With every step, he felt an overwhelming urge to stop, and with every step, he forced himself to carry on. The sound of his footsteps, creaking and crunching, was amplified and echoed in his ears, about as discreet as when the tanks rolled through the streets at the start of the siege. But if there was a sentry on duty that night, he must have dozed off.
Halfway across, he turned around. It was the first time he saw it from the other side; the houses seemed to be crouching in the darkness, turning their backs on him. In that moment, he understood why there were people who wavered and stood still one breath too long. Freedom – during the protests, they had shouted the word until they were hoarse, but now he no longer knew what kind of freedom he was looking for. During the siege, they had been prisoners of starvation and airstrikes, but also free to say and think whatever they wanted. Soon he would be able to eat his fill and fall asleep without hearing the distant sound of gunfire, but he would also be a prisoner once more.
There was still time to go back. The cats slunk in and out of the ruins. The snipers were on a break. He looked at his city, then turned his back on it, and as he did so the city turned its back on him. Sami would never see his home again, or what remained of it. He would never pass the playground where he once swung high on the swing and which had now been turned into a cemetery. He would no longer see the rebel soldiers play football next to his old school, divided into teams according to their battalions.
If he really did have several lives, he left one behind in Homs. Part of him continued to sleep on the cramped sofa, with his knees pulled into his chest. The glow from the stove would die out and the last heat leaving the room would be his breath.
He glanced back one last time and let his eyes linger on the house and the city that had been his home.
Then he ran fast in the direction of the glowing point.
V
Coffee and cigarettes and a never-ending stream of cars on the Champs-Élysées. You always pay. You always roll one for me first. You smile and show me a picture of kittens you put a bowl down for in a ruined house, your home. Remember?, Facebook asks. You smile and remember the kittens.
After swapping memories and stories for almost a year, we become good friends. Then more than friends. Al-tafahum. You say that’s the most important thing for you in a relationship. According to the dictionary: mutual understanding. To be in agreement and exist in a context. Possibly that is the greatest kind of love: to be seen and to have your story recognized.
‘Does it matter that I’m a non-believer?’ I ask.
‘No. I have many friends who are atheists.’
‘Aren’t you worried I’ll go to hell?’
‘I think our actions determine what happens to us after death. And you can do good or bad regardless of faith.’
Later on, you tell me you don’t know what you believe. If there is a god, he’s on Bashar al-Assad’s side, which means he’s not your god.
I used to think believers had an easier time, that they held the answers in their hands and had faith. But I was wrong; you often seem to have more questions than answers.
‘Maybe you could talk to an imam,’ I suggest.
You smile again and brush the crumbs on the table into a pile, shake your head.
‘I’m sorry I tell you such sad stories,’ you say.
‘I’m sorry I ask so many questions,’ I say.
‘No, go on. I like it.’
‘OK. What do you do when you can’t sleep?’
You tell me that sometimes you imagine an old childhood friend, with freckles and a bird’s nest of curly hair, who picks you up and drives you through the spring night, through the Milky Way, down a deserted Champs-Élysées. Your lips close around the filter, you inhale. Your voice rises and scatters like smoke.
37
SAMI HAD AN impulse to touch his chest to make sure it was in one piece, that he wasn’t leaking from invisible bullet holes, that he hadn’t been turned into a sieve and that the man in front of him wasn’t the ferryman waiting to take him to the underworld. Maybe he had already crossed the black river. The regime soldier put a finger to his lips. A circus performer asking for silence, as though it were all staged, with an audience waiting on the other side, hidden behind the black velvet curtain of night. A shove in the back got him moving. The dot of light turned out to be a cigarette lighter with a built-in flashlight. That was when Sami realized he must be alive, because surely there are no lighters in the afterlife.
He was taken round the corner of a building that was almost identical to the one he had lived in for the past six months. The regime soldier led him through a doorway, gently but not particularly kindly, inside which three more soldiers were waiting. They searched him in silence, with a meticulousness that almost made Sami smile. How were they to know his most valuable possession was twelve red lentils in one of his jacket pockets.
Then began a long journey through hidden doorways and tunnels. After exiting the labyrinthine passages they stepped out on to a street, empty apart from a car with tinted windows. The night closed in around them and the moon hung over them, a fruit you could almost reach out for and pluck.
‘I can get by on my own from here,’ Sami whispered.
A gun was cocked and the hand on his shoulder tightened. One of the soldiers hushed him and raised his hand to calm the others. It wasn’t done yet; first he had to see the general.
‘Whatever you do, don’t look him in the eye.’
His tongue felt coarse and swollen. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen; the deal was that he was to be released immediately. If only there had been time to think, but there wasn’t. If only there had been somewhere to run, but there wasn’t. He was ushered into the car with the black windows and recalled other people who had climbed into cars and disappeared. Was this the last time he, too, would be seen?
The car slowed down in front of an enormous building Sami vaguely recognized but had never looked at twice before the war. He was brought into a bare room and placed on a straight-backed wooden chair. There was a chill draught around his legs even though a radiator was steaming in the corner and the air was warm and stuffy with tobacco, a hint of vanilla. The general greeted him and asked a few casual questions. Sami knew the type; it was the kind of politeness that people in power only deign to show when they want something in return. He straightened up and avoided looking the general in the eye, but still noticed the glass eye staring blankly at him. To his right: a short, squat man sweating profusely, his contact and the mediator of his freedom. His presence reassured Sami, but not for long.
A door opened and seven men in handcuffs were brought in and ushered to the other side of the room, which reinforced Sami’s impression that this was an interrogation. Even so, a modicum of relief. He didn’t recognize any of the prisoners and they didn’t recognize him, so he would be able to adjust his story a little whenever prudent.