Farewell, Damascus

by Ghada Samman

  The entire place was infused with a spirit of merriment now, and as the waiter brought them fresh hot tea, he said jovially, “You deserve it! By the way, I thought the two of you were going to swim to Cyprus so you wouldn’t have to pay the tab!”

  But when Ghazwan tried to do just that—that is, pay the tab—the waiter made him put his money away, saying, “Come every day! You’ll help us attract more customers!”

  They were still sopping wet when they got back into his car, dying for a couple of sets of dry clothes.

  To Zain, Ghazwan’s whole person—his skin, his clothes, his everything—gave off the fragrance of the Acre Sea, Jaffa, and tears of nostalgia. He smelled like Palestine.

  “Is there some way I could pick up your scent with a camera?” Zain asked him. “I want to take a picture of your feelings, you loved-racked soul! I want other people to see your passion for your homeland, the love that emanates from every word you write. It isn’t Zain you’re madly in love with. It’s Palestine.”

  They both fell silent for a long time. Then suddenly he blurted out, “But I am in love with you, Zain. I’ve loved you since the first time we met. I fell in love with the Subki Park teenager who turned down my marriage proposal, and with the Havana Café fruitcake who rejected me for the second time!”

  After a pause, he added, “It didn’t occur to me when we were in Subki Park that I was falling in love with a time bomb that would turn into a writer who’d compete with me in my profession!”

  …

  “On second thought,” he added, “I won’t let you compete with me!”

  Her tone earnest, she replied, “Nobody could ever match your love for your country, whether in word or in deed. I ask so many questions because I lack certainty. But you know the answers, so you’re stronger than I am.”

  Zain felt herself tottering on the brink of love. But she’d be damned if she was going to fall into that hole again. She didn’t dare give in to this person that she wanted so badly to give in to, since if she did, she might lose him. Does a man always stop loving a woman when she admits she loves him back? Is that just human nature? Or do only some men do that?

  Ghazwan pulled over to the side of the road, leaned over and stole a kiss which he apparently thought people driving by wouldn’t take any notice of. But the kiss lasted a lot longer than he thought it would, and Zain was afraid some self-righteous somebody might come down on them with a bamboo cane. Actually, people in Beirut show a lot of tolerance toward both politicians and lovers. But a kiss like that on the streets of Damascus might have cost me my life, or my reputation, at least.

  The lips that had just touched hers were strewn with mines. No! I’ll be damned if I’m going to let myself get burned a second time. She had a powerful, sinking feeling she really might fall for him. Romantic love might be a mirage, but it’s more real than any other fact of life.

  As they drew apart, she thought to herself: All right, I might end up loving Ghazwan. But if I do, I’ll also end up hating him. So if he’s a huge love in the making, he’s a huge tragedy in the making, too.

  * * *

  Beirut amazed her, nay, enchanted her. With every step she took, she came upon a new sidewalk, a new side street, a new path to explore. She was captivated by the city’s simultaneous embrace of the modern and contemporary, the ancient and traditional. After lingering in spots she’d visited with her father as a little girl, she continued on her way to the AUB campus. She headed first for Bustani Hall, a girls’ dormitory, to visit her classmate Lamis who’d come down with a cold and a cough. From there she headed for Uncle Sam’s across from the AUB’s Main Gate. On her way there she climbed a staircase leading to the Medical Gate surrounded by lush greenery. She strolled alongside the wall, gazing thoughtfully at the campus’s marvelous, aged trees. The nip of Autumn had turned their leaves a rich brown and golden hue, and she thought wistfully back on the goldens of Damascus—the fallen leaves she used to go stomping through gleefully with her father in the orchards around their house in Sahat Al Midfaa. After a hike up the foothill of Mount Qasioun to Sahat Al Umawiyyin, he had once said to her, “They’re going to be expanding this square. As you can see, they’re constructing a huge building which, I’ve been told, is going to house a TV and radio station.”

  It had always been great fun to step on a pile of goldens and hear them crackle under her feet. The crunch-crunching of the dry leaves sounded joyful, as if there was nothing they wanted more than to be crushed, go back into the soil as fertilizer, then spring up again. Her father had always told her, “Nothing dies. Everything comes back to life again, but in another form.”

  Zain walked along, reminiscing about sweet times spent with her father, walking through the orchards, in the Ghouta, on his farm along the bank of the Barada River in Rayhaniya, climbing up Mt. Qasioun. But across the street she saw the present. A large sign announced that a movie theatre called the Orly would be opening soon. There was Abul Abed’s shop, which sold toasted sandwiches featuring tongue and other meats and cheeses, a luggage store, Khayyat’s Bookshop, which she’d decided to raid some day, and Faysal’s. Faysal’s was right next to an alley where, according to a sign at the alley entrance, the Sheikh Hotel was located. When she came to the Main Gate, she crossed the street to Uncle Sam’s, which served pizza, hamburgers, and other student fare. As she stepped inside, she inserted a few coins in the jukebox to listen to Edith Piaf sing, “Non, je ne regrette rien.”

  She asked Abu Zakkour, the elderly waiter, to bring her a hamburger, which she planned to devour on the spot before rushing off to her lecture with Dr. Jewell. She buried herself in her notebook to the sound of Edith Piaf ’s lovely voice crooning: “No, I don’t regret a thing, neither the good nor the bad.” She was lifting her papers off the table to make room for her food when she sensed somebody standing in front of her. Assuming it was Abu Zakkour with her order, she looked up. But instead of seeing Abu Zakkour, she saw Ghazwan instead! He seemed to have appeared out of thin air like a genie from a bottle. In the morning newspaper she’d read a newly published story of his that overflowed with his impassioned ache for Palestine, his stolen homeland. He reached out and shook her hand, and she was reminded of how a handshake can feel like an embrace. She invited him to sit down. There was something aristocratic about this handsome, hardworking, inspired freedom fighter. Abu Zakkour brought Zain’s order, and as he placed it before her, he shot Ghazwan a look of mild disapproval for his intrusion.

  “Would you like anything, sir?” he asked.

  “An espresso and a pack of Lucky Strikes, please,” Ghazwan replied.

  As Zain gulped down her hamburger, she took in Ghazwan’s handsome features with no less gusto. She mentally ran her fingertips over his face, which had a tearful look about it, whether from fatigue or infatuation. Her glance traveled from his forehead, to his eyes, to his cheeks and at last to his chin, where they settled in that endearing dimple of his. He was sitting there in silent surrender to her eyes’ loving caresses when, suddenly, she said, “I’ve got to get to class!”

  Abu Zakkour brought the coffee and the cigarettes, and as Zain got up abruptly to leave, Ghazwan got up too, taken off guard by the suddenness of her movement and the shift in her psychological wavelength. Zain stuffed a bill into Abu Zakkour’s hand to pay for both their orders. He tried to give her the change, but she said, “No, it’s yours. Thanks!”

  Ghazwan followed her out like somebody being swept away by a flood.

  “Can I see you after your class?” he asked.

  As they exited the restaurant, somebody put money in the jukebox to listen to another round of, “Non, je ne regrette rien.”

  “You’ll regret it,” she said to Ghazwan.

  “The only thing I’ll ever regret is the time I’ve spent without you since the day I first met you in Subki Park!”

  She laughed, thinking about the psychological eons that had passed since that encounter, and how much she had learned.

  As she walked
through the AUB’s Main Gate on her way to her class in Main Hall, she said, “Well, I’m sure we’ll end up meeting again and again by coincidence, the way we always do!”

  “Actually,” Ghazwan replied, still keeping pace with her, “I didn’t just happen to run into you today, and from now on I’m not letting you out of my sight. Like a good detective, I followed you in my car all the way from Choueifat to Bustani Hall. I bribed a guard to let me stay close enough to the building to see when you came out again. Then I stalked you some more you as you went strolling from the Medical Gate to Uncle Sam’s. Nothing will be able to keep me away from you, not even you! So…I’ll be waiting for you when you get out of class.”

  Zain grinned skeptically. Guys are so good at lying when they’re after something! Then the minute you give it to them, they forget all about you.

  “I’ll never be parted from you again,” Ghazwan went on, “and I won’t let you run away from me. I love you, and that’s that.”

  She didn’t believe him. But to her amazement, when she walked out of her class, he was at the door waiting for her, staring at an upside down book!

  You already know a little about what I went through, but don’t waste your time digging into my wounds. And don’t expect me to fall to pieces like some silly teenager and say, “You’re the only guy who’s ever understood me! You’re the only one I can confide in and depend on!” I know you’re as confused and tormented as I am, if not more so. You might share some of my hard times, and maybe even some of my good ones. But you aren’t my savior, and I’m not yours. We’re companions on life’s road, and that’s all. I’m not one of those girls who press flowers between the pages of their diaries, or who wear pink velvet and lace gloves drenched in tears.

  Somewhat to her chagrin, that night Zain took a blossom from a jasmine necklace Ghazwan had bought for her from a vendor on the Corniche and pressed it between the pages of her journal. What a cheesy thing to do! But he ran after me like a teenager, and was so happy to see me, I felt like his long-lost homeland!

  * * *

  Zain walked into the office of the magazine she wrote a weekly column for and handed her materials to the editorial secretary, who invited her to stay for a cup of coffee. The telephone rang. Zain was about to leave his office out of politeness when he said, “It’s for you!” So he left instead!

  “Hello?” Zain answered.

  “Don’t have any coffee there,” she heard Ghazwan’s voice say. “You’re having coffee with me at the Horseshoe Café.”

  “I can’t believe this! Is somebody paying you to keep me under 24-hour surveillance?”

  “Well, that’s one way of looking at it,” he replied. “That ‘somebody’ is my heart. I’ve made it my profession to keep you under surveillance, and my salary is a knot in the stomach! I love you, you crazy girl. And now you’re driving me crazy with your cool sensibility. As I told you before, I’ve loved you since the day I saw you sitting broken-hearted on a bench in Subki Park—a situation which, by the way, I’m going to interrogate you about you some day. I admit, I hadn’t expected you to go from being the tormented to being the tormentor. You torment me by killing my indifference towards the opposite sex. In any case, I’m waiting for us to go to the mountains, or to the sea, or to hell, or to the Horseshoe Café for a cup of coffee if you’d prefer. What matters is for us to be together.”

  “A colleague of mine needs to use the phone,” Zain broke in.

  “Come over here, then!” he shouted. “I’m calling from the grocery store across the street!”

  * * *

  “Hello? Zain? This is Fadila. I’m calling from Kuwait. Good evening!”

  “Oh, my goodness!” Zain gasped with surprised delight. “A good evening to you, sweetie!”

  Unable to contain her curiosity, Zain added, “So how did you get the school’s telephone number?”

  “Uncle Amjad gave it to me.”

  “It’s so wonderful to hear your voice! How are you?”

  “I’m really good. I’m happy with Najm, and I don’t regret a thing. I’m not pregnant, either! I thought you’d like to know!”

  And indeed, it came as a huge relief to learn that the rhino’s assault on Fadila hadn’t brought the added ordeal of pregnancy.

  Fadila went on, “I just wanted to thank you for your encouragement.”

  “Don’t worry,” Zain reassured her. “The people in Ziqaq Al Yasmin will welcome you with open arms when you go back. And if you show up with a baby and a loving husband at your side, they’ll put on a big celebration! You know how people in our old neighborhood are. When they get mad, they froth up like boiled-over milk. But after a while they forgive you, and everything settles down again.”

  Fadila’s telephone call sparked Zain’s nostalgia for Damascus and everybody she’d known there—well, almost everybody! She got in her car and went driving aimlessly around. She drove up Beirut’s sea front as far as Ayn Al Marisa. Then she drove back up the Damascus Highway as far as Dar Al Sayyad in Al Hazmiyeh. On her way to Choueifat via Aley, she tried to pass a truck, in a hurry to get back to the school before the eleven o’clock curfew. Then she noticed that the truck had a Syrian license plate.

  By this time she was so homesick. She stopped trying to pass the truck and instead just kept driving behind it, wishing she could follow it all the way to Syria.

  Trance-like, she drove behind the truck, oblivious to the exhaust fumes it was belching and the obnoxious growl of its motor. She was drawn inexorably to this unsightly truck, whose driver could go back to his house in Syria when he got off his shift. Before they got to Bhamdoun, she realized she would have to turn around and go back if she wanted to sleep at the school that night. She was dying to see her father, her grandmother, Ziqaq Al Yasmin and Qubbat Al Sayyar on Mount Qasioun. I’m not really a boulder on Mt. Qasioun. I’m just a girl crying because she misses home.

  * * *

  The network of saboteurs Lieutenant Nahi had sent to abduct Zain and take her back to Syria had been arrested. Yet since the day she heard about them, she’d developed the habit of checking her rearview mirror to make sure nobody was following her with malicious intent whenever she turned at the Choueifat intersection to head for Beirut. And she did the same thing on her way back to Choueifat every night. One evening on her way home from Beirut, she glimpsed a vehicle following her in her rearview mirror. On closer inspection, she realized that the car behind her belonged to none other than Ghazwan, who was trailing her out of love. Before arriving at the school gate, she pulled over, and so did he.

  They got out of their cars, walked toward each other, and met halfway.

  “Why do you follow me at night?” she wanted to know. “Are you jealous? You realize, don’t you, that I’ve got a school curfew to meet, and that after that time I can’t go anywhere?”

  “And you realize, do you not, that I read every word printed in my newspaper before it goes to press? You and I both know they could make another attempt at kidnapping you.”

  …

  “I know Lieutenant Nahi has it out for you. I also happen to know from my own sources why he has it out for you. He’s backed by Lieutenant Colonel Samir, whose dirty work he does for him. In short, he’s one hell of a dangerous guy.”

  …

  “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. That’s all. Unlike me, you don’t belong to the Arab Nationalist Movement, or to any organization or party that might protect you for that matter.”

  Zain reached out and placed her hand on Ghazwan’s lips. “Please,” she said, “don’t try to politicize me and recruit me into your organization. Don’t claim to love me when all you really want is to spread your views or make me into a ‘comrade’ who’ll make the coffee in your revolutionary kitchen.”

  “Actually,” he quipped, “I’d been thinking of another job for you, like highjacking airplanes, for example!”

  Then he added in a whisper, “I love you no matter what you are—unless, of course, you’re a s
py for Israel!”

  “So,” she said, “you’ve heard that I’m the Syrian Mata Hari who spies against her country for West Germany.”

  “That’s bullshit,” he scoffed. “Everybody knows that. And everybody knows why he made the accusation.”

  “Yes, it is bullshit,” she replied, her voice quivering. “But he’s got the power to ruin my life with it. He could have me thrown in prison just like that. Did you think I’d come to Beirut to run after you? I came here to rescue my freedom.”

  Trying to direct the conversation away from the minefield it had just veered into, Ghazwan said, “I’ll see you tomorrow at Uncle Sam’s after your class finishes at noon.”

  Then he rushed off before she had a chance to refuse!

  Chapter Eight

  Zain’s heart leapt for joy when she heard her father’s voice over the phone. He had called her with a happy surprise. “Hello? Zain? I’m at the Continental Hotel with Najati. We’re attending an open seminar at the invitation of the Lebanon Bar Association. We got here a little while ago, and I’ll be leaving Beirut on Tuesday evening. My lecture is scheduled for Monday, the day after tomorrow. I was hoping you could spend the weekend with me. If you don’t have other commitments, we could go to the summer houses in the mountains tomorrow.”

  As immersed as she was in her new life in Beirut, nothing could have made Zain happier than to hear the voice of her father, the one person in the world she could confide anything to without being afraid he would use her confidence to hurt or exploit her.

  “Oh! I’ll come over right now!” she exclaimed. The excitement in her voice reminded her father of the squeals of delight she used to give as a little girl when he would push her in the swing on holidays. “We could have lunch somewhere! Then we’ll spend Sunday together, and I’ll be in the front row clapping for you when you speak at the seminar on Monday. I’m on my way!”

  “No, sweetheart,” she heard her father say, his voice betraying a hint of fatigue. “Why don’t you come this evening? I’m feeling really tired right now, and I need to take a nap. I’m having some stomach pain, and I might ask you to make me a doctor’s appointment. There’s a well-known gastroenterologist here by the name of Munir Shamma`a. If I can get in to see him, I might stay on for a couple of extra days in Beirut to be treated.”