by Rafik Schami
There was nothing to be done about it. Answering back just spurred Mauriac on to think up even worse humiliations. “You have to keep saying, ‘Yes, sir, very true, sir,’” Elias’s predecessor had told him quietly, “while you secretly wish him an elephant’s prick up his arse.” Elias laughed, and thought the old administrator had lost his backbone with the advancing years, but he soon found out what happened to those who stood up to Mauriac. The first lieutenant had them beaten and put to cleaning the latrines.
So the former Jesuit student repeated, “Yes, sir, very true, sir,” at least three times a day. It was a bitter daily pill that Mauriac made him swallow.
Otherwise, however, there was nothing wrong with the administrative work. Elias and another Syrian called Adnan, under Mauriac’s direct supervision, managed a huge store containing not just foodstuffs but luxury goods from all over the world, things that the average Syrian never set eyes on: expensive sweetmeats, textiles, wines, coffee, butter, cognac, champagne, spirits, rock candy, pistachios and peanuts.
Over thirty workmen did what the two managers told them, and before three months were up Elias thought up a good idea for getting around the problem of certain logistical bottlenecks that were delaying the supply of goods. Mauriac was pleased, because the military governor gave him a decoration for it, and “his” procedure was to be adopted in all the other stores too. But Adnan ascribed the fact that the newcomer and not he had won praise, although he had been in the job so much longer, to the general injustice of Christians. He was a Sunni and had never been praised for anything in his ten years working here.
Elias later suspected that Adnan gave him away out of resentment, and took pleasure in his cruel punishment. But something of crucial importance was to happen first.
Nasibe visited him. It was a surprise. He came back from work about five in the afternoon, and there she was standing under the chestnut tree near his lodgings, carrying a small basket. Elias was bewildered. On a short visit to Mala, he had probably told her where he was living in Damascus, but he had never expected her to come and see him.
But now here she was, delighted when he smiled at her and said she was in luck, because that dragon his landlady was away for a week, staying with her daughter in the distant seaport of Latakia. She wouldn’t let her lodgers have visitors, either men or women. “Their shoes wear out the stairs,” he said, quoting the old lady as he took Nasibe into the house.
However, after a few hours his pleasure in seeing her died down, and on that day he knew he didn’t want to live with Nasibe. She, on the other hand, was as happy as ever with his pretended ardour, and took the things she had brought from Mala out of her basket: dried fruits, wheat grits, cheese. He took her hand, led her to the larder and asked her to cook something with these magnificent provisions.
Nasibe sensed no change in Elias, because he still wanted her in bed. Perhaps he didn’t make such wild love as before, but he was more affectionate than any other man she knew. Above all, he was very courteous to her, and Nasibe regarded courtesy as one of the cornerstones of love. In the evening he even took her out, and they went walking through the Christian quarter together. He just didn’t want her to take his arm.
She stayed with him for five days, cooking, washing, and ironing, and looking forward to his return every evening. Elias was especially courteous to her now, for the very reason that he no longer desired her. He thanked her for every little thing. But she was losing all her power of attraction for him. He tried hard to find her interesting in some kind of way, and drank when he was with her so that he could give his instincts free rein, but even drunk he couldn’t make love to her as wildly as he did a few months ago.
She smelled of strong rosewater, sour milk, and rutting billygoats. Even when she put on makeup he thought she looked rustic. She used too much of everything, as if the world were short-sighted and colour-blind. Everything she said and did reminded him more and more of Mala. And Nasibe became more rustic all the time because, out in the street, she noticed that she was inferior to the city women.
He was glad when she left. She had wanted him to take her to the bus, but he pretended he had an urgent inventory of the store to draw up. However, she did not, as he had hoped, sense his coolness. He could feel that when she embraced him in tears behind the door as they said goodbye, and whispered to him almost pleadingly, “Think of me, my little stallion. I’ll look forward to your decision. We suit so well together. Did you notice too? Five days, and we haven’t spoken a cross word.” And her eyes became a gushing fountain of tears.
32. Adnan’s Revenge
Mauriac was supposed to be on three days’ leave, but suddenly there he was in his uniform. It was after five in the afternoon. He had never before turned up in the store at that time of day, after working hours. Elias had just invited a workman whom he liked to drink a glass of wine with him in a back room. They were sitting among the crates, sipping their wine and eating roasted peanuts from a little dish. The man’s name was Burhan, and he was very poor. He worked as a porter, making ends meet as best he could, but he had a quick and clever wit. Elias liked his pointed remarks. A small sack of peanuts had split open that day; he had distributed the contents to the porters, except for this last handful, and then he asked Burhan to stay and chat with him after work. Like Elias himself, Burhan was a bachelor.
Adnan had seen it all from the doorway. But soon after that he left, and Elias hadn’t been sorry to see him knock off work early. There wasn’t anything more to do. Now, however, Adnan was standing behind the furious Mauriac with a spiteful grin on his face.
“A manager thieving!” shouted Mauriac. “Caught you in the act, you lousy Arab.”
He took no notice of the porter at all, and indeed turned his back on him and seized the shocked manager’s hand as if he feared Elias might run for it. Burhan quietly made himself scarce, and no one paid him any attention. Elias stood there in front of the open bottle of red wine and the dish of peanuts.
“You thought I wouldn’t notice what a thief you are. But you were wrong, and you’ll be punished for it.”
Then he laughed as if he had exactly the right idea for a punishment in mind. He turned to Adnan. “Tell the commandant of the men on guard that I need two good strong fellows.”
Adnan went off and soon came back with two tall guardsmen, both Syrians.
“Hold the thief tight,” said Mauriac, and in pleasurable excitement he whispered an order to Adnan, who disappeared into the equipment room and soon came back with a funnel and a small hosepipe.
“And now a bucket of pour.”
Pour was short for pour chien, “for the dog”. It was the codeword in the store for a cheap red wine given only to the common soldiers when there was something to celebrate. The two Syrians held Elias’s hands, one on each side, and pulled his arms apart so that he slumped between them as if he had been crucified.
Then Adnan roughly forced the hose into his mouth, and Mauriac, laughing, poured the wine into it down the funnel. “Here, drink up,” he said, still laughing. Elias thought his end had come. Years later he was still saying that at this, the worst moment of his life, he had understood all the misery of the Arabs. Three Syrians slavishly helping a corrupt, cowardly French officer to torment their fellow countryman.
He swallowed and swallowed, tried to get his breath back and choked, but Mauriac went on pouring. The wine flowed out of the corners of his mouth and down over his throat and chest. Mauriac poured the entire contents of the bucket down through the hose until Elias lost consciousness.
When he came back to his senses, he was lying on a dirty mattress in a dark room. He sat up, his head heavy. His skull was buzzing and there was a bitter taste in his mouth. He didn’t know how he came to be in this room or how long he had been lying there.
Slowly, he went out of it. The room was in a poor peasants’ house, behind their living room. An old man sat with his wife beside the small hearth, and they were feeding the fire with thin pieces of
wood. Elias didn’t know either of them. He sat down on the first stool he saw.
“Thank God, you’re alive,” cried the man. “My wife thought you’d die soon.”
“Where did you find me?”
“In the ditch at the roadside, not far from Damascus,” said the woman. “We were just coming home from market after selling our walnuts and dried figs,” her husband added.
Elias quickly recovered, went back to Damascus, fetched a few possessions from his room, and set out for Mala.
The village knew by now was that he was doing splendidly with the French, and was said to be a store manager. George Mushtak felt a certain pride in that damn son of his who wouldn’t let anything get him down, but kept on fighting. He had decided to bury his hatred and forgive the boy next time he came to visit.
Elias came home a broken man, carrying a single case, so he was much moved when Mushtak sent Salman to tell him he could come and receive his father’s blessing. He ran upstairs. His father was sitting on the big couch like a king, and Elias’s eyes filled with tears when he kissed Mushtak’s hand and asked his forgiveness.
“I forgive you everything! You are my son, and you have my blessing,” said George Mushtak, equally moved. Salman and his wife were standing in the doorway.
“Why are you standing there like a couple of plaster dummies? Fetch us wine, bread, olives, and cheese, and we’ll celebrate!”
The word “wine” was unwelcome to Elias’s ears, and indeed he never in his life drank red wine again.
“Water for me, please,” he begged.
“Why? You’re a man, aren’t you?” asked his father, and there was anxiety in his voice.
“Yes, Father, but some red wine gave me bad blood poisoning,” Elias replied. He stopped for a moment, and then realized that he was going the wrong way about it. He must be frank. “Father,” he said, “I’ve been tortured. They poured five litres of wine into my belly down a hosepipe.” He fell silent as Salman and Hanan carried in two large trays laden with olives, preserved aubergines and sheep’s milk cheese. George Mushtak gestured to them to put it all down and keep quiet.
“Who tortured you? And why?” he asked, taking his son by the right shoulder.
Elias told the whole story, laying the blame on Adnan and Mauriac.
“Then now let’s celebrate your homecoming, and I swear to you by my mother’s soul that neither of them will have the strength to reach their own homes tomorrow,” said his father, drinking to his son.
Late that night three men rode towards Damascus behind Elias. They arrived early in the morning. Like his father’s three servants, Elias wore peasant clothes, and they lay in wait for Adnan, who always turned up for work at eight. When he appeared, the men looked hard at him and memorized his face and figure. Then Elias pointed out Mauriac, who came to work at nine with all due ceremony, wearing his uniform.
“You can sleep until midday now,” he told the men, and they lay down beside a nearby stream. He stayed awake himself. He kept thinking of his father, who had insisted on paying out those who had tormented his son. He woke the men around twelve.
“They’ll both come out in half an hour’s time,” he told them. “God be with you.” And he reached for his pistol. They had agreed that he was to stay in the background. The men would attack the two from the store and beat them, and only if they were in danger themselves would Elias give them cover.
Mauriac came marching out of the store first. Adnan, his puny shadow, followed him. Mushtak’s men, well muffled up, let them go about a hundred metres to the first bend in the road. Then the peasants from Mala fell on them, threw them to the ground in silence, and beat them about their heads and knees with iron bars. After that they mounted the horses that Elias was holding for them and rode out of town faster than the wind.
His father’s welcome, however, was a strange one. George Mushtak stood with his face impassive, listening to his favourite servant Basil’s account. When he heard that it had all gone as he wished, he said only, “Good,” beckoned to Elias, and took him into his bedroom. He went to the shelf under the picture of St. Giorgios on the wall opposite the big bed. It was a seventeenth-century original that the bishop had given George Mushtak after he made the Church a large donation.
“Put your hand on the Bible,” he ordered, “and swear not to fuck a woman again until you marry.” Elias was shocked at first. Then he was almost overcome by a fit of laughter. Only his father could utter the words “Bible” and “fuck” in the same sentence. He put his hand on the Bible. He was almost unconscious with weariness after the six hours’ ride.
“I swear,” he whispered, almost inaudibly.
33. Flight
George Mushtak was less and less intemperate in his dealings with Elias now, but he was truly at ease only with Salman. They were almost like boon companions. George’s eyes always flashed with joy and admiration when they rested on his firstborn child. But at least he had made his peace with his youngest son now. Elias had a fine room on the second floor, and was treated with respect by everyone, including his father.
It took Elias some time to recover from his experiences, and then he wondered what to do now. He didn’t want to teach at the school in Mala, although the village priest was pressing him to take the job. But the musty damp of the classrooms choked him the moment the priest so much as mentioned the subject, and in any case he never again wanted to work in the service of any authority, even the Catholic Church.
He briefly contemplated starting a small factory to produce natural dried fruits. But one day George Mushtak suggested horse-breeding, a trade at present pursued by only two families in Mala: the hated Shahins and, in a smaller way, the Mobates. And the future of the Mobate stud farm was uncertain, since the village elder’s three sons had shown no interest in the business.
“The beautiful Samira is crazy about horses, the only one among them who is, but she’s a woman and needs an intelligent man to guide her,” said his father, in an almost conspiratorial tone.
Elias knew Samira only slightly. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was large and imposing, which amounted to the same thing for the peasants of Mala. She laughed a lot, very loudly, and she rode like the devil. Everyone knew that Mobate idolized her, and to the great annoyance of her brothers was leaving her a quarter of his large fortune in his will, just as if she were a man.
Elias had no idea that his father and the village elder had already settled everything. He was to marry Samira and start a stud farm of his own with her. Mobate would provide the thoroughbred Arab horses, Mushtak would contribute three hundred gold lira for the stables.
But it was in that summer of 1935 that Elias met Claire and fell in love. Captivated by her as he was, he was impervious to all else. Every hint his father dropped about Samira went unheard. He nodded amiably, but he wasn’t listening. And even when he was stopped in the village square at noon one day by the handsome lunatic known to everyone as Shams, the man’s strange words did not alarm him at first.
“Brother, don’t marry Samira. She loves me, but her father wants to sell her off to you. Look at me, brother, look at me,” begged the madman, and his wide eyes showed how deranged he was. “Have I done anything to harm you? Is it too much to ask? You can marry all America, but leave me Samira!”
Elias found this conversation embarrassing. “Hush, there’s no need for you to shout. Why would I have anything to do with Samira? I’m happy to leave her to you or anyone else,” he replied.
“No, brother, not anyone else, just me, all right? Just me, right?” cried Shams, laughing, and there was a pleading note in his voice. The saliva dribbled uncontrollably from his mouth, yet he was still as handsome as a Greek god, thought Elias.
Only that evening did he learn that the madman had not, like many Arabs, used the word “brother” as a courteous but generalized form of address, but meant it literally.
“He’s your half-brother,” Salman told him, his tone cold and brittle as usual. “Your mother wa
s unfaithful to my father, and God punished her because he loves George Mushtak. She went crazy, and her son has fits of lunacy.”
“Where does he live? What does he do?”
“He’s worked as a groom for Mobate ever since he turned up here. They say he’s good with horses,” replied Salman.
“And what about Samira? Why did he beg me not to marry her? Does Father have plans of some kind?”
“What do you mean, plans? He has no plans at all. You mustn’t let any chance-come idiot turn your head,” said Salman, lying. He knew very well that Mob ate and Mushtak had already fixed the wedding for Christmas. The only snag was that Samira didn’t like Elias. She often mocked his slight figure and his liking for books, and she thought his affairs with women ridiculous. She dreamed of an immaculate love as Shams passionately understood it. He described such a love wonderfully.
Elias wasn’t interested in Samira either. While the fathers were making their plans he had met, for the first time, a woman who attracted him even though she smelled only of perfume, giving off no aura of desire for him. But her speech was sensuality itself, and when she said “chéri” he could have fainted away with happiness.
She spoke fluent French, which sounded to his ears like civilization, liberation from cow dung and the smell of sweat. There was something in her voice that he had never encountered before. It trembled, it sounded almost hoarse, as if Claire had a slight cold. And when she spoke of Molière, Mozart, or Lamartine her vibrant voice gave him a warm feeling and a great sense of longing.