by Rafik Schami
Now Noura was led by her mother on her right and Mayyada on her left out of her parents’ house to a decorated carriage. Noura thought this must certainly be copied from some Egyptian tearjerker. Behind them, friends and relations got into twenty more carriages, and the column started moving through the quarter in the direction of Straight Street. Many passersby, beggars and street sellers looked wide-eyed at the procession of horse-drawn carriages. And many of them called, “May the Prophet bless you and give you the gift of children.”
“A niece of mine,” said Mayyada, “had a disaster instead of a wedding last week. Her bridegroom’s parents are rather old-fashioned, and two hours before the wedding her new mother-in-law asked a midwife who was a friend of hers to check my niece’s virginity. My niece, who loved her future bridegroom dearly and felt she was approaching Paradise, had no objection, because she was indeed virgo intacta. But her parents rejected the idea. They felt it was a deliberate insult on the part of the mother-in-law, who had been against this marriage from the start. There was a great to-do, and in the course of it the two families came to blows. Only an hour later was the alarm raised, and the police managed to separate the two sides. The inner courtyard was a heartbreaking sight. Nothing but a heap of rubble, and my niece’s happiness lay broken to pieces among it.”
Noura’s stomach turned. Why is she telling me this, she asked herself, is it meant as a helpful hint to me?
At the door of her future home she got out of the carriage and went toward the assembled guests, and as soon as she had taken a few steps they began to rejoice and welcome her in chorus. There were more than a hundred of them expressing their delight. Dalia gave her a quick hug. “You’re more beautiful than any princess in the movies,” she whispered, and then melted into the background. A man from the bridegroom’s family placed a chair in front of the entrance to the house for her, and a woman handed her a lump of dough the size of her fist. Noura knew what she had to do. She took the lump of dough, climbed up on the chair, and slapped the dough down hard on the stone arch that framed the doorway. The dough stayed in place. The guests rejoiced. “Like the dough, you two will increase and multiply,” they called.
Noura entered the house, and was fascinated by the inner courtyard, where her mother had placed a large number of candles and incense burners, as she had in her own house for the betrothal.
Noura looked for her father among the rippling sea of men and women. She felt strangely lonely, and hoped for an encouraging word from him, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Without a word, her mother drew her into a room where a pack of old women grinned at her. And now she had to put up with half an hour of the cheap spectacle that her girlfriends had already told her about. The women spoke to her both separately and sometimes in unison. She stood by herself in the middle of the room, while her mother leaned against the wall watching the whole scene with as much detachment as if Noura were not her own daughter. The women were reciting precepts learnt by heart to her.
“Whatever he says to you, don’t contradict him. Men don’t like that.”
“Whatever he asks you, you don’t know the answer even if you know it perfectly well. Men like women to be ignorant, and our knowledge is none of their business.”
“Never give in to him, resist him so that he has to conquer you. Men like that. If you give yourself readily – even if it’s out of love – he will think you’re a girl of easy virtue.”
“And when he takes you don’t be afraid. You just have to clench your teeth for a second and then he’s inside you, and before you can take ten breaths he’s letting the juices of his desire flow into you. Start counting, and before you reach one hundred you’ll hear him snoring. If he’s very potent he’ll do it three times, but by then at the latest he’ll be nothing but a limp, sweaty rag.”
“You must make sure to pump him empty on the wedding night, because it’s not the first ejaculation but the last that puts his heart in your hands. From then on he’ll be your slave. If he’s not satisfied on the wedding night he’ll be your master, and he’ll go to visit whores.”
They went on at Noura like this as if she were on her way to face an enemy. Why should she treat him like that, so that he would seem to be what he wasn’t because she was not what she was pretending to be?
Noura stopped listening. She felt the women and the room beginning to go round and round as if she were standing on a turntable. Her knees gave way beneath her, but the women held her arms, made her sit on a bench, and went on talking to her. But Noura tried to dig herself a tunnel through the noise they were making, so that she could hear what the people out in the courtyard were doing. Suddenly she heard her father call to her.
After a while there was a knock at the door, and there he was. Noura pushed the women aside and made her way out into the fresh air. Her father smiled at her. “Where were you? I’ve been looking for you.”
“And I was looking for you,” whispered Noura, shedding tears into his shoulder. She was safe with him. But she felt a surge of hatred for her mother, who had left her to the mercy of those old women. The nonsense they talked stuck in her memory, word for word, for many long years.
Out in the courtyard, women were dancing with coloured candles. Her mother was busy giving orders, and Noura stood there for a while as if lost. Then she heard noise out in the street. A distant cousin of the bridegroom took her hand. “Come with me,” she said, and before Noura knew it she was in a dark room. “We’re not allowed to do this,” she whispered, “so take care.” She went to the window and lifted the heavy curtain. Then Noura saw Hamid for the first time. He was a handsome sight in his white European suit, striding toward the house in a group of torchbearers and sword-players.
Noura had wanted to get a sight of him ever since her betrothal. Her mother had told her where his studio was, but she avoided going near it for fear he might recognize her. “Men don’t like inquisitive women at all,” her mother had said. “It makes them feel insecure.” The photograph that her mother had obtained in secret, by devious means, didn’t say much about him. It was a group photo taken at a picnic, and Hamid was visible only as a vague outline in the back row.
The solemn procession stopped, and at that moment he was so close to the window that if she’d opened it she could have touched his face. He was not tall, but his bearing was proud and athletic, and he looked much more handsome and virile than all the descriptions she had heard of him. “The torches make all men better-looking,” she heard the woman beside her say, but at that moment Hamid seemed like a prince to her.
It was all so unreal in the torchlight.
“Now you must go out and sit on the throne,” said the woman as the procession reached the door of the house, to be welcomed with rejoicing and trilling song. Noura slipped out of the room and ran straight into her mother’s arms. “Where’ve you been all this time?” her mother said crossly.
At that moment Hamid entered the house, and his keen eyes fixed on her at once. She blushed. He strode firmly toward her, and she looked down. Then he took her hand and went into the bedroom with her.
Hamid spoke reassuringly to her. He had known what she was like only by hearsay before, he said, and now she was much more beautiful than he had ever expected. He would make her happy, he told her, she should obey him but not fear him.
He took her face in his hands and moved so close to her that she had to look into his eyes. Then he kissed her, first on the right cheek and then on her lips. She kept still, but her heart was racing. He smelled of lavender and lemon blossom. His mouth tasted slightly bitter, but the kiss was pleasant. Then he left her alone and went into the bathroom.
At that moment her mother and their neighbour Badia came into the bedroom as if they had been waiting outside the door. They took off her heavy wedding dress and the jewellery, gave her a beautiful silk nightdress, straightened the bed, and disappeared. “Remember, we’ve all gone through this and we’re still alive,” said Badia ironically, with a dirty lau
gh.
“Don’t disappoint me, child,” whispered her mother in tears. “He will be captivated by your beauty, and you’ll rule him by submitting to him.” She kissed Noura, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking lost, and hurried out. Noura felt sure that both women were lurking outside the door.
Hamid came out of the bathroom in red pyjamas, and spread out his arms. He looked even more handsome, she thought, than in his suit.
The women in the courtyard were singing love-songs about the longings of women waiting for their husbands who had emigrated, about their sleepless nights and unquenchable thirst for tenderness, and at the third verse Hamid was already inside her. He had treated her very carefully and with great consideration, and she moaned and praised his virility, as her girlfriends and her mother had said she should. He did in fact seem to like that very much.
The pain was not as bad as she had feared, but she didn’t really get any pleasure from the whole performance. For him, it was far from over yet. As she went into the bathroom to wash herself, he took the sheet off the bed and handed it to the women waiting outside the door, who hailed it with rejoicing and more trilling.
When Noura came out of the bathroom, Hamid had already put a clean sheet over the mattress. “I gave the other one to the women waiting outside – they’ll leave us in peace now,” he said, laughing a little. And he was right; after that no one took any more notice of them.
Hamid was much impressed by Noura. “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life,” he said in amorous tones. “My grandfather was wrong about Aunt Mayyada,” he added, and he fell asleep at once. Noura didn’t understand what he meant.
She lay awake on her wedding night until day began to dawn. She was excited by this great change in her life, and it felt so odd to be in bed beside a strange man.
The wedding festivities went on for a week, and Hamid slept with her whenever they were alone in the bedroom, whether at siesta time, early morning, night, or in between times. She liked his desire for her, but she herself felt nothing.
“That will come in time. I’m sure it will,” one of her girlfriends consoled her.
But her friend was wrong.
15
Colonel Shishakli treasured Farsi’s calligraphy. Nasri presented him with a classical poem in beautiful calligraphy almost every week. Hamid Farsi was glad of these commissions, for now many friends of the president also acquired a taste for his work and ordered calligraphy from him. He regarded Nasri as the bearer of good tidings, and unbent toward him, although Nasri hardly noticed.
The second time that Nasri brought the unapproachable President Shishakli a calligraphic inscription when he came to dinner, the president, much moved, was already putting an arm around his shoulders. Since the day when, as a poor child, he had been given a whole honeycomb to eat on his own, said Shishakli, he had never felt as happy as he did now, and he embraced his guest. “You’re a true friend.”
He asked the other guests to sit down, and then went hand in hand with Nasri into the garden, where he told him at length and emotionally about his terrible luck with politicians. The president spoke like a lonely village boy wanting to pour out his heart to a city dweller, rather than a powerful head of state. Nasri understood nothing about politics, and thought it better to keep his mouth shut.
When they returned, two hours later, the guests were still sitting around the table, stiff with exhaustion, and they smiled subserviently at their president. He took hardly any notice of them, thanked Nasri one last time for the calligraphy, and went off to his bedroom, shoulders bowed. At last the officials who were ensuring that protocol was observed allowed the guests to leave the table. Nasri was beaming, while the others swore quietly to themselves.
Calligraphy – Tawfiq was right there – has a magical effect on an Arab. Even the whore had gone to extraordinary lengths to please him since the day when he first gave her a piece of calligraphy. She wept with joy when she saw the famous calligrapher’s signature under the beautifully written aphorism about love.
For the first time he found her ardently loving in bed. He felt he was in Paradise, surrounded by a cloud of perfume and her soft skin. It was a feeling he had never known before – either with one of his wives or his countless whores. His heart caught fire. Should he tell her he was madly in love with her? Better not. He was afraid of her laughter. She had once said nothing could made her laugh more heartily than when married men declared that they were madly in love with her just before orgasm. And as soon as they’d finished they lay beside her, motionless and sweaty, thinking guiltily of their wives.
Nasri said nothing, and cursed his cowardice. Soon, when the whore went to wash and gave him a cool smile – as usual just before he left – he was thankful that reason had prevailed. He paid and left.
Nasri had sworn never to fall in love with a whore. But he gave her a piece of calligraphy now and then, suggesting with a touch of boastfulness that it was he who had dictated the accompanying letter.
Nasri was surprised that the young whore, just like the president, could discuss at length details of calligraphy that had escaped him. When the words were intertwined like an impenetrable forest of fine lines, he couldn’t even decipher many of them. The President and the whore, on the other hand, could read every word as if it were the simplest thing in the world. And when they read them aloud to him, he too saw the words emerging from the thicket of characters.
He would have liked to discuss the secret of his craft with the calligrapher, but the questions died away on his tongue. He was afraid of losing his sense of superiority to this man who thought so much of himself if he admitted his ignorance.
Only once did he get a chance to discuss a small part of the secret. One day, when he arrived at the calligrapher’s studio to find him absent, the older journeyman asked him, at his master’s wish, to wait, and showed him a piece of calligraphy to divert him. It was a painting of vertical, slender lines and curving loops, as well as a large quantity of dots, and it was intended as a blessing on the President. But all he could decipher was the word “Allah.”
“I’m no expert,” he said, “would you explain the picture to me?”
The journeyman was rather surprised, but with a friendly smile he ran his finger over the glass, tracing the letters of each word, and suddenly a whole sentence slipped out of the tangled lines: Leader of the People, Colonel Shishakli, God’s hand is with you.
Nasri was surprised to find how easily the text could be read, but after a few minutes it was blurring in front of his eyes again. Only the single words Allah, Shishakli, and leader were still clear. The rest were lost in the forest of golden letters.
The year 1954 began badly. There was fighting against government troops everywhere. President Shishakli was under pressure, and called off the weekly meetings. Nasri saw him only in the newspapers, where he looked pale and as if he had shrunk inside his uniform, his gaze lost and sad. Nasri thought again of the lonely, vulnerable farmer’s son who had poured out his heart to him. “Nothing but thistles and scars,” he whispered at the sight of that sad face.
In the spring the Colonel was overthrown in a bloodless coup. The president made a short farewell speech and left the country, his pockets well filled with gold and dollars. Nasri was grief-stricken for weeks. He had nothing to fear, his business manager Tawfiq told him. The new democratic government was going to open up the country, and in times of liberty no one would be attacking businessmen. Personally, said Tawfiq, that primitive peasant who had no idea about anything but was ready to give his opinion on everything had really got on his nerves.
“And from now on,” added Tawfiq, laughing, “you won’t have to be coming up with an expensive piece of calligraphy every month.”
Nasri was indignant to find his business manager so cold and ungrateful. The words that would fire his assistant of so many long years were on the tip of his tongue, but he curbed his anger when he heard the rejoicing in the neighbourhood, where o
nly recently they used to turn out at demonstrations ready to give their lives for the president. He consoled himself with the realization that Damascus was a whore who would open her legs to any ruler. And the next ruler went by the name of parliamentary democracy.
Nasri felt that he had loved the overthrown colonel like a brother without admitting it to himself all these years. He suffered from a recurrent nightmare in which he saw the president opening the door of his house and smiling at a stranger whose face Nasri could not make out. But the smile froze into a mask when the stranger levelled his pistol at the colonel and fired a shot. Every time, Nasri woke up bathed in sweat.
The country did not lapse into chaos, as Colonel Shishakli had assumed it would. In the summer of 1954, the Damascenes seemed to Nasri more peaceful than usual, they laughed a little louder than before, and no one mentioned the toppled president. The farmers had never known a better harvest than they brought in that summer. And suddenly the news kiosks sold over twenty newspapers and as many magazines, all of them competing for readers.
The coup and the president’s exile left Asmahan the whore cold. “Men are all the same to me. Once they’re naked I don’t see any difference between a vegetable seller and a general,” she said callously. “Nudity is better camouflage than a carnival mask.” A cold shiver ran down Nasri’s spine when, on the way home, he worked out the meaning of that remark.
However, she appreciated the calligraphy he gave her, and enjoyed the letters that he claimed to have dictated to the calligrapher. They contained maxims, hymns of praise to sensual enjoyment and the pleasures of life. But none of them contained so much as a word about the deep love that Nasri felt for Asmahan. If that love ever showed through, even in a subordinate clause, Nasri asked the calligrapher for a different accompanying letter. “I don’t want her to misunderstand me. Women weigh up every single word, and sometimes they think round corners, not like men. We always think straight ahead, and I can do without that sort of trouble in my life.”