by Alon Hilu
Then the barber and I were instructed to empty the sacks into the Black River and so we departed, one after the other, in stealth, with hurried steps, each in turn skipping to the end of the alley outside the home of Meir Farhi to the place leading to the river, just next to the home of the rabbi Moses Abulafia, and there we heaved the contents of the sacks into the river and returned to the room, our sacks empty, and we refilled them with pieces of the murdered monk.
And I tell him that from this confession, which at long last completes the affidavit I wrote to the governor, the resting place of the dissected body is finally known to be that pit leading to the Black River, near to the home of Meir Farhi, and that is where we must search for remains of the body and bring them to Sharif Pasha as final and decisive proof of the guilt of my family.
After all this has come to pass I turn my gaze to Mahmoud, my most beloved, and he seems shaken, though a little encouraged, and he rumples my black hair affectionately and pats my buttocks and calls me his small and hairy monkey, and from there we return to Azm Palace, our mouths full of news for the team of investigators and judges, the head of which is his eminence Sharif Pasha, governor of the city of Damascus, that we have a lead in finding the body of Tomaso, may Allah have mercy upon him.
The rumour that the whereabouts of the bones of the deceased monk had been discovered took wing and circulated around the entire city, and at once an order was issued by Sharif Pasha that the bones be removed from their burial place by their gravediggers, Aslan and Suleiman, and put on display for all to see, after which they would be interred in a religious ceremony to be conducted by the priests of the city and attended by the entire Christian congregation of Damascus, as well as priests and monks and Christian faithful and other holy men from other cities, for Father Tomaso was well known and dearly beloved among his fellow sons of man.
Thus, the next day, Suleiman alkhalaq was brought forth from the place of his enchainment in one of the cells of the Saraya prison with me at his side, and we were transported as one man in a cart to the Jewish Quarter, where gangs of hooligans whooped and shouted at us along the way, and Suleiman, his face swollen from many lashings, unable to sit or stand, lay on the floor of the speeding cart and did not understand the meaning of this hasty journey, nor did Aslan explain this tumultuous turn of events, only hinting that he should trust him.
Aslan shows the young cart-driver where to turn, three soldiers guarding him, and all eyes are upon me, impatient and curious to see where I will direct the careening cart, and Sharif Pasha’s horsemen and a regiment of gendarmes careen along with us in order to find the pulverised bones of that dear and beloved man the Jews rose up against and murdered in a manner that makes the ears ring and the heart thunder merely upon hearing.
Dressed in a red tunic and a flapping apron, and riding at the head of a battalion of horsemen in the black carriage of the Damascus governor, Aslan arrives at Kharet Elyahud and slowly takes in the familiar buildings, Teleh Square, the chicken market and the Khush Elpasha Synagogue, and at this point the cart slows to a crawl because of the narrow and winding streets, and Aslan directs the cart-driver to the environs of his father’s home, which stands stooped in its place, its wretched walls casting an ashen and disheartening shadow, and from there the cart turns right and left until it reaches the estate of Aslan’s uncle Meir Farhi, the site of the loathsome ritual, and there, next door to the Eljuma’a Market, open on Fridays only, adjacent to the home of Rabbi Moses Abulafia, Aslan instructs the young cart-driver to come to a halt, and Aslan descends from the cart escorted by three soldiers, his red tunic billowing in the cool winter wind, and he proceeds to search out the balua, the cover to the hidden aperture whence the maidservants dispose of all that is filthy and polluted, such as the cloths used by women during the days of their menstruation and for wounds and papules, and whirlpools of vomit and congealed, blackened blood, and in the meantime battalions of soldiers arrive and they encircle the place, their bayonets poised and ready, and residents of the Christian Quarter are in evidence as well, and all pay heed to Aslan’s actions.
At that moment I become overwhelmed with fear that my lies will be exposed, for I cannot locate any place from which refuse is dispatched to the Black River that winds about under the buildings of Damascus and into which flow all the lavatories and sewers, and I overturn the paving stones with no success, and at those moments when I regard the mob, tense and anxious, I catch sight of the Good Interrogator, his pure smile beaming, his yellow hair glistening in the winter sunshine, and he is my sweet beloved, and as I gaze at him I stumble at the edge of the opening and I pull aside several paving stones and discover the aperture, calling out in a loud voice, Here is the place, and the Good Interrogator joins the shouts of the crowd, and one of the gendarmes asks me whether it was to this place we dispatched the remains of the monk’s body on that cursed night, and Aslan answers that indeed it is the very place of Tomaso’s burial, here are interred his bones and flesh.
The barber is lowered from the cart but he is incapable of moving his legs for his knees are broken from beatings and floggings, and a stretcher of sorts is procured and upon it he is placed, and the battalions of soldiers make way for the arrival of one lofty man, head and shoulders above the rest, approaching in ardent strides, and lo, it is the noble consul, Count de Ratti-Menton, come to supervise the exhuming of the slain monk’s bones, and he draws near Aslan, his face glowing though stern in accordance with the gravity of the situation, and he shakes Aslan’s hand and pinches the cheek of the barber lying semiconscious on the stretcher, and then we are commanded to descend to the Black River along that same dark path and resurrect from there what was inside the coffee sacks – the broken bones, the dissected limbs – while the mob, gripped with horror and curiosity, observes us, myriad eyes upon us.
Aslan descends into the pit with the aid of a small ladder brought from somewhere, and the broken-limbed and battered barber is lowered down after him, and there the former lovers find themselves together within the reeking abyss of a darkened valley, only their black eyes blinking one to the other in the gloom, and Aslan coughs and retches from the stench of a donkey’s carcass among bits of flesh tossed there by the butchers of the Eljuma’a Market, and Suleiman of the shattered jaw and ruined teeth glares at Aslan and curses him, and curses his father and his mother, and he curses the day he and Aslan first met, and his voice is hoarse, exhausted, low, and he wishes upon Aslan all manner of strange deaths and diseases and tortures, and with his last bit of strength he attempts to rise from the stretcher to which he is strapped and strangle Aslan with his hands, but they are weak and to Aslan it feels like a lover’s caress, and he is overcome with laughter and returns Suleiman to his stretcher and tightens the ropes that bind him so that he will not fall and break his body.
A few minutes later they ascend from there, Suleiman dragged, semi-conscious, on his stretcher, his lips still uttering weak curses, and behind him, his arms laden with goodies, emerges Aslan son of Rafael Farhi, who hastens to present the loot he plucked from the belly of the dead donkey to the consul Ratti-Menton and to the huge gathered crowd, and Ratti-Menton burrows into the mounds of filth in Aslan’s hands until he produces a patch of black cloth and calls out, See before you, a torn piece of cloth from slain Father Tomaso’s cloak! And the crowd responds with a lamenting cry, Ahhhhhh! And Ratti-Menton continues his search until he comes across tiny bones from the donkey that Aslan had gathered quickly, nearly collapsing and retching from the stench, and the French consul extends his arm into the air and cries out to them, Here are the bones of the holy monk, who has been murdered!
At once, a huge commotion breaks out, accompanied by the din of lamenting cries from female mourners and the shouts of men calling for revenge, and in the hands of the Christians are sticks and clubs, and they go forth and encircle the Farhi estate as well as that of the Stambouli family, and the homes of the poor, and they demolish beams and they twist the arms of Jewish passers-by and th
ey smash the heads of the Torah scholars who happen by on the narrow lanes of the Jewish Quarter, and in the midst of the shouts and the brouhaha Aslan catches sight of that feathery yellow hair and that stately posture, but Mahmoud’s gaze is distant and altered and he averts his eyes from Aslan and does not look upon him, and a great terror befalls Aslan and the paving stones upon which he stands begin to rattle one against the other and he is about to fall down between them, to the place where the carcasses of beasts of burden and impure animals lie, and he wishes to grasp for one short moment more that wisp of a smile, that ray of light, that tiny spark from the face of his beloved, but a wave of Christian faithful pass between them and he can no longer see Mahmoud, who has vanished in the wake of their uproar like a light and summery feather-cloud, and Aslan is anxious and terribly burdened with worry.
My happy friend, two days were necessary for Sharif Pasha’s physicians to determine whether the bones placed before them were those of man or beast, and during these two days Mahmoud disappeared and reappeared again and again from Aslan’s side; at times he would meet Aslan in his chambers and he was all pleasantry and niceties and at times he would abstain from sharing his dear, beloved presence, and Aslan was overcome with silent tears and plunged into an abyss of worry, and Mahmoud teased him with his dazzling smile, assuring him he would visit him during the night but then failing to appear, and sometimes he surprised Aslan as he lay dormant on the bed and awakened him with clever prattle, and Aslan did his best to respond with smiles and confections, never to utter a bad word or grumble, never to display the slightest sadness, for even the tiniest convulsion of anger that flashed for a fraction of a second at the corner of Aslan’s lips would enrage Mahmoud and then he would depart from Aslan and remain estranged from him for many long hours and would not so much as glance at him.
Tomaso’s funeral was set for the afternoon and Mahmoud informed Aslan that he would meet him there, then he departed, leaving Aslan to arrive alone at the Capuchin monastery, where he found a huge crowd assembled. At the head stood Sharif Pasha and the French consul and many priests who had arrived from near and far and Christian men, women and children, all gathered round a magnificent oak casket lined with black velvet in the middle of which lay, among huge funereal bouquets, splendid and beautiful, those tiny bones found by Aslan and now lined up one next to the other, clean and scented with perfume after having been washed diligently by the women of the Christian burial society and sprinkled with holy water by Father Alexis.
Aslan walks among the hordes of mourning Christians as they cry profusely, scouting for Mahmoud and cursing him in his heart for keeping his distance, and against his will he joins in the festive burial procession proceeding slowly in mourning black from the church of the Capuchin monastery to the altar of Saint Elijah in the Terra Sancta Church, and there are those in the crowd who recognise Aslan and cast sidelong glances at him, though it is unclear whether they denounce him for participating in the murder or whether they bless him for his full and atoning confession, and Aslan is infected by their grief and he joins in their tears, and he recalls his sin, how he dissected the monk and left his flesh for the desert foxes and jackals, and he pushes his way towards the faithful monks as they cross themselves again and again and carry, with their white hands, the small wooden casket, and all the while his eyes roam in search of his yellow-haired friend.
The enormous crowd of the faithful gathers at the entrance to Terra Sancta and several priests who have come from afar stand over the open casket and they praise the deceased monk before them for his good deeds and his deep faith, and they praise the Creator, upon whose deeds one may not cast doubt or wonder, and who chose for Tomaso so cruel a demise, and suddenly Aslan catches sight of Mahmoud and he wishes to wave gaily in his direction in spite of the mournful nature of the occasion, but Mahmoud’s face is grave, only his eyes express a pure, smiling blue, and next to him, Aslan is horrified to discover, stands the curly-haired youth from the Nur Aladdin hammam, and the two of them stand together while Father Modesto Donano, one of the priests who has come specially from the Vatican, eulogises Tomaso in a broken voice and kisses the casket lined in black, and he calls out to the bones, The voice of Tomaso’s blood cries to me from the earth.
My happy friend, at that moment a great calamity befell me and Aslan wished to make haste to reach the pair and come between them as Father Modesto asked the Creator of the Universe to avenge Tomaso’s death, and the priest took his leave of the monk and the remains of his bones with a grand prayer to the almighty God in heaven and once again he kissed the casket with closed eyes and deep conviction, but as for Aslan, he hears nothing of the deeply emotional and venerable eulogies, nor does he perceive the profound and heavy mourning of the huge crowd, nor even the tremors of his fellow Jews who are preparing all manner of hiding places for themselves in fear of the gentiles, for his entire being is given over to the sob that is shaking his soul as his true, first, life-giving love drifts away and leaves him, before his very eyes.
And when the last of the eulogies has been delivered, voices rise in a requiem while ten pallbearers dressed in black place the casket of bones in a sumptuous grave, its headstone inscribed in Arabic and Italian, and a long procession of mourners, a black wave of the faithful, trudges by the fresh grave, among them many Capuchin monks who cling to one another in consolation and friendship, and Aslan is among them, his sobbing deeper now, and he passes by the donkey bones buried under the headstone and he bursts into copious tears for lives doomed to death, for buildings doomed to destruction, for health doomed to disease, for blossoms doomed to wither, and for the great, precious, glittering love stolen from before his eyes, and he wishes to rescue it but does not know how, and through his tears the writing inscribed in Arabic on the monk’s headstone cries out to him, words never effaced and, to the best of my knowledge, my happy friend, words still engraved on that headstone in that church graveyard in faraway Damascus to this very day:
Here, in this place, are buried the scant remains of Father Tomaso of the Order of Capuchin Franciscan Friars.
May it be written in the Chronicles that he was slaughtered by Jews, who left nothing of him behind.
Our Father who art in Heaven, to You our souls will depart from us; You, who are far from our eyes.
3
LAST EVENING I recounted to you, my happy friend, that the donkey bones were interred in a splendid burial and I stood over the headstone reading the inscription dedicated to their memory and I was mournful over the estrangement to which my beloved was subjecting me, my soul as ragged and withered as that of a ninety-year-old woman.
Aslan departs from there, his head drooping and his cheeks hollow, and he meanders without purpose through the alleyways of Damascus as hoarse, goading cries rise from the Christian Quarter and the gentile women curse and revile the Jews, inciting their husbands to new, more violent, acts of vengeance upon the traitorous, murderous Jewish people, and Aslan quickens his pace in flight, but where will he go if not to his parents’ stifling, noxious home, and when he returns to Kharet Elyahud the place of his childhood and lifelong residence appears to him as a silent city of spirits, still and empty but for the ghosts, the inhabitants locked into their homes in cellars and other hiding places, the market stalls collapsed one on to the other, and even the beet vendor always stationed outside the Khush Elpasha Synagogue is not at his usual corner, his sweet, hot beets missing as well.
Aslan hesitates, unsure whether to pass through the walls of his father’s home to reach that servants’ room with its lingering scent of urine, for he does not wish to encounter Markhaba or his mother or his siblings and endure their curses, and while standing there, uncertain as to what to do and not yet burdened by the one-eyed shrew who is sure to come and cast over him her twisted, tyrannical power, he hears a nightingale calling to him, the sound echoing rhythmically from afar, and Aslan turns his gaze and is filled with happy surprise to see Mahmoud bounding towards him, and Mahmoud pats Aslan
’s shoulder and smiles radiantly at him and showers him with many kisses in the manner of Damascene men, and he relates breathlessly that he has been searching for Aslan throughout the city in order to beg his pardon and forgiveness, and he hastens to apologise to his beloved, the Jew, for the estrangement to which he has subjected him and explains that he was so distraught at Tomaso’s interment that his good judgment was confounded and the entire world slipped from his mind and he was only barely aware, through a veil of mourning tears, that his beloved Aslan was waving to him, and this was the reason he did not return his smile or gaze; and upon seeing the sombre expression in Aslan’s eyes, Mahmoud embraces him boldly and swears that the youth in his company at the funeral was none other than an old chum, their friendship pure, and he reassures Aslan that there is no passion between the two, no acts of lust or fornication, only companionship and pure manly affection, for it is preferable for men to love one another and protect one another from the poisoned arrows of women, instead of gorging themselves on competitiveness and hatred, and Aslan affirms his words and slackens the tension in his arms and presses himself into Mahmoud’s chest.
At that moment, my happy friend, I was overwhelmed by that sweet and soothing melody of clemency and absolution, for my beloved, to whom I would depart from myself, was not, at long last, far from my eyes, and this consoling, healing song flowed warmly, steaming through my veins and swallowing any grudges and resentments in its path so that my former pure love returned to me and I forgave Mahmoud wholly for all his caprices, and I made him swear not to turn away from me again, nor deprive me of his presence for long hours.
And Mahmoud levelled his sky-blue eyes at me and swore to me that our love was holy and eternal and that he would never, ever abandon me or cause me any harm, for the tip of the curly black hair growing from my little finger was more precious to him than all the treasure of Araby, and Mahmoud and Aslan linked fingers and rubbed noses; and yet a doubt, sharp in its obscurity, pecked at Aslan’s ribs, and it was the beak of the one-eyed shrew come to warn him in her shrill and wicked voice not to fall into the snare of this comely man, for his lies and fabrications were well apparent to her, and she cautioned Aslan that in the end he would be stuffed full with these lies, gorged too on large doses of heart-grief and worry, and he would suffer protracted and numerous torments in hell for having informed against his father and progenitor and his wife’s father and the entire community of Jews, and for having beaten his friend Suleiman the barber with a whip, and for the falsehoods that danced so gaily across his tongue; all these he had committed for the sake of his handsome lover. But Aslan silenced the evil witch, suppressing her with a light laugh that squeezed her back to her place between the third and fourth ribs, for what were worries and suspicions to him now that the man loved him utterly and he was protected by his embraces like a harbour, safe from the torrents and tumult of stormy seas?