The Damascus Cover

by Howard Kaplan

  A long way to the west poplar trees surged up the Anti-Lebanon Mountains. On a further slope the Jordan River, beginning as a bubbling spring, trickled toward the Dead Sea. To the east the orchards pushed back the desert, drawing around Damascus like protecting soldiers. Beyond the outskirts of the city rose the barren mounds of el-Aswad and Mania; behind them the sand continued until it joined the sky.

  “Do you ever laugh?” Kim asked, leaning against his back.

  “That’s a strange question.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course I laugh.”

  “I just wondered.” She reached for the bag that contained the chicken sandwiches the hotel had made, and handed one to him. “You know, a relationship between an older man and a younger woman never works.”

  He bit into the dark bread. “Then why are you here?”

  “I don’t know, maybe you remind me of my father,” she said jokingly, hoping he would smile. But he didn’t. Suddenly the warm wind rose, rustling through the olive and walnut trees surrounding the glen where they sat. Kim gazed down into the valley, following a flock of sheep with her eyes. “I’m a little afraid of you,” she said.

  “Afraid of what?”

  “I’m not sure. I just sense there’s a whole part of you that’s hidden, that I can’t get to. Sometimes I reach out but instead of feeling flesh, I touch a wall. It’s as if there’s something important I don’t know. Every time I get close to discovering whatever it is, you become vague and evasive. Maybe that’s what frightens me.” Kim stroked his hand. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Not really.”

  She turned away in frustration. A long silence followed, broken finally by Kim. “What do you believe in?”

  “Results,” he said without hesitation.

  “What do you mean, results?”

  “Winning.”

  She sensed he was not talking about business, about closing the big deal, beating out the competition. “You mean like in a war, defeating the other side.”

  “That, or crushing the enemy within yourself.”

  “What enemy? What is it you’re fighting?”

  “What makes you think I’m fighting anything?”

  “I can feel it. It’s like there’s a bunch of people locked in combat inside you, with none of them able to emerge victorious. Everything seems so contradictory. Sometimes I almost think you don’t know who you are.”

  Then for the first time since they met he laughed, a low bellow that seemed to burst from deep within him. “You’ve been reading too much Freud,” he said mockingly.

  He hurt her; it showed in her eyes. She had tried to open an entrance into understanding him, only to have the door slammed shut in her face. She could not have known she’d trod on a raw nerve, that he’d laughed only to protect himself from her painful probing. It bothered him that she’d been so accurate, that she sensed so much in so short a time. It was disarming, as well as potentially dangerous.

  Later, as they walked in the tall grass toward the Tomb of Abel, a small boy sitting among the rocks held out a bunch of pink grapes and stuck his hand in his pocket signifying he wanted money for the fruit. Ari shook his head no and to his surprise the boy did not run after them to pursue his offer. Instead he started eating the grapes himself. Kim watched him, a smile on her face.

  Reaching a small secluded meadow, they lay down, deciding to rest for a while. The tall blades of grass rippling in the wind enclosed their bodies in a sea of green. A staccato chant rose from the minaret in the valley below, calling the Muslims to prayer. Kim unbuttoned her blouse exposing bare breasts, and brought his head to them. He lay there for a long time feeling the warmth of her chest on his cheek.

  “I suppose traveling around so much you make love to quite a number of women.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I guess not,” she said.

  He turned and looked at her. “I’ve been to bed with a lot of women but made love to few.”

  A smile flicked the corners of her mouth, then it disappeared. “You had a bad dream last night. You were mumbling in your sleep—something about barking dogs, an oven, and the smell. I couldn’t make any sense out of it.”

  She watched his body stiffen. “Is anything the matter?”

  “No,” he said, pulling her on top of him. “I’m sure it was nothing.”

  10.

  SEPTEMBER 7

  The bazaars of Damascus, thin, crooked streets, flanked by open shops and overhung with clothes, seem to cry out in shame. Not because the beauties of the past have vanished, but because they’ve degenerated. For decades advancement has meant the ebb of artistry; changelessness, a slavish cleaving to the past. At best the work of the old masters is carefully copied. The crafts themselves, once proudly utilitarian, now service the tasteless tourists. The heavily inlaid trays, copper veined with silver or brass, seem clumsy, anachronistic. Where once an old man took fifteen days to pound out the black designs painted on the metal surface of a small plate, now a series of young boys work on an assembly line, each specializing in a specific part of the design. Rarely is a piece wrought that even resembles the old excellence.

  “I’m afraid you may be disappointed,” Franz Ludin said to Ari as they walked under the vaulted roof of rusty, corrugated tin that covered the Street Called Straight. “The garments in the Suq el-Bzouriye are mostly woven from synthetic fabrics.”

  Shops pushing in from both sides of the street left only a narrow, noisy passageway between them. The air, trapped under the roof, was thick and hot. Somewhere near here, Ari remembered, the disciple Ananais received a vision from the Lord commanding him to go unto the house of Judas on the Street Called Straight and inquire after a man named Saul. Cured of his blindness and converted by Ananais, Saul of Tarsus, renowned as the scourge of Christians in Jerusalem, became Paul the Apostle.

  Ludin stretched out his hand, waving it at the donkey carts and motorized rickshaws loaded with an array of fresh vegetables, rolls of damask, and electrical appliances. “At one time this was a mile-long, hundred-feet-wide thoroughfare known as Doconomos. Under its arches regal Roman processions passed. Now the Doconomos is fifteen feet below us and only one of the seven great Roman gates of Damascus still stands.”

  Ari smiled to himself, thinking Ludin, if not fated to be born in the century of Nazism, would have wanted to spend his years as a Roman.

  “Ahmud Azziz, a young merchant I know, sells hand-loomed dresses of the purest silk,” Ludin continued as they skirted around a mound of dung left recently by one of the donkeys. “Maybe he can direct you to quality merchandise selling at a reasonable price.”

  “I hope so,” Ari said. “It is certainly worth speaking to him about it.”

  They passed into a narrow cobbled alley shot through with patches of sunlight streaming down from the holes in the roof overhead. The scent of crushed rose petals freshened the air. “There’s a perfume factory nearby, Damascus rosewater,” Ludin explained, as they moved through an entrance in the stone alley leading to a courtyard. Ludin circled a blue-tiled fountain overgrown with crawling ivy, took the heavy brass knocker that hung on the door, and pounded the wood several times. “Azziz doesn’t have a phone so I couldn’t call him, but he’s usually home Friday afternoons.” There was no discernable sound of movement within, so Ludin rapped sharply on the door again. Still no response. “It seems Azziz is not in,” he said, turning to Ari. “I’m afraid I’ve wasted your time.”

  “Nonsense. I enjoy the opportunity to just walk around Damacus and talk to you. Besides, visiting these merchants and haggling over prices becomes tiring after a while. I think I’m ready for some diversion.”

  “Tell me, what can I show you? Damascus is overflowing with exotic sights: the tomb of Saladin, the minaret of Hisham, the Tekkiyeh of Suleiman, the Madrassa Selimiya.”

  “Excuse me, Herr Ludin. Your offer is most gracious. But after one has been sightseeing all over the world, visiting even the most magnif
icent structures becomes tedious.”

  “My friend, if there is something you would like to do instead—the baths, a woman. Please, just ask.”

  “Well, when we dined with al-Husseini you did mention something about Jews in Syria. I was quite intrigued. Do you think it would be possible for me to witness your methods of dealing with them?”

  Ludin smiled in self-contentment at his continuing role in the destruction of the Jews. For a second Ari lost himself; he wanted to pounce on the former German propagandist, kick that smile off his face, crush it under his foot. He knew that murdering Ludin would make him no better than the animal the Nazi was, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all.

  “I like you,” Ludin said, wrapping his arm around Ari’s shoulder and leading him back toward Straight Street, past a bakery with a yellow pyramid of stale berazlik biscuits stacked in the window and slabs of makrouk bread, still pulpy and steaming, spread over the stone floor. “Germany is getting weak, effeminate. The young are falling over themselves trying to imitate American dress and music. They ignore their Aryan heritage. Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche are abandoned for the likes of Günter Grass, a blubbering schoolboy who peddles the myth of German guilt for profit. Fools, all of them! They’re blinded by self-righteous sentimentality. For the time being we must abandon Germany, our work lies here in the Middle East. Before we can return we must slash the arteries of Israel and drown the Zionists in their own blood.”

  “And the Jews of Syria?”

  “We practice on them. Come, I’ll show you.”

  ◆◆◆

  “In 1947 there were twenty-five thousand Jews in Damascus and over forty thousand in the entire country,” Ludin said as they parked the car on El Amine Street on the fringes of the Jewish quarter. “Today a little over four thousand remain, and soon…” he lifted his hands in the air and let the rest of his sentence drift into suggestion. They got out of the car and began to walk. A bus, brown with Iraqi dust, rumbled by, spewing dark exhaust into the air. “Now only a few streets still belong to the Jews,” Ludin continued.

  Ari know the history of the Jews of Damascus well; Tsur had drilled the details into him. The Christians have sliced into the Haret al Yahoud from the north, the Muslims from the west and south. The streets where the Jews live are quiet. The doors of sunken courtyards are edged open and slammed shut to receive children from school. The walls are broken and crumbling. A subdued flow of Arabic parts the silence from various windows, the words often sounding like prayers. The use of Hebrew is met by beatings. Palestinians roam the streets at will; rape is not uncommon. Residents of the quarter have been known to leave their apartments to walk across the street, only to return months later. Some don’t return at all. Or as two of the girls Tsur had described, they are sent back in separate pieces.

  Ludin approached the two soldiers lounging on the corner of El Amine and El Hadjara streets. He uttered a phrase in Arabic and presented a card to the elder of the two privates. Immediately they grabbed their lightweight, Japanese-built Armalite rifles, bolted up from the sidewalk and stood rigidly to attention. Ludin swore at them in a German they couldn’t possibly understand and headed up El Hadjara Street with Ari. Far off in the west the sun had dipped beneath the mountains of Lebanon, spraying clouds of bright orange through the evening sky. The snowcapped peak of Hermon stood silhouetted in the orange mist, slowly fading from view with the descending of night.

  “We have plans to significantly reduce the size of the Jewish population here,” Ludin said, his lips curving into a smile. “But we must retain a small number whose position can be exploited for internal consumption. In the eventuality of a setback at the front, the populace must be allowed to vent their frustration on someone. Such release is healthy.”

  “What are the chances of any of the Jews actually having contact with Israel?”

  Ludin laughed. “The word Musawi, follower of Moses, is stamped in red on their identification cards. They can’t visit abroad or emigrate; a government ordinance requires they obtain written permission before leaving the city; soldiers are posted at all entrances to the quarter; Palestinians are housed everywhere among them—they hardly talk to each other. Contact with Israel is impossible.”

  “I see. What about a synagogue? I assume there once was one in the ghetto.”

  “What do you mean, once. There are two main synagogues, the Al-Frange and the old Jawbar synagogue. You wouldn’t want the American politicians protesting about religious intolerance in Syria, would you?” Ludin laughed and Ari forced himself to join in. “Come on, I’ll show you the Jawbar; the Al-Frange is where we take the tourists and newspaper reporters.”

  “But I didn’t bring my skull cap,” Ari said, trying to be flippant.

  Ludin laughed even louder. “I think they might be persuaded to allow us to enter anyway.”

  The stone synagogue was dark. Fifteen, maybe twenty old men sat on divans against the walls, all, it seemed, muttering different prayers. The couches were of a faded red, ragged and torn. No one stood on the raised platform in the center of the room to lead the congregation in prayer. One door of the ark was missing and the other swung loosely on its hinges. It hardly mattered, for there were no Torah scrolls for the doors to protect. The floor of the synagogue was mosaic and the walls covered with aged tapestries. Though rows of candelabras hung from the ceiling only one light, directly over the dais, was lit. Nobody looked up or whispered when they entered. The old Jews just continued to pray, as their ancestors had for centuries.

  “They huddle here and wait for their messiah to come,” Ludin said. “They’re insufferably stubborn. We managed to kill off six million of them, and they learn nothing. With the smell of burning bodies in the air they marched to the gas chambers, praying. Clearly a pathological people. But then you were at Dachau, this is not new to you.”

  Ari nodded. Haunting Hebrew melodies droned in the background beneath their loudly spoken German. “As a whole I find them wretched creatures,” Ari said. “That is, with one small exception.”

  “What is that?”

  “Herr Ludin, I don’t dare tell you. I’m afraid you will look upon me with disgust.”

  “Nonsense. You are a German, a former SS officer.”

  “But in front of you I’m embarrassed to talk about my weakness.”

  “We all have weaknesses. Besides, I’m an expert on the Jewish Question. I may be able to be of assistance.”

  Ari bit his lower lip. “I need a drink. Is there someplace we can go?”

  Ludin nodded. “I know a clean restaurant that serves liquor. It’s just outside the walls.”

  As Ari followed him out of the synagogue he cast a final glance back at the old men.

  They moved along winding streets, then passed through the Bab Kaysan, a huge Ottoman gate that opened onto the spacious Ibn Assaker Boulevard. The restaurant was only a short distance away. Inside, they sat at a table with a red and white checkered tablecloth and ordered a bottle of arak. The room, brightly illuminated, was long and narrow, with copper plates dotting the yellow walls.

  After the arak was set before them Ludin rolled his glass between his hands. “Now tell me, what is it that’s troubling you?”

  Ari drank off half his glass and looked down at the floor. “It began at Dachau. Some of the officers…well, it would get lonely…months on end without female company. There were no women around; that is, there were Jewesses, but no real women. So a few of us decided since in the end we were going to kill them anyway, there really wouldn’t be any harm in taking a female in for the night, as long as we were careful not to allow any of them to live long enough to bear our children. There was always a large number of the animals who would do anything for a few scraps of meat, but they didn’t seem to do anything for me. Those girls always licked your ass and begged to come back the next night. But one day a dark little Jewess named Rachael was assigned to one of my labor details. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. When
I asked her if she’d like to come to my quarters she spit in my face. I had two enlisted men carry her to my room on the spot and then, well, I availed myself of her.” Nervously he gulped down the rest of the arak.

  “How was this Rachael?” Ludin asked, his tone flat.

  “Exhilarating, absolutely beyond description. I’d previously experienced nothing causing comparable excitement. After she was gassed there were others, all defiant, resentful, angry, and young. Since the war I’ve slept with many women.” He filled his glass and took a long drink. “But it has never been the same.”

  Ludin stared silently across the table. Ari looked away from him; it was essential that Ludin make the next move. “You have surprised me,” the Nazi said, withdrawing a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket. “Would you care for one?” He held the pack outstretched in his arm. Ari took a cigarette and lit it. Ludin had to react sympathetically, the entire mission depended on it. He drew a mouthful of warm smoke deep into his lungs.

  Ludin slowly removed a cigarette, but left it dangling between his fingers. “I’ve heard of other cases like this, of German officers who got a thrill from raping Jewish women. We shall not speak around the issue, you did rape them.” Ari took a long drag off the cigarette, agreeing with Ludin by his silence. “The question remains as to why only Jewish women. Possibly your attraction is a manifestation of a hatred of women. Or a projection of some self-hatred. Or a misplaced fear that sleeping with a decent German woman bridges over to a violation of your mother. We would have to spend a long time together before I could uncover the source of your abnormality and be of any assistance.”

  Forcing his hand to shake, Ari reached for his glass and brought the licorice-tasting liquid to his mouth. It wasn’t going right. Ludin was reacting like a psychiatrist outlining further therapy options for a patient. “But I can see why you led me to the point where I conveniently dragged the story out of you,” Ludin continued. “You are looking for another Jew-bitch sex goddess right here in Damascus.”