Death of a Monk

by Alon Hilu

  What sort of life was this and what was its purpose and towards what was it flowing? I did not have the answers to these questions, and lo, I pictured myself hanged in the large square at the entrance to the Saraya for a crime whose nature I did not know, or plunged into the River Barada to drown in its chilly waters or escaped to the hills of Lebanon, climbing to the summit of Mount Tzalkhaya from which, like the young virgins married off to old men against their will, I would throw myself down, down, pitching my body into the void to bring to an end these days of senselessness.

  At the outbreak of a plague in the city I would try to become infected, and when snow covered the streets I would roll about in it in an attempt to fall ill, and when the governor of the city, Ibrahim Pasha, would pass by, I tried to mock him, so that he would find me guilty, but none of this ever came to pass, and Aslan remained alive and his health remained constant.

  In the wretched days following the springtime Passover holiday, when a thick, desert dust covered the city and the smell of summer clung to one’s nostrils, it was my custom to leave my little room and make my way through the trees of the orchard then in full and glorious bloom and pass through the opening in the wall that encircled our home and continue from there through the narrow alleyways stinking of sewage, skirting the passers-by and donkey-drivers, past the crowded houses and pushing on from there to the main street of the Jews, passing the beet seller and the greengrocer and the butcher hawking their wares, bypassing Teleh Square, which was always teeming with people and merchants and shoppers and hordes of beggars, and from there straight on to the chicken market, where feathers blew in the hot, heavy desert wind and the blood of chickens stained the mud walls, and I would come to the filthiest corner at the edge of the souk, lift the lid on the rubbish bin used by the butchers, and grimace, poised to empty my innards outwards, down, towards Elnahar Alaswad, the Black River, wishing to deposit there vomit and bile and evil smells, might they depart from my body and descend and drain into the sewage canals of Damascus, but these clung to my chest like sinews and would not give in to the convulsions of my throat and gullet, and for a moment, when the sun appears through the haze that comes before the great hot days of summer, I am gripped with terror at the appearance of black figures in the filthy waters swirling beneath me, and I can see the slaughtered chickens screeching at their untimely deaths and the knife that slits their throats without mercy, and a fresh wave of convulsions pushes to expel itself but does not spew into Elnahar Alaswad; all but a single dangling drop of food swallowed but only partly digested falls and drowns in that water; and lo, it travels far away from my father’s home and my mother’s home and the homes of my uncles and their children and their evil laughter, to the villages of the simple farmers outside the borders of Damascus, to the desert, where the nights are cool and the hills naked and a wild mare is waiting there and I mount her, armed with a sword and lying in ambush for a caravan of heavy-hoofed camels laden with goods, their humps bursting, and I am waiting to plunder their wares and kill their guides with the sword, and from there, with great exultation, to gallop into the clear air; and suddenly a man is holding me from behind, and he raises my chin and wipes clean the remains of saliva, Ya walad, shu am bitsavei hon, Child, what are you doing here, and he returns me, feeble and dependent, to my father’s home.

  2

  FLOCKS OF BLACK-WINGED cranes invaded the house during a storm, wreaking havoc among the pillows and comforters and spreading a spirit of evil among the curve-necked swans woven into the rugs; from there, to the sound of squawks and screeches, they scattered their long, pointed feathers and disappeared into hidden cellars under the tiled floors until that unwelcome time when they would reappear in flocks.

  Who was Aslan and what were his intended paths in life and where was he headed and why were his manners and ways so twisted, his customs so crooked and perverse, why had it been necessary for him to suckle from his mother’s breasts, don the clothing of children, develop his organs, grow taller; why were his limbs lengthening, his hair sprouting, his wormlike body stretching and growing and filling out, why was his body now covered with gills, his jaws becoming harder, stronger, his mouth producing bile, why was he so loathsome to other creatures, why did he live among them as a blood-sucking louse, devouring their marrow and awakening in them a prickling anger?

  My happy friend, behold, not even a single hair has yet sprouted on your delicate skin, and you are a foundling, fatherless and motherless, the essence of sweetness and charm, never a complaint or cry issues from your mouth even when you are troubled with hard physical labour; how different is your path from that of our young friend Aslan, awash in senseless hatred and indulgence! Imagine this Aslan, lathering himself with Nablus soap in the little room at the edge of the orchard and at once comprehending the meaning of the pores covering his skin from head to toe in flocks, since from each pore he can now see a follicle of pale coloured hair joining its many many sister-hairs, and he hastens to examine his arms and legs and, as far as possible, his back, in order to observe the entire surface of his skin covered with sprouting hairs, now waiting in their hiding places, but in just a few months or even weeks they will become a frizzy black fuzz just like the frizzy black fuzz covering the bodies of Father and the uncles, Murad, Meir and Joseph.

  From then on I would peek at Father on his return home without exchanging a word with him, I would steal after him like a cat of the dunghills as he dressed or changed clothes or removed his shirt in the overpowering heat, in order to catch sight of his smooth, fleshy feet above whose smoothness there was a line demarcating the start of a hairy fuzz that climbed up his body like moss, beginning in straight black lines on his calves, leaving small bald spots on his rounded knees and continuing to his thighs, where it curled and frizzed and turned a little darker, and then rose and wound itself around the pair of testicles adorned with veins and then became dense and compressed and very dark on Father’s genitals, and from there spread out to great, boundless distances on the jellied flesh of his back, on his round belly, on his arms and chest, until it gathered into crowded black dots in the region of his face and stopped its uproar there, leaving his forehead clear and pure apart from the slight pauses where his eyebrows met and sometimes even his ears, where short, black hairs would peek out from time to time.

  Were it possible to put a stop to this dance, to strip off this fur coat and the follicles heralding its onset, I would have taken up blades and razors and removed the fuzz from my body, alienating and abusing that hair; but the more I tormented and tortured them the more stubborn they became, and they were fruitful and multiplied, and the servants cast me scolding looks in regards to the hairy remains I left behind, which they sent tumbling into the latrine and onwards to the Black River.

  Once again I am crying in my room. Not because of the abuses heaped upon me by my family – I have pushed them all from my thoughts – and not because of the taunts of my classmates in the Talmud Torah, for I am blind to them as they pass before me, and not because of Aunt Khalda’s shouts when she spies me in the street, Ta’el lahon ha khmar, Come over here, you jackass! but because of my image as it is reflected in the Damascene mirror in my room, a mirror decorated with seashells and stars and five-sided shapes that trick the eye and appear as a large rebel army, and my reflection is quite strange: a light fuzz will soon cover my cheeks which means I must become like all men in shaving daily, just as Father does, and to entrust monthly to Yusuf alkhalaq, the barber, the hair on the back of my neck and the hair in my ears and the rebellious hairs that rise from my chest to mingle with the whiskers on my neck.

  By the time the hair on my cheeks had become so thick and plentiful that the children were making my life at school an even bigger misery than previously, I began wandering the streets I knew well and despised, and without knowing why, I arrived at the door of Suleiman alkhalaq, one of the poorest barbers of our ranks, whose customers included flea-infested Jewish paupers and beggars whose pubic hair had been eat
en away by stinging lice; six of these men were gathered just then and were playing a game of cards at Suleiman Negrin’s barber’s shop, which stood next to the Alifranj Synagogue.

  Suleiman Negrin cast a look of great surprise at me as I stood on the threshold of his dark and meagre shop, wondering how it had come to pass that a son of the House of Farhi – men who had their tresses coiffed, their cheeks lathered and the hair on their necks pruned each month in their homes by the noted Muslim Yusuf alkhalaq – had descended to the rank and file, stepping daintily over the open sewage that flowed down the street.

  Silence fell on the six paupers in Suleiman’s shop; as for me, I was filled with blushing embarrassment over the silk clothing on my body and the scent of soap on my skin and the feeble voice that issued from my throat. I was about to depart, prepared to entrust my first shave to Yusuf, a jabberer and gossip who spoke vulgarities to me about the hair on women’s heads as well as their private parts, and all sorts of other matters accompanied by laughter wrapped in narghile smoke, but the barber Suleiman, who was older than I by only a few years and like me was pilose and possessed of jet-black hair, banished his pauper guests and motioned for me to sit, and while noting with disgust the eyebrows that met one another in a long, thick arc, I obeyed, my head bowed, and sat on a low wooden stool. From atop the table in front of me Suleiman removed the remains of men’s hair and jars filled with leeches used to cure all matter of illnesses, and with a flourish he spread over me a sort of dirty cloth serviette so that no dead hairs from my head would fall on to my body and tangle with the live ones; wordlessly he took in hand a razor and a wood-and-horsehair shaving brush and I was filled with awe at how I was sitting there in the way of men, on a low chair, and the barber was painting my cheeks with the same cream he used on other men and, lo and behold, I could picture them marching each morning by the legions, hundreds and thousands of men from all parts of the city, young men and old in the Jewish Quarter, the Christian Quarter, the Muslim Quarter, and the men in Bedouin tents and the men in merchants’ caravans and men on the far side of the sea, all of them sprouting beards and moustaches and whiskers, combing, grooming, trimming their hair, and just like them here was I, for the first time, placing the stubble on my cheeks under Suleiman’s blade and promising myself not to cry, not to shed a tear.

  The barber passed his blade gently over my skin, occasionally smoothing the hair on my head, exclaiming about my jet-black, shiny locks and complimenting me on my beautiful clothes and cultivated manners, and from the corner of my eye I could discern the six paupers peering through cracks in the walls of Negrin’s tiny barber’s shop, straining to watch us in the gloom, all of them excited at the scene in front of them, watching us and smiling and laughing, and the touch of Suleiman’s hands was very pleasing to me and I wished to linger there a while longer, far from my beautiful home and tidy room and the furnished liwan in which I was living out my days, I wished to remain with Suleiman and his crowd, and when the paupers could no longer contain themselves they piled in the shop, filling it with their gibber and jabbing one another with their elbows, telling me Sahten, Congratulations on your first shave, you are now rajoul, a man, and straight away they asked, Should we take him to a whore too, to carry out the ultimate act of a real man, what do you say? But Suleiman the barber told them, Leave him alone, we’re dealing with a real prince here, not one for your cheap and dirty prostitutes, and he continued massaging my temples, and the touch of his fingers was exceedingly pleasing to me.

  Before leaving the shop, while I was doling out a few coins to the paupers, who pretended to take offence at my gift, the barber pulled me to a small and dirty corner of his shop and moved his head so close to mine that his arced brow touched my forehead and his breath entered my nose and he asked if I would like to be engaged in friendship with him, because friendship with me seemed lovely to him and he was very interested in knowing everything there was to know about me.

  And with the resulting protrusion that stood out from my tunic and the bashful smile this brought on, the barber whispered – a lecherous look in his green eyes – that I should come visit him that evening near Bab Alfouqara, the Paupers’ Gate, three hours after the fourth cry of the muezzin. I did not respond, I merely slipped his fee into his hand and made my escape for home, a cloud of sharp-smelling cologne trailing after me which the beggars continued to sniff.

  That very evening, when three hours had passed from the time of the muezzin’s fourth call, I rose and set my face towards Bab Alfouqara, towards the reckless meeting with the barber, preparing excuses for my parents to explain my odd and hurried departure, in the evening, when the gates to the Jewish Quarter remained shut and the doors to the homes were closed and no one left or entered unless they were returning late from a party or looking for trouble. But then I filled myself with loathing at Suleiman’s thick, dark eyebrows which flowed one to the other without charm or splendour, and this was how I managed to quash the excitement inciting the front of my tunic, and I joined my estranged family, to listen to their gossip about the nasty deeds and evil schemes of the Harari family, may their name and memory be blotted from the earth, chewing carrot stalks with them while we sat facing the apricot tree as it shed its leaves at the very heart of the Farhi family estate.

  *

  My happy friend, here you are, a foundling with no family, pining throughout your days for the images of your father and your mother whom you never knew, and I believe I discern in your eyes a certain amazement over Aslan, ensconced in a wondrous mansion, surrounded by members of his family, dressed in pleasant clothing and free of all laborious tasks – that in spite of all these he hates his life and hates his parents and hates himself, and I must reveal to your tender ears that there are still many more hates awaiting this lad. But let us not cross those bridges of evil until we reach them.

  In the days that followed I was unable to visit the muddy lane that housed the barber’s shop of Suleiman alkhalaq, but the memory of his green eyes pursued me everywhere, at times sparkling in the light of the morning sun and at times glowing in the darkness of night, and my thoughts kept wandering to the place mentioned by the barber, Bab Alfouqara, a neglected gate to the city sealed off generations earlier, with no way to enter or depart from it through the Jewish Quarter, hence my curiosity about the meaning of his invitation to meet me there at night-time; once again I found myself in turmoil, pining to go there at that very instant, but instead I remained curled up in my bed and did not move from it.

  My parents spoke of the woman who in future I would take in marriage, when I had come of age, and they consulted and whispered among themselves and I overheard the names of young ladies, maidens, whom they counted on their fingers, Father’s angry voice erupting on occasion: La, ya khmara, She is from Aleppo, do you wish to bring thieves into our home? After this he listed the considerations of profit and loss, the benefits, the status. I heard it all as if I had heard nothing at all.

  Apart from my mother and sister and wide-hipped aunts, I did not know the female of the species, I had had neither positive nor negative contact with them, was unfamiliar with their ways and manners and with the secrets they kept hidden from men.

  My classmates spoke vulgarly of a certain suppressed and hidden organ possessed by females called khashush, and the ways one had of reaching that place and ploughing it utterly; they told of demon dreams and the evil inclination that women awakened in men, and I could not understand these words and was not party to their fantasies; instead I was flooded with thoughts of Suleiman, whose fingers in my hair were exceedingly pleasant, so that one evening I returned to the place I had seen him last, determined to confront him, to question him about that place where he had wished to meet me: what was the purpose of his request and at what was he hinting, and these thoughts pursued one another in my head and I increased my pace, failing to notice the haberdashers collecting their wares or the coppersmiths rising from their workbenches; a hammer was pounding at my temples and a dark
screen fell across my eyes and my breathing became jagged grunts and gurgles arising from my throat, and the screen grew darker, then black, and it painted my mind in melancholy colours; all at once the force of life ceased its flow in every organ of my body, pursued and hunted by one word: Aslan.

  A small crowd of beggars and passers-by assembled around the haggard, unconscious lad, consulting with one another about whether to pour water over him or slap his cheeks, and I was gripped with strange convulsions as if my organs had quarrelled and were no longer connected to one single body, their joints only tenuously attached. Just then the barber, who had only a moment before shut the door to his tiny shop, pushed his way through and, as soon as he recognised the young man in princely garments who exuded an aroma of pampering and delights, he drew near me and gathered me into his arms, my head lolling behind and my legs drooping; he carried me to the paupers’ stool in his shop, and so it happened that after a short while I awoke from the fainting spell that visits me from time to time to find Suleiman whispering pleasantries into my ear, his fingers quivering above my head, my forehead, my temples.