“He has been studying me.”
She turned a page, and Midhat looked over her shoulder. One passage was large and legible.
The Effect of a New Language Learned by a Primitive Brain.
It is as if learning the word makes room in the mind for its meaning—its usage, nuance, connotation, and distinction—so that even if the word were forgotten, an indent in the surface of the mind would remain, an imprint, or cavity. Thus a wordless man may be capable of complex thought, except that he must once have learned to speak.
Jeannette did not move to turn the next page. They were silent.
“Did you know about this?” he said, after a moment.
“Of course not.”
“Do you … think … do you think I am …” His voice strained. “I must speak to him.”
He held the chair back for balance.
“Yes. I suppose you should.” She placed the book carefully on the desk. “Would you like me to come with you?”
“No. You and I—this is not the time for it. I need to sit down.”
Jeannette followed him to his bedroom. He sat on the bed as she watched from the doorway. Her eyes were red with suppressed tears.
“You can sit.”
He could not look at her. As her figure moved past he stared through the open door down the hall, where a light thrown from a window out of sight dispersed on the floorboards. He stared at the shapes framed by the door until they were estranged from his eye, and the banister became a woman’s arm, and the shadow in the far corner by the bathroom door a black shoe, with a long lace, which was in fact a shadowed gap where one of the floorboards had warped upwards.
He felt a cramp in his stomach. He was a guest, but the host had trespassed. And he too had trespassed, and transgressed, with the host’s daughter. Whose then was the crime? The spectre of his ignorance rose again before him. He thought he knew their public codes now, more or less—but the private ones? He had thought himself in the bosom of the family, capable—almost—of sitting in a chair in the study. He had thought his difference no difference. But if he was the father’s subject, how could he be the daughter’s husband? One did not study one’s sons-in-law.
Darkness was engulfing the view through the door, and the shadows widened and the light patches contracted, and the shoe in the corner disappeared in the pooling shade.
“Midhat?” Jeannette’s eyes were wide. “Midhat I just heard the door. They’re here.”
He heard himself respond.
“I should change,” she said. “They will have a drink first.”
She entered the field of the doorframe, moving in and out of light, and then she was gone.
He moved slowly. He put away his books and notes on their shelf in the cupboard, and pulled off his examination robe. He dressed himself in a dark grey suit, with a silver tiepin and a butterfly brooch on his lapel. He looked at his reflection in the mirrored door of the armoire. He tried to see what Frédéric saw. Something moved. It was the reflection of a branch from the garden tree, wagging in the breeze like a shaken arm.
In the hall the floorboard creaked; he opened the door and saw Jeannette at the top of the stairs. She wore a dark yellow gown with black lace over the shoulders.
“Come down,” she said.
“I will wait, and come after.”
Sylvain Leclair and Docteur Molineu were already at the table when he entered. Sylvain was beside Jeannette, and a place was set for Midhat beside the Docteur opposite her.
“Good evening Monsieur Midhat,” said Sylvain.
“Good evening, Monsieur Leclair. Docteur. Mademoiselle.”
Leclair had lost some weight since he last came for dinner in the spring, though he was still large, and his face sagged slightly. His pointed eyebrows were grey; for some reason Midhat had remembered them black.
“Well. You will have to forgive us for the simplicity of the meal,” said Docteur Molineu to Sylvain. “I’m afraid we were unable to find any fowl or meat. But we do have butter, so hourra for that.”
Georgine brought bowls of pumpkin soup, and Molineu poured the wine.
“You have finished your examinations, I understand?” said Sylvain.
“Yes, I have finished.”
“And they went well?”
“I hope so. We shall see.”
They sipped from their spoons. Jeannette ripped a bread roll and began to butter it.
“And when will you be returning to your country?”
The spoons were silenced. Even Jeannette turned her head.
“When will I be returning?” Midhat heard a tremor in his voice. “Soon, possibly.”
“And will you practise medicine in your hometown?”
“Will I what? Oh … I don’t know …”
Molineu reached for the butter dish.
“I was sorry to hear about your friend,” said Sylvain.
There was no reason why this above all should have been the statement to provoke him. It may simply have been that Midhat was already primed to react. But in a quick moment, his anger gushed and rendered him wordless, filling the front of his head like a wall of water. When he finally managed to speak, his entire body was shaking, and he could only whisper.
“Who are you?”
“Monsieur Kamal,” said Jeannette, “are you all right?”
“Am I all right? Am I all right? That man, that man … Mademoiselle, I am afraid to tell you, but that man … he is a worm and a, a thief.”
“A thief?” said Frédéric.
Sylvain laughed. “I am afraid I have set him off,” he said in a high, ludicrous voice. “Your guest is feeling guilty, perhaps, that his compatriots are at war with us and have killed our friend.”
“You are disgusting. You have no respect for women, or for anything that is sacred.”
“Midhat,” said Jeannette.
She had blanched. Midhat felt a blast of panic—her love for him so precious, so fragile, so long earned—and what control he had gained over his own voice was lost in an instant.
“No—This man, he is a cancer, he has slipped into the heart of your family. But I know him for what he really is.”
Sylvain met his eye. “You know nothing.”
“Calm down, Midhat,” said Molineu. “You are—I think you should calm down.”
“You!” said Midhat.
He looked at Jeannette again: her eyes were shiny with tears. It was the wrong time; he breathed, he steadied himself.
“What on earth is wrong?” said Molineu.
“Wrong! What is wrong, I … I …” The orange bowl blurred in his vision. “I have found … I had planned to talk to you … about this …”
Jeannette warned him with a tremor of her head. No, said her lips.
“Later, I had planned to talk about it later.”
“Talk about what?”
“Nothing—nothing.”
“It is not nothing,” said Sylvain. “You have made two strange and aggressive accusations, Monsieur, and at the least you should explain yourself.”
“Your wife!”
“No,” said Jeannette. “No, Midhat.”
“My wife?” said Sylvain.
“No. His wife.”
“Midhat!” said Jeannette, shocked.
Something in Midhat broke. He tried to hold on. “He is a bad man,” he said. It surged up: “I saw—I saw, on your desk …”
“My desk?” said Molineu.
“I did not mean to enter, I did not mean, I was curious—forgive me!”
“There is no need,” said Jeannette, “to talk about this now. We are all excited. Let us collect ourselves.”
“No, Jojo, let him speak,” said Molineu, in a tone for addressing a child. “You went into my study?”
“Forgive me, I saw, on your desk …”
Alarm crossed Molineu’s face. “Midhat—”
“Do you think I have no insides?” He dropped a slack fist on the table. His spoon tipped, and lukewarm orange soup spl
attered over his hand and the tablecloth. He gaped down at the mess. Jeannette reached across with her napkin to wipe his hand.
“I can … I am only …” said Molineu.
“You have been studying me.”
“No, that is not it at all …”
“Do you think I am not, you think I am uncivilised?”
“I should have asked your permission, of course, I see that very clearly now—”
“Do you think I am uncivilised?”
“No! Heavens, no, I was, on the contrary, Midhat, I have been inspired by your presence, by your elegance, and your—humanity …”
“My humanity?”
“Yes! Yes, your humanity—please, let me explain. On the contrary, I have been aware of the stereotypes that abound in our, in European culture. I believe there is some progress to be made, in the study of civilisations—”
“Docteur Molineu,” said Midhat.
“No, let me speak. On the contrary, I am attempting in my research—a humble attempt, Midhat! A preliminary monograph, only! I have been, was attempting, on the contrary, attempting to humanise you!”
In came the tinkling of Georgine’s tray. Sylvain, nearest the kitchen door, shook his head at her, and she stopped and tinkled away again.
“To humanise me?” said Midhat, after a breath. “I am—really, I am amazed. Monsieur, I am a person. I am—no—” He stood. His napkin fell to the floor. “Excuse me,” he murmured. “I must go. Good night. Good night.”
They were talking as he left but he could not hear them. He grasped the banister and mounted, very slowly. The gallery rotated into view. At the top he heard footsteps, and Jeannette caught him before his bedroom door.
“Oh, Midhat,” she whispered. “I wish you hadn’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
He lowered his head, and her hands caught him on either cheek.
“I wish you hadn’t. Sylvain is …”
“I know about Sylvain,” said Midhat.
“What did you mean by that? Sylvain is a friend.”
He took a deep breath and stood upright. “I have reason to believe that he is at least one of the causes of the problem with your mother.”
Jeannette looked at him blankly.
“When I was searching for the possible reasons for her illness, for her great unhappiness, it seems that in most cases of nervous illness, there is an event that is the first cause of the degeneration. And I have reason to believe that Sylvain Leclair may have abused …”
Her face was not reacting. Doubt set in. He could not go back; he would remain firm, in this at least.
She dropped her gaze. “Oh, Midhat. You are wrong about him.”
“I am not wrong. He is a bad man. He does not have a clean heart.”
She shook her head. “No. Sylvain was a friend to my mother.”
“Listen to me.” He held her by the arms. “You are in danger from that man.”
“What?” Her eyes were sharp. “What is it you think you are doing?”
“Listen, Jeannette. I’m trying to—”
“No, Midhat. I said, you are wrong.”
With a slow, certain gesture, she turned her face to the side. And then, she shut her eyes.
Midhat waited, close to amazement. As if he had just watched a glass bowl fall and smash, and was not yet able to believe its shattered fragments were irrevocable, he clasped her arms, watching, waiting for her to turn back to him. She did not say a word. If there were any tension in her expression he could think it was an impulse of the moment, of passion, that would pass. But there was no clenched jaw, no tight lips, no tears. Only a quiet sadness, in those eyes that opened slightly and looked at the ground. She would not defend him against her father. It was broken. He had broken it.
The corridor began to change shape. The shadows flexed, as though a light were swinging to and fro on the ceiling and contorting them. He shook her once more, in desperation. The edges of the gallery were already blurring in his vision. Even this thing, this one thing, Jeannette, even she was far from him. He loosened his grip on her arms and stepped back. She did nothing to protest. It was obvious to him that he could no longer stay in this house.
PART TWO
1
As is often the case when a city is ancient, and the names of her tenants are centuries unchanged, the gossip carried on the winds between the two mountains of Nablus had settled over the years into legends. Tales of marriage abounded, and tales of rivalry, and of curses and charms cast by the Samaritans. And the cockerel sentenced to death for crowing on the mayor’s land, and the Moroccan hakawati who stole only gold jewellery, and the Bedouin prince who slept on his horse and shot his bullets at the sky.
One such story concerned a French Crusader queen of Jerusalem named Melisende, who inherited from her Armenian mother a pair of dark eyes and a love for riding in the sun. Her mother had borne no male heir, and on his deathbed the king her father divided the kingdom between Melisende and her son Baldwin. When Baldwin came of age he wanted the kingdom for himself, and for this purpose amassed an army to besiege his mother and force her into exile. Banished from the Holy City, Melisende spent the rest of her life in a palace at the centre of Nablus. Every day the prison guards let her go riding, and she would take her horse past Mount Gerizim, out to where the valley spilled into the fallow plain.
Eight centuries on, in the year 1915 by the Gregorian calendar and 1333 by the Hijri, the foundations of Melisende’s Crusader palace were still to be found near the mosque in the Yasmineh Quarter, and the land where she would go riding was now part of the village of Zawata. On that same piece of land lived a man named Haj Hassan Hammad, who in the heat of one August afternoon had just lain down in the shade of an olive tree when his wife came running down the lawn. A Turkish messenger had arrived, summoning him to a tribunal with Jamal Basha in Aley, a city twelve miles uphill from Beirut.
In the spring of that year, the Turks had begun to deport the Armenians. First they rounded up the intellectuals in Constantinople—Krikor Zohrab, Daniel Varoujan the poet, Rupen Zartarian, Ardashes Harutiunian, Atom Yarjanian “Siamanto,” Yervant Srmakeshkhanlian the novelist—more than two thousand in total taken to imperial holding centres, many tortured, most killed. Then the Turks forced every remaining Armenian civilian to march into the desert without supplies. The Empire was dying and in its last throes killing with paranoiac ferocity all dissidents. Now even race could be a mark of treachery. The women were raped before they were throttled, and the Euphrates was strewn with corpses. Under the pressure of the Great War, the Empire that so recently had been reforming towards democracy now attacked without mercy whoever was not, and did not want to be, a Turk.
The messenger told Haj Hassan that his friend and colleague Fuad Murad had also been summoned to the trial, and had already left Nablus for Aley. Hassan assured the messenger that he would set out at once, and sent him on his way. Hassan shut the door and found his wife Nazeeha, who had been listening, in tears. It occurred to Hassan that his uncle Haj Tawfiq Hammad, who represented Nablus in the Ottoman parliament, might intercede for him with the authorities. He composed a message to Tawfiq and sent it with his servant to the telegraph station in Nablus. He would wait one more night on his farm for Tawfiq’s reply, and catch up the hours lost the following day.
That evening, after their meal of lentils and lamb, every member of the family disappeared to sleep or pray, except for Hassan, who took the opportunity to sit in his garden. Nazeeha wanted to join him, but he sent her away. He looked down from the ledge at the swimming pool glittering with starlight, and listened to the irrigation system watering the pomelo trees below.
In his study he packed a small bag for the journey—two fresh shirts and a pair of his best French trousers; the Quran; a bar of soap—and as he was buckling the straps the maid entered with a visitor. It was his friend, the merchant Haj Taher Kamal.
“Jamal Basha has become an anxious and bloodthirsty man,” said Haj Taher at once. “You
must not go, it will be certain death. Al-Lamarkaziya, Al-Ahd—every group that wants independence is a threat. It will not be a fair trial.”
“We never asked for independence,” said Hassan. “We are the Decentralisation Party. We ask only for reform.”
But Haj Taher was convinced of his danger, and urged Hassan not to go to Aley. Hassan did not entirely disagree with him, but he had made up his mind, and of course he was counting on Tawfiq. Haj Taher meant well, but he was not a politician.
A telegram from Tawfiq arrived before midnight: yes, he would intercede. Hassan could be sure of a pardon.
He woke at sunrise, kissed his sleeping wife, mounted his horse, and rode north through the hills. By the time the sun had started to heat the air he reached Jenin, where he stopped at his cousin’s house to exchange his horse for a carriage and driver. He napped in the carriage seat as his man drove them on. Through the wooden wall he listened to the uneven contours of the road, and woke to the quiet roar of wheels on rocks as the temperature dropped by Lake Tiberias. He ate one of the pieces of bread he had brought and offered the other to the driver. As they approached the Litani River he began once again to feel hungry, but all they had left was a bag of seed for the horses, so he requested a stop at the travellers’ inn that was coming into view on the hilltop ahead.
While the driver fed the horses, Hassan approached the building. The exterior had recently been refurbished and plaster clung to the leaves of the carob tree outside in a sticky crust. The innkeeper appeared in the doorway, a short, black-eyed man in a dirty apron. No food, he said. Haj Hassan scowled, and the man remembered they might have a couple of eggs left over after all—if effendi could wait just a moment. Handing Hassan a newspaper to read, he limped out of sight.
Hassan sat on a stone in the now midmorning sun and opened the paper. There were the usual deaths and births, news of the British rebuffed at Gallipoli, and a long review of a book about a Syrian immigrant in America. He skimmed the review. Turning the page he read the title: “Eleven Nationalists Crucified in Beirut.”
The Parisian Page 15