City of Sparrows Read online

  City of Sparrows

  Copyright © Eva Nour 2020

  All rights reserved

  First Melville House Printing: 2020

  Originally published in the UK by Penguin Random House

  UK under the title The Stray Cats of Homs

  Melville House Publishing

  46 John Street

  Brooklyn, NY 11201

  and

  Melville House UK

  Suite 2000

  16/18 Woodford Road

  London E7 0HA

  mhpbooks.com

  @melvillehouse

  ISBN 9781612198521

  Ebook ISBN 9781612198538

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2020934622

  A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  a_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0

  For Sami

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part II

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part III

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Part IV

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Part V

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Epilogue

  A note from the author

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors

  I

  It wasn’t because they might be diseased, though many of them likely were. No, it was because they lived under the siege, just like you. The cats were as innocent and as thirsty, as emaciated and starving as you. ‘It would be like eating your neighbour,’ you said.

  A cat has seven souls in Arabic. In English cats have nine lives. You probably have both nine lives and seven souls, because otherwise I don’t know how you’ve made it this far.

  What determines whether you survive or not? Chance. But chance doesn’t inspire hope. Instead, you say there are strategies, two strategies to be precise. The first piece of advice came from a friend in the Syrian army, who said that imagined freedom is a kind of freedom.

  ‘When they wake us up in the middle of the night and pour ice water over our naked backs, convince yourself that you are choosing this, that it’s your own choice.’

  The second piece of advice, and you can’t remember who gave you this, is to never look back and never feel regret. Not even about the things you do regret.

  When you tell me about your childhood, I think about the Russian-American author Masha Gessen’s words. ‘Do not be taken in by small signs of normality,’ she writes, on how to survive in totalitarian times. Your childhood was bathed in light and sunshine, in safety and love. All the small signs of normality.

  1

  IT WAS HIS older sister’s idea to fetch a kitchen knife to save the sparrow. The little bird sat stock still, chirping urgently, in the glue their parents had smeared across a couple of flattened cardboard boxes on the roof terrace. The glue was meant to catch mice but the sparrow had got stuck instead. Down below, the streets and square courtyards of Homs shimmered in the heat. The air was thick with exhaust fumes and the sweet fragrance of jasmine, which climbed over stone walls and iron gates, but the occasional refreshing breeze reached seven-year-old Sami and his nine-year-old sister.

  They leaned over the bird. Hiba gently cut away the glue from under its claws as though she were a top surgeon from Damascus and not a schoolgirl with a short attention span. But they soon realized there was glue in the bird’s feathers and it wouldn’t be able to fly. Sami carried it in cupped hands down the stairs to the bathroom, careful not to trip – take it slow, his sister told him – and they rinsed and washed the sparrow in the sink, making sure the water was neither too hot nor too cold, the jet neither too powerful nor too gentle. The light brown ball of fluff rested in his hands while Hiba softly dabbed the trembling body with the green towel.

  ‘What are you doing?’ their mum asked from the kitchen.

  Their parents, Samira and Nabil, would sit in there on the weekends, discussing matters relating to the children and the house, listening to Fairuz’ soft songs on the radio. Sami heard the clinking of their cups, black coffee in which cardamom pods rose and sank, and the sound of his father clearing his throat as he wiped crumbs out of his moustache, the part of his appearance he was proudest of.

  ‘Saving a bird,’ Sami replied.

  ‘No more animals,’ Nabil said.

  ‘No, we’re going to release it now,’ Hiba promised, in the same tone she used to tell her teacher she hadn’t glanced at her classmate’s answers on the test.

  They reached the top of the stairs and opened the terrace door. The sun loomed high above their heads like a mirage, impossible to look straight at. Hiba took the sparrow and held her hands up. Fly, little bird, fly! But the bird sat still, curled up and without emitting so much as a peep.

  ‘It’s because its wings aren’t dry yet,’ his sister said.

  So they sat down on the sun-warmed roof, under a sky as blue as the pools in Latakia, to wait for the last of the moisture to evaporate. The kitchen knife glinted. Hiba held up the newly sharpened edge and the light that bounced off it blinded the two chickens and drove them clucking back into their coop.

  The heat made Sami drowsy and happy at the same time. It reminded him of a similar day the week before, which, in spite of its simplicity and unpredictability – or maybe because of the randomness of the moment – made him feel warm inside. Sami had lost his balance on a bicycle. Perhaps there had been a small rock in his path. Whatever the reason, he had taken a tumble. For a split second, he had been weightless, alone and insignificant, like a cloud of dust swirling through the white morning light. Nothing could stop him. No one knew where he was. No one except for Hiba, who ran inside and told on him, saying he had borrowed the bike, even though he wasn’t allowed, and ridden it out on the main road, even though there were cars there. Then the moment had ended and everything returned to normal. But for an instant, he was sure of it, he had experienced absolute freedom.

  The guilt he felt at taking the bike without asking made him keep quiet about his little finger. It hurt more than anything he had ever felt before, and stuck straight out like a bent feather on an injured bird. He tried to hold back his tears but Grandma Fatima noticed. She noticed the scrape on his right knee, where blood was beading, and him trying to hide his hand behind his back.

  ‘Let me see,’ Fatima said, and closed her wrinkled hand around his little
finger.

  She recited an elaborate chant, a monotonous half-singing that breathed tenderness and solemnity. Words that ran like a red thread through his childhood.

  ‘There,’ his grandma said and opened her hand. ‘It will be fine tomorrow.’

  He went to bed and tried to think of the pain as a cloud hovering above him. The cloud was still there in the morning, now edged with rain. His sheets were wet too. When Samira found out, her face changed colour and she scolded both her son and her mother.

  ‘Why didn’t you go to the doctor? Your finger’s broken.’

  His chest burned again. Because he had fallen on the bike, because he had wet his bed, because he had believed in his grandmother’s stupid chants. If her words of wisdom couldn’t be trusted, what was safe and unchanging? Nothing seemed to last for ever. Soon even their sparrow would leave them.

  Their sparrow. That was how Sami thought of it, even though it had only been in their possession for a short while. For an hour or two, their rescue operation had been so exhilarating they’d lost track of time. He felt a bond with the bird, as though a connection had been created simply by watching its dark pinhead eyes. By touching its downy feather coat. Feeling its light weight in his hand. He felt responsibility and love for it; no, he didn’t think those words were too big. He would miss it when it spread its wings and disappeared across the sky.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of inane whistling and he felt a shudder run down his spine, despite the heat. When he looked over the roof ridge, he saw the neighbour’s daughter ambling about their courtyard.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll protect you, little sparrow,’ Sami whispered.

  The girl always popped up when you least expected it. Behind the bins or in a doorway, or she would drop out of a tree. She wore glasses and had two stiff plaits and was a head taller than him. Why did she pick on him? Possibly because he offered no resistance. There was a methodical stubbornness about the blows. He lay on the ground and tried to curl up and protect his face. It was widely known the girl’s mother was a secret drinker and that her daughter probably took as many beatings as she handed out. But in that moment, he felt no compassion. Such injustice, that someone could lay into a body so small and insignificant without God, fate, a passing neighbour or the world at large intervening.

  Hiba distractedly twirled the knife on the cardboard. Sami grew more sleepy. He couldn’t put it into words, not then. It was a dizzying feeling, amplified by the bright light, like the feeling of being thrown off the bike. The thought solidified later in life: perhaps there was no fate to control him, perhaps he was completely and utterly free. When you took a step in any direction, you immediately faced a choice and then another one. Time forced you to move. Every second was a new start in which you had to act.

  But that was a dangerous thought that went against everything he had been taught. You were supposed to trust in fate and the higher powers. God, first and foremost, then the leader of their country. Or was it the other way around? Hafez al-Assad first and God second.

  Sami and his sister were sitting on the roof terrace with the knife and the bird, almost dry now, between them. The sparrow’s heart was beating rapidly in its chest. Afterwards, you might regret it and ask what might have happened if you had done this or that, if you hadn’t cycled on the main road, if you had put up a fight the very first time you met the girl next door, if you had listened a little bit less to what other people thought and said, like your older sister, for instance. But by then, it was too late.

  ‘You have to throw it,’ Hiba said, interrupting Sami’s contemplation.

  ‘What do you mean, throw?’

  She showed him how he should lift his cupped hands up and out, to give the bird momentum and make it understand it had to unfurl its wings.

  ‘That’s how they learn to fly, their mums push them out of the nest,’ his sister said.

  ‘But our bird already knows how to fly.’

  ‘Exactly, it just needs to be reminded.’

  They each kissed the bird’s beak and stroked its back. In that moment, he regretted not giving it a name. If it had had a name, it would stay with them, a name would anchor his love for it. Instead he whispered, teer ya tair: fly, bird.

  He raised his hands and hurled the sparrow into the air and, for a moment, it looked like it was flying in a wide arc out across the rooftops and courtyards of Homs, through the shimmering blue sky, before it plummeted towards the asphalt three floors down, broke its neck and died.

  2

  HE IMAGINED A quilt and that it was his country. Sami’s mother used to collect patches of fabric, from ragged jeans to old curtains and torn tablecloths, and sew them together on her shiny black Singer. Their country looked like one of her quilts, made out of fourteen pieces. Some edges were as straight as if cut out with a pair of scissors. Homs’ governorate was the largest part, occupying the middle – most of it was camel-wool, the colour of sand, and showed Palmyra, whose Roman ruins attracted pilgrims and tourists. At the other end of the cloth, a blue thread seemed to wander, surrounded by orchards and cotton farms. The stitches became more sprawling in that part, more broken and colourful. A silk blue patch of water, a cross-stitch of roads and hills.

  In that corner was Sami’s hometown, Homs, which gave its name to the province. Looking more closely at the blue thread – the Orontes river – it divided the city in two. To the east was the centre and the most important neighbourhoods, and to the west, the new and modern al-Waer suburb.

  Yes, both the country and the city resembled the quilt Samira held in her hands: an incongruous collection of pieces, which she patiently sewed together with equal parts frustration and love.

  * * *

  —

  Homs was the country’s third biggest city and home to about a million inhabitants, situated on the river banks near the Crusader castle Krak de Chevaliers. There was the old clocktower, the Saint Mary Church of the Holy Girdle and the Khalid ibn al-Walid Mosque, but the city didn’t attract as many tourists as the capital Damascus or the commercial centre Aleppo. Homs was primarily a city for the people who already lived in it, an unassuming place. No one was particularly rich and no one was particularly poor; everyone ate the same kind of food, as the saying went.

  Sami’s home was in al-Hamidiyah, in the Old Town, the most condensed part of the city. Several of the houses had shops and cafés at street level while the owners lived upstairs. Sami could recognize his home streets from the smell: fresh coffee, roasted almonds and diesel steam. Their house, like the neighbouring houses, was striped, built with dark and bright stone. When Sami was born his father had had a small shop to make ends meet but it had been closed down long ago and made into a garage. They reached the apartment from an outside staircase. It had two levels, three if you counted the roof terrace.

  The house had originally been built with a square courtyard, which an orange tree brightened during the day and a starry sky illuminated at night. But as the family grew, floors had been added and the courtyard built over. Now the pride of the house was the children it contained, not to mention all the animals. Sami and his mother would place bowls of leftovers on the stone steps for the neighbourhood cats. From time to time, a cat or two would move in, and they were usually allowed to stay so long as they didn’t get pregnant or pee on the Persian rug. Two hens lived in a mesh-encircled coop on the roof terrace, alongside a turtle on a water-filled silver tray.

  The white duck, however, that had been Sami’s special pet, had vanished without a trace. His parents had told him it was sick and they had taken it to the vet. That night, they had meat for dinner. When his mum leaned across the table and asked if he liked it – pulling a face as though trying to stifle a giggle, and then she coughed and Nabil handed her a glass of water – his sister said they were eating his duck. Sami didn’t want to believe it. Besides, only half of what his sister said normally turned o
ut to be true. But they wouldn’t tell him where the white duck had gone. The meat on his plate was light and tender and had tasted juicy up until that point, but afterwards he wasn’t really hungry any more.

  After dinner, Sami went to the biscuit jar and comfort-ate some of the sweet pistachio rolls in it. He was not allowed to do so and to emphasize the point his mother had placed a note at the top of the jar that read God sees you. Samira was the only one in the family who turned to Mecca five times a day and fasted during Ramadan. Sometimes the others joined her so as not to make her sad. She was the heart of the family, tall, imposing, with a thick braid that swung far down her back when they were at home. Like many women of her generation, she didn’t work, aside from the work required to bring up three children, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  Sometimes, however, Samira made tablecloths that she sold in the market. She had started sewing at the same time she started wearing a hijab. It was a few years before, not because she had to, but because people around her were. Samira wore it on special occasions and with her fringe visible, more in the style of early Hollywood starlets. She made her first headscarf out of one of her mother’s polka-dotted 1950s dresses. When she had the sewing machine out anyway, she also took the time to make things for Sami and his siblings. A skirt for Hiba, a pair of sweatpants for their big brother Ali, a jumper for him.

  The jumper was yellow and black with two penguins on the front. Sami wore it every day, until he went to a classmate’s birthday party and someone called him an egg yolk. That made the jumper lose some of its charm, but the penguins still captivated him. His dream was to one day travel to a permanently cold place with snow and ice – his older brother talked about exotic places like Svalbard and Antarctica. He imagined the cold did something to the people there, that it created a silent mutual understanding. They dressed in thick jackets and blew smoke rings and had a common enemy, namely the biting winds. He figured there would exist a deep bond between humans and animals there. So long as you respected each other’s habits and didn’t act unpredictably, you could live side by side. Penguins would waddle about, polar bears would hunt seals, seals would dive into their holes in the ice in search of fish. And he for his part would live in an igloo, staring himself blind at the white landscape.