by Rafik Schami
Some looked embarrassed, for Gibran was still having psychiatric treatment, but rumour had it he was soon to be released.
There was someone else missing too, although few noticed. “Suleiman’s been arrested,” Josef whispered to Farid. “The new regime has an account to settle with all secret service men.”
“But Suleiman was only a little fish,” said Farid in surprise.
“I know, but they’re after the little fish and the big fish alike. Sarrag the criminal secret police chief is in jail too.”
“Criminal, did you say? It was your revered Satlan who promoted him to the job.”
“I believed in Satlan, yes, but I never claimed he was infallible,” said Josef dryly. “That criminal Sarrag was one of his biggest mistakes.”
“What about Suleiman’s parents?” asked Farid, trying to change the subject.
“They’re allowed to visit him. They say it was all a misunderstanding.”
“What else would they say?” replied Farid. “That he handed me and Gibran over to the secret service?”
“They certainly ought to admit it,” said Josef, “after going about telling everyone I gave Gibran away. Just because I thought his jokes about Satlan were in poor taste, and I said so openly. Taufik almost murdered me, and saw sense only at the last minute. The neighbours spat when I passed by and insulted my mother and my sisters with their accusations.”
“Oh, come on, it’s all over now. Don’t bear a grudge,” said Farid. But when he turned around, he was horrified to see that Josef had tears in his eyes.
211. Gibran’s Return
Farid was woken by the stormy ringing of the doorbell. The university was closed on Fridays, and as he had been at a meeting of his Party cell until late at night he wanted to sleep late. His mother opened the door. He sat up in bed, and heard Josef in the inner courtyard, telling Claire, “No, he’ll have to get up. Gibran’s free.”
“I’m awake,” groaned Farid. When he came down into the courtyard, Josef and his mother had already drunk their coffee.
“How about me?” he protested.
“They’re expecting you at the club. We’ve laid on a big breakfast for Gibran, and they sent me to fetch you at once. There’s tea and coffee flowing like water there, don’t worry,” Josef said, hauling Farid to the door. He just had time to drop a kiss on Claire’s cheek, and then he willingly followed his friend. She smiled. In some ways they were still little boys.
About two in the afternoon Farid had to leave the celebrations to go to the cinema. He wanted to be there as early as possible to keep a seat for Rana, who was going to be a little late. When she did arrive she would join him in the third row to the right, apparently by chance but knowing just where she was going.
In the bus he kept thinking of Gibran. Two shiny patches disfigured his temples, just like Matta’s. “The male nurse and the doctor were in a temper. It burned like hell, but the medication had left me delirious, and it was days before I realized what they’d been doing to me. But never mind, that was what I wanted.”
Gibran had risked a great deal, and when he was arrested he staked everything on a single throw: he pretended to be crazy. That trick had saved his life once before, in Indonesia. “That’s when I realized the power of madness. I was waiting to be executed – and that’s another story, but it was all to do with arms smuggling and a lot of money, and my partner wanted to be rid of me. I’ll tell you about it some other time, but there in Indonesia I found that madness was my guardian angel, and I knew I must keep it up or I’d be a dead man. So I stood outside myself, checking that I wasn’t acting normally for a single second. The Indonesians tried everything they could to make me sane again, but I just went crazier and crazier, running around the jail stark naked, shitting everywhere, almost scratching people’s eyes out, laughing like a hyena. They beat me until I fainted, and as soon as I came back to my senses I started again. It’s easy to act crazy for a short while. Any child can do it perfectly in front of the mirror – but if you want to keep it going, you have to strain yourself to the limit.
For brief moments I really was crazy now and then. The mask stuck to my face, and I said confused things even when I was on my own. And at such times a cold hand clutched my heart. Gibran, I told myself, you’re not just acting crazy, you are crazy. The Indonesians tormented me for six months, and only then did they believe I was deranged and threw me out. I had to leave the country on the next ship. Its captain was an old friend of mine. He was horrified at the sight of me, but once we’d put to sea I showered and shaved, and we ended up laughing a lot and drinking together.”
It had not been a difficult decision for him to opt for mental disturbance again in Damascus, for otherwise they would certainly have beaten him to death. He was maltreated by secret service men in jail for two weeks, and then they were convinced that he really wasn’t pretending. However, in the psychiatric hospital he discovered that the secret service had its eyes and ears there too, so he had to go on pretending to be crazy, and only when the coup brought Satlan’s regime down was Gibran cured overnight, along with twenty other inmates.
But Karime would have nothing more to do with him. Gibran went to see her. He wanted to tell her how he had longed for her, and ask why she never visited him, but she wouldn’t even open her door. That was two weeks after his discharge from hospital, and Gibran came to the club looking grey and stooped, as if he had aged ten years. Yet he remembered Karime to the last day of his life, and he was always returning to the house of memory, which never sent him away.
212. Matta’s Wedding
Farid would never have expected Matta to have such a big wedding. His aunt’s house was crammed to the roof with guests. Claire and Elias had generously provided all the drinks. Josef came with his whole family. Even Matta’s parents were invited, although they had no say in the arrangements; that was his aunt’s business alone. This was the first time Farid had seen Matta’s whole family: the nine brightly dressed peasant boys who were his brothers, and his father, whose name was Tamer and who seemed far too old. And then there was his mother Nasibe, whose beauty did not escape Farid. Nor did her bad temper. She seemed withdrawn all evening.
“As if she’d come to a funeral,” he said quietly to his mother.
“Nasibe is a bad loser, but that’s a long story. Celebrate your friend’s wedding and take no notice of her,” Claire whispered back.
The bride’s family was a noisy, colourful clan from the mountains. They sang and danced, to the disapproval of Matta’s devout parents, but they had to put up with it or their son would have turned them out.
Matta and Faride were very lucky. The first week of December was almost like summer, with temperatures up to 25 °C by day. Even the nights were mild and summery. Gibran enlivened the evening in his own way, standing by the balustrade on the second floor and turning to the inner courtyard to tell amusing stories. The guests were delighted, and Taufik and his helpers served the drinks.
Matta’s aunt was very happy. She had never had so many guests in her house before. They filled the rooms of the first floor and second floor, they were thronging the corridors too, they even went up to the flat roof to celebrate.
Faride’s relations entertained the wedding guests better than any theatrical company. They spent all evening leaping about with great verve. As soon as a moment’s silence came, a couple of women would begin trilling or dancing, and then others would join them and sing along too. When the men hopped and stamped the ground shook. Elias and Claire were enjoying themselves too, singing and dancing together for the first time since the days when they were so deeply in love.
“Matta’s found himself just the right family,” said Josef, and Farid looked at the bridal couple with satisfaction. Memories rose in him, taking him far back into the past. He had always liked Matta from the first day when he met him in the village square in Mala. Farid hadn’t even been ten at the time, and Matta was a couple of years older.
He would have been
spared so much if he’d been allowed to live with his cousin Aida. As a shepherd, Matta would happily have roamed the steppes, mountains, and forests; it was the life he had been born for.
But even before his time at the monastery he had sometimes acted strangely. When the boys were sitting together he would often freeze as if he were a statue, only to explode suddenly like a firework display. He had always talked to himself, too, and when Farid asked what the matter was he would answer in an incoherent way, or laugh until the tears came for no reason at all.
Some of the Fathers in the monastery had thought he was possessed by evil spirits. Father Istfan, who censored the students’ letters, had in all seriousness tried to exorcize them, laying hands on Matta and adjuring the spirits to leave the boy. Matta had laughed at the priest, which only confirmed Istfan in his assumption that the devil in person was laughing at him from inside the novice. But with astonishing courage, the boy had told him to his face that it was he, Father Istfan, who had the Devil in his own heart, for Matta, like everyone else, could smell the odor of decaying bodies and sulphur emanating from his mouth. That went home. Father Istfan struck poor Matta in the face and sent him packing.
And then Matta had run away, and when he was taken to the doctor later he no longer knew who he was. He had told confused tales, saying they put something in his tea in the monastery, and that was why he couldn’t remember anything.
But today this same Matta was celebrating his wedding to the woman who, as Claire said, gave him all that he lacked.
213. Hegel in Damascus
Two municipal measures changed the face of the city in 1962. The last tram rails were torn up, and the river Barada was covered over.
General Amilan went back to his barracks, as he had promised, handing power over to a civilian government which was a coalition of conservative parties. There was an amnesty for all prisoners but Sarrag, formerly chief of the secret police. He managed to escape and join his old boss Satlan in Egypt, where he was welcomed as a hero, but that wasn’t until early May.
At the beginning of March, Farid was asked by the Central Committee of his Party whether he would take over as head of the new editorial team for the underground magazine Youth, and expand its scope. The offer was delivered by the comrade in charge of coordination for the city of Damascus. Farid was already running the youth and culture sections of the organization in Damascus, another comrade called Salih looked after finance and the archives, and a third, a gloomy and silent comrade called Taher, was responsible for running the network of cells. The idea was to work more effectively in the underground through these links. The head of the coordination office, a son-in-law of the General Secretary of the Party, congratulated Farid on the offer, which was an honour, but he asked for time to think whether he was up to the job. He always felt curiously shy about expressing his opinion openly in front of Party comrades whom he didn’t know, so he did not tell this man that his memories of editorial meetings were not particularly happy. He went home and thought and thought, but still he couldn’t make up his mind. Only the Party’s political training course in early April tipped the scales, and he accepted the editorship.
At this meeting, Farid and another twenty comrades did their best to follow the boring utterances of an elderly man who spoke in a nasal voice. He called himself Comrade Gaber, and talked about Hegel. It was spring, and Farid felt terribly weary as the man droned on in his monotonous voice about thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. He had hard work keeping his eyes open, particularly as one comrade sitting near him was already snoring. He sat up straight and glanced through a crack in the curtains over the window. The large apartment where the meeting took place was in a modern building in the New Town. There was vibrant life down in the street under the beautiful blue sky. People were going about in short-sleeved shirts, happily enjoying the fresh breeze that blew through Damascus at this time of year, scented with apricot and almond blossom, while the mists of Hegelian concepts grew ever more opaque around him.
Suddenly Farid knew that Laila was right. He couldn’t change anything here, because the Party consisted of old, rotten wood. The Communist Party, she had said, would at the most share an administration but wouldn’t overthrow one, for in any such political upheaval it would go down itself. Somehow, he thought, Hegel just doesn’t suit Damascus.
When the comrade finally reached the eagerly awaited end of his speech, they all enjoyed the coffee break.
Next another and rather livelier comrade from the Central Committee spoke on plans for the leadership to listen more to the grassroots in future, thus improving the work of the Party.
Encouraged by these remarks, a comrade stood up and asked, in a southern accent, whether the leadership was thinking of holding a Party Congress at long last, after more than twenty years, and before the General Secretary died of old age and power passed to his wife or his son. Perhaps Comrade Secretary General had forgotten how a Communist Party works.
This sounded almost like a contribution to the satirical magazine al-Mudhik al-Mubki, “What Makes Us Laugh and Cry”, which had recently begun publishing again. It was popular and it was feared, with the result that dictators regularly banned it.
No one dared to laugh. The face of the envoy from the Central Committee twitched in a peculiar way, and he noted something down.
“Any other questions?” he asked at last, icily. Farid would have liked to know a few things about the unpleasant Comrade Osmani, who was back in the leadership again, but he dared not speak. He felt unwell. Ever since the first question, the atmosphere had been curiously ominous, as if before a thunderstorm. At such moments he felt more fear than during police interrogations.
Another comrade rose, reeled off thanks to the Party leadership, and asked in a subservient tone whether the Party had any rules or guidelines for the protection of those working underground. “Everyone improvises,” the man went on bitterly, “and we none of us know how to guard against informers. I’ve fallen into a secret service trap three times already.”
The Central Committee envoy nodded, impressed. He wrote all that down. “I will put your important idea to the politburo of the Committee. Very good, very good,” he praised the man. The comrade proudly sat down again.
Then a thin student rose to his feet. Farid had been joking with him at the coffee break. His name was Nagib, and he was studying Arabic literature at Damascus University. “And I’d like to ask,” he began, “why the comrades don’t write about love in our magazines, instead of printing long hymns of praise to the agriculture of the Soviet Union? No one reads them, least of all the Russians. Our journals are illegal, so how am I supposed to persuade a student to read them and risk being thrown out of the university if all they print is eulogies of Soviet achievements, and never a word about love? You can discuss love with anyone. And then everyone would read the magazine.”
Laughter rippled round the room.
“Write about what? Write about what?” the envoy was heard to ask.
“Love,” explained one of the older comrades, spluttering with laughter.
“I mean,” continued Nagib, undaunted, “I’m working with over ten students who sympathize with our Party, and all their heads are full of any number of questions about love. It seems to me we’d be much better motivated to throw off the fetters of society if we tackled that subject.”
“The subject of screwing!” cried one man with assumed indignation. The comrades laughed heartily, and Nagib went red in the face.
“If the Party would address that question it would have a much firmer footing among the young,” he said, fighting for his idea one last time, but then his words were drowned out by loud and confused voices. There were cries for everyone to keep an eye on the time and not fritter away the meeting with useless chatter.
The comrade from the Central Committee who wanted to listen to the grassroots didn’t write anything in his notebook this time. “The comrade is still young, we must be patient with him,” he said sarcastica
lly.
Nagib stood up and left the room. Malicious laughter rang out when one of the comrades cried, “He’s off to the brothel to take a course on love.”
What peasants they are, thought Farid, but he dared not protest. As time went by he realized more and more clearly that discussions in the Party didn’t revolve around the best way for the country to go. They talked, asked questions, and provoked comment just to please those present. Anyone who gave his frank opinion was in danger, because his words showed what he thought, whereas those who said nothing were flexible and could adapt to the majority. So most people said nothing, or at least didn’t say what they really thought.
The representative of the leadership turned to the platform. “I would like to request that at the next meeting for training purposes we should make sure the participants are more mature.”
Many people laughed and clapped, and Farid hated his own cowardice. On the way home that night, he decided to overcome his fears, and as a first step he set himself the task of editing the journal Youth. He didn’t guess what a risk he was talking. Later, he would even claim that he had fallen into a trap set by Osmani that night, but that was exaggerating.
When he reached the door of his house he saw Claire sitting by the fountain. She looked careworn, and he knew at once that something had happened. “However late you came home, Josef wanted you go to straight to him. Rasuk has had an accident,” she said, shaking her head. “Poor boy – he’d only done a week of his army service.”
Rasuk had died when a military transport vehicle collided with a bulldozer. Ten soldiers were killed, ten more badly injured.
Josef said that Rasuk’s coffin had been brought home in the afternoon. He had been to see the family just after that. Azar, who was now running a little vegetable store near Bab Tuma, went with him. And Suleiman had offered to run errands for the family, but Rasuk’s parents sent him away. Apparently they had found out that under Satlan, Suleiman had informed not only against Gibran and Farid but against Rasuk’s girlfriend Elizabeth too. The police had expelled the Englishwoman from Syria. “His father is crying like an abandoned child, and he’s been trying to wake his son up as if he were only asleep,” Josef said.