by Rafik Schami
As she passed a white building in Rauda Street she stopped for a moment at the entrance with its imitation Greek columns. Some kind of restaurant was about to open here. It used to be the Nomade de la Nuit club, and painters were busy obliterating the name, covering it with sky-blue paint. In the 1940s the Nomade de la Nuit had been the club for the richest people in Damascus and high-ranking French army officers. When the French left the country and the number of coups scared off the rich Damascenes, the club folded.
She remembered how shy she had been the first time she went there, because her husband had lectured her endlessly on table manners, and the etiquette of dancing, and subjects of conversation to be avoided if you ever wanted to go to the club again. She had been terrified, because it seemed that anything other than breathing quietly could cause a scandal. Louis was a coward. But fear has never been a good teacher to anyone who wanted to find out about the world.
Three or four visits, and Amira had learned the rules of the game and was popular and highly regarded. Her husband, on the other hand, bored everyone by expressing fulsome and diplomatic agreement before his interlocutor had even finished what he was saying. But he was one of the most respected doctors in the city, and a very good match. Sometimes she felt almost grateful to him, for instance when she looked at herself in the big mirror of her bedroom in winter, wearing nothing but Russian mink next to her bare skin, or when she sat beside him in his open Mercedes driving through the streets of Damascus. There were only three Mercedes in the city at the time. Louis Safran was extremely large and stout, but a chance like that came a woman’s way only once in her life. She had had to take it at once.
Amira had been happy to go to the boarding school run by the sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Damascus, where she ultimately met Louis. And she hated her family, who had more time for their blood feud with the Mushtaks than for real life. Her father took no notice of any of his children but Butros, whom he idolized, and if he did happen to recollect that he had other offspring too, Mariam was his favourite among the girls. He treated Bulos like a stranger and a menial, and ignored Amira entirely. As for her mother, she loved only Faris and Jasmin.
When Dr. Louis Safran came to the school to give the girls lessons in hygiene once a week, he took a liking to her. The other girls said he was old and fat, but he was interested in her, and for that alone she was happy to marry him.
She had never for a moment felt any love for him, and love wasn’t what Louis Safran needed. He wanted children to show off and a wife at his side. She had to be beautiful. Apart from that, he preferred to occupy himself with his rich patients and his expensive and hard-to-get cars.
Louis never complained. He was always smiling, but he could give neither her nor the children any affection because he had none in him. He had once told her that the Safran family regarded kissing as a sign of a primitive nature.
But he was always pleased when she outdid his expectations, for instance at the club. Soon all the most respected members were asking after his wife, if Amira happened not to have come that day, so he always begged her to accompany him, because the members included the fifty most prominent men in Damascus.
And what a surprise when, one evening in 1943, she was chosen as the club’s beauty queen! Over thirty wives had stood for election, four of them Parisiennes. Her husband had been proud as a peacock. That evening she fell in love with Jean-Pierre, a dashing French air force officer, who talked about his adventures until she was lying in his arms in some kind of storeroom. He smelled so virile in his summer uniform. Even as a little girl she had been fascinated by athletic men who wore clean uniforms.
Jean-Pierre was a sportsman, and he captivated her with his ready tongue. French is better for love-making than Arabic, she thought. When her lover said “chérie” or “mon amour”, she always felt a tingling sensation run from her ears down her legs to the tips of her toes.
He was a passionate lover but also a charming rogue. He had a mistress in every city; oddly enough she had been able to forgive him that. “You can’t blame a fox for chasing chickens, mon amour,” he had told her, laughing like a naughty little boy.
Her husband didn’t notice that she was in love with the Frenchman, either that first evening or on any that followed. It was an exciting adventure.
Jean-Pierre was bold. One day he phoned: her children were at school, her husband at his consulting rooms, would she like to go for a flight in an airplane? It was the first time she had known what it was like to see the city and its people from above, and she suddenly had a sensation of lightness in her heart, a kind of sublimity. She felt almost like a goddess.
Her passionate love affair lasted three years. Then her air force officer left the country in 1946 with the French troops, making her no promises.
As she went to the prison that morning, Amira’s heart closed itself against grief. She felt her tears evaporating on their way to her eyes. For she felt she had been let down by both her lover and her son. Jean-Pierre had never told her when he was going to leave Damascus, and her son had chosen to take his uncle Butros’s advice without a word to her.
She never did learn just what had happened. Her husband was always repeating, like a parrot: that’s not women’s business. But suddenly Samuel was “her” son. She ought to have brought him up properly, said Louis, instead of entrusting him to that rustic oaf her brother, who had filled the boy’s head with nonsense.
He would never visit the prison with her. He hid behind appointments and the bonnets of his motor cars, but Amira knew better: it was his mother, the arrogant widow Safran, who had forbidden him to visit his son.
Amira could see her son twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays. She walked from her house in the rich Abu Rummana district to the prison in the old citadel near the Suk al Hamidiye. She needed time to herself. For days, she had felt a strange uneasiness.
What kind of a family was it for whose honour Samuel had sacrificed himself? He was the bravest of all the Shahins. He had done what they all wanted, but no one else dared do it. The others hid behind cowardly excuses. Her eldest brother Butros, who had always despised her way of life, had suddenly turned so friendly to Samuel, and even praised her for raising “such a lion”. Only he didn’t dare say such a thing publicly. He was afraid of his mother. Was that just? The boy was blamed for everything, while the rest of family quickly went back to their own lives, just as if Samuel had done the deed for himself alone. He had told Amira that he kept seeing Jasmin dancing towards him in his dreams. The surprise in her eyes when the shots rang out tormented him.
Her brother the lawyer, Basil, would have nothing to do with the case. It was a delicate business, he said. His mother was suing her own grandson for premeditated murder and wanted his legal assistance. So did his sister Amira. He asked both parties to understand that there was really nothing he could do.
Butros knew no one in Damascus who could help. Bulos was a simpleton. That fox Faris was on the side of her mother and Mariam. Amira’s sister hid behind her cynicism. And as for her mother! She’d been the cause of all this misery, after all, and now she was suddenly making herself out grief-stricken! Jasmin was the only one of Samia’s children whom she had loved. She had always been unjust. Whatever Amira or her younger sister Mariam did, she had coldly ignored it and talked only of her wonderful darling.
Jasmin was four years younger than Amira and thought she could trample all over her sister’s feelings. She’d always been outrageous. Even at Amira’s wedding, she had tried to attract attention to herself; she was only thirteen at the time, but much too mature for her age. She had performed a series of belly dances, and the men of Damascus reached out to touch her, encouraging her to show even more vulgarity. Amira’s husband’s family, all of them doctors and architects, had been horrified by the girl’s conduct. Her father-in-law George Safran was still alive then, he had turned his face away so as not to see Jasmin, and her mother-in-law Victoria was spitting venom.
Amira
had to ask her father to control the brat, and when Jusuf Shahin growled something to his wife Jasmin stopped, sulked, and soon left the festivities with her mother. Instead of boxing the girl’s ears, her mother even covered up for her, saying that she felt dizzy and they’d both have to go home. Shortly after that, she even said the sight of that poisonous creature Victoria Safran, Amira’s mother-in-law, would always give her a headache.
She had tried covering up for Jasmin’s treachery and shamelessness yet again, but then Samuel intervened. Her brother Butros told Amira that the boy couldn’t be sufficiently honoured for getting in ahead of his grandmother’s wicked plan to humiliate the family forever. Samuel, he said, had acted for the honour of the clan, like a razorblade separating a shameful encumbrance from the family name.
Still lost in the labyrinth of her restless thoughts, Amira reached the rusty old gate of the citadel of Damascus, which had seen better days since Saladin’s time. It stood on an arm of the river which was now just a stinking sewer. Rats scurried everywhere, disappeared into their holes, came out of other holes and looked suspiciously at human beings. Amira woke from her daydreams in alarm when one of them crossed the street. It had almost passed over her foot. She must have uttered a small scream in her fright.
Then Shukri, that sun-tanned, bright-eyed young officer smiled at her. He was standing in the gateway watching the passers by. Still smiling, he asked in his deep voice what brought such a pretty princess to this grubby area.
“Fate, First Lieutenant,” replied Amira, almost bashfully. He shook hands with her. His was a strong hand.
“And what’s the name of this fate?” he asked.
“Samuel Safran,” she replied.
“Ah, that courageous lad. Well, just come with me,” he said, knocking softly at the small spy hole let into the right-hand side of the gate.
A soldier opened the gate, and Amira went down the corridors beside the first lieutenant, whom everyone greeted respectfully. Doors swung open, no one asked to see her ID. The officer led her down a passage to a short staircase, and then entered a large, bright room with flowers in it, a large desk, a new sofa, and two chairs.
“Do sit down until the soldier brings your son,” he said politely, picking up the phone and relaying an order. His eyes wandered over her body, and she felt a hot beam of light scorching her skin beneath her dress, not too strongly, but giving her goose bumps. She couldn’t help thinking of her old physics teacher. He always tried to tell them that eyes don’t emit light. Poor old fool, she thought, moistening her lips to make her lipstick shine, and smiling.
46. The Opportunity
Faris told his mother, only a week after the funeral, that proof existed of the fact that his brother Butros had incited that fool Samuel to attack Jasmin. Samia wouldn’t believe it, and still less would she believe the reasons why, as he said, Butros had arranged for his sister’s murder in such haste. His main aim, Faris told her, had been to hurt his mother, because if Samia had been reconciled with Jasmin it would have been a bitter pill for Butros to swallow. He wouldn’t have been undisputed head of the clan any more, the one who made the life and death decisions. Instead, she would have retained the highest authority. So Butros had passed sentence of death on his sister, and he saw that it was carried out.
Samia listened carefully. She had always feared jealousy among her own sons, so she distrusted any negative remarks made by one of the brothers about another.
“Nonsense, Faris! Butros is a man of high calibre. I never disputed his position as head of the clan, but it wasn’t for him or even the President of the state to make decisions about my daughter’s life, that was only for Jasmin herself and God. That’s why we quarrelled. Anything else is just a wicked insinuation,” she reproved him.
Faris kept calm. “He promised him the black stallion,” he replied quietly but firmly, “and a very special pistol. He’ll take the horse to Damascus himself, Butros said, on the day Samuel comes out of prison. Wait, Mother, and you’ll see that your son Faris isn’t lying to you.”
Faris never returned to the subject. Samia tried to be composed in her treatment of Butros, who was being extremely charming to her. But the doubt that Faris had sown in her mind kept returning. Suppose her son Butros really had ordered her daughter’s murder? It was at night most of all that she felt abhorrence for him: a peasant ready to sacrifice a life to win mastery over a dunghill. She discovered that even after decades in Mala she was still a city woman at heart.
One cold day in late February 1951, Amira went to Mala with her husband and young First Lieutenant Shukri, to visit Butros. Faris was able to overhear their conversation from a bedroom above the drawing room of his brother’s apartment. He discovered that Samuel was to come out of jail on 10 April, and a party would be held for him. Amira was going to invite her brothers Butros and Bulos. Their mother refused to see Amira and her husband.
Amira praised First Lieutenant Shukri who, she said, had done so much to ease Samuel’s time in prison, and Butros gave the man handsome presents of wine, honey, and pistachios. From his hiding place, Faris could also see Amira coming out on the balcony with the officer several times to show him the view of the village, while her husband talked to Butros and his wife.
When the visitors went back to Damascus, Faris hurried off to see his mother. “Butros is going to take his finest horse to Damascus on April the 10th, as a present for Samuel when he comes out of prison,” he told her, his voice as quiet as ever.
Samia pretended to take it calmly. “Why, he wouldn’t even give his wife that horse!” she said, laughing. But her laughter was full of uncertainty, and matters turned out worse than she had expected. Butros led the horse out to his horse box and drove him to Damascus on 9 April. He planned to be at the prison gates with the horse early next morning. From her window, Samia watched him leave. His wife and two children sat in the Chevrolet, which also belonged to Butros, with Bulos and Bulos’s wife.
The brothers hadn’t even said goodbye to their mother. They were slipping away like thieves in the night to celebrate a murderer’s release, thought Samia, and Faris encouraged her. She considered Bulos far too stupid to take any responsibility for what had happened, and his morale had snapped anyway from the grief of childlessness. At first it had been thought that his wife was infertile, but then the doctors found out that he was the one who couldn’t father a child. Since then his wife had humiliated him day and night for the injustice he had done her.
“Butros and no one else is responsible for letting everyone know that Jasmin had gone astray,” said Faris after supper. “We ought to have listened to Basil and hushed the scandal up, the way those damn Mushtaks always do.”
For the first time Samia felt something akin to hatred for her own son Butros.
“You are right,” she agreed. She felt that she herself was partly to blame for her beloved daughter’s death, because she had hesitated to forgive her for so long. She hated Butros and Samuel because the murder had humiliated her too, and she lay awake all night, brooding. She imagined the riotous feasting in Damascus. When she fell asleep at last the revellers in her dream were still celebrating, but they were sitting around a large table, cutting up Jasmin and greedily devouring her flesh.
On the third morning she summoned Fahmi, her most faithful manservant. He had been ten when his parents died and he joined the Shahin household. Fahmi had always served Jusuf obediently, but it was Samia whom he idolized. And he was the only one of the servants to have worn black since Jasmin’s murder.
“I want you to go straight to that bastard Salman Mushtak and tell him that in four days’ time Butros will be getting delivery of a large consignment of guns and over sixty mule-loads of hashish from the Lebanon.”
“Oh, madame!” cried the alarmed Fahmi, taking her hand and kissing it with the humility of a slave begging to be released from the performance of an unwelcome task.
“Fahmi, Butros gave the order to have my daughter killed. When he did that, he
struck me to the heart. It was attempted murder of me too, and do you know what God says about that?”
Fahmi did not reply, because he too knew that Butros had encouraged young Samuel. But he had hoped and prayed that his mistress wouldn’t find out. Now he was horrified to discover that she knew.
“Madame, I can’t turn against the hand that feeds me …”
“Fahmi, you will do as I tell you. And if that son of a whore Salman asks why you come to him of all people, you’ll say you want revenge because Butros makes your wife Salma sleep with him once a week, and you found out about it only today.”
Fahmi went red with anger and stormed out of his mistress’s room. A little later Samia heard the sound of blows and Salma’s pleading, and then there was silence. Fahmi rode off on a brown mule, going down to the village square.
Salman disliked double-dealers, but at his faithful servant Basil’s urging he listened to Fahmi. He asked him the very question that Samia had predicted. When Fahmi refused the money Mushtak offered him for his information, and said he wanted to avenge his honour, Salman finally believed what he said.
That evening, Butros came back from Damascus. He was going to act the hypocrite and call on his mother. But she cursed him as a Judas and wished death to him and his wife. Butros wasn’t about to take this lying down. He replied to her in kind, saying it was his mother’s fault that his sister had become a whore, that he was proud of encouraging Samuel to do his heroic deed. She had better retire from public view, he said, and then she could live on his charity, but if she insulted him, the head of the clan, he would throw her out.
His mother did not reply, but went to her room and wept all night. She cursed Jusuf for dying prematurely and leaving her alone.
A week later Salman Mushtak made a phone call to Damascus. That was after his faithful servant Basil had confirmed that columns of mules had been delivering their loads to the Shahins for several nights running, and then went back in the direction of Lebanon as day dawned.