and Nabil’s eyes were wetter than usual.

  ‘Are they treating you well? Have you eaten?’

  Sami nodded and thought to himself that it was almost true. During his detention he had managed to eat two potatoes, and there was no point worrying his family. The fact that he hadn’t showered was harder to hide. But they held him for a long time, until the uniformed woman in charge of registration noticed them.

  ‘Why is he not wearing handcuffs?’ she said, pointing at the guard who had brought Sami in.

  ‘I was told to take them off while he met with his family.’

  ‘This is no family dinner. Come on, you, visiting hours are over.’ The woman rapped her gold rings on the desk.

  ‘We’re doing everything in our power to get you out of there,’ Ali said and gave him a final hug.

  The meeting was over in minutes. Sami would be taken back to the military prison in Boloni and wait for the decision about his placement. In the car, the driver handed over his phone.

  ‘A gift from your brother. You’ve got five minutes.’

  Sami called Sarah first, then his mother. He could hear Samira swallowing several times but her voice was strikingly calm. He must do what the soldiers told him to do, she insisted.

  ‘Don’t get riled up over nothing, conserve your energy and eat when they feed you.’

  She said what he needed to hear.

  * * *

  —

  Back in Boloni, the persistent rain kept the temperature low and turned the nights into protracted battles. Time stood still or moved in circles, even the sounds of torture blended with exhaustion and hunger. Sometimes he didn’t know if he was awake or asleep, if he was sitting or lying down, if he was a body or a human.

  On the eleventh or twelfth day, he had lost count, there was a break in the tedium. Together with the two judges, whose shirts were now virtually transparent, he was handcuffed and taken to a new location.

  * * *

  —

  Al-Nabek was on the road between Homs and Damascus, known for the nearby monastery Mar Musa. The city was in the valley and the monastery up in the mountains. A British archaeologist had recently found ten-thousand-year-old remains next to the monastery: stone circles, the foundations of walls and graves. Traces of people who had lived and died. The thought boggled his mind, that humans were so short-lived compared to the objects they surrounded themselves with.

  Having left the crowded cell, Sami was now standing in an endless field. The autumn sun was high in the sky, warming his neck, and the air was dry with sand. The din of voices and feet intensified. Five thousand men surrounded him, ready to be assigned to their new divisions. Most had registered more or less willingly when called up. A small number of women had joined of their own free will. They often came from Alawite families and did not attend the usual military service but went to military school to be placed on administrative services later. Around a hundred men had, like Sami, come straight from prison.

  The field was surrounded by numbered lorries and a soldier with a megaphone called out names and numbers. When Sami’s name rang out, it felt like when he was younger and had to go and get the football from the old man’s house. Mud and quicksand, like the world was losing its contours.

  The lorry he was placed in was followed by two more vehicles. Similar convoys drove off in different directions. From above, it must have looked like a snake pit scattering; caravans of dark military vehicles slithe
ring through the barren landscape.

  Sami didn’t speak during the drive. He wore the same clothes as when he was arrested, the jeans and black T-shirt now covered in white sweat streaks. The sports bag his father and older brother had managed to give him in prison sat by his feet. It contained a change of clothes, a first-aid kit with plasters, antiseptic and gauze. His mother had also put a miniature Quran in it, so small it fitted in the palm of his hand. He had held it since he took his seat on the lorry and now, as he opened it, a folded note fell out.

  I love you, my son.

  14

  THEY HAD PASSED evergreen forest and little villages and turned on to a dirt road. Now, the military convoy slowed down. They were in the mountains, somewhere outside Damascus, that was all Sami knew. Up here, the air shredded his breath and he shivered in his short-sleeves. Everyone climbed out of the vehicles, hundreds of strangers eyeing one another. Some tried to find reasons to laugh, spotting an acquaintance or relative to talk to, but Sami kept quiet.

  ‘Can anyone here write quickly?’ the soldier who had driven them asked.

  When no one raised their hand, Sami did, if hesitantly. Considering the soldiers he had encountered so far, he thought it safest to show a willingness to help from the start. He was told to make lists of the new recruits. First he was to tell them about himself.

  ‘I’m twenty-two years old and from Homs.’

  ‘Do you have any special skills?’

  ‘Networks and computers.’

  The soldier contented himself with that and Sami breathed a sigh of relief. The row of soldiers-to-be inched forward and Sami noted down their names and details, one after the other. They were from Damascus, Aleppo, Daraa, Idlib and other places all over the country. They had studied law, economics, art history, medicine or just graduated from secondary school. They were pimply, thin, muscular, long-haired, shaven, swarthy, ginger, freckled, with or without facial hair. What many of them had in common was that this was going to be the first time they had lived away from their parents.