by Rafik Schami
Now Farid knew why the principal had invited him to drink tea. “You want to know what to write about me.”
The principal didn’t look at him. “The others have already written everything down for me, and I hardly know you, so I didn’t want to be unfair to you.”
Farid laughed. There was something tragi-comic about the situation. The same neglectful government that left the village children without school books would send three reminders that an informer’s report was due, as if the future of Syrian culture depended on it.
“Oh, just go ahead and be negative about me!” he said. “Tell them I don’t like the place and I keep complaining of the injustice suffered by all the farmers here. Say I keep complaining of the bad roads, and I …”
“That won’t interest anyone, my dear colleague,” Husni interrupted him. “In Damascus they want to know what you’re doing here, what you talk about, and how I assess your political affiliations. So?”
This was an interrogation, and for a moment Farid thought the principal was a genuine informer. The secret service often blackmailed members of the opposition and made compliant informants of them. But at least this man was talking about it openly.
“Well, write that I’m a converted communist. I mean someone who wants socialism, but neither the Russian nor the Chinese kind.”
“What kind, then? An Arab kind?”
“A Farid Mushtak kind,” he said, forcing himself to laugh. “But don’t ever say that I try unloading my views on the children, because I’d consider that educationally wrong. You can say that you’re the only one who knows my political opinions, and that was only in private conversation.”
They went on talking for half an hour, and Farid had a queasy feeling when he left the principal, who had taken it all down in shorthand on a sheet of paper. When he told the other teachers about it, they reassured him. Husni was okay, they said, and a victim of informers himself.
Only two years later he was to discover that his colleagues had been wrong. Husni’s hatred of communists outweighed his personal misfortunes. He had accused his new teacher of subversion and sophisticated manipulation of the children, encouraging them to be materialists who no longer saw anything divine in natural phenomena. His was a Cuban kind of communism, Husni claimed.
Next morning Farid woke with a start. Salvoes of gunfire followed the sound of bombs going off, and again and again the noise of a jet fighter rent the sky. The widow in whose house he was lodging was already in the inner courtyard. She was pale, and pointed south. “They’ve been fighting for an hour. Do you think they’ll come to our village?”
“No idea,” he replied. He quickly dressed and ran out into the road. Screams and the hollow sound of bombs dropping came from the southern part of the village. Black smoke was rising. An ambulance raced past him.
It was a hot June day. The seasonal workers, mainly Bedouin or poor peasants from neighbouring villages, came to meet him. “It’s hell there, hell!” shouted one of the reapers. “They’re dropping incendiary bombs and surrounding the camp down by the spring, but the Palestinians are fighting like the devil.” Then he ran on.
Farid went in the direction from which he heard screaming. A farm had been hit. The farmer, a man in his fifties, was sitting on the ground weeping. The house was in flames. Farid joined the other people handing on a chain of buckets full of water. It took them two hours to put the fire out.
“What am I to do now? Where do I start?” asked the farmer, and he and his wife and four sons looked in horror at the smoking remains of their house. The neighbours tried to console him by pointing out that neither the family nor his barn with the harvest in it had been hit. The house itself was mud brick.
Gradually the southern end of the village quietened down. No one ever found out what the Israeli and Palestinian losses were, and once again grisly rumours were told and passed on everywhere.
When the fire was out, and Farid realized that he felt like a stranger among all these people who knew each other, he went out into the fields. Leaden silence weighed down, and the whole world seemed hollow. Suddenly he heard the song of a cicada. For a while it fiddled away alone, then an answer came from the shady place under the pomegranate tree, and a little later it was a concert performance with many orchestral parts, as if the first cicada had given the signal that the danger was over and life had returned to normal.
Moved by the song of the cicadas, Farid set off for home. Not far from the burned-out house several peasants accosted him and, in ornate Arabic, requested him to do them the honour of drinking tea with them. He accepted the invitation, particularly as he didn’t know what else to do that day. The peasants took him to a large farm where ten of them, young and old, were sitting around a small fire. They all rose and welcomed him warmly. “You’re not a city dweller,” said one toothless old farmer, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Yes, I am, I’m a genuine Damascene,” he replied, smiling awkwardly.
“Oh no, they’re all bastards. Different blood flows in your veins. You’re from the mountains,” said the farmer. Farid preferred to stay loyal to his city of Damascus, and wasn’t going to claim Mala as his native place.
“I really am from Damascus, but we’re not all bastards. And I can hardly run away from here, because I was never a good sportsman,” he joked.
A young farmer told the toothless man to mind his manners. His son was one of Farid’s pupils and spoke warmly of him. When he mentioned the boy’s name, Farid was astonished. He was one of the most troublesome boys, and he often had to speak sternly to him.
The men told him jokes about the teacher from Damascus who had preceded him, but disappeared after three weeks. He was particularly amused when the young farmer told him about a theatrical group from Damascus which toured the front line to encourage the people there. They called themselves the Standing Firm Company. But before any of the actors had delivered so much as a single line on stage they took to their heels and ran for it, involuntarily providing the audience with a perfect comedy. They left half their props behind. There had been fighting between the Israelis and Palestinians south of Shaga that evening.
When Farid went on his way again it was already noon. He was hungry. In the village he saw hundreds of seasonal workers lining the streets. Suffering from the intolerable heat, they were leaning against the walls of buildings and trying to retreat into what little shade there was.
The house where he himself lived was providing shade for three people in the street, two men and a woman. Farid greeted them and asked if they would like a drink of water. All three gratefully said yes. The door of the house was locked, for the widow had gone away, but luckily he had the key on him. He unlocked the door, went in, and filled a large jug with cool water. When he was taking it out again he found the woman waiting in the doorway to spare him the trouble. Farid stopped dead at the sight of her. He had never in his life seen such a beauty.
“Thank you very much,” she said, smiling. As if dazed, he gave her the jug. She poured water from its spout into her mouth in a curving jet, stood there squarely before him, left hand on her hip, and drank and drank.
“Hey, daughter of the devil, leave a drop for us!” joked one of the men. The woman laughed, and spilled some of the water over her shirt, but it was welcome refreshment to her. She handed the jug on and looked with amusement at Farid, who was still standing motionless in the doorway.
“Perhaps Mr. Teacher doesn’t like our manners,” she said flirtatiously. She was about twenty, but with her mischievous smile she seemed as playful and carefree as a girl of ten.
Farid smiled too. The peasants here called any idiot in European clothes “Mr. Teacher”.
Very soon the jug was empty. He filled it again, and was going to take the water out, but when he turned away from the tap the young woman was standing in the middle of the courtyard, with both hands on her hips now, smiling radiantly at him. She was shabbily dressed, in a yellow man’s shirt with a red shawl over a mended sk
irt, and with her feet in clumping men’s sandals, but she could have worn anything and still looked good.
“I thought I’d save Mr. Teacher the trouble,” she said.
“What’s your name?” he asked almost inaudibly.
“Sharifa bint Abdulrahman bin Salih bin Gawash bin Saqir, of the Gasalah tribe,” she replied.
“And is it okay for people to call you just Sharifa if they’re in a hurry?”
She looked amused. “What is Mr. Teacher’s name?”
“Farid without any bint or bin.”
“Just Farid, plain as dry bread.”
“If you’re hungry, I have bread, olives, cheese, canned tuna and a few tomatoes here,” he offered, hoping she would stay.
“I’ll be back once I’ve shaken off those two vultures,” she agreed, as carefree as a child fixing to come and play with another.
Two hours later she was back.
231. Sharifa
She ate like a lioness, laughed like a little girl, and was as lovely as a Greek statue. Farid couldn’t take his eyes off her, and had hardly any appetite. They sat in the courtyard under the vine, where his landlady had placed an old wooden table, Sharifa on a wooden bench, he in a wicker armchair opposite her. As they ate, he listened to her story.
Her Bedouin tribe was one of the poorest of all, and lived in the steppes between Jordan and Syria. She had been lucky enough to marry the man she loved, but he soon went off to Damascus looking for work, and after a while he sent her letters from Kuwait. He had planned to spend only two years working there, and then come back as soon as possible, but he’d been away for six years now. He had left her behind with her parents, for his contract didn’t allow him to take his wife with him. But there was nothing for her to share at home but hunger. So she had to work as a picker during the tomato harvest, ten piastres for each ten-kilo crate, and by the time you’d earned a whole lira you had no back and no hands left. The sun burned pitilessly down, and the supervisors were shouting at the pickers all the time because they didn’t want to keep the trucks waiting long.
She slept out of doors, and men pestered her every night, but the twenty women pickers had formed an alliance and slept close together to protect themselves. Now, however, work was interrupted every other day, and then she didn’t get any money, so she was planning to go to Damascus tomorrow, hoping to work in peace and earn something there. All her worldly goods were in a poor little bundle that she had put down behind an oleander in the courtyard, feeling ashamed of it.
“May I stay the night here somewhere?” she asked, as darkness fell.
“Of course. I’ll bring you a mattress and sheet, and you can sleep here, but only for tonight, because my landlady will probably be back tomorrow.”
Farid made her a bed in the open air, and showed her where she could wash. Then he went to bed too. He saw her washing thoroughly and singing softly as she did so, and then she slipped under her own covers. He felt a great desire to hold her close and kiss her lips, but next moment he felt ashamed of himself. After a while he fell asleep.
It was pitch dark when he felt her hand on his cheek. He didn’t know how long he had been sleeping.
“Do you want me?”
She was naked, and without waiting for an answer she slipped into bed with him. He lit the oil lamp. She smiled shyly and hid her face under the covers, baring her perfect back. Farid lay back on his pillows, feeling wretched.
“You’re in love with a woman. I noticed right away. Other men try to grab me before they’ve said three words together, but you’re already spoken for,” she said, laughing. She kissed his nose and nestled close to his chest. Soon after that she fell asleep. She lay there before him like a beautiful child, and he stayed awake for a long time. Only as day began to dawn did he sleep too.
When he woke she was already gone. So were his wristwatch, his stocks of sugar, flour, and oil, and all his underwear except what he had been wearing the day before. The mattress and sheet had gone with her too. She had left him only twenty lira in his wallet.
“Generous!” he said, and smiled.
232. Illusion
5 June 1967 was a perfectly ordinary Monday. Farid was going to discuss the main points of the physics test that he had given his three grades the previous Thursday, and had now corrected. Considering the situation, his students were doing well. They had stopped just learning by heart, and were genuinely trying to understand what he told them. Their average marks were generally satisfactory.
The humid heat made him get up early, and a strange restlessness drove him out of doors. As he walked through the fields, he was thinking of Rana and Claire. When his mother said goodbye to him on Friday two weeks ago, she had been crying. “You go further and further away. I hardly ever see you, I feel I’m chained to the spot here. I wish I could go with you, cook for you, take ten novels with me and tell Elias I won’t be back until I’ve read them all. And then I’d read more slowly than a short-sighted turtle.”
But Farid didn’t want her here. It was dangerous. Only two weeks ago, a cannon ball had hit a bus during a Syrian army manoeuvre. Luckily the bus was empty, and its driver had come off with no worse than a fright.
Around seven o’clock Farid entered the schoolhouse. Husni was just rolling up his thin mattress and putting it away in a cupboard. He looked like a ghost in his washed-out pyjamas.
Farid went into the Grade 8 classroom. He was to give the first two lessons here, and he liked to be first so that he could welcome the children himself.
Lessons for all the grades began with extraordinary punctuality that morning. Hardly anyone was absent. But just after eight-thirty, MIG 23 jet fighters thundered over the school. Soon after that the janitor looked in at the door and shouted, “War’s broken out!” Farid froze. For weeks before both sides, Arabs and Israelis alike, had been clamouring for war, and now it had come. All the same, for a moment he felt almost surprised, as if no one had believed that this war could really begin.
Husni and two teachers standing close to him were praying in the yard, looking up at the sky. Later, they said they had been shouting the kursi verse from the Koran after the jet fighters so that God would protect the planes.
In less than an hour the children had left. The radio in the principal’s office was broadcasting songs, communiqués, and pro-war speeches. It was clear that the region would soon be declared a restricted military area, so Husni recommended all the teachers to go home at once themselves.
Salman gathered Fadi, Adib, and Farid around him. “Let’s go a little way together,” he whispered. Farid felt that this boded no good. His heart was thudding wildly. Almost two years ago he had joined the Radicals group, gone to training camps run by the Palestinians in the summer vacation, even fought in a nocturnal operation against Israeli positions in the summer of 1966. Salman was head of the Radical teachers in Shaga, and he was a tough character.
“We must go to our bases along the border. Our liberated territories and the farmers will be delivered up helpless to the Israelis there,” he said quietly but firmly.
“Of course. Let’s go,” replied Fadi. “Now.” He seemed amused to realize that he had just involuntarily quoted the name of their organization’s journal.
“Our comrades think the situation is very critical. If a Syrian government shows its famous cowardice once more, all we can rely on is a popular uprising, and we must stand shoulder to shoulder with the peasants. After that no one in Damascus will be able to govern without us. But the peasants are unprepared, and our men and women don’t get more than four hours’ sleep a day. There are far too few of us.”
Farid had never before heard a more comprehensive and credible analysis of a situation delivered within five minutes.
“Then we must do it, come what may. The peasants deserved our support against the Israelis,” said Adib, but his voice and his hesitant manner reflected his inner turmoil.
“I think it’s a bad idea. I’m not going along with it,” said Farid,
feeling as forlorn as if he were falling into a deep hole. “I’m not questioning your courage and bravery, but I’m afraid. I’m just plain afraid, and not ashamed of it, because my doubts are based on the superior forces of the enemy. Haven’t we spent hours discussing what a guerrilla ought to do in his moment of weakness? Who says we have to die for a state that’s repellent to us?”
“We’ll die for our principles and the word we gave the peasants,” said Salman brusquely.
Farid wanted to reply that the peasants would probably have a better chance of survival if they refrained from joining such a hopelessly ill-armed resistance group, but he dared not.
“You know that cowards risk expulsion, comrade, fond as we are of you,” said Salman, trying to prevent him from backing out. Farid felt deeply injured. No one had ever accused him of cowardice before.
“Then expel me. I’ll have to live with it.” And he left without a word of goodbye.
The principal and the other teachers had all gone some time ago. He waited outside the school for the next bus, and saw his three friends walking away southward. Adib turned briefly once and waved. Farid waved back, biting his lip, for now he must admit to cowardice.
An hour later he was in the bus on the way to Daraa. Tanks and trucks were rolling towards them on the other side of the road, and the sky was full of Syrian fighter bombers and helicopters. The bus driver turned up the radio so loud that Farid’s ears hurt. It wasn’t only in the bus that voices were droning from transistor radios, it was the same at the central station in Daraa, where after a short wait he boarded a shared taxi going to Damascus. War bulletins and singers bawling out bellicose verses quickly cobbled together were coming from all the stores, cafés, and houses. They spoke of blood and the Fatherland, and above all the certainty of victory over “the bandits’ mini-state”, meaning Israel. On the Egyptian “Voice of the Arabs” station, the shrill-voiced Egyptian broadcaster Ahmad Said was congratulating himself and the nation warmly on their chance to witness this historic moment, “when the Arabs will throw the Israelis into the sea.”