by Jamal Naji
Before we set out, the guide advised us to buy a couple of straw hats for protection from the sun and two bottles of cold water.
We walked behind him down rocky paths and other sandy paths that were surrounded by tall pine and almond trees. Groups of monkeys holding their young crouched on the hills and nearby rocks, eyeing us curiously.
Trying to lighten things up on our difficult trek, I said, “I feel like I really needed this trip, in order to see things I haven’t been used to seeing.”
The Basha answered, panting, “I don’t think I will forget this trip as long as I live.”
He was walking ahead of me in his white shirt and khaki pants. From behind, his head looked square to me, and his shoulders broad, and his rear end seemed to be protruding backwards.
The sky was an expanse of clear blue, broken by mountains adorned with green trees. Our clothes were soaked with sweat, to the point that I thought maybe the slight paunch that had developed at my waistline had melted away during our walk. As for the Basha, he stopped every so often to drink a little bit of water, swish it around in his mouth, and sprinkle some over his head before starting up again.
At the foot of a stone hill, the entrance to Harsha al-Hakim’s abode appeared before us, carved into the stone and with engravings on both sides. Along the top of the entranceway were little statues stuck together and carved into the stone. The sound of distant melodies reached us, as if they’d been sent from above.
When we neared the entrance we were surprised to find an old man dressed in white and sitting on a boulder a few meters away. Before him was a smoldering fire over which he was turning a two-meter-long snake that writhed in the flames but didn’t die. We stopped to get a good look at this strange scene. Still panting, the Basha asked the young guide, “What is that old man doing to the snake?”
“Bathing him,” he answered. “It’s a fire snake.”
“Don’t his hands get burned?” I asked. “Doesn’t the snake get burned?”
“It is a heatless fire.”
I smelled a new scent in that place, something close to the odor released when bark is peeled from a tree. While I was looking around trying to locate the source of the scent, a bearded man in his fifties suddenly came out from inside the abode, leaning on a primitive staff. His features and sunburned skin inspired a sense of humility.
He asked us in English for our names, the purpose of our visit, and who had referred us, so I explained to him why we had come and I mentioned the name of Uroub, the Moroccan woman. He nodded his head and told us to follow him.
The top of the entrance door was very low, not more than a meter and a half high, so we were forced to duck down behind him as he led us to an area where there were rows of benches chiseled into the stone. He asked us to wait there and headed down a narrow corridor.
We sat on the benches. I looked into the Basha’s face, expecting to see him worried and distressed in this strange world we found ourselves in, but he appeared to be at ease and content. He spoke to me in a hushed voice.
“No matter what the outcome of this trip, I feel like I’m living another life, a calm life far away from all the noise and hypocrisy of everyone in the city. Have you ever experienced such cosmic tranquility before?”
I responded in a hushed voice, too. “I feel a certain humility here. This place inspires awe and reverence.”
The attendant came back and ushered us down the narrow corridor to where Harsha al-Hakim was.
It was clear that the old man sitting behind the speckled stone table was Al-Hakim and the bearded man sitting beside him was the interpreter who would translate from Hindi into English.
There were no windows inside the cave, and no other sources of light, and so I was amazed there was so much daylight streaming in. I noticed that the Basha looked on in total awe at this new miracle.
Harsha al-Hakim’s face and his general appearance reminded me of the image that had formed in my imagination as a child of those legendary, ancient peoples who lived well into their hundreds.
I felt as though the man had surpassed all the statistics to do with longevity and life expectancy. He wore a white Indian cap and there was an ethereal glow that emanated from his wrinkled face. His beard was white and thick and ran together with his mustache and sideburns. It actually covered so much of his face that only a small triangular patch encompassing his eyes, the area around his nose, and the line of his quivering lips, was left bare.
He was seated on the floor with his legs crossed, behind a table which provided a resting place for his sharp elbows and stick-like arms. He held a set of prayer beads between his skinny fingers that dangled over the edge of the table.
He signaled with his eyes for us to sit down cross-legged before him. He looked into the Basha’s face, but did not look into mine. He seemed able to ascertain our relative importance from the way we entered and sat down.
The Basha cleared his throat and recounted his story for Harsha al-Hakim and told him all about what Uroub the fortune-teller said the night of his sixtieth birthday party. As soon as he finished, the translator began performing his task.
There was total silence. Al-Hakim shut his eyes, lowered his head and started playing with the beads. Meanwhile, the Basha turned his head and stared at the stone walls that were dispersing light throughout the place, as if to give Al-Hakim a chance to think before announcing his verdict.
Al-Hakim said solemnly, “Uroub has permission to speak on our behalf. What she has told you is with our permission. It is your fate, and there is no way to escape from it. Why did you come?”
“She said you have a way to change fate,” the Basha answered. “I don’t care how much money it will cost me. I want to change my fate if you confirm what Uroub predicted. Is it in your power to change fate?”
Muntaha al-Rayyeh
I knew Fawaz al-Shardah (now they call him the Basha) from the Malco Stock Company in the Shmeisani area of Amman, behind the white-collar union complex.
How I wish I had never met him.
That was thirty years ago.
He was the biggest shareholder in the company and he used to visit once every two or three months.
I worked as a typist for the company, at a very low salary, because I never continued my studies after graduating from junior college.
One day, with a frown, my boss dropped off a large batch of paperwork he wanted me to process before leaving for the day.
We used to call that boss the “Porcupine” because he pricked whoever came close to him. Plus he was short and thin and his hair – black in those days – stood straight up on his head.
I placed the papers in front of me on the desk, grumbling.
Everyone else who worked there left at the end of their shifts while I stayed behind at my desk, all alone except for the company clerk.
An hour later, Fawaz al-Shardah arrived at the office, despite it being past normal business hours.
The clerk greeted him with such exuberance; he might as well have carried him on his back, too. Fawaz ordered him to make two cups of tea – one for him and one for me.
God knows it was pure coincidence, but it completely changed my life.
Did I say coincidence?
I guessed he was around my age, thirty-ish. He had a full head of thick black hair and a broad, white face. He was wearing a coarse brown suit, a white shirt, and a walnut-colored necktie.
I was wearing a dust-colored dress that covered my knees. In those days I got hit on by lots of colleagues and other men at work, asking me out to restaurants, but I never took them up on it. I was afraid of them. They had hungry eyes that would eat me alive if they could. What was worse, any one of them would mean an instant scandal; if I went out with one, the news would spread around the whole company like wildfire. It happened to my friend who worked at the same company and there was a big scandal.
Fawaz approached me. I could smell his strong cologne.
He very casually asked me my name, where I lived, when the firm had hired me. I was sitting at my desk behind an Olivetti typewriter. He kept circling around the desk and around me as he spoke. I felt as though he were tying me up with invisible strings, trapping me in my place.
Despite the fact that he was the same age as me, he seemed much older. He possessed that awe-inspiring air of bosses and rich people, an aura that had nothing to do with age.
He didn’t stay circling around me for long.
The clerk came back carrying a tray with two cups of tea with mint. Fawaz gave him some money and said, “You go ahead and drink it. I have an appointment.”
On his way out he patted me on the shoulder, praising me for my hard work and willingness to work late, and I thanked him for his kindness. To be precise, his fingers brushed against the skin of my shoulder, just below my neck, but I disregarded that and convinced myself it was merely praise for a hard-working employee.
After he left, I touched my hand against the spot on my shoulder he had brushed with his fingers. My mind felt empty, bare of all thoughts. I scratched my forehead with my red-polished fingernails, and the scent of his cologne came back to me. I sniffed my fingers and the scent was stronger.
My mood changed. I stared straight ahead, without focusing on anything in particular. Even after he’d left, he was still standing there beside me. My neck and my whole body went limp. I wiped my face and brushed off my shoulders, freeing myself of the strings he had wrapped around me.
Then I decided to postpone finishing the paperwork until the next day, forgetting the problems it would cause from the Porcupine, who had hit on me twice before when I first started working there. Once was in his office, as I was bending over to correct a typing error and he put his hand on my knee and clamped hold of it like a pair of pliers, to which I responded by jumping back in alarm. He started laughing childishly, as if he was playing a game. The second time was also in his office. I had arrived early to work because of an easing in the traffic that always determined my daily arrival time. I got there twenty minutes before any other employees, and was surprised to find the Porcupine all alone in his office. I greeted him good morning and he told me I had come just at the right time, handed me a big file, and asked me to find a certain document. I put my purse down and opened up the file. He got up from his chair and left his office. Then he came back and stood right beside me, acting like he was trying to help me search the file. He kept putting his hand on mine, and his bony pelvis bumped against my thigh, so I withdrew my hand and started to leave, but he grabbed me and pushed me up against the wall. Suddenly his rat’s mouth was between my breasts. He latched onto me like a tick. I gathered myself and broke free of him all at once. Then I slapped him on the neck. I noticed his face was beet red and he looked startled and rattled.
But he regained his composure and started laughing childishly again, as if he was playing a game.
He must have been around thirty-five years old.
I didn’t know who I should complain to about the Porcupine. He was “connected,” as I had been told, with a direct relation to Fawaz and many of the higher-ups, one of whom was Nayef Shahadeh, Fawaz’s father-in-law.
I applied for many other jobs after that, but didn’t hear back from any of them. And so I remained under the Porcupine’s command.
After Fawaz left, I grabbed my purse and went home.
My father noticed that something was wrong and asked me what was the matter. All I could think to tell him was that I was tired from work.
My relationship with my father was calm on the outside and complicated on the inside. It was pretty much a one-sided love. He loved me and tried to placate me, but I felt stifled by the fatherly love which came with large doses of over-protectiveness and unsolicited advice.
My mother was very strong and in full control at home. Her constant meddling in my father’s personal affairs annoyed him, and he often found reasons to go out or visit relatives, in order to avoid problems with her. But the thing that irritated me was how she always knew what I was thinking, even if I didn’t say a word to her.
The day after Fawaz’s visit, the Porcupine didn’t lecture me like he usually did. Instead, he praised my loyalty and conveyed the praise that had come from Fawaz who – according to the Porcupine – “just happened to be driving by in his car, having turned from the next street over, and decided to drop in for a visit seeing as he thought we were all still working. But then he found you working all by yourself, a mere coincidence.”
Then he added, “You’re very lucky. He singled you out, finding you there without any of the other girls around. Expect some kind of reward from him. Maybe he will even ask you to lunch one of these days. It’s his way of honoring those who do selfless work.”
Sari Abu Amineh
Changing fate. That was the last thing I imagined I would be thinking about while navigating my way through this construction zone called life. However, changing fate was precisely what the Basha wanted, and what we went all the way to India to seek.
“The problem with your situation,” Harsha al-Hakim continued, “is that you have come to me from a land teeming with heaven’s activities. God began all his activities right there in your homeland; that is what your books say. He created Abraham in Mesopotamia and sent him to Egypt then on to Palestine. Then he created Moses in Egypt and sent him to Palestine. Then he created Jesus the Nazarene in Bethlehem and willed his death in Jerusalem. Then he created Muhammad in Mecca and sent him to Jerusalem, according to your book, and willed his death in the place where he was born.
“Son, in places where heaven’s activities are abundant, it is more difficult to interfere with the fates, impossible even, and you have come to me from a land the heavens never tire of roaming through and over which the fates are constantly flapping their wings.”
Then he fell silent. A semblance of hopelessness appeared on the Basha’s face. As for myself, my feeling of humility grew before Harsha al-Hakim’s vast world of knowledge, and before the idea of heavenly activity in our land, which had never occurred to me that way before.
Al-Hakim took in a deep breath through his nose, which looked like a small fig, and resumed speaking to the Basha. “And also, the lives of the rich and powerful do not just belong to them, because the destinies of hundreds or maybe millions of others are tied to them. I know that you have companies and business interests that employ many people, and businesses that provide a living for many families. You are of great importance in your country.
“Your life and death hold sway over those connected to you. If the lives of people such as yourself deviate from fate’s course, the entire chain could be broken. The system could be shattered and our existence could go completely out of control. Fate can overlook a common person, because his life doesn’t affect the destiny of others. That is what allows common people freedoms that elicit the envy of the rich and powerful. Any one of them can die whenever he likes, and do whatever he wants whenever he wants, because he is just one little cog in the millions and billions of wheels by which the machine of fate rolls along its path. If one breaks or gets off track, it has no effect whatsoever. As for the likes of you, you do not enjoy the luxury of doing what you please. This is a luxury exclusive to commoners. It cannot be loaned out to the rich and powerful.”
Then he was silent, and I found myself clearing my throat and saying, “Sir, I know nothing of fate and destiny; next to your vast store of knowledge I am but a simple man living on the outskirts
of your wisdom’s domain. However, it is true that our Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said, ‘Prayer meets the calamity that has been decreed and wrestles with it over that which is between heaven and earth. A battle takes place between them, and if the prayer is stronger, then the calamity is lifted, but if the prayer is weaker, the calamity is brought down, though to a lesser degree.’”
Al-Hakim looked me in the face for the first time since I’d entered his abode. Then he said, “Son, if this encounter takes place, it is governed by fate. And it only concerns the common people. As for the rich and powerful, they are merely creatures living at fate’s disposal, creatures whose prayers do nothing to change their destinies. There is a force that reigns over things, an obscure, cosmic force that is not embodied in any one being. And it is not bound by time. Indeed it is outside the boundaries of time as you know it.”
Encouraged by this I said, “Please permit me, wise sir, to ask you about your religion?”
He looked at the translator and then at me and said, “Religion . . . There are many religions, dear boy, but very little happiness. It suffices that they permitted the slaughter and eating of beasts and birds.”
“So then what can I do?” the Basha asked.
“You must acknowledge this living being who has come into the world through you. This will allow you to feel that you will continue on even after your death. There is nothing like a son to give a man the feeling of immortality before he passes away.”
The Basha’s color changed. “And if I do not acknowledge him?”
After a silent pause, he answered, “The path of denying him is open, but it is bloody.”
I felt the Basha was gasping, but without inhaling or exhaling. “How so, wise sir? I don’t understand!”
Al-Hakim looked at the translator, then at the Basha and said with anguish, “One of you will perish on that path. Someone’s blood will be spilled.”