* * *
—
A month had gone by since their arrest. Nothing seemed to happen, but since they could now leave the country they decided to head over to Lebanon and lie low for a while.
Muhammed said Sami could have the car indefinitely and so Sami enrolled in a programming course at a university in Beirut for the rest of the spring.
‘I miss you,’ he said to Sarah.
‘I miss the Pink Panther,’ she replied. ‘And you. But mostly the Beetle.’
He pushed the phone closer to his ear and listened to her breath.
‘When will you be back?’ she asked.
‘In the summer,’ Sami promised. ‘We can rent a bungalow in Latakia. Go for swims, make fires on the beach and rest on a blanket under the stars.’
‘You can’t even swim properly.’
‘You can teach me.’
‘I mean for good, Sami. When will you move back for good?’
He was picturing the future but somehow he didn’t believe in it. After the secret police’s raid, everyday life felt like a puppet show, in a shadowland, off to the side.
II
‘Do you think it’s a matter of luck?’ I ask.
‘I was careful,’ you reply.
But after hearing the story of you boiling water for tea by connecting a cable to a power line, I no longer believe you. It’s possible you were careful sometimes. Sometimes, though, I think it was precisely your way of throwing yourself into things that enabled you to escape the worst dangers.
If you hadn’t hurled yourself forward and been so confident, I’m not sure I would have dared to believe in us.
I’m at the outer edge of this narrative, far out on the periphery. What right do I have to speak with your voice and bear witness for you? Only the right you grant me. What is told here has grown like an ongoing conversation, a plait we pull ever tighter with threads of four languages. We break off and start over, then we cry and carry on.
To be honest, I do most of the crying, since your tears have long since dried. Children wrapped in white sheets and body parts sticking out of the debris is too incomprehensible. A couple of dusty teacups, left behind in a hurry. I inherit your nightmares and memories without knowing how to put them down, if not on paper.
Your grief takes different expressions; you chain-smoke and go for long walks. To you, it’s not incomprehensible or fiction, since it has already happened.
12
OUTSIDE THE POLICE station, the city had rubbed the sleep out of its eyes and roused itself. It was the beginning of autumn 2009 and Sami was finally back home, in Homs.
Sarah had invited him to stay over in her student room and they talked through the late hours in whispers. When the first morning light fell on her face, he kissed her and sneaked out. He could still feel her lips on his neck, and was grateful they were slowly finding their way back to one another.
‘What are you going to do about your military service?’ she had asked.
‘It’s fine as long as I’m studying.’
‘But you’re not studying here any more. Not since you left for Beirut.’
‘I’m not officially missing from the service yet. I’m just a few months delayed.’
‘So, what’s your plan then?’
He had already weighed his options and found each worse than the next. Endure, like his older brother Ali and childhood friend Muhammed? It was unimaginable, to let the army steal a year and nine months of his life. Fleeing the country and living in exile was just as impossible. It entailed leaving Sarah, his family and his friends, in short, giving up his whole existence. The final option was to stay and go underground, waiting to be found out and sent to prison in Palmyra where people could be kept for years, or worse, be forgotten about and disappear.
At the same time, the country he lived in was a pragmatic one. There was almost always a spoken or unspoken way around things: money. You could stay abroad for a while and earn enough money to buy your way out of military service. That was why he was here, at the police station, to collect his passport, so he could head to Dubai to look for work. When he told Sarah about the plan, he thought she would argue or at least sigh. But she only stroked his hair and looked him in the eyes.
‘I don’t like it, but I understand,’ she said.
While Sami went abroad and saved money, Sarah could graduate and start working as a teacher. They talked about getting married and living in Homs or Damascus. Anywhere they could have a library, Sarah said, with winding bookcases all the way to the ceiling.
‘Be careful,’ Sarah said before they parted that morning.
But going to the police station was not dangerous. It was a routine matter and besides, it was only the army that was interested in apprehending missing recruits. As an extra precaution, he had brought a fake certificate stating he had studied in Homs during his time in Beirut.
A waft of warm sweat and irritation greeted him when he opened the door to the waiting room. Sami entered just as a name was called out. If at that moment he had turned around, gone back out on to the street and then run until he ran out of air, maybe none of the things that awaited him would have happened. You never know which moments are pivotal ones. Maybe it wouldn’t have made any difference at all.
His name was called. A police assistant studied Sami’s ID and shook her head, as though she were dealing with an unusually troublesome student.
‘You’re a wanted man. Come with me.’
* * *
—
Sami was allowed to make one phone call. Not long after that, Ali turned up with a sports bag full of cash, but no bribe could help him. They had already passed his name on to other police stations. After a couple of hours his older brother returned, distraught, his eyes red.
‘I promise, I did everything I could.’
He had called some people they knew, people with good connections, but with no result. Sami’s heart stopped beating in his chest, or maybe it was beating so fast he couldn’t distinguish the individual beats. After Ali left, two officers came to pick him up. His stomach was churning with hunger and thirst. Sami held his arms out and the handcuffs clicked shut.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked as stones crunched under the car tyres.
‘To the cinema,’ replied the officer in the driver’s seat.
‘Right,’ said his colleague. ‘Remind me, what’s on tonight?’
‘I don’t remember, some kind of horror film.’
They laughed and the driver shot Sami a glance in the back seat.