by Rafik Schami
As time went on Abu Satur turned yellow in the face. He was said to have hepatitis, and soon after that he disappeared.
Rumours were rife: it was said that there had been a severe crisis in Damascus, with the dismissal of increasing numbers of high-ranking Syrian politicians from their posts. The prisoners celebrated such rumours as a victory over Hamdi, and threw themselves into yet more cultural activities. A number of the criminal fraternity began learning to write.
In the middle of all this good news, however, came one report that struck Farid to the heart. A government newspaper of early December, stolen from the captain’s office, said on the front page that President Satlan had praised the USSR for saying nothing in condemnation of the wave of arrests which was systematically destroying the Communist Parties of Egypt and Syria. For the first time in weeks, there was disagreement among the camp inmates again. Three high-up Communist Party functionaries tried to explain away the silence from Russia as a wise move; everyone else deplored it. The three talked wordily on about tactics that were necessary if socialism was to continue its victorious progress around the world.
Farid couldn’t get his head around that. He lay awake at night, wondering what kind of socialism it was whose superpower knuckled under to a small-time dictator, leaving its own supporters to fend for themselves. Did it really want to change the world for the better?
202. The False Martyr
A report in an anti-Satlan Lebanese newspaper set off the next quarrel in the camp. It had been smuggled in from Beirut in mid-January, and described an international campaign for the freedom of Basil Omani, who was said to be mortally sick.
Basil Osmani was the highest communist functionary ever to fall into the net of the Syrian secret service. The first General Secretary of the Party, Khalid Malis, had escaped the police and was now in Moscow, where he had to keep his mouth shut, since the Russians were linked to Satlan by the arms trade, the building of the Aswan Dam, and other major but secret projects which they didn’t want spoiled by an asylum seeker.
The second in command, Basil Osmani, had been in Hut 7 of the Gahan prison camp. He was treated with special courtesy by the camp commandant, Captain Hamdi, out of fear rather than respect, for his prisoner was one of the Osmani clan, which owned great tracts of land and whole villages on the Euphrates. Hamdi himself came from one of those villages, and his ancestors had always been serfs of the Osmanis. After forty years, his father had risen to the point where he could lease a small farm from the clan. Hamdi was absolutely convinced that the Arab clans would survive all political parties and all states, so he considered himself the sheikh of the camp and treated Basil Osmani as a sheikh of equally high birth who just happened to be visiting him.
Farid had disliked Osmani from the first. The functionary had been jovial when they met, like a sheikh to his children, authoritarian and arrogant – a patriarch from the country facing a self-confident young man from the city.
His family had more or less openly sent Osmani plenty of money in the camp, and he used it to bribe the guards and soldiers and to lavish presents on Commandant Hamdi. The other inmates of his hut, which the prisoners nicknamed “The Euphrates”, did not go short of food, cigarettes, and medicaments.
But now this Lebanese newspaper had come to light, saying that the whole world was demanding the immediate liberation of Basil Osmani, who was being held in the camp at Tad and severely mistreated. He had a weak heart, said the paper, and doctors said that Osmani was on the point of death.
Not a word about the murders that really had been committed in the camps. Nothing about the beatings given to the prisoners by the guards when they arrived, and certainly nothing about torture and inhuman degradations. The great pro-Osmani campaign was taken up in Western Europe. Churches, trade unions, political parties and intellectuals from Paris to London were firmly backing the cause of the Syrian functionary who was said to be mortally sick. But he was not in the death camp of Tad, he was in Gahan, enjoying the best of health, although he had put on rather too much weight for lack of exercise.
This news report with all its false claims hurt, and when Farid cautiously asked Osmani how such lies had arisen, he laughed smugly. “Young Comrade, our class enemy tells lies all the time. We have to pick up their weapons and turn those weapons against them ourselves.”
Farid felt like throwing up. When Radio Earth Closet courteously corrected the newspaper report that evening, congratulating the functionary on his present state of good health, Osmani was furious. Immediately after that, it was clear that the witty radio reporter was being ostracized by the communist faithful in the camp. One man whispered to Farid, “I’d advise you to keep away from that viper. He’s a Trotskyite.” Such an accusation amounted to a death sentence in the Communist Party.
“And I would advise you,” replied Farid, “to use your brain and not your backside when you have something to say.”
Next day Farid himself was taken away and put in solitary confinement for two weeks. It may be mere coincidence, he thought, but if so then it was mere coincidence that he hated Basil Osmani.
203. The Chemistry of Isolation
Solitary confinement wore you down. The commandant had his most unpleasant soldiers and guards keeping watch on you. To overcome the absence of sound, which filled his brain with a strange void, Farid began constructing chemical reactions in his head. He carried out processes synthesizing simple elements into complex compounds, and once he had achieved a substance he gave it a name and then, three days later, tried dismantling it again step by step, until he was back with the simple elements.
The bucket for faeces and urine sometimes wasn’t taken away for days, on purpose, and then the isolation cell stank horribly. And in the midst of this wretchedness, Farid’s body asserted itself. When he closed his eyes he had erotic dreams. He wondered where his mind found these fantasies.
In the camp all days were alike, in solitary confinement even the time of day was lost in everlasting darkness, but it must have been mid-April when a soldier – a Damascene, judging by his accent – said that Farid’s friends (he meant the Russians) had sent a man called Gagarin flying around the earth. Farid didn’t understand. But the soldier was talkative that day, and told him about a party to which Osmani had invited all the officers, guards, and soldiers. They had enjoyed a great many delicacies from Damascus in his hut: roast meat, pistachios, fruit. But the soldier, he said, had drunk too much, and his head was still spinning. “Gagarin went around the world in a rocket, I do it with alcohol,” he said, laughing at his own joke.
When Farid was let out of solitary confinement again, the radio presenter had disappeared.
“He was deported to Tad after a quarrel with a guard,” old Said told him.
At that, and in front of all his fellow prisoners, Farid accused Osmani of being behind both his own solitary confinement and the radio presenter’s deportation. “A man who does a thing like that can never be a communist. You’re still the descendant of a feudal tribe. You don’t understand anything, you’re just playing the same old egotistic game as your father.”
Osmani reacted indignantly, but there was nothing he dared do. His comrades warned him that strong anti-communist feeling was abroad in the camp. Two days earlier there had been a brawl between Ba’athists and communists. Osmani knew it had been a mistake for the soldiers to join in and hit out only at the Ba’athists, on Captain Hamid’s instructions. The camp was split more deeply by this partisanship than it had ever been by torture or the work of informers.
For suddenly, in the eyes of many prisoners, the Ba’athists figured as martyrs and the communists as their persecutors. So Osmani held his tongue, even though Farid had spoken out so clearly.
204. Salto Vitale
By now relations between the Syrians and the Egyptians were soured beyond redemption. President Satlan reacted to the crisis with yet more dismissals of Syrians from all political and strategic posts in the Union, by arresting yet more opponents
of the regime, and by strengthening the powers of the secret service. He appointed the head of the secret service, Abdulhamid Sarrag, to the post of vice-president and supreme administrator of the province of Syria.
That was the most stupid move the Egyptian could have made. The Syrian army carried out a coup on 28 September 1961 and declared union with Egypt at an end. People danced in the streets for joy, and sang songs against Satlan and his Syrian vice-president. Popular rejoicing lasted for days. The Syrians were glad to regain their independence, and did not guess that they were witnessing the burial of the dream of a united Arabia. They danced as if they were at a wedding instead.
All the Egyptians, now humiliated by Syria, were sent home, and many Syrian secret service men fled to Cairo to go underground there.
As for Elias Mushtak, he did as he had promised and lit thirty large candles to the Virgin Mary. All his life, he firmly believed that his prayers to Our Lady had been answered.
On 4 October, Farid and a thousand other political prisoners were freed. Buses took them to Hidjas rail station. Each of them was given a hundred lira for the journey, and a packet of bread, fruit, and three cans of meat and two of sardines as a gift. Farid gave his packet to an old beggar he didn’t know. The man had been sitting outside the station there for years.
Then he boarded the Number 5 bus to go home. Suddenly, when he got out at the stop near his street, the moment of his arrest came vividly back to him. Overcome by the memory, he stopped and looked around. All at once he saw Lilo standing at the door of his barber’s shop as he had been then. At the same moment Lilo saw him. The barber looked closely once again, to make sure, and then ran with outstretched arms to the neighbour who had been missing for so long.
Farid hugged him. When he let go of the man again, he realized that the barber was making throaty sounds of joy, but could utter no words. With difficulty, he read from his lips that Lilo had lost his voice soon after Farid’s arrest, and had been having treatment for it ever since.
Claire almost collapsed with joy and relief when Farid arrived home. She kept kissing and embracing him. Elias was still at the confectioner’s shop, and would be back later.
She wanted to tell the whole world that Farid was free at last, but just now Farid himself had only one wish: for a bath. He ran hot water into the big tub and lay in it. Gradually he felt the dirt of the camp coming off him. The water turned grey, and stank of mould and rust, oil and sweat. He let it run out and refilled the bathtub. This time he added some orange-blossom essence to the water. Only now did he begin to feel really all right again.
Josef was the first visitor. He rushed right into the bathroom, where Farid had just begun to dress, flung his arms around his friend, and kissed his eyes. When Farid freed himself from Josef’s embrace, he saw Matta standing in the doorway. “My brother,” he cried. “Thank God. Faride and I have been praying for you.” Farid embraced Matta, and then gently impelled both him and Josef out of the bathroom. “If you don’t leave me alone for a moment I’ll be standing here in my underwear until midnight,” he said, and saw Matta’s fiancée and his mother laughing in the inner courtyard.
Laila was very soon there too. Immediately after Claire called she had taken a taxi, urging the driver to hurry so much that he wished he had a siren and a flashing blue light. The moment she arrived she hugged Farid for a long time and kissed him without restraint. But she had to leave again almost at once, for she had a wedding dress to deliver that day. As she said goodbye, she whispered into Farid’s ear, “As soon as you can get your breath back, you must come and see me.” He nodded without a word.
Although the telephone was ringing almost without a break, Farid waited in vain all evening for one particular call, but it was always someone else on the line. Hadn’t Rana heard that he was free? Once, when the company were talking about amazing natural phenomena, Claire had mentioned the milk teeth that Rana’s grandmother grew before her death. She had died just before Christmas, said Claire, who in spite of the hostility between the two families had gone to the funeral. Farid was amazed to think of his mother going there on her own, and he knew she had done it only for Rana’s sake. But where was Rana now?
All the neighbours and relations came, but something strange oppressed Farid’s heart: they were all acting as if he had merely been away on a journey. At first he couldn’t understand it, but gradually he realized they didn’t want to acknowledge where he had been since April of last year, they didn’t want to know that he had raised his voice against Satlan in spite of them and their silence, and had gone to prison for it. Worst of all, he thought, was his father, who when he came in late that evening was almost embarrassed when he embraced him, and could think of nothing better to say than, “I hope that’ll teach you that politics are not for us Christians. You’d better leave them alone!”
Farid was determined to do the exact opposite.
But he heard the worst news only just before midnight, when Matta, the last guest, had left the house. Claire took his hands, kissed him on the eyes, and shed tears. Then he knew that something bad had happened to Rana.
BOOK OF LOVE VI
Love lives only in the memory but it needs oblivion too.
DAMASCUS, APRIL 1960 – OCTOBER 1961
205. A Bus Ride
Rana had chosen a window seat. The bus was almost empty when she boarded it, and filled up only as it came closer and closer to the Old Town. She suddenly noticed a man molesting a woman from behind in the crush of passengers. The woman turned around and asked him to keep his distance. The man acted as if he didn’t understand, but Rana saw the bulge in his trousers. She turned away, disgusted, and looked out of the window.
The bus had just reached the Al Buzuriye spice market. Memories surfaced in her mind. Memories of the year 1960, when she was still studying literature at the university, and taking lessons in painting and drawing from a well-known woman artist at the same time. She had wanted to be an artist herself, but she knew that she couldn’t earn a living that way. Literature had been her second passion, and with a degree in it she could at least survive by teaching.
Back then, she too had been standing in a crowded bus, and suddenly felt a man very close to her back. His hot breath burned her neck. A cloud of sweat and a smell like a brimming ashtray enveloped her. She felt sick. The man kept pressing against her. Then she felt his hard member between her buttocks. She turned angrily, and was surprised to see how inoffensive the man looked. He had a small beard, and wore glasses. Rana asked him to keep his distance. He smiled and went on pushing and waggling himself about, as if to get through his trousers, her dress, and two sets of underwear. She asked him a second time, but that just encouraged him to take even more liberties. “Don’t be like that, admit it, you’re enjoying it,” he whispered, holding her hip firmly in one hand.
At that she slapped him in the face so hard that he lost his balance and fell on another man’s lap. Rana had expected all the passengers to turn on him and support her. But it was exactly the opposite. Apart from one young woman, they had all been against her and took the shameless man under their protection. One man was particularly indignant. “There’s no decency or morals these days,” he cried. “To think I’d live to see the day when a woman hits a man.”
“She’s no woman,” the man whose face she had slapped replied. “I swear she’s a man.” Rana got out at the next stop and took a taxi home.
This time she heard the woman quietly begging her molester to stop, and then, after three or four stops, saw her escaping to the safety of a seat that had just been vacated. The importunate man, now standing behind a farmer, cursed his bad luck in clearly audible tones.
When the bus reached Saitun Alley, Rana glanced at Farid’s house. A burning pain stabbed her breast, and she began to cry. A woman near her asked if there was anything she could do. Rana shook her head. “Thank you, no, it’s just a sad memory,” she whispered.
A few days after her last meeting with Farid, she had longed
for a word from him. Never guessing what had happened, she called him at home. Claire answered the phone, and after a few words her voice failed her. Rana’s heart was racing anxiously. Gradually, she learned that Farid had been arrested. It was as much as Claire could do to tell her. She ended by saying there was nothing anyone could do for him.
Rana felt desolate as she had never in her life felt before. She hung up, ran out, took a taxi and went to Farid’s mother. That had been about midday, and Claire was alone. She embraced the girl, and they both wept. Farid’s mother had aged by years within a few days. You could see grey hairs on her head for the first time. Rana stayed for several hours.
“You can come here whenever you feel like it,” said Claire, hugging her as she said goodbye. “Farid loves you very much.”
“I love him too,” said Rana, hurrying out. At that time his mother didn’t even know if he was still alive. No lawyers could be hired by a prisoner’s family, no questions officially asked. It was only by roundabout ways and with many bribes that she and Elias discovered he was being held in Gahan. However, they couldn’t visit him or write him letters. Even the powerful Catholic patriarch made only one remark, which soon became habitual in his mouth: “If it were murder, robbery, or hashish, I would have spoken up for him, but he’s a political.”
When Rana came home she stuck Farid’s photograph into the last page of her Bible. Jack was always snooping, and even searched her chest of drawers, but he didn’t touch religious books.