by Eva Nour
* * *
—
Sami, Rafat and Ahmed worked in a dark room with grey concrete walls. The square glass drawing table was lit from underneath. Their pencils were the German brand Faber-Castell and similar to the ones he had used in school: sky blue, sand, light pink and grass green. One box was enough for about ten maps; the tips wore down and needed constant sharpening, the shavings scattering like confetti on the floor. After months of digging and shooting practice, Sami slowly got back into his old craft. War fronts and brigades materialized under his hands. Red dots denoted hidden armouries and tanks. Their task was to draw different scenarios. How would they counter, say, an Israeli airstrike against an important armoury? The maps showed five to eight strategic steps to follow, to show how the Syrian army would move its battalions and brigades.
The brigade general who was in charge of the maps trusted Sami. There were two keys to the room with the codex maps and he was given one of them. It was one of the base’s most highly classified buildings. It was also the dustiest, with cobwebs in the corners, since no one was allowed in to clean.
Sami’s new role came with certain privileges. All brigade generals were required to produce and submit a local map of their area every month. Since they were unused to drawing, they asked Sami, Rafat and Ahmed for help. In exchange they were given boots, fuel for the radiator and extra food. Whenever an officer of higher rank passed by, all the sergeants had to stand to attention. But Sami and Ahmed stayed in their seats during their breaks and smoked with their army-issue shirts unbuttoned. Rafat too, who started to relax in their company.
When they crossed the line, they were sent to the clink, but it was nothing compared to the prisons Sami had been in. Sami had his own corner; the guards allowed him to smoke; someone always brought a guitar and played it. They were fed and not beaten. In fact, it was one of the few times he could catch up on sleep. He had a special blanket and pillow for the clink. In time, he became friends with the guards and could sneak in a toothbrush, water bottle, gum, cigarettes and sometimes even mosquito repellent. Some of the guards played cards with him.
Sami was usually detained for minor infractions, like skipping morning assembly to get some extra sleep and have his coffee in peace. Or procrastinating on a time-sensitive map, handing it in a day and a half later than promised.
‘Six days in the clink,’ the general would declare.
But Sami was usually let out after a day or two when a map needed to be completed because he was considered the best colourist.
It was when he was under arrest that Sami got to know the shepherd Jemal, another regular in the clink. They were the same age but Sami had grown up in a major city and Jemal had lived all his life in the country. Every time Jemal was put in the clink, he declared himself innocent, saying it wasn’t his fault one of his goats had slipped away and trespassed on the military base. At the same time, he readily admitted the grass was better at the base. After a few days, the general would let Jemal out, confiscate one of his goats and say, ‘See you soon.’
Sami wondered what his life would have been like if he had grown up in a different family, in a different part of the country. Maybe all change starts that way: with a simple question. You suddenly discern a possibility in what used to seem preposterous, unimaginable. What if your life had been different? What if society were different? What if you could actually change it?
* * *
—
Everything would change that spring, 2011. Sami had almost completed his military service and was counting the days until he would be discharged when rumours started flying around the base. At first he didn’t believe them because they were so improbable. There was whispering about a demonstration in Daraa, a city on the Jordanian border.
The police had caught some schoolboys writing on a wall, Ahmed told Sami when they were making a map together, something about the people wishing for the fall of the regime. Their families were forced to hand the boys over to the secret police, who tortured them. The whole city was in uproar.
The officers at the camp didn’t say a word about the demonstrations. They did, however, cancel all leave and announce that everyone in the military would have their service extended.
‘For how long?’ asked Ahmed and polished his glasses on the uniform, like all of this was normal procedure.
‘Indefinitely. Probably a couple of weeks, maybe months. This decision comes from higher up.’
Sami swallowed hard. The buzzing in his ears intensified as though there were a wasp in his head. Indefinitely. After that, the rumours spread like wildfire. More demonstrations had been organized, it was said, in Damascus and Homs and Hama. Not Hama? Yes, even in Hama. The state news showed a sea of people marching through the cities, waving the Syrian flag.
‘They want to show their love and respect for the president,’ the reporter said.
In later broadcasts, the demonstrators had switched to the revolutionary flag used to protest against French rule in the previous century. At that point, the reporter looked straight into the camera and said, matter-of-factly and without batting an eyelid, that the people taking to the streets were junkies and criminals. Only now did the officers start talking openly about the demonstrators. They were terrorists, armed terrorists.
* * *
—
One day at the end of March there was an order to confiscate all TVs, satellite receivers and mobile phones at the base. It was to be done within twenty-four hours. The next day, the military police went through each and every room to make sure no prohibited equipment had been overlooked. The military base was allowed to keep one TV set that showed state and Lebanese channels.
Sami didn’t know what to think. Before he handed in his mobile phone, he had read news from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya that the people in those countries were demanding freedom and democracy. But the demonstrators were said to carry weapons, which made him feel torn. An armed struggle? Led by whom?
One of the generals showed Sami a video of a colonel supposedly shot dead by Syrian protestors. The film showed his bloody corpse and grieving family.
‘This is what the terrorists’ so-called fight for freedom looks like,’ said the general.
Sami asked Ahmed about the murdered colonel. He told him there was a rumour that the colonel hadn’t been shot by protestors at all. No, he had been stopped at a checkpoint and refused to show his ID card, which led to him being shot by a member of a regime-friendly militia.
Regardless of one’s opinions, it was safest to keep them to oneself.
‘Finally, the people are rising up,’ one soldier said during breakfast.
Sami looked around to make sure he wasn’t the only one who had heard it. Even Ahmed, who usually didn’t hesitate to speak up, stayed quiet.
The next day, the soldier was gone.
* * *
—
Sami’s doubts soon crystallized further. From time to time, he was asked to take notes or send deliveries to other battalions. He was also good friends with Issa, a soldier who received messages from other battalions in a bunker. Issa had managed to hide a TV that received international channels, partly to follow the news, partly to watch soap operas to help pass the time. Sami immediately won his affection by humming the theme music to Kassandra.
‘I wish I was rich and could pay my way out of here,’ Issa said dreamily. ‘A bunker, seriously? If someone had told me that from the start, I would have been born a girl. No doubt. I would have stayed in my mother’s womb until my dick turned into a vagina.’ He quickly scrolled through the channels. ‘Ah, look at her! Gorgeous. And don’t get me started on the uniform. I need more colour in my life.’
It was on one occasion down in the bunker that Sami saw a report about a demonstration that had been organized recently. Unarmed. Sami read the sentence over and over. There it was, in writing, in a military report: the prot
estors were unarmed. And the army had responded with teargas and bullets.
Ahmed had handed over only one of his phones to the officer and hidden the other under his mattress.
‘God, you’re crazy,’ Sami said.
‘God is dead,’ Ahmed shrugged.
‘We can take turns to hide the phone if you sometimes let me use it.’
In the evenings, when Rafat was out and they were sure to be alone, they took it out and listened to the revolutionary song ‘Ya Haif’. They listened to it over and over again, its lyrics and melody like a drug.
In the mornings, the military speaker car would stop in the yard and regime songs would fill the air. Then the president’s voice came on, blaring out his message for the public. The demonstrators were a disease, he said. A virus to the body of their country. And the only cure was to cut off the sick parts.
* * *
—
In April, thousands of people in Homs filed into the square around the famous clocktower for a peaceful sit-in. Sami watched it on the TV in the bunker with Issa. The minarets urged everyone to come to the square. Young people cut up their ID cards to show that they were not going to leave the country until the dictator was gone. Sami glimpsed people in T-shirts whose logos he knew all too well – they were from Abu Karim’s restaurant, his first place of work – handing out food to hungry protestors.
As they watched, three words echoed out across the crowd: freedom, dignity, democracy.
We are blossoming like an infatuation, Sarah wrote to him from Homs, texting Ahmed’s secret number.
Sami read her messages and erased them, in case someone found the phone. Sarah seemed to have entered a state of bliss, as though she and the other protestors were in the process of writing their own future, their own history. Maybe it was the adventure she’d always been waiting for.
We’re like a kaleidoscope, Sarah wrote. Voices and hands are raised in the square, a cascade of mirrors. We are glass, shards and fragments, and no matter which way you turn, twist and shake us, we overflow with colour, improbable patterns. We fit inside a single broken ray of light that contains the echo of every spring.
Sarah’s next message came only an hour later. It was just one sentence:
They’re shooting at us.
18
THE ARMY HAD opened fire in Clocktower Square in Homs and people had fled in panic. Sarah had sought refuge in an alley and heard the rifles’ crackle in the square, like heavy rain against a tin roof.
The blood, she wrote to Sami. I’ve never seen so much blood.
When he called her, he wasn’t sure it was actually Sarah who answered. Her voice sounded different and distant.
‘Were there many injured?’
‘I don’t know, Sami. I didn’t look. I just ran.’
He listened to her breath and felt stupid because he wasn’t there and couldn’t hold her, and because he couldn’t even come up with anything comforting to say.
‘It is difficult to describe how it has been,’ she said. ‘All the feelings at the demonstrations. I really thought we could change something. I know it sounds silly but I didn’t realize what was at stake, but now—’ She stopped. ‘I should hang up, Sami. Talking to me must be dangerous.’
‘Wait, what do you mean?’
‘You’re with them now. You’re on their side.’
* * *
—
Sami went to breakfast with a dizzy head and a lump in his stomach, the world turning faster with every footstep. Eggs and tea, tea and eggs, every day the same meaningless food followed by the same meaningless chores. He was stuck here when he should have been with her. Had there been doubt in her voice? Was she blaming him for what had happened? He sat down in the circle of soldiers and thought he would pass out.
‘Filthy dogs,’ one soldier said and spat in the grass.
Sami assumed he was talking about the soldiers shooting at civilians and was about to agree, spill out some of the anger and confusion that was building up inside.
‘They have no respect,’ the soldier continued. ‘Blockading the square like it’s their living room. I’m surprised no one’s put their foot down sooner.’
The soldier was holding an egg, breaking its shell with a spoon. White flakes fell on to his boots like big snowflakes. The egg yolk welled up, soft and creamy. Sami felt his gorge rising. He wasn’t sure what Rafat thought but after breakfast he pulled Ahmed aside.
‘What are we going to do? Can they order us to shoot at protestors?’
Ahmed glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice.
‘Not us, but other battalions.’
‘So, what are we going to do?’
‘Nothing. We’re going to wait and see.’
Ahmed’s response surprised him but he was probably right. They had completed their military service and should be discharged shortly, in one or two months, when the protests died down.
But summer was approaching and the demonstrations continued all over the country. It was getting increasingly difficult to follow events from the military base. Ahmed didn’t dare lend Sami his phone more than necessary and Issa in the bunker, who had the TV with international channels, also pulled away. Sami understood. Reporting someone was easy and people had to protect themselves.
Besides, Sami had his hands full with cartography work. The need for maps never seemed to decrease. They were still focused on potential Israeli attacks and Sami continued to draw possible defensive plans. He marked out combat vehicles and thought about the ones he had been in during training. You climbed down through a hatch and landed in a claustrophobic cockpit with a tiny reinforced window. From inside, the people on the outside looked like paper dolls, fluttering in the breeze. If a soldier wanted to signal to the driver, he had to stand off to the side of the vehicle and wave his arms about. From close up, you were invisible. It wasn’t real. Israel wasn’t going to attack but if they ever did, his division would probably be annihilated.
* * *
—
At the start of the summer, the brigade general came to them in a hurry with a rolled-up map. Sami was standing in the half light by the drawing table next to Ahmed and Rafat, slightly unfocused on account of the itchy mosquito bites from a recent visit to the clink.
‘What’s this?’ Ahmed said and ran his fingers over the paper.
‘I have a different task for you today,’ said the brigade general.
He was a sinewy man in his sixties who wore his badge with the three yellow stars and eagle with pride. Furthermore, he wore a badge on his chest that showed he had completed parachute training. In his eyes, they were nothing but schoolboys, but schoolboys who held his reputation in their hands. Their work reflected on him and he scrutinized every map before passing it on.
Now he rolled out the map, pointing and explaining. When he was done and had left the room, they stood in silence. This time, the task was not about practice scenarios, about defending weapons and vehicles. Instead, they were supposed to map out the quickest way for the army to enter a small city. From when the first troops reached the centre, no more than fifteen minutes could elapse before the last soldier was in place.
But this wasn’t a strange city in a foreign country. It was a small city in northwestern Syria on the trade route between Latakia and Aleppo. The city had made a name for itself as a rebel stronghold ever since the 1980s, when resistance fighters torched a local Baath Party office. The regime brought in helicopters and crushed the rebellion, and hundreds were arrested and executed.
Now, three months into the revolution, there was a rumour that armed gangs had killed over a hundred regime soldiers in the town. His friend in the bunker had made an exception and let Sami watch the news. Much was unclear about the deaths. Activists in the town claimed the soldiers had in fact been killed by the army, either for openly deserting or for refusing to s
hoot at civilians. Either way, the massacre was now being used as an excuse for the regime to attack the town.
‘What do you think they want?’ Rafat asked, even though they already knew the answer.
‘A takeover,’ Ahmed said quietly.
They studied the map. There were fields and high mountains, and a couple of bridges that stretched across the river into the town. When the brigade general returned, they had barely put pen to paper. He gave them some choice words of warning and an extension until the next day. That evening, a light rain fell and steam rose from the ground, but inside the map room the air was close. They were sitting on the floor, their backs against the wall. Rafat was sweating heavily and suddenly got up.
‘We have to do something. If we don’t draw the map, it’s over.’
Ahmed stood up too, and reached for the pencils.
‘You’re right. We have to do something.’
‘Are you serious?’ Sami said. ‘As soon as we draw the map the military will enter the city.’
Rafat turned and looked at him, his chin raised and the sweat visible on his forehead. ‘It’s not like we have a choice.’
‘Calm down, I have an idea.’ Ahmed put his hand over the bridges. ‘We draw the map as you say. But with some adjustments.’
‘Leave me out of it,’ Rafat said. ‘I just want to get out of here as soon as possible.’
It was risky, Rafat was right about that, but Sami sharpened his pencils and coloured in the fields with the greatest level of precision. It was going to be the best map he had ever made.
* * *
—
The next few hours felt like walking on hot embers, and when the brigade general finally summoned Sami, Ahmed and Rafat to his office, he wasn’t alone. The major general, head of their entire division, was sitting behind the desk with his brow deeply furrowed, like a newly tilled field. He was staring straight ahead, making no attempt to meet their eyes.