by Rafik Schami
“But that would require her to make a personal decision to go back to her husband,” Dr. Salam interrupted, turning slowly back to his desk. Dr. Bishara gave him her case notes, with a question in her eyes. The medical director shook his head. “She ought to stay here a little longer. It’s still too soon!”
Why, Hanna Bishara wondered that evening on her way home, is he so set on postponing Rana’s return home? Does he suspect that she never will want to go back to her husband? But what chance does she stand if she leaves him now – a woman on her own, without a profession, here in Damascus? Or is that itself his reason: to keep her here until she knows her own mind?
Hanna Bishara could find no answer. By now she had come to realize that sometimes there is no clear answer.
290. Third Report
Dr. Salam, chief medical director, 22 March 1969, 15.00hrs.
Patient surprised to find that I know about relationship with Farid M., yet do not condemn her for it. Does not seem to have expected understanding. Obviously entertains great hostility towards mother and brother on this subject. Disappointed rather than hostile towards father for ranging himself on mother’s side. Clearly feels very much alone. Will allow her to get in touch with Farid’s mother by telephone. Once a month, from my office. Farid M. obviously still detained, but patient wept for joy on learning that he is still alive. She should talk to Dr. Bishara about it, but discretion is key. For now she seems to feel safe and protected in the hospital.
Continue imipramine and levomepromazine until further notice. Can go for walks alone as long as she likes, but not in the evening.
Still no special wish for family visits. According to Head Nurse Kadira, husband is very cold towards her. Comes once a month and talks to patient, who never answers.
291. Kisses
When Farid kissed her, his kiss was like a pebble and she like a lake rippling all the way from her mouth to her toes.
She had never been kissed by her parents, only by other relations, but she shrank from those kisses. Uncle Bulos, who always smelled of sour milk, had been particularly nauseating. He used to hold her so tight that she could scarcely breathe, and the dense stubble on his chin was scratchy. Kisses from Aunt Basma, her mother’s sister, were even nastier; her mouth had smelled of decay. When Rana was little, her father once whispered to her, “Aunt Basma died ages ago.”
And her father had laughed. Aunt Basma reminded Rana of the dead mouse that her father had found behind the couch years ago, after a long search. The drawing room stank of it for days.
Aunt Basma had died on a Sunday in May 1945. Rana remembered precisely. It had been a beautiful spring day. She was playing indoors when the first French bombs dropped on the city. Her parents were still at the funeral, and Rana and her brother had gone to the neighbours. Suddenly her father arrived. He took her hand and ran ahead with her, while her mother hurried along behind with Jack in her arms. The French bombers and heavy artillery were aiming at targets in Damascus. One of them was the parliament building, very close to her parents’ house. It seemed to take the four of them forever to reach Bab Tuma, and then they had to spend a week staying with George Abiad, a lawyer who was a friend of her father’s, in a large house with lemon trees and in the company of his horrible children, until at last the fighting stopped.
The French withdrew from Damascus, leaving six hundred Syrian dead and three thousand wounded. Many houses were destroyed.
Her parents were glad to get home and find their house still standing. “Our Lady protected it,” said her mother. But Rana felt sure it was the evil spirit under the stairs who – even though he was evil – needed a place to live too. She was glad, all the same. Riad and Fuad, George Abiad’s children, had been spiteful, calling Rana and her brother refugees and hitting them when the grown-ups weren’t looking. The two boys were big and strong, particularly Riad, who was a colossus, and liked to sit on Rana’s stomach saying he wouldn’t get off until she kissed him on the mouth, and she’d better not tell tales, because if she did he’d put a rat in her bed one night, and rats liked to eat little girls’ ears. After that Rana often woke up in the night and felt her ears. But she’d had to kiss Riad three times because he was pressing all the breath out of her.
Here in the psychiatric hospital, over twenty-three years later, she saw him in a dream with a rat in his hand, and she ran down a little flight of stairs to the courtyard where her parents were sitting. She screamed, but no one heard her, and whenever she reached the last step the stairs grew longer. Riad came no closer to her, but the flight of stairs still never seemed to end.
292. Fourth Report
Dr. Salam, chief medical director, 15 May 1969, 11.00hrs. Psychopathologically, distinct improvement and stabilisation in patient. Drive and sleep patterns normalised, psychomotor functions also normal, affectively adequate to the situation and responding to it, no more indications of suicidal moods. In conversation in the last few weeks very frank, affectively modulated, able to empathize. Still sees her future as very dark, in particular cannot imagine returning to husband, but seems to know of no alternative. Cannot count on support of her parents. Medication: 150 mg imipramine, was able to discontinue levomepromazine over last two weeks.
Popular in the ward, feels safe and sheltered. Does not want to be discharged yet, but must begin facing reality. She rejects my suggestion of a stay with relatives or abroad, for which her husband’s consent could be obtained with a little pressure. Cannot yet make up her mind what to do. In view of difficult family situation and the anhedonia still present, inability to make decisions and tendency to brood still part of the picture for the time being. I prescribe an active life with plenty of exercise. Possibility that therapeutic conversations may merely increase brooding tendency? Dr. Bishara rejects this, strongly wishes to continue therapy. Once a week will be enough.
In early June, Rana heard from Claire that Farid was soon to be granted an amnesty, and she, as his mother, was able to see him once a week. He was well, said Claire, and longing for Rana.
Three days later she asked the medical director to be discharged. She knew how she was going to live now, she said.
When her husband arrived with flowers she said a warm goodbye to Hanna Bishara, and hugged Edward Salam. “You’ve helped me so much. Thank you!” she whispered to him, kissing his right cheek. There were tears in the doctor’s eyes. A daughter was leaving him, and he knew it was for ever.
BOOK OF BUTTERFLIES
When a butterfly first sees the light it forgets everything except that it can fly.
DAMASCUS, BEIRUT, SUMMER 1969 – SEPTEMBER 1969
293. Suspicion
Matta was standing at the door, looking pale. Claire made him sit down by the fountain and brewed him a strong mocha. He was nervously cracking his finger joints. When she came back she also brought a plate of sablés, Matta’s favourite cookies.
“Bulos lied to me,” he said after a while. Claire sat very still. “He swore by our sacred vow of brotherhood that he’d never seen Farid since the monastery, and then he wanted to know who gave me that information. It’s terrible, just think of it! I risked my life for Bulos, and then I ask him a favour for my brother Farid, and …” Matta fell silent.
The doorbell rang. It was a neighbouring woman bringing a domestic still around for Claire. When she came back to Matta she saw that he was weeping.
“What’s the matter?”
“I risked my life for him, and now he lies to me. Who knows, perhaps he was always lying to me,” he said, standing up. “I just wanted him to spare Farid. That’s all. But I’ll go to him again. Perhaps I’ll take my wife, she can soften a heart of stone when she cries.” He smiled shyly.
Farid should be proud that there are people who love him so much, thought Claire. At the door she hugged Matta more tenderly than ever before. He was sobbing like a child. “Farid is my brother. Matta will see to it,” he whispered defiantly, and went out. Suddenly a strange feeling came over Claire. When he sat ther
e like that, lost in thought, his features were very like Elias’s. She too had heard the rumours that Nasibe, the young widow who was passionately in love with Elias long ago, had become pregnant by him and married the poor shepherd in a hurry to avoid scandal. Elias denied it all. Nasibe had had a thousand and one relationships with men, he always said. But Matta’s aunt said that when her deranged nephew came back from the mental hospital, he was sure of only one thing: Farid was his brother.
294. Out of the Cocoon
President Amran returned from Moscow in a good mood, and next day pardoned seven hundred political prisoners, a hundred and eleven of them held in Tad. Two large buses took the freed men to Damascus. First they just sat deep in thought, looking almost sad. It was not easy to say goodbye to their companions in misfortune. Many wept, but when they understood that they were really free they almost all went crazy. They jumped up from their seats, sang in strange languages that no one could understand, danced in the central aisle, fell into each other’s arms, clapped one another on the back and the shoulder and exchanged happy kisses.
“If you carry on like that the police will send us straight to the nuthouse. Calm down, we’re in the suburbs of Damascus already,” begged the bus driver. The freed prisoners sat down again, looked out of the window at beautiful women, whistled, played at hiding, laughed like little schoolboys.
Farid reached his house around midday, and wanted to storm in through the front door, dance around the fountain with Claire, and shout for joy, but the door was locked. He rang the bell, and Claire came to answer it in her cooking apron. “Holy Virgin!” she cried. Farid hugged her and carried her to the fountain. She was laughing.
“Since when have you been locking the front door?”
“Since the city filled up with so many anonymous strangers. They flock in and take anything that isn’t nailed down. And others come along and involve you in shady business that could put you behind bars for ten years. Someone left a kilo of hashish in a flower pot at Suleiman’s cousin Faris’s house. He doesn’t smoke and he despises drugs, but that didn’t help him with the police. A number of people have had locks fitted to their doors since his arrest.”
Farid wanted to have a bath, but Claire said that first, as when he came home from Gahan, he must go and see his father, who was waiting impatiently for his arrival. And indeed, on this second occasion Elias was in transports of joy. He laughed and wept and kept stroking his son’s face. Almost awkwardly, he offered him sweetmeats.
“Those bastards tortured him, although he isn’t in any political party,” he told his old neighbour Nuri, who ran the flower shop and could make the most beautiful bouquets, even though he was drunk all day.
“That’s what happens when peasants get power,” said Nuri scornfully. “My father always told me: if you have just two piastres, then spend one on a piece of bread and the other on a fragrant rose. But fewer and fewer of us do that kind of thing now. I’ve noticed it for years, people only want flowers for funerals. Peasants don’t think flowers are necessary. They won’t pay good money for such things. Last week one of them was telling me how many kilos of wheat he could buy for a bouquet like this. I told him he’d better give his wife not flowers but a bagful of wheat. And do you know what he said? That was a good tip, he told me.”
It was about three when Farid reached Rana on the telephone. She was at home alone, and he told her the plan he had been working out for months.
“Wonderful,” said Rana, feeling that she was near the gates of heaven. “There’s only one thing I want to ask you: let’s not leave before September the 6th.”
“Why not?”
“Because my husband is flying to Moscow for two weeks on the 5th. I shall need a day’s rest before we finally leave.”
“Right, but by then you must have your passport and all your documents translated into German by a sworn interpreter.”
“I already have my passport, but why German? I thought we were flying to Paris.”
“Officially we still are. I’ll tell you all the rest of it once we’re in safety,” said Farid.
It was easier than Farid expected to get hold of two skilfully forged passports. Josef didn’t ask why he needed them. “Muhsin will do them for you, they’ll look more genuine than the real thing,” he joked, “but he’s expensive.” Farid didn’t mind about the price.
The forger did not have a sophisticated workshop, but was the possessor of a brilliant mind and felt no respect at all for his employer. He was a hard-working civil servant with the registration and passports office, and had a taste for overtime unusual in such jobs.
Muhsin Sharara was a Muslim, but as he was a bookworm he happened to have read the Gospels, where he found the story of the raising of Lazarus. That had been in the early sixties, when President Satlan began on his great wave of arrests. People would pay a thousand dollars – a fortune then – for a “good” passport. He listed all registrations of the deaths of children, and began selling passports. Only two things weren’t quite right about them: the passport photo and the fact that the real bearer of the holder’s name had died decades ago. Muhsin had erased the entry of his or her date of death from the register with an ink remover that was little known at the time. Everything else in his passports, including the rubber stamp and the signature of the head of the passport office, was genuine.
So at the end of August Farid was in possession of four passports: two real ones and two forged ones in the names of Sarkis and Georgina Shammas, a married couple. The two real passports contained visas to go and study in Germany.
295. The Wound and the Trap
Farid soon settled in again. The voice of Feiruz on the radio was part of every morning, like the first coffee with Claire and the cry of the muezzin from the nearby mosque. But he noticed that the Damascenes had withdrawn into a cocoon of silence, because they were afraid. They talked a lot and were always cracking jokes, but only to cover up for that silence.
One hot August day Farid didn’t feel like doing anything much. He was standing in the doorway of the house, watching two dogs scuffle for a bone in the shade. Suddenly Matta came running down the street, stopped in front of him, and told him, still breathless, that he knew for sure now that Bulos had betrayed him in the monastery.
“Let’s not talk about it. It’s over,” said Farid, for Matta had already spent the whole of the last few days searching like a man possessed for the proof of Bulos’s treachery. Only Bulos could have given him up to the police when he ran away from the monastery that second time. Matta’s tone was not heated. His voice was cold, and he set out his evidence meticulously.
“The police must have known. They were waiting for me at the last barrier before the main road. And I can do my sums well enough to be sure that only two people knew I was running away: you and Bulos,” Matta ended his argument, and nodded thoughtfully. “Why does he want to destroy us? Why? What have we ever done to him?”
“Perhaps because in his own way he loved us and couldn’t hold us. He didn’t want you to leave. You were his greatest support, and he loved you. At first he liked me too, but he got on my nerves, and then he found out that I’m a Mushtak, while he was and is a Shahin.”
“My dear brother, what on earth do all those books of yours teach you? Bulos loved no one, not even himself. He abused my trust, and I was a fool,” said Matta bitterly.
But he had a touch of the wily fox about him now. Mahdi discovered nothing of what he was thinking, but Matta had acquired Bulos’s wife as a customer, ran errands and carried purchases for her, asking little money. Since then she had taken to telling him about her husband’s loveless ways and her own loneliness.
“Would you like to help me?” asked Farid at the end of August.
“Of course. What do you want me to do?” replied Matta.
“Look closely at this ticket,” said Farid, showing him an air ticket made out by the French airline.
“So?”
“That’s my flight for 14 Septembe
r. I’m flying with Air France at twenty hours exactly on that day. Can you remember that? Sunday, 14 September.”
“Of course I can remember it. That’s the Feast of the Holy Cross in Mala, but I haven’t been there for years,” said Matta.
“And you won’t be able to go this year either, because you and Faride must come to the airport to see us off.”
“Of course we’ll come, but what does that have to do with the air ticket? Why did you show it to me?”
“I want you to be sure to let Bulos know I’m flying with Air France that day,” said Farid.
Matta’s face showed anger. “Brother, what do you take me for?”
“My most loyal friend. If you tell Bulos that, you’ll be doing me and yourself a favour. You’ll have nothing to fear. He can’t touch me now. Believe me, this will just make him drop his mask and show his ugly face, but he won’t get his hands on me again. You’ll be helping me enormously by pretending to be so naïve that you give him that news without stopping to think about it. It will keep him concentrating on the airport and not even thinking about any other route. Okay?”
“And you’re sure I’ll be helping you by letting that traitor know exactly when you plan to fly?”