by Alon Hilu
My happy friend, upon my return home towards evening with the taste of the barber’s body still on my tongue, I feel a stirring among the servants, how they point at me and whisper until that time when one of them shores himself up and announces that Father is seething with anger and waiting in his study, and I grow alarmed, lest my secret has been discovered, and it seems to me as though the servants are besmirching me, perhaps one of the neighbours or even one of the uncles happened by the barber’s shop just as events were occurring and witnessed us in the hour of our sin, and great fatigue and panic fall upon Aslan as he stands on the edge of a coughing and fainting spell, and I ask the servant whom I dispatched to secure the barber’s willingness to meet, What is the meaning of this matter, and from his evasive answer I know to take a last lingering look of farewell at the setting sun and the cloudless Damascus sky of blue, and the servant answers that he does not know the meaning, only that I have been ordered to visit my father immediately.
There can be no doubt about it: if my actions with Suleiman are known to them I can expect to be ostracised and excommunicated; perhaps they will stone my young, hirsute body, gathering round me in one of the city’s deserted squares, encircling me from every direction, the brothers and uncles and relatives and Torah scholars, each holding a thick slab of rock in his hand, and when the signal is given, they will hurl them one by one in order to increase the agony, and the first stones scratch and hurt, though only slightly, while the wave that follows is stronger, and there are stones that strike my face and mash my eyes and teeth, and now the stone-throwers are even more keen, their routine now well established, their salvoes now quicker, denser, more insistent, and I gather myself in, bow my head between my thin arms, which have never been useful for physical labour, and I entreat them to throw larger stones, that they may crush me with boulders to put an end to the torture, and the servant says, This way, Aslan, your father is awaiting your arrival.
I knock upon the door to his study and at the sound of his voice I open it a crack. Father is sitting with his back to me and I approach him slowly and with trepidation, poised to absorb a blow to my head or nose or stomach, but Father does not move or stir.
He turns towards me, expressionless, his eyes hollow, and I anticipate the string of curses to come, but he utters not a single word, and with difficulty I say, You asked to see me, and he says, Yes, but adds no explanation, and I ask, What, then, is this matter, and this causes Father to push some sort of paper in front of me and from this I deduce that it is incumbent upon me to read it, and I laugh silently when it becomes clear that his wrath is directed not against me but against those ignoble villains the Hararis, who, in their cunning, have managed to bribe the minister of the Treasury, Bakri-Bey, that they should serve as the sole customs agents for the entire city of Damascus and thus they deprive us of the mainstay of our income, and the document shows this in clear wording, leaving no opening for dispute or interpretation, the decree being that from the end of the month and for evermore, the Farhi family will be hard-pressed to maintain its ancient profession and it will be the Harari family that will amass the huge fortune accrued by those responsible for freeing from customs merchandise that has traversed the sea or the desert.
Father orders me to fire off letters of alarm to the minister and, if necessary, to Ibrahim Pasha and even Muhammad Ali, the Egyptian ruler over the whole of the land, that this evil decree be cancelled, and I take this mission upon myself with great glee, overjoyed at the stoning that has not and will not take place, and at the many days ahead during which I may meet with the barber again without a soul knowing of our adventures or intruding upon us, and I sit down to write these missives on thick paper, peering occasionally at the large figure of Father as he sits with his hands covering his face, silent and still.
That same day, late at night, the uncles gather too, and Father tells them – I am present as well – that if we do not succeed in quashing this misfortune and crushing the head of the snake, the Farhi dynasty will in future become impoverished, for no treachery is too unsavoury for the Hararis, and they aspire to remove us from every position and rank we maintain, and after having quarrelled with the Khaham-Bashi Yaacov Antebi and ostracising him and preventing him from receiving his salary, they now wish to strip us from our place in the Beth Din, the rabbinical court of the Jewish community, so that ultimately their antics will lead to a command forbidding the Farhi family from loaning with interest and the fortunes and palaces and beautiful clothing that belong to us will become à fonds perdus.
I am filled with wonder and sadness: why is it that men cannot love one another more, instead of beating and striking, oppressing and debasing, despoiling and destroying? Why is it that they do not cast their women aside and come to one another in acts of love, their arms accustomed to brawling now stretched towards one another, their tongues accustomed to curses and humiliations now united in wet kisses; why do they not massage one another’s backs, lick each other’s roughened skin, remove one another’s tunics? The uncles’ words have caught fire, intensified, and now they have become one clear voice shouting to annihilate the Hararis, to bring about their extinction on the face of the earth, to assassinate them, one after the next, until the danger passes and is no longer.
I request permission to take my leave from these wrathful men and seek consolation chez Maman, in our games of yore, and she, sequestered in her quarters, shocked at these grave tidings, welcomes me as in days past, and she takes my face in her hands and plants wet kisses on my cheeks and I press up against her chest and call to her, Maman, Maman, wicked people are trying to render us asunder, I have been sent to marry a strange and evil woman, I am forced to deal with matters of commerce in Azm Palace and the perfume and spice markets, whereas I desire only your company, to which Maman responds with great affection, and I gesture towards her sumptuous gowns, pass my hand over the choice cloth, favour the patterns ornamented with beads and pearls, and she acquiesces, closes the door behind us and spreads across my body the best of her garments, and I take measure of her shoes and select the most comfortable among them for my clumsy, overgrown feet, and I adopt a delicate, swaying gait and add a long, white necklace and a pair of earrings, and for the moment we are as we were in the past, pleasant and loving, and her laughter mixes with mine, and all at once I am startled to wonder what would be if she knew about Suleiman the barber, whether she would still dance and laugh with me, or whether she would join the circle of stone-throwers, even rushing to cast the first stone, and just then one of my feet twists in her white sandals and I fall, women’s clothing draped over my body, and Maman raises me to my feet with difficulty, Stand up, Aslan, go, a woman named Markhaba is waiting for you and perhaps your father will catch sight of your face here any minute, and so I take leave of her with a light kiss, the kind from the days of our infatuation, and I depart from the room, a trace of rouge still upon my cheeks.
6
AN IMPORTANT DECISION was reached by Father and the uncles, according to which six of our seven servants were dismissed, returned to their villages without severance pay or any other recompense, and the costly garments ordered from Europe would no longer be brought into our home, and the gurgle of two fountains toiling to soothe our souls day and night would be halted, for difficult times lay ahead, and even the verses decorating the inner courtyard of our home, bidding the inhabitants an abundance of riches and good health, were powerless to help us: the finances of the Farhi family were dwindling.
Maman spent entire days sequestered in her room with no maid to comb her long, black tresses and no special messenger to deliver a parcel from England or France containing all manner of fine cloth; and who would toil to carry the wood planks brought by camels to the gate of our estate, and who would lug coal from the cellar in the cold days of winter, and who would root out alkhayaya, the snakes, before the cleaning of the carpets? The chesty rumbling of phlegm that was my lot now attached itself to Maman, and she sat through long days and nights
alone on her bed, spitting her barking coughs in every direction.
Father and the uncles tried to find solutions, for we were living for the time being on monies earned earlier from loans not yet due and mortgaged lands not yet sold, but now that they were no longer permitted to extend their patronage to caravans travelling to Mecca and Baghdad and they no longer had access to commissions from Damascene customs duties, they had no choice but to slash their considerable expenses, bend their backs – which had never known physical labour – and pray for God’s benevolence as in bygone days.
At times when I came to offer condolences to Maman in her bedroom I found her proferring prayers and supplications to the lean figure of a youth hanging from and riveted to a piece of wood hidden at the side of her bed. Covertly, she would entreat him and heap praises and compliments upon him and kiss his bare feet and pass a finger over his emaciated arms, which were spread to the side, and when she finished this ceremony she would command me to bow and lower my gaze in the presence of this terrible god, who must be pleased and appeased, otherwise our world has no future, and I cannot deny that on occasion she spread before him a sliver of meat or blew curls of hashish smoke his way or sprinkled drops of milk on his head, hoping with all her soul and all her might that her maids might be reinstated and her days might resume their path.
As for me, however, the more that my parents and siblings and uncles were occupied with the calamity that had befallen them, the freer I was to pursue my own interests, and I resolved to forsake my obligations as husband, son and brother and leave the Jewish Quarter, beyond the gatekeeper, far from the Black River of sewage that flowed beneath our feet, far from the screeching chickens being slaughtered at market, to the underbelly of the city, which, veiled in the blackest night, offered the men of Damascus to me for acts of pleasure and love.
My first guide in these endeavours was Suleiman alkhalaq, whom, since the time of our first indulgences together in his shop, I would visit on occasion to engage in similar acts; it was he who first awakened me to that act I had not even dared dream of, the way of men with men, which is complicated and dangerous and involves maladies and pain, but for him who opens that gate it is none other than the path to the haven of pleasure and joy, even though the barber himself refused outright to tread that path, which he claimed was a trap for fools and utterly forbidden.
Instead, he graciously informed me about the Maqha, a café on the border between the Christian and Muslim quarters, near the home of one Eliyahu Nehmad, a place hidden under a veil of secrecy which the sons of Damascus visit every evening for the wine and alcohol prohibited to Muslims, and for the beautiful whores obtainable for a few meagre piastres, in small rooms where the desires of men shatter like waves on rocks.
On the eve of the anticipated labour of his pregnant wife, Suleiman alkhalaq refused to accompany me to the Maqha, willing only to instruct me as to the location and the hour, and he further suggested that I buy the silence of le guardien of the gates by paying several piastres; in fact, the barber continued to spurn the promises I heaped at his feet, and my pleas and entreaties for an escort, all because it was his wish, each evening at sunset, to sit with his pregnant wife and hold her hand and caress her large belly.
Thus it came to pass that at midnight one evening, while my parents lay in bed, angry, back to back, Maman with dry tears and Father in thunderous silence, and with no servants in the house save one boy lost in deep sleep, snoring copiously, exhausted by Maman’s tyranny, I departed from the fourth room which I shared with that foreign woman who clung to my bosom, and I turned towards the north gate of the Jewish Quarter, where the guard, a one-legged Jew, sat dozing, a ring of keys hanging from his wrist.
If the guard was surprised to see Aslan the Delicate, who was always mindful of his parents and who was soft-hearted and prone to tears, placing a small bribe in the palm of his hand to buy his silence and his freedom to follow a forbidden path, his face showed none of this: he did not smile or murmur or utter a single word, merely pocketing the coins and lifting his healthy leg to push open the gate, which was in any event already open, so that Aslan could pass through into the city.
My happy friend, it is incumbent upon you to understand and realise that Aslan had never before set out alone, at night, into the city, not only because it was forbidden for Jews to leave their quarter after sundown but because of the great danger posed by Arab thugs, African slaves and other wild men who roamed freely and pummelled mercilessly all who crossed their paths. Therefore, Aslan took the utmost precaution, following the barber Suleiman’s instructions to the letter, which were scribbled on a folded sheet of paper in his pocket, and he was careful to stay close to the walls of the buildings, and if he heard the low rumble of a man’s voice or the muted shrieks of drunkards he froze in his tracks so that no evil eye would divine his presence.
The street mentioned and described by the barber where the café-tavern could be found turned out to be long and narrow, with two-storeyed buildings abutting on both sides and the stench of urine reeking from a distance. As he rounded a certain corner it was possible to discern the sounds of music, even a voice singing, and Aslan followed these sounds until he found himself facing a curtain of red beads, and he handed to the dark-skinned youth stationed there the specified amount of piastres and Aslan ducked into the tumult of people suddenly exposed to him, the smoke of narghiles and tobacco mixing with the chink of araq glasses and the clack of backgammon pieces, and Aslan desired to set his eyes upon that which the barber had described in hints, a corner of that place, near the latrines, where men capture the glances of other men and stare at one another for a length of time as a sign of agreement, before departing together for a small park, much like so many other small parks scattered along the hidden channels of the River Barada which ornament the length and breadth of Damascus, and in this place there are those willing and ready to engage in the act that even Suleiman will not consider and does not even dare dream of, for it is a sin punishable by death, an abomination absolutely forbidden in the Torah and the Talmud and by the great and sacred rabbis, and terrible punishments are meted out for this crime, and in the shadow of low bushes or small trees they bend over, and there are those who make use of sheep fat or olive oil to lubricate the organ, and Suleiman maintained that this act was not only forbidden and horrible but also unfeasible, due to the smallness of the place, and in any event, stimulating the area was likely to bring on maladies not even mentioned in the Torah, but Aslan was drawn to that corner and he set out to find it, the penetrating gazes of hairy, pot-bellied Arab men marking his progress.
When Aslan’s gaze lit upon the araq table, under which stealthy glasses were poured and handed to Muslims to be sipped quickly, then he knew he had found what his soul had been searching for, since near to the moustachioed barman, who carried out his task with a swiftness bordering on the sacred, there stood a short but sturdy man, old and wrinkled and clad in a black cloak, but nonetheless unabashedly staring directly, deeply at him, his pupils boring into Aslan’s downcast eyes, and now Aslan felt as though two beams had entered his head and penetrated to the lower regions of his body, and he was filled to the brim with the stare of this older man, and Aslan’s organs melted one into the other, rounding out, his buttocks rotund, his chest softening, and he became a sweet, round bubble dripping with ripened masculinity.