The Stray Cats of Homs by Eva Nour

Street cats, crying from hunger, instantly claim our attention, but to understand what a fellow human being has suffered, we have to walk a mile in their shoes. Before we can do this, we must get to know them. In the first few chapters of Nour’s bewitching book, we learn about Sami’s early life, when Syria was at peace: growing up in a close-knit family, keeping a pet turtle on the roof, winning calligraphy competitions, helping his mother feed stray cats, falling in love, setting up a small business. Then, a merciless civil war and enforced military service shattered his world.

I review books in three genres; comedy, community and crime. The Stray Cats of Homs comes under the heading of community. Sami’s childhood and student years were spent within a strong, diverse, mutually supportive neighbourhood. Then, due to circumstances beyond their control, the support networks of Homs were broken and friends scattered. To save their own lives, Sami’s family were forced to abandon their home, and take shelter among relatives in the country. He chose to stay in the city where he was born, and take his chances. But in the end, Sami also had to flee for his life, giving up his dream ‘to return to a time when you could have tea with your neighbour….’

In Assad’s army, he met a former shepherd who was grateful for regular meals and warm showers in the barracks, and was so unused to sleeping in a bed that he tied himself to the frame, in case he fell out. It was different for middle-class, urban Sami, to whom the brutal life of a conscript was almost unbearable. In the nick of time, he was chosen for his beautiful handwriting, and trained as a military cartographer. However, this meant that he was forced to act against his own moral code. Faced with a choice between following murderous orders or being shot, he became a deserter.

Sami continued to try to do the right thing, although at times, he felt as if he was the last person left alive. Fragile buildings offered no shelter from constant missile attacks, and there was very little food to be had. He was so starved he ate fungus he scraped from rotten wood, but even so, he returned to his bombed-out family home to look for his turtle, and help the kittens sheltering there. His lowest point came when he had to bury someone he loved, without ceremony. However, there was also great kindness and fellowship. There were even moments of dark humour, when friends outside the siege boundary forced sheep to stampede into Homs, by putting chillis up their bottoms. Ultimately, Sami realised that his education and privileged upbringing were useless under duress. What he really needed were survival skills, to provide himself with warmth, shelter and water.

The story of Sami’s eventual escape, from Syria to Lebanon, is suspenseful and breathtaking. At this point, I could hardly bear to put the book down, because I was so desperate for him to make it. His life was hanging by a thread, and he had to put his trust in strangers. Of course, he did get out, or this wonderful book would never have been written, but he was no longer the bright young IT entrepreneur he had been, before the shooting started and his dreams crashed. When asked to recount his experiences, he was unable to put them in date order in his mind. That is where journalist Eva Nour took over, to record what happened to Sami, and to all those others like him, who did not make it to freedom.

For those of us not directly affected by the Syrian conflict, the sufferings of the inhabitants of Homs, a major industrial city, May 2011 - May 2014, seemed remote at the time, and are now merely a footnote to a troubled history. Only environmentalists, who argue that climate change caused large-scale migration within Syria, leading to socio-economic pressures ending in a civil war, continue to remind us that we are not as safe from this kind of disaster as we like to think. The book’s title, The Stray Cats of Homs, is a metaphor describing the condition of people existing under the siege. The events of this section are horrifying and heartbreaking, but also enlightening. As citizens of the world, we need to know that these things have happened, and continue to happen.