7.30 am. Refreshed after an excellent night. Too early to ring his father. Abdul will be at his old friends’ in Hama, the Minas, who are not yet bugged. So first he’ll have an espresso downstairs and, to celebrate his exile, a pain au chocolat which the Lebanese do so well. Then find a public phone. Then off to enquire about today’s schedule for coaches to Beirut. He makes his way to the reception hall. The shutters are still closed. Wilting furniture, a couple of kids playing table football in the dim light.
Piercing screeches startle him. Not the kids. Cats. Probably scavenging in uncollected rubbish – not like Syria, where the firm hand of dictatorship keeps the streets clean. The irony makes him cough. From the gloom behind the reception desk two men emerge, moving onto him, in military uniforms – whose he can’t tell, though they look familiar. There is not enough light. He holds his breath. An accented voice shouts at him in English.
‘You British passport. You no look British.’
‘My parents were Turkish but I was born in Cambridge, England. I am a British businessman.’
‘Where you live?’ asks the arrogant mouth.
‘Leaford, Britain.’
‘What business?’
‘Textiles, carpets. I’ve come back from Syria where I have my business partners. I can show you my cards and… theirs as well.’
The man consults the acolyte. Khalid, displaying a feigned ignorance of Arabic, retreats slowly towards the door. A roar drags him back.
‘What you name? Erdal Neyzi? No! You real name? We check you at border.’ He grabs Khalid by the arm. ‘What you business?’
An immense sadness overwhelms him. No divine intervention in Al-Faour. Were they tipped off? Walid? Damn them all!
The officer slices up the passport, his lifeline, with a pen-knife, while the sidekick searches him, down and up. His body stiffens into a corpse. Finding nothing on him, and nothing in the luggage he left in his room, their suspicions are confirmed.
‘Why you no phone? Why you no address book? Why wrong business cards? Why 10,000 dollars? You do bloody arms? Who you work for? Hezbollah?’
They change tack, in Arabic and French now, voices suave with threats.
‘Well, well, brother, qui es-tu? What prayers do you say? On va t’aider. We prefer business with Christians.’
Silence.
‘Your name? Brother, your name.’
The bully, his face too close, bears his teeth, growling insults: “pig, pig”. That black uniform! The badge on the beret! Seema’s tormentors. The flashback sparks off seconds of pure madness as he jumps for the throat, squeezes it, victorious, yelling, ‘Got you, bastard!’ Trained in self-defense, the officer tears the lunatic off, pins him down. The colleague takes over with two clean hand chops that send him crashing onto the floor tiles, head first. Khalid’s howling in agony triggers a flow of ardent abuse and another vengeful kick to the groin to suppress the “pimp”. The team turns the half-conscious bundle over and ties the arms at the back with professional knots before getting back inside to celebrate the arrest, well-orchestrated and justified, with a Beirut beer handed out free by the appreciative barman.
Long since inured to violence, the little boys abandon their football and skip over the body into the sunlit street.
Returning from the mosque, Dr Abdul Al-Sayed turns the corner from the grand Al-Hassad Square, buzzing with traffic and edged by swish cafés wedged between sinister municipal buildings, to enter a tangle of quiet pedestrian lanes lined with semi-derelict shops and graffiti. There is Abu Reen, as always at this hour, sucking a tacky-looking nargile in front of the only inhabited block of flats, a sad confused man he has no wish to cultivate tonight. An Alawite who rabbits on. They exchange their evening salutations.
‘Masa Al-Khayr.’
‘Masa An-Noor.’
And Abdul hurries past, shamed by stories dishonouring the Sunni community. Years ago in a neighbourhood, Sunni or Shiite, depending on his spleen, the caretaker saw a banner barring the street saying “Access forbidden to Alawites and dogs”. That was before Hafez Al-Assad shifted power in favour of the Alawites.
Putting down the white plastic bag full of mangos he had carefully prodded one by one at his favourite stall, Abdul fumbles in his baggy trousers for the heavy key that opens the wrought-iron enclosure surrounding the Al-Sayed mausoleum, built in 1786. He reads the date every week, praying, talking to himself, stroking the slabs; feeling close to the generations of imams, scholars and doctors who made Hama’s reputation as a place of Sunni learning. He steps in and freezes, glimpsing an image from way back when living in Leaford: his wife’s grave desecrated with human excrement. He weeps. The tears bring back his grandfather sent by the Turks, Arab cannon fodder for Gallipoli, he never recovered; his other martyr, Seema, her body mixed with Lebanese soil in September 1982. His wife, unable to bear the tragedy, buried in the land of unbelievers in 1994.
He talks to his dead aloud. ‘My dearest, I will leave for Mecca as soon as our son returns.’
He also prays silently for his three daughters and their families, so that the living will enjoy peace and honour, in Hama and in Britain. He thanks Allah for protecting his enduring friends, the Franklins.
He prays aloud for his beloved granddaughter, the well-named Zaida, the Fortunate One. ‘The All-Living, give her the grace to bloom as a Damascene rose in an English garden, and the strength to be guarded from evil. Allah the merciful, take my life and spare my precious Khalid. A compassionate son and father. A courageous man with the heart of a falcon, whose body deserves to be buried in this grave under your protection. Alongside his father’s.’
To protect his son, a traveller in this world, he chants Ayat Al-Kursi, his favourite Koranic prayer. ‘Allah – there is no deity except Him, the Ever-Living, the Sustainer of all existence. Neither drowsiness overtakes Him nor sleep. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. Who is it that can intercede with Him except by His permission?’
His throat is dry. He has the mangos and, of course, his pocket knife. With assured slashes, he slices the fruit into two halves, ready to cross-hatch the pulp swiftly so as not to waste the sweet juice.
There are fatal shots. Blood spills from the neck onto the yellow fruit. He falls forward, kneeling towards Mecca, furious, demented with the burning pain thumping through his lungs, hallucinating a rose garden for a final reunion.
There will be no investigation concerning the disappearance of the scholarly Dr Abdul Al-Sayed. Abu Reen rolls his eyes, flicks the dandruff from his cloak, swears to Omar Al-Sayed that he saw nothing in the darkest night, heard nothing after the two gun shots. ‘Nothing at all. How could I, a meek man like me, half-blind?’ He spits at Omar’s well-shod feet. ‘Death is liberation.’
Epilogue
For Those Who Like Tidy Ends
The Franklins learned of the Al-Sayeds’ tragedy in long letters from Aunt Halima. Her saintly father was among the heroes who would never return home. After discrete enquiries, her relatives concluded that he had been murdered – by whose cursed hands they would never know. ‘Allah, forgive us for not burying our dearest father!’ There followed more devastating blows: to insult their dead, the family mausoleum was bulldozed and Uncle Omar was jailed for three months for facilitating his nephew’s escape.
Then, a second letter. “Rejoice, Zaida, your father is alive. Alhamdulillah…” Snatching the letter from her mother, Zaida runs around the William Morris room, laughing. ‘All praise is due to Allah alone. You see, I’m not forgetting!’ She reads on. “The bad news”… Oh?… “my friends, is that he has been tracked down to Roumieh, a Lebanese prison”… No! No!... where living conditions are poor.”’ She collapses into Virginia’s arms, in tears, whispering, ‘Mum, can’t we be a normal family?’
‘We’ll look after him, darling! We know where he is, we won’t let him starve. Aunt Halima, look here,
has already brought fresh food and clothes. We’ll send him lots of money to—’
‘How, Mum? How? God doesn’t help much, does he?’
Her mother strokes her hair down. ‘Look, Halima is right. There’s good news. Uncle Omar has been released already! He’ll be invaluable; he has enough connections to get Khalid out! With Halima he’ll find out how to deal with the guards, how to get him the things he needs, and sheets of paper so he can write to us.’
‘Maybe they’ve seen him already!’
‘We can help from our end by getting legal advice relevant to Lebanon. And, treasure, I’m going to alert Marianne and Ian. Let’s see what they say.’
Advised by Amnesty, Marianne hires an experienced Syrian lawyer who confirms Khalid’s true identity to a Lebanese court. The judge, convinced by the prisoner’s testimony that the Assad regime murdered his father and forced him to flee, acknowledges Khalid’s status as a political prisoner. A generous move.
For Walter, Syria is proving fatal. While his family feeds on every grain of hope, Walter has no illusion about Khalid’s wretched life. Is it his fault? And Abdul’s murder? If they had all been more trusting, the friend he vowed to cherish would still be alive. Sinking into depression, his interest in the clinic wanes. There are other inexorable shifts. Patients, short of funds, fall away. Fewer practitioners register for Walter’s long courses, preferring to train quickly in more profitable therapies which only deal with tangible bodies, not the person as a whole. A sure sign of mediocrity.
Undeterred by her husband’s dismal decline, combative as ever, Gwen does her utmost to resist bankruptcy. She is forced to borrow at high rates until finally the business has to be sold. Robbed of his craft, plagued by guilt, Walter’s heart gives way and he dies of desolation.
Soon after the clinic’s closure, Virginia is hired as an NHS consultant to practise the Eight Principles; but to appease her father, wherever he might be, she resorts on the quiet to the Five Elements for her more difficult cases.
Supporting Zaida through tidal swings of grief and rage, Virginia and Gwen work smoothly together to wrap up the business. Gwen, free of her husband’s bemused glances, indulges her passion. The unused space in the clinic is repopulated by her growing bird collections. Should she open it up to the public as a local attraction?
‘Go ahead, Mother, you’re the boss.’
On the order of the court, Khalid is released from “the indignities of Roumieh prison”, as he writes, and is moved to a better-equipped camp where political prisoners are allowed to buy their own food from outside. Eager to help the friend whose downfall he provoked, Ian moves mountains to set up a solidarity fund to top up Khalid’s miserable allowance from the International Organisation for Migration.
The camp swarms with spies, happy to gain credit by alerting the Syrian authorities to Khalid’s accusations. Damascus retaliates, identifying him as an Islamist Jihadist, an indelible tag certain to block his application for permanent residence in Britain. Another request to enter Fortress Britain on a temporary visa as the father of a British child is also rejected after months of waiting.
Among fellow prisoners there is whispered talk of fanciful escape to Turkey or Egypt by buying the conscript jailers. Khalid ignores these pipedreams. “My spirit is not yet full of dust. Every hour of the day I wonder why my life has been preserved. My dearest friends, my time here is not wasted. Together we share our stories of injustice, courage and fury. I want to come home a stronger man, free from either the hope or the hatred that, for some, are more destructive than prison itself. Please send me history books of the Middle East. I mean recent history. And more poetry from all around the world.”
In March 2011, pro-democracy protesters take to the streets of Darea, Aleppo and Damascus demanding the fall of the regime. Massive crackdowns by the security forces draw more people into the conflict. This very month, Khalid is allowed his first visitors from abroad. The news sets off a bitter phone conversation between Marianne and Virginia. They should both go over Easter, urges Marianne. Virginia refuses.
‘You’re frightened?’
‘No, it’s not that. How can I see him? He’s bound to act… I mean… the hero…the victim!’
‘Well, he is a victim of history!’
‘Big words, Marianne! But face it – in his letters he takes no responsibility for what happened. Unlike Ian.’
‘You forget… censeurs read the letters.’
‘He was a fool and still is! Why believe in Bashar Al-Assad’s promises about reforms? Why go back? The Al-Sayeds were naive. Their connections melted away one by one! He was arrogant, crazy! How could he bring human rights to that place?
‘Really?’
‘It’s tragic. Ian beats his chest, but not Khalid… He kept Zaida when he was in danger. No, I can’t go, I want some explanation – why didn’t he get out of all that shit when he still could? Was that a way of punishing me? So selfish!’
‘Don’t be ridicule!’
‘Marianne, don’t mock, it’s the truth.’
After the phone call, Marianne shudders at the tormented story of Virginia and Khalid. There will be no reconciliation, that is ghastly enough, but more appalling is the prospect of Khalid remaining interned for years in Lebanon. Equally deplorable is a future where Zaida’s yearning for the fusion between her two worlds will never be fulfilled. Mission impossible. Deeply distressed, she paces the terrace, trying to beat off the nightmare. Indifferent to her turmoil, the chateau’s peacocks strut about with the arrogance of a Ritz butler. She can travel without Virginia. Why such venom? She kicks a bird out of her way. She has not seen Khalid for years. How will they get on? Will he be disagreeable, bitter, vindictive? Halima suggests otherwise, but is she sugaring the pill?
A month later, Marianne is glad to report back. How much she admired Khalid’s resilience and integrity whenever he argued against those prisoners drawn to more violence and revenge.
In years to come, after her retirement from Médecins Sans Frontières, Zaida Franklin-Al-Sayed will publish in Arabic and English the collected works of Abdul and Khalid Al-Sayed. Words as soft as snowflakes, hard as courage.
About
Yvette Rocheron
I grew up in France, married (twice) in Britain, and have one son. Graduated in English (Poitiers, France). PhD in Sociology (Warwick, Britain). I worked at first in sociological research and latterly taught French Studies. Now retired in the Languedoc, I have enjoyed moving away from academic writings to return to literature.
My first novel Double Crossings (2009) focuses on a troubled Anglo-French couple living in France. Homecomings also dramatises international family bonds but this time across Britain, Syria and Canada. The current civil war prevented me from writing for about two years, after which Bashar Al-Assad’s survival in power, contrary to Western predictions, encouraged me to strengthen key characters and let them heal beyond the blockages of fear, distrust and blackmail.
Acknowledgements
I owe a great deal of thanks to the few people who have read earlier manuscripts for their support in the course of the writing: Joseph Périgot, Frédérique Beaufumé, Faith O’Reilly, Sandra Freeman, Michel Aubeneau, Françoise Aubeneau. And crucially, Ben Evans, literary agent for Cornerstones, whose sensitive advice gave me the confidence to launch into some substantial re-writing.
I would also like to give my husband a big hug, James Hinton, who helped me bring to fruition the novel. Once a poet and now a historian. Watchful, he read the text tirelessly, underlining for the umpteenth time Gallicisms and many other blunders. Doing the job of an old-fashioned copy editor, he generously claimed. He did far more: he respected my voice.
My thanks to all those figures who peopled my imagination when writing. Tutors at the College of Chinese Acupuncture, UK. Also, Martine Gallie with whom I enjoy spending time discussing the craft of the acupuncturist and other mysterie
s of life.
I also acknowledge my debts regarding legal advice about the movement of children across borders to my friends at Reunite International Child Abduction Centre, for whom I worked as a volunteer for too short a time.
The poem I rushed into the garden is adapted from Rûmi, thirteenth-century Afghan poet, quoted in French by Malek Chebel in Dictionnaire amoureux de l’islam, Plon, 2004, p. 531.
As half the novel takes place in Syria and I do not understand Arabic, I relied on translated works to evoke scene and atmosphere. A seminal book for detail about female family life in Damascus under French occupation was Siham Tergeman’s Daughter of Damascus. A memoir, 1994. And about current Damascus, Nathalie Bontemps’s Gens de Damas, 2016, was particularly helpful.
Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to an engaging member of the Syrian Writers Union, a poet dissident, and his son, a maths teacher barred from travelling abroad, for their open-mindedness and generosity one day in Hama in April 2010, when they engaged in French with me, an unbeliever, about their threatened Sunni heritage and their dispossession. I felt their presence throughout the writing.
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