by Alon Hilu
A resounding slap on Aslan’s cheeks. The stab of a knife. The plunge of the lower intestines to the chasms of despair. The tremor of the upper intestines, a state of nausea and vomiting. Could such a thing be true?
If Aslan did not cry or wail or lament for his love, who had been murdered by a mere utterance, it was due only to his hope that these were lies told to him without the bat of an eyelid, and that through the veil of red beads the singer Umm-Jihan would suddenly appear, just as she had before, just as he remembered, when he had known and loved her with every jot of his soul; but not only did Umm-Jihan fail to appear, she continued to be murdered, slain and bleeding, her skin flayed by a butcher’s knife of loud and coarse laughter, and Tomaso strengthened the pressure of his embrace so that it became a lover’s grip and he continued without mercy the story of the young man who had led Aslan astray, and this young man was a collector of aljiziya, the head tax imposed by Sharif Pasha, and the young man went from house to house among the Jews, and evil people informed on him, claiming that he had embezzled government funds, and for that reason he had been placed in the prison beneath the Saraya, and Aslan plugged his ears for this could not be possible – this same merciful and compassionate woman had held his own hands in hers and planted eternal kisses on his cheeks – and he departed from the Maqha to the narrow and winding Damascene street just as a light rain began to fall, and the water trickled and seeped between the paving stones, pooling in long, narrow channels and from there dropped below the passers-by into rivulets leading to a stream, and the water dispersed to a great distance, sweeping along with it muddy yellow earth and bits of rubbish and the beaks of slaughtered chickens, squawks frozen in their slain eyes, and Aslan wished to join the flow of water, to be sucked down to the wild and ancient river, for what was the purpose of Aslan’s life in a world that did not – and never had – contain Umm-Jihan, and any desire and delight and love that had awakened in him, and any gains he had made as a male, were none other than a jest, a deceit, and Aslan stood ready to collapse at the entrance to the Maqha but did not do so.
Ibrahim, Tomaso’s manservant, a slow, dimwitted Muslim with a clipped moustache who stubbornly refused to follow his master’s religion, exited the Maqha at the monk’s command in search of Aslan, found him on his knees sobbing silently and informed him, quite simply, in his master’s name, that because the hour was late they would have to postpone the act they had planned for that evening to the next; further, Ibrahim told Aslan that Tomaso knew where he lived and would come to collect him from his home on the morrow two hours after the fourth call of the muezzin and then, without awaiting Aslan’s answer, he turned his back and re-entered the café.
Aslan heard his words though his heart did not grasp them, for there was so much he had to do: return to Kharet Elyahud, the Jewish Quarter, and bribe le guardien on the way, then lie next to his wife and pretend to sleep soundly, and how would he manage all this when he saw himself scorned and mocked among men, all of them pointing at the groom incapable of impregnating his wife, at the boy bewitched by a woman who was not a woman, a dancer with no breasts, and it was abundantly clear to Aslan that he had no place in this world, that there was no one else like him, no other created in his image who could fathom his heart, and that he was alone in his confused passion, and he recalled the sharp letter-opener in his father’s study: Why not go there this very night and open the top drawer, searching among the mortgage deeds and guarantors’ notes stored there to torture the farmers until their souls depart from their bodies? Why not take up the knife and point it at the jugular vein in his neck or at his wrists and then draw lines of blood along his body and fall into deep sleep so that when the servant enters the study in the morning he will fail to awaken Aslan? With this new thought Aslan’s steps lightened and he rushed to carry out his scheme, but when he arrived home he was drawn unwillingly towards his wife’s sweat and joined her in the bed, and he was overcome with the urge to pray to a god in whom he did not believe: that when he awakens it will be clear that the events of the evening were the product of his own imagination, his own visions of dread and empty dreams. On the morrow, however, Aslan knew that he had not been dreaming and that Umm-Jihan’s death was a fait accompli from which there was no appeal.
By dawn Aslan had made up his mind not to be seen during the approaching hours in the vicinity of the family estate so as not to encounter Tomaso, or his manservant, or his eternally erect organ. Instead, he hastened to his father’s office and requested to accompany him in all his endeavours that day, and his father, who was surprised at his son’s sudden wish to remain close to him, agreed to his entreaties and together they proceeded to the Court of Damascus, at which Rafael Farhi presided as a judge.
Aslan regarded the line-up of pickpockets, beggars and rogues waiting to stand trial, among them – conspicuously different – a pot-bellied, moustachioed Arab merchant in the grips of deep humiliation, his cheeks ablush, and in the depths of his heart Aslan knew the reason for his appearance in court, for he was touched by the same urge, forbidden by all religions, and when Father read the indictment the facts became clear: how that evening gendarmes were patrolling the Khan Assad Pasha, where the donkey and mule drivers meet, and how they came across the merchant embracing a Turkish youth, the two of them disrobed, and Father cleared his throat when obliged to recite aloud the details of this hideous act, the things they did to one another with their organs and tongues and fingers, and the merchant – portly and pink-cheeked, his hand over his mouth and moustache, his eyes damp – was given the chance to deny the charges, but instead pleaded guilty to every charge and every detail and begged the court and the judges and God to pardon him for this wicked act, saying that he knew the severity of his actions and was aware of the heavy punishment due him, requesting only that the court be merciful on him for the sake of his wife and children and promising that he would not return to the Turkish youth nor to any youth like him nor to any other man the world over, and the judges consulted among themselves on this matter and when Father asked Aslan his opinion he responded that this man should know no absolution or pardon, that this rebel should be punished according to the strictest letter of the law, that he suffer torture and life imprisonment in the prison dungeon of the Saraya, that he be prevented from any contact with his wife and children, his neighbours, or any other human being, to which Father replied, When did you – soft-hearted Aslan – become a man of hatreds and contention? And Aslan glanced once again at the corpulent merchant, his nipples now erect under his clothing, his full buttocks straining at the cloth of his tunic, and Aslan remained certain that his was the rightful verdict.
The panel of judges announced to the merchant that their verdict would be delivered at a later date, and it was after midday when Father and Aslan departed the court for the family estate. By chance they passed, on their way, the shop of Suleiman alkhalaq, and Aslan was flooded with a sour desire to flee from there, to turn his back on the barber, guardian of his dark secret, but the devil himself intervened and Father stopped precisely there, next to the entrance to the barber’s shop, abreast of the Alifranj Synagogue, to peruse a large notice posted there:
May it be known in the streets of Damascus that the Christian woman called Terra Nova, of Austrian citizenship, has departed from this world and left behind a large inheritance and many chattels which will be sold at auction at her home in the Street of the Honey-sellers on Wednesday, at the second hour after the second call of the muezzin. All interested parties are welcome.
Aslan pressed his father to move on from there so that he would not encounter the green-eyed gaze of the barber, but the more impatient Aslan became to escape that place, the more serene his father became, and he read the notice again and yet again, calling Aslan’s attention to the fact that it was signed by the Capuchin monk Tomaso, who was always on the scent of some new and unseemly business dealing, and upon learning of this coincidence, Aslan’s flesh turned prickly, for it was precisely from this Tomaso a
nd his erect organ that Aslan had run away, having no other purpose for accompanying his father than to avoid the pestering monk who wished to enter his body that very night.
After the midday meal everyone dispersed to rest, as expressed in the old Damascene saying, Tga’ada wa’ithada, Ta’asha itmasha – After lunch catch a nap, after dinner stroll a lap – while Aslan scanned the area to ensure that the monk, who had been hanging notices that very same day announcing the auction, did not approach the door of their home on some pretext.
My happy friend, from the tears of dread in your eyes I see that you, like young Aslan, have caught a whiff of the calamity about to befall him, and indeed, many a time, on cold winter evenings, you have sat beside me and asked about the meaning of my presence in this monastery, for I am a son of the Jewish people, and each time I have rebuffed you and turned my face away and failed to reveal how it happened that it is to this place I have come to rest.
And lo, in the few hours left before my meeting with Tomaso the feeling of encroaching disaster prevented me from finding any rest or repose, neither with my pious wife, who was busy in the cursed fourth room of our home preparing herself for her monthly purification at the ritual bath that evening, nor in the bathing room where I washed myself for the second and third and fourth time that day, so that I walked from room to room, pitching pebbles, plodding with heavy feet and noisy shoes until Maman stepped out from her room, furious, to scold me, to which I dared respond with impunity, hurling accusations at her, I despise this life you forced upon me, and, Why was your womb not blocked or infertile, but no, you had to follow the path of females and fall pregnant and give birth to foetuses that had no wish to be born, and Maman responded that in the year since my marriage I had become an overgrown and noisy child with no purpose or benefit, and how comely it would be were I to leave this house with my burdensome bride and cease to be an encumbrance upon them all with my perpetually wrathful countenance, unable as I was to coax even a single progeny from my wife’s womb.
At the sound of these words I departed with a slam of the door and went to the old fountain in the middle of the courtyard, which had been silenced since the start of our troubles with the Harari family, and the souls of the goldfish that were once there had departed and the pool was covered in lichen and algae, and there I checked the fury vibrating through me and tried to calm the tremor, weaken its strength, and Aslan knew not the source of this fury nor its nature, but with this sharpening of his senses he suddenly understood this panic that had settled upon him, and the source of this internal uproar was none other than that aperture hidden from view, a place of closing but also of opening, narrow but also wide, deep but shallow, like that kingdom of secrecy that women have, though instead of being hidden among frizzy jungles it is eternally guarded by lush hills, and it was to this place, at once cool and burning, familiar and foreign, that the power of his soul was directed, and to that very same place and at that exact moment the monk’s organ was also directed as he went about the city posting his notices, accompanied by his manservant Ibrahim of the clipped moustache; and that very same evening he was destined to reach that moist spot, that warm, recalcitrant, stubborn place accustomed only to the shameful view of the Black River, that place spoken ill of by human beings and used for curses and slander, and it would be the focus of that evening, the place which Tomaso would seek to mollify and soften, and massage gently, and pepper with unaccustomed kisses, and enter into as an act of copulation and unity.
Aslan returned to his empty room, pondering these thoughts and forgetting the ugly things he had said to his mother and she had said to him, forgetting the image of his wife, who had stepped out, he knew not where, perhaps to secure cloth for making costumes, as the Purim holiday was nigh upon them, or perhaps to cry to her father of the evil groom who had materialised under her wedding canopy; and so immersed was he in these thoughts of forbidden acts that Aslan was oblivious to the sound of knocking at his door – his whingeing sister of the blue-eyed gaze requesting that he write a letter of persuasion and entreaty to yet another prospective groom – and could anticipate nothing but the second hour after the fourth call of the muezzin, at which time he would take to the street and follow the monk to that secret room, where he would indeed engage in the act.
8
AFTER OUR EVENING meal of seared aubergine wallowing in a puddle of goat’s cheese – a delicacy known as medias bjibnah – accompanied by the bean dish mufahrket ful; after Father locked the doors and bolted the latch against the pouring rain that had begun rapping at the doorways and thundering through the city; after Markhaba fell asleep, breathing in heavy grunts on her distant side of the bed; after all this had come to pass, I rose secretly from my bed, preoccupied with thoughts of the ageing, wrinkled, shrivelled monk, whose gaze was hollow and whose hands were coarse and hardened and in spite of all this I was drawn to him and to the touch of his warm fingers on my thigh, and lo, once again Aslan was sneaking away from his bed and his home late at night, though this time not for child’s play with the barber and not for the lecherous glances of men passing in the streets or clients of the Maqha, but for the thing itself.
Aslan calmed himself and spoke to his organ so as not to bring on excessive excitement and spill his seed, and to that end he imagined the calamities and distress that have befallen the Jews: the repeated razing of the Temple in Jerusalem and the dispersion of the people to Babylonia and Europe; the blowing of the ram’s horn on Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement – and the parching fast; the heinous deeds of Haman the Wicked and the Pharaoh of Egypt; and with each disaster that entered his mind his organ lost a bit more of its strength and the blood drained away so that it was limp and contorted as the back of a wizened moneylender.
Aslan waited at the gates of his home at the second hour after the fourth call of the muezzin according to Tomaso’s instructions, but the street stood in silence in the flood of rain, and no man passed this way or that, and Aslan said to himself, Look at yourself in your wretchedness, running about in a terrible downpour, leaving behind your parents and family and the woman brought unto you, and all this for what? For an act of sin and depravity, evil and stupidity; but in the next moment Aslan recalled the aim of his desire, and he wished to unite with this ripened male whose grapes were juicy, fermented, and from the fruits of whose body arose a pleasant scent like an orchard, and he was none other than the distant lover from the old song sung by his non-existent beloved, Umm-Jihan, and Aslan knew that his feminine walk and his delicate manners and the tainted garments he adorned himself with would all disappear with the embrace of this older man, would dissolve inside his love and vanish with the rainwater as it poured into Elnahar Alaswad, the Black River.
While pondering all these matters he felt a light tap on his shoulder, not administered by squat Tomaso but his dark-skinned, slow-witted manservant Ibrahim, who sputtered from under his clipped moustache that his honourable master had entered the Jewish Quarter at eventide after a long day of exertions that led him throughout the city, toiling to invite people to the auction of Terra Nova’s chattels and other business matters that were preoccupying him, and now he requested that Aslan meet him at the eastern edge of the Straight Street and from there they would set out for a safe and secret place beyond the walls of the city.
Aslan wished to protest at being led outside the city on a night of stormy winds, for previously they had spoken of a secret abode kept by the monk in the Jewish Quarter, but Ibrahim crooked his arm tightly around Aslan’s neck and the scent of youthful sweat mixed with the misty rain that was growing stronger and stronger drew Aslan after him like a blind man, and after only a few minutes the two found themselves at the appointed rendezvous, though there was neither sign nor evidence of the monk himself, and his manservant Ibrahim grew worried, for Tomaso had many enemies throughout the city, Muslims who did not accept lightly his proselytising for Jesus Christ and Christianity, and a terrible uproar had erupted not long before that at the Khan Assad
Pasha when they had demanded an exorbitant fee for hiring a mule to visit the small villages outside the city and Tomaso had cursed them and their prophet Muhammad and they had sworn he would meet a violent death, and the sputtering manservant began pacing to and fro, swinging his muscled arms, for what would he do if his master died and left him? To where could he return? The poor and squalid village of his birth? He spoke sputteringly of his merciful and forgiving master, who was gracious to him and refrained from spraying his holy fluids into Ibrahim’s mouth, for their taste was bitter as wormwood and not at all to his liking.
The two young men, Aslan and Ibrahim, waited for Tomaso for nearly an hour, becoming friendly during this meagre time together, confrères to the same strange fate, and the rain poured between them with great force, and Aslan regarded the manservant – his wide lips, slow limbs, thick hands and neck – and he brimmed with potent feelings of affection for him, desired to cover his body with hot kisses, cure him of his loneliness and sorrow and fears, but just then a lumbering, angry figure appeared, careening towards them down the street, and Aslan felt his old repulsion towards himself and towards this friend with whom he was meant to copulate, and at that moment he decided to turn on his heels and make an escape from Tomaso, his rapid skipping soon becoming a light run as he attempted not to slip between the puddles pooling in the streets. His sole desire was to protect himself and his body from the grave consequences which Suleiman the barber, in his great wisdom, had tried to warn him.
Tomaso perceived that his prey was slipping through his talons and shouted luridly, commanding his manservant to chase after Aslan and deliver him as agreed. He complained that from the time the yellow-haired monk Alpino had departed from Damascus a half-year earlier there had been no man prepared to lay bare the slit of his buttocks and open before him a world of wonder and supreme benevolence, and he went about, among the market-places and the baths and the beautiful Arab men, angry, a bundle of nerves, unable to find gratification, and if this Jewish lad were to wriggle free from his grip his testicles were sure to burst open from the pain of it, and his seed, which sought to flow through them, would fill his head all the way to his ears and he would fall prone and his soul would depart his body on the spot.