The Dark Side of Love

by Rafik Schami

  “Hello,” he said, but he got no further. Before Claire could say a word, Elias had jumped up and hit him in the face. Farid fell backward and crashed into the door of the room. His nose was bleeding.

  Claire begged her husband to stop, but he was like an angry bull. He grabbed the boy by the collar, kicked his backside and hit him on the head. Then he pushed him out into the courtyard and over to the storeroom near the kitchen. He thrust him inside and locked the door. Farid lay there for a while, but finally sat up. There was a light switch, but nothing to sit on, only shelves of foodstuffs, cans, rice, flour, salt, sugar. He crouched on the floor and tried to stop his nosebleed by raising his right arm and putting his head back. It did begin to dry up, but the pain in the back of his head, his ears, and his back was still there. He heard Claire crying and Elias shouting, telling her she’d be responsible if anything happened to her son on the street in the evening.

  The memory of Chaplin’s slapstick routines made Farid smile. All was quiet outside now, and it was late when he heard soft footsteps.

  “How are you doing?” whispered Claire.

  “I’m okay, don’t worry,” said Farid.

  “I can’t let you out. Elias has the key. But I can slip something under the door. I can …”

  “Oh yes, please, some bread and my geography exercise book. And a pencil. I have to draw the solar system. And I need an eraser too.”

  “I’ll be right back,” said Claire.

  Soon after that she pushed his exercise book, ruler, compasses, a pencil, and an eraser under the door, as well as two flatbreads and a slab of chocolate in a flat paper bag.

  Only later did he find a note between the flatbreads. “I love you!” it said, and, “I want to hear all about the movie tomorrow.”

  His solar system was not a huge success, but better than nothing. The geography teacher was strict, and seemed to have his hand welded to his cane. He rapped the pupils’ knuckles for the least little thing. The children were afraid of him, and learned the lengths of rivers and the heights of mountains by heart, parrot-fashion.

  Next morning a number of them were punished, including Josef and Suleiman. Farid escaped because of his drawing, and he thought gratefully of Claire. For the first time he understood what mother-love really means.

  “How did you manage to get your drawing done?” asked Josef curiously at break, not without envy.

  “The nights are long in my father’s prison,” he replied, aiming for a tone of histrionic pathos.

  82. The Short Memory of Chickens

  Aunt Salime wasn’t really any relation; Claire and Elias just bought their eggs and chickens from her when they were in Mala, and called her Aunt out of civility and respect.

  She had been a brave woman all her life. Wonderful tales were told of incidents in which she had played a prominent part, usually showing more courage than all the men in the village put together. Perhaps that was why she had never married.

  If anyone asked why men avoided her, she said, “It’s because they eat too much meat steeped in fear. Meat is digested in the body and everything that was in it goes its own way, the nutrients into the blood, the waste matter out again, and the fear into the heart.”

  She herself knew no fear and ate no meat, whether beef, mutton, or goat, because in her view not all the seasonings in the world could do away with the fear felt in its last moments by an animal going to slaughter.

  Aunt Salime raised chickens and lived from selling their eggs, which were in great demand, because she fed them only the best grain. And when she had nothing else to do she sat with them and sang them nursery rhymes in a quiet voice. The chickens seemed to like her singing. They clucked quietly and melodiously, as if echoing Aunt Salime’s voice.

  She told her fowls tales of love, loyalty, and treachery. Claire was amused by them, and said Aunt Salime had a brain no bigger than her chickens did, that was why she understood them so well. But Farid thought her stories were exciting.

  One day she told him about a hen who put up with all kinds of dangers and humiliations for love. She refused the advances of the magnificent rooster who ruled Aunt Salime’s poultry yard, and instead went through a hole in the fence to the yard next door, where a gaunt white rooster lived. She made love with him until he fell over, exhausted, and only then did the hen go home. Aunt Salime’s jealous rooster pecked her and flapped his wings, but the hen took her punishment, and went back day after day on her amorous outings. When Farid saw Aunt Salime’s magnificent rooster, he doubted her story. The bird was a fine specimen, with all the colours of the rainbow in his tail.

  “There, look at that! What did I tell you?” she suddenly said. The hen was on her way through the fence. Farid stood up and saw the two lovers dancing around each other. Then the white rooster mounted Aunt Salime’s hen, who willingly squatted down and raised her rear end for him. Meanwhile Aunt Salime’s rooster was throwing a fit of rage and jealousy, crowing himself hoarse. But the lovers took no notice. He couldn’t get through the small hole in the fence; Aunt Salime had made sure of that. Whenever the white rooster finished the hen wooed him again with her dance, until he mounted her once more. And just as Aunt Salime had said, she didn’t come home until the white rooster was lying in the sun half dead, and didn’t even have the strength to keep his eyes open.

  Farid shooed the jealous rooster away, and wouldn’t let him get near the love-sick hen.

  When a chicken was too old to lay, Aunt Salime killed it and sold it to one of her family or the neighbours. The way she killed the chickens so as to keep their meat free of fear was an impressive sight. When she had chosen an old hen, she took a long, very sharp knife and went out. She fed the chickens. She lured the bird whose life was about to end to a wooden platform set up in the middle of her meadow, drove all the others away from this raised dais, and finally made a great fuss of the hen, feeding her a few nuts and grains. The hen pecked, felt happy, and suspected nothing. Aunt Salime sang songs to her.

  Then, quick as lightning, she drew the knife from its sheath, which she wore on her back, and stabbed, but not like a butcher, more like a dancer. Seconds later the knife had disappeared again. Her hand, now free, moved gracefully back to the bowl of corn. The other chickens were alarmed for a split second or so, but next moment they were greedily pecking at the grain that Aunt Salime scattered around the platform, while the star of the day performed a headless flight. It looked as if she were going to loop the loop in the air by way of farewell, but before she had finished she fell to the ground a few metres away, and Aunt Salime quickly vanished into the kitchen with the dead fowl.

  “Okay, so that one left this life without fear, but what about the others?” asked Farid. “They’ve seen their companion die. How will they ever get up on that platform without feeling afraid?”

  “Yes, the chickens do see it,” replied Aunt Salime, “but they have very short memories – if they didn’t, they’d have stopped laying eggs long ago.”

  83. The Devil’s Daughters

  His family’s summer residence was not in a pleasant location. In the hot season, when Damascus was unbearable, his parents fled to Mala in the mountains, and Farid was woken every morning by a terrible sound: the bleating of sheep on their last journey through the village.

  Nothing ever changed in Mala. Grapes, figs, sweet corn and tomatoes certainly tasted better there than anywhere else, but the butchers still slaughtered animals right outside their doors. There were three butchers in all, and one of them had his shop opposite Farid’s house. The butcher was one-eyed but witty, and his fine voice was popular with the women.

  Every morning he led one of the sheep from his distant sheds to his butcher’s shop. He did it with the composure of a conqueror. He walked patiently behind the sheep, and kept stopping when it stopped and bleated pitifully, obviously with some presentiment of misfortune ahead. It was a short-winded, bloodcurdling bleat. The sheep looked around with its eyes wide. The butcher sang soft folk songs about longing
and loneliness, and pushed the animal almost considerately forward. The sheep seemed to rouse itself from its sense of loss. It walked on as if automatically for a while, only to stop again. Interestingly, it was more hesitant and bleated louder the closer it came to the shop. It wouldn’t walk the last few metres at all. All its legs seemed to go rigid, but with the ease of long practice the butcher pushed the poor animal to the door, tied it up to a metal ring there and opened the shop. At this time of morning Farid was already sitting out on the balcony.

  The butcher soon came back from the shop with a knife and a tin bowl to catch the blood. He skilfully caught the sheep by both front and back hooves, threw it over like a judo fighter, and pressed his knee against the animal’s head. It was taken by surprise and made no more noise. The knife flashed quickly and the sheep began bleeding to death. Its last twitchings pursued Farid into his dreams.

  Once a week there was goat meat at the butcher’s. Usually it came from young animals, but now and then an old billygoat had his throat cut. On goat days Claire stayed well away from the shop. She was fond of the little kids, and didn’t want to see them slaughtered. The elderly billygoats smelled too strong for her, even if they had been washed before slaughter and the flavour of their meat was disguised by large quantities of choice spices.

  The goats never took a step towards the shop of their own accord. The butcher hauled them there on a rope, and they resisted with all their might, bleating not pathetically but indignantly. In the end he had to carry them. He never sang to the goats at all.

  “It’s worth resisting even in the slaughterhouse,” said Claire, who sometimes consoled Farid in this early and sorrowful hour on the balcony by bringing him a coffee.

  In the afternoon – by which time all the meat was sold – the butcher rose from a brief siesta and strolled through the village and past his shop with his goats, about ten of them, and his sheep, taking them to the nearby fields to graze on thyme, thistles, basil, parsley, grapes, roses and anything else they found. That was what made the meat he sold so popular. The surprising thing, however, was that as they passed his shop the goats looked at it, stopped, bleated in agitation for a moment, and only then did they obey the butcher’s imperious call.

  “The nanny-goats know all about it. They don’t just wail like the sheep, they’re telling their friends exactly where they’re going,” said Claire, who affectionately called the animals “the Devil’s daughters”.

  84. Secrets

  The school vacation hadn’t even begun when Farid realized, in horror, that his father had planned the summer ahead for him in every detail. If Elias didn’t want to go to Mala he thought up some reason to keep his family in Damascus too. This time it was repairs to the house that Claire must supervise, since he had more than enough to do at the confectioner’s shop. There were ten weddings imminent in the Christian quarter alone, and he had to provide mountains of sweetmeats for each of them.

  “And I’ve found you two jobs,” he casually told Farid, as if the matter had only just crossed his mind. “You’ll spend the mornings with Abdullah the calligrapher, and the afternoons with the perfumier Sheikh Attar. He’s the best creator of fragrances in town. You’ll like working with both of them.”

  “Why two?” asked Claire. “Wouldn’t one job be enough?”

  Elias ignored her. “You start with Abdullah at nine on Monday.” Farid knew the calligrapher’s workshop; Abdullah was a friend of his father’s. Whenever he went there with Farid they spent some time together, and Elias sometimes felt embarrassed about it and bought some examples of fine calligraphy, usually quotations from the Koran. Later, at some suitable opportunity, he would give them to his own Muslim customers, since he wasn’t about to hang up passages from the Koran at home.

  “So where’s the perfumier’s shop?” asked Farid, knowing that his father wouldn’t put up with any protests.

  “Ten minutes’ walk from here, on the way to the Buzuriye. You’ll learn a lot from old Sheikh Attar, he’s a real magician.”

  The calligrapher was a shy, stiff, elderly gentleman. Farid had to start by polishing the workshop until it shone, and then he spent several days learning how to clean, sharpen, and trim pencils, pens, quills, and reeds and set them out for his master. Weeks passed before Abdullah finally said anything about calligraphic script itself. “It is the shadow of the voice,” he said quietly, and handwritten script must be as clearly formed as shadows under the Arabian sun.

  Farid learned what the calligrapher told him, made tea for him and his customers, fetched water and ran errands for his master. It was very hard work. All the same, he was happier there than at the perfumier’s shop, where he went after the siesta. At first he liked Sheikh Attar’s smile, but then he found out that it was only a mask. The man was cold as ice. He just wanted to use Farid as cheap labour. He put a seat outside the shop for him, and the boy was supposed to encourage passers by to go in and visit the master perfumier. But Farid himself was never to enter the place.

  When he told Claire about it in the evening she didn’t believe him, but next day she checked for herself, watching from a distance and seeing her son sitting on a stool outside the shop, looking forlorn. The sight did away with any scruples she might have had.

  “This is not what we sent him here for. He isn’t learning anything at all,” she informed the perfumier in civil but determined tones.

  “I don’t have any other job for him,” replied the master, with his mask-like smile. “I can’t let anyone into the secret of my perfumes.”

  “Then we’ll part company, with thanks for your hospitality,” said Claire, patting Farid on the shoulder. “Come along, let’s go.”

  They went to eat an ice at the Bakdash ice cream parlour in the Suk el Hamidiye, and then set cheerfully off for home. Claire said she would tell Elias about the end of this particular job that evening.

  But Farid enjoyed going to the calligrapher, and Abdullah himself liked his young employee and his interested questions. He even began to smile a little. And when the summer was over, he had at least told the boy about the mistakes that a calligrapher must not make, and had agreed that the boy could go on coming to help him out any time.

  So during the following school year Farid continued his training with the calligrapher. Whenever he felt like it he took the bus to go and see Abdullah, who always gave him some work to do. Usually it was filling in the characters on large advertising posters. The master painted the outlines of the characters with a thin brush, and the rest of it was tedious, time-consuming work, but it taught Farid patience.

  He spent six weeks with Abdullah next summer too, before going to Mala with Claire and Elias for their vacation. From then on Abdullah even gave him exercises to take home. Usually he had to write out certain sayings in one of the seven different kinds of script that he now knew.

  Later his master taught him the technique of calligraphic reflection. This was pure pleasure to Farid, and quite often it made him forget the time entirely. Playing with reflections fascinated him so much that even at home he could sit up until late at night over a picture in which a triangular calligraphic figure was reflected six times around the centre of a circle, producing a geometrical game and a maze for the eye to follow.

  His father was deeply moved when, at Christmas, Farid gave him a calligraphic version of the name “Elias Mushtak” in the form of a circular ornament. The script was in gold on an olive green background; both were his father’s favourite colours. Elias couldn’t take his eyes off the picture.

  “Did you do that all by yourself? Did Master Abdullah help you?”

  “No, no, I did it by myself here at home. I’m sure Master Abdullah would find all sorts of mistakes in it. I’d rather you didn’t let him see it,” said Farid, smiling awkwardly.

  Elias gave his son ten lira that day. He had never given him so much money all at once before. “Go and buy yourself the best paints, brushes and pens. And if the money isn’t enough, come back to me,” he said.
Two days later his name in Farid’s fine calligraphy was hanging in a frame on the wall over the cash desk at the confectioner’s shop.

  Farid scribbled and practised on every piece of paper that he found. Before two years were up he was known as “the boy with the beautiful handwriting”. He was only eleven.

  He didn’t guess what his reputation might do for him. Girls weren’t very interested in the pieces of paper on which he wrote their names in curving script, but their mothers suddenly discovered his talents. They asked him in, turned on the charm for him, and after a while they came to the point. Would he write a letter for them, please? Those were strange sessions, in rooms where the daylight was dimmed because the women drew their curtains to guard against the neighbours’ prying eyes, and sent their children out to play in the street when they were going to tell Farid what was on their minds. They had loving letters to send their absent husbands, sons, siblings, and friends.

  At first he just wrote down everything the women poured out to him, but as time went on he reworked the texts himself so that they really did sound like love letters. Later came a third phase in which he listened only to the main points and then used his own intuition to write the love letter. Once he had found the right way to say something he repeated it word for word to all the husbands. Their wives rewarded Farid with chocolate, delicious rolls, and candies, and if they were really delighted with their letters they even gave him a hug.

  His best letter of all was written for young Shafika. She lived at the cobbler Abdo’s house in Abbara Alley, two buildings away from Josef. One day she beckoned to him and asked, in the abrupt manner of all northern Syrians, how much a letter like that to her husband would cost. He told her it was all right, he didn’t charge, and when she asked him in he followed her.