by Rafik Schami
“None at all. I didn’t know about the rebels at the time, I was only a naïve child. I didn’t want to go into the monastery. It was my father’s decision …” replied Farid quietly.
“If you’ll allow me, sir,” one of the thugs interrupted in the accent of the Mediterranean coast, “if you’ll allow me I’ll get him to spit out everything you want to hear, along with his teeth.” And both guards laughed. But Mahdi Said waved the offer away. “No, no, this is not what you coastal folk would call a little anchovy, this is a shark whose teeth and everything else will grow again. But I know his kind. Never fear, when I need someone I’ll send for you two,” he said, opening the metal box. Farid saw the syringe and two ampoules as well as a small flask containing some kind of powder. He heard the two thugs leaving the room. And the clerk who had been sitting in a corner almost motionless all this time, taking down every word of the interrogation in shorthand, closed his notebook and went out of the room without a sound as well. There were to be no witnesses, so other prisoners who were given injections had said. Farid felt paralysed by his fear. It was so overwhelming that for a moment he had no voice left, and his tongue was so dry that it stuck to his palate.
In panic, he saw death grinning at him from the syringe.
“I can’t tolerate injections, and a high dose of truth serum could kill me. Major, you know I haven’t been a member of any political party since I parted with the Radicals in the summer of 1967. I’ll sign whatever you like. I’m completely insignificant, I’ll never mingle with politics again.”
“Oh,” said Mahdi, “and who led the famous strike that’s ruined our reputation abroad for years, eh? Do you know that our beloved country is mentioned in the same breath as South Africa, South Vietnam, Persia, and Saudi Arabia? Israel would have paid millions to distract the world’s attention from the Golan Heights. Now the Zionists have what they wanted for free, and it’s your responsibility.”
Mahdi adjusted the reflective sunglasses that he always wore during interrogations. Many suspected it was his way of unsettling the men being questioned. Worst of all for Farid was that he could see himself reflected in both lenses and disappearing into the distance, as if his own reflection were distancing itself from him.
“It really was the first non-political strike of my life,” he repeated, “and it was done out of despair, because Abdulhamid Garasi treated us worse than animals. Under the supervision of the East Germans too. That was degrading. It really was the first non-political strike of my life. That’s why we were all united, even the young offenders and the criminals. The strike became political only because the camp leadership was corrupt and didn’t take us seriously. You know all that,” replied Fari, in fear, because he had scented death in the major’s words. But he still noticed his tone of voice turn submissive and pleading.
Mahdi was standing before him now. He perched on the edge of the desk and smiled at him, then he stood up once more and slowly walked past him. Farid did not turn around.
“Please, sir,” he whispered, as he felt Mahdi unbuttoning the cuff of his right sleeve and slowly rolling it up, “I have epilepsy because I had meningitis as a boy in the monastery, and it was left untreated for a long time, so my meninges are delicate, like … like Nagi’s. An injection could kill me. I beg you … please no injection. I’ll tell you everything.” His voice was barely audible now.
“Never fear, my boy,” said Major Mahdi in a loud and triumphant voice, as if to let the whole world know that within a few weeks he had cracked Farid Mushtak, the hardest case in the camp. “Never fear. I won’t hurt you if you’re a good lad,” he assured his victim.
Farid felt Mahdi’s cold hand stroking his bare arm. It was a slow movement of the fingers, as if they were carefully groping into a dark tunnel under his skin. Then the needle burned deep into his arm.
Complete darkness.
BOOK OF LAUGHTER V
Laughter breaks and enters, opening mouths, hearts, and wounds.
TAD, MARCH 1969 – APRIL 1969
273. My Mother Says
When Farid thought back to it, the time between the victory over Captain Garasi in mid-March and the arrival of Mahdi Said in the first week of April had been the craziest period of his life. Hungry as the prisoners were for laughter, their lived unfolded and flowered. They hardly slept. Every evening there were stories, dramatic performances, accounts of films they had seen. Most vividly of all Farid remembered a biting monologue delivered in Hut 5 by the young actor and conscientious objector Hassan Bakkali. It had been received with boundless mirth.
“Reporting for duty, Captain Bulldog!” cried the actor, standing in the middle of the hut and exaggeratedly staring, as if under the influence of drugs.
“Captain, sir, why are we at war with Israel? She has nothing against it, my mother says, and I’m not asking because I’m scared, we’d just like to know why we have to die. If the Israelis are stronger than us then they’ll slaughter us. Is it any fun, starting a war against an enemy with superior forces when you’re weak and stupid yourself? No, my mother says!
“Our people live in a Paradise of freedom and democracy. Well, it says so in all the school textbooks, and we hear it day after day on the radio too, so even the illiterate know. The British, Americans, Germans, Swedes, and most of all the Swiss really envy us our democracy. They come here pretending to be tourists, to learn how real democracy works and see what the Syrians are doing with all their freedom. Only my mother won’t believe it. She’s always saying: if problems were dogs, you’d have to buy pebbles from the jeweller’s. But she learned that saying about the pebbles from our neighbour Mustafa. You see, captain, sir, Mustafa was a good traffic cop. His wife Sahra was the most beautiful woman in our quarter. And one day, when he stopped the Interior Minister’s son for doing a mere hundred and twenty kilometres an hour in the city traffic and asked for his driver’s licence, he was beaten up by the seventeen-year-old lad and fired by his father next day. So now there’s the pair of them, Mustafa and Sahra, left without any money, and so angry that they keep fighting each other. One day, when the man noticed how beautiful his wife was, he had an idea: he’d stop beating her, make up her face, and offer her to a few rich men. She was happy to go along with this plan, just to be rid of her husband for a few hours and stuff herself with the kind of sweetmeats she’d only ever seen in the display windows of confectioners and delicatessen stores.
“From now on they lived a peaceful life, because Sahra brought home more money than thirteen policemen earn, and Mustafa kept house very well and played backgammon with pensioners. People said he wore the horns, but to be honest, he didn’t mind that. He and his wife laughed at their neighbours. And it was when someone said the two of them were a problem to the whole quarter that Mustafa said that about the dogs and the pebbles.
“But I’ve strayed away from the subject. I was going to talk about Israel. Well, the Israelis are supposed to be weaker than we are – and oh yes, you bet they are, because we’re a hundred and twenty million courageous Arabs with a heroic history. And how many Israelis are there? Three or four million, so let’s suppose that’s fifty Arabs attacking one Israeli. My God, people would be standing in line like they were buying butter! Is that honourable for an Arab? Is it manly, fifty to one? Certainly not, my mother says. A victory like that doesn’t even gladden the heart of the dead.
“Arabs give refuge to the weak, so if they aren’t exactly weak then let’s give the poor Israelis some of the mighty land of Arabia. They’re a small and ancient people, and we’ll be praised for treating them so well.
“My mother never thinks about religion when she’s judging what someone is like. For instance, she always called the olive oil dealer Samman an arsehole without ever asking about his religious beliefs. He gives his best oil to light the lamps in church, and sells us the low-quality blends.
“His father was just the same, a devout robber. He robbed the rich of their money, he spent half of it on drink and whores, and gave
the other half to the poor to pray for the salvation of his soul. So he thought God would weigh his sins against one rich man that he’d robbed in the balance against the prayers of five hundred poor.
“But forgive me, I’ve strayed off the subject again. That hashish cigarette was too strong. My mother loves our President. Didn’t he say he’d even attack America if the crunch came? My mother says a war against the Americans would be a really good idea. If they defeat us, they’ll rebuild our land again better than ever, the way they did in Germany and Japan. It’s an old American custom: they flatten countries and then rebuild them. And if we beat them, then we can finally emigrate to America without needing a visa.”
BOOK OF GROWTH V
Presidents come and go, but the records on file remain.
TAD, DAMASCUS, SPRING 1969 – SUMMER 1969
274. Bulos
When Farid came back to his senses he was lying on a plank bed, with a bright neon light shining down from the ceiling. There was no window in the room, and no light switch. A chair and a small table stood by the wall. The cell was clean, with a concrete floor and whitewashed walls. But the iron door was rusty and reminded him of the doors of other solitary confinement cells. So here he was in the Presidential Suite, as the prisoners called this particularly large one.
There was a curiously bitter taste in his mouth. He remembered the injection and looked at his arm. The place where the needle had gone in had a reddish rim.
Had he fainted, or had he told Mahdi all he wanted to hear in his delirium? He tried to reach the door, but had to cling to the wall because his legs were too weak. Farid closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Then he put his ear to the cold door. The soldiers on guard were telling each other jokes about the Bedouin and their women. He knocked at the door, waited, and then heard footsteps.
“What do you want?”
“What day is it today?” asked Farid.
“Somewhere between Monday and Sunday,” replied a deep voice. Another man uttered a high laugh.
“Can I have a little water, please?” asked Farid.
“With ice and soda or neat?” asked yet another man in an artificial falsetto, like a barmaid, and snorted with laughter.
A day later he was given water and allowed to use the lavatory. When he came back Mahdi was sitting on the chair, grinning at him. The soldiers chained Farid’s hands and feet, and fastened the ends of the chains to iron rings welded to the head and foot of the plank bed. Farid remembered the camel he had seen as a child.
Mahdi slowly took off his sunglasses. At that moment Farid recognized him, and at last he was able to identify the voice that had seemed familiar to him all this time.
“Bulos,” he whispered, near tears.
“So we meet again, but in the right circumstances,” retorted Bulos, grinning. Paralysing fear took hold of Farid.
“Bulos,” he whispered again. “It’s you.”
“Yes, indeed, Mr. Mushtak, it’s me. Your clan murdered my father, you betrayed and almost destroyed me. Now I’m about to pay you and your clan back.”
“What do you mean, murdered? Who murdered whom?” asked Farid with the last of his strength. He was utterly baffled.
“Your uncle Hasib shot my father just for a moment’s joking with Hasib’s wife, an American whore. Don’t you know about that? My father was unarmed. Never heard of it?”
Farid shook his head.
“I actually believe you. Yes, how would you know? My father was Musa Shahin from Mala, Jusuf Shahin’s fifth son. Does that mean anything to you?”
Farid was knocked backward by the shock. He nodded, as if dazed. Of course. Rana’s Uncle Musa had been shot dead that Easter Sunday in 1941 when the bishops were trying to reconcile the two clan leaders.
“And then my mother, my sister Mona, and I were plunged into misery. I was five. As a widow, my mother had to go back to her skinflint of a father, who humiliated her and us day and night, until she married that monster who forced us to turn Catholic. It was misery of the genuine Mushtak kind, my mother always said. All those nights when I was tormented, all the tears my mother shed, all the wretchedness I had to bear – I swore I’d pay a Mushtak out for it some day, and what do you think? When I was almost on the point of forgetting, following the way of Jesus Christ and loving my enemies, up popped a Mushtak who betrayed me. You did all you could to ruin me, but you were out of luck. I bore the torture and the questioning, I hated you every second of it, as much as I’d loved you every second before that. There’s nothing worse on earth than discovering that you love a traitor.” Mahdi’s face was dark and pale at the same time.
“I never betrayed you. You wouldn’t stop to hear that neither Gabriel nor anyone else ever learned a word about you from me. Stupid coincidences must have confirmed your ideas all that time, they fed your suspicions of me, but I suffered badly enough myself. In the end I left the monastery in a much worse state than you,” said Farid.
But his hopes of explaining, or at least arousing a little pity, disappeared when Bulos merely grinned unpleasantly and shook his head. “So there you are. My mother was right when she said the Mushtaks were master liars and slippery as vipers, but it does me good to listen to you now, seeing you chained up like a dog. It was a lot of work getting you taken to Tad. You won’t escape me now. No one can hear you. This is the only place where no microphones or cameras keep watch. You’re going to live for a long time here, suffering so much that you’ll wish for death ten times a day.”
He stood up, knocked twice on the door, and then calmly sat down again. Two large guards came in and hit Farid until he lost consciousness.
Farid went through hell for four days. And every day he hoped to reach Bulos’s heart and arouse some pity in him, but his archenemy came back again and again only to tell him about the torments inflicted on him, Bulos, by the Mushtaks. Sometimes he talked about his stepfather, and the merciless revenge he himself had taken on the man later, when he was an old, broken failure. Humiliated by Mahdi, he had hanged himself in the cellar of his factory after it was closed down.
One morning Farid heard a soft knocking. He listened. “Farid,” said a familiar voice, but he couldn’t quite identify it.
“Farid, it’s me, Nabil. Can you hear me, Farid?”
“Nabil, my friend, what are you doing here?”
“I’m on duty as a substitute here for half a day. My comrade’s okay, he’s keeping a lookout for me.”
“Nabil, please help me. I’m dying.”
“How can I help you? We don’t even have a key to your cells, and this one has the stoutest door of all, you can’t even push a piece of paper under it.”
“Listen carefully, Nabil. You can save my life. Is there any way you can get to Damascus in the near future?”
“Yes, I have three days off, starting tomorrow, because I spent a week outside working on the camp fortifications.”
“Listen: go to my mother. We live opposite the Catholic patriarchal residence in Saitun Alley, near the east gate. My mother’s name is Claire. Tell her they must do everything they can to get me out of here, because a son of the Shahins is trying to kill me.”
“Whose son?”
“The Shahins. They’re my family’s sworn enemies, and it’s their son who has power here. And he wants to kill me. Did you get all that?”
“Of course. Let’s hope I don’t find your mother at home, because then I can go to your father at the confectioner’s shop, and while he’s listening to me I can eat half of what’s in his window. Did I tell you that as a child I sometimes spent all my pocket money on a nightingale nest?”
“You did, yes,” replied Farid, smiling faintly, and then he sank to the floor by the door and listened to the young soldier’s confidences as he talked of his wish for a swift end to his military service.
Finally Farid asked the soldier to repeat everything he was to tell Claire, and Nabil did not disappoint him.
275. Metamorphosis
Two days later Fari
d was running a high temperature. He heard a knock at the door, but he couldn’t get up. One of the soldiers on guard came in and gave him water. Farid was so weak that he couldn’t even talk. “Poor devil,” said the soldier, trickling something liquid into his mouth. “My God, what are they doing to you? And you think you can destroy the state with those shaking hands, you idiot? You’re only a poor lost child.” He leaned Farid up against the wall, went out and called to his colleague. “Do you have a painkiller tablet? If not, go and find one.” The other man whispered something. “Yes, you’ll get your bloody cigarette! Hurry up, will you, the man’s dying,” shouted the soldier by way of reply.
Mahdi didn’t show up for three days. When he came back, Farid had to some extent recovered his strength.
He was surprised by Mahdi’s detailed knowledge. The commandant seemed to have found out about everything he did in his entire life. He could repeat, word for word, many of Farid’s letters and many conversations with his Party comrades. But he obviously didn’t know about Rana.
Mahdi seemed to enjoy telling Farid about his own career, and how cleverly he had jumped all the dangerous hurdles and cleared his enemies out of his way. After that final examination for his high school diploma he had gone home. By then his mother and sister had moved to Safita, a pretty little town where his stepfather was unsuccessfully trying to start an arrack distillery. Mahdi was to study chemistry and help to make arrack later. But his heart was set on studying law. He had dreamed of being a just and good judge, and he went to Damascus to get a place at the university there. Just before his examinations he fell passionately in love, but his stepfather was on his heels and turned his inamorata’s parents against his own stepson. A little later the young woman broke off her relationship with Mahdi.
He put the woman out of his mind, and registered to train at the police academy. From there he was detailed for duty with the secret service, and as his logical and ruthless mind was outstanding his boss sent him to Moscow for further training with the KGB. In fact Mahdi’s crafty superior officer, who hated communism, wanted to discover just what the KGB was up to among the young Syrian officers. Mahdi was duly recruited by the KGB, and told everything to his boss in Damascus, a cousin of his present superior officer Badran.