‘That’s why my beer’s always on him,’ said the swimmer of the two and smiled.
They talked about childhood memories, which reminded them that they did have a past, a normal life, before everything was broken. Did they remember the theme music to Kassandra? Did they ever. Sami hummed its distinctive melody.
He asked the waiter for salted nuts. The bowl clattered when he put it down on their table and, in that moment, they heard the crackling bangs. The people in the bar looked around and exchanged nonplussed glances.
‘Fireworks this early?’
After that, everything happened very quickly and very slowly. Phones began to ding and people were shouting that they had to leave. Chairs toppled over, glasses smashed on the ground, Sami caught the word ‘shooting’. Nothing around them seemed to signal danger; maybe it was just a gang fight further down the street. They walked around the corner from the bar and had a look around before Sami dropped his friends at their hotel.
* * *
—
It was only on the metro back home that he realized the extent of what had happened. Normally people didn’t speak to each other in the carriages but now everyone was eager to inform and warn. Sami caught snatched words and sentences and read more on his phone. Masked men had fired at several restaurants near the canal. Explosions by the football stadium, the Stade de France, where a game was being played against Germany, had been reported. He and his friends had talked about going to that game but the tickets had been too expensive. His phone dinged again; terrorists had opened fire in Bataclan, where over a thousand people had gathered for a concert.
When police helicopters began to circle above the rooftops, Sami had flashbacks to the airstrikes in Homs. He bought two large bottles of water and stocked up on candles and tinned goods. Then he paced to and fro in his room, unable to relax.
Later that night he decided to head back out for a walk around the neighbourhood. The streets were deserted but he felt like he was being watched. He turned around in the light of a streetlamp and looked into a pair of golden eyes. The cat licked its black fur, languidly stretched out its back, then jumped down from the wall and slunk into the cemetery.
* * *
—
The following night, to clear his head, Sami walked to the Place de la République. Marianne was standing on her stone pediment, holding an olive branch up towards the sky, surrounded by flowers and light. For the first time he felt a strong kinship with the city. They were here together and they grieved together. Perhaps the people here did have some understanding of the trauma he had been through.
The French president had declared three days of national mourning. This was not just an attack on Paris or the French people, the American president had said. This was an attack on all of humanity and our shared universal values.
Sami had passed the square many times before, had sat in its burger restaurant and gazed out of the windows on the second floor. During the day, skateboarders zigzagged across it. One time, an evangelical man had preached about sin and forgiveness through a whistling microphone. The preacher had spoken rhythmically, like a rapper, and the people had swayed around him. Sami had paused for a while, trying to decipher the French.
Now it was midnight and the mood was very different. People were gathering in groups, offering each other tissues and cigarettes. Soldiers with automatic rifles patrolled the square; Sami would have preferred it if they had kept more of a distance.
A slight cough made him jump. And when he turned around, there she was.
* * *
—
‘Do you have a light?’
He searched his pockets.
‘Thanks,’ she said with an accent he couldn’t place. ‘You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, too?’
He laughed and lit one; she smoked with her hand close to her chest as though she were cold. She was a journalist and there to report on the terrorist attacks.
‘Stockholm,’ he repeated. ‘I know a couple of Syrians who live in Sweden.’
‘What else do you know about Sweden?’
‘There are polar bears there, right?’
‘Not really.’ She laughed. ‘We have as many polar bears as Syria has penguins.’
‘Well, it depends on how you look at it…’
And then he told her that his mum once knitted him a penguin jumper. That it had been his favourite. He didn’t know why, but something made him want to tell her that. And tell her more, continue sharing his memories. He stopped himself in the middle of a sentence when he realized how strange he must seem.
‘I guess you miss her a lot. Your mum and the rest of your family.’
Then silence, hands deep in their pockets, neither one seeming to want to leave. He nodded at the graffiti wall and asked if she knew what the words meant. Fluctuat nec mergitur.
‘It is Paris’s motto,’ she said. ‘She is tossed by the waves but does not sink.’
Then she took two tealights out of her coat pocket and asked if he wanted to light one with her.
Sami thought about his little brother, about the ninety people who had drawn their last breaths in the concert hall, about how death always struck out of sequence and indifferently. He cupped his hand against the wind, a flickering flame in the night.
* * *
—
When we were born, what did any of us know about what our lives would be like? Nothing. We knew nothing. The only thing we could do was look at the place we were in and take a step in one direction or another. Life required nothing more than that. That was freedom. One step at a time.
Sami had already started feeling at home at Charles-de-Gaulle, particularly in terminal 2F. Over a year had passed since their first meeting at the big square, where people had mourned and she had asked him for a cigarette. During the autumn, he had waited for her here every other or every third weekend. Sometimes, he had hidden behind a pillar and put his hands over her eyes and pressed his lips against the back of her neck. They took the train into Paris and forgot about time for two or three nights until they had to come back here. Charles-de-Gaulle was their passage and ritual; they met and parted under the white fluorescent lights.
But now, in December 2016, it was Sami’s turn to go to her.
Sami had only been on a plane once before and had already forgotten the procedure. Did he show his passport first, or his bag? How many security checks did he have to go through? There was something about all the security guards that made his shirt cling to his back and his breathing become laboured. Martial law was still in effect over a year after the Paris terror attacks. There were reports about raids in the banlieues and Muslims being arrested in the middle of the night on the vague charge of associating with terrorists.