She was astonished that Abdel Latif could still describe the first time she entered the school. He remembered the color of her socks, the style of her shoes, her white blouse and black skirt. He was eloquent in describing her perfume, the shape of her neck, her laughter, and the color of her eyes. He only left off describing each detail in order to return to it a moment later, this time more vehemently. Nevine was bewildered. She didn’t mask her longing for the days when S was still a small village crossed by one long, straight road, when it was surrounded by groves of olives, peaches, and apricots and grapevines. Its houses were spacious and welcoming then, the doors were always left open, and you could count the number of strangers on one hand. It was only a few kilometers from Damascus, but the road to the city used to be lined with meadows, of which only a few remained now.
She liked to have someone from those times around to reminisce with. In truth, she’d barely paid any attention to those attractions back when they’d really existed, but now she liked to give them central, undisputed pride of place in her memories. She’d had another life in art school that no one from S knew about, but in the end, it hadn’t been enough for her. That life consisted of a single failed love story, adolescent in its simplicity. She had been in love with the same young man as all the girls in her university class. She was the first to withdraw from the race, unable to bear being so totally ignored. Withdrawal suited her conservative personality and her lack of self-confidence, frightened as she was of the passions and caprices of the city. She guarded this story closely, considering it a dangerous secret, a failed sexual adventure, a one-time-only experience. Her reticence went unappreciated by her colleagues at the art college, where disorder and stupidity were an integral part of student life.
She thought of the long night when she met Abdel Latif again. They were both caring for a young man who had been hit by a sniper bullet, which had ripped through his shoulder. His prognosis was good, and there was no real cause for concern. The battle had stopped for some days, but the truce wouldn’t last. Everyone could see the hordes of regime forces at the entrances to the town; tanks and defense artillery had been stationed there, checkpoints made of sandbags had sprung up, and snipers had proliferated on every tall building that overlooked the town. That night there was a full moon, and everything was quiet. Abdel Latif had spent days rearranging every detail in the field hospital. He made a list of all the medications in the stores as well as the names of the patients who had been discharged, along with the casualties whose burials he organized meticulously in the new graveyard he’d built, with numbered graves. When preparing this new cemetery for the victims of the siege, he made sure to gather flowers for them all—something that caused Nevine to reflect that this man must have changed considerably since she’d last seen him. He seemed different from the other men his age: younger, more vigorous. Nothing frightened him anymore. He would rush into the heat of battle alongside the young men and drag the wounded to safety, heedless of dying himself. A strange energy welled up from inside him, and despite his long workdays he made do with only a few hours of sleep a night and never forgot a single detail required by the field hospital or the graveyard.
She felt him panting like a teenager, and it wasn’t long before he reached for her hand and squeezed it with disconcerting force. She thought it was just an expression of the solidarity called for in such circumstances, but even so she felt a not-entirely-innocent sensation flowing through her veins. He would never find a better opportunity than this to declare the love he felt compelled to reveal. He talked for more than an hour, and Nevine listened without comment—not that he gave her any chance to respond, to correct his interpretation of the facts he related with such confidence; he just stood up when he was finished and walked out. He left the hospital for what remained of his house: a single bedroom and the remnants of the kitchen, whose eastern wall had been destroyed, leaving it open to the garden. He was used to living in these ruins and refused to leave the house; he told his friends, who asked him to move somewhere safer—somewhere with a cellar that might protect him from the aerial bombardment—that whatever remained of his own home was good enough for him. He wouldn’t leave his bed; to do so would make him feel like a stranger to himself. Homesickness always began with leaving one’s bed, he said, and abandoning the little items you use every day that have become a part of you. Leaving these objects behind is extremely difficult and is always a herald of misfortune.
He wasn’t the only man who refused to leave his shell of a home, but even so his determination to stay put seemed incomprehensible. His remaining friends and acquaintances explained it as reluctance to leave his memories of his wife, but the truth was that Abdel Latif didn’t want to leave the place where, for years, he had daydreamed about Nevine. The night of his confession, he slept deeper than he had for years, while Nevine sat alone on her bench in the garden of the field hospital, unable to move. She thought of what Abdel Latif had said and tried to piece together his precise words, the various expressions he had used. She couldn’t remember anything in concrete terms, but she had to admit that the thought of shaking up her life was attractive. She was delighted to discover there were men who had been in love with her for years without speaking a word to her about it; she’d always hated being the country girl afraid of the city who hadn’t felt able to turn down the first suitable offer of marriage. And after accepting, she hadn’t been able to back out; Najib Abdullah never gave her a logical enough reason for retreating from her foolish decision, agreeing to be joined to a man she didn’t love. She hadn’t noticed that life had already presented her with a bouquet floating quickly down the nearby river; she hadn’t seen it until it was too late, when it didn’t mean anything anymore. What was the point of clinging to memories as life went by? They were only good for digging up more pain, she thought.
Abdel Latif didn’t pursue her, exactly, but neither could she forget what he’d said. He was always present nearby, like a moth fluttering around her. He had decided to burn; no more slow living for Abdel Latif—that was what he thought as he saw her furtive looks at him changing every day. He felt surrounded by a wall of time protecting him from frustration and sluggishness. He was confident she wouldn’t let him drown in the whirlpool again. He didn’t know where he found the courage to act so recklessly in the early years of the revolution, doing so many things he used to find horrifying. He opened his wife’s wardrobe, and the smell of moldy clothes wafted in his face. Even now he refused to look inside. He asked a girl who took care of donated goods to cart everything away, and he cleared the house of his wife’s clothes at last. Later he decided that this wasn’t enough; he asked a group of young men to take the whole wardrobe out of the house and dispose of it; some nails in the wall would be enough to hang his few clothes on. If you want to expel someone from your memory, you need to remove their scent from your presence entirely.