by Rafik Schami
“Now, now, Josef! Who do you mean by Stinker?” asked the butcher, displeased.
“Your butcher’s boy was going to set our quarter on fire. He thinks we Christians are traitors.”
“Who? The fool said that?” Mahmud put the poetry book down on the chopping block and turned to his apprentice. “This lad can’t even tell fillet steak from ground beef – so now he’s meddling in politics?” A ringing slap landed on the boy’s face. “You bastard, insult my customers, would you?” And a second slap landed on his other cheek.
“I’m sorry, master. I’ll never talk politics again. I kiss your hand, spare me your blows,” the boy begged, submissively reaching for his master’s arm. The butcher shook him off like a fly, and turned to Josef and Farid. “It must have been a mistake, but if he does it again just let me know, and I’ll cut off his balls and throw them to the dogs.”
162. Backgammon
Chess ranked highest among the games played at the club. Drafts and dominoes were played by the very old and very young members, but card games were forbidden. They were regarded as primitive games of chance that merely caused quarrels and enmity. No one would commit himself about backgammon. It wasn’t forbidden, but it wasn’t encouraged. Taufik who ran the café was not pleased about that.
“It’s only because the committee members don’t play it well,” he said scornfully. Farid could play a great many games – chess, draughts, dominoes – but no one in his family used to play backgammon. It had been forbidden in the monastery. Josef knew how to play, but it was forbidden in his home too. A game for the lazy, said his father crossly.
One day Farid came into the club and saw Josef and Taufik sitting at the backgammon board. He watched the two of them, fascinated. Josef was cursing quietly because he was losing game after game. The variant they were playing was called Frandjiye, the Frankish game. When it ended with a score of 5 – 0, Taufik suggested other variants, and Josef decided on Maghrebiye, the Morocco game. But after half an hour Taufik was victorious again, although only just.
“Perhaps we ought to try Mahbusse, the prisoners’ game. You beat me twice running at that one recently.”
Josef waved the idea away. “The dice aren’t falling well for me today.”
“What kind of a game is it?” asked Farid.
“An annoying one,” said Josef, “but it gets you addicted.” He stretched.
“It’s a complete philosophy,” said Taufik. “Take a look. Chess is iron logic and strategy. A game that leaves no room in it for life, luck, or chance. The whole world praises it because it is indeed a game for clever people. I don’t play chess. It’s too cold and calculating for me. If you play against a pro you don’t have the slightest chance, he’ll destroy your army in meticulously planned moves. But with backgammon, as in life, everything is still possible. And there’s something else about it too – look, this is what Gibran showed me.
“Two players represent two lives, two dice are two ways to go. Each dice has six numbers on it.
One is God.
Two is heaven and hell, good and evil, man and woman.
Three is father, mother, and son.
Four is the seasons of the year and the points of the compass.
Five is the number of fingers and senses.
Six is the number of harmony, the number of colours in the
rainbow.
Each set of two numbers opposite each other on the dice add up to seven. Seven is a holy number.
“Each side on the backgammon board has twelve triangles, known as points, twelve spaces for the twelve months of the year. Between them the players have twenty-four points, as many as the day has hours. They play with thirty pieces, which are the days of the month, half of them black for night and the other half white for day. Or you could say for grief and joy, for happiness and sorrow.
“The player tries to use skill, and in contrast to the game of chess he must consult his luck, his oracle, before every move: he must throw the dice, and the victor can quickly become the loser and vice versa, sometimes not until the last minute. The greatest luck in throwing the dice doesn’t help you if you play without skill. And that,” he concluded his description, “that’s life.”
That evening Farid asked Taufik to teach him the rules of all the variants of backgammon. And for the first time he had a glimpse of what lay behind the mask of the apparently unassuming licensee of the café.
163. Nourishment
Entirely unexpectedly, Rana phoned. The Greek vacation was over. She wanted to see him, she said, and she had good news too: her Aunt Mariam was flying to Milan for a week to buy the latest fashions for her shop. Rana was to water the flowers and keep an eye on the apartment. In return her aunt would bring her a leather bag from Italy.
“I’d have done it for free, anyway,” cried Rana excitedly. He could enjoy Rana’s company seven times, thought Farid that first evening, when he had done his school homework and was on the bus. He could hardly believe his luck. They could be together and undisturbed for three or four hours every day. Jack suspected nothing. Rana was right: those hours were stolen from Paradise, and beyond the grave would surely be docked from their time there.
Later, at the worst moments of his life, Farid was to think of those days again and again, and the extraordinary peace that he knew only near Rana. He felt both safe and light as air, so that at some moments he almost thought he could fly. Rana was only a few months older than he was, but she was always a little way ahead of him. He loved talking to her, and was never for a moment bored. And then there was her hair, and her eyes! He loved to kiss her on the lips. They were always sweet, and had her own special fragrance.
He liked it when she read aloud to him. He himself loved to tell stories, but she preferred reading. During those seven days they read L’Étranger and La Peste together. Even years later, he always thought of Rana’s voice in connection with the works of Camus. And in those days Rana told him for the first time how, whenever she had been with him, she waited as long as she could before showering, so that she could take the smell of him to bed with her.
She also confessed that it was he who had taught her the joys of kissing. No one in her family ever kissed.
“What, never?” exclaimed the surprised Farid, who couldn’t go a day without kissing his mother.
“No, as I said. My mother doesn’t kiss anyone, not even Jack, and he’s her favourite. She certainly doesn’t kiss me.”
“What about your father?”
“He once patted my head when I wasn’t well, but he’s incapable of hugging anyone. And if you hug him he doesn’t know what to make of it. It was you who taught me that kissing is nourishment just like bread, water, and olives,” she said.
When Farid took her in his arms and kissed her for a long time, she laughed. “Kind sir, you’ll eat me up!” And then she tickled him. “I said kissing was nourishment, understand? Not Rana Shahin.”
“Very well, madame, very well, but somehow your kiss is a strange kind of nourishment, because the more I have of it the hungrier I am.”
164. The End of a Dream
During that week Farid came to know the thousand reasons why he loved Rana. Her way of laughing at anything fascinated him. On their last afternoon in Aunt Mariam’s apartment, she told him how badly disappointed her father had been by the Greeks, and she couldn’t stop chuckling. “He expected every taverna proprietor to be a grandson of Socrates, every bureaucrat a descendant of Plato, every poor baggage carrier to be Diogenes in person.” And she described the way her brother had given himself alcohol poisoning with the sweet wine of Samos. He had to stay in bed for three days, and his Mama had stayed in bed too, to be on the safe side. Her father never wanted to hear the word retsina again.
Then they sat in the kitchen drinking tea, while Rana read aloud the last few pages of Camus’s La Peste. Suddenly Farid gave a start. He felt icy cold.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“How late is it?” he aske
d in return, because he had left his watch at home. He was white as a sheet.
“Just after six. Aunt Mariam won’t be back until tomorrow,” she reassured him.
“All the same, we ought to go.”
But Rana wanted to finish the book. She felt very peaceful; she had already cleaned the apartment and removed all traces of their presence.
Next moment, however, they both started in surprise. Through the open kitchen doorway, they saw Aunt Mariam carefully pushing her large suitcase into the apartment. Mariam froze when she saw Rana with a boy. Then she recognized Farid, and forgot all about her case.
“I don’t believe it,” she said, slowly coming towards them. She left the front door of the apartment open. “How dare you meet a Mushtak in my apartment?” she cried, hoarse with anger.
Question after question whirled around Farid’s mind. Had someone given Rana away? Was that why her aunt had come home early? What was he to do? He couldn’t leave Rana alone now. How could they calm this Fury down?
The two young people stood there as if turned to stone.
“But Aunt Mariam,” said Rana, to break the silence, “we were only drinking tea and reading a book.”
“You have brought a Mushtak into my most private place! Is he brave enough to take me into his parents’ bedroom? Well, is he? I trusted you, I asked you to do me this small service, and you bring a Mushtak into my apartment!”
“But Aunt, I thought you’d understand us. We’re young, we were born here in Damascus, what can we do about the feud between our parents and grandparents? Farid and I have both sworn never to go to Mala again,” she went on, almost pleadingly.
“Tell him to get out of my apartment. I will never in my life exchange words with a Mushtak.”
Farid left the kitchen, walking past Rana’s heavily perfumed aunt.
“And now for you, madame!” screeched Aunt Mariam. “Isn’t it enough that Jasmin had to die? Isn’t that enough for you? Do you want another murder in the family? Don’t interrupt me,” she snapped when Rana merely raised a hand. “Your brother Jack was right. You’re playing with fire. He told me someone had told him you were friendly with one of those Mushtaks. He’s going to keep a close watch on you. And if he catches you with that Mushtak, it’s him and not you that he’ll shoot. Is that what you want? If you’re after another bloodbath, then go on meeting this boy, but never come into my apartment again.”
Farid waited in the stairwell outside the open front door. It was already dark.
“Aunt Mariam,” cried Rana in one last attempt, stretching out her arms as if to embrace her aunt.
“Go away, go away!” the woman shouted, retreating from her. When Rana left the apartment, her infuriated aunt slammed the door behind her.
Farid didn’t want to put the light on. They slowly went downstairs.
On the last landing, Rana placed herself in front of him and flung her arms around him. He kissed her lips. They tasted salty.
165. Training
Farid was proud to be a part of the secret life that pulsated beneath the calm surface of the city. Since the autumn of 1956 he had been in the Communist Party youth organization. Meetings of the Young Communists were held at different places every time, and members went separately so as not to arouse suspicion. He liked that in itself. He felt like a secret agent, although owing no allegiance either to Moscow or its Communist Party, only to a future society in which he could live freely with Rana, their heads held high.
The whole idea had the magnetic attraction of forbidden fruit. Like the others, he had a cover name for security reasons, and he regularly attended training courses. The young people he met there came, like himself, from rich families. Communist writings spoke of the workers and proletarians, but he never met one of them in all those years, and he didn’t much like that. How could the workers in Russia, England, and Germany come out on the streets with such militant self-confidence, going on strike, even forming something called the Labour Movement, while here they trudged submissively from home to work and back again, in fear?
When, at a meeting of his own Party cell, he suggested explaining communism to the workers, he was warned not even to try it. It would just scare people. He discussed the matter with the members of his old gang, Rasuk, Azar, Suleiman, and Josef, and encountered outright opposition. Josef was the only one who bought the illegal Communist Party journal Youth from him. The others wouldn’t touch it. But in his own mind, Farid felt this was the right way. He was full of impatience in his early years in the Party, and genuinely believed that the revolution was imminent. In his daydreams, he imagined himself at Rana’s side, storming palaces of some kind in which dictators, feudal lords, and also (rather comically) Catholic priests who had been overthrown begged for mercy. Tears came to his eyes at the idea of himself standing before these defeated enemies, showing magnanimity and sending them all off to an agricultural commune to live by the labour of their own hands at last. But if he so much as hinted anything of the kind to Josef, his friend laughed at him. “A bad Russian movie,” was Josef’s succinct comment.
Farid read a great deal, and since his French was perfect he was able to translate short texts for his comrades. Before a year was up he was voted onto the editorial committee of the youth magazine. His job was to write about literature and culture; other members wrote on economics and history, and others again on contemporary politics.
Working on Youth was a great responsibility, and one that spurred him on to try gathering together the best, most audacious, and most revolutionary short stories and poems of world literature, and offering them to the journal’s young readers. A few months later he was praised by the Central Committee, which reported that many readers turned to the literary page first.
In those weeks he lay awake at night, wondering why people didn’t fight for their freedom. The basic principles of socialism, as he gleaned them from his reading, were so illuminating, and not at all far from Christ’s own ideas, yet when he tried to talk about them, people acted as if he were offering them drugs or pornographic pictures. Some were polite, others snapped angrily and asked him to spare them such dangerous naivety.
Farid liked working on the journal, but after a year he still couldn’t describe anyone on the editorial team as a friend. He felt a strange chill, a wall dividing him from them. Quite unlike the infuriating Josef, who worshipped Satlan, hated communists, and yet was still close to Farid.
166. The President’s Jacket
The communists were convinced that the union of Syria and Egypt, which was rushed through in 1958, had been a bad and over-hasty idea. Satlan, they pointed out, was a confirmed anti-communist, and the government had brought him to Damascus in such haste only to crush communism. Sure enough, persecution of the Party soon began, and the majority of its Syrian leadership went into exile in Moscow.
When Satlan came to Damascus, Josef was keen to seize his chance and approach that charismatic figure. He begged Farid to go with him, because he was afraid to be on his own. However, the Communist Party had strictly forbidden any of its members to attend occasions held in honour of Satlan. All the same, Farid went to the ceremony with Josef, and when one of his Party comrades claimed later to have seen him from his balcony among the jubilant crowd, Farid denied it and mollified the suspicious underground fighters by pointing out, “Every other Damascene looks like me.”
It was a beautiful spring day when Satlan was to drive through the city streets in an open car. Schools took the day off, packed their pupils into buses, and went to join the happy throng. Factories and offices were closed. The Christian elite schools were not enthusiastic about union with Egypt, but as everyone knew that the leadership was firmly in pro-Egyptian hands, and the majority of the government were close to the Muslim Brotherhood, they too gave their students and teachers the day off, leaving it to them to decide whether they took part in the rejoicings or stayed at home.
The streets of the New Town were lined with crowds even at nine in the morn
ing. Soldiers stood along the carriageway, making sure that no one left the sidewalk. Josef and Farid managed to push and shove their way through to the front row. Finally they were standing in a good spot, and agreed that as soon as the President’s big limousine showed up they would rush forward to greet him. Recently the newsreels had repeatedly shown pictures of a smiling Satlan shaking hands with his admirers. To shake hands with the President himself was Josef’s dream.
Along came the black Cadillac. Josef ran that way, with Farid after him. The car was surrounded by rejoicing, dancing men, all shaking the President’s hand. Farid pushed Josef closer to the car, which was moving forward at the pace of a tortoise. They avoided the soldiers who were now busy trying to keep the rest of the happy crowd away from the road. “Let us through,” cried Josef, reaching out his arms to Satlan. Farid saw the President close up. He was much taller, and his skin much darker than they had expected. And he was talking to his two vice-presidents, while he shook the hands held out to him.
Suddenly one of the joyful crowd turned and struck out ferociously at Josef and Farid. It was confusing. Josef called him angry names, thinking he was just selfish and wouldn’t let anyone else near the President, but that was a mistake. Speaking an Egyptian dialect, the man summoned another in a white shirt and told him to “deal with” these two troublemakers. Only now did Josef realized that all the dancing, happy figures were really secret service men. This realization came too late. Blows went on raining down on them both until the car had moved away. Then the men left them and ran after it.
Josef and Farid went home with headaches and a rushing in their ears. Just before they parted, and Josef turned into Abbara Abbey, he mumbled, through swollen lips, “But I did get to touch his jacket.”