by Eva Nour
Now they had neither the time nor the ability to organize a procession or reception. The four martyrs – Malik, Anwar and the two boys whose names they didn’t know – were lowered into the ground and covered with sand and stones. Dusk fell quietly.
* * *
—
Back at the basement Sami had half a can of water left but didn’t want to wash. There was blood on his arms and hands but it was his little brother’s blood. He sat on the basement floor, rocking back and forth. He was alone. Muhammed was out doing battle and didn’t know what had happened.
When there was a faint but clear knock at the door, Sami was sure it was his brother coming home. He hurried upstairs and took a step back when he saw the three men in black trousers and kaftans. The man at their head was Abu Omar, the leader of the al-Nusra Front, who raised a calming hand.
‘We’re here to offer our condolences.’
They greeted him with bowed heads, kissing his cheeks, without seeking eye contact.
‘I think it would be best if you…’ Sami was unable to finish the sentence.
‘Tea, my brother?’
Abu Omar stepped inside and unpacked a basket on the coffee table. What persuaded Sami to let them stay wasn’t the thermos of tea, it was the glass jar full of honey.
After a while, he almost forgot who they were, and that they had threatened to kill him after he published their names and pictures on social media. Abu Omar said that was water under the bridge. And when it came down to it, wasn’t a certain level of attention a good thing? It lent them credibility and made it easier for them to spread the word.
‘Let’s not dwell on the past,’ said Abu Omar and put a teaspoon of honey in Sami’s teacup.
‘Martyrs,’ he continued. ‘God’s sons and daughters who give their lives in the struggle for justice. Innocent teenagers who die for a higher purpose. Is it God’s will? Of course not. But things are the way they are.’
The words blurred together. Abu Omar’s voice was almost as soothing as the honey.
‘Our country is at war and God has his hands full and we have to have faith, and to trust our faith to guide and support us in our darkest hour. Isn’t it better to fall in the struggle than to lie down without resisting?’
Abu Omar stroked his beard and counted his prayer beads. His nails were strangely clean, neatly cut and manicured. Abu Omar and the others talked for hours, or so it felt, while Sami listened in silence. At midnight he almost dozed off, sitting on a cushion on the floor, but then he twitched and was suddenly wide awake.
‘So,’ Abu Omar repeated, ‘will you come tomorrow? We have plenty of beds and our house is safe.’
‘Yes, or I mean, let me sleep on it.’
When the three men had left, Sami gathered up his things and sent Muhammed a message.
I have to leave. Call u later.
* * *
—
He packed only his laptop, camera and water can, and decided to come back for clothes and cooking utensils later, or find new ones.
When he started to move through the city ruins, his heart eventually stopped racing and he was able to think back over the day before. His little brother hadn’t died, it was just a misunderstanding and a mistake. Malik would appear before him any moment.
Had the three jihadists been a bad dream too? Sitting in his flat, talking about martyrdom? Rage surged inside him, caused in equal parts by them forcing themselves on him when he was in the throes of grief, and by it almost succeeding. After hours of talking and ingratiating voices, their words had got under his skin.
Sami tried to conjure a parallel reality in which his little brother was still alive. He heard Malik’s voice, and went over the fights they had had and invented new endings, in which instead of standing his ground, he yielded and compromised. What had they even argued about? Silly things, like which movies to watch and who got the most attention from their parents. The stray dog that Malik had brought home to cheer up their mum. When he told Sami that he wanted to work in IT, just like his older brothers, and Sami had said it wouldn’t suit him, when what he had meant was that his little brother was too social, too loving, to be stuck in an office. When Malik had chosen to stay at the beginning of the siege, as if he wasn’t old enough to make a choice of his own.
He embellished old scenes to make himself less of a big brother scolding and looking for faults, and more of a sibling his little brother could have turned to with questions and problems.
He wished so desperately that he had been better at offering a warm embrace and a shoulder to lean on. But there was nothing in between, no space between the lines to rest in.
33
THE STREET IN Bab Tudmor was deserted. Even the cats had left. That was why he went there: no one would suspect the house to be inhabited. No sane person would ever consider settling there. There was no water or electricity, but the living room and parts of the kitchen and bathroom were intact, and that was where Sami set up camp after Malik’s death.
Sami ran his hand over the cracked bathroom mirror and saw his brother. He stroked his brother’s cheeks and beard and saw his eyes well up with tears. The reflection trembled but he was still, completely still. He saw his brother lean on the sink and only then did he become aware of his lightheadedness and collapsed on the cool stone floor.
When he woke, he saw the blood. He made a fire, boiled half of the water in his can, undressed and washed his clothes in a bucket. Scooped some of the water over his body and dried himself on a shirt he used as a towel.
His new accommodation had only one major drawback and it was a fundamental one: the house, or what was left of it, virtually touched the red line. Which was to say it was right on the frontline between the regime’s army and the rebels. A six-lane motorway separated them; snipers shot at each other round the clock. He didn’t have to worry about airstrikes but the Free Syrian Army’s presence was weak. The regime’s soldiers could at any time sneak across the road to conduct a night raid.
Sami decided to break his promise and buy a gun. Once upon a time Sarah would have been proud of him for daring to join the armed struggle; now it seemed not to matter. Her messages grew ever shorter and more sporadic. She apologized but claimed the power cuts were becoming more frequent, even in the countryside. In the end, Sami couldn’t get his hands on a gun anyway. The prices on the black market had soared and he couldn’t afford one. The irony was that food on the black market was even more expensive and hard to find.
During the day he lived with the constant sound of gunfire. At night he woke up thinking someone was in the house. He crept round and checked the adjacent rooms and peered out at the nearby houses, but it was just the wind. He lay down on one of the sofas and saw the contours of the room slowly take shape in the dark. He pictured the six-lane motorway and the bodies on it, on the red line, where no one could retrieve them for burial. He didn’t believe in jinn, not really, but then there was the soldier who had met a talking cat. What if the spirits were feeling restless and looking for new homes? Maybe one had already taken up residence inside him; maybe he was one of the living dead.
From now on, he was alone. It was too arduous and dangerous to make his way over to Muhammed’s or Leyla’s. He almost hadn’t been able to tell them about Malik’s and Anwar’s deaths because he knew that as soon as he said the words, it would be real. They would be gone. And when he did finally tell them, Muhammed cried, and it felt like he cried for them both.
Sami spent most of his time inside his newfound house aside from short outings every other or every third day to fill up his water can and look for food and clothes. One time he found a fungus growing on a wooden door. He broke it off and put it in his backpack, pondering whether he dared to eat it. He did. He left it to his stomach to work out whether or not it was edible.
Before, street names and addresses, maps and GPS had been used to navigate. But no
w the city had changed shape; it had turned into a maze and people had to find other signposts. He could go hours without seeing another person. The concrete had risen up like an iceberg and the city was shrouded in a blanket of ash and dust. Sometimes he had an urge to lick the wall of a building or grab a fistful of the reddish-brown, iron-rich ash and put it in his mouth. The whitish-grey ash, on the other hand, he associated only with death. He had heard it could be used as a natural disinfectant in lieu of soap but he couldn’t bring himself to try it.
The dust got in everywhere. Even though he tried to brush down the sofa cushions and keep the rug clean of rat droppings, it was just as dusty again the next morning. The dust crunched under his feet and for a few hours that would be the only sound, aside from distant gunfire.
* * *
—
Sami spent several days setting up a parabola, a satellite receiver and a generator, so he could use his laptop and phone. That autumn he read about a former systems administrator working for the American intelligence service, Edward Snowden, who had revealed the extent of the United States’ mass surveillance of its own citizens. Why all the fuss, he had thought at first. Of course the state spied on its citizens. How could it be otherwise? And then he understood. He had internalized surveillance. It had become part of being a citizen. That was the true extent of his government’s abuse of power: you monitored yourself even before the state did.
In November 2013, the first snow fell, recalling a different time. The flakes swaddled the wounds of the city like cotton, filling its tears and cracks. It snowed outside the room and the snow fell inside Sami. He was cut off from the world. The streets were empty. One morning he feared his hideout had been discovered when he spotted unknown tracks by the front steps. But then he realized it was just the rats smearing the sludgy ash of his own footsteps.
He might have been the last person in the world. Civilization had been destroyed and the radio stations shut down in a larger war happening outside the one he was in. The Earth had been invaded by aliens or an epidemic had killed large parts of humanity, like in the time of the plague. A volcano had erupted and covered the planet in ash. Except right here, in Homs, where the ash was already so thick humans had learnt to live in the murky air.
He moved through the ruins like someone shipwrecked. Even if he were the last person in the world, he would never know. He would live and die and, with him, humanity would perish, but the Earth would continue its journey around the sun for a little while longer, before it was sucked up by the masses that constituted the universe, leaving behind an everlasting black hole.
The snow kept falling and he needed to find new, warmer clothes. He groped his way in the dark, pulled out dresser drawers and opened wardrobes. He had found two jumpers and a pair of jeans. He was reluctant to enter houses, even though they were abandoned and their owners would hardly mind their clothes and food being put to good use. But it was as though the houses themselves were people, empty and broken by grief. Would they ever be able to return to a time when you could have tea with your neighbour and exchange gossip while the sweet voice of Fairuz filled the background?
Sami’s thoughts were interrupted by a familiar and ominous silence. The calm before the strike. He only just had time to throw himself to the floor before the missile struck the house next door. The roaring escalated and the tremors intensified. The walls shook, a heavy object thudded to the floor and then he heard a girl’s high-pitched voice from the other side of the room. He looked up in the dark. The girl’s monotonous voice made his blood curdle.
‘You’re a beautiful girl, you’re a beautiful girl…’
He lay still and listened until the battery in the doll died before daring to get to his feet and gather up his scattered items of clothing. He had to leave; there was no guarantee the next missile wouldn’t hit the house he was in – and yet, it was as though he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Sami moved towards the window he had first climbed in through, but with each step he felt as though something was trying to hold him back. As though the house wanted to hold on to him, yes, devour him.
A new silence fell. In his head, he could hear the doll’s voice ring out after him, hollow like a house without human life. That was when he decided to seek out Muhammed and Leyla after all, before the isolation drove him mad.
34
CHRISTMAS WAS APPROACHING and although Sami didn’t celebrate it, he missed the sense of festivity that used to spread through the city, especially in his old neighbourhood, al-Hamidiyah, where many Christian families lived. The streets would be transformed in December, with holly wreaths and tinsel garlands and luxury gifts in the shops.
Sami had celebrated Christmas with Sarah one year. They had dinner with her family and then went to the midnight mass, where they sat close on the wooden bench and held hands, hidden under her Bible.
Both the church bells and minarets had been silent for a long time now, the muezzin no longer calling out for prayer five times a day.
The muezzin was usually chosen for his talent in reciting prayers melodiously or at least – as in Sami’s old neighbourhood – loudly. The recitation was a special kind of art that touched everyone who heard it. Not least the salat, the dawn prayer just before sunrise, which many woke up to, or half slept through with the words finding their way into their dreams. But the muezzin in al-Hamidiyah had made people put pillows over their heads or turn up the radio. Finally, the priest in the neighbouring church had taken the matter into his own hands and walked over to the mosque to talk to the imam.
‘Church bells sound the same regardless of the day,’ the priest had said. ‘A human voice is another matter…’
He didn’t want to hurt the imam’s feelings, especially since they were colleagues in the matter of religion, but the imam didn’t seem to understand.
‘You know how people talk,’ the priest continued. ‘Religion is also a matter of aesthetics.’
The imam fully agreed. ‘Content and form can’t be distinguished from each other and when they interact at best, the message is…elevated.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the priest finally said, ‘but I have to tell you the truth: your muezzin is completely tone-deaf. You’d better change to someone with a better voice to keep your believers.’
Sami smiled at the memory and picked up his phone.
Hey Sarah. What do u want for Christmas?
It took some time before the small screen lit up.
Ask Santa for peace on earth. And chocolate.
His belly rumbled at the thought of food. Right now, between peace and chocolate, the choice would have been easy.
* * *
—
It was both the hunger and the thought of company that drove him out now, on to the dangerous road to Muhammed’s house. Muhammed had stayed in his old home and promised he was going to make Sami and Leyla a feast. A phenomenal recipe, he claimed.
The passageways Sami used through houses and cellars were constantly changing whenever new ruins blocked the road. Several of the fabric screens set up to obscure the view of snipers had blown down. In addition, the ground had frozen during the night and he had to take extra care when moving in open spaces.
He arrived at Muhammed’s house but barely recognized the building. The rose bushes had been cut down, probably for firewood, and black plastic now covered all the windows.
‘My friend.’ Muhammed embraced him on the doorstep as if it had been a lifetime since they last saw each other.
‘It felt like I lost you at the same time as your little brother and Anwar. How are you?’
‘You know.’ Sami shrugged, then suddenly noticed the grey wool sweater Muhammed was wearing. ‘Is that Malik’s?’
‘Do you mind that I’m wearing it? It’s been difficult to find warm clothes.’
‘No, not at all. It was just…’
His voice broke and the grief came ove
r him without him being prepared for it. They walked inside and Leyla rose from the couch. She took his hands and kissed his cheeks, her lips cold and her fingers blue. Both she and Muhammed had become thinner since he last saw them. And although Sami was happy that they were all together again, he felt discouraged, because in their empty eyes he saw himself.
‘How about your plans to start a new school?’ Sami asked.
Leyla sat down heavily. ‘It’s not possible any more.’
She held out an arm and Sami sat down beside her on the sofa. Muhammed fiddled with a stereo until they could hear quiet music, then took a few steps into the room and declared that they were not under any circumstances to talk about sad things, for this evening was a feast.
‘Did Abu Omar ask for me?’ Sami interrupted and felt his legs shaking.
Muhammed nodded. ‘But don’t worry, I said you were dead.’
‘Which is almost true. You look like a ghost,’ Leyla said.
‘You too. Both of you. Which makes this a ghost party, I guess.’
Muhammed raised the volume and Sami recognized the mixed rock classics they had played during the car trips as teenagers.
‘Can you remember when you last had a decent meal?’ Muhammed asked and waved a wooden spoon in the air.
‘I remember the arsenic pancake,’ Sami said.
‘This is different, I promise. Smell that meat?’
Sami remembered the smell of roast chicken in Karim’s restaurant and his mother’s lamb stew; he remembered juicy steaks, kebabs and steaming beef kibbeh. And this, which Muhammed insisted was meat stew, smelled nothing like meat.
‘Are you sure? Have you tried it?’ Leyla asked and pulled her scarf tighter around her shoulders.
‘It’s one hundred per cent animal. You won’t be disappointed,’ Muhammed reassured her. ‘When the revolution is victorious and we’re living in a villa by the sea, I’m going to write A Survivor’s Cookbook. It’s going to be a bestseller.’