by Rafik Schami
August 31 — In the last few days everything on our street has been topsy-turvy. I couldn’t even sit down to write. The secret service man is really on edge. He told the greengrocer that experts are now analyzing the ink and the handwriting. I got scared, but Josef calmed me down. He said he knew the spy had no leads. And from my lovely handwriting, one automatically thinks of an adult and not a boy of fourteen years.
I dreamed armed police troops surrounded the block and that I was led through the streets with my hands bound and my shirt wide open. The neighbors waved to me with their handkerchiefs, and when I passed Nadia, she ran up to me and threw herself, sobbing, around my neck. The truck that would take me to prison was waiting at the end of the street; the guards trembled in fear. Suddenly Uncle Salim came riding on a white horse, and behind him came a powerful-looking man on a black one. Clearly, he was one of the thieves from Uncle Salim’s stories.
Today I don’t know whether this was a real dream or a story I made up.
September 1 — Today I made a beautiful Chinese lantern out of an orange. I removed the flesh through a hole at the top, then carved little windows in the rind and put a candle inside. Shining through the pores, the light looks as if it came from thousands of small, yellowish lamps.
September 3 — We have been deliberating over which of the other boys should be in our gang and have come to the conclusion that Ali is the only possibility.
September 4 — I asked Ali whether he wanted to join the Black Hand. He laughed at me, saying he was a tourist-catcher, not a bandit, but he could give us an assignment. His friend Georg had borrowed three pounds from him and now denied it. If we beat Georg up and got the money back, one of those three pounds would be ours.
Josef is enthusiastic at the prospect of improving our finances and wants to accept the commission, but Mahmud and I are against it. What’s between Georg and Ali is no concern of ours. We are a justice gang, not personal cops.
September 5 — Nadia was waiting for me on the corner. I like her more and more.
September 7 — “Why are you always running away?” Nadia asked me today. She had also been waiting on the corner a few days ago, but I had run past her. She had laughed so sweetly! If only she had a different father!
September 9 — Nadia wants us to meet secretly. I told her I don’t want to. How can I say I’m afraid of her father?
September 11 — For days my old man has been bitching about the bad flour.
Uncle Salim said something beautiful today. While he was telling a story from his youth, Josefs mother, sitting in our courtyard peeling potatoes, accused him of exaggerating. “You mean to say that I’m lying?” Uncle Salim asked calmly. “But falsehood is the twin sister of truth. No sooner does one appear than you can see the other; all you need are good eyes.”
The woman tittered; they didn’t understand him as I did. A fabulous remark.
September 13 — This Mahmud, nothing escapes him. Today I quickly stroked Nadia’s hair, and she blushed. That scoundrel Mahmud came tome and said some time ago he had noticed what was going on between us. If I went on publicly courting the secret service man’s daughter, he’d be happy to attend my engagement party—in jail.
September 15 — Mahmud is always asking questions! Today we saw an American movie—a great mystery. Afterward Mahmud was upset. When I asked him the reason, he said, “Hasn’t it occurred to you that all the criminals are shady characters with black hair and ugly mugs? Why is this so? Why isn’t a handsome blond man ever a criminal? Then the films would be more exciting! After five minutes I know who committed the murder, but the detective is so dumb, he needs two hours to figure it out.”
September 17 — God, was it ever painful for the neighbors today! The miller stood outside our door and yelled for my father. My mother had to say he wasn’t at home. The miller didn’t believe her, so he spoke with her as if my father were within earshot. He threatened to stop delivering flour if he didn’t get his money by next Tuesday.
Nadia thinks my poem about the flying tree is very pretty. Because of my handwriting, I could not give her a copy. All I need is for her father to see it!
September 18 — I’ll probably never see the inside of school again. At supper my father said he can’t manage alone anymore and why, after all, had he brought a boy into this world who would not help him. But I don’t want to go into the bakery business, cost what it may. When my father’s voice got really loud, Uncle Salim came up to our apartment. He said he had come to visit me, his friend. My mother was glad to see him because my father has great respect for him. Amazing that Uncle Salim is never ashamed of my friendship, even when my father, in his wrath, counts me the worst of scoundrels.
How often I wish Uncle Salim never should die.
September 20 — Today I had a good idea. I wanted the Black Hand to write a threatening letter to my father so he would not take me out of school. Mahmud wrote a few lines:
Dear Sir, Not that we have anything against you, but you simply must not take your clever son out of school It would be expressly against the will of our gang. In spite of the love we have for you, we must warn you against it!
I thought the message sounded stupid. We might as well have been inviting my old man to a party! I suggested we use stronger language and really make a threat, but Mahmud refused. He respects my father more than his own.
Josef sneered at the word clever. I told him straight out that he’s just plain jealous that I’m first in the class. We argued quite a bit.
“This gang shits,” he cried, “if all it aims to do is solve its members’ family problems.” He walked out.
I’ve had enough. A gang that doesn’t even want to protect its own members! Mahmud suggested we secede and let Josef go on by himself.
Funny, we are the best of friends, but our gang has not yet survived one autumn. How do adults do it?
September 21 — “The mosques are built of marble, while our shacks crumble and hurl their clay on our heads. The sun plays in the courtyards of the mosques, and people suffocate in damp, dark holes.” Enraged, Mahmud told me about his uncle who lives with his entire family in one room. The room has only one window, which once looked onto open space, affording the family some light and air. Now a rich sheik from Saudi Arabia has erected a mosque in the space. The high walls of the new building are so close to the houses that they block the view from all the windows. The protests of the community do no good, for the sheik has powerful friends.
For a year Mahmud’s uncle has not gone into the mosque.
September 22 — The street merchants always extol their wares in a splendid way, which is sometimes also comical. The masters among them are the sellers of fruits and vegetables.
“A hiccup after every bite! Quinces!”
“In you nests the dew, Figs!”
“My tomatoes painted their cheeks and went for a stroll!”
“The bees will go pale with envy! Honey melons!”
Only the tarragon, which we get cheaply and fresh and have on our table at lunch every day, comes off badly.
“Tarragon, you traitor!”
Why traitor? I asked my mother, and she said that tarragon grows not only where you plant it but also creeps under the earth and turns up in your neighbors’ field.
All the merchants exaggerate. Not only do they seem to care for their fruits conscientiously; they even seem to know them personally. Some of them grossly overstate all the things they have stuck in the ground on behalf of their mangy heads of lettuce.
The man who sells fish is the true master of embellishment. Over and over again he talks about a huge fish he once caught in a distant sea. It irritates Uncle Salim.
“The fish weighed 120 kilos and 150 grams!” the fish seller reported. It’s not the 120 kilos but the ridiculous 150 grams that bother my old friend!
“This I don’t believe!” Uncle Salim says. “It was at most 120 kilos and 10 grams on the scale!”
The two strange old birds argued over it
a long time.
September 25 — Today we gave it to an old tourist. He came strolling down our street with his wife and wanted to photograph us—all ten of us kids. We grinned into the camera. He took several shots, while fat Georg ran around wildly with Hassan. The stupid fool pulled out a dollar bill and told Georg that the money would be his if he knocked Hassan to the ground. Georg doesn’t understand a word of English, but upon seeing the green bill immediately figured out what the guy wanted. For a piaster, Georg would even throw his mother to the ground! He was on the verge of running after slightly built Hassan again, but Josef was quicker. He grabbed Georg around the neck and cried out to the tourist in English, “No! I’ll give two dollars to watch your wife box your ears. Then I’ll take the picture!”
Josef lunged for the man’s camera. The man’s wife laughed heartily. In Arabic I explained to Georg why the man looked so appalled. The idiot was so pleased that he rammed into the man’s side and ran off. The man staggered around and had a hard time keeping our dirty hands away from his camera and out of his trouser pockets. Cursing, he ran down the street.
September 26 — Today Georg made me lose my salary (all four pounds). That swine! Gone, my money and my dream of going to the movies.
I was standing outside his door, raving about the film I wanted to see.
“Do you want to double your money?” he suddenly asked me.
“What kind of question is that!” I replied. “Of course!” Idiot that I am.
“You know Toni, the gynecologist’s son. He likes to bet and has a lot of money. He’s got bundles of bills in his pocket, so what difference does the loss of a pound make to him? Eh? None whatsoever. A stupid boy. He says he can guess all the cards without touching them. Before your very eyes he buys a new deck of cards. You shuffle them; then he looks at the pile and tells you what the top ten cards are. He claims things always go his way.”
“And what happens when they don’t?”
“If he gets one wrong, you win. I don’t know whether he’s telling tales or whether what the others say is true,” the lousy creep whispered, knowing exactly how to suck me in.
“What do the others say?”
“That his father gives him X-ray pills so his eyes can even see through walls.”
“Rubbish! But tell me, why don’t you double your own money?”
“All I have is a few piasters, and Toni won’t take a bet under one pound,” he said.
“Good, let’s go!” I had become curious about this dunce.
“But what’s in it for me? After all, I’m the one who told you about it. Three piasters for every pound you win?”
“One piaster. No more. It’s my money that’s at risk.”
Georg accepted, and we walked to Olive Lane. There the fat hippo Toni stood at the edge of a little playground. But he didn’t want to play. He said he’d just lost three times and now he didn’t feel like it.
Georg implored him, and Toni finally agreed under one condition, that I pay for the next deck of cards. To myself I thought, what difference does buying the cards make if I win? So I went to the shop around the corner and bought a deck of cards for one pound.
I really must be uniquely stupid. I could kick myself. No ram in the world is so dumb as to also bring the butcher a knife.
I opened the pack and shuffled the cards for a long time; then I laid the neat, tidy stack on one of the stairs. I gave Georg one pound to hold, and Toni drew a thick wad of bills out of his pocket and also handed Georg a bill.
“Withdrawing from the bet counts as a loss,” Toni said, as though he were an old hand. Then he gazed at the pile and whispered, “Queen.”
I turned the card over, and in fact it was a queen.
Again the hippo concentrated, and I thought, now Lady Luck will deal him a blow for his arrogance. But my fingers went stiff when I turned over a jack, just as Toni had predicted. Ten times he guessed right, and I lost the pound.
A donkey avoids the pit it has once fallen into, but I? I stumbled even more willfully into the next catastrophe. I raised the stakes to two pounds. Toni invited me to buy new cards, but since he hadn’t laid a finger on the old ones, I didn’t want to. I made Georg stand farther away from me. Some people bring bad luck. I wanted to know if that’s what the problem was. I shuffled the cards thoroughly; then I laid them on the step. Again Toni guessed correctly ten times.
I sat there as if paralyzed. Georg excused himself and disappeared, and Toni trotted away, content. I was shaking with rage, at Georg and above all at myself.
I walked home slowly. En route I saw Georg licking a big ice cream cone. He smiled peculiarly and quickly looked away.
When I told Mahmud about the X-ray pills, he laughed and told me what an idiot I was. He explained that the place where I bought the deck sells only marked cards. On the back of each one, in the chaos of the colorful pattern, is a small sign that tells what each card is. Mahmud owns a deck of these cards. After a short time I also knew how to distinguish the thirteen different signs from one another.
Mahmud wanted to beat up Georg right away, but after a while we came up with a better plan. A completely diabolical plan! Georg won’t notice a thing. All we need is five pounds. Mahmud and I are broke just now, so we’ll see if Uncle Salim will advance us the sum.
September 27 — We’ve paid them back for what they did to me. We robbed Toni outright. He’ll never speak to Georg again.
Uncle Salim was splendid and gave us the five Syrian pounds with no questions asked. Mahmud flashed the bills under Georg’s eyes until Georg lured him to Toni. Mahmud followed him to the playground like a pious lamb.
Once there, he went to the shop, but all he bought was a pack of chewing gum. He took a fresh deck of unmarked cards out of his trouser pocket and returned to the playground.
Mahmud opened the pack of cards and cried out loudly, so all the children within earshot could hear, “You know, I’m absolutely positive you’ll lose, so I’m betting five pounds. If you’re not a coward, you’ll put up five as well.”
Smiling, Toni accepted the bet. Mahmud shuffled the cards, beaming at Georg, who looked a bit unsettled. “Come on, be my good luck charm,” he said, kissing Georg on the cheek. The boys in the playground drew nearer and ogled the ten pounds Georg held in his hand. Mahmud put the cards on the step.
Toni looked for a long time.
“Well, X-ray Eye, will you be done soon?” Mahmud taunted him.
Finally Toni said, “Two of hearts.”
Mahmud turned it over.
It was the ten of diamonds.
“Let’s have that money, Good Luck Charm!” Mahmud bellowed and snatched the cards away before the confused Toni could pick them up. “I’ll give you one more chance, but you may not touch the cards.”
“One moment, please,” the hippopotamus pleaded.
“So, now you’re scared, eh? No, if you’re not a sissy, come up with ten pounds!”
“Ten pounds!” the others gasped.
Toni preferred to go into the shade, claiming the sun had blinded him.
“If you like, but now that you’ve accepted the bet, I just want to stress you can no longer back out!”
Toni put up the ten pounds and was defeated by the first card. Mahmud kissed Georg and gave him a piaster.
“That’s what we arranged, isn’t it?” he called loudly.
Georg seemed about to remind Mahmud that his cut was one piaster per pound and not per fifteen, but he swallowed hard when he saw the look on Toni’s face.
We bought Uncle Salim two packets of the very finest tobacco for his water pipe. It cost three pounds a pack. The remaining nine pounds we divided among us.
September 28 — When I told Uncle Salim the whole story today, I remarked that I felt like examining every would-be friend with a magnifying glass before I called him a real friend. Uncle Salim shook his head.
“And if inspection reveals you’ve made three hundred mistakes? Seek out new friends, and don’t be suspicious!
” He sucked on his water pipe. “You know, my friend, it’s the poor in this world who invented friendship. The powerful have no need of it. They have their power. Seek out friends, and let the magnifying glass alone. Using it could be the biggest mistake of your life: You will live alone.”
September 29 — I ran through the fields with Nadia today. I gave her a kiss, and we laughed about our parents.
I gave two pounds to Leila. And she’s already spent it.
Today was also my last day at the cabinetmaker’s. Working with him was a lot of fun, and now I know how to handle wood. Not a single window in our apartment sticks anymore.
Tomorrow evening I want to go with Mahmud to see the film at the new cinema in town.
October 10 — A few days ago we accompanied a very congenial young man from Luxembourg to the airport. His name was Robert, and he was twenty-one years old. Not only did he steal our hearts but those of our mothers as well.
Hunting for tourists, Josef picked him up in front of the church and attempted to ensnare him with his usual spiel, saying, “My mother is sick, and I have to feed the entire family. My uncle makes lovely wooden boxes and copper plates,” and everything else he had by heart. But Robert spoke to him in Arabic, saying he did not want to buy either boxes or plates. He had no money, and he was extremely hungry.
Josef invited him to eat, and they liked each other at once. We got to meet him, too, and fetched his things from the hotel. Everyone took him in for a few days, my family included. My father said the door should always be open to foreigners and that Robert could share my room with me. My sister was permitted to crawl into our parents’ bed during this time. Leila didn’t like Robert and was always asking him when he would leave. Robert, good soul that he was, laughed at her and replied, “Never!”