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.