‘Are you serious?’ Sami said. ‘As soon as we draw the map the military will enter the city.’
Rafat turned and looked at him, his chin raised and the sweat visible on his forehead. ‘It’s not like we have a choice.’
‘Calm down, I have an idea.’ Ahmed put his hand over the bridges. ‘We draw the map as you say. But with some adjustments.’
‘Leave me out of it,’ Rafat said. ‘I just want to get out of here as soon as possible.’
It was risky, Rafat was right about that, but Sami sharpened his pencils and coloured in the fields with the greatest level of precision. It was going to be the best map he had ever made.
* * *
—
The next few hours felt like walking on hot embers, and when the brigade general finally summoned Sami, Ahmed and Rafat to his office, he wasn’t alone. The major general, head of their entire division, was sitting behind the desk with his brow deeply furrowed, like a newly tilled field. He was staring straight ahead, making no attempt to meet their eyes.
‘I have only one question. Are you retarded or just regular idiots?’
The air was thick with tobacco smoke and they could hear bangs from the shooting range.
‘Well? I asked you a question. A simple one at that.’
Ahmed coughed and opened his mouth but the major general banged his fist on the table.
‘Did I say you could speak?’
The major general lowered his voice and articulated as though he were speaking to imbeciles.
‘We didn’t ask for the long way to the city centre. If that’s what I’d wanted, I’d have asked my niece to draw the map, or a donkey.’
The plan had been doomed from the start. Of course they would discover that they hadn’t put in the most important entry points to the town, the bridges. That they had instead drawn up a longer route and ignored the possibility of using armoured vehicles.
‘Have they caused trouble before?’ the major general asked, addressing their general.
‘Never,’ he assured him. ‘They’re normally very well behaved.’
‘We should send you all to Palmyra,’ said the major general. ‘Who’s responsible for this map?’
For a moment, time seemed to stop and the world shrank to that one room, its walls and the two eyes watching them. Their fates depended on the caprice and ill-will of a single person.
‘I am,’ Sami said. ‘I’m responsible for the map. Rafat was on leave and Ahmed was working on other assignments.’
The brigade general looked like he was about to object but then he closed his mouth. Perhaps it was better for his reputation if only one of his apprentices had screwed up. Maybe it could be passed off as a mistake and not a deliberate act of protest. The leather chair creaked when the major general leaned back.
‘Take him to the clink and I’ll think about it.’
Sami breathed a sigh of relief.
In the clink the mosquitoes were more numerous and eager than usual but now that the tension had been released, Sami fell asleep immediately. He woke up with his blanket pulled up over his face, his arms red and swollen with bites. He felt palpitations under his ribs, the feeling of harbouring something that was baring its teeth. He would have to be more careful. Another transgression would not be tolerated, especially now the major general had his eye on him.
* * *
—
Sami was let out four days later. He almost expected Ahmed and Rafat to congratulate him but they were absorbed and barely looked up when he entered the map room. The light from the drawing table spread a halo around the brigade general’s back.
‘Ah, there you are.’
The concrete walls seemed to warp and Sami’s field of vision narrowed. The map they had made was laid out in front of him. The general cleared his throat and straightened up.
‘We are behind because of you, and now time is growing short. You have until tomorrow morning to finish the job.’
There was no need for him to deliver veiled threats or mention their families; they knew what was at stake. Their pencils lay where they’d left them. New paper had been brought in. The map table shone dully, white, like the new moon above the treetops in a dark forest. Ahmed and Rafat had been sketching out a new scenario that included the bridges. Sami just had to colour it in. He told himself it wasn’t hard, that it was like the drawings he painted as a child, but a string had begun to vibrate and left behind a dull reverberation inside him.
* * *
—
The day after they submitted the map, Sami descended the steps into the bunker, which soon turned into an illuminated tunnel. The lights flickered and cast long shadows across the walls. The corridor wound ever deeper underground.
Sami’s friend was normally always in the same room, eyes glued to a fax machine that at any moment could spit out a pivotal message from another division. How Issa was able to keep a TV that received international channels wasn’t clear to him. It likely had more to do with his commanding officer wanting to follow events than with an oversight. There was always a certain level of anxiety when they were down here, even though unknown footsteps would be heard from very far away. Hafez and Bashar’s eyes watched them from the walls. The kettle was sitting on the black iron stove. They normally drank maté, a bitter green herbal tea, but this time Sami was unable to raise the glass to his lips. His hands were shaking too much.
Sami remembered conversations they had had. Why them? Couldn’t they just refuse? The answer was always: if they didn’t do it, someone else would. But if they all refused, who would do it then? A system can only be perpetuated if people perpetuate it. The memory of voices, his own concerns and doubt, all the threads tangling together. The din intensified, drowning out all thought. Stop! It was too late, it made no difference. Not now.
The blue light lit up the room and the newscast began. The reporter summarized the events of the past few days. Thousands of residents had fled to the Turkish border, where they were being housed in temporary refugee camps. The town was virtually deserted, an activist said. And yet the army claimed armed rebel groups were holed up in there.
‘Yesterday we could see the army lining up armoured vehicles and surrounding the town. Most of its residents have fled,’ the activist told the reporter.
But far from everyone had left. Later, Sami would describe it as the moment a missile hits. When matter seems to lose its original form and firmness and contours dissolve. The floor swayed, the portraits stared at him, the kettle whistled, slicing through the sound of guns firing on TV. He didn’t notice his hands cramping until he felt the glass cut into his skin. Red blood dripped on to the concrete.