by Rafik Schami
Her husband was tall and massive. Farid had never seen him looking as if he had just washed; he was sweaty even early in the morning. Most traffic cops in Damascus were extremely elegant in appearance, but not Maaruf. He looked like a jailbird on the run who had just stolen a traffic cop’s uniform.
He earned very little. It might have been enough for him on his own, but with a wife who in his opinion couldn’t keep house, and four children whose appetites were never satisfied, even two salaries wouldn’t have been enough. And he had his old parents to support as well.
Claire had never liked Samira and Maaruf, and since the incident with her brother Marcel she wouldn’t even pass the time of day with them. Maaruf had stopped Marcel close to Bab Tuma. Marcel gave the policeman a friendly greeting and said, casually, that he knew him and his delightful wife, since Maaruf was his sister Claire’s neighbour in Saitun Alley.
“I don’t know any Claire,” claimed Maaruf, and he also denied living in Saitun Alley. “You hooted, that costs ten lira, you have vapour coming out of your exhaust, that costs twenty lira, and you’re driving without lights, that costs thirty lira. Pick your fine. I don’t want to be unjust.”
Marcel was trapped. He decided for the cheapest fine on offer, but he could find only a twenty-lira note in his wallet. He gave that to the policeman, saying, “I’ll have the hooting.”
The policeman grinned and said, “Very sensible of you.” And turned away.
“But I want my ten lira change,” protested Marcel.
Maaruf put the twenty lira in his shirt pocket and said generously, “For the second ten lira, you can hoot your horn again.”
112. Raining Sugar-Coated Fennel Seeds
One summer morning in the year 1952 the inhabitants of the Christian quarter found that a miracle had happened. By now coups and miracles were everyday occurrences for the Damascenes, although so far miracles had befallen only individuals, not whole parts of the city.
Almost all the inner courtyards, balconies and rooftops were sprinkled with little coloured things that looked like grain. People cautiously tasted them, and were delighted to find that it had been raining fennel seeds. In Damascus, fennel seeds are coated in coloured sugar and used to decorate sweet dishes, or simply put in the mouth to be chewed after a spicy dish. Fennel is good for the digestion and perfumes your breath.
The neighbours picked up the delicious seeds and ate them thoughtfully. Many decided that they had never tasted so good before, others claimed to have been cured of chronic stomach ailments the day after eating them.
So this was a time of blessings. Now that Colonel Shaklan had risen to power in Damascus, heaven appeared to be content. There had been plenty of rain last winter, which augured well for a record harvest in summer. And now sugar-coated fennel seeds had fallen from heaven. Some of the neighbours were reminded of the manna that God had fed to the children of Israel on their flight through the desert. Was this a sign from heaven that the lord of the universe was pleased with President Shaklan? The ever-suspicious Josef suspected that government airplanes had dropped the sugar-coated seeds, but no one had seen or heard any planes.
The gang sat in the attic above the aniseed storehouse, thinking about it. Azar joined them late that evening, and brought the answer to the riddle with him.
“It was Burhan and me,” he said. “A thank-you to the neighbours.”
Burhan was not a man of many words, and found talking hard work, but when he did come out with complete sentences he sounded surprisingly clever. Normally he was regarded as simple-minded for the time it took him to put two words together – hours, days, even weeks.
Burhan was small and strong and had a job that suited him perfectly: he was a stonemason. Stonemasons are silent folk, and he liked to keep quiet.
He worked as a labourer for Josef’s father, he was a bachelor, and he lived only a couple of houses away. He and his sister had inherited their house. He lived on the second floor, she lived on the first floor with her husband and four children. Burhan didn’t want to get married. Marriage would have meant talking a lot, which would be too much of a strain on him. He liked best spending time with his pigeons. He had over a hundred, and knew every single one of them better than he knew some of his neighbours.
He paid his sister a third of his wages, and for that he shared her family’s meals. He spent another third on his pigeons, and with what was left he allowed himself a small pleasure here and there. Burhan was at ease with himself and the world. He ate what was put in front of him, he found fault with nothing, but he never praised anything either.
Josef’s father liked Burhan but not his love for his pigeons, because it meant that the man always put his hammer down on the dot of four in the afternoon to go and see to his birds.
Pigeon breeders had a bad reputation in the city. They were considered obsessive and lazy, and their witness statements were worth nothing in a court of law because they were regarded as notorious liars. Furthermore, they were always up on their rooftops, where they could spy on other people’s houses. And their neighbours were bothered by the pigeon breeders’ calls and whistles, and all the garbage that they threw at hawks, cats, or even their own birds if they turned awkward. The garbage often landed in inner courtyards, even on tables where people were eating, and the pigeons themselves were lavish with their droppings.
All that was true of pigeon breeders in general, but Burhan was different. He loved his pigeons, and never threw anything at them. He conducted them the way a musician conducts an orchestra, and he always tried not to bother anyone. Curiosity was far too strenuous for him.
Josef, Farid, and the other boys in the gang had no great opinion of pigeons. Azar was the only one who liked them, and as he couldn’t afford any of his own he went to see Burhan almost every day and admired his birds, which had a very high reputation in the pigeon fancy. Over the years, Azar became almost like Burhan’s assistant. On Sundays he was even allowed to go to the Pigeon Café in the Suk el Sinaniye with him, where breeders met and offered their birds for sale.
Like Burhan, Azar was silent and given to brooding, so the two of them got on well. One day Burhan asked Azar how he could thank the neighbours for their patience with him and his pigeons. Azar immediately had an idea. He made little boxes of lightweight card, and fastened them to the pigeons with short rubber bands cut from the inner tube of an old bicycle tyre. The boxes had little holes in their bases, and just before the pigeons took off the boxes were filled with the sugar-coated fennel seeds.
Then, early that summer morning at the first light of dawn, Burhan sent fifty pigeons up into the air. He guided them soundlessly on their round trip, and before anyone had begun getting up in the morning, the pigeons were back from their flight over the Christian quarter of the city.
113. Grandfather’s Salt
Farid hated the idea of leaving Damascus for the monastery, but he sometimes consoled himself with the thought of being closer to the Mediterranean. Josef, Suleiman, and Azar had never been away from the city for long. Of the friends, only Rasuk had once spent two years outside the country, in the Lebanese monastery of Christ the Redeemer.
One night, two weeks before Farid’s departure, Rasuk came up to the attic where they were all sitting gloomily. No one was saying a word about the Flash Gordon movie they’d all seen together that afternoon.
“You’ll like the sea, Farid, I’m sure you will,” he began. “I was eight when I saw it for the first time. I spent hours, fascinated, sitting on a rock outside the monastery the day after I arrived. I could look down on the waves from up there, and a week later I found a huge book all about the Mediterranean in the monastery library, with illustrations. The underwater sights, the sea creatures, the amphorae, the shipwrecks – they were all there in large, hand-coloured photographs. It was the mysterious blue of the sea that I liked. I played by the water whenever I could. Later I learned to swim, and the salty taste of seawater surprised me.
“Then I came back here to
Damascus in the summer vacation, and my parents took us away from the heat, the way they do every year, to our home village of Sabadani, fifteen hundred metres above sea level up in the mountains, where we always stayed with my grandparents.
“One afternoon I was sitting on the terrace with my grandfather. He used to drink coffee there just before sunset. The coffee was spiced with cardamom and smelled delicious. I loved my grandfather, because he told good stories.
‘Tell me about the sea, Grandfather,’ I asked him.
“He smiled slightly. ‘I can’t tell you much about the sea. Ask your grandmother. She comes from Latakia, the northern harbour town.’ But Grandmother was away with her family for three weeks just then, and when she came back my vacation would be over and I’d have to be back at the monastery. So I said what bad luck that was, and the old man nodded and took a big gulp of coffee. ‘The sea,’ he whispered, and then he fell silent. ‘The sea is – well, the sea’s quite something,’ he added, finishing his thought out loud at last. He stood up. ‘The Mediterranean lies over in the west, beyond the mountains, and I can tell you a little story about that. Thirty years ago I was planning to escape the First World War and emigrate to America, but when I saw the sea, and I found out that an even mightier ocean lay beyond that great stretch of water, and I’d have to cross it, I decided to stay in port for the time being. So I leased a tavern. Evening after evening I listened to the bragging tales of sailors, smugglers, adventurers. One day an Englishman gave me a lot of money to go to Cyprus with him and smuggle gold and weapons to Beirut for Lawrence of Arabia. So I stepped into his rotten boat. But I couldn’t swim, and the sea was rough …’
“And Grandfather told me such a long tale of weapons, gold, and smugglers that I can’t repeat it all to you now, but he was so excited that every now and then his voice sounded hoarse, as if he were reliving the moment when he was near drowning, but a dolphin rescued him and brought him safe ashore.
‘And ever since then,’ he concluded, ‘salt oozes from my skin when I tell stories of the sea.’ And he reached his wrinkled brown hand out to me. ‘Taste it,’ he said, smiling. I licked it carefully, and sure enough, his hand was as salty as the sea at the foot of the monastery of Christ the Redeemer.”
BOOK OF LONELINESS I
Loneliness is death’s twin brother.
THE MEDITERRANEAN COAST, 1953 – 1956
114. The Journey
Arriving as suddenly as a summer storm, a small truck with no licence plate appeared on the winding road, overtook the bus, and came to a halt right across the carriageway. The words “secret service” went back and forth among the passengers. The bus driver braked sharply and cursed under his breath. A bearded traveller and a stout woman, sitting on the front seats near the door, trod on invisible pedals in parallel with him and noisily sucked air in through their teeth. The vehicle lurched to one side, and didn’t come to rest until it reached the soft verge of the road. Gravel fell to the abyss below.
Seconds later the bus was surrounded by four armed men in civilian clothes, while two more searched the passengers. A large, handsomely ornamented dagger earned its owner a slap in the face. After taking his punishment the peasant, a figure of impressive masculinity, stared dejectedly out of the side window. The consolations offered by his neighbours didn’t get through to him; the dagger was all he had inherited from his late father.
Cameras were also frowned upon in the mountains where rebels held sway. An Egyptian tourist had to hand over his, with all the films. Smuggled goods, however, didn’t interest the inspectors. They were looking for books, newspapers and weapons.
Colonel Shaklan had hardly any allies left in Damascus in this, the fourth year of his dictatorship. The army was muttering more and more audibly. Riots and mutinies were breaking out everywhere. The secret service was the one weapon he had left. When he sent it in, death would not be far behind.
A young teacher was hauled out of the bus for hiding a French newspaper. From the angry abuse hurled at him, the other passengers gathered that the newspaper carried an article about a Syrian government in exile in Baghdad. The young man was kicked and pushed into the truck. Everyone could clearly hear his pleas.
Only after this prelude did the first lieutenant in charge of the party get into the bus himself. It was baking hot by now in the July sun. Almost politely, he demanded to see the passengers’ papers. He was charming to the children. His gaze moved back and forth between the passengers’ ID and his lists.
On coming to a bearded doctor he asked, in passing, what would cure his migraine. The doctor hesitated, fearing that the question was a trap. Everyone waited with bated breath for his answer.
“Aspirin,” he said at last, hoarsely, swallowing hard. “Don’t smoke too much, no alcohol, and get plenty of sleep.”
The officer laughed and shook his head. His laughter gave all the passengers a moment’s respite. Some heaved a sigh of relief, others cast a quick glance at the photos in their ID cards, as if they feared they might find forged papers there.
Farid felt no fear, and even enjoyed the sight of his father’s pallor. Elias kept muttering to himself, “We ought to have taken the coastal road, it’s safer.” When things went wrong he liked to use the first person plural, as if to avoid taking the blame himself. Claire had recommended the coastal road, but it meant a longer journey, and as usual his father was in a hurry. Farid had to get up at four in the morning, so that his father could be back in Damascus at eight that evening for a meeting of the confectioners’ association.
Encouraged by his undaunted passengers, the bus driver had overtaken trucks and other buses on the good blacktop road going north from Damascus. After four hours, he had turned off and taken the protesting vehicle up the endlessly winding country road, which was more detritus and potholes than asphalt.
Worse than the potholes, however, were the many checkpoints. Farid had counted four barriers guarded by soldiers along a twenty-kilometre stretch.
An elderly smith sitting on the other side of the aisle had told Farid’s father that the region was under the control of a rebel called Tanios. Whole villages and forests had once belonged to a single clan. The peasants had attacked it again and again, but they had all been butchered until this man Tanios came along. He was a Christian, although hostile tongues said he was in league with the devil. Under his influence, the young peasants suddenly became brave as lions. Even Muslims flocked to join him, crazy men who now bore arms too. What poor soldier was going to hold out against the rebels here for the ridiculous wage of fourteen lira a month?
115. Tanios and Asma
Only later did Farid learn that until Tanios’s uprising, the peasants of this mountain region had not been allowed to have lights in their houses. And every virgin had to spend her wedding night with the landowner – she couldn’t be taken home by her bridegroom until next morning. It was the custom of the droit de seigneur, entitling the master to the first night.
Tanios was a proud man, and he loved Asma. At their betrothal, he swore to her before friends that Sheikh Mustafa, the mighty owner of the whole area, would never touch her. They were to marry at Easter. Tanios bought black patent leather shoes in the nearby harbour town of Latakia, and at Asma’s wish he was going to wear them at the wedding. He spent his entire savings, for he liked nothing in the world better than seeing tears of joy in his bride’s eyes.
On the wedding day Asma stared spellbound at his patent leather shoes the whole time. What her bridegroom promised, he performed. Suddenly, in the middle of the Kyrie eleison, she longed for the touch of his hands on her naked skin.
But two birds of ill omen were waiting outside the church, Sheikh Mustafa’s black-clad guards, saying that they had come to fetch the bride and the patent leather shoes, for only great men might wear shoes like that.
Tanios roared, “Now death will taste sweet as honey!”, and that roar echoed through the mountains for weeks to come. He fell on the two messengers like a lion and killed them.
Thereupon hundreds of angry peasants and serfs stormed Mustafa’s magnificent estate as if they were drunk on blood, killing him and his three sons. They drove his three wives and ten daughters away. When the peasants saw how easy it was to murder a lord, they conquered two more mountainous valleys.
Only in the valley of the Three Rivers was the onward march of the rebel peasants halted, for here they met with the troops of another rebel called Salman Sufi, who ruled the mountain chain down to the Mediterranean. The government was still partly in control of the road leading through the mountains to the sea, but no more.
The peasants who followed Tanios divided the land and money they had taken between them, and they all bought patent leather shoes to wear every Sunday. And now they also lit lamps in their houses. Asma was the first poor peasant’s wife to lose her virginity in a night of love.
When Colonel Shaklan, the son of a small farmer himself, carried out his coup and made himself president, he felt sympathy for Tanios, whose heroic story had spread like wildfire. He wrote him a letter saying that the feudal period was over, the peasants could safely place their cause in the hands of the father of their country and lay down their arms. He, President of the Republic and father of the great Syrian family, gave Tanios his word that the government wished for peace with him. All he, Shaklan, wanted was Salman Sufi’s head.
In return the colonel received a barely legible letter written in pencil, which ran: From Tanios, the slave of God, to Colonel
Shaklan, who calls himself lord of Damascus.
God alone is lord of all cities and all creatures. We
do not trust city folk. First agree to our demands, and