by Rafik Schami
Around five in the afternoon, Farid left the taxi at the junction with Saitun Alley. When he opened the front door Claire leaped up from her chair by the fountain. “Our Lady has heard my prayer!” she cried, hurrying to embrace her only child. Elias Mushtak smiled; even he could no longer conceal his relief behind the mask of indifference. “Your mother has been worried sick about you,” he said in a voice that shook.
“A hundred and fifty million Arabs against three million Israelis, that’s not really fair,” remarked Claire over coffee.
Elias grinned. “Subtract a hundred and forty-nine million who are glued to the radio, and half of the remaining million Arabs aren’t fit for service.”
“And another thing,” Farid put in, “the Israelis know what they’re fighting for and what they’re defending. Do the Arabs?”
After coffee, Elias went to the bedroom, and soon Claire and Farid heard the calm voice of a newsreader and knew that he was listening to his favourite BBC London station.
The telephone rang. “That will be Rana,” said Claire.
The club was like NATO headquarters that evening. A large map was pinned to the wall in the table tennis room, with strong lights from standard lamps turned on it. Josef stood in front of the map with a long, thin, bamboo cane, with men in densely packed rows facing him. They were following news of the battles as it came over the radio, picking out the places mentioned with the help of the pointing bamboo cane in the hands of an expert on geography. When Farid appeared in the doorway, Josef broke off his presentation of the front line, leaned the cane against the wall, and hurried towards his friend.
“I’ve been terrified you’d be caught there on the front,” he said, hugging him warmly. Matta had appeared behind Josef. “Brother,” he said, kissing his eyes.
“Someone with sense at last in this bunch of lunatics,” said Gibran, who was sitting some way off, as if physically emphasizing his distance from the assembled company.
“He’s had a bad day,” whispered Josef.
“Where’s Nadia?” asked Farid, looking around. There were only four women from their street there, among about forty men.
“With her parents,” Josef replied. Farid shook hands with everyone, took Gibran’s arm, and sat down with him and the others.
“Strike, brother, strike! Oh, Arab brothers from the Gulf to the Atlantic, strike now!” roared Ahmad Said hoarsely from the radio placed below the map.
Gibran began to laugh. “That bastard! How does he expect an oil sheikh or a poor Moroccan to strike? And strike where exactly?”
“Quiet!” Josef shouted at him. “This is no time for jokes!”
“… your hour has come, brother! Hear the Israeli fighters shot down from the sky like flies by our modern Egyptian anti-aircraft defence … I’m just getting news of the first train full of Israeli prisoners coming towards Cairo. The prisoners are glad to have it all over and done with,” Ahmad Said continued.
Gibran looked at the windows of the nearby houses. Everyone was sitting by the radio this summer evening, rejoicing at the news of that first trainload of Israeli prisoners.
“I can’t stand this,” said Gibran, and he rose and went out. But after a short walk down the street he turned, came back, sat down in a distant corner, looking concerned, and demonstratively put his hands over his ears. Taufik led him into the café and gave him a tea. “I’m surrounded by idiots,” Gibran whispered. “There’s no helping them.”
Josef was expecting the defeat of the Israeli air force at around ten in the evening. The Israelis had over four hundred fighter planes, it couldn’t be much longer than that. All of a sudden joiners became anti-aircraft experts and tilers were rocket specialists. Names like Rommel, Montgomery, and Saladin flew around the room like table tennis balls in any lull between the reports of more victories coming over the radio.
“The news will come any moment now,” said Josef.
“What news?” asked Farid.
“News of the liberation of Tel Aviv. The Palestinian flag will be flying over the city.”
Gibran stepped out of the café, and laughed and laughed. They all knew he was crazy, but they still couldn’t make out what had amused him so mightily. The old sailor pointed alternately to two women hanging up white sheets with clothes pegs on the rooftops of their houses. Still no one understood what was so funny about it. But when more women appeared on the roofs of another four houses, also pegging sheets to their washing lines, Josef turned thoughtful.
“Why are they all doing their laundry like that in the middle of the night? Let’s hear BBC London,” he said, and there was uncertainty in his voice.
A heavy silence fell over the place.
233. Women’s Views
Rana couldn’t bear to listen to the radio any more. As if everyone had gone crazy, they were all singing for the war. She didn’t know whether the planes thundering low over the city were Israeli or Syrian jet fighters, but she felt almost dead with fear. Her neighbour Saliha asked if she would like to come over. Saliha’s house, unlike her own, had a cellar that would do duty as an air raid shelter, and her husband suspected that the Israelis would leave Damascus in rubble and ashes. Rana took nothing with her, she just hurried over. The cellar was full of people. Saliha’s husband was sitting in his wheelchair, telling the assembled pale-faced neighbouring women about his own wartime experiences. He had once been a military officer, but a splinter from a hand grenade had caught him in the back during an exercise. Since then he had been paralysed, and a thorn in the flesh of Saliha, who prayed every evening before she went to sleep that the Prophet Muhammad would soon take her husband to him, so that she could have a few years of peaceful life. “But the Prophet is a man of good taste, why would he want that bore’s company?” she had once said to Rana.
Another woman, whose husband was also an officer, was begging God to save him. Even if he came home without arms and legs, she’d a hundred times rather that than be left a widow. Saliha looked at Rana and rolled her eyes.
“You said it, dear neighbour, you said it,” remarked Saliha’s husband, Captain Mahmud al Samawi (retired), encouraging the desperate woman. Rana drank a glass of fragrant tea, and felt safer under the solid vaulted roof of the cellar. You could hardly hear the airplanes here. Mahmud was sure the Arabs would win. “It’s just a case of a couple of days, and then the Arab colossus will be washing his feet in the sea off Tel Aviv.”
The retired captain’s voice drowned out the radio in the corner. As every news item came through he felt further confirmed in his beliefs, and lectured the women. Sometimes he corrected the newsreader.
The howl of sirens made its way down into the cellar. “There, hear that? Now the anti-aircraft defence is answering back,” he cried. Drops of his saliva landed on the face of the woman next to him. Disgusted, she wiped her cheek. “We’re already in the firing line,” she finally remarked.
“No, no. Those are ground-to-air rockets and high velocity four-bore guns sifting their way through the aircraft, ratatatam … ratatatam …” explained the captain, spraying the woman again with each “ratatatam”, until she moved elsewhere.
“Are you worried?” asked Saliha quietly.
“Yes,” said Rana. She was thinking of Farid. She had called his mother three times. Claire had been very nice to her, but was in dreadful anxiety herself. Her boy still hadn’t phoned, she had said despairingly last time.
“I know, if my husband went away I’m sure I’d worry too, but then he never does,” said Saliha, who always had a feeling that Rana and Rami were not happy together.
Through the cellar window, they saw people hurrying by outside. Jubilant shouting was heard. If they had caught the gist of it properly, a hit had just been scored on an Israeli fighter. A nearby explosion shattered the building. Rana was grateful for Saliha for letting her sit here among the other women instead of having to stay in her house alone. Her mother had called that afternoon, asking if she would like to go to her brother Jack’s place.
Her parents had already gone there, after swiftly hanging up white sheets on their rooftop, as the Israeli radio station was advising the Damascenes to do. Of course no one in the capital would admit it, but it was a remarkable fact that hundreds of thousands of people thought of nothing but whiter than white laundry in these days of the war. Her parents were going to stay with Jack “until things clear up,” as her mother always put it when she was at a loss. Rana’s brother had made a lot of money with shady import deals, and at the age of twenty-five, three months before the war, he had bought a villa in a village near Damascus. Rana never visited him.
An hour later Saliha exchanged glances with Rana. “We’re going to fetch bread and cheese and a few olives. We’ll be right back,” she called out. Rana rose to go with her just as a jet fighter was breaking the sound barrier above the buildings.
What would life be worth without Farid? Rana asked herself hopelessly as they went upstairs. It was almost two in the afternoon by now. “May I make a quick phone call?”
“Of course, the phone’s in the drawing room. I’ll be in the kitchen having a cigarette.”
Farid still hadn’t come home. Her fear grew. She felt ridiculous as she hung up. It was childish to try to reassure Claire by saying nothing could happen to Farid because they both loved him.
Saliha carried the large tray with sheep’s milk cheese, olives, preserved eggplant, tomatoes, and curd cheese, Rana the smaller one with the teapot and tea glasses rinsed with hot water. The women were delighted. Saliha’s husband ate nothing, just drank tea.
Time crawled by, and the retired captain became more and more intolerable. He kept talking about his own heroic deeds. Rana noticed that Saliha seized every opportunity to go up into the house and smoke a cigarette. Around six in the evening they both went up again to prepare supper. Rana breathed a sigh of relief, for she couldn’t rest down in the cellar. She asked Saliha if she could phone again, and shed tears when she heard Farid’s voice at last.
She ran happily into the kitchen.
“Everything all right?”
“Everything all right,” she said. And while the homely lentil dish mujadara was cooking, Saliha took her up to the second floor to show her pictures of her childhood. Rana pretended to be interested, but her thoughts were far away. Gradually darkness fell over Damascus. The sky was quiet now. From where they stood they could see into a nightclub with its windows open because of the heat. An Oriental dancer was moving between the tables, all of them occupied. Early as it was in the evening, the men seemed to be drunk already.
“That’s Rihane. My husband sits here for nights on end. That window is his television,” said Saliha.
“How does he get up to this floor?”
“He had a special elevator from France built in. That way he can follow me right up to the third floor.”
Rihane was still looking across at Saliha’s house, as if she missed her audience there. She didn’t seem to be moving her feet but hovering between the tables, and she elegantly avoided the many hands trying to grab parts of her body.
“Disgusting, isn’t it?” said Rana on the way to the kitchen.
234. Sobering Up
The Arab media kept the lie going for another whole day before it collapsed like a house of cards. The defeat had been devastating. Within six hours, Israel had destroyed all the airfields and air forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan without meeting any resistance worth the name.
Ahmad Said had fallen silent. On the radio they began preparing the population to face the worst disgrace in its history. Josef had his most severe crisis yet. His beloved Satlan turned out to be a fool, the man mainly responsible for this defeat. Josef didn’t want to see anyone. Even Farid couldn’t get through to him. Nadia said on the phone he needed peace and quiet.
On the third day Rana called Farid. Surprisingly, Rami had come home. He was hiding away in the bedroom, crying like a little boy who has lost his toys.
All the members of the government had fled from Damascus. They were hiding in Aleppo, or according to many news reports even in Baghdad. On the third day of the war, when the first Israelis reached the Suez Canal, the Egyptian government had asked for a ceasefire. Thereupon the Israelis attacked Syria and Jordan. Within two days they took the West Bank and the Golan Heights. They were less than a kilometre from the village square and the school in Shaga. Not a single high-ranking Syrian army officer was to be seen anywhere along the whole front.
White bedlinen fluttered on all the rooftops of Damascus. But the Israelis didn’t arrive. They had conquered three times the area of their own country, and long-term occupation of great cities like Cairo and Damascus could have devastating consequences, so they refrained. Farid walked the streets, observing the people of the city. They were depressed and ashamed. He couldn’t make up his mind where to go, he drank a coffee here, a tea there, and listened to conversations. Then he phoned his cousin Laila, who was delighted to hear that he wanted to come and see her.
Later, he wandered with Laila through the houses of the quarter where the rich lived. She had the keys of her customers who had fled from Damascus and asked her to water their flowers. None of them had forgotten to leave white sheets fluttering from their balconies or rooftops, as the Israeli radio station had advised.
“I’m their night watchman and housekeeper at the moment, but normally they’re my customers.”
Those were wonderful hours with Laila. Her husband Simon was recording in Athens, and would be there all June. After doing her rounds, Laila suggested spending the night in a rich architect’s magnificent villa. They bathed together, slipped into white towelling robes, made themselves an excellent supper, drank a bottle of champagne, and sat in the drawing room like a couple of housebreakers.
She comforted him when he told her about his cowardice in not taking up arms with the Radicals. Laila said his decision was very sensible. “And good sense,” she added, “is the sister of cowardice.” Sensible people were out of place at the front in wartime. “I despise heroes who paralyse others by speaking for them and saying they’ll accept death, instead of cooperating with them to make death impossible.”
Farid breathed freely again for the first time in days.
“Why should you die when a whole army that we’ve been feeding since Independence runs away in time of need? How would you win a victory with officers who aren’t even allowed to choose the woman they’ll love and marry? Their clans marry them off instead. Our officers have never practised conquering or liberating a village, they’ve just learned to strike out at their own people, and everyone knows how easy that is. And now we discover that the government in Egypt knew about the planned attack ahead of time, through Russian espionage, even knew just when it would come. But did Satlan negotiate? Not he, he relied on what his field marshal Abdulhakim Kahban said.”
“Poor Josef.” The words escaped Farid as Laila was lighting a hashish cigarette.
“Would you like one of these, former comrade?” she asked with a seductive smile.
Farid didn’t answer, but took the cigarette and drew deeply on it twice.
235. Laila’s Night
Laila fetched a second bottle, and they put out the many wall and ceiling lights. It wasn’t quite dark, all the same. A little light fell through the open doorway into the drawing room, where she and Farid were sitting on an enormous couch, nibbling salted pistachios and drinking chilled champagne.
“My wages as housekeeper,” she said cheerfully, leaning against him. She stroked his head and clinked glasses. As usual, he was fascinated by her and wanted to kiss her forehead, but his lips suddenly fixed on her mouth.
Her saliva tasted sweet. She held Farid very close. Her fragrance intoxicated him, and he kissed her again. Laila embraced him and slid underneath him. Their robes fell to the floor of their own accord. His hands sought something to hold and found the soft skin of her thighs.
When he was finally lying beside her on the carpet, exhausted, he wasn’t sure why he had
suddenly wanted so much to make love to Laila. It was a new, strange sense of closeness that he didn’t know even with Rana.
“You sang as beautifully as a dolphin when you came,” he said, looking at the ceiling.
“I love dolphins,” she replied, kissing him tenderly.
“Do you regret this?”
“No, comrade. There are many things that Moon Women regret, but never love. Particularly not love with the lost halves of themselves.”
Laila uttered a peal of clear laughter, tickled him, and when he was about to get up and sit on the couch again she flung herself on him and forced his shoulders back on the carpet with all her might. They scuffled like two children. He sensed her excitement from her goosebumps. His lips wandered like a butterfly thirsty for dew, and closed around one nipple. Laila quivered and uttered an ecstatic cry.
Later they lay still. His head was resting on Laila’s belly, he breathed in her sweat. A sense of happiness came over him, but at the same time he felt profoundly sad. Then he suddenly saw the half-moon. It lay there blue before him, as if it had just risen, embedded in the soft skin beneath Laila’s left breast. Farid sat up and kissed the place.
“Hello, moon,” he whispered.
“Do you know when you first sucked at my breast?” she asked, crossing her arms behind her head.
He thought the question was a joke. “Sixty-five minutes and thirty seconds ago,” he said, laughing.