His father was right. If anyone could get him out of this situation, it was his childhood friend who’d always been at his side, ever since the walks to school.
Muhammed’s familiar, languid voice exuded calm on the phone.
‘Pack your things, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,’ he said.
It took almost an hour, but then there he was at the door, his hair as unkempt as ever. Muhammed ran a hand through his fringe, pushed his glasses up with his index finger and politely greeted Sami’s parents.
Nabil took both of Muhammed’s hands in his. ‘Make sure he’s safe.’
‘Of course. I promise.’
Sami turned away, embarrassed, but Muhammed kept a straight face.
‘How did you afford this?’ he said when they had climbed into his car, a red BMW with the smell of pristine leather.
‘Borrowed it,’ Muhammed replied.
He scrolled through the radio channels until he found one playing classical oud music. The strings of the lute vibrated and darkness engulfed their vehicle, which was no longer a car but a javelin hurtling through the night. This was a different beast from the Pink Panther, which had long since drawn its last, rattling breath and stopped in the middle of a steep incline. They drove past their old school, the ice cream café they went to as children, all the well-known streets that had turned foreign. Muhammed explained that the regime still believed the rebels were mainly members of the lower classes; driving a car like this through the rich neighbourhoods minimized the risk of being pulled over.
‘But where did you get it?’
‘We have a couple of showroom cars at work. It just took me a while to deactivate the alarm.’
Once they had left Homs, Muhammed let Sami off at a bus stop. He rested his arm in the open window and gave him a wry smile.
‘Good luck, my friend.’
‘And you?’
‘I always get by.’
Sami didn’t doubt it. Moreover, Muhammed had completed his military service before the revolution began and was not in danger of being drafted. At least not right now. He had launched into a long monologue in the car, unusually long for Muhammed, the message of which was that their time had come. To make a difference, he meant. They were twenty-something and what had they really achieved in life? These were the years they were going to look back on. The tipping point people would say changed everything.
‘For the better?’ asked Sami.
‘Of course for the better,’ Muhammed said. ‘Of course.’
And so, less than one day after secretly leaving his division, Sami was back. He had failed to desert, but he had heard stories of the revolution, taken part in his first protest and fled from his own hometown.
Back on the base, the other soldiers swarmed around him. Were the demonstrators outside FSA really unarmed? Then why did the regime want soldiers to shoot at them? Was it true what they said, that the only thing they were asking for was freedom? Other soldiers turned their backs on him. The less you knew, the better. One sergeant threatened Sami in front of the others.
‘If you keep talking like that, this will be the last night you spend here.’
Sami realized he had to be more careful, that it was pivotal to learn how to tell friend from foe.
Sami let the black dog, who had found its way back to the base on its own, crawl into his bed and rest its heavy head on his stomach. Before, sleep had been an escape, but now he couldn’t get so much as a wink of it. The voices of the protestors echoed inside him. He longed for Sarah, to feel her body close to his. He listened to the dog’s sighing and counted the minutes until the first light of the new day broke through the window.
21
A NAME, WHAT was in a name? He remembered the signs he wrote with his siblings’ names on, his yearning to name the sparrow on the roof terrace, the pet names Sarah had whispered to him in the night. In the army, a name wasn’t worth much, only the stripes on your shoulders mattered.
‘Sergeant!’
Sami let the shout echo behind him and ran his hand over the bark. A thin layer of splinters and woodchips covered the ground. The knife he had used wasn’t sharp but it was still legible: his name and today’s date. More than two years had passed since he signed out his uniform and blankets. It was finally over. This was the day he was leaving this hellhole for ever. No more nights when he collapsed into bed with aching feet and a pounding headache. No more early-morning runs over frosty moss with the air stabbing at his lungs.
The brigade general looked through Sami’s papers and raised his eyebrows ever so slightly as though the documents amused or annoyed him.
‘This must be some kind of record,’ the general said. ‘On average, you’ve spent one week of every four in the clink. We won’t be sorry to see you go.’
‘The feeling is mutual,’ Sami said and saluted him.
The brigade general signed his name and handed back Sami’s military ID.
‘Get out of here.’
* * *
—
The same day, as he prepared to leave, Sami tried to find the black dog. He looked for it and had almost given up hope when he finally heard whimpering coming from a shrubbery behind the armoury. There it was, licking two newborn puppies. When she spotted Sami, she lit up; it was as though she wanted to apologize for disappearing. A third puppy had died and she had carried it away and covered it with a thin layer of sand: the wet tip of a nose and one paw were still visible. He contemplated bringing them home with him. But the dog was better off here, where she could roam the open fields with her puppies. The roof terrace at his parents’ house, where he was going, was no place for semi-wild animals. He patted the dogs, fetched his bags and snuck out of a back door.
As arbitrarily and randomly as the soldiers had been brought together, their groups were now split up and scattered across the country. Bill was even leaving the country. He had booked a plane ticket to Canada for the same day he was discharged and was planning to become a language teacher. Whatever else you might say about his time in the army, his Arabic had improved, at least as far as insults were concerned.
Rafat would return to his family’s olive groves in Afrin. He gave Sami a long hug in the windowless room they had shared, where the three steel beds would be filled by new recruits. They promised to be in touch if either of them heard from Ahmed.
Before Rafat left the room, he turned at the door and looked at Sami.
‘He was right, you know. We’ve stayed silent for too long.’ Rafat’s face seemed older and paler than when they first met.
Hussein was the only one who asked to stay on in the army. The salary was meagre but it was still better than herding sheep.