‘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.
‘Remember, you’re my cousin.’
They stopped; the soldiers watched them in the distance without moving. The driver rolled down his window and held out a packet of cigarettes.
‘Can I offer you boys a cigarette?’ he called out.
His previously cocksure voice lost its authority in the wind. One of the soldiers, the youngest from the looks of him, left his post and slowly walked over to the car.
‘You again,’ the soldier said.
‘My cousin needed a ride and you don’t say no to family,’ the Lebanese man said and adjusted his hunting rifle so it was visible in his lap.
‘That’s really nice.’
‘How about a cigarette?’
The Lebanese man lit one for the soldier and one for himself, without asking Sami if he wanted one. The young soldier squinted at him with each deep drag and then flicked his ash in his direction.
‘Who are you?’
‘My cousin,’ the Lebanese man repeated.
‘I’m not talking to you. What’s your name?’
‘Sami.’
‘I feel like I’ve seen you before…Have we met?’
The Lebanese man started coughing and beating his chest; he leaned over the steering wheel, gasping for breath.
‘Damn it, my lungs,’ he said with tears in his eyes. ‘Here, want to try it?’
The soldier took the hunting rifle and looked through the sight. He turned it on the Lebanese man, then aimed it at Sami, caressed the trigger and finally gave it back.
‘How much do you want for it?’
‘Well, you know what they say, you don’t sell your children.’
‘All right, then I’m borrowing it.’
The Lebanese man pondered the gun, scratched his knee and nodded.
‘Sure, no problem. I’ll come through here tomorrow, I’ll pick it up then.’
The soldier turned his back and waved them on.
‘Fucking prick, thieves, the lot of them,’ the Lebanese man muttered after rolling up the windows.
Then he lit another cigarette; the smoke made Sami’s eyes water.
* * *
—
They pulled over at a petrol station where an SUV with tinted windows was already parked. How could he be sure it wasn’t a trap? That they wouldn’t take his money and hand him over to the regime? Why would he trust regime supporters when they were the ones who had bombed his home, killed his brother and reduced his hometown to famine and darkness? The answer was simple: because he had no choice.
The car door opened. A gangly man in tracksuit bottoms and flipflops climbed out. Sami’s heart skipped a beat when he recognized him. It was the same man he had paid to arrange this trip. The smuggler shot him a wide smile.
‘Jump in,’ he said and took his backpack.
They turned off on to a smaller road and the Lebanese man followed so they could split the money and the two cartons of Alhamraa cigarettes Sami had brought. Comet tails of dust swirled around the car on the dirt road. The surroundings were the same, yet everything was different. But his chest was intact and the air finally reached his lungs.
They had crossed the border into Lebanon.
40
THE YELLOW FIELDS stretched out in every direction, sandy and dry under the scorching sun. A tractor was moving over by the horizon, in front of the mountains that rose up like a wall towards the blue sky. The tractor moved back and forth, back and forth, as persistent as an ant.
Sami thought about his own cultivation on the roof in Homs, about the radishes which would have time to develop tender roots now that he wasn’t harvesting them prematurely. He hoped someone else would find his rooftop garden. That someone else would treasure the vegetables and they wouldn’t grow in vain. The thought of the white and pink buds and their fresh bitterness made his mouth water.
The smuggler should be back soon with food. He lived in a caravan and had invited Sami to stay with him for the first few days before he could move on. The caravan was stuffy but Sami wasn’t allowed to leave it. It’s too dangerous, the smuggler had told him. Hermel wasn’t like the rest of Lebanon; the militant group Hezbollah had soldiers everywhere and were in cahoots with Assad. The truth was Hezbollah had extended its spiderweb to cover all of Lebanon – from being a Shiite militia it had grown into an organization with its own TV and radio channels and seats in the Lebanese parliament, and ran schools and social programmes.
Hermel was one of its strongholds. The Bekaa Valley was one of Lebanon’s most fertile areas, with fields of star-shaped leaves and the white petals of a certain type of poppy. To put it plainly, it was the ideal place to grow marijuana and opium, which made Hermel, no matter how unassuming the town was otherwise, one of the Middle East’s drug capitals. Hezbollah held the monopoly on trafficking, and they used the profits to buy weapons from Iran, which were then transported via Syria with the blessing of the regime. Everything was connected in a unique ecosystem.
The view from the caravan was, however, anything but fertile. Sami contemplated disobeying instructions and heading out to scour the surroundings for green plants. Under the present circumstances, it might be a way to alleviate the tedium.
His boldness was becoming a hazard. Just because he had made it this far didn’t mean he was invincible. It was tiny details that drew the invisible line between life and death. Unexpectedly finding radish seeds. An alcove in a tunnel. A sniper taking a coffee break.
No, to leave the caravan was to tempt fate. Sami remembered when one of his childhood friends quit his pharmacology studies and fled to Lebanon. He was caught almost immediately at one of Hezbollah’s checkpoints in Hermel and brought back to Syria, where he was imprisoned for terrorist activities. His friend’s crime: helping to smuggle medicine into the besieged parts of Homs. Two weeks later, his dismembered body was delivered to his parents.
To make matters worse, the Syrian presidential election was under way, which made Hezbollah especially interested in Syrians fleeing across the border. Their fingers were inspected for blue ink smudges from voting. If they were clean, they were driven to voting stations to give their support to Bashar al-Assad.