City of Sparrows

by Eva Nour

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’d love some tea.’

  They sat down in the office and soon after, there was a knock on the door. She entered the room, naked, carrying a tea tray.

  ‘Serve your brother first,’ the officer had told her.

  Sami didn’t want to hear the rest, and Malik was stuttering and didn’t seem to want to keep on speaking, but he did.

  ‘They let her go,’ Malik said. ‘After she had served them tea. The money was on the table and everything.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘But then Yasmin asked if she could have her camera back. And that was when…well, her brother tried to stop them…’

  Malik sat down on the sofa now, exhausted, and looked at the floor.

  ‘The officer gave Yasmin’s brother her clothes back, after he shot her.’

  Sami stood in the middle of the room and felt the walls disappear. The wind swept in and carried with it the smell of Yasmin’s cigarettes, the pens they had used to make the placards, the sweet scent of low-hanging oranges from their school years. Once upon a time she had been his first love. Later on, along with Sarah, Yasmin had been the one to help him find a place and a role in the revolution. Now she didn’t exist. Sami had an urge to tell Yasmin herself what had happened, to plead with her to go into hiding. The numbness started in his fingers and spread through his body but it was too soon to call it grief.

  Malik took off his backpack and dropped it to the floor. The same backpack he had once used to carry his school books in. Sami remembered the stray dog Malik had dragged home and the olives he had thrown while he sat at the breakfast table, all the times he had reprimanded his younger brother.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Malik said, ‘but this is the way it is. I’m staying.’

  And Sami knew it was Malik’s decision to make, just like he had made his.

  IV

  In the beginning, while we are still learning to sleep together and share a duvet, you sometimes wake up in the middle of a scream and hurl yourself out of bed.

  ‘Was it the checkpoints?’

  Sometimes, it’s prison corridors with hunting dogs. Sometimes, your nightmares are about the lack of tobacco. It’s almost never what I imagine would be the worst of the worst. We drink tea with honey, interlace our fingers and decide you should sleep on the outside of the bed, away from the wall.

  You tell your story and simultaneously translate it. Partly by using another language than your own, partly by dressing your bodily experiences in words. What happens in the translation and interpretation and description, to us and to the story? What disappears and what is gained? I would like to think something is gained.

  Describing trauma is always overwhelming – powerfully emotional memories that don’t slot into our constructed narratives. Events and fragments we can’t fit into the rest of our experiences, and which therefore break through like uncontrollable flashbacks. It’s only when we can deal with the trauma and intertwine it with our memories that the story can become whole, and we can become whole as humans.

  But does telling the story always help? When you return to certain events your throat goes dry. You clear it and drink more tea. Your eyes look different. Your irises grow big, dark and shiny, as though you can see what’s happening. I put a hand on your arm to remind you you’re not alone. Afterwards, we talk about something lighter and return to the present. That is my promise to you: after following you into the dark, I also have to follow you back and show you the light.

  27

  THE MASS EXODUS entailed new concerns, like what to do with family pets. Some took cats and dogs with them; some left aquariums with neighbours. Others set their animals free, hoping they would survive over the summer.

  The pigeon owners had the hardest time letting go. They handled their domesticated birds as tenderly as if they were relatives, stroking them and feeding them sunflower seeds and giving them names, but their cages were too much of an encumbrance. Before the war, you would see the doves flying above the rooftops of Homs in well-orchestrated formations. The birds had been a natural part of the city. That the sky was now devoid of the fluttering of wings was a clear sign life had changed.

  May usually smelled of jasmine flowers, now it smelled of dust and fires. A couple of thousand civilians remained in the city centre. Many were elderly people who had been unable or unwilling to flee; others were families with young children who had not managed to get out while the roads were open.

  Sami and his little brother stayed at Muhammed’s house, as did Anwar. After a lot of persuasion, they managed to buy a pigeon coop from a reluctant seller. Of the twelve birds, they ate four, which Anwar turned into stew by cooking them with herbs and stock cubes. A couple escaped or were stolen. The rest were killed by alley cats or giant rats – the rats were the worst since they didn’t even bother to eat what they killed.

  Sami and his friends went around the other houses, scavenging for food. At first they only took food that wouldn’t go bad, like rice and flour and tinned goods. They returned for the food they had passed over the first time, then a third and fourth time, until not a trace of rice or shrivelled chickpeas remained. When Sami remembered that some families saved chocolate Christmas decorations, he collected them and gorged himself until he had a stomach cramp.

  From time to time, they’d spot a dead turtle with its shell covered in ash. They had once lived in fountains or ponds in people’s courtyards. Muhammed, who was as solution-oriented and patient as always, showed them how to use a rock to crush the shell. Sami cringed, thinking of the turtle that had once lived on their roof terrace. Then Anwar took over and cut out the green cartilage and connective tissue on the inside, as carefully as he once rolled a sandwich. After boiling it for a long time, slimy lumps formed, which they ate in silence.

  ‘Doesn’t taste that bad, does it?’ Muhammed said, trying to cheer them up. ‘This would be a delicacy in the old times.’

  ‘I’d prefer a burger and fries,’ Malik muttered.

  ‘I’ll have your share then,’ Sami said and raised his chin.

  ‘No, never mind.’

  * * *

  —

  When Sami was too dejected to take pictures of the destruction, he turned his camera on everyday life. The young children filling water cans on the street. A middle-aged woman breaking wooden chairs into smaller pieces for her fire. The dog man in his wide-brimmed felt hat and white beard, sitting on a wooden chair in the sun, talking to the passers-by. Before the siege, he ran a kennel and would only agree to sell a puppy if the new owners promised to visit occasionally so he could see how the animal was doing.

  ‘Mind if I take a photo?’ Sami asked.

  ‘Only from the right.’ The dog man turned his head. ‘It’s my photogenic side.’

  Sometimes the camera lens was helpful. It became a shield against reality, something to hide behind. Sami stepped into private rooms he was both part and not part of. One time he saw a missile strike a building and an elderly couple burst out of it at a run. They were covered in grey dust from head to toe. But when they saw Sami and his camera, the woman stopped in the middle of the street and pointed. She wiped her forehead and beamed, because she was about to be photographed and tell the world her home had just been destroyed.

  It was the shock, of course. But also a sign of the camera’s power. He remembered when, at the start of the revolution, a Japanese photojournalist was lifted up and carried aloft by the protesting masses. Someone from Japan in Syria – it was taken as proof of the world’s interest in their plight. Now the images would spread and the world would support the Syrian people.

  He had a nebulous feeling the images might not have had the effect they imagined. Or rather that the world chose to see some images but not others. Among the most widely distributed and commented on were the ones showing injured animals. Two horses with flared nostrils and their legs in th
e air. A cat undergoing surgery for a bullet wound in a field hospital, getting a bandage around its tummy.

  A woman wrote to Sami and asked him to follow up what had happened to the poor cat.

  Yes, he replied. I will try to shoot some more.

  No! the woman had replied. We must save the cats, not shoot them.

  I meant shoot more pictures, Sami wrote.

  Before the roads were closed, the activists had managed to smuggle in satellite equipment. Through it, Sami maintained contact with the rest of the world, where life seemed to carry on unchanged. He was primarily interested in news that could affect Syria. In the same spring that Homs became under siege, 2012, Vladimir Putin was re-elected president of Russia and François Hollande became president of France. Every day, new deaths and massacres in every corner of Syria were reported. The outside world talked about a red line that was supposed never to be crossed, but somehow that line was always moving. A little further away, a little more blurred with time.

  * * *

  —

  During the summer, new battalions were formed within the Free Syrian Army in Homs, each with a couple of hundred rebel soldiers. Some were deserters from the army, others were civilians who wanted to take part in the armed struggle, and each battalion and each leader had their own opinions on how to conduct the struggle.

  In order to achieve more cohesive action, a military council was established for the rebel groups in Homs. The Free Syrian Army also ran social charities for distributing food to families with children. In that way, a city within the city was created and people adapted to their new life under siege. No one could leave the fourteen city blocks the regime had surrounded, but within those blocks, everyone was free. They could speak freely, assemble and organize. Sami for his part continued working with the media centre for journalists and activists. They got their electricity from diesel generators, which were still available – most buildings had a back-up diesel tank on the roof, used for heating in the winter.

  ‘Why don’t you pick up a gun and join us?’ asked Muhammed, who had joined the rebel soldiers.

  With a scarf around his head, the crack in his glasses and a nascent beard, his childhood friend now looked like a pirate. It was as though their roles had been reversed. While Muhammed was able to find a calm at the eye of the storm, Sami could feel stress gnawing its way out of his insides. He told Muhammed he was done with weapons and the military.

  Instead, he, Anwar and a couple of other media activists started a photo blog on Facebook and Instagram.

  ‘I’ve never held a camera before,’ Anwar said, ‘but I need something to focus on.’

  In a way, cooking and photographing had something in common, Anwar argued. Both were about capturing the moment. To create the perfect food or perfect picture, soon to be gone, was to live in the present.

  ‘As long as you don’t lose the battery charger,’ Sami said.

  The everyday pictures seemed to fulfil an insatiable need. They had a hundred followers after one day, five hundred by the end of the week – then thousands. Before long, they reached one hundred thousand followers.

  Activists in other cities copied them and started similar blogs under a shared name. The photographs spread and drew comments; international newspapers called for interviews or to license the images. Syrians in exile wanted to see what was happening on their streets and the world wanted to know what everyday life was like in the war zone. The only one who didn’t share or comment on his pictures was Sarah, who had also stopped mentioning the revolution in her messages to him. Her texts got shorter and maybe his did too.

  Hayati, he wrote. Khalina nehki?

  Can’t talk, Sarah answered. We’re moving again. More tension here now.

  OK, be safe. Miss u.

  He knew she was still in Eastern Ghouta, the area outside Damascus where they had lived until now. But all the other details that they used to share, from what they had eaten for breakfast to conversations with friends, fell like sand between their fingers.

  * * *

  —

  While Sami and his Nikon lived under constant threat, he was still much safer than the activists who lived in the regime-controlled neighbourhoods, where they could be monitored and arrested at any moment. Sami thought about Yasmin and felt like a bit of the revolution had died with her – but then the media group declared it was safest to choose a new leader from among the besieged activists, and their choice was Sami.

  He delegated but sought to make decisions collectively, often via online chats or video conferences. Sometimes this slowed down the work, but it was important to conduct their business that way, to create democratic micro-structures. If they were making a poster, what should its message be? And which campaign would be more effective, one that called for hunger strikes or one urging people to send letters of protest to their governments? A lot of it was satirical, partly because they themselves felt a need to laugh, partly because it was an effective weapon against power and powerlessness.

  * * *

  —

  Sami had sporadic contact with his parents and older siblings but he was cautious on the phone. Ali was still hiding in al-Waer to avoid conscription, while Hiba lived with their parents at a relative’s house in the countryside. On occasion he felt a pang of guilt, but his mum assured him she felt calmer with him and Malik on the inside, protected by the rebels.

  ‘You’re the big one now, Sami. You have to look after your little brother.’

  ‘I will. Don’t worry about us.’

  ‘And how are Muhammed and his friends doing? I hope they are safe.’

  There was a warm undertone to her voice when she talked about the Free Syrian Army, even if she never mentioned their name. Samira would never admit to supporting the revolution, especially not in front of Nabil, but she seemed to dream of a different future. To understand what they were fighting for.

  ‘I heard it’s been raining,’ she said, which meant the falling rockets.

  ‘I keep myself dry, don’t worry. Say hi to Dad.’

  * * *

  —

  Sami didn’t tell his parents about the other dangers. You had to pay attention to details, say, the beginnings of chafing on your feet. Sami’s trainers were worn out and the sole was flapping loose, so Muhammed had lent him a pair of his shoes. Sami was so busy digging around the debris that he didn’t give the fact that the shoes were half a size too small a second thought. The chafing was nothing at first. It started with the skin being worn smooth and slightly wrinkled, like when you’ve been too vigorous with an eraser on a piece of paper, then it started to swell. The blisters grew and merged, blueish-purple and boil-like. Eventually they burst, oozing with bloody pus.

  Sami paid no attention to that either. He was constantly on the move and simply slapped on regular plasters. But the plasters fell off because the wounds were wet, and only then did he notice his feet. The skin on top of them was stippled with holes that wouldn’t stop bleeding. He tore up strips of fabric and wrapped them around his feet, swapped his shoes for bigger ones, but they kept bleeding. The chafing didn’t heal for weeks. He asked at the field hospital why that was, and the doctor replied: vitamins. Or rather, a vitamin deficiency. That was the first sign of starvation.

  Another sign was how challenging it was to think about anything other than food. It would have made sense for his body to forget about the hunger since there was nothing to eat. But his body refused to be reasonable, and he swallowed and thought about food to get the saliva flowing. He heard about a friend who tied rocks around his stomach to trick his body in thinking he had eaten, as though one weight could stand in for another. There were things the camera couldn’t capture; there were wounds that didn’t show on the outside.

  28

  AS THE MONTHS went by and the leaves started falling from the trees, the children learnt where the red line was – the i
nvisible zone where the rebel streets turned into regime-controlled neighbourhoods – and played soccer and other games among the ruins. Sami saw one little girl who wore a necklace made of empty cartridges. He saw a little boy standing by the bare foundations of a building, red cheeks under his knitted cap, holding a plastic camera, the kind you might have bought at a carnival for nothing and change.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Documenting,’ the boy said without looking up.

  ‘That can be dangerous, you know. They might think you’re working for us activists.’

  ‘I don’t care, he’s a duck. Bashar al-batta. He destroyed our house and the whole world’s going to see it.’

  Sami bent down to hug the boy but he kicked him in the shins and ran off. Sami stayed where he was, studying what was left of the house, when he spotted something bright red among the debris. He carefully moved closer and picked up a toy tractor, polished it with his sleeve and put it down on the wet ground, in case the little boy came back.

  * * *

  —

  It was Leyla’s idea to start a school in the besieged area. Like Sami, Leyla was working at the media centre and was one of the activists who never seemed to sleep. There was always something more to do, someone to help. Leyla was a couple of years older than Sami and reminded him of his sister, not least because she was so stubborn. And Leyla seemed to see a sibling in him, too.

  ‘I might adopt you as my little brother. Would you mind?’

  Her face was serious and her eyes sad, and there was a scar on her left eyebrow that she never explained. Before the war started, Leyla had been studying philosophy and literature at the university, but her idea for a school didn’t come from a moral and ethical angle. She said it was for the children, that they were bored and had nothing to do. They needed something more constructive than playing among the ruins, where they were targets.