#16. ZENOBIA PARK, Damascus, SYRIA
Monday June 29, 21:24
IT WAS already dark when Ali perched himself back on the brown-painted, black-framed bench next to the toilets in Zenobia Park for a third successive evening. He was wearing blue trackies and green sweater over a plain white T-shirt. It was beginning to get cold but not yet cold enough for a jacket. He focused his gaze on the gates and the street beyond the toilet-block and waited. Occasionally an old man would sit on the bench next to him, smoke a cigarette, chat briefly and go away again. Other men visited the toilets. Ali timed them. Each one left again after less than five minutes. He did not blame them. The toilet was a stink-hole.
Every day had been the same so far. He woke at ten, read Tales of the Prophet and Pokémon comics in bed for half an hour then jogged round this park for a half an hour. Home again, he did fifty push-ups and fifty squat-thrusts then took a hot shower before a breakfast of bread, yoghurt, eggs, fruit and tea with Friends, Oprah or Dr Phil on MBC4. Sometimes he smoked one of Hamza Madani's Gitanes Blonds. He didn't like smoking much. It made his lungs feel heavy and the smell clung to his clothes but nearly all the street-boys he had observed smoked and he had decided it was something he might need to do to get accepted.
The safe-house was on the top floor of a discreet five-storey building in a quiet, narrow side-street between Maysaloun Street and Hafez Ibrahim Street in the Sha'alan district of northern Damascus. An excellent location, it was close to both the glamorous shopping area of Salhiyeh and Al-Hamra and the slightly seedy parks and squares, hotels and banks that attracted beggars, sniffers and whores and the subsequent interest of recruiters for criminal gangs.
The flat itself, floored throughout with pale yellow lino, was more functional than luxurious. The metal front door opened into a small lobby which contained just a telephone table and a wooden chair. To the right was an open arch into a long, narrow, coffin-shaped living room. To the left were two doors, one to a square bedroom, the other to a small gloomy passageway which had, at the end, a blue-tiled kitchen with an elderly cooker, a dodgy-looking microwave and chipped, Formica-topped work-units, and, before that, a small, warm toilet and shower room. The shower-head was attached to the wall-tiles and there was no curtain. This meant anything that would get soaked by the spray such as towels, toilet paper and clothes had to be moved into the passage first.
The bedroom contained a cheap wooden double-bed buried under a faded-yellow, cotton bedspread and a couple of thin pillows. Ali slept on the right, near the sliding, glass balcony door. Hamza Madani slept on the left, next to the cheap chest of drawers that contained their clothes. Ali had the top two, Hamza the bottom. From the small, narrow balcony, Ali could see into the playground of the nearby Dar Es-Salaam Girls' Secondary School. He had observed a number of tartan-skirted girls milling round a flagpole at lunchtime while a woman's voice had boomed announcements and morally improving messages over a crackly tannoy. Hamza Madani had crankily accused him of ogling the girls, which he had not been doing, honestly, although the little tartan skirts were quite sexy, especially with the tight white blouses…Ali had flushed hotly.
The living room's large window looked directly across narrow Rafeek Sallum Street into the stark, white-washed walls and single bulb of a flat across the street. Ali had seen a couple of smallish kids talking to a fat, hairy-shouldered man in a tight white vest who, twice a day, shifted his vast bulk from the sofa to visit a pigeon-loft on the roof, scatter corn and 'chuck-chuck' his feathery pets. The loft was open-sided so the birds could flit in and out as they pleased.
The kitchen cupboard and fridge were well-stocked. Fruit, vegetables and packs of chicken seemed to fill every space, there were blue cartons of Syria Saudi Cow milk, jars of Sunbulah honey, Nutella and Tova apricot jam, packs of Bugles crisps, chilli and cheese, and ketchup flavours, boxes of Enjoy orange juice – Ali did not like orange juice, which seemed to annoy Hamza Madani greatly - and plastic bottles of Oasis and Baraka water.
The neighbours, an elderly couple, doted on their doctor son and looked after his child during the day, the doctor's wife being dead. Ali had seen a little girl in a nappy sitting astride a plastic yellow tricycle and attempting to propel it across the parquet with her feet. It had reminded him of Fatima, and made him feel sad.
The building itself, Number 5, seemed secure. The street-door could only be opened with a key or by an internal switch. There were just two flats on each floor and the stairwell was open and airy so each landing, all the stairs and the black and white diamond-shaped tiles of the entrance-hall floor could be clearly observed from their doorway. Continuing through a padlocked iron gate, the staircase led from the landing up to the roof which was covered with junk, old buckets, discarded taps, long wooden ladders, tins of paint, rubber hosepipes, debris discarded by decades of builders, joiners, plumbers and decorators. It resembled a junk-yard.
Hamza Madani, Ali's handler, was twenty-six and fairly new to the Service. Short, around five seven, but stocky, with a thin, gloomy face, a swarthy complexion, a permanent five o' clock shadow and a tumbling cliff of black hair, he had made it plain that 'baby-sitting' and watching cartoons was not why he had joined up. From the Aramaic-speaking village of Ma'aloula, north of Damascus, his father was a bus driver and his mother was a teacher in the elementary school. His sister Alana, a sweet, shy girl with the temperament of an easily startled roe-deer, worked in a shop. When Mokhtar had asked for her hand in marriage, it had been the happiest day of Hamza's life. The entire community had celebrated for days. He had joined the Intelligence Service with Mokhtar, straight from college, and they had become firm friends. Now, with Mokhtar missing and his family heart-broken, Hamza Madani, with his M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Damascus, felt he could be doing something much more useful, more pro-active than minding a child, and he had told Ahmed Ahmed so. Nonetheless, Ahmed Ahmed prevailed and Hamza got landed with the boy. The other agents had sniggered, making snide comments about playing Lego and watching Teletubbies as part of the briefing. He had told them to go to hell, so, when Ali arrived in the early hours of June 25, Hamza had been somewhat uncommunicative.
Ali had not slept for twenty hours. The JETT inter-city coach, uncomfortable and jolty, had hard, badly sprung seats and filthy windows. His fellow travellers, an ancient, seriously wrinkled woman in a black niqab whose two bulging white and pink-striped plastic carrier-bags had dug deep, painful trenches in her arthritic white fingers, two tense, tanned uniformed soldiers on a week's leave from confronting Israelis across the Golan Heights and a middle-aged couple in cardigans and slacks who had deposited their cheap cardboard suitcases in the underbelly of the bus at midnight in Amman, had snoozed and snored and smacked their gums all the way to the border, grumbled when asked to disembark for Passport Control, then snoozed and snored and smacked their gums again for the next three hours all the way to Damascus. Ali had closed his eyes once or twice but stayed stubbornly awake. He was tense, excited and a little scared and besides, the songs of Pink Floyd were not meant as lullabies.
Peering through the dirty, scratched bus window, he watched the silent, sleeping streets, the still, shuttered shops and the ghostly grey humps of houses flow by in the dim illumination of a half-dozen dingy street-lights. An elderly man, a young couple and three hopeful tax drivers lurked on the pavement as the slowing bus eased between the concrete posts of the Western Bus Station, pulled into a demarcated parking-bay near a kiosk and, clattering and rattling as though in a death-throe, wheezed into silence.
Hamza had greeted him tersely. Granted, it was four forty-five in the morning and noticeably chilly but, after the password exchange and some half-hearted questions about the journey, they had fallen into uncompanionable silence as the VW Golf chugged through the streets to the Sha'alan safe-house. Things had improved slightly since then, but not much. Hamza Madani had made his feelings about his part in Operation Flashlight crystal-clear. He slumped round the flat watching TV and c
omplaining about the shopping, the cooking, the washing, the housework, saying he thought the mission 'idiotic', till he left at twelve for the office.
Ali sat at the table in his pants and a T-shirt playing Solitaire on the work-issue Acer Aspire and listening to Natasha Bedingfield and Pussycat Dolls then, at two, got dressed and went out. Singing 'Pocketful of Sunshine' under his breath, he drifted round the shops, Kickers, Benetton and Spacetoons then sat in Zenobia Park for an hour watching the boys in their dark blue trousers and pale blue shirts and the girls in those hot tartan skirts coming home from school. Most of them walked in groups. Few deviated from their routes. Even fewer glanced at him. Later, around four, he walked, pounding the pavements between Sha'alan and the Old City, getting to know how streets and alleys connected together, how parks were laid out, how the streets ebbed and flowed, the fluctuations of people interacting, transacting, or just acting in Sharia Al Jala'a and beyond. Sometimes he walked up the steep slope of Jamal Abdel Nasser Street towards the massive brown bulk of Mount Qassioun which, topped with red and white striped radio masts, loomed protectively, or threateningly, over the city.
At seven he went home, ate whatever Hamza had put together for dinner, usually a green salad, Baba Ghanoush, bread and pickles, and then, at eight, when most people were settling down for an evening of Friends and the nine o' clock movie on Dubai One, he went out again, to bench-hop in Zenobia Park or stroll along Al Mahdi Ibn Barakeh Street to another, smaller park before winding back through the maze of alleys and narrow side-streets of Salhiyeh where he had seen the boys of greatest interest.
The numbers varied between two and six during the course of an evening and the ages ranged from seven to seventeen. They were poorly dressed, mostly in cheaply made sports clothes and even cheaper sandals, and spent their time sitting on the yellow and black kerbstones huffing glue from plastic bags and yelling abuse at passing motorists. He had watched them closely but not yet approached them. Tonight he probably would.
He gazed across the circular, closely clipped hedges and regularly spaced beds of red and yellow flowers to a playground which contained the slides, swings and climbing frames that occupied the local children whilst their parents enjoyed grilled, blistered sweet-corn from a stall just outside the Al Mahdi Ibn Barakeh gate. He liked Zenobia Park. The gardeners worked hard to keep the grass neat and lush. Several frequently employed hosepipes coiled away from taps at the rear of the toilet-block. A long, ivy-covered pergola strung alongside Al-Emir-Omar-Al-Jaza'Eri Alley 410102 housed backgammon-playing men and hand-holding couples. A long, narrow pond, illuminated at night by discreet under-water green and blue spotlights, ran through the middle. A couple of ducks paddled up and down the grassy slope. The wide, white balustrade surrounding the pond was a favoured location for waiting, working boys.
Ali entered the toilet-block. The scruffy concrete floor was soaked and reeking with old piddle-puddles. Half a dozen cubicles lined one wall. The ridged floor-plates were stained, the holes in the ground brown with use and age. The green wooden cubicle doors were scuffed and peeling. There was a long tiled ledge, four inches or so in height, for standing on. The urinal itself was a long, white-tiled wall with four vertical dividers fixed at intervals. The tiles were stained orange, brown and yellow. A length of green hose-pipe lay on the floor curled up under two filthy wash-basins and scratched mirrors like a sleeping snake.
Ali had been propositioned more than once by men who masturbated whilst watching him pee. One had even fondled his bum and offered him cash for 'sucky sucky' in a cubicle. Just thinking about it made Ali feel sick, especially when Hamza Madani had told him grimly to 'man up and take one for the team'.
Zipping up, he hurried through the gate to the kiosk in Alley 410102. Plastic footballs dangled from open shutters. Cardboard boxes crammed with crisp bags nestled between tall tins of body-spray and air-freshener. Ali bought a packet of Benson & Hedges 'Blue', a cheap white Bic lighter and a yellow tube of Uhu glue then passed a pile of plastic crates and crushed cardboard boxes which had once held bananas to cross Hafez Ibrahim Street. He was heading towards the Franciscan church at the junction of Amin Loutfy Hafez Street and Al Majlis An Nyaby Street.
Four shabbily dressed, skinny young boys were sitting on the pavement by the traffic lights watching the cycle of cars slowing down, stopping, starting up, speeding away, slowing down, stopping, starting up, speeding away. The one in the middle, the tallest, had a rag pressed to his face. The two littlest were sharing a blue plastic bag, pushing their faces inside and inhaling deeply. The fourth smoked a cigarette morosely and spat into the gutter every so often. Ali watched from a discreet distance then slit open his pack of B & H, slid out a cigarette and crossed the road.
''Got a light?'' he asked nervously.
The smoker shielded his eyes from the street-lamp's glare. ''Got a cig?'' he countered.
''Yeah.'' Ali held out the pack. ''Got any glue?''
Laughing, the boy took the bag off the little kids. They barely noticed as they stared vacantly into the dark. A smear of snot disfigured one. A rash of spots scarred the other. The kids were about eight years old.
Ali inhaled deeply. The overpowering smell of the glue made his whole head swell hotly. He felt his heart race, his eyeballs bulge and his knees buckle slightly. Feeling suddenly sick and dizzy, he leaned against a parked car. Distantly he heard the boy laugh again.
''You like marijuana?'' he heard himself saying. ''I can get you some if you want.''
''Maybe.'' The boy got to his feet. ''Let's get off the road.''
He was a couple of inches taller than Ali but much thinner. His brown face was pinched with hunger. His black hair fell in a ragged, untidy fringe. He was wearing an olive-green tracksuit and a filthy black T-shirt. His bare feet were black with grime.
He lit Ali's cigarette and then his own. ''Hisham,'' he said.
''Ali,'' said Ali, feeling his head spin as he dragged the cigarette smoke into his lungs.
''You're not from round here,'' stated Hisham, ''Not with an accent like yours.''
''Baghdad,'' said Ali, ''Till the Americans fucked it up. Now I live here with my cousin.''
Hisham huffed from a glue-soaked handkerchief which he offered amiably to Ali.
''He's a bastard,'' said Ali, pushing the rag against his face. ''Forgotten who his God is.''
Turning down a narrow, car-lined alley called Abdul Kader Al Kharsa, they were squeezing between a faceless beige wall and a red Toyota Corolla when Hisham suddenly seized Ali's shoulders and forced him up against the car.
''Who are you?'' he hissed.
''I told you.'' Ali squirmed uncomfortably under the other boy's pressing weight. ''Ali.''
''Whatchoo doin' 'ere?'' Hisham waved his lit cigarette in front of Ali's face. ''Stealin' our business…eh? You come 'ere after our business?'' He shoved his free hand between Ali's legs. ''Nice bits,'' he slurred, ''Very nice. Very soft.''
Rubbing his own bits against Ali's thigh, he flicked his cigarette away and dragged the glue-soaked handkerchief from his pocket for another huff.
''Keep 'em to yourself,'' he said, trying to sound menacing, ''If you wanna keep 'em nice.''
Ali took in the unfocussed, glassy, slack-jawed expression, the white-headed spots round his mouth, the wispy strands of hair on his upper lip, the stink of self-loathing.
''I'm new in town,'' said Ali. ''I just want some friends.''
''Paying friends?''
''Any friends.''
Hisham barked a laugh and slid away. ''Give us a ciggie,'' he said.
''I can do better than that.'' Ali produced his tube of glue. Hisham snatched it like a drowning man snatching a rope and, rapidly unscrewing the cap, fell back against the Corolla.
He told Ali he was fifteen and from Damascus. His father was dead, his brother was away in the army and he lived with his sick mother in a mean mountain-side shack owned by a Kurdish shopkeeper who demanded 'favours' when the rent was late.
''Fr
om you, or from your mother?'' asked Ali.
Hisham flared up. ''Fuck you. You think my mother's some kind of whore? Fuck you.'' He squeezed clear, colourless Uhu onto his rag. ''She couldn't do it anyway. Not like me.''
He passed the rag across. Again Ali felt his spinning head swell as they staggered drunkenly away from the car to meet Tamer and Anas in Odai Bin Al Roqa, Alley 030001.
Tamer was also fifteen and also barefoot. He had wild curly hair and wore grey slacks and a vest with blue and white hoops.
Anas, fourteen, was taller, shaven-headed, bonier, beakier. He wore a pale blue shirt, bottle-green joggers and sandals. They seemed quieter, more shadowy, somewhat cowed, somewhat defeated, especially compared to Hisham's domineering aggression. They smoked and sniffed and tossed tiny stones into the bushes whilst Hisham raged against the police (corrupt), the government (more corrupt) and the rich (most corrupt).
''Well,'' said Hisham, ''One day we'll organise ourselves and fight these bastards. Things will change, and when they do…'' He smacked his fist into his palm. ''We'll burn the lot, Bashar, his cronies, the fucking immigrants, the whole fucking lot! We will make them suffer!''
It was quarter-past eleven when they arrived at the big brown and gold wedge of the Chams Palace Hotel. The street-boys appeared to vanish around half-past, presumably tucking up in doorways until morning. Ali had walked these streets between midnight and one a couple of times and seen nobody. If he let them melt away into the night, there was no guarantee he would ever see them again and he sensed that these boys were perfect recruits for the Dar El-Tawhid.
''Where we going now?'' he asked.
''What do you mean 'we'?'' challenged Hisham.
''The night's just beginning,'' joked Ali. ''We could go clubbing.''
''You girls do what you want,'' Hisham said tartly. ''I have a home to go to.''
''Will I see you tomorrow?'' Ali blurted, too eagerly.
''Why?'' sneered Hisham. ''You fancy me or something?''
''I can bring you some glue,'' said Ali, ''And cigarettes. What kind do you like?''
Hisham spat on the road. ''You're awfully keen to please,'' he snarled, ''Faggot.''
''Just trying to be friendly,'' said Ali peaceably.
''Faggot,'' Hisham snarled again. ''Cock-sucking, shit-stabbing faggoty fuck.''
''Bring us some money,'' Anas said softly, ''So we can eat.''
''I'll be in Zenobia Park,'' said Ali.
''I bet you will,'' said Hisham sarcastically, ''Zibby Park, the Perverts' Paradise.''
The others laughed. 'Zib' is Arabic slang for 'penis'.
The three boys passed the Chams Palace Hotel. They did not look round. Ali watched them go. When Hisham peeled off from the others, Ali was torn. Should he follow Hisham? Or Tamer and Anas? Or should he go home and hope the promise of money would lure them to the park tomorrow afternoon?
Hisham pissed against a lamp-post. Tamer and Anas stopped outside a juice bar.
Hugging the shadows alongside the buildings, Ali set off after Hisham. The other boy, drunk on glue, was staggering and stumbling, seemingly quite unaware of his surroundings.
Ali hung back. Hisham seemed unstable, confrontational. The last thing he wanted was to risk this contact with a fight.
Hisham lurched passed a silver statue of Hafez Al-Assad, swore at some kids roller-skating nearby, flicked a finger at a couple of cops who were smoking next to an ice-cream van then stumbled up the steps to the traffic lights strung above the road. Ali lurked by some bushes and watched Hisham cross the road into Jamal Abdel Nasser Street. Then he turned a corner.
Ali broke into a jog. Thankfully, Hisham was only half-way along the alley.
Suddenly Hisham half-turned. Ali shrank against the wall, squeezing himself into the darkness, flattening himself against the rough concrete. Wishing he had worn darker clothes, he cursed his white trainers.
Hisham was standing in a dust-filled white pool of seeping light. He was facing a patch of waste-ground where a building had been demolished. The drab olive-green tracksuit seemed even drabber. He frowned, glanced back up the street, scratched his crotch.
Ali pressed himself against the wall. He found he was holding his breath. Perhaps he should not have hidden. Perhaps he should have strolled right up to Hisham with a cheery ''I didn't know you were going my way'' or a ''Fancy bumping into you'', making this into a chance encounter. Lurking in the darkness like a stalker was bound to seem suspicious even to someone as stoned as Hisham.
He wished now he had stuck with the other two who, he suspected, had just found a warm doorway to sleep in. He could have stayed with them, waited for them to fall asleep, then snuck away home. Damnation. Why had he not thought this through properly?
Hisham whistled softly through his teeth.
Ali froze. God Almighty. What if the other could see his breath in the cool night air? What an idiot he had been, to follow him here.
Now, without warning, Hisham crossed the road.
Ali peeled away from the plaster, moved in a noiseless semi-crouch to the corner and peered into the waste-land. It was badly lit, covered in half-bricks, plastic bags, crushed cans, shattered glass, broken bottles, puddles of liquid and plaster chunks. At the far end, against a high beige wall, was a heap of rubble. A spindly tree grew in a corner. Hisham, back to the street, was pissing against it.
Ali withdrew. Where the hell could he hide? Hisham would surely see him when he emerged, would see that he had followed him. The game would be up.
He looked along the street. None of the doorways were sufficiently deep or dark to conceal him. He could argue, try to talk his way out of it, or he could give up and leg it. The other boy was too stoned to fight or chase him. He peered round the corner again. If Hisham was heading his way, he decided, he would scarper, but Hisham had disappeared behind the rubble.
Carefully Ali picked through the half-bricks, bottles, bags and rags. Soaring up on three sides of the rectangular patch were the red-brick sides of apartment blocks. He hesitated. Crawling up the pile might dislodge the rubble and cause a hard-core cascade but he had to see what was going on. Slowly, infinitely slowly, he inched his way up the heap to the top.
What he saw made him draw in a sharp breath. Behind the bricks, Hisham was standing on a carpet of broken glass in front of a bald, hook-nosed man whose face was pressed against Hisham's groin. Hisham's trackies were halfway down his thighs. The bald head was moving rhythmically backwards and forwards.
Ali felt suddenly sick and cursed silently. He wished he had gone home. He didn't want to see this. He started to slide back down the rubble-heap.
''Hey.'' Hisham turned his head slightly. ''Ali. Come down. Come join us. It's OK.'' He put his hand on the man's face. ''It's ….. ah…. just…. ah…come on down. Join us.''
Ali steeled himself and clambered over the top of the rubble-heap just as Hisham uttered a long, low, guttural groan and stepped away from the man's mouth.
''I knew you would come.'' He pulled up his trousers. ''I knew it. You faggot.''
The bald man, still on his knees, squinted up at Ali.
''Brought a friend, Hisham?'' He licked his lips. ''That's kind.''
Ali gulped and stood very still while the bald man's fingers fumbled at his waistband.
''Ali,'' said Hisham conversationally, sitting on a brick. ''This is Moussa Bashir. Moussa, this is Ali Hassan.''
Everything was suddenly warm and wet.