The Calligrapher's Secret

by Rafik Schami

  While he was thinking about that, Almaz came heaving herself upstairs and wanted to know what he was doing up there.

  The best time for him was during the siesta, when Almaz slept soundly. Even if Nariman cried she had no chance of attracting her mother’s attention. If her grandparents weren’t there she had to calm herself down on her own, because Almaz lay sleeping like a log, snoring so loudly that it sent the flies in the bedroom looking for escape.

  What could Nasri do? Now and then the voice of reason spoke, blaming him for acting like a boy in love. There were whores all over the New Town, each lovelier than the last, and here he was waiting, with his heart thumping, for a sight of a woman neighbour. But he ignored the voice of reason. Defiantly, he whispered, “So what about it? Love makes us children again.”

  One icy December morning, pale with his grief, he went into Hamid Farsi’s studio. The calligrapher had customers, a married couple who had come to collect a framed calligraphic work. Nasri said a civil good day and waited patiently. His mind was elsewhere, and he did not take in much of the lively conversation, except that the couple thought the picture was too expensive.

  “Your coffee,” said someone beside him. It was a thin young man with jug ears, serving him the sweet coffee.

  The coffee tasted insipid, and the troublesome customers wouldn’t stop haggling. Hamid Farsi was obviously annoyed. Nasri tried to read his thoughts: first the customers commission an expensive work from the best calligrapher in the city, and then they get faint-hearted when it comes to paying!

  After a full quarter of an hour Hamid agreed a price with the husband that was ten lira less than the sum he himself had asked. The delicate little red-haired wife was not satisfied. She hissed something inaudible to her husband, and when he did not react she rolled her eyes and showed Nasri her annoyance. He refrained from giving her the smile of solidarity that usually unites customers against the person they are dealing with. These miserly people were getting on his nerves.

  When the deal was finally done, the calligrapher put the money in his desk drawer and turned to Nasri with a broad smile.

  “Where have you been all this time? I haven’t heard anything of you for ages. I even looked in to see you recently to make you a proposition!”

  “You came to see me?” asked Nasri in surprise, put out because they had not told him at the office.

  “Yes, we are planning to found a School of Calligraphy. We already have generous support from the Ministry of Culture and the leading families of Damascus – al-Azm, Bakri, Sihnawi, Barasi, Asfar, Ghazi, Mardam Bey and many other personalities, for instance Shukri al-Quwwatli, Fares al-Khuri, Khalid al-Azm, Fakri al-Barudi and Sabri al-Assali have not only welcomed our idea, they are backing us with large donations. And I thought you ought not to be missing from that catalogue of honourable men. Arabic script must be close to all hearts. Our beautiful art must not fall into neglect and decline, it must be studied, cleansed of unnecessary accretions, further developed. If we don’t do anything about it our script will soon be written by European machines.” The calligrapher noticed that Nasri seemed preoccupied, so he would have to entice him. “Of course there’ll be a marble slab immortalizing the names of all who made the school possible. And if I know you and your generosity, yours will be up there at the top.”

  Now Nasri knew why they hadn’t told him about this at the office. It had been agreed not exactly to turn down all requests for donations but to leave them unanswered long enough and often enough to wear out the petitioners – and there were a great many in Damascus – until they gave up asking of their own accord.

  But this was different. He imagined first, and enjoyably, the envy of his two brothers when they found his name among donors including the great men of politics and culture, then he thought of the annoyance of his teachers who used to tell him that the Arabic language would be put to shame by the damage he did to it every day. For a moment he thought, with particular relish, of Sheikh Rashid Dumani, the teacher he particularly hated. He would make sure he was invited to the opening ceremony.

  “A good idea,” he said, “and I’d be happy to be part of it. As it happens, I have a newly renovated house standing empty in elegant Baghdad Street – you can have it rent-free for the next ten years. The donation will run out then, and the school can rent or buy the house. Just so long as it is in the same spotless condition in ten years’ time as you’ll find it today. What do you say?”

  “You leave me speechless,” said the calligrapher, unable to restrain his tears. Nasri felt nothing when he saw the emotions of a man who was usually so cold welling up. The house was empty, like four others that he owned, and if an empty house could win him renown while scholars lived a life of poverty, it just went to show, yet again, that school was not the way to fame and fortune.

  “Do you have teachers and enough students?” asked Nasri, to break the oppressive silence.

  “Teachers, yes, and we must pick our students from all over the country. Only the best will be fit to say they studied with us, and soon the school will be world famous, for we set store by the quality of training in calligraphy according to the criteria of the legendary Ibn Muqla. Students will come to us from all the Arab and Islamic countries, making Damascus their centre. When can I see the house?”

  “There’s not much to see; it’s a modern European building. Seven rooms on the ground floor, five on the first floor, and five more on the second floor. There’s a kitchen, two bathrooms and two lavatories on each floor. Go to see my business manager today and sign a contract. I’ll call him and give him instructions. When are you thinking of opening the school?”

  “If God wills, in May, but the official ceremony will be in March, so that we can begin advertising in February and send out invitations.” Hamid stopped for a moment and turned to the workshop. “Salman,” he called, and the young man who had served Nasri his coffee appeared, “run over to Karam’s, will you, and fetch us two cups of coffee.”

  “Not for me, thank you, I must go in a moment, and I’ll have to drink coffee again where I’m going… so thank you, no more today, please, but could I have a word with you in private?” said Nasri, glancing at the young man with the jug ears.

  “We can go out for a moment. There are several cafés that open very early in the Salihiyyeh quarter,” said Hamid.

  Ten minutes later they were sitting almost alone in the Café al-Amir. “It’s about a woman,” said Nasri when the old waiter had grumpily brought them steaming cups of coffee. “A woman who has stolen my heart. I need a letter. She’s a young widow and lives very quietly. That’s why I need your help. Your letters have always worked magic. No one in this city writes better.”

  “How old is the woman? Is she well-to-do? Does she read poetry?”

  “You see that salesgirl in the textiles shop opposite? She’s about her size and shape, but her face is much prettier. Like a beautiful boy’s. I don’t know whether she reads poetry.”

  The calligrapher glanced at the girl in the shop. “She’s pretty too,” he said, smiling. But Nasri shook his head, and described the charms of his beloved as far more erotic than the salesgirl’s. He mentioned those details that, visibly or invisibly, made the difference, the way the lady of his heart moved, the radiance that came from within. And he explained the subtle difference in the radiance of a woman who had been satisfied. “This woman has never yet known satisfaction,” he said in a conspiratorial tone, “while the salesgirl over there is positively replete with it.”

  Hamid looked at the shop across the road, interested, but for the life of him he couldn’t see how his rich customer recognized the girl’s sexual satisfaction.

  “I’ll write you not only that letter but all your letters for the next ten years, free of charge!” the calligrapher promised.

  Nasri phoned his manager Tawfiq and explained that he was now a patron of the arts, and the house in Baghdad Street was to be at the disposal of the School of Calligraphy free for the next ten yea
rs. He expected cries of indignation, but Tawfiq reacted calmly, almost cheerfully. “That sounds good. Who else is making a donation?” And when Nasri enumerated all the well-known names in a loud voice, mentioning that his would head the list on the marble slab, Tawfiq was afraid he was drunk.

  “Tawfiq is expecting you,” said Nasri, smiling, as he came back.

  “There’s something I must ask you,” said Hamid, “although I don’t want to pry too much into your relationship with the lady you love. But I have to know, so as to decide what kind of letter to write. What is her life like?”

  Nasri broke out in a cold sweat. He would never have expected the very correct calligrapher to ask a question so close to the bone all of a sudden.

  “Oh, she lives not far from here, close to the parliament building,” he lied.

  “No, no, you misunderstood me. I’m not interested in where she lives, but I have to know how and with whom she lives. I suspect you will have to give her the letter in secret, and if there’s any danger of someone else in the house seeing you, I’ll make the meaning of the letter clear but without giving you away. If it’s possible for you to hand this lady the letter personally I can write more directly than if a messenger is delivering it. In that case it would be better to use invisible ink. So I have to know whether she lives alone or with others.”

  “No, no, she lives in a house by herself. I don’t know yet exactly how I’ll get the letter to her. What did you mean by invisible ink?”

  “Well, one can write with various fluids that can be read only after treatment with warmth or chemicals. You can write with milk, lemon juice, onion juice. And there are inks that cost a good deal more, but the writing remains legible only for a certain period of time.”

  “No, I’d rather not have that. I want to let the woman have beautiful letters written in your hand. With my name, Nasri Abbani, at the bottom. One does not hide a name like mine,” said Nasri proudly.

  “No invisible ink, then. That’s all right, I’ll think it over a little and you can have your letter in three or four days’ time.”

  “Wait before you phrase it. I’ll call you tomorrow at the latest, once I’m sure what I want the letter to say,” said Nasri as he left. He had to hurry, because his wife Lamia had to go to the eye specialist. Little veins had been breaking in her left eye for months, and now it was dark red and looked as if he had been beating her. She was afraid she had eye cancer. It was a form of hysteria. To women, every tiny abnormality that could usually be cured with herbal teas threatened them with cancer, and these days they didn’t go to consult their grandmothers, who knew just what herb to use for which disorder, they went straight off to the specialist.

  23

  Hamid was surprised to get such a friendly reception from Tawfiq, Nasri’s business manager. The grey-haired little man with the attentive eyes had an intelligent smile, and his questions were not sly or suspicious. They were sharp as a knife, and contained cleverly hidden traps, but when he heard that the famous Hamid Farsi himself was to be at the head of this new school, and the calligrapher Serani, a legend in his own lifetime, its honorary president, the business manager became almost servile in his polite expressions. He gave Hamid the contract and wrote, where the amount of rent ought to be, “The contracting party to pay no rent for the duration of this agreement.” However, he drew the attention of Hamid Farsi, although in a kindly manner, to the paragraphs stipulating that the tenant could be given immediate notice if he used the house for other purposes, or let it fall into ruin. “With so many buildings and so many tenants as Mr Abbani has, otherwise we’d be renovating the whole time and couldn’t do any other business.”

  Hamid, expressing his full understanding, signed with a flourish.

  The next day Nasri phoned the calligrapher to tell him what he wanted to be in the letter. “There should be something about gold in it. You must say that I’d be ready to give her weight in gold if I could see her beautiful eyes and kiss the birthmark on her belly. Or something like that. Anyway, I’d like gold to come into the letter.”

  “Lucky woman!” cried Hamid into the phone. “Half the girls in Damascus would be at your feet if you were to give them their weight in cotton, let alone gold.”

  “You’re right, but the heart is a wild beast and has never understood reason.”

  “You put that very well. I’ll use it: the heart is a wild beast. Beautifully put,” repeated the calligrapher in a singsong voice. “I already have a draft in mind, and I think you’ll like it. Two pages, normal notepaper format, but on superfine handmade paper from China, white as snow so that the black of the script will unfold regally on it, and it’s just this moment occurred to me to write the word ‘gold’ in gold leaf. You can collect the letter in two days’ time. And by the way, did your friendly manager say that we’ve already signed the contract? He’s given me the key. Yesterday night I was so curious that I went to Baghdad Street to look at the house. A pearl of great price, you weren’t exaggerating. The marble slabs will be ready in early January.”

  “Several slabs? Do you have so many donors?”

  “Yes, but I want one of them to name only the noblest donors and benefactors of the school. You will of course come first. The rest will come after you.”

  Nasri had decided to sail his letter through the air to the beautiful woman. Days before, he had given up the idea of going to her house and delivering the letter direct, or having it delivered by a messenger once he had found her street.

  He tried to locate the woman’s house precisely, and found it very difficult to identify her front door from his attic window. However, he had noticed the unusual brown paint of the guttering, and hoped that once in her street he would be able to see which house it was.

  But he had not yet even left Straight Street to find out where his mysterious neighbour lived when he heard the voice of his distant cousin Bilal Abbani. Bilal was a man of little intellect but a busy tongue. He had been paralysed after an accident, and now spent twenty-four hours a day sitting at his window. “Well, whom have we here?” that horrible voice croaked. “Why, if it isn’t my cousin Nasri Abbani! What are you doing in our street? Done someone down again and bringing the compensation payment, are you?” And he laughed such a dirty laugh that Nasri wished him dead. “Good day,” was all he called as he hurried past under Bilal’s window. Ten paces further on the second surprise was lying in wait. The sister of one of his tenants recognized him and rushed to take his hand. She wanted to kiss it in gratitude, and called out loud to someone inside the house where she rented a room. “Here’s the generous Mr Abbani, come and look at this fine example of a man!” He freed his hand and walked hastily on, cursing his luck, as she called to her women friends who had come hurrying up, “He’s shy, you see, a real Abbani.”

  Not five metres further on a beggar hailed him. “You here, Mr Abbani? What a surprise,” he cried hoarsely.

  Nasri had no idea how the beggar, who was clutching him firmly by the sleeve, knew his name. Furiously, he freed himself again, in such agitation that he not only failed to find the beautiful woman’s house, he didn’t even know how to find his way out of the street again.

  No, he thought, this street is a minefield. His cousin was one of the mines, his tenant’s sister another, the beggar and all the many people lurking behind windows and looking through doors left ajar, ready to tear his reputation to shreds, were a whole battery of mines. Nasri remembered the story of a lover who waited forty years to hand the woman he adored a love letter. By that time she had four sons and twenty grandchildren.

  He would have to find some other way. Why not fold the letter into a paper swallow and let it fly from his attic into her room or her inner courtyard, he asked himself as he saw two boys near the Umayyad Mosque, skilfully sending their folded swallows sailing through the air.

  The visit to the eye specialist didn’t take long. Dr Farah examined the reddened eye for exactly five minutes, reassured Abbani and his wife, prescribed her a hepar
in derivative and charged thirty lira. “That was expensive,” marvelled his wife Lamia as they went out. Nasri pointed to the plate on the doctor’s door. “Someone has to pay for his travels to all these wonderful countries.” Lamia had just read the last line under the doctor’s name on the doorplate. It named hospitals in New York, London, Lyon, Madrid, and Frankfurt in evidence of his qualifications.

  At home with his wife Lamia, he began folding paper swallows and sailing them through the air from the first-floor balcony. His four elder daughters jumped around him excitedly, the two younger girls pointed to the paper birds laughing and marvelling at them. They sometimes dive-bombed down on the balcony, sometimes sailed in elegant wide arcs to get stuck somewhere among the trees of the large garden, or simply landed in a belly-flop.

  Paper swallows, Nasri decided, were unreliable. One of them was even caught by a gust of wind and carried into the garden next door. He imagined his letter landing not in his lovely neighbour’s courtyard but in a nearby garden, where it could be found and read by the wrong person, maybe even his cousin Bilal. Nasri’s secret would be out. He felt fury like a stone in his throat.

  What on earth, Lamia wondered, had come over the man? She had never seen him playing with their daughters before. And now, suddenly, there he was romping with them on a sunny but very cold December day.

  It was his third daughter, Samira, who found a much simpler trick than the complicated swallow. She folded the sheet of paper three times lengthwise. The folded paper strip looked like a ruler. Now she bent it into a V-shape in the middle and let it fall from the balcony. And lo and behold, the paper turned gently in the air like the rotor of a helicopter and fell slowly to the ground not far from the balcony. Nasri was delighted. “That’s the way to do it!” he cried. And he too folded the paper lengthwise, weighted it with a coin that he fixed with some glue to the middle of the V shape, and now the paper sailed vertically down and dropped reliably just where he wanted it, underneath the balcony.