City of Sparrows

by Eva Nour

  Their expectations rose dizzyingly. Something akin to saliva moistened their mouths. Sami and Leyla nestled into the sofas; Muhammed handed out bowls. A charred cooking pot sat on a moth-eaten jumper on the coffee table. Muhammed waited for silence, like a magician waiting to pull a rabbit out of his black hat. He lifted the lid. The pot contained a watery, brownish soup with flat rectangles floating in it. Their excitement was dampened somewhat, but they held out their bowls while Muhammed served. Leyla put a spoonful of broth in her mouth.

  ‘You should probably come up with a plan B in case the cookbook thing doesn’t work out,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not that bad, is it? Sami, what do you think?’

  He stuck his spoon in the soup and fished out a piece of meat. Sami chewed and thought to himself that it was like chewing a rug. A sheepskin rug, that had spent years on a dirty floor, collecting dust and grime, and then been picked up, rinsed tolerably, cut into squares and boiled for hours.

  ‘Isn’t it amazing?’ Muhammed said. ‘You just cut off the wool and boil the skin for a few hours.’

  Sami was surprised to find it was possible to fall short of his expectations. But the so-called meat was in fact inedible. Afterwards they had tea with shaving gel, which gave the beverage a hint of sweetness.

  Moments like this cut through the meaninglessness with a metallic white light and almost made him smile. What if anyone could see them there, in the basement, chewing boiled sheepskin? Wasn’t it comical, this human existence? How your life contained many lives, layer upon layer, like a nesting doll or an onion? How you never knew what to expect?

  Before, he would never have been able to imagine this. The way the rest of the world would never have been able to imagine this, because most people only know about their own lives and one or two generations back. If the world knew this, it wouldn’t let it continue, naturally. And so Sami laughed, at the ignorance of other people and at himself, who only now realized that everything he had ever learnt was meaningless. He should have been learning how to make fire and to dress in layers. How to determine whether a plant is poisonous or not. How to find and purify water.

  In the before times, he had worried about unfinished homework or a spilled drink. In the before times, he had been able to obsess about a rash word or a rash action. All of that was nothing. Insignificant. It was about finding warmth, shelter and water, in that order.

  35

  THAT WINTER, THE last one in the siege, brought a white storm in over Homs. The snow rose in plumes of smoke and whipped across the rooftops. The wind howled and whistled through cracks as though the house were an organ. Sami kept the small wood-burning stove lit around the clock. His fingernails were purple and his cuticles black with soot and oil. The sofa was too short to stretch out on; he spent his nights with his legs pulled into his chest, counting the seconds between the rumblings. His hair, which had grown long once more, started to fall out. He slept with two hats on and in the mornings they were full of tufts. He cut it himself with nail scissors but kept part of his beard for warmth.

  It was during the protracted blizzard that Sami stopped praying. He had never performed the daily prayers with much dedication; he preferred to pray when he felt a need for it. But now, after burying his little brother, in their hometown, which was no longer theirs, what was there to hope or pray for? Sometimes he felt guilty about the shoes, that he hadn’t let his brother keep his shoes.

  * * *

  —

  A gun battle broke out in a nearby house; one half of the building was dominated by the rebel army and the other by regime soldiers. They were so close they could see each other’s faces, so close they would be able to recognize an old classmate or neighbour or barber among the enemy, through the bullet holes in the wall.

  But it was as though the fighting no longer concerned Sami. He slept and watched reruns of the cooking show Fatafeat, a kind of elaborate self-inflicted pain that still gave him some pleasure. Despite his hunger, he knew it wasn’t hunger that was going to kill him. It was more likely he would die from dehydration or exposure on a night with sub-zero temperatures, or that a blood infection would eat him up from the inside. And yet, all those thoughts of food. It would be a long time before he could pick the first spring grass and the delicate green leaves of the bushes, and another few weeks after that before the first unripe fruits would appear on the few remaining trees.

  The mice were another problem, even though he sometimes appreciated their company. At night, they climbed over his legs and back as though he were part of the sofa, an immobile piece of furniture, already dead. He slept with an arm over his face so he could swat away the most intrusive little tails.

  Sometimes Sami wondered what the end of the siege would be like, if there ever was an end. The Free Syrian Army was too weak and fragmented now to resist the regime forces and liberate the city. They could possibly withdraw to one city block and regroup, maintain at least one stronghold. Otherwise, it was likely the army would go in and clear out the city centre.

  * * *

  —

  In the spring of 2014, after drawn-out negotiations between the regime and the UN, there was an opening. The green city buses that people had used before the war now entered the besieged zone to evacuate civilians, but not without restrictions. Any young men were likely to be pressed into service. It was unclear whether there would be an amnesty for people who were wanted by the secret police. As a consequence, the people leaving on the green buses monitored by the UN were mainly women, children and the elderly.

  ‘See you on the other side, little brother?’ said Leyla.

  They hadn’t seen each other since the sheepskin meal with Muhammed. Leyla stroked his cheek. It was an unusually tender gesture, but then it might be their last time together. She had stuffed her backpack full of textbooks, some of whose thick bindings had been hollowed out to hide memory cards.

  ‘Remember what we agreed,’ she said.

  If he hadn’t heard from her in twenty-four hours, she had probably been arrested, and he was supposed to get in touch with his contact at Facebook and ask them to close her account. If she was brought in for questioning by the secret police, she would be forced to tell them her password and thereby put others at risk. By closing the account, they could at least protect other media activists Leyla had been in contact with.

  Sami asked her to send his love to his family and to Sarah, if she managed to see them. Leyla climbed on to the bus and waved through the window, but she didn’t smile.

  The green buses left, as did the UN, and the checkpoints closed behind them. He felt both sadness and relief. Several of the children from their school had also been given a seat on the buses. But not Mona and Amin, whose faces he involuntarily scanned the crowd for.

  There was another way out but it could hardly be considered an opening. It consisted of relying on people outside the siege, people who had good connections and could negotiate the passage of their friends. But there were no guarantees. Some managed to get out that way but it was mostly a matter of luck. It only took one sniper not knowing about the negotiation or disapproving of people being let out, or one stray bullet, and it would all be over. There was also the risk of disappearing in the labyrinths of underground jails. To Sami, the odds seemed too long to take the risk.

  ‘I’m doing it,’ said Muhammed, who despite his placid nature was growing impatient. He was speaking faster than usual; his nails were chewed to the quick and he had lost more hair than Sami. There must be another way, Sami said to his friend. Wait a few days.

  ‘I’ve waited long enough.’

  When they hugged goodbye, he could feel his friend’s ribs.

  ‘Do you know the first thing I’m going to do once I’m free?’ Muhammed said. ‘Drink a Coca-Cola.’

  ‘Are you serious? Pepsi is so much better.’

  Muhammed shook his head and smiled.

&n
bsp; ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Sami thought of everything they had been through together. From when they were young, trying to get each other to laugh during the military class at the schoolyard, to the excursions with the Pink Panther, and all the times that Muhammed had got Sami out of danger. Without him, the siege’s difficult years would have been even more challenging.

  ‘So, where are you planning to go?’ Sami asked.

  ‘Beirut, probably. My cousin has invited me to stay in his flat. You’re welcome too, when you get out of this hell-hole.’

  ‘If I get out.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that. We are both getting out.’

  They stood in silence, neither of them wanting to leave.

  ‘Hey, by the way,’ Sami said. ‘My parents are going to try to persuade you to testify.’

  Muhammed bowed his head. ‘You know I can’t.’

  ‘I know, and it’s fine. That’s all I wanted to say.’

  It was about his little brother. In order to produce a death certificate for Malik, the regime required two witnesses to testify as to the cause of his death, which was tantamount to admitting you had been in the besieged area and were a rebel sympathizer.

  ‘I’ll explain to my parents, they’ll understand.’

  The two friends said goodbye again, then a fourth time and a fifth.

  It was the last time they saw each other.

  * * *

  —

  No one was able to explain to Sami what happened next. Maybe it was a sniper who didn’t know Muhammed had negotiated free passage in exchange for leaving the Free Syrian Army and handing over his gun. Maybe it was a bored regime soldier doing target practice. Maybe Muhammed had a change of heart halfway and tried to turn back. Maybe he paused one second too long, a moment of hesitation. Whatever happened, his body now lay on the red line, in no-man’s-land, only starving cats daring to approach him, sniffing interestedly.

  Sami’s deepest grief was not being able to grieve. One by one, they had disappeared from his side. His little brother, Yasmin, Anwar and now Muhammed – soon he would have no one left. He wasn’t even there himself. He was a shadow, wandering through ruins.

  * * *

  —

  In April, a third and last route out was offered. This time, the agreement to bus people out of the besieged zone to a town north of Homs had been brokered by the Russians and Iranians, both allies of al-Assad. But Sami would not be safe in that town; he had written negatively about FSA soldiers there. Once again, the green buses arrived and left.

  April wore on and the situation became increasingly dire. It was only a matter of time before the regime forced its way in, reclaimed the city centre and purged whoever was left. Sami was still staying in the house near the red line and considered moving to a different street, but then what? It was like being back in that tunnel watching the water rising. Should he have tried to get out on the buses, even though he would have been arrested on the other side? He thought about Younes, the electrician, and how little it took for the regime to brand you as a threat. The cable mark on his forehead, the smallest of visible scars.

  He needed someone to talk to about all of this. On occasion, he caught himself saying words or full sentences out loud to his little brother or his childhood friend. The mice squeaked in response and darted about the floor. There was nothing to look forward to; loneliness enveloped him like a blanket. He rarely left his room.

  But he had a small quantity of ground coffee beans left, which Muhammed had given him before he attempted the leap across the red line. A good day was a day when Sami could make coffee, had enough tobacco to roll a cigarette and it was warm enough to sit on the roof. He took up a couple of sofa cushions. Turned his face to the sun and studied his garden: a six-by-six-foot patch of sand, rat shit and soil. He had found the radish seeds in an abandoned house. There wasn’t time to let the roots grow; he picked the tender leaves and ate them like lettuce.

  It was there on the roof that Sami pondered his future and finally concluded that there was only one way out. The way he had already rejected. The way that had claimed Muhammed’s life: crossing the red line.

  36

  IT WAS THE biggest decision of his life. It was not only about escaping the siege. If he succeeded, he would also have to leave the country. To stay in the regime-controlled area would be too dangerous.

  Having made his decision, Sami got in touch with a few people who might be able to help him: a distant relative, a childhood acquaintance and a woman he had got to know online through his work as a photographer. They in turn negotiated with people on the regime side.

  While he waited, he found lentils. Sami ran his hand over the dusty kitchen counter and gathered them up: twelve pale red lentils. They were tiny, round discs, like miniature versions of doughballs before the baker rolls them flat. He put the lentils in his jacket pocket, scraping the last one from his greasy fingers and pulling the zipper closed. Not today, maybe tomorrow. It was easier to endure the hunger when it was voluntary, when he knew he could make a soup of water and twelve lentils whenever he wanted.

  The question was whether he could have eaten if he had decided to make soup. As so often, his worries had lodged themselves in his stomach.

  Then he was given the go-ahead, and told a time and a place. After midnight, at a certain corner of Bab Tudmor. The only thing Sami had to do was cross the six-lane motorway; a regime soldier would be waiting for him on the other side. It sounded easy but required high-level strings to be pulled both politically and militarily. Could he really trust that every last soldier watching from rooftops and through cracks in walls was aware he had permission to leave? And what was waiting for him on the other side?

  After weighing up all possible scenarios, there was only one way to know for sure: to cross the road and trust that his contacts had done a good job.

  * * *

  —

  Sami closed his social media accounts, put his laptop in a plastic bag and buried it outside the house. He texted his parents and siblings, without telling them what he was about to do. It had been weeks since they last talked; messages didn’t use up the battery so fast. He thought about calling them now but was afraid that his voice would give him away. He then wrote to Sarah.

  Bahebik kteer. I love you.

  But before sending the message, he erased it. It had been too long since they had used those kinds of words and she would only get worried.

  I’m thinking about u, he wrote instead.

  He waited for an answer but the phone remained silent. Finally he took the SIM card out and broke it. He shook out the sofa cushions and swept the rug, even though he wasn’t coming back. And at midnight he left.

  * * *

  —

  The full moon hung high in the warm sky, round and so bright its craters were visible. It spread enough light to guide Sami without him needing a torch. At the same time, the moonlight made him an easier target. He stood in a doorway without a door and listened for strange sounds. Maybe in all of this destruction it was possible to see how the world had been when there were still no people in it. Once, all of this had been under water; once, there had been nothing but mountains and valleys under a scorching sun. Aside from the sound of gunfire and the airstrikes and the stones under his shoes, in the beginning there was only this: silence.

  An empty tin can was being pushed along by the wind, rattling out into the road. Half an hour before the appointed time he moved to the front of the building, hiding behind a shot-up car but still able to keep an eye on the road. He had never been this close to the red line before. The car was practically in the line of fire and its metal body was scant protection – bullets would easily pierce it if anyone spotted him.

  Sami stiffened. A creaking followed by a muffled curse came from diagonally behind him, up in one of the rebel positions
. He hunched down behind the open car door and glanced up. He couldn’t see anyone but he heard footsteps receding. It was probably a patrolling FSA soldier. He had warned them he was leaving and hoped they would honour their promise of letting him go.

  While waiting for the signal from the other side, he examined the road ahead. Before the revolution it had been one of Homs’ busiest thoroughfares, especially during rush hour. In the moonlit night it looked like a tsunami had crashed over it – car parts, tree limbs and blocks of concrete covered the asphalt like ancient beasts. Weeds grew out of every crack.

  There were other shapes too: twisted, cramping. The bodies had reached various stages of decomposition. A few feet away lay a pile of what looked like clothes that concealed the skeleton of someone who must have been killed during the earliest days of the siege. Further on was a fresh body emitting a stench of dead flesh and excrement. Probably one of the FSA soldiers he had been told had been shot the other day, who, like Muhammed, had been unlucky or deceived in his negotiations for safe passage. Maybe the same fate awaited him.

  Then he saw it: a light in the darkness. The dot was no bigger than the glowing end of a cigarette. He held his breath and stepped out.

  Sami couldn’t make out the faces of the bodies he stepped over but he thought he saw Muhammed’s lanky frame, curled up in the foetal position, with red spatter in his dark curls and among the freckles on his forehead.

  He saw the body of a fifteen-year-old boy, who he could have sworn had the same black eyes, bare feet and thin layer of dust on his downy top lip as his little brother.

  There was the faint smell of fire and he saw around forty bodies belonging to men, women and children, a girl with half a head.