City of Sparrows

by Eva Nour

  The smell of overripe fruit was almost suffocating. Why did they let the fruit rot? There must be people who could pick and eat them. You could make preserves and jam and marmalade, squeeze them for juice…

  ‘We have more than we need,’ a woman’s hoarse voice said behind him.

  Sami turned to see his maternal grandmother, dressed in a black robe and hijab, and beaming at the sight of her long-gone grandson.

  ‘Oh, Sami.’

  She embraced him with the force and caution of someone who believed they had lost a dear object for ever and then found it again.

  ‘You are here! You’re really here.’

  She laid her dry hands on his face and the tears began to fall in small streams down her wrinkled cheeks.

  ‘Now let’s go in before someone sees you.’

  * * *

  —

  Sami could already see how different his and his grandmother’s lives had been for the past few years. During the siege, they had suffered food shortages, power cuts and fighting too, but they had still been able to go about their lives. Sami supported his grandmother’s arm, or maybe he was leaning on it, and they slowly moved towards the front steps.

  ‘You have no idea how many times I’ve prayed for you and…Oh, Sami, your little brother…I’m so sorry.’

  It was as if time had stood still in his grandmother’s house. The same flowery curtains in the kitchen, the same furniture in the same places. Fatima made his bed with clean sheets and put out a big bath towel. Sami breathed in the smell of clean fabric with not a trace of ashes or dust. In the shower, he turned the heat up until the steam rose and his skin almost burned; brown streaks pooled around the drain. Serves you right, jinn.

  The scent of the soap mingled with the smell of the food his grandmother had cooked, kibbeh labanieh. How did people eat again? He raised the spoon to his lips and filled his mouth with the oily yoghurt sauce, which tasted so heavenly he wanted to stick his head in the pot and drink himself full. But the moment the food touched his throat, he gagged. His body had grown used to feeling full on nothing but dreams of food – on imagining its smell, taste and appearance – and the real experience was overwhelming.

  Was that how people did it? Chewed and swallowed and let it all out in a different form? It couldn’t be human, this eating business. Just like it couldn’t be human to sleep through an entire night without waking up to the sound of imminent death.

  When darkness fell, he sat down on the edge of the bed and looked out at the orange tree, where the fruits were glowing like stars.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, his parents came to the house. He saw them from the upstairs window and found he couldn’t move at first. Samira was supporting Nabil, who slowly set one foot before the other. Halfway up the path he paused and laid a hand on his chest, and the simple gesture caused the pain to rise in Sami’s own breast. When they knocked on the door he finally hurried to open it.

  My son, our beloved. Ya rohi. He didn’t perceive all that they were saying, only felt the warmth flowing towards him.

  His mum and dad embraced him at the same time, enveloping him with their arms and bodies. When he felt their wet cheeks against his, Sami didn’t know if it was he who was crying or his parents, or all of them at once.

  ‘I barely recognize you,’ Samira said. ‘Has Mother fed you?’

  ‘Of course I’ve fed him,’ his grandmother said and shook her head. ‘But the poor thing doesn’t eat much. I’ve set the table in the kitchen. Follow me.’

  Their reunion was warm and tear-filled, and yet it was as though he was looking at himself from the outside. This is how a son who has been separated from his family for two years should act, he thought, and tried to fill out his own contours. He sat down at the table and attempted to drink and to eat, but he knew they would ask at any moment. As soon as he found his breath, he would have to tell them.

  Nabil’s eyes were wet and he said very little, but as they sat there he continued to kiss Sami’s cheeks and stroke his hands. In the end it fell to Samira to tell Sami what their life had been like, all the things they had never been able to discuss over the phone.

  His parents had been staying with a relative in the countryside since the start of the siege, and avoided the worst of the airstrikes. Instead, they had watched through their windows as their neighbour’s house exploded in a sea of fire. Not even during iftar, when the fast was broken during Ramadan, did the regime’s bombs stop falling.

  And his sister and older brother? They only had sporadic contact with Ali. He was wanted by the secret police and was still in hiding. Hiba, her husband and two children had fled across an open field but had been spotted and shot at by regime soldiers. Hiba’s daughter was now in a wheelchair after being hit in the back by grenade shrapnel. Hiba had tried to cross the border to Turkey to seek specialist medical care, but the aid organization they had been in contact with had told them their daughter’s injuries were not considered sufficiently acute for humanitarian response.

  Then his mum grew quiet and Nabil looked at her, and she looked at Sami. She folded her hands on the table and his dad moved a cloth napkin to his nose. Sami knew then that the time had come.

  ‘We already know,’ Samira said, ‘but we want to hear it from you, in person. Tell us about Malik.’

  And so he began to tell them how Malik, their youngest and most beloved son and his little brother, had died. He told them about his last days. He told them about his unquenchable spirit. And he told them how he had given Malik’s shoes to someone who needed them more and then buried his body in the stony ground.

  * * *

  —

  The next day Sarah came to visit. He heard her voice from the open window, from under the orange tree where his grandmother was collecting fruit.

  ‘Is Sami here?’

  He opened the door and there she stood. Her cheeks were slimmer. Her eyes seemed brighter. Her hair had grown out and turned black; only the ends were still red.

  ‘Sarah.’

  They hesitated on the front steps as though they were each waiting for the other to set the tone for their meeting. Sarah had already told him she wasn’t leaving Syria, that she couldn’t go with him. Maybe things had ended between them two years ago, the day he chose to stay in Homs, at the start of the siege. But now, were they friends or lovers? To what extent had time and circumstances made them strangers? Then Sarah leaned in and kissed him on his cheeks, gave him a brief and hard hug. Friends. Something sank down inside him.

  * * *

  —

  They ignored the risk that someone might see them and sat outside on the warm stone steps with tea that Sami had made. Sami had to feel the sun on his skin, if only for a while. When he passed Sarah the cup, she smiled, and there was the dimple, the most perfect shape he had ever seen.

  ‘You have to come with me,’ he said.

  ‘I have to stay,’ Sarah answered. ‘I can’t leave the children I’m teaching.’

  She saw them almost every day, practised grammar and spelling, blew on their scraped knees and stroked the hair out of their eyes. She was their big sister and their friend. A light breeze rustled the leaves and when he looked her in the eyes, he realized they weren’t brighter but filled with a translucent darkness.

  ‘How has it been outside Damascus?’ he asked.

  She folded her hands around her cup. ‘Not easy.’

  Their neighbours had been suspicious of the city people seeking refuge in the villages. Since when had they ever cared about the countryside? Since when had the city people taken any interest in things like drought, water shortages and the other challenges farmers faced? It served them right to have to pay through the nose for rent and food now that the countryside was suddenly good enough for them.

  She talked until she was almost out of breath, then they sat i
n silence for a moment.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Sami asked, finally.

  ‘Nothing, nothing at all. It’s just that…your cheeks, and your wrists – they look like they would snap like twigs.’

  Sami had changed. Of course he had changed. He had, for instance, lost twenty-five pounds, and he had been skinny before. But somehow he had managed to forget or deny it in the lead-up to her visit. He figured she wouldn’t be able to tell, that it wasn’t too bad.

  He tried to smile but he knew it was true. He took her hands in his and felt their warmth.

  ‘But aside from the physical I’m the same, right?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s like you’re not really here.’

  He looked straight ahead, beyond her and the orange tree. She was the same but moved more quickly than he remembered, and now she pulled her hair back and bit her nails. Maybe he had slowed down while her pace had increased, like two instruments playing to different beats. Maybe that was one of the more subtle effects of the war, that people lost their natural rhythm. Instead you vibrated according to external circumstances, attentive to the smallest shifts in atmosphere that might indicate danger, an approaching threat.

  ‘How is your family? Did your dad get out?’

  Sarah’s dad had been arrested in one of the mass round-ups the regime performed before every round of negotiations with the opposition. They would arrest up to a thousand people in just a few days, on trifling or trumped-up charges, only to release them again as part of a deal. But Sarah’s father had not been released. He was from an affluent family, which made him a perfect subject for blackmail.

  ‘We sold everything we had,’ Sarah told him.

  ‘And they let him go?’

  She nodded and took out a photo from her pocket. A picture of her father lying in a hospital bed, his ribs showing through his skin, which was transparent and as thin as rice paper.

  Sami put his arms around Sarah and she leaned her head against his shoulder. He remembered the first electric feeling of her legs touching his in the university cafeteria. He remembered when they went to the festival in Palmyra and stayed up late, sharing candied nuts they had bought from the food stalls. The night sky in Palmyra had seemed bigger, starrier and a darker shade of blue than the one in Homs. It had been a different time. Everything had felt possible.

  Now the echo of that previous life fluttered against the walls of his chest like a trapped butterfly looking for a way out.

  When Sarah got up to leave, the only thing Sami could muster was emptiness and a feeling of futility. She kissed his cheeks and went.

  Maybe he would have felt more if he hadn’t been so paralysed by fear about what was going to happen next. He had taken the leap into freedom only to end up in a new kind of imprisonment. The pain in his gut made it impossible to move, to eat, to sleep. He tried to have normal conversations but all he could see was long corridors with barred doors, and all he could hear were the screams of the men dragged out into the courtyard in the military prison. He thought about the scar on Younes’ forehead and the picture of Sarah’s emaciated, ruined father.

  That was what was waiting for him if he stayed.

  39

  BEFORE THE WAR began, the journey from Homs to Hermel, just over the Lebanese border, had taken thirty minutes, but with broken roads and checkpoints it was now expected to take several hours. Sami packed his backpack, put in a couple of ripe oranges and left without saying goodbye. It was safer if no one knew. It also made it easier for him to think he wasn’t leaving for good.

  The escape would cost him a thousand dollars, equivalent to about five months’ salary before the war. Why had he spent so much on tobacco in the siege, he thought regretfully. But he had lived only from moment to moment then, with no idea whether he had a future.

  A thousand dollars. Sami had brought nothing with him and his family had no money saved. However, he had the salary from the news agency he worked for. He hadn’t been able to get it until now, but through a complicated transfer, which went through different hands in the activist network inside and outside Syria, he got the money together.

  Sami had made enquiries with the contacts who had once smuggled computer supplies for him. He had let them know he was looking for smugglers to take him across the border to Lebanon, and he ended up with three.

  The first was an Assad supporter and a member of the secret police, who was pragmatic about politics if there was money to be made.

  ‘Climb in,’ he said and held open the door of his Toyota truck.

  Sami got in the passenger seat, visible to everyone. His throat seized up as they approached the first checkpoint and he found it hard to breathe. He saw the parked vehicles from afar, the soldiers with their rifles drawn. Had any of them lain on a roof and used Sami and his friends for target practice during the siege? Aiming for right arms one day. Left arms the next. An injured man or woman was a bigger drain on resources than a dead one. An injured person needed medical attention and rest and couldn’t fight, even if they survived.

  ‘Stop that,’ said the driver. ‘It’s like nails against a blackboard.’

  Sami hadn’t realized he was grinding his teeth. He put his hands flat on his thighs and focused on keeping his legs still. They were getting closer; soon he would be able to see their eyes. Would his emaciated body arouse suspicion? He had shaved and had his hair cut and put on new clothes, but his trousers were held up by a belt and the double jumpers did little to conceal the emptiness inside them. He would prefer a bullet to the head to being thrown in prison. He would prefer anything to becoming an unknown name, transferred to an unknown location. The driver focused forward and slowly pressed the accelerator. When they passed the checkpoint, he smiled and casually raised his hand to the soldiers. Only around forty more to go.

  Every time they came to a checkpoint, Sami thought it was over. There were the regular ones everybody knew about. And there were temporary ones, which popped up when you least expected it. On the surface they seemed random and unplanned, but the areas they covered were often negotiated between the army and regime-friendly militias. The checkpoints were like any other tradable goods – they raised money in the form of bribes, which made it possible to buy weapons.

  They usually stopped in a special lane next to the civilian cars. His smuggler flashed his secret police ID and they were let through. Sometimes a soldier nodded to the washing machine strapped to the flatbed.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘Homs,’ the driver said and held out some money.

  The soldier glanced around, accepted the notes and waved the Toyota through.

  ‘So, you want to get out of doing your military service,’ the driver said. ‘If you were my son, I’d give you a good beating.’

  That was the story he’d been told. They didn’t exchange another word for the rest of the journey. After passing abandoned and burnt-down orchards, they eventually stopped at a villa; the driver signalled to Sami to wait in the driveway while he made a call. He sought out the shade of a tree, undid his fly and tried to relieve himself, but had to give up.

  * * *

  —

  His second driver was Lebanese and a member of the Shiite militia Hezbollah, al-Assad’s extended arm in Lebanon. He didn’t get out of the car, just waved for Sami to climb in. He had a gleaming hunting rifle between his knees, the barrel pointing diagonally up towards Sami.

  ‘Would you mind moving that over a bit?’ Sami said when they hit a bump in the road.

  ‘Oh, this…’

  He turned the gun out towards the window but as soon as they hit another bump, the barrel was back in Sami’s face.

  ‘So, you’re from Homs?’ said the Lebanese and flashed a row of yellow teeth. ‘Almost all my furniture is from there. Well, not just mine, all my friends have furniture from Homs. Excellent quality – and completely free!’
>
  The Lebanese laughed and scratched his groin; Sami felt the air in his lungs compress. He didn’t feel like talking but the man seemed eager to socialize.

  ‘Have you been to al-Qusayr before?’

  Sami had, but the landscape they were driving through looked nothing like the al-Qusayr he knew. The city was about twenty miles south of Homs and had around thirty thousand inhabitants. It had been an FSA stronghold but the regime had reclaimed it with the help of Hezbollah. Now there was nothing but ghost towns, abandoned villages and bombed-out buildings. The yellow flag of Hezbollah was everywhere.

  ‘I cut the throat of a rebel dog over there,’ said the Lebanese, pointing. ‘Over there, we fired missiles at those houses. You should have seen the families running out of them screaming like rats.’

  Sami tried hard to seem unperturbed. They passed three checkpoints without any trouble. Sami was his cousin, the Hezbollah fighter explained, and fired his gun a few times out of the car window, straight up into the air. A pigeon landed on the ground with a thud. The soldiers lost all interest in Sami and instead admired the weapon.

  On the outskirts of al-Qusayr, as they approached the border between Syria and Lebanon, the Lebanese man turned more serious. He shoved three pieces of gum in his mouth and chewed so hard his jaw creaked. The paved road meandered through mountains and vast fields.

  ‘This is going to be the hardest one. Fingers crossed we get through.’

  Sami spotted the checkpoint long before they reached it. Two armoured vehicles were parked on either side of the road, across which piles of sandbags formed a wall. Ten Syrian soldiers turned their eyes on them. The driver ran his hand across his forehead again and again; his hair was sticking to it, even though it was an overcast day and not particularly warm. The dust settled everywhere, like a second skin.