Farewell, Damascus

by Ghada Samman

  “And what’s the news on that lemon-of-a-car you bought from your neighbor?”

  “Well,” she said mischievously, “I’m jealous of my freedom even when it comes to the mistakes I make! But my dad felt sorry for me after what happened, so he’s decided to buy me another little car and give the lemon to somebody he doesn’t like.”

  The two of them burst out laughing. Then they fell silent as they sat looking out over ancient yet modern Damascus, which lay before them gentle as a kitten, and ferocious as a lion.

  “In the Fall, Baba and I used to go walking down a dirt path that leads through these orchards. I loved the sound of the leaves crunching when we stepped on them. It was as though they were welcoming us and kissing the bottoms of our feet… By the way, will you be coming to the seminar at the University of Damascus?”

  “You bet I will.”

  “Another story writer and two poets will be reading pieces, too.”

  “I’ll listen to yours, and then run!”

  “Actually, I’m the last one on the program anyway!”

  They left the café and lingered for a while in Sahat Al Muhajirin.

  “Look at that ugly cement building in the middle of the orchards!” Zain remarked. “I hope they don’t build any more monstrosities like that around here!”

  * * *

  “Rosanna, Rosanna, the good she’s done who can tell? Rosanna, Rosanna, may God reward her well!” When Zain got home she found her grandmother singing in the kitchen, and Haroun and the new household helper making circles around her. I’ve never figured out those odd songs Grandma Hayat sings. They were passed down by her grandmother, and by her grandmother’s grandmother, and her grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother! Anyway, if nobody can tell what good Rosanna did, then why does the song go on to say, “may God reward her well?” Which reminds me: There’s that lullaby that says, “Sleep, little boy, sleep, I’ll slaughter you a sheep!” Was it the sheep’s fault that the little boy couldn’t go to sleep? And why should the green bird strut around singing sadly, “My mama slaughtered me, my father ate my flesh, and my loving sister gathers my bones”? What a world! Why would we eat each other? What is this violence that lurks inside us?

  Grandma Hayat welcomed Zain home, and then hurried over and sat down in front of the television as she peeled some garlic. When I started appearing on television, the new-fangled gadget that’s invaded our homes lately, some people liked me better than before, and others hated me. I’ll never forget how happy my grandmother was to see me when I got home from the station after my first TV appearance. Certain neighbor ladies, and even some family members, only welcome me because my face has appeared on a lit-up screen a few times, while others hold secret grudges against me. But I still adore Ziqaq Al Yasmin. I can’t get enough of Damascus’s old traditional neighborhoods, and I don’t take pride in the fact that I live in Abu Rummana or some other part of town where new high rises have replaced the gardens and parks I love so much.

  * * *

  Now that Zain wasn’t banished from Ziqaq Al Yasmin anymore the way she had been right after her divorce, she volunteered to take her grandmother to Fadila’s house to check on her family and see how they were handling Fadila’s elopement. They arrived in the middle of an argument between Zain’s uncle Abdulfattah and his sister.

  “Now quit being such a doggone worry wart, will you, woman?!” he shouted. “My health is just fine, and I’m not going to the doctor!”

  Turning and noticing the two visitors, he asked suspiciously, “Who are you? Have you come to beg? Get out of my house, damn it!”

  Saddened by her son’s condition, Grandma Hayat replied in a feeble voice, “No, sweetheart, we aren’t here to beg. I’m your mother.”

  “Poor thing,” she whispered to Zain. “Fadila’s made him lose his mind all over again.”

  After an abbreviated visit, they got up to leave on the pretext that they needed to see Juhaina, and returned to the house with heavy hearts.

  * * *

  I went to mom’s hometown of Latakia to participate in a literary seminar with a couple of poets and another story writer at a local cultural center. As in Damascus, I’d been scheduled to do my reading last, since I’m just a beginner that nobody’s heard of, and they were afraid that if I read first, people would get up and walk out before the seminar was over!

  When my turn came, I was shaking all over. But I was determined not to let my voice quaver. So I decided to pretend I was reading my story to my mother at her graveside. I wanted her to realize that she was still alive in a sense, and that through me she was reading her own poems and stories and being applauded by the people who had silenced her during her lifetime.

  When I went up to the podium and began to read, an old lady at the tender age of twenty years, the room fell completely silent. I wasn’t reading only with my physical voice, but with the voice of my spirit, the voice of my heart. And I wasn’t afraid the way I’d thought I would be. Instead, I felt myself melting into the audience, sharing their sorrows, hopes, illusions, and disappointments. I read as though I knew each of them personally. My maternal uncle, a poet himself, wasn’t in the audience. After all, he was the one who had insisted that my mother publish under a pseudonym for fear that she might besmirch the family’s honor. I’d wanted him to attend, since I thought that if he saw me that night, he might also see my mother, her face stained with tears of grief and anger over being robbed of the chance to reveal her creativity for what it was.

  On that planet of sorrows past, I read my short story not to avenge my mother, but to do her justice, and to my amazement, no one got up and walked out! In fact, when I finished I heard loud applause, and some people even gave me a standing ovation. It didn’t make me feel proud or conceited. All I felt was the satisfaction of having helped repay a debt to my mother, who hadn’t been given the chance she deserved. My little owl, who sat perched on the podium, started flapping her wings in applause, and I think I saw my mother’s ghost smiling at me.

  After the seminar was over, who should Zain see but her long-lost poet uncle. He’d apparently been sitting in the back row, positioned for a quick escape in the event that her performance was a disaster. In spite of his demeaning attitude toward her, she was happy to see him again.

  “You can spend the night at my house—your grandfather’s house,” he offered unexpectedly.

  She explained that she’d been invited for dinner at the sports club across from her hotel.

  “But,” she hastened to add, “after the dinner’s over I’d love to come spend the night there.”

  Surprising Zain for a second time, her uncle pulled something out of his pocket, saying, “Here’s the house key. Feel free to come over after your outing, and I’ll see you in the morning. You’ll also get to see your cousins.”

  After being honored at the dinner with her fellow litterateurs, Zain realized what power words can have. All through childhood and adolescence I was the butt of jokes and insults, and I spent most of my life having to justify my existence because I’d been born “Zain” and not “Zain Al Abidin.” Yet here I am being showered with rose petals at a dinner hosted in my honor. No wonder so many people want to be writers! I’ve never been so pampered in my whole life.

  I’ve never written as an act of either vengeance or defense. Even so, writing has put me through plenty of trials. As a teenager I used to write out my secret sorrows, disappointments, and distresses in a journal I kept hidden under my mattress. Wednesdays always made me nervous, because Wednesday was the day when linens were washed, so I’d move the journal to the bottom of my section of the closet—this was before I had my own room. If I forgot to move it, Wednesday would turn into a day from hell. I’d sit in school worrying that my mean aunt might find it and, worse still, read it, since if she did, I’d be in for a tanning when I got home. I didn’t realize at the time that this aunt would never have read anything anybody had written no matter how curious she got. She was illiterate, and happil
y so, since, as far she was concerned, writing was a tool of the devil.

  I stayed out late that night with my fellow writers in Latakia. I even allowed myself to enjoy some of the flattery coming my way. I didn’t believe most of the nice things people were saying about me, but after the cruel blows life had dealt my self-esteem in my earlier years, I let myself bask in the positive attention.

  After the celebration I headed back to my grandfather’s house, let myself in, and headed straight for what had once been my mother’s room. I sniffed the pillow, hoping to pick up her scent. Unfortunately, my uncle’s wife, clean freak that she is, hadn’t forgotten to change the linens. When I stretched out on the bed, I heard my uncle stirring in the bathroom one door down. He was doing his ritual ablution for the dawn prayer. I had an overwhelming urge to get up and pray with him, but my overwhelming fatigue won out. When I woke up, sunlight was streaming in through the window and onto my face. I headed for the bathroom, and on my way there, I heard people arguing in another room. My uncle was angry because the man his daughter wanted to marry, although he was Latakian and rich to boot, wasn’t from a high-heeled family like theirs. The would-be groom’s father was from a small village. “But don’t forget,” my aunt piped up in defence, “he managed to start up Latakia’s first bus transport company. So the man deserves some respect in my opinion!”

  I almost barged in on them with my nightgown on to give my uncle a piece of my mind. But before I could make a move, I heard my maternal grandmother chime in sarcastically, saying, “Well, you’ve got a lot of room to talk! You’re still the new kid on the block yourself when it comes to material success!”

  I sympathized with my cousin, but didn’t say anything. I’d finally been learning a lesson Grandma Hayat had mastered long before me: not to butt into other people’s business. Actually, I feel as though everything that happens on Earth is my business in one way or another. Even so, I went back to my room and got dressed without making a peep. Before leaving, I went in and kissed my uncle’s hand (as much as I hate this tradition). As I did so, I sensed that it might be our final farewell, and that the next time I made it to Latakia, he might not be alive. I hugged my aunt and my cousin, wishing I could have taken up for her, and headed back to my own concerns in Damascus crowned with the success of my literary evening in Latakia.

  * * *

  How do I dare tell my wife and my half-brother Farah that I turned down a chance to sell my share of the old house in Ziqaq Al Yasmin today? Somebody wants to build a restaurant there, one that serves traditional dishes and that will attract tourists. Farah, a merchant in Souq Al Bazzuriya, has been staying in Damascus for my sake.

  How can I tell Brigitte I’m not going back to Paris with her, and that I want to spend the rest of my life in my beloved Damascus? If I were younger, I’d climb the stairs to the top of the minaret and sound the dawn call to prayer the way I used to do before going to school some mornings.

  As Rahif Manahili stood at the window with his back to the black-and-white television set, he heard a lovely voice singing, “Djamela, proud, brave and strong…” He turned and saw the Algerian singer Warda, fresh as a rose, as she went on singing in her captivating voice, “They thought there was only one Djamela. But all of us are Djamela! All of us would give our lives for our motherland.”

  His heart was suddenly aflame with a zeal that had nearly been extinguished. He had been so disillusioned with his country that he’d once nearly settled in Paris with a friend of his, Sharif Al Khurma, who had married a French woman and joined the Socialist Party. It was said that Sharif ’s French mother had had something to do with his decision. But my mother is Damascene through and through from a neighborhood near Qabratkeh. My uncles on both sides have businesses in the Souq Al Sarouja, Al Hariqah, and Al Marjah, and my father is a full-blooded Damascene, too. As much as I love Brigitte, I wasn’t really being honest with her when I told her I only wanted to come back to Damascus in order to liquidate my properties so that I’d have enough money to buy a clinic near the Eiffel Tower or on Fosh Avenue. At the time I didn’t realize how hard it would be to cut the umbilical cord between me and my mother city Damascus… It’s raining outside. I’ve always loved the warm, gentle rain in Damascus. It refreshes my weary heart like a sprinkle of water on a feverish brow. I feel like taking a stroll down toward the Parliament Building and Hejaz Square. Then I’ll turn left and head in the direction of Souq Al Hamidiyah and the Umayyad Mosque and then…

  His daydreaming was cut short as Brigitte cried excitedly in French, “Come look! Isn’t the girl on the screen the same one we performed an abortion on that day?”

  He turned and glanced at the television screen. It came as no surprise, of course, to see Zain engaged in a spirited defense of her first book. What did surprise him, however, was the type of program she was appearing on. How on earth did she end up on a show devoted to the concerns of wives and mothers? It looks as though those fiery, subversive writings of hers have catapulted her to notoriety. Audiences like excitement, and the program host wants to grow her audience. So…!

  “No, that isn’t her,” he said to his wife. “She does look a lot like her, though. I’m going out for a walk.”

  “Are you sure it isn’t the same girl?” she asked.

  Not wanting to lie any more than he had to, Dr. Manahili changed the subject, saying, “Would you like to come with me?”

  “Sure,” she said enthusiastically. “I’ll change my clothes and be right out.”

  He was glad his wife had left the room, since it gave him the chance to drink in Zain’s intoxicating words one at a time, in all their ferocity and insubordination. Her writings are upsetting to people who aren’t rational, and who don’t question inherited ideas and beliefs. People like that don’t want to be forced out of their blissful hibernation. But that’s exactly what Zain does through the things she writes.

  He gazed at her on the screen, enchanted. Was he in love with her? Did he wish she were the daughter he’d never had? Or was he happy she wasn’t his daughter? Then again, maybe he just saw his orphaned self reflected in her. He honestly didn’t know. Zain’s presence in my life makes me positive and optimistic. Ever since the first time she came to the clinic, I’ve had a hard time defining my feelings toward her. But one thing is certain: I’m delighted to see her taking life by the horns rather than playing the miserable, helpless divorcee.

  He listened to Zain with rapt attention as she spoke truth to power, and as the moderator tried in vain to shut her up.

  “I’m ready to go, my luny Damascene!” he heard Brigitte announce brightly. He drew her close to him. Mingled with a rush of tenderness, he felt a pang of guilt toward this noble woman, who had agreed to marry not only him, but his city as well. And as if that hadn’t been enough, she had agreed not to have any children as long he didn’t want to have any himself. He held her tight, as though Zain’s feisty but vivacious television appearance had infected him with a vitality he couldn’t suppress.

  Then suddenly he asked, “Would you be willing to have my child?”

  Fireworks went off in her eyes, which were soon moist with tears. “Isn’t it too late?” she asked. “I’m thirty-five now, and you’re forty-five.”

  “No, not at all,” he assured her. “Don’t forget what a good doctor I am! I promise we’ll have a little girl and we’ll call her Zain.”

  “You call her whatever you like!” she replied with a laugh. “What matters is for her to be born.”

  “And…,” he continued with some difficulty, “would you be willing to stay here in Damascus with me instead of moving to France?”

  After some hesitation she replied, “I’d be willing to stay with you even in hell. Isn’t that what I’ve been doing ever since we met?”

  A rush of affection for her swept through his heart. He knew he couldn’t rely on his feelings, which came and went in waves. So, digging his fingers into his chest, he made the motion of taking his heart out and offering it to her.
I’m amazed I didn’t see any blood! As he did so, he expected her to say, “What’s that? A prickly pear?”

  And for the first time he noticed that this was exactly what his heart had been: a big cactus plant.

  He imagined himself saying, “Like a coconut, a cactus is tender on the inside, which is why it protects itself with a hard exterior!”

  As for Brigitte, she was too happy to hear his self-denigration. All she could think about was the fact that for the first time ever, her husband had invited her along on his nightly jaunt around Damascus, and for the first time ever, he’d broached the subject of their becoming parents.

  * * *

  Amjad Khayyal had started coming home from work early, drawn to the daughter whose company he so enjoyed. He was proud of the success of her first book, which had been received well in the Beirut press, and irritated at the attacks it had been subjected to in some Damascus press outlets.

  When he arrived, he found her, as usual, working at the table in his study. He wanted to support her with all the influence and prestige he had at his disposal. Rather than telling her this directly, however, he went all out praising her work instead. A certain enraged religious cleric had issued a statement declaring open season on Zain and had signed it “the girls of Hamah,” although news of it had been hushed up temporarily thanks to Amjad Khayyal’s intervention. Similarly, he had stood by Zain when certain newspapers had incited attacks on her in the name of religion.

  Zain had won the enthusiastic support of Mr. Wadee, owner of a newspaper known as Jaridat Al Intisar, together with his wife and son. Their son Raja’i, a student at the American University in Beirut, regularly brought her encouraging, positive articles being written about her in the Beirut press.

  He tiptoed into the library so as not to disturb her. Of course, she was so engrossed in what she was doing, he could probably have exploded a hand grenade next to her without her noticing. From over her shoulder he read aloud the last line she’d written: “My eyes should give away everything but my age.” Laughing in spite of himself, he exclaimed, “What’s this? You’re still young, but you’re writing as if you were an old woman!”