City of Sparrows

by Eva Nour

  The light hurt his eyes when he stepped out in a daze on to the battlefield. A white haze of smoke and dust surrounded him. He took a step and caught his foot on something, a bloody corpse in his path. A squatting rebel soldier was taking aim in the fog and signalling for him to get out of there. But Sami stayed where he was, frozen. He took out the camera and polished the lens and looked at the buttons, unable to remember how it worked. What was he holding? From the smoky mist, he saw Muhammed come running towards him; he grabbed Sami and Anwar by the arms and pulled them to safety.

  As evening fell, the fighting died down. A grey dusk swept in between the buildings and for a moment Sami was unsure if it had all really happened. But when the bodies were lined up, it became impossible to deny. Around fifty regime soldiers had been killed, fifteen or so rebels. And thirty of the regime’s men had been taken prisoner.

  * * *

  —

  It took several days for Sami’s hearing to return, and a monotonous beeping lingered. He started writing to Sarah, apologizing for staying, for not leaving with her. But when he was about to hit Send, he changed his mind and deleted the message. It made no difference now.

  The action led to a gruesome aftermath that tarnished the Free Syrian Army in his eyes, even though far from all the rebels were involved. The rebels’ military council had been sceptical about the al-Qarabis mission from the start. It was considered too dangerous. Afterwards, the rebels edited together a propaganda film with religious overtones that the military council considered inappropriate, and banned. But someone shared it on social media anyway, which exacerbated the internal conflicts.

  Before the siege, prisoners taken by the rebels had always been detained and then set free in due course. This time it was impossible. They would be a danger to the civilians in the besieged area. It was decided that some of the prisoners would help build a barricade by the red line. Coincidentally, those prisoners managed to escape back to the regime-controlled neighbourhoods, and coincidentally, they all happened to be Alawites, while the remaining twelve prisoners were Sunnis and Christians.

  The civilian population was in uproar. Rumours spread in the besieged area that someone on the rebel side had negotiated the release of the Alawite prisoners – that the rebels had colluded with the regime.

  One of the Free Syrian Army’s battalions in Homs proposed doing something drastic to calm the angry populace: the execution of the remaining twelve prisoners. A clear signal to the regime, which would also serve to regain the trust of the civilians in the area.

  The proposal was unanimously rejected by the rebels’ military council. But after days of negotiations, opinions shifted. One night in late September, even though the decision was not sanctioned by the military council, the executions were to be performed.

  Sami found out an hour before they were to take place. When he reached the square in al-Hamidiyah, he was soaked from the rain. Around twenty soldiers were present; Sami and Anwar were the only media activists.

  ‘You can’t take pictures,’ ordered the general of the battalion in charge.

  Sami’s body seized up and he found it hard to think clearly. It didn’t need to happen, he was sure of that. There must be other ways to deal with this.

  The twelve prisoners were tied up on the ground, face down. The rain was pooling around their bodies. Sami’s field of vision narrowed to a tunnel without light.

  ‘I don’t want to do this,’ said the FSA general. ‘They’re poor and were forced to fight for the regime against their will. I’ve talked to them. Several of them are really decent.’

  Then he ordered the rebel soldiers to fire.

  Two of the soldiers refused and stepped aside. For a few seconds, there was nothing but the sound of automatic fire. Then the general raised his hand, walked over to the mangled bodies and finished off the executions by putting a bullet in each head.

  31

  EVERYONE FOUND THEIR own way of surviving. Activists outside the siege zone supported them as best they could, by trying to smuggle in medical supplies and paying for satellite phone contracts. Others chose to stay and work for the regime while secretly supporting the resistance, using their connections to warn people about suspected airstrikes or help prisoners out. It required inventiveness and risk-taking, and it could be the difference between life and death.

  One elderly man used to buy carp at a market in Homs. When the city centre was surrounded, this market remained open because it was in a regime-controlled neighbourhood. So the man continued to buy his fish, two or three at a time, until one day when he ordered a hundred carp.

  ‘My niece is getting married,’ he told the fishmonger, and took a photograph out of his wallet, leaning on his walking stick.

  ‘Mabrouk, ya hajji. May God smile on them and give them many children.’

  ‘Thank you, that’s very kind. Do you have children?’

  The fishmonger didn’t but he hoped he would one day – God willing. Meanwhile, he would sell his fish and save his money to buy a house for his future family to live in.

  ‘So, how many fish did you say?’

  ‘A hundred of the biggest and fattiest you have. And if it’s possible…’ said the elderly man. ‘No, never mind, it can’t be done.’

  ‘No, do say.’

  ‘I really think it’s impossible.’

  That made the fishmonger insist, since problems were there to be solved and he was proud of his reputation as one of the city’s best fishmongers.

  ‘Since you insist,’ the elderly man said at length. ‘Fish is best served fresh, as you know, and if I take all the fish now, they’re going to go off before the wedding. The best thing would be if they could be delivered fresh, straight to the grill. Then the guests would have the pleasure of seeing them wriggle on the hot coals!’

  The fishmonger smiled and asked the elderly man to come back in two days.

  Two days later, the fishmonger showed him twenty buckets with five carp in each. The elderly man was happy, overwhelmed. He thanked the fishmonger, paid and wished him all the best in life, both with his house and his future children.

  Then the elderly man put the buckets in his car, waited until nightfall, and emptied the fish out in a stream which ran in the direction of the besieged neighbourhoods.

  For the starving people on the other side, it really was like being invited to a wedding. Women and men gathered by the stream and fished in the moonlight.

  Sami arrived too late, standing with cold water up to his knees for hours without catching a single fish. He pulled his net through the water and from time to time thought he glimpsed a silvery shard of glinting fish scales, but it always turned out to be one of the white stones on the riverbed.

  * * *

  —

  Another idea to help alleviate the starvation, which was never carried out, was to round up a flock of sheep by the red line and shove chillies up their behinds, so the animals would bolt into the besieged area in desperation.

  As food stores ran ever lower, the civilian population’s patience began to run out and the siege seemed to enter a new phase. The regime was holding them hostage and the rebels had not been able to push them back as promised.

  During the year, a group of battle-hardened rebels from the Free Syrian Army left and joined a branch of the terrorist organization al-Qaida, the al-Nusra Front. In Homs, the group was small at first, and unorganized, founded partly out of religious fervour, partly as a result of personal conflicts among the rebel leaders.

  One of the members of the al-Nusra Front was called Tareq. He was a former university friend of Sami’s, a twenty-four-year-old from one of Homs’ more well-to-do families. He had neither lost a loved one nor suffered more from the war than anyone else, but he was prone to taking on the grief of others and considering it his own. It was not uncommon for him to end up in heated discussions with one of the ima
ms who lived in the besieged area. The imam would urge Tareq not to mix politics and religion. The most important thing was to ease people’s suffering, not to stoke hatred.

  ‘You’re a kafir, no better than any other infidel,’ Tareq told the imam. ‘God is the highest and his will must be reflected in every part of our society.’

  Sami continued to meet up with Tareq on occasion, to have tea and talk to him, even though his friend had become an extremist. Socializing was limited under the siege and at least it was a breath of fresh air to have someone to argue with.

  ‘How can you justify violence in the name of religion?’ Sami asked.

  ‘What do you mean? People do that all the time,’ Tareq countered. ‘The American president says “God bless America” and drops bombs on the Middle East. And the rebels are shooting at the regime every day…’

  ‘You can’t compare the Free Syrian Army’s self-defence with a desire to take over the Western world and introduce sharia law.’

  ‘Why not? Muslims are being killed and oppressed. We have to defend ourselves.’

  * * *

  —

  Sami was having tea at Tareq’s hideout, a miserable basement with no electricity or water, when Tareq informed him that one of the al-Nusra soldiers was spreading rumours about him. They were saying Sami was an atheist and an infidel, and that he should be taken care of. That usually meant death.

  ‘But I’ve never even met him,’ Sami exclaimed in surprise.

  ‘He’s seen your pictures and what you’ve written about us. You’re shaming our leaders.’

  ‘I write about anyone who commits crimes and transgressions, irrespective of their allegiances.’

  ‘Either way, he says you’re a bad Muslim.’

  Before they could finish the conversation and without pausing to think it over, Sami got up and walked straight to the nearby house of the leader of the al-Nusra. He knocked, was patted down and shown into the living room. The group had about fifteen members in Homs at that point and most of them were gathered there, on sofas around a glowing cast-iron stove.

  ‘What can we do for you, brother?’ said their leader, a man in a black kaftan with prayer beads in his hand, who introduced himself as Abu Omar.

  ‘I’m not your brother,’ Sami said. ‘And that doesn’t make me a bad Muslim.’

  ‘There, there, calm down.’

  But Sami wouldn’t calm down. Things were boiling over inside him. People who claimed to know the Quran should know better than to talk ill of others, especially if you didn’t know them. And to create a so-called caliphate, were they out of their minds? How was that supposed to work, when they hadn’t even been able to leave their own neighbourhood for over a year? When the regime kept shooting at them and dropping bombs? Non-Muslim lifestyles were hardly the enemy here and not worth starting a war over. Wasn’t there enough war to go around anyway?

  Sami left the house of the al-Nusra leader without waiting to see their reaction. Later, back at the basement, Tareq laughed and said Abu Omar had taken to task the person who had been spreading the rumours.

  ‘Abu Omar thought you seemed well read. Maybe we should recruit you.’

  ‘Over my dead body,’ said Sami.

  * * *

  —

  That would happen sooner or later, death, that is. But for the moment, he and Malik and Muhammed and Anwar were alive.

  They had moved the sofas into the basement of Muhammed’s house, even though it offered only limited protection against a barrel bomb. Barrel bombs were old oil drums filled with explosives and scrap metal, which scattered in the air like confetti.

  The regime had also released sarin gas over Eastern Ghouta, the Damascus suburb where Sarah had grown up. Sarin was heavier than air and sought out low points in the terrain, like basements. Because of that, the nerve gas was especially effective in areas where people had already moved underground to escape the airstrikes.

  We’re safe, Sarah wrote. But no word from my cousins yet.

  The longer time went on, the less Sami found the words to express what he felt. Maybe because he hardly felt anything any more.

  I wish I was there with you, he finally wrote.

  Sami, Malik and Muhammed had consulted the internet and made their own gas masks, even though they would make almost no difference in case of a chemical attack: sarin penetrates the body through the skin as well as the airways. Firebombs filled with napalm and other chemicals were also impossible to protect yourself from. They broke up like a rain of fire, like fireworks, in the pitch-black night.

  Sami studied Malik’s silent face as he built the gas mask. He tried to remember his little brother from before, sparkling with life, and realized he had adjusted to the situation all too fast, all too well.

  There was no room in their lives for the suggestive or ambiguous any more. That was one of the biggest casualties of the war: the grey area. There was warmth and cold, being full and being hungry, friends and enemies – but in between, nothing of any real importance.

  And then there was life and death. One day, his little brother was alive. The next, he was dead.

  32

  THAT OCTOBER MORNING Sami heard birds tweeting. He couldn’t remember when he had last heard the sound of birds and thought he was imagining it. But there, perched on a chair, was a sparrow. Sami tried to beckon it but the sparrow twitched its head and refused to budge. Then it spread its wings and flew out of the window.

  He didn’t know if it was because of the bird but he had a bad feeling that morning. He didn’t normally worry about his little brother, but when it happened, he knew. He knew it when the doorbell rang and an acquaintance was standing outside. He knew it when the acquaintance said Malik was injured and had been taken to the field hospital. And he knew it when he jogged towards the hospital in fits and starts, as though he both wanted and didn’t want to get there.

  A couple of volunteers had put up bunting in the street, the kind that had been used for parties and weddings before, to help people find their way to the field hospital. The green and yellow ribbons ran down ditches, into basements, through private residences where missiles had opened up holes in the walls, up staircases and over boulders. The acquaintance tried to keep up with Sami. Outside the field hospital, he apologized to Sami for not having told him the whole truth, then he leaned his hands on his knees and looked down at the ground.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Sami pushed past him, feeling no desire to be held up by this man when he could simply talk to his brother himself and find out what happened.

  * * *

  —

  Malik was lying on one of the hospital beds, next to Anwar and two other boys. His little brother’s body was less bloody than the others, but just as rigid. Anwar’s tall body barely fitted the stretcher. He had grown lean in the siege and no longer resembled the healthy chef he once knew.

  The heat drained out of the room and a white chill spread from Sami’s chest to the rest of his body. He fell to his knees wanting to scream but no scream came out. It was Malik and at the same time it couldn’t be him. Sami pulled himself upright again and stroked his brother’s cheeks. Flies were buzzing around his eyes, which were white as though his irises had vanished into his body in terror. Maybe this was death’s way: to freeze the features that had once made a body into a person.

  ‘What happened to you?’ he whispered.

  A medic came up to him and told him in a soft voice. Malik, Anwar and the two other boys had gone to a street in al-Hamidiyah to put up cloth screens to block the snipers’ view.

  ‘That was when the missile hit. They were crushed under debris.’

  Sami thought about his parents. They had thought he and Malik were safe here. At least here, the regime couldn’t get to them. Here they couldn’t be arrested, tortured or pressed into military service.

  But there w
ere missiles, every day.

  A medic and two rebel soldiers helped him move the bodies. Sami carried his little brother and put him on a flatbed truck. He sat down next to him and held his hand, stroking his forehead. The truck drove a few blocks and then came to a stop. Sami looked over his shoulders, scanning the roofs for snipers, but all he could see in the sky was a pointlessly shining sun. The ashes and concrete only reflected its light.

  It was not easy to find an open patch of ground by the mosque. They had no shovels so they dug with whatever they could find, scraps of metal and bin lids. Sami took his brother’s ID card and searched Anwar’s pockets, but there was nothing in them to give to his family. Then he remembered the necklace with the gold ring, gently removed it from around Anwar’s neck, and carried on digging.

  ‘Do you mind if I take his shoes?’

  A skinny boy with streaks of dirt on his face was pointing at Malik’s feet.

  Sami stood still. Sweat was streaming down his face, or maybe it was tears, and the salt reached his lips. Then he bent down and pulled the shoes off himself.

  ‘Here, they might need to be polished.’

  * * *

  —

  When Sami’s grandmother died, Grandpa Faris said, ‘When there is nothing left, only rituals remain.’ But now, not even rituals remained, at least not in their ancient form. Before the war, an imam would have read verses or said a few words at the funeral. Before the war, a procession of cars would have driven through the city and out to the countryside, either the same day death claimed its victim or the next. The body would have been swathed in white cloth tied at the head and the feet. The family would have hosted a three-day reception, in their home or at a mosque, where friends and relatives could come to offer condolences.