The Diamond Setter

by Moshe Sakal

  “Is that you?” But he knew it was, having also noticed that the girl in the picture had one eye that was darker than the other. “Who are they?” he asked, although he could already imagine.

  “Those are Rafael and Adela.”

  In the picture, Rafael sat on his chair with a stern expression. His brow was furrowed and his lips pursed, with one hand on his knee and the other in Laila’s hand. Rafael’s wrist was folded in a gentle position that contrasted with his severe look. On Laila’s other side sat Adela, her shoulders slightly hunched, with a questioning, somewhat suspicious face, small black eyes, fairly short-cropped hair, one hand on her knee and the other in Laila’s hand.

  “Look how we were dressed!” Laila said to Fareed. “With sleeveless dresses, and above the knee, like they wear in Paris. And our heads were bare, you don’t see that anymore.”

  Fareed studied the women and man holding hands, and he suddenly perceived a tension, a restlessness: Adela’s hunched shoulders, Rafael’s lost look, Laila biting her lip.

  “Why did Adela give you that diamond?” he asked after a few moments. He lit another cigarette.

  “It was the last time we met. She wanted me to keep it for her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she was afraid to have it, but she didn’t dare give it to anyone else.”

  “What was she afraid of?”

  “What can I tell you, Fareed? She was a complicated woman. And she loved me. Maybe she wanted me to have a souvenir.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “I think so.”

  “What do you mean, you think so?”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “What about Rafael, did you love him, too?” He spoke candidly. It was hard for him to imagine the situation, but ultimately he felt he did understand. One thing still bothered him: “If you say Adela loved you, then how can you explain the fact that she gave you a cursed diamond?”

  “I didn’t believe in that.”

  “But Adela believed in the curse, didn’t she?”

  “I think she did.”

  “After all, you told me yourself that she spoke to you explicitly about the diamond’s curse and said she was afraid to keep it.”

  “Yes, but I thought it was nonsense.”

  “Maybe she gave it to you because she actually wanted to hurt you?”

  “Are you mad?”

  “Maybe. I mean, after she gave it to you, you had to leave Yafa.”

  “At that point we didn’t have to leave yet. We decided to go away until things calmed down. It was only a few months later that people started leaving Yafa because they had to.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that you left your home after meeting Rafael and Adela in Aley, and then you weren’t allowed to go back.”

  Laila looked at Fareed as though she were seeing him for the first time as he really was. “That’s a very unkind thing to say.”

  “What?!”

  “The things you just insinuated, Fareed. It’s not kind. I just told you some very personal things. Maybe you don’t understand this sort of matter—” She stopped short because his look told her he was all too familiar with the things she spoke of.

  “No, I’m glad you told me,” Fareed said. “But this issue bothers me. Would you rather I just listen without saying anything?”

  Laila was lost in thought. Perhaps she regretted being so open with him. But it was too late. Now he knew. Although in fact, he didn’t know everything. And she felt she had to defend Adela and Rafael, or at least try to distract Fareed from the diamond. She told him about their last night in Aley, about the pregnancy in Yafa and the difficult birth of Shaker, his father, in their new home in Damascus, in 1949.

  Fareed was confused. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because you need to know.”

  “But why?” Fareed wanted to know and yet he didn’t.

  “You already understand,” Laila said, and her voice was low now, “that the baby I gave birth to in Damascus…”

  “My father.”

  “Yes, your father. Well, his real father was…”

  “I don’t believe you.” Fareed got up and sat down again, trying to maintain his composure. “This is a made-up story, a thousand and one nights.”

  “You could look at it that way,” she said, and tried to take his hand. “In fact maybe it’s better you did. It doesn’t matter anymore, and maybe I shouldn’t have told you. But I’ve kept silent for so long.”

  Fareed leaned back. After a moment he stood up. “Who else knows about this?”

  “No one, only you.”

  “Mother doesn’t know?”

  “No.”

  “And Father?”

  “No.”

  “That diamond…” Fareed’s voice was low and ominous. “Where is it now?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I want to know.”

  “I’ve already decided that when the time comes, you will get the diamond.”

  “Me? But why?”

  “Because that is what I want.”

  “But where is the diamond now, Grandma?” He turned to her and his voice cracked.

  “Fareed,” she tried to calm him, “everything in life has its time.”

  She was fearful upon seeing him so upset and deeply regretted the things she had told him. But it was too late. She bowed her head in defeat. Her shoulders shook. She hardly noticed Fareed standing up. He leaned over and was about to kiss her forehead, but at the last moment he turned around. He walked inside and went to his grandmother’s bedroom. Laila heard him open the closet drawers and dig around, and imagined him finding the box with the blue diamond. She did not move and did not say a word.

  3

  Adela and Rafael did not speak of it between themselves. In the months they spent at home in Damascus, everything proceeded ostensibly as usual: Each morning they led the animals from the farm to Adela’s family’s slaughterhouse. The shochets slaughtered the beasts with a sharp knife, and at midday they sold chunks of red meat to their customers. The poor young men whose job was to inflate the sheep carcasses with air in preparation for skinning walked back and forth between the butchers and the slaughterhouse with blood congealed on their lips and glazy eyes. Every day Rafael went to work at the Bourse, ate lunch with his friends in the souk, and went home to Adela in the evening.

  Laila sent them a letter from Yafa every week. They read her letters together, and then sat down to read them again separately. Adela shut herself in her bedroom for a long time, her fingers still damp from cooking. Her eyes delved into Laila’s words, and she tried to decipher the meaning behind them, or perhaps to imbue them with what she longed to find.

  Laila did not explicitly mention the date of their next meeting in her letters, although she did on rare occasions admit to missing them both, and said she thought of them often. Adela was not sure if one could really miss two people equally, and she wondered if Laila truly thought of them both, or if perhaps she sometimes loved one and hated the other, yearned for one and not the other.

  She did not dare discuss Laila with Rafael. She loved him now even more than before, and felt she had enough love inside herself for both Rafael and Laila. Neither of them was deprived, and in fact quite the opposite: The more she loved, the greater her capacity to contain the love, and she filled up with love as one can become filled with memories.

  This is how it began: One summer, Laila traveled to Aley with her mother, Suad. The day after they arrived, she came upon Rafael with his wife, Adela, in the café. Rafael was resting his head on his hand. A newspaper was spread out beneath his saucer, and he read comfortably while he sipped coffee. Adela sat opposite him in an airy light blue dress. Her hair was curly and black. She sat straight up and looked far away. Rafael said something to her, and she looked back at him and answered.

  What were they talking about? Laila wondered. She longed to go over to them but she was embarrassed. Finally her curiosity got the
better of her. She got up and went over. Rafael looked up at her, said hello without any apparent embarrassment, and introduced Adela. Rafael could not conceal his smile when the two women shook hands.

  He asked for the check and paid, and the three walked out and strolled the streets side by side. Rafael told Laila that his father had died shortly before their wedding, and so the glorious celebration they had planned was canceled and instead they had a modest meal. He told her about the relatives, especially those who came from Turkey and Iraq, and about his aunt Gracia who sang traditional wedding piyutim for the young couple.

  While he talked, Adela looked at Laila. A breeze blew in and ruffled her hair. She swiftly ran her fingers through it and braided it loosely. Laila smiled.

  Rafael kept talking about the Bourse and his in-laws’ slaughterhouse, about Adela who refused to eat meat (“Only vegetables and chicken for her, she feels sorry for the cows”), about the days of war in Damascus and the shocking events in distant Europe. Eventually they reached the hotel. Rafael looked at Adela and smiled with his bright eyes. He told her to go up to their room and promised to join her soon. Adela did not object. Perhaps she was happy to be alone. She said goodbye to Laila and lightly touched her shoulder. Rafael kissed Adela on the lips and she turned and left.

  Rafael and Laila walked toward the place they had first met, a few years earlier, when Rafael had come with his aunt Gracia and Laila with her father, Sami. Time seemed to have stood still in the café, with its lush garden and tree-shaded benches, where lemonade was served in tall glasses garnished with thick sprigs of fresh mint.

  “How was your journey?” Rafael asked when they sat down.

  “So-so,” Laila replied. “It was hot on the train and I was nauseous from the dry air. Perhaps also from the excitement. How was it for you and your wife?”

  Her emphasis did not escape him. “It was a pleasant journey. We were happy to get out of Damascus for a bit. The last few months have been too busy.”

  There was another silence. Laila looked down at the ground. Rafael studied her expression and tried to read in her eyes the way her life would unfold without him, far away from him.

  When he had first met Laila, he had noticed something that made her face unique: One of her eyes was blue and the other brown. It was clear to him that these eyes suited her capricious nature, a very stable foundation tinged with delusion and changeability. How different was Adela, with her black hair and small black eyes and the constant skepticism and judgment on her face, as well as unspoken mockery.

  Laila was as curious as a little girl, although her life was already sketched out almost completely: She was about to marry, she would have a family with Abed in Yafa, she would probably soon be a mother, in charge of a household and the children’s education. They knew nothing yet of the nomadic life in store for her and Abed.

  To overcome his awkwardness, Rafael asked a lot of questions about Laila’s fiancé: What sort of man was he, what kind of doctor did he want to be, how did he treat her, did he care for her well? And how many children did they want? And what were things like in Yafa, after years of violence? What did they think about the situation between the Zionists and the Arabs?

  Laila gave Rafael a distant look. She was clearly not especially bothered by the political situation. Her feet were planted in the present so firmly that she did not believe things could change, even though in recent years it was impossible to deny that violence was looming over the entire land. Her thoughts were preoccupied by completely different matters. Burning with curiosity, she asked Rafael about Adela. What sort of woman was she? Did she like summer or winter? What was her loveliest quality, in his opinion, and what sort of relationship did she have with her mother and father? And how had their wedding night been?

  Rafael answered all her questions, and then there was another silence. Was she satisfied? It seemed that his forthright answers were paradoxically making her restless. She wanted to get up and say goodbye, but just then Rafael gently touched her hand, and she fell back against the back of the bench.

  He took out a little box from his pocket and looked around to make sure none of the café dwellers was watching. Rafael opened the box, and Laila beheld a diamond with a bluish tone that danced in the sunlight. “I’ve never seen such a beautiful diamond,” she said after a long silence. She studied Rafael’s face, which turned grave. He began to say something, but after a few truncated syllables he fell into a heavy silence again. When he finally opened his mouth and began telling his story, Laila gaped. This was not what she was expecting. Instead of explaining the origins of the diamond, he began telling a strange tale about his aunt Gracia, his mother’s sister. Rafael wished to know if there were chanteuses in Yafa, too, but he discovered that Laila did not even know the word. He paused awkwardly but continued his story and allowed her to read between the lines.

  Back when Gracia was a young girl, Rafael explained, she was known for her delightful voice and wonderful singing. Rich men came from near and far to hear her sing and enjoy her beauty and company. Gracia became famous throughout Syria, Rafael recounted with a hint of pride, and one day, “You won’t believe this, she even met the Turkish sultan!”

  Laila looked at him in astonishment.

  “The Turkish sultan bought the diamond in 1901,” Rafael continued, ignoring Laila’s dubious look. “But the diamond you see here is actually only part of the original one. It came to Europe from India in the seventeenth century. The sultan paid almost fifty thousand dollars for it.”

  When he finished telling the story of how the diamond ended up being gifted to his aunt Gracia, Laila carefully took the box, removed the diamond, and held it in her hand to examine it.

  The next day she dined with Rafael and Adela in one of the restaurants that looked out on the mountains. After dinner they invited her to their room. The two women sat on the sofa. Adela inhaled the scent of the unfamiliar body — the body that later, when its limbs were so familiar, she would find traces of in every blouse or pillow or even walking down an alleyway. And then her fingers were in Laila’s hand. The windows, veiled with yellow curtains, were open to the valley. Rafael sat on a wooden chair to the side. His face was flushed after a morning spent out in the sun, and he stared at the curtains. Then his eyes rested on the two women. They asked him to come over and sit with them. Together, they asked him. And he came.

  * * *

  At night Laila lay between them on the wide bed. Her head rested on Rafael’s chest, and he felt his heartbeats imprinting her cheek. Adela lay with her back to them, facing the window, with the back of her foot on Laila’s shin.

  That long night sustained Rafael’s thoughts for a whole week. Over and over again he remembered the long hours the three of them spent in each other’s arms. He looked forward to their next meeting but did not count the days. It was not the anticipation of a man in love but rather a vaguely distorted sense of time, as though the three of them existed in a time and space that were measured differently. The anticipation of fulfilling his passion imbued him with pleasure but also instilled in him a constant disquiet, and his spirit — which he had controlled so finely in the past — was uneasy most of the time. His mood swung back and forth like a pendulum: happiness, dulled senses, restlessness. And above all — yearning.

  In the morning, Adela leaned over Laila, who lay curled up under the sheet with her head beneath a pillow, uncovered her cheek, and kissed her. “Are you awake, Laila?”

  “Yes,” came a low, steely voice from under the pillow.

  “How are you? Did you sleep well?”

  “I slept all right, but I’m not all right today,” Laila answered.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m asking for trouble today.”

  Adela looked questioningly at Rafael, who lay on the other side of the bed watching them. “What do you mean?” she asked, trying to keep her composure.

  “We’ll see,” came the answer from under the pillow.

  Adela pulled awa
y. She covered her eyes with her hands and wondered what she would do today.

  A few moments later, Rafael got up and went to the bathroom, and Laila said to Adela, “Rafael showed me the blue diamond.”

  “Did you tell anyone you saw it?”

  “No.”

  “Very good. No one must know about it. It’s a secret, you know.”

  “I know, and I won’t say a word.”

  “I’ll tell you something: I don’t like that diamond.”

  “But don’t you think it’s beautiful?”

  “It’s very beautiful,” Adela said. “There’s no denying that. But its story…It’ll bring us nothing but trouble, that diamond.”

  “If you’re talking about the curse, then you should know that I don’t believe in that kind of nonsense.” Laila grinned. “That’s a Turkish superstition.”

  “How can you not believe it? They cut off the head of the queen of France in the guillotine — don’t you believe that? And the king of England, are you saying he had a good life? And the Turkish sultan — did you hear what happened to him in the end?”

  “I don’t believe that stuff,” Laila said ponderously. “What can I tell you? A thousand and one nights…You can’t blame a little stone for every trouble.”

  Adela turned to look at Rafael, who had come back to the room with a glass of yansoon. He sat down by the window and sipped quietly.

  The following night was long, and Adela had disturbing dreams. All three shared the bed again, and again she saw on her right Rafael’s large back, rising and falling to the rhythm of his slow breaths, and to her left Laila’s body huddled against the wall, her head buried between two pillows and one foot reaching back, as if probing for something. All night long Adela tossed and turned in the gap between the two, afraid of the moment when dawn would come.

  As soon as the sky took on a pale white color, the horrible screeching of the chickens came from beneath the window, and it grew louder and louder, as though the dawn were about to wring their necks. When the sky was finally captured by a pale blue, the chickens were spent. Between the bushes lay a dozen eggs as an offering, their shells soiled with mud.