It seemed the universe would not let Midhat’s conscience lie. Only a few months later he spotted Monsieur Samuel Cogolati, his Belgian friend from the Faculty of Medicine at Montpellier, in the audience of the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens during the performance of a comic opera about a magical pear. When their gazes collided, Cogolati jerked his head back in surprise. During the interval Midhat found him by the bar.
“Monsieur Kamal! I did not expect to see you again. I thought you had returned to Palestine.”
Although only a year had passed, Cogolati looked older and his waxy face had at last grown some down. Midhat himself had grown an inch and been forced to buy new suits on the Rue Royale. He was also starting to comb his hair with a side parting, and carried a steel-topped cane.
“No, no, I am in Paris … I decided …” He stopped. “I decided that I needed a change of scene. And, you know how it is, new experiences, and so on.”
“What do you mean?”
“New scenery, new people … I never wanted to outstay my welcome. And to see Paris! How can one visit France and not see Paris?”
“Indeed. I am here for the weekend on my way to Geneva. But we miss you at the Faculty, I was not expecting you to leave. I heard you did well in your examinations.”
“Oh, well, all thanks to you. How—have you heard from my host family at all?”
“The Molineus haven’t written?”
“Of course, only, it was a while ago …”
“The last I heard, Jeannette went off to be a nurse, but I’m sure you know more than I do.”
“Well.” An usher in red lapels was calling for the second act. “We should meet when you next come through Paris.”
Midhat reached for a napkin with a shaking hand and drew a fountain pen from his pocket. Rue du Four, he wrote. He did not recognise his handwriting.
“Who was that?” said Faruq, as the curtain went up and the cast reassembled onstage to general applause and a few whistles.
“A Belgian.”
Midhat struggled to focus on the remainder. All that time he had been studying at the Faculty of Medicine, and in the end it was she who worked in a hospital! Insipid images of Jeannette as a nurse tending wounded soldiers, stolen from newspaper illustrations; imprecise jealous pangs. And there was something uncomfortable about seeing Cogolati, an anxiety that he might not have presented himself as he wanted translated back to the Molineus. If only, in his vain haste to impress upon an old colleague his new urbanity and poise, he had borne in mind what Jeannette might have thought of such a Midhat, had she caught wind of it. Midhat the Levantine, with his mouchoir and new suit, now thoroughly estranged: the figure of the Parisian Oriental as he appeared on certain cigarette packets in corner stores. Cogolati surely only saw him as a colleague and an equal—and yet, that innocent, hardworking man would be forever linked in Midhat’s mind with the moment he was awakened to his own otherness, when on the day he completed his examinations and said goodbye to his classmate he returned to the house to discover the other way in which he had been examined—by his host, and without his knowledge. Harrowed by the glimpse of a strange outside view of himself. And in just a year he had undergone such an alteration, from that stranger who had once desired to become European both inside and out, closer already in appearance to the pale Italian or Greek—when he was not blithely offering his genealogy to anyone who asked—than to the inhabitants of those apostasized subaltern continents who had so defected from civilisation as they occurred in picture books and nursery rhymes and the imaginations of French children. He had fallen so easily into the compromise available in Paris, this type, by an embrace of otherness that at first he had admired in Faruq but which now appeared in his mind a skewed, performed version of what it was really like to be in a place but not of it, not to know it truly. Docteur Molineu lurked at the edges with his notebook and his analysis, his charts of cranial development, observing him at the dinner table.
The husband had been duped! The pear was not magical, after all. Applause; the curtain, the bow.
That same summer, while preparing for a seminar on the history of modern philosophy, Midhat returned one evening from the café where he had been reading Spinoza to find the apartment fuller than usual with Faruq’s friends and clouded with smoke. Faruq raised a hand in welcome; he had rotated the desk chair away from the desk, and standing, now offered it to Midhat.
The men around the room were animated with discussion. Most Midhat recognised; all were Syrian Arabs. The coffee table and floor were spread over with periodicals and papers, cups of cigarette stubs and saucers of spilt coffee.
“You cannot extrapolate and extrapolate, saying we for I,” said someone from the sofa. He turned his head and Midhat saw it was Bassem Jarbawi, with his long chin. The Jarbawis were among the founders of the Lebanese Alliance in Paris, a diaspora body that lobbied for French political support for the Lebanese nationalist cause.
A man with close-set eyes leaned his elbows on his knees and looked about to speak, when Raja Abd al-Rahman, an accountant and aspiring poet, broke in.
“Yes, I speak for myself. I am not Christian, Muslim, Turkish, French, Chinese, or any of these things. I am just one among humankind.”
“Raja,” said the man with close-set eyes in an exasperated voice. “That’s … You’re misunderstanding—”
“I misunderstand nothing.”
“No, we have to fight as a jama‘a, or people like you will suffer.”
“Omar,” said Faruq.
“What?” said the exasperated man. “His own actions will make him suffer. If he wants to be on his own, let him.”
“Khaleek shway,” said Faruq.
“What ‘khaleek shway’? They have just killed our best men. This is not about being one of humanity. We are from the East, every one of us in this room, and we have suffered enough. Lazim, kuluna, rise up.”
“Using the same tools as our oppressors?” said a warm, level voice.
Midhat did not recognise this speaker. He was tall and thin, with hooded eyes, reclining on the sofa with one leg crossed over the other.
“Really, if you were given the chance, you would colonize Europe?” he continued.
“Yes!” said Omar. “Of course! All this, you don’t want all this?” He gestured at the room around him as if the room itself, its green walls and mahogany chair legs and velvet cliffs, was the city of Paris in all her glory. “Come on Hani, be realistic, ya‘ni. Think. Use your … you know.”
“I am thinking. Are you thinking?” said the thin man named Hani. “I don’t think this is enlightened talk, habibi.”
“Hani is right,” said Faruq. “You know we have to be modern in our thinking.”
“Modern?” said Omar. “Ya zalameh, they may look like they are modern when you’re in … in Saint Germain, when you’re on a nice train, when you’re in a cinema, but believe me, believe me, they are as brutal as the Turk in their empires, in their wars, in their cannon. You are not listening to me. Isma‘nee. What does Arab tribalism look like? It looks like each town is his own country, and his country is better than the next town a hundred feet over. A united East is not Arab tribalism. By the definition.” He pinched his thumb and forefinger together and shook them, as if he held a piece of paper with the definition on it.
“Wallah, I don’t know,” said Bassem Jarbawi. “You know? They have killed us. They are killing us. Like the Armenians.”
“Who have they killed?” said Midhat.
“You didn’t read the paper today?” said Yusef Mansour, a Maronite Christian from Aley with an ivory moustache. “Midhat, you have to start reading the paper.”
“Another round of executions, nationalists,” said Hani. “Twenty-one Syrians hanged in Beirut and Damascus.”
“People from Palestine, habibi,” said Faruq.
“They will lose the war and then we’ll win,” said Jarbawi.
“Who, who from Palestine?”
“A Shihabi, a Nashashibi,” sai
d Faruq, reaching behind him for a newspaper. “Ali Nashashibi, you know him? Salim al-Jaza’iri … wallah. They have cut out our eyes.”
He passed the paper to Midhat and pointed at the relevant paragraph.
“An jad,” said Omar, turning to Bassem Jarbawi. “You really think there’ll be independence that easily?”
“Ana … assez confident.” Bassem swivelled his hand.
“Abd al-Hamid al-Zahrawi,” said Faruq. “He chaired the Congress here three years ago. Important people, Midhat. We’re lucky to be where we are now, really.”
“Exactly,” said Raja Abd al-Rahman. “They’ll kill us if we go back, just like the Armenians, just like Zahrawi. Or enslave us, turn us into Turks.”
“So how did they catch them?” asked Midhat, handing the page back to Faruq.
“Papers at the French Consulate in Beirut. Habibi would you pass me that ashtray.”
“We’ve been colluding with France, amo,” said Bassem Jarbawi.
“I’m not returning until the war is over,” said a portly man from a cushion by the fireplace.
“That’s because you’re a chicken,” said Omar.
“They’re shutting down the newspapers!” said Bassem. “You really want to go back there and become a Turk? Omar, look at the,” he grabbed a journal lying beside him on the sofa, “at this, look, death, death, death. No alliances, nothing.”
“I think,” said Hani, still reclining, “that actually, the missions of the Christian countries, ya‘ni, this will be our greatest obstacle. Because at the moment, they want to undermine the Turks, yes. But then later … I mean, they are empires. We know what empires do. They are hungry. The muthaqafeen in this country, at least, they see Zionism as a project to make, you know, make the Arab world this European thing.”
“I don’t know that Zionism is really the issue,” said Omar, frowning.
“How can you say that?” said Hani, with an energy that pulled him upright. Midhat noted the yellow scarf that slid out from under his lapel.
“Our issue is independence,” said Omar.
“What? The two are completely intertwined.”
“I have to say,” Raja Abd al-Rahman raised his hand. “You’re forgetting that the Europeans don’t want the Jews here. You heard the story about this Dreyfus? Yahud, Muslimeen, we’re all the same to them, they don’t trust us. Just put us over there. So it’s not a matter of colonialism. It’s more a matter of disposal.”
Yusef Mansour heaved to his feet. “Glass of cognac anyone?”
“Please!” said Raja.”
“Careful. Anyone else?”
“So what was I saying,” said Raja, “yes, so, the Jews in Europe.”
“Is that glass dirty? Forgive me, I’m going blind.”
“Shush, let him finish.”
“Sorry.”
“Whereas we, on the other hand, we have always had Jews. Always, there have been Jews in Syria. They’ll just be Syrian Jews.”
“Raja, habibi, listen to me,” said Hani. “They already have their own stamps.” (“Stamps?” said Yusef to Bassem. “Ya Allah. We don’t even have our own stamps.”) “Exactly. So this really is the issue.”
“Still, at the moment, France is the bigger threat,” said Omar.
“You are all talking about independence as though Britain and France had won the war,” said Bassem. “The Turk is still fighting, there might be a truce or something. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“But if you look at the news,” said Midhat, weighing in for the first time. “And now that the Americans are in, the Germans are really … I think it’s only a matter of time.”
“Midhat, come sit here. You look uncomfortable.”
“I’m fine. The chair is just a bit broken.”
“Faruq your place is falling apart,” said Yusef.
“That’s because I have fifteen Arabs sitting on my furniture every night.”
“What are you talking about, we are as thin as reeds.”
“Speaking of which, is there any food?” said Raja. “I brought carrots.”
“It used to be chocolate we’d bring to a party,” said Bassem. “Now it’s carrots and potatoes. And bread.”
“Did you bring bread?” said Faruq.
“No, sorry, I was just saying …”
“Well we don’t have bread. But we do have some biscuits,” Faruq slid off the desk, “they’re in the cupboard, there should be enough. And there’s a stock boiling.”
“I actually bought some bread on the way home,” said Midhat.
“Habibi that’s marvellous.”
“Midhat the Messiah,” said Yusef. “Oh, it’s warm, ya Allah.”
“But what I was saying is,” said Raja Abd al-Rahman, carrying his carrots into the kitchen, “the Jews are good agriculturalists. You know? They might be a boost to the local economy.”
“That’s because you’re in Damascus, Raja,” said Hani. “You’re not Palestinian.”
“We are all Syrians,” said Yusef. “None of this ‘Palestinian, mish Palestinian.’ We are united, we will be one nation.”
“Enough,” said Omar. “I’m starving, I can’t think anymore.”
“See?” said Yusef to Faruq. “How could we break your chairs. Look at Omar’s stomach. He doesn’t even have one.”
As Midhat grew in confidence he became more vocal during these evening conversations. Remembering what Jeannette had once said to him, about how she began to speak up at the university without fear of making errors, he felt his ability to argue develop like a muscle, which he exerted in his essays on the Revolutionary Wars and Jeanne d’Arc as much as over coffee and cigarettes, and which, though not totally detached from any notion of truth, seemed discrete from it, as if words could wind around and through the truth without manifesting it link by link. Besides, the fluidity of these debates and the changing political facts meant that none need be held to any assertion he had made, and each was free to swap between positions as served the present conversation. Then came victory in the Hejaz, and finally, the Ottoman Empire fell. Emir Faisal came to Paris for the Peace Conference, and what had been speculation, mere banter in high rooms off a boulevard, now these questions of nation or not were on the very threshold, and the blissful years of exile and indeterminacy were coming to an end.
It was three years since Midhat left Montpellier for Paris. Over that time, his life had become multiple. At one moment he was the student of history, meeting acquaintances after class in barrooms and cafés; at another he was the companion of women, with a gentle manner and easy laugh; then he was the mysterious lover; then the debater; and then he was the Arab. The divisions, though sometimes porous, were abiding, for with all the talk of origins and truth in his university essays and among his Syrian friends, Midhat was learning to dissemble and pass between spheres and to accommodate, morally, that dissemblance through an understanding of his own impermanence in each. But as despondence broke out among his friends, Midhat found it was the arguing Arab, that least interesting of roles, which he performed more and more. He loved this country, he loved her lines of rationalism, the sciences that put a veil on the unknowable, the lines of verse about the Orient, which Faruq read aloud on Sunday afternoons, even as they pinned him and his ancestors into effigies of themselves. Standing on Faruq’s balcony, looking down at the black cars in the street like a procession of hearses, he felt that some great frame had cracked. He turned back to the apartment and the scene trembled through the quartered glass, the room appeared dislocated, the faces of his friends unfamiliar. Faruq was dressed in a velvet waistcoat, there was a stain on his shirttail that had been washed and preserved, like a pale brown birthmark.
Once the war ended, the meetings in Faruq’s apartment became less frequent, and when the friends did assemble the tone of conversation was sober and apprehensive. Yusef Mansour was fixated on news of the famine in Beirut. Omar became inarticulate in his anger against the Triple Entente. Midhat drew closest to the other N
abulsi in the group, Hani Murad. Hani was the only one directly involved in politics, and his insights did not provide any of them with much hope.
When it came to Bonaparte and Bismarck, Hani Murad sympathised with the Germans. It was clear to him that to unify a country was the supreme goal of mankind. And after all, the people in Alsace did speak German.
Though enthusiastic about his own analyses, Hani had learned not to air all of them in public. The one occasion when he broached the question of Bonaparte and Bismarck, with a French colleague at Le Matin where he was working as a translator, the man looked up at him through the steam issuing from the kettle as though Hani had just blasphemed, and only later as they stepped into the street at dusk did the man address the issue gently, explaining as if to a child that language is not the source of nationhood, that there are other things that mark a person’s origin and nature. Hani could not have disagreed more, but realised he should hold his tongue.
In December 1918, Hani was sitting at the typewriter in his room at a pension in the Latin Quarter, a fire flapping in the grate, the wallpaper peeling with damp. For the last year, while moving back and forth between journalism jobs and the boarding school where he took children to visit castles and gave spontaneous, imaginative lectures on French history, Hani had been spending his evenings with a pen in hand. He was translating a book from Turkish into French, and in the process had turned his desk into a morass of handwritten papers. A few weeks ago, a series of urgent letters had arrived at the pension from one Monsieur Payot, who agreed to publish the book on the condition that Hani present a typewritten manuscript as quickly as humanly possible. France, said Monsieur Payot, was peaking in her curiosity about the Ottomans, and now was the time to strike and see the gold wink beneath the rock.
The title was “The Historical Fate of Turkey.” The original author was a Turk named Ahmet Rasim, who had written the four volumes almost a decade prior. The Empire’s defeat now coloured the whole thing differently, of course, and over the month since the armistice Hani found himself taking particular authorial liberties, inserting proleptic glosses in some places and on other occasions simply marvelling that certain passages already held their own shadows within their stances.
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