by Alon Hilu
Mahmoud places a hand on Aslan’s head and with a single gesture dismisses all his complaints, and he urges Aslan to rise from the bed in his chambers for the purpose of attending this last session of the murder trial, for today is the handing down of the verdict; but Aslan is weak, fragile as a driven leaf, and to Mahmoud’s questions he answers: No, he has no ache in his throat, nor fever on his brow, nor trouble passing his bowels; still, a deep feebleness resounds in his head and he holds Mahmoud’s hands and tells him his days are short, for a terrible infirmity has befallen him to which he shall surely succumb.
Mahmoud purses his lips for he is in a rush to attend to his many secret affairs, whose nature and purpose he never discloses, and Aslan knows in his heart that Mahmoud is unravelling their love stitch by stitch, for nothing but tatters and shreds remain of this magnificent garment made of the finest Damascene cloth and embroidered with their love and desire, the edges now curled and fraying.
This grave and terrible infirmity weakens Aslan and confines him to his bed, and he welcomes the shivers it brings him and the quivering muscles and the cold that sears his bones and the prickles upon his skin, and Mahmoud wishes to take his leave of Aslan shortly, mirthlessly, for it is clear that Mahmoud is displeased with Aslan as he cowers in his chambers and sullies the bedclothes with his thin and sickly spittle, and Aslan is aware that Mahmoud no longer loves him and perhaps never loved him, and he grieves at this knowledge but comes to terms with it as well, is appeased, and he lovingly accepts this fate that has been decreed upon his frail body.
Aslan has but one request, which he places before his estranged lover of the pursed lips and sealed heart: before Mahmoud turns his back upon him and departs from his chambers, Aslan wishes that he might grant him, one last time, just a glimpse of that merciful, righteous woman Umm-Jihan, and Aslan swears that afterwards he will leave this place and set forth for Kharet Elyahud, never to return, but for this moment he requests nothing other than that this excellent and beloved personage sing him a short song, contained and fragile, and that its measured notes be the last melody to accompany him down into the silent pit.
Umm-Jihan acquiesces with that former look of love, and her face forms itself upon that of Mahmoud’s, and her countenance, delicate and noble, settles on to his sharp and rigid bones, and she takes my hands with such gentleness, and while stroking my fingers she sings to me one last time our old, shared song, which has been present with us right from the beginning and all the way to the end of this affair, now fast approaching: To you I will depart from myself /Ya a’aeb an aynya. And Aslan is aware that these moments, during which he lies dying upon his bed from a mysterious ailment, are their final shared hours, and he swallows her expression so as to recall every line of her face, her bright eyes with the pleasingly feminine streaks of gold, her clear skin as soft as velvet, her sweet breath, her tiny teeth, her long, tapered fingers, the crease between her round and ample breasts, her nipples, constantly erect in his presence and ready for mischief and lovemaking, and they envelop their last song in kisses and elaborate embraces.
Aslan knows, too, that he will for ever long for her soft, engulfing caresses and for the childlike serenity with which she imbues him, and now, when he is sure and certain that his days have tapered to mere hours, he releases her from her vow of love and sets free this bird, this dove of love, to other realms, far from view, and he thanks her for this true love which she imparted to him, and because he does not wish to grieve her with the sight of his sickly, languishing body destined soon to rot until the soul flees, he declines her pleas and commands her to leave his side post-haste so that upon her return to these chambers he will no longer be lying there in repose, for the banks of Elnahar Alaswad will have claimed his body and transported it far from there, and Umm-Jihan presses her palms to him for one last, brief embrace from which Aslan will distil her essence to the end of his days, and when she slips away from there, letting the door shut behind her, she hastens to fall into the arms of Mahmoud, who awaits her, teary-eyed, and Aslan knows that this final chapter of his love for her has come to an end and he wishes to plunge into his mourning.
Several hours later Aslan quits Mahmoud’s chambers and he does not tarry even to take his leave of the beautiful views, he simply walks towards his death, to receive the fatal decree proffered by Sulini Elkhakim, the Farhi family doctor these many years, perhaps Aslan will even request that the doctor ease his torment and hasten a painless demise, and as he rambles through the streets of Damascus towards the Christian Quarter he notices on every doorstep and at every turn the malady that has spread through the city, and anguish and sorrows have seized upon Damascus as a woman in labour; the passers-by are jaundiced one and all, sorely fatigued, saliva frothing upon their lips, and the thousands upon thousands of leeches preserved in thousands upon thousands of jars in Damascus will not suffice to put an end to this plague, and these leeches suck the contaminated blood from the veins of the infirm and they swell up greatly as leeches have done from time immemorial, and they die from the poison and are sent down to Elnahar Alaswad, and Aslan imagines row upon row of the carcasses of Damascene citizens piled high on wagons and in trenches, and when he reaches the clinic of Sulini Elkhakim he collapses as if dead upon the doctor’s oak desk, and waits to receive the toxin that will hasten his death.
My happy friend, when our family doctor took note that it was I in his surgery he quickly drew the curtains and ordered his manservant to bolt the door, and he examined Aslan at length, taking his pulse and his temperature, and he stripped him of his garments and inspected his orifices, each and every one, and he noted all manner of numbers and letters to himself in the Latinate alphabet, and Aslan was prepared to take his leave of this world and this meaningless saga, and he answered the doctor’s questions: No, he has no pains and no ailments, but he is exhausted to his core, his life strength has been sapped and is no longer extant, his blood has changed colour and is not red any more but yellow – sickly and sluggish – defeated as if that of a ninety-year-old woman.
And Sulini Elkhakim’s face grows grave and angry furrows form at either side of his mouth, and he tells Aslan of the terrible plague that has erupted recently in Damascus, and this plague has been felling the aged and the infants; already the Maristan Nur Aladdin Hospital is flooded with dead bodies, and this plague affects the blood and is passed from the blood of the beast to the blood of man and from neighbour to neighbour and from beloved to beloved, and it seeps into the body, teeming and gaining strength in secret, hiding in the deepest veins where it works its black magic and sorcery until it attacks the healthy bodily fluids in one fell swoop, befouling them with black and filthy pus, and this pus spreads through the internal organs, to the heart and the liver and the lungs until it overwhelms them, all of them, with its contamination, and the blood transports it to all the organs of the body and immerses them in its poison.
In fact, Sulini Elkhakim cannot determine what malady has visited me, whether I too have fallen into the clutches of this terrible plague; however, upon taking note of my jaundiced visage he fears that this illness has taken up residence in my body and so he orders me to lie in my bed and take a mélange of many herbs he has concocted so that I may gather my strength, and he instructs me to receive the much-needed love I crave, for without it the body shrivels and the spirit perishes and the soul desires to die.
But to where can Aslan return if not to his parents’ home, whose windows have been criss-crossed with planks and where thick, choking dust is destroying the rugs, and Aslan, his head covered, rushes mournfully to his house, and in his parents’ bedroom he knocks at the door of the closet to scare away the house snakes and he removes from there a thick blanket and he wraps himself up in it in the deserted bed of his progenitors, for his mother and his siblings have long since escaped, and he falls into a feverish sleep and his head throbs with pain and his body is exhausted, and he knows for certain, without the slightest of doubts, that he too has fallen prey to this
plague of the contaminated blood, and from the depths of his heart he condemns himself for having been among the first to engender it, and he is willing and ready to welcome its torments and to die there alone as a dog whose day has come, in this manner so suited and fitting to him.
My happy friend, at that selfsame moment the prison guards of Sharif Pasha were leading the defendants into the qa’ah, the brothers Meir and Murad whose sentence had already been determined and who were dressed in prison uniforms, many scars slashed across their skin; and the Khaham-Bashi Yaacov Antebi, who was leaning heavily in his weakness upon my father, drawing his last strength from him, and they have been summoned to stand for the final session of their trial, at which their sentence will be handed down.
While Sharif Pasha continues partaking of thick atayif pancakes in a sweet syrup, and many types of dried fruit whose pips he spits into a hammered copper tray – the pride of Damascene handicrafts – he announces the outcome of the trial, but first he provides the courtroom with the rational and simple reasoning that led him to this conclusion.
The governor of Damascus points out that if only the decomposing body found in a cesspit near the Farhi home had been placed in front of him, he would not have found the defendants guilty; and if in addition to the body, only their rivals of bygone days had accused them, he would not have found them guilty; and if in addition to the body and the rivals, only the stark and unambiguous confession of Muhammad Effendi had been sounded, he would not have found them guilty; and if in addition to the body and the rivals and the confession of Muhammad Effendi, he had only been presented with the testimony of Suleiman alkhalaq, he would not have found them guilty; and if in addition to the body and the rivals and the confession of Muhammad Effendi and the testimony of Suleiman alkhalaq, he had only been made to witness the tears and passing of water of the Farhi brothers, he would not have found them guilty; but since this trial rested on the sturdy, trustworthy foundation of Aslan Farhi’s affidavit, the first-born son and product of the loins of Rafael Farhi himself, and since this confession was chock full of details, all of which had been verified through repeated and ongoing investigation and by other confessions and by findings, well, he – Sharif Pasha – found the decision regarding their sentence to be clear and simple, and he had no doubt with regards to its truth and its sincerity, for if the first-born son found them guilty how could the governor himself set them free?
Many years hence people will still be speaking, as they sit on the rooftops of Damascus on pleasant autumn evenings, of how Sharif Pasha sentenced Father and the Khaham-Bashi at once, and they will still be clucking their tongues at how the two consoled one another in each other’s arms; and in their lives and their deaths they would never be parted, for Sharif Pasha decreed that they should be hanged seven days hence, at the end of the Passover holiday, in the Saraya Square, and the Harari brothers standing alongside them in the qa’ah and Moses Abulafia and the Christians and converted Jews and Muslims could not contain themselves, and they burst out in boisterous shouting, for the time had come for the city of Damascus to burn away the evil in its midst, and indeed there were many dead as a result of this sudden plague that had broken loose and rampaged through the city’s quarters, and this was the finger of God, his wrath pointed at his sinning children for slaughter and for sucking and licking the blood of the victims, and if Sharif Pasha had not handed down a sentence of death by hanging then the earth would have opened up and swallowed them alive.
Father and the Khaham-Bashi are placed in a cell designated for those condemned to die and Sharif Pasha signs their sentence with an official seal, and with this it is clear that the affair has come to a close, that this is the last word in the trial, and Sharif Pasha dispatches the Christians to celebrate the Easter holiday beginning the next day and curses the Jewish people, for were it not for their religion, perverted and sinful, and were it not for the act of murder in which they were involved, they could at that moment have been partaking of those stale perforated wafers, so odd of appearance, eaten during the Passover holiday in the company of friends and relations under the trees and arbors of Damascus in all her blessings.
Aslan is burning with fever just then in his parents’ bed, and in spite of his absence from the legal proceedings in which the sentence was handed down, he knows full well the fate of this pair of fathers, and the illness courses through him with increasing vigour, sloshing noisily between his ribs until his friend the one-eyed shrew hangs on to them so as not to drown in the riotous waves of disease-ridden blood, and Aslan wishes to assist her, that witch who is now his sole companion in the world, and he rolls on to his side so as to allow her to breathe a little in the cavern of his stomach and his intestines, and his illness throbs violently inside him and gnaws at his internal organs and he imagines himself dead, yet he lives on.
And it is clear to Aslan that he has erred greatly, and his friend the one-eyed shrew, now battling for her life, affirms this with a silent nod of the head, and in a break in the waves, which are beginning to abate, she embraces him, an internal embrace that consoles him, and she encourages his stubborn thoughts that follow, one after the other, that he must atone for all his sins by taking his own life, for Aslan hates life and hates all the labour he has toiled under the sun, for no person will be remorseful over the departing of his soul; on the contrary, all the birds and plants and even the lizards and all the other reptiles on the face of the earth will feel less burdened when Aslan is removed from the world and leaves it behind, and how beautiful will be the world and how wondrous God’s creation without Aslan; would that it were possible to eradicate every trace of his jaundiced bones and the foul flesh that will remain after his death, for that way humankind will be spared every memory, every shred of evidence, and his name will be effaced for ever from the earth.
Aslan rouses himself with difficulty from his parents’ bed but is incapable of smothering his own life, and his gaze falls upon the crucified statue kept in a niche on Maman’s side of the bed, and Aslan grabs hold of this lonely messiah, his house companion, and lo, he looks at the sunken eyes painted brown but faded with age, and they do not condemn him for his sins, in fact they are full of forgiveness and pardon, for many are the sinners observed by the eyes of Jesus, and in his greatness he has made it his custom to atone for all of their iniquities.
And Aslan is overcome with a new vigour and the torrent of blood washing through him grows calmer and Aslan enters the kitchen to bring the holy icon an offering of fresh water, scented herbs and incense, and he knows well how right the saviour of the Christians was when he offered to pardon completely even the whore, and he recalls things told to him by the priests visiting Damascus, that Jesus was abandoned repeatedly by his Father, who would leave him alone in the desert faced with evil, and allowed him to be crucified at Golgotha alongside two common thieves, and who did not reveal Himself even when Jesus called to Him in the heavens above Jerusalem, and in spite of all this his love for his Father was great, and he returned to his Father’s fold, for it is pleasant and good for a father to shield his son under his wing, and it seems to Aslan that beneath its drooping nose the figure of crucified Jesus is smiling his first, wan smile.
Although Aslan recalls the severe warnings issued by the Jewish elders of Damascus not to take heed of the gentiles’ creeds, nor to be drawn to them or fall prey to their false enchantments – their pork-filled pots, their sculptors’ sins, the deceit of their graven images – and although it had been told to him what the Christians had perpetrated upon the Jews, how they had slaughtered them in the lands of Europe and other countries, he nonetheless was drawn to this dreamy and tormented youth, for Jesus’ only intent was to improve the lot of humankind and win the love of his fathers, both the carpenter, who had abandoned him from infancy, and the One in Heaven, who had abandoned him in his adolescence, and in his abundant benevolence he would gather Aslan in his arms and forgive his wickedness.
How sad, how wretched was that Passover holid
ay of the year five thousand, six hundred, when all awaited the coming of the Messiah and lo, there came no messiah, no king, no resurrection, no redemption of the Children of Israel, only shame and disgrace and heart-grief and low spirits and dejection.
My happy friend, the Seder night of Passover fell that very evening, but in the whole of Kharet Elyahud not a peep was heard: not the sound of the reading of the Haggadah, not the sound of the hard and fragile unleavened bread crunching between the jaws of the Jews, only a deathly silence reigned, and if there was a tiny band of Torah scholars in some hidden corner of a yeshiva somewhere in the Jewish Quarter, well, they carried out the Seder meal in whispers, in tears, spewing their fury for the gentiles while at the same time quivering in fear of their lives, and in our home and its many rooms there was not a soul but Aslan and the crucified one, and they wished to help one another, Aslan by bringing many offerings to him where he remained nailed to planks of wood and by allowing him to rest upon costly pillows placed on his parents’ bed; and the icon of Jesus by the light of reason and assurance that he beamed upon Aslan, this light the final refuge in the face of agony – gruelling, excruciating – and they embraced one another, the statue’s fingers resting upon Aslan’s eyelids, and they consoled one another on the bed of his mother and father, and his friend the shrew added her blessings, for the thing was very good in her eyes.
And in the Saraya prison the prisoners are carrying out their Seder night in disputation and conflict; the butchers and the gravediggers curse one another and feuding families blame one another and all the Jews wish upon their brethren the plagues that were visited upon the Egyptians, rivers flowing with blood, and an onslaught of lice, and the death of the first-born sons, and there are still children incarcerated there, more tearful even than usual, and they recite from memory the promises of the God of Israel to deliver the Jews from slavery to freedom, from darkness to light, and the Saraya guards oppress them and do not permit them to remove the copper bowls from their heads.