The Calligrapher's Secret

by Rafik Schami

  “But we also need new letters,” said Hamid, seizing this opportunity to realize his dream. “There are four missing, and we could throw out others to make room for them, so that in the end there will be a dynamic alphabet that can elegantly take in all the languages in the world.”

  The minister looked at him in surprise. “I don’t entirely understand you. Do you want to change the alphabet?”

  “Only to free it of dead weight and add four new letters,” replied Hamid. “If our letters are lame, the language will limp and be unable to keep up with the rapid speed of civilization,” Hamid pursued once more, adding, “I have been experimenting for years. I could derive P, O, W, and E from existing Arabic letters without much difficulty, and…”

  “Oh no,” cried the minister, outraged. “After all this, I find out what you’ve been thinking. My dear Hamid,” he said, “I shall be glad if after next October I can put through my modest reform and retire without getting a knife in my ribs. Your suggestions may be brilliant, but they must win the approval of scholars first. With my proposition of doing away with LA and teaching reading by the whole-word method, I am already going as far as I can with the opportunities open to me.”

  He rose and gave Hamid his hand. “I think your idea is courageous, but it cannot be realized until the state and religion are separated. And that lies far in the future. I am in a hurry and want to change something now. But,” said the minister, holding Hamid’s hand firmly, “why not found one or two, three, ten schools of calligraphy all over the country? We shall need a great many for the new printing works and the stimulus that the press and the book trade will feel. And even more important, you must gain allies in the shape of the men you train, allies who will understand and defend your ideas. They will be more effective than ten ministries,” added the minister. Finally, he told him in confidence to look after himself. Even here with him in the Ministry of Culture he should speak softly, because the place was full of members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Most of them were harmless, added the minister, but some among them formed secret underground societies calling themselves by such names as the Pure Ones, or Those of the World Beyond, fanatics who would not shrink from murder.

  Hamid was not afraid.

  When he left his mind was agitated. He felt like the fisherman he had once seen in a film, sitting in a tiny boat in the middle of the stormy ocean and riding so daringly over the crests of the waves and down into the depths that Hamid felt short of breath as he sat there in the cinema. The minister had cast him into total confusion by his rejection of the idea of new letters, followed by his encouragement. But he was right: schools of calligraphy must be founded as the basis for a small army of calligraphers who would fight against stupidity with their reed pens and their ink.

  However, he could not be happy about the project, hard as he tried. The founding of schools of calligraphy meant that action was postponed again for years. On the way to his studio, however, he plucked up hope again. If he could convince a single influential Islamic scholar, he would surely be able to get the minister to support a second reforming step. In the studio he struck his assistants as absentminded, and indeed he felt no wish to work. He went for a long walk, and did not go home until nearly midnight. His wife asked if he had had an accident, he looked so pale and distracted. He merely shook his head and went straight to bed, but soon after midnight he woke again and went quietly into the kitchen, where he wrote down the names of several scholars who might agree with his ideas.

  In the time that followed, Hamid tried to get each of those well-known Islamic scholars on his side, but they all reacted aggressively. One of them recommended that he go on pilgrimage to Mecca, to pray for healing there; another refused to shake hands when they parted. Three more refused to speak to him even before he told them what he wanted.

  Could it be that one of them had given him away to those sinister circles?

  Everything suggested that someone had, but he was not sure even now, after all these years.

  The minister had been right, for as soon as his reform was made known at the end of September, even before the school year began, a wave of indignation ran through the mosques of the big cities, and fanatics denounced the minister of culture and his assistants as unbelievers. Many sheikhs called for the death of the apostates.

  But the president acted with a firm hand, placed himself behind his minister of culture, and had the fanatical orators arrested and charged with stirring up popular unrest.

  There were no more inflammatory speeches, but plenty of whispering. Some of it was aimed at him, and that was why his master Serani advised him at the time to attend the Umayyad Mosque and not only pray there, but dispel the prejudices about him by talking to the most respected men in the city.

  Certain things became clear to him now, in prison. On 10 October 1953, a week after the introduction of the new alphabet of twenty-eight letters, a mosque and the central administration of the main graveyard had cancelled their commissions to him, giving no reason. He had entered the fact in his diary at the time, but did not even comment, because he was up to his ears in work. Only here in prison did he remember it.

  That was the reason for his fears.

  After the middle of 1953 at the latest, not only at the end of 1956 or the beginning of 1957, the fanatics had put him on their hit list. His name as a calligrapher was in every school textbook. The fact that they had not murdered him was a part of their malicious and subtly devised plan. They did not want him to die like a martyr. They ruined his reputation first, then they wanted to bury him alive, tormenting him daily until he longed for death.

  “Not I,” he said, in quite a loud voice. “You’ll be surprised to see what I’m capable of yet.”

  The end of a story and the beginning of a rumour

  In the winter of 1957 joiners and their assistants in the large prison carpentry workshop began preparations for the creation of a great calligraphic painting. At the end of April the widely known calligrapher Ali Barakeh was to arrive from Aleppo to work on the great painting with Hamid.

  Barakeh had already agreed to the arrangement. The gilding of the frame was to be begun, under Hamid’s supervision, in May 1958 and to be finished by the middle of June.

  Governor al-Azm was delighted, for this painting was to immortalize the name of his family as donors to a new mosque in Saudi Arabia. Although he was an atheist, his pride knew no bounds. As a lawyer, he was indifferent to all religions, but not to the name of his clan, and certainly not to the respect that all his relations would now owe him.

  From now on he made sure that Hamid was treated particularly well. Beginning in January, the calligrapher had a hot meal brought in for him every day from the nearby Ashi restaurant, and Hamid slept more peacefully than ever before.

  But not for long.

  In February 1958 Syria over-hastily formed a union with Egypt. A dark phase of the country’s history began. All political parties were dissolved overnight, all newspapers banned, and waves of arrests followed hard on each other’s heels.

  At the end of March 1958, al-Azm was dismissed as governor of the prison and soon afterwards arrested. He was accused of belonging to an organization supported by the CIA that had called for the overthrow of the new regime.

  A new governor was to arrive soon.

  Hamid felt the first step down to hell under his feet. He could scarcely move.

  But Hamid was resilient, and the blow did not numb him for long. He overcame his shock and thought of making an offer to the new governor: he could inscribe a patriotic saying on the well-prepared wooden surface for the calligraphic painting, as a gift from the prisoners to their president. The time for Islamic sayings was over. The Saudis hated Nasser who, after a failed assassination attempt, had Islamists prosecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and killed.

  He was waiting in suspense for the new governor. He felt it ungrateful of him to forget his protector al-Azm so quickly, but the Secret Society and his future came first. And he wa
s happy with everything that would make it easier to hand over supervision of the work to the calligrapher Ali Barakeh.

  However, the new prison governor was a bitter disappointment. He was an officer of peasant origin who could write his own name but no more. He always wore sunglasses, even in a closed room, as if to hide his eyes. His was a boorish nature, and he did not conceal his contempt for books and scholars. He regarded calligraphy as an underhand trick, executed at great expense, with the sole purpose of making reading more difficult. Only arrogant sadists could expect people to put up with it.

  When Hamid heard about the new governor, he lay awake worrying for three nights, and not without reason. On the fifth day came the worst fall from grace of his life.

  The prison governor roared with laughter at him and his idea. “Millions upon millions of patriots love our President Nasser, so why would he care whether a few rats in prison love him or not?” he cried, still splitting his sides. He had the great panel for the painting chopped up for firewood. But that was not the worst of it. As the new governor wanted the three cells for privileged prisoners for his own favourites among the inmates, he had their previous occupants taken down to the inferno of the ordinary cells. The governor had Hamid’s calligraphic works hanging on the cell walls, along with his photographs, books, notebooks, and expensive calligraphic implements thrown away. It was forbidden to possess such things. As a convicted prisoner, his new guard told him cynically, he should be glad to be fed at the state’s expense. Did he expect art in prison as well? “Where do you think we are? In Sweden?” asked the man, and did not wait for an answer. He didn’t even know where Sweden was, but it was a saying current in Damascus. Many Arabs regarded Sweden and Switzerland as perfect examples of states full of happy people.

  That day the garbage men’s cart, still drawn by an ancient bony mule in those times, took away not only refuse from the kitchen, the workshops, and the prison office but also a treasure of calligraphic works beyond price to the garbage dump of oblivion.

  No trace was ever found of Hamid’s forty thousand lira. Apart from his clothes, he had nothing at all with him when he was taken to the communal cell.

  At the end of April, after a tiring bus journey from Aleppo, a thin man asked civilly at the prison gates after Hamid Farsi and Governor al-Azm. He showed his written invitation. When the officer on duty saw the letter he sent the man brusquely away, saying he had better clear out before he lost patience. An old guard with two yellow teeth in the dark cavern of his mouth recommended the indignant stranger to make his getaway fast, because the former prison governor al-Azm had turned out to be a CIA agent spying for Israel, and Hamid Farsi was a serious offender.

  Ali Barakeh, people said, had assured the man in tears that he knew nothing about al-Azm and the CIA, but he was sure that Hamid Farsi was a divinely gifted calligrapher who should be revered, not locked up in prison. He knew of several young calligraphers in Aleppo who would be ready to give their lives for him.

  The guard shook his head over so much emotion. He pushed the thin and tearful man away. “Better for you not even to mention the names of those two. Now get out before I take you to join your friend.”

  Destitute and a broken man, Hamid arrived in the section of the prison housing the worst offenders, who had all been given life sentences, sometimes several to run concurrently.

  This was hell on earth among rats and killers whose brains had been eaten away by the damp of the years. The walls sweated moisture, for the Citadel was near a small river. When the French occupied the country, a veterinary surgeon in the French army had said the ground floor of the building was unsuitable even as a stable for horses and mules.

  None of this misery horrified Hamid Farsi more than the fact that a poor reputation had preceded him. His fourteen fellow inmates of this large dark cell treated him with contempt, and not one of them would believe his version of his story.

  “But I killed him. I stabbed him twelve times with my knife,” he said, trying to glean a little respect. He hadn’t counted the stab wounds, but the Abbani family’s lawyer had emphasized the number twelve.

  “You’re not just an idiot and a cuckold,” said Faris, who was serving four life sentences, “you killed the wrong man. Nasri only fucked your wife, Governor al-Azm had her in his harem. Or do you really think he put you up there in the villa because you’re so bloody good at writing?”

  Hamid shouted and wept with rage, but to prisoners serving life that was only an admission of guilt.

  Two months later the new prison governor, informed by the guards of cause for concern, had Hamid Farsi admitted to the Al-Asfouriyyeh psychiatric hospital north of Damascus.

  He took a last look at the calligrapher, whose body was covered with bruises and filth. “I am a prophet of script and the great-grandson of Ibn Muqla. Why do these criminals torment me every night?” he cried. The other prisoners roared with laughter. “Give me a piece of paper and I’ll show you how script flows from my fingers. No one can equal me,” he whimpered.

  “The same old fuss every day until we smash his face in, and then he howls like a woman,” explained a heavily built prisoner with a scarred face and a tattoo on his chest.

  “Get him hosed down and wash him twice with soap and spirit before the men from the hospital come,” said the governor, revolted. “I don’t want them speaking badly of us.”

  Hamid was sent to the hospital for several months, and from there, once he was a little better, to a closed psychiatric institution. After that his trail was lost. But his name lived on.

  His sister Siham inherited all Hamid’s property. She sold the house years later to a general. Even after ten years, however, the neighbours spoke of the property as “the crazy calligrapher’s house.” That was one of the reasons why the general sold the house again. The Finnish ambassador bought it. He had no objection to living in the crazy calligrapher’s beautiful house. He didn’t understand Arabic anyway.

  The studio was sold, at a wickedly high price, to Samad, the senior member of Hamid’s staff. Good businessman that he was, he kept the name Studio Hamid Farsi on the sign above the door, and on the stamps and all the official papers. He signed his name to his work in such small lettering that it was hard to decipher it. The reputation of the calligrapher Hamid Farsi had travelled as far as Morocco and Persia, and the studio got plenty of commissions from those quarters.

  Samad was a good technician, but he never achieved his master’s elegance, refinement, and perfection. Experts saw that at once, but for the majority of rich citizens, businessmen and company owners a calligraphic work was particularly valuable if it came from the Farsi studio. Samad was a modest but witty man, and if anyone asked him why his calligraphy was not as good as his master’s, he would smile and reply, “So that I don’t end up as he did.”

  But how did Hamid Farsi end up? That is a story with countless different conclusions. A rumour began circulating soon after he was transferred to the psychiatric hospital, and it persisted: Hamid, said the rumour, had escaped from the institution with the help of his supporters and was now living as a highly regarded calligrapher in Istanbul.

  There were witnesses ready to support the story. Ten years later, a former guard in the Citadel told a newspaper that when Hamid was in the prison he had received three letters from Aleppo, which of course were inspected before they were passed on to him. They had been harmless letters with broad ornamental borders, written in beautiful script. He remembered very well that immediately after the arrival of the third letter, Hamid Farsi lost his wits, or that was how it seemed.

  The psychiatric hospital declined to make any comment. Not that the flight of a madman would have interested anyone in Damascus, but his name was Hamid Farsi, and his sworn enemies, headed by the Abbani clan, suspected a cleverly planned escape behind everything.

  Twenty years later, in a sensational report, a radio journalist revealed a scandal: Hamid, he said, had fled at the time, and the long-serving medical director o
f the psychiatric hospital had hushed it all up.

  Hamid had never had any chance, said the reporter, of escaping from the Citadel, “and no wish to spend the rest of his life shut up with criminals, so by agreement with his friends in Aleppo he pretended to be out of his mind, and it obviously paid off. Here there was only a little garden fence for him to climb. And after a few presents to the medical director the fence was even lower,” he said, interviewing passersby who assured listeners that anyone, even the least athletic, could easily get out from behind an unguarded wire netting fence. The broadcast caused great mirth in Damascus. Many jokes about swapping politicians for lunatics dated from that time.

  However, the reporter’s object was not to amuse listeners, but to settle accounts with the medical director of the hospital, who had held his position for forty years, and against whom he had a grudge. His broadcast ended with the statement that the medical director had been lying when he said that Hamid had died and was buried in the hospital cemetery. The calligrapher’s sister said indignantly in front of the microphone that she would have known if her beloved brother had died. She added, in agitation, “The medical people at the hospital ought to show me and the press my brother Hamid Farsi’s grave – if they can.”

  In spite of the scandal Dr Salam, medical director of the psychiatric hospital, had no cause to fear for his position. His youngest brother was a general in the air force. He kept his mouth shut. Not so the rich garage owner Hassan Barak. He gave the journalist an interview that created a sensation in the capital.