by Rafik Schami
“Filthy dog,” snarled Mansur. Colonel Dartan was standing some way off, disguised by a pair of sunglasses, unmoved as he watched the man who until just now had been his supreme commander. Two soldiers tied the dictator up with an old rope stinking of dung. “Put him up on the bonnet of the car,” called First Lieutenant Mansur, while Dartan got into his own vehicle and went to the radio station to deliver his first communiqué personally.
Mansur drove his armoured car with the screaming dictator on the bonnet through the streets of Damascus, and then out towards Mazze. Once on the narrow country road he stopped at an agreed place, and waited for a second car to arrive with the overthrown Prime Minister Barasi. The scene had been well rehearsed and went exactly as planned. Four soldiers used their rifle butts to drive the dictator and his loyal prime minister, both in their pyjamas, out into the fields barefoot and with their hands tied. Mansur went up to them and shouted that they were going to be executed as CIA agents and traitors to the Syrian nation. Then he shot them both. Barasi said not a word. He had appeared dazed all the time. The first bullet hit and killed him. But Hablan, who was only wounded, screamed and cursed the cowards who were deserting him now. Mansur levelled his pistol at the dictator’s forehead one last time as Hablan lay on his back and called out, loud enough for all the soldiers to hear him, “Anton Saade sends you this bullet, my dear leader.” Then one final shot rang out in the silence.
Colonel Dartan, who had led the new coup, preferred to pull the strings backstage, and installed a civilian government loyal to him. But it didn’t last long. On 19 December 1949 Colonel Shaklan, another early supporter of the nationalist Anton Saade, carried out a coup of his own. Shaklan, a wary and hardboiled character, was an enemy of the British and a friend of the Germans and the French. He ruled Syria with an iron hand until the end of February 1954, when Colonel Batlan carried out his own coup and put him to flight.
78. The Alley
Abbara Alley became Farid’s province. In the afternoon he could hardly wait to be through with his homework and allowed to go out with Josef. He met more children and young people now. There was no other street where so many girls met every day to play games and whisper secrets. Word of that got around, of course, and the reputation of Abbara Alley attracted other boys.
And some strange people lived there, the kind you didn’t find anywhere else in Damascus. The cab driver Salim was the best liar of all time; Riyad could talk to birds; and Basil, a lonely widower, had a dog who drank strong liquor with his master every day. Crazy Sa’dia wore seven dresses one on top of the other, and whenever she set eyes on a man she called out, “Don’t you want to marry me? See how many dresses I have.” Then she would begin lifting her skirts one by one. Bassam could shed tears to order, and Jusuf could walk upstairs and downstairs on his hands.
The inhabitants of Farid’s own street exchanged polite salutations but otherwise kept themselves to themselves. At most, they knew their neighbours in the two or three nearest houses, whereas here in Abbara Alley people lived at such close quarters that they were like brothers and sisters, and everyone called old people Auntie and Uncle. The front doors of the buildings were never locked, and you could get into the inner courtyards any time you liked.
The alley divided at the end. To the right, it led to Jews’ Alley, and to the left to the small but famous Bulos Chapel by the wall of the Old Town. Crowds of tourists passed by every day, and the children shouted, “Mister, mister, this boy is the son of holy Paulus,” pointing to the only fair-haired boy among them, Toni the perfumier Dimitri’s son. Toni just stood there, munching a flatbread filled with Dutch cheese, and as usual understood none of what was going on.
Farid had been spellbound the moment he stepped into Abbara Alley. It was the place of his dreams, just as he had imagined it during his solitary wanderings. It pulsated with life. The boys would often spend a couple of hours playing football, marbles, or cops and robbers in the street or its many back yards, and then four or five of them went along to see Uncle Salim and listen to his stories and tales of adventure.
But if they wanted to be private they went to Rasuk’s place. With his father’s help, Rasuk had converted an old tool shed in the garden into a room where he and his friends could be undisturbed, coming and going as they liked at any time.
Rasuk’s elder brother Elias was a tiler. He was a cheerful character, and very nice so long as you didn’t lend him any money. He danced beautifully, sang, and always looked slightly raffish with his oiled hair and open shirt. It wasn’t long before Farid fell for his tricks. A little cat had broken its leg, Elias told him, but the vet wanted five lira and he had only four. Could Farid help out with the other lira? It was touching: the poor tiler, who earned two lira day at most, seemed very surprised to find that Farid loved cats more than any other animal. “I can see you’re a noble, brave boy. Only the brave and noble like cats,” he praised him.
Farid ran home as if those words had lent him wings, raided his piggybank, returned to Elias breathless and handed him the lira. When he told Josef about the cat’s operation later, with much emotion, Josef laughed pityingly. “That trickster!” he said “He can’t stand cats. He scores at least one hit with a stone on any stray cat around here. And now he’s cheated you of the lira you carefully saved up.” But on seeing his friend’s horrified face, he consoled him. “We all get cheated by Elias some time or other. He wangled a lira out of me too,” he added, shaking his head gloomily. After the cat story, Farid avoided Rasuk’s brother.
Toni always had the best cigarettes, but he also brought chocolate and Dutch cheese to Rasuk’s little hideout. They all liked the cigarettes except Farid, who didn’t smoke. He preferred chocolate. The ever-hungry Azar used to fall on the cheese. He was very poor but highly intelligent. His father was a street trader who sold vegetables, fruits, or sometimes household implements from his wooden handcart, depending on the season, pushing the cart through the streets from sunrise to sunset, crying his wares. He had to feed nine children from the proceeds.
Azar’s mother did what she could to help out by earning a little money. She embroidered Arab robes and dresses for a textiles dealer, she knitted pullovers, woollen caps and scarves. Her children always wore the most colourful pullovers in the whole alley because they were made with odds and ends of leftover wool. Her most tedious job, however, was wrapping caramels and other sweets in coloured paper for a large confectionery factory. The work itself was easy, but Azar’s mother had a hard time protecting the delicious sweets from her hungry children. They were all carefully weighed and counted, and she had to pay out of her own pocket for every one that went missing. Once, when the children were left unsupervised and ate about forty, the poor woman had to wrap four hundred extra sweets to pay for those she had lost. She gave up that job in the end and wrapped socks instead.
Azar, who loved and honoured his parents, was able to go to the elite school in spite of the family’s poverty, because he was extremely gifted and the Catholic Church paid his fees.
The Jewish boy Saki was different. Farid had never known anyone who made fun of his own parents before. Saki called his father “Old Skinflint” and his mother “Liverish” because of her liver disorder.
It was a year before Farid visited Saki’s home for the first time. The family lived in nearby Jews’ Alley, in a fine house with wood and marble panelling on its interior walls. Saki was doing an injustice to his father, a calm and courteous man with a melancholy face. His mother, however, was much worse than Saki described her. She was always suffering from some ailment or other, and expected everyone to feel sorry for her. Her husband did the housework for her, and suffered in silence from the diabetes that finally killed him at the age of sixty.
But to Farid, the greatest surprise was Saki’s sister Sarah. Sarah was a beauty. She had her mother’s blue eyes and her father’s gentle, melancholy face. She was two or three years older than Saki and had matured early. At the age of twelve she went about looking ver
y raffish, dolled up like a diva. One day, when Farid’s gaze lingered on her backside, she turned and grinned at him. “Don’t even think about it! I’m not marrying you. You’re only a little boy.”
He felt caught in the act, for at that very moment he had in fact been thinking that Sarah’s behind was even prettier than Antoinette’s, and he would like to marry her and lie on top of her back. Saki, who knew his sister, laughed. “He can’t marry you anyway. He’s a Jew gone wrong. He seriously believes the Messiah already came to earth to let a few useless characters crucify him.”
Farid understood none of this. When he told Josef about it, his friend said the only difference between Jews and Christians was that one bunch thought Jesus had already come into the world and the other didn’t. Only now did Farid understand Rasuk and Saki’s game when they grabbed each other by the collar for a joke and kept shouting the same things.
“The Messiah came to earth – go on, say it!” Rasuk would bellow.
“No he didn’t come to earth – go on, say it!” Saki would reply, even louder, until finally both boys punched each other in the ribs, grinning.
“What about Sarah?” asked Farid.
“Oh, never mind her,” replied Josef. “She’s a silly cow, mad keen to get married, that’s all she has in her head. She wants to be married before her bloom wears off, because then there’ll be nothing left but her stupidity.”
Her brother Saki couldn’t stand Sarah either. “She’s thirteen, and she already knows what kind of meals she’ll be cooking when she’s fifty,” he said with derision.
But Sarah was nice to Toni, and only to him, and closed both eyes to any faults. Perhaps because he looked like a blonde girl, perhaps because he was always giving her perfume. It was only when his father beat him one day for giving Sarah two wickedly expensive bottles of scent, and Toni had to go to see her empty-handed, that she gave him too the cold shoulder. Saki laughed at him. “You’re nothing to Sarah without perfume,” he told him in Rasuk’s shed. As usual, Toni didn’t understand.
79. An Angel’s Weak Point
Aznar was really far too pale and thin for the part, so everyone was surprised when he was picked for the role of the angel that year.
Father Michael, who taught religious instruction, read out the names of all the pupils who were be in the end of year celebrations. This time Molière’s The Miser was one of the items on the programme. The twelfth grade had been rehearsing twice a week since January. Farid, who had recited a long poem last year, was to do the same again too. He was known for his good memory and ability to get through a piece without getting stage fright. A gigantic tombola with many prizes donated by rich Christians was to boost the school funds. The Minister of Culture, the Patriarch of all the churches in Damascus, and the Vatican ambassador were invited to the festivities, which acted annually as an advertisement for the elite school. Forty or fifty rich families also had invitations.
Everything was going smoothly. The pupils taking part were let off homework on rehearsal days. Farid was very pleased. He had only to read his poem through twice before he knew it off by heart, but he didn’t mention the fact, thus ensuring that he still had time off.
Azar rehearsed endlessly, practising how to move elegantly in his long white robe and manage his large, snow-white wings. The wings got in the way, and he kept falling over sideways. He looked pathetically clumsy. In the end the priest realized that he’d have to find him smaller wings, and after that Azar played his part brilliantly.
The great day came. Over five hundred seats in the school yard were all occupied, and over three hundred pupils and the school servants had to make do with standing room.
Opening the show, Mr Mansur the Arabic teacher read out a long, patriotic poem about Palestine and love of the homeland. Apparently his grief for Palestine made him weak and sick. Farid thought red-faced Mr Mansur, who was bursting with rude health, was rather too stout to be convincing. The pupils didn’t understand the poem, but they had to clap at a signal from their teacher in order to impress the minister of culture.
Then came the play. It was a huge success, for nothing makes Arabs laugh as heartily as a miser. Finally Farid recited his poem with so much feeling than many women in the audience wept. But something went wrong with Azar’s part in the proceedings. He was supposed to hover past the distinguished guests in the front row during the brief intermissions, offering them chocolates from a tray held in front of him and disguised as a cloud. But temptation was too strong.
When Farid joined the others he saw Mr Mansur who was so upset about Palestine, and the art teacher Madame Marierose, both laying into Azar, who was weeping with his mouth full. There was a pile of chocolate wrappings.
“What a thing to do!” cried the indignant Madame Marierose. “He ate all the chocolates! Every last one!” Azar shed more tears. One of his wings was hanging hopelessly askew.
80. A Message
Farid was fascinated by Sarah, but she simply ignored him. She walked past him and the other boys who visited her brother without a word of greeting, as if they weren’t there at all.
You might have thought she was blind, for even when Farid put on his best clothes and asked for Saki at the door she merely said her brother wasn’t in. Farid was well aware of that, having just seen his friend with her father in the family textiles store. Then she would turn and go away. Yet about every tenth time she said something that had him thinking for nights on end.
“Grey doesn’t suit you. If I were you I’d try black and white and make the most of the contrast,” she once advised him. So she was noticing him after all.
Next day, when Saki was working with his father in the store, Farid turned up not in contrasting colours but in white trousers and a white shirt. However, Sarah simply looked through him and said, “Saki’s out.” She didn’t notice that he hadn’t taken her advice, nor did she ask how he was. Nothing, no sign of interest, and that was worse than if she had called him and all his ancestors bad names. But just before turning she examined him scornfully once more, and said, barely audibly, “Black suits you better.” Then the door closed.
“There’s a secret message to you somewhere in all those remarks,” said Josef, when Farid told him about it. Farid felt the same, but he didn’t understand the message.
One night he dreamed of Sarah. She was lying on the marble floor of the hammam beside him. Steam hovered above them, and they were both perspiring. Sarah smelled of jasmine, her favourite perfume. She looked intently at him with her blue eyes, and he could have died of love.
“Now you must be brave or I can’t marry you,” she said, coming closer and kissing him on the lips, and then she lay down on her back beside him again and held his right hand. Suddenly he heard the voice of Claire’s cousin Michel the barber.
“What’s he doing here?” he asked.
“He has the best knives. Made in Solingen,” she replied. And suddenly he felt a heavy weight on his outstretched thighs. Michel in his barber’s coat was sitting on his thighs, holding his penis firmly between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, and a razor blade flashed in his right hand. Farid wanted to jump up, but his body was heavy as lead. He heard the barber laugh. “You’ll be a Jew in a minute,” he cried, and Farid felt a sharp pain on his glans.
Breathing heavily and sweating, he sat up. His room was dark. Two cats were fighting on a rooftop somewhere. They hissed loudly, and then all was still. His prick hurt. He got up and put on a light. His foreskin was intact, but the glans was slightly inflamed.
81. Going to the Movies
“We just have to see that movie,” said Josef up in the attic. It was Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid. Josef loved films. But as all the cinemas were in the new part of town, and his parents worried about him; he always had to keep his cinema-going secret.
Although he was only nine, Josef had seen all the films about Flash Gordon the space traveller, and he knew the names of all the American film actors. He didn’t like Arab film stars. �
��They just aim to make women cry. That’s not what boys want to watch,” was his crushing verdict.
“You have to see Chaplin before you die,” he announced portentously, as if hatching a conspiracy. Rasuk was keen to go off to the cinema at once. He thought Chaplin was a genius. Saki and two other boys joined them, and at the last moment Toni said he’d come, but Josef didn’t want him tagging along. “He’ll only attract sex maniacs in those shorts of his.”
So Toni went off to change and arrived at the bus stop, gasping for breath, just in time. His long trousers weren’t properly buttoned up yet, and he was still fumbling with his flies.
“There are two people with congenital defects in this street,” said Josef. “Aida ought to have been born a boy and Toni a girl.” Suleiman’s sturdy little sister could compete with any boy. Her stone-throwing was feared, for she always hit her mark.
It was Farid’s first visit ever to the cinema. The man on the door took their tickets and laughed. “Here come Ali Baba and his thieves.” He seemed to know Josef well.
When the lights went out Farid’s heart raced with excitement. However many movies he saw later, The Kid was always his favourite, because of the magic of that first film show. He soon forgot everything around him and plunged into the world of the little orphan boy to whom the large-eyed tramp took such a fancy. Unfortunately the film kept tearing, and the light coming on in the auditorium was like a cold shower.
The show wasn’t over until half an hour later than scheduled, and they ran for the bus. The driver took his time, stopping at every other store on his way through the bazaar to pick up people who had booked seats. This seemed to be his last trip of the day, and he was in no hurry.
It was after seven when Farid walked through the front door at home. He could hear his father’s angry voice in the drawing room.