by Eva Nour
* * *
—
Days and weeks passed, darkness fell and ice water was poured on their backs. From time to time soldiers had to be brought to the military hospital after passing out or not being able to feel their feet. I choose this, Sami thought. I choose this and it won’t kill me.
After the initial training period, they got some time off. He counted down the days until each small break. He could endure the physical punishments tolerably but some things were harder to deal with than others. Like one particular sergeant. The sergeant had an arrogant way about him and enjoyed insulting them during training. They were weaklings. Vermin.
‘I could put a bullet in the back of your heads and no one would care. I could fuck your sisters and little brothers.’
Sami was just getting up from doing push-ups when the world went black and he lost his balance. A foot between his shoulder blades and the sergeant’s scornful voice: ‘Eat shit.’ White lightning shot through his body. Sami got up slowly and groggily, braced himself and kicked the sergeant so hard in the stomach that he fell headlong on to the stony ground.
In the barracks, several people patted Sami on the back and laughed at the whole thing. Except Hussein, who shook his head.
‘They’re going to punish all of us.’
The next night, they lined up as usual, dressed only in their underwear. It was cold, well below freezing. This time their instructor was present to personally oversee the evening’s punishments. A few people bent down to start the push-ups.
The instructor held up his hand. ‘No. Tonight, we have a different task for you.’ He wrapped his scarf around his neck, pulled up his leather gloves. ‘It’s very simple. Tonight you are to stand still.’
A numb feeling spread through Sami’s body. Stand still? He had expected some sort of consequence after the kick. For them to pull him out of bed in the middle of the night for extra punishment. For them to send him to the clink, even though soldiers weren’t supposed to be sent there during their basic training.
At the same time, he figured the sergeant was ashamed. The instructors were supposed to demonstrate good morals and serve as an example for the new soldiers. In order to explain the kick, the sergeant would sooner or later have to admit that he had broken the honour code of the army by insulting the recruits’ families.
Sami had almost started thinking of his kick as a nightmare, as something imagined, a cat standing on its hind legs asking the time. But now, with the instructor right in front of him, the event acquired a crisp clarity. After a few minutes, he began to understand the severity of the punishment. Because standing still was much worse than moving around. Doing exercises made the body warm and gave the mind something to focus on instead of the cold.
After a few minutes, his teeth started chattering uncontrollably. He clenched his jaw but the shaking spread through his body. After half an hour, he couldn’t feel his legs. After an hour, he heard a thud, then another. Sami didn’t dare to turn to look, but out of the corner of his eye he saw soldiers dropping around him. They fell and stayed down. Their hands were claws in various shades of purple. Only after some time did the instructor signal to the medics to take them to the military hospital. Bill managed to stay up, as did Sami. Hussein seemed unperturbed by the cold, but when they got back inside their barracks he wrapped himself in all the clothes and blankets he had.
* * *
—
The next morning, the ground was covered with glittering ice crystals, the tussocks of grass stuck up like spiky hedgehogs. Fourteen people were in the hospital with frostbite. The others were woken up to begin the day’s drills as though nothing had happened.
16
WHENEVER SAMI HELD a new pen, he would assess its weight. See what kind of nib he was dealing with: wide or thin, straight or diagonal. It was the pen that inspired the writing, not the other way round. In the beginning was the word, his mum used to say. He pictured instead a golden pen, the original pen that wrote the world into existence, that drew light in the night of the universe.
Quite unlike the pen in front of him at this moment, which was barely usable. Sami moved the broken-off felt tip across the paper. A broken line of ants, a parade of grasshoppers. The sergeant held up the notepad and studied it in silence.
‘What’s your name, what’s your number?’
After almost six months of basic training, Sami and the other recruits were about to be split up. They continued to perform the same drills but noticed they were watched less meticulously than before.
One day, a jeep had pulled up to where they were doing their morning workout and a sergeant had climbed out. If anyone were to draw his face, lead pencil would have been the inevitable medium: grey eyes, placed close together, a thin moustache and a thin mouth. Outside of the army, he would have been someone you found in an office, in some unassuming bureaucratic post. But here everyone looked up when he cleared his throat. The sergeant had come from a military base outside Damascus and he was looking for someone with good handwriting. Since the military base in question was the core of their division, where the important decisions were made, it was a place most people wanted to be. Most of all because administrative work was a dream for the soldiers. Being there meant not being in active combat, not getting punishments. And certain perks could be negotiated, too.
‘Who here has the best handwriting?’ said the sergeant.
Sami was just about to raise his hand when the group thronged in front of him.
‘Me, me!’ one of them shouted and was given the notepad to write a sample.
The sergeant raised his eyebrows and sent the pad on to the next volunteer.
‘Write in your neatest hand,’ he urged them, and one after the other, they were dismissed.
‘Please, try your best.’
One of them tried so hard he broke the blue felt tip. When it was Sami’s turn, the pen was all but unusable. Did he have another? The sergeant shook his head. Sami wrote as best he could and tried to perfect all the fine lines, curlicues, dots and marks needed.
‘Which script?’ the sergeant asked, scrutinizing the paper.
‘Al-diwani,’ said Sami.
‘Do you know others?’
He filled the page with sentences and words. For a moment, he was so engrossed in the familiar task – taken back to the writing competitions in school and writing signs for his siblings’ doors – that he forgot the officer.
‘OK, that’s enough.’
* * *
—
During the following weeks, Sami and the other recruits waited to be given their assignments. If there was one silver lining, it was that their bodies slowly adapted to their trials. Sami suffered from constant sleep deprivation but was now able to do the drills without too much pain.
They had a day and a half off every other week. When they rejoined the camp, they would have a potluck with the food brought back from home: bulgur balls filled with lamb and pine nuts from Aleppo, rich red wine from Suwayda and grainy, matured cheese from Homs, dipped in silky smooth olive oil from Afrin.
Every morning, they ran out into the vast evergreen forest and back again. Whoever made it back first was given an extra day off. It was an almost unimaginable luxury. Yet even so, no one wanted to be the fastest, because that meant being added to the list.
No one had seen the list but they all knew about it. The soldiers in the combat battalion had the hardest physical job and the list contained the names of the recruits assigned to it for the final part of their service. So they jogged at a leisurely pace, careful to return to camp in a group.
Their drill instructor grew increasingly annoyed. Granted, they did follow orders and ran, but they seemed to have discovered a loophole in the regulations. An unspoken agreement. A collective resistance. Whenever someone felt impatient and wanted to sprint the last half mile, they reminded each other about th
e list.
One morning they were shivering in the yard, in long, sleepy lines. The sunlight broke through the haze and their commanding officer began to speak.
‘Today, you will not be going for your regular run. It will be the same route but whoever finishes first will be given something extra.’
He looked around and straightened up.
‘Nothing special, just a little bonus. Four days’ leave.’
Waves now rippled through the formation. A confused din rose around Sami. Bill turned to Hussein, who for the first time raised his hand in the morning assembly.
‘Do you mean in addition to the regular weekend, the one we get every other week?’
The officer nodded. Four days, an ocean of time. They would be able to go home, see friends and family. But they hadn’t forgotten the threat of being selected for the combat battalion.
‘I’d rather die,’ Sami heard someone say.
‘It’s a trap,’ whispered someone else.
‘I’d rather run with my legs lashed together than end up on that list,’ said a third.
The officer clapped his hands and the din subsided.
‘Yes, and another thing. If I catch you coming back as a group, everyone will have their weekend leave cancelled.’
An angry clamour surged through the group. Being offered something you had never had was one thing, having your privileges rescinded was another.
They started to run in silence. A few people tried to talk but soon ran out of breath as the group cranked up the pace. Sami followed, still unsure if it was worth it.
‘Aren’t you already on the list?’ Hussein asked.
‘Yeah, I’ve been on the list since the first time we did target practice. But I see no need to push my name further up it,’ Sami replied.
Or maybe it was worth it? He pictured driving the pink Beetle to the sea with Sarah, picnicking on the beach. Sitting in a café in Damascus, smoking the hookah, apple-and-mint flavour, maybe spending the night in a hotel. Without noticing it, Sami accelerated and left the group behind. The ground disappeared underneath his feet. Wet leaves, slippery. Two miles in, he considered stopping to wait for the group but he turned and set his sights on two runners up ahead. Only Hussein was keeping up with him.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Sami asked to flee his own thoughts.
Every breath pressed against his ribcage. The rushing in his ears. He didn’t expect Hussein to answer.
‘I’m thinking about the sea,’ he said. ‘I’ve always wanted to know what it sounds like when the waves break against the shore.’
They were approaching the densest part of the forest when they saw one of the runners trip over a root and fall. The guy behind him didn’t have time to swerve and so tripped over him. Sami and Hussein lengthened their stride, caught up and passed them. They were coming up to the final stretch. One of them was going to sprint. Sami sensed Hussein would win; despite his sinewy body, he was used to roaming across vast distances. They had found another rhythm now. His throat was burning and his chest pounding but his legs were light. They could keep running for ever and beyond, past the horizon.
‘What the fuck…’
Just then, three people dashed out of a shrubbery. They must have hidden there on the way out and were completely rested. Hussein stopped and bent over with his hands on his knees and spat on the ground. Sami stopped, too, and felt his lungs heaving. They walked the last hundred yards to the finish line. Their instructor patted the first three runners on the back and congratulated them.
The three winners laughed and Sami frowned at them, but Hussein put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Let it go.’
The four days of leave had just been a fantasy anyway. Military service was built around creating vanishingly brief moments of hope that were then instantly dashed.
* * *
—
Living in the camp you had to hold on to the moments that kept your head above water, like the taste of fruity lip balm. On Saturdays, the soldiers in training were allowed visits. It was a two-hour window of brief happiness, which he could live on for a long time.
Sarah came to visit Sami a couple of times, and neither time did they talk about the future or the past. In fact, they didn’t talk much at all, just sat on the bench behind the barracks, kissing.
‘Have I changed?’ he asked when they came up for air, but she was evasive.
‘What does it feel like to shoot a gun?’ she asked instead.
‘The recoil hurts your shoulder, but you get used to it.’
‘Tell me more.’
‘I don’t know, it feels strange…Like it’s a game.’
‘Well, you’ve always liked games. At least on the computer.’
‘That’s different. You know, sometimes we practise with the cold weapon, the bayonet, on dummies that look like humans.’
He swallowed and didn’t continue but Sarah took his hand and smiled, like it wasn’t that bad.
‘Do you aim for the throat or the thigh?’ she asked. ‘I’ve heard a person’s brain is drained of blood in less than a minute after a stab wound to the thigh. That is, if the person’s standing up.’
They didn’t have a minute, Sami told her. They weren’t knives for slicing bread or cutting firewood with. They were straight, pointy blades, part of the rifle, and with the enemy that close, you only got one chance.
‘So where?’ she insisted.
‘You stab at the heart, through the ribcage.’
He didn’t tell her he had dreamt of the crunching sound of ribs. That he had woken up clammy with perspiration and looked at his hands, relieved they weren’t red, that it was still training and make-believe.
* * *
—
Soon enough, though, it became real. It started with the assignments being announced. Hussein’s shoulders drooped when he found out he was going to the combat battalion, as were the three runners who had cheated in the foot race. Bill was going to work in communications, which was ironic since he didn’t speak the language, but he was good with technical things.
Then Sami’s name and assignment were called out. Several people in the assembly turned around and looked at him in surprise. Cartographer?
Sami would be going to the military base outside Damascus, the heart of their division, to work as one of three cartographers among twelve thousand soldiers.
17
WITH SAMI’S NEW posting came two new roommates, Ahmed and Rafat, who were also going to be trained as cartographers. They shared a windowless room with three steel beds and a stove in the corner.
Ahmed was from Aleppo and had two degrees, in philosophy and sociology, because he had tried to postpone serving by studying. In the evenings he read in bed, with thin frames at the tip of his nose.
‘Do you know when I really started losing faith in our country?’ Ahmed said and turned a page without looking up; his hands were long and fine for belonging to the tall body. ‘In the summer of 2000. When all the TV channels showed Hafez’s funeral instead of the European Championship.’
‘You can’t say that. Not here,’ Rafat said and shook his head.
‘Why? We’re all alone. Are you going to snitch on me?’
‘No. Not at all. I just think we should be careful.’
Rafat frowned and put his arms around his legs. He was younger than them, a quiet teenager who bit his nails when he got nervous. He hadn’t been to university yet because he wanted to get his military service out of the way. His hands were narrow but scarred. His skin was tanned from working in his family’s olive groves in Afrin, a small town in the north, surrounded by red soil and blue mountains.
‘What are you reading anyway, the holy book?’
Sami meant it as a joke, but Ahmed snorted. ‘If you consider Nietzsche holy.’
Ahmed was one of the
first people Sami had met who openly identified as atheist.
‘I’m fine with religion,’ he said. ‘As long as it doesn’t worship al-Assad.’
Overall Sami was happy to have them both as roommates, apart from the slight downside of Rafat’s snoring at night.
‘It’s impressive, don’t you think?’ Ahmed said with a clear voice in the dark room. ‘A mouse who sounds like an elephant.’
When certain recruits from basic training accused them of having bribed their way into jobs at the military base, Sami pointed to Rafat, who was a Kurd and would never have been able to get ahead through bribery. If bribes had been involved, they would have been placed elsewhere, where they weren’t in charge of maps or invited to participate in strategy meetings.
In Homs, Sami had mostly spent time with Sunnis and Christians, but at the base everyone lived cheek by jowl. The army was a place where people from every corner of the country came together, irrespective of religion and ethnicity. Friendships were based on being there for each other, sharing your food and telling entertaining stories at night.
It was during such evenings that he found out details of other parts of the division, such as that there was a group of North Korean teachers who taught martial arts to the commanders, and a chemical battalion in the event that the country was hit by chemical attacks.
Sami also tried to ask about Younes, the electrician at his old IT company. But no one knew him or could say where he was. In the end, Sami gave up hope that his friend was still alive, even though he always kept up appearances when he talked to Younes’ parents. Sami thought back to another time, when they worked under swirling blue skies, and how the world looked slightly different from up there, on the rooftops, and how the happiness could suddenly give way to a feeling of wanting to jump. He must take care not to fall for those kinds of thoughts.