When darkness fell, he listened to the monotonous ringing from his first target practice. He often found himself staring blankly at the concrete wall. Sometimes when he fell asleep, the scenes played in his dreams like in the cinema. The crackle of the projector starting up was automatic rifle fire. The red velvet curtains flowed like rivers of blood.
Sami thought about how some things here were the same as back home, and yet not. The biggest difference was the freedom: freedom to and freedom from. The freedom to act freely. The way people here embraced and kissed each other openly, and were allowed to vote and choose their leaders. And the freedom from oppression and restrictions. From worrying about arbitrarily being thrown in a dark cell and left to rot.
* * *
—
‘Would you like to try a video call?’ Samira’s message said. ‘We finally got hold of a new phone.’
At first his cracked screen went black, then it showed two people on a sofa. Who were these elderly people, Sami thought before recognizing his parents. Samira had deep wrinkles around her eyes. Nabil, who had been balding before, now had only a few grey tufts around his ears and new liver spots on his cheeks.
‘Why don’t you have a moustache, my son?’
‘But, Dad, I never had a moustache.’
‘Then it’s about time you grew one.’
Sami asked how the family was doing and said Paris was amazing, much better than expected. Everything was good with him. He was studying French, had a place to live and was hoping to find work soon. They said the same thing: they had a roof over their heads, food on the table and the power cuts were less frequent than before. Then they fell silent, as though it took time to find the words, the right, reassuring words that wouldn’t make him worry.
‘Everything is wonderful,’ Samira said. ‘Hiba and her family send their love. They’re good, too.’
‘And Ali?’
They were evasive but said that, inshallah, it would be OK.
‘What have you eaten today?’ his mother asked to change the subject. ‘And don’t lie.’
‘Falafel,’ he said.
Sometimes Sami longed for the smell of the kibbeh his mum made and the shish tawook from Abu Karim’s restaurant. He sometimes ate at a Syrian restaurant on his new block. He had made friends with the owner, a man from Aleppo who moved away long before the war broke out, and the food was good, but more than anything he felt at home in the warm kitchen. He enjoyed watching the knife slice through the big, rotating hunks of meat, the sizzling of the coriander-green chickpea balls being lowered into the hot oil. Raw, crispy onion that made his eyes water. But the smell of Karim’s roasted chicken remained absorbed in a painful darkness, like the other memories of his childhood and youth.
‘Just falafel, nothing else?’
There followed a series of reproaches. Samira said he had to put some meat on his bones and not go outside with wet hair, since he could catch encephalitis and die.
‘Do you have to be so dramatic?’ Sami sighed.
‘You’ve survived this far, my son. Do you really think I would let you die from wet hair?’
Nabil interrupted her. ‘Let me give him some pieces of advice, too.’
Nabil reminded Sami to be respectful towards strangers. In other words, to be honest, polite and just a little suspicious, yet trusting and respectful. Not envious and proud, but goodhearted, open, generous, and did he mention respectful?
When all the unimportant things had been said, Sami asked how they were again. His mother lowered her eyes and said they wouldn’t be able to rebuild the house. The regime had denied their application to move back, and one of the reasons was that their youngest son was wanted for evading military service.
‘They don’t believe us when we say Malik is dead.’
The regime was also asking for Sami and he felt a pang of guilt. Samira began to cry and Nabil took her hand. The new phones didn’t crackle but Sami still imagined crackling on the line. They were so far away, or maybe he was far away from them. Yes, he was the one who had left. If something were to happen to his dad again, he wouldn’t be able to take a taxi to the hospital and hold his hands, feel his warmth rise towards his face. Nabil coughed and took a deep breath.
‘I have to be honest,’ his father said, ‘there’s not much to look forward to here. But that my son is going to live a life of freedom, that is something I never thought…’ He let the words tail off.
Sami wondered if he had heard him right. It was an admission he never expected from his father. That freedom existed, that it was worth something. And by extension: that the revolution he and his siblings had fought for had value.
‘Don’t forget,’ his father said before they hung up.
‘What?’
‘Moustache.’
* * *
—
The exile was an involuntary loss. It was losing your linguistic, cultural and social identity. But it was first and foremost grief at having lost himself, his dreams and plans for the future. Of course it was possible to start over, but what if you didn’t want to? What if you found that the weaving of your life had been torn and the wind was blowing through its warp and weft. He had been cut in two: the Sami who walked the streets of Paris and the Sami who looked up and saw the pigeons of Homs circle overhead. As though everything in his former life – all the memories associated with specific places and people – had been transformed into stories.
Longing was embedded in every memory. He could not sit in the kitchen and argue with his siblings. He could not gather up the overripe fruit under the orange tree at his grandmother’s house. He couldn’t walk to Clocktower Square and have a coffee with a friend. He could only tell people about it. And every time, he wondered if his memories were changing, if he was adding or subtracting, if his narrative was as fluid as he felt. Was the telling a way of keeping the memories alive, or did he lose them the moment he spoke them?
* * *
—
In November, two friends Sami had grown up with but not seen for many years visited him from Germany. It was a Friday night and they sat outside a bar near the Saint-Martin canal, under the patio heaters.
Their journey had been more difficult than Sami’s. They had crossed the Mediterranean in a rubber dinghy that had quickly sprung a leak. At first, the boat stayed afloat, but then fuel mixed with the water and burned their skin, particularly of the women and children crowded on the floor. Only one of the two friends knew how to swim; he had to keep them both afloat. People screamed in the freezing water. One by one, the bodies sank, only to be washed up on the beach they could see in the distance. But, miraculously, the two friends made it.