The Road from Damascus

by Robin Yassin-Kassab

  Jim Clark turned to Gabor with an old-fashioned smile.

  ‘Gabor, I believe, is a Hungarian name.’

  ‘That’s right. From my mother’s side. My father is Russian and… British-born.’ He glanced at Mr Nader. ‘British of Russian origin.’

  ‘O what a lovely complex background!’ Jim shifting his chairaccustomed legs across the thin carpet. ‘What complex backgrounds we all seem to have these days. Such strange beasts history has made of us.’ He chuckled at this cosmic witticism. ‘And what brings you to Marwan’s ta’ziya?’

  Gabor received and swallowed the strangled word, assuming –correctly – that it meant the condolence ritual.

  ‘I work with Mr al-Haj’s daughter. I’m a teacher at the same school. I was with her when she heard the news.’ Gabor remembered it, their shared moment.

  ‘Ah yes. Muntaha. Wonderful girl. Very bright.’

  ‘She certainly is.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s a successful teacher.’

  Gabor burst into smiles. ‘She must be. And not just for our pupils. I’ve learnt a lot from her too. She’s got me interested in Islamic philosophy.’

  ‘Has she really? What do you teach, Gabor?’

  ‘Art and science. Physics. Which ties in with my own stuff. I’m an artist, you see, as well as a teacher.’

  ‘How interesting.’

  ‘I do paintings and computer-generated art, a lot of it based on cosmology and quantum physics. The physical fundamentals of being. And Islamic philosophy.’

  ‘Indeed. The doctrine of tawheed. Unity underlying variety.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Gabor warmed to both theme and Jim. ‘Exactly that. It’s a beautiful principle, and appropriate to modern discoveries. Time and space are one. Particles and waves are one.’

  ‘The Qur’an certainly inspired some great scientists in its day.’

  ‘I can see why. Muntaha gave me a copy. The scientific tone is the amazing thing. I mean, if I were inventing a religion today I’d put a lot of science in. Most people do their spiritual thinking when they think about science. But fourteen hundred years ago? You know…’ Gabor pinching thumb and fingers urgently. ‘It doesn’t just say believe. It says, study the mountains and the stars if you don’t believe. Look at biology and cloud currents if you want to find signs of God. That’s why the Muslims were scientists. This oneness behind the signs, you know, beckoning its lovers, waiting to be discovered. There’s something very seductive in that. I think it inspires my art now as much as anything else.’

  ‘And Muntaha is also your muse?’

  Gabor took this playfully, in the way it was intended. ‘Yes, I suppose she is. She’s got me reading all about it. Al-Ghazali. Suhrawardi’s Shape of Light. Lots of classical writers. It’s a fascinating field.’

  Jim lidded bulbous eyes and shook his head in satisfaction. But Gabor noticed Ammar studying him over the rice, bending a frown towards him, and the convert and the Pakistani, no longer in conference, following Ammar’s gaze. Gabor stopped talking.

  ‘Ghazali, you say?’ continued Jim. ‘Yes, I recommend the Sufis. Lovely poetry.’

  ‘You must suggest some reading for me,’ said Gabor, his eyes on Ammar’s.

  A spasm passed through Ammar’s kneeling body.

  ‘Poetry? Philosophy?’ he spat. ‘Inspiration for your art?’ Another long shiver grappled him. ‘I don’t think so. Islam is faith and action. Don’t fuck with it.’

  The young brothers grunted and pouted. Abu Hassan glared at Ammar, who inhaled sharply.

  ‘He thinks it’s an invented religion. What’s this, on the day of my father’s funeral?’

  ‘Please eat more meat, Mr Gabor,’ said Abu Hassan, carefully ignoring Ammar’s appeal. ‘Uncle Jim, please have more meat.’

  Ammar half stood, thought better of something, and dropped his stare to his knees.

  The silence softened. A spread of blood in Gabor’s face and head tingled and receded, and he made a show of returning to Jim.

  ‘So tell me, Mr Clark. How did you know Mr al–Haj?’

  ‘We met years ago, in Baghdad. Dear me, thirty years ago! I ran the British Council there, and Marwan was a regular visitor. He came to read his poetry. Wonderful stuff it was. Wonderful.’

  Jim talked until he held the room’s attention, covering Marwan’s commentaries on Shakespeare and Marx, the literary periodical and the volumes of poetry – and anti-communist terror, the police state, the purges, the Iran-Iraq war (digressing into chemical bombardments, ravaged Edenic marshes, population transfers). Then Jim’s retirement and the rumours that reached him of Marwan’s trouble. Marwan’s understated letter from Jordan. How they’d met again, and the signs of Marwan’s torture. How Marwan’s first wife was murdered. How Marwan came into exile a limping broken man.

  The three elder men sighed and hissed at intervals. They were like Shia listening to the martyrdom epics, glistening with tears, gripping and massaging their heads. Jim too, who had invested his best years in the bad returns of foreign lands, was wavering, restraining tears.

  ‘He had such a bright future ahead of him. That whole generation promised so much.’

  Across the room Ammar was staring either in fury or blind confusion not at Gabor or Jim but at the empty air between. Chin uptilted, his nose like a weasel’s scenting danger. Fumbling, amid a whirl of feeling, towards confrontation. He wanted to say, ‘What does this Englishman know about my father? What’s this Crusader fantasy about my father and Karl fucking Marx?’

  There were no copies of Marwan’s poems in the London house. There never had been. They existed now only in Jim’s library, and in the minds of the dead. Ammar, therefore, had no access to the largest section of Marwan’s life, before the fall. None beyond an eroded Englishman’s nostalgia.

  He puckered his lips into a tiny hooligan ‘o’. What violent thing was about to burst forth? His maladroit conspirators observed, imitating him with banal lip thrusts of their own. The convert’s beard splayed out bloodish like a renaissance ruff, damp shaded skin quivering underneath. Mujahid wasn’t sure what was wrong, but he was willing and poised for brotherly defence.

  Truly, Ammar wasn’t sure what was wrong either. Except that he had no country. Except that he was orphaned. Except that there was nothing for him to love. Except the endless gaping depths of space separating him from his father. Except that his father, even dead, was still an embarrassment. Except for powerlessness. Except for the earth and the heavens and everything in between.

  Gabor, assuming control, pushed the rice bowl in the boy’s direction.

  ‘He was a good man,’ he said. ‘A good man and a fine father. He brought up two fine children. This is the proof of his success.’

  Abu Hassan clasped Gabor’s shoulder, and the grip remained, clutching Gabor to the family’s bosom. No light thing, is what the grip conveyed. Nothing temporary. Nothing to trifle with. To join a family like this was to be pinioned to it, skewered to it by a javelin through the heart.

  Ammar’s hostility seemed to have drained away, and the brothers eyed the walls in disappointment.

  Afterwards the Pakistani took his shuffling leave. Then the doorbell, to which Ammar replied. A woman clucking Arabic was ushered up the stairs which, creaking, stoppered further conversation. Ammar returned and kneeled closer in. Abu Hassan, Nader and Veysel took turns extolling Marwan’s character, his mosque attendance, his steady morals. Mujahid fidgeted with his fingernails. And when speech lapsed Gabor, in his innocence, posed a dangerous question.

  ‘Where’s Sami? I’d love to meet him.’

  There was a broad expanse of non-response. Abu Hassan tutted explosively, and clenched a fist to strike at the anvil of the other hand. Nader smiling at the rice. Veysel studying the carpet. Mujahid exhibiting outrage but, unsure of the etiquette, not doing anything with it.

  ‘Sami is away,’ said Ammar, coolest of all now. ‘Unfortunately he couldn’t come.’

  After a few more minutes Gabor rose to lea
ve. All rose with him, and the older men wanted to shake hands again. They went so far as to embrace him. Virile, crushing hugs and kisses on both cheeks. He liked these old Arabs. He liked their exaggerated features and overdone gestures, their delicacy, their complicated heavy heads. They reminded him of his grandfather.

  When he had his shoes on he asked for his regards to be passed to Muntaha. Ammar in a light, high voice said to wait, he’d get her. While he waited Gabor resolved to buy a shoe rack for his own doorway. Civilized behaviour, the removal of shoes. Then he heard the stairs. She came down beaming, full-lipped. She looked up at him, slipped on her own shoes, and pulled the door open.

  ‘I’ll come with you. I need a break.’

  It was a maturing afternoon, clouds clearing away a little abashed, yielding precedence to a self-assured but lowering sun.

  ‘Are you going by tube or taking a bus?’

  ‘I haven’t decided,’ he said. ‘Let’s walk for a bit.’ And then: ‘So how do you feel?’

  ‘I think I feel fine…’ – speaking to the rhythm of her footsteps – ‘… maybe I’ll be upset later but I don’t think so. I feel that everything’s all right. And that he’s all right. Does that sound silly to you?’

  ‘Not at all. In some situations, feeling is the best judge.’

  ‘In mysteries. When we don’t have anything else to guide us.’

  Under the surface of death, behind the pixilated screen, what was there? Human beings gone like rabbits bolted into holes, into what unseen unimagined warrens? He had a picture of an anthropomorphized warren in his head, with fluffy armchairs and bunny beds. From one of his children’s books. Which was as close as his childhood home had come to a Bible.

  He held a wrist in a hand at the base of his back and stepped on slowly enough for her to walk comfortably.

  ‘I admit I find heaven difficult to visualize. But I’m sure he deserves to be there, the way you’ve talked about him.’

  ‘Not heaven yet, although I hope somewhere like it.’

  ‘Not yet?’

  ‘Muslims believe no one goes to heaven or hell until the Day of Resurrection and Judgment. They’re still here until then.’

  ‘That could be a long time.’

  ‘But time for them isn’t like for us.’

  Buoyed by the coffee, Gabor had to restrain a bounce. He kept at her pace.

  ‘So they’re here, seeing us and hearing us?’

  ‘In some way, yes. It’s mysterious. It’s recommended to pray for them, to make them happy. You know, there’s a hadeeth of the Prophet that he went to talk at the graves of people killed in battle. He said, “Look, do you see now?” ’

  They passed a scrubland park. From the bleached street birds darted wingless into shadow.

  ‘In our prayer we greet Muhammad and call for God’s mercy and blessing on him, and we greet and bless God’s righteous servants. What would be the point of that if they don’t hear?’

  In the petrol cough of a car in a side street Gabor heard Vronsky’s chuckle.

  ‘You know the Ghazali book I gave you?’ Muntaha went on. ‘There’s another section of that which says the dead are fully aware for just a couple of days. They know what’s going on for that long. That’s why you shouldn’t moan and shout at funerals. You see Muslims doing it on TV, but they shouldn’t. The Prophet said crying disturbs the dead. Then after a couple of days they slip into a kind of dream called the barzakh, which is a barrier, an in-between state. The souls sleep and dream of the state they’ll be in after the Last Day.’

  Her face, which had been fluid with hope and eagerness, hardened.

  ‘I feel silly thinking about it in too much detail, like I’m making things up to please myself. I’m talking about things I know nothing about. It’s a mystery. Death and life are mysteries. It’s arrogance to pretend they’re not.’

  ‘Although your religion has doctrines which I suppose you must subscribe to.’

  ‘Not really. I mean yes, but doctrine is secondary to faith. And doctrine is open to interpretation. Near the beginning of the Qur’an, near the beginning of the second sura, after the first descriptions of heaven and hell, there’s a verse which says, “God does not disdain to propound a parable of a gnat or even less than that.” ’

  Not following, Gabor allowed three slow paces.

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘That God uses any image or symbol He likes to get His point across. He tells you that the fire and the gardens and the fruit in the gardens are not really fire or fruit like we have here, but imagery to describe what we can’t understand.’

  ‘I see.’ Gabor nodded, eyebrows raised. ‘That opens it up to interpretation. A different book to what the media presents.’

  ‘Not just the media. The Muslims too. The first word Muhammad heard was “read”. The Muslims should read better. They should be less literal about everything. It was that verse that made me read the Qur’an again. It warns us not to take ourselves too seriously when we interpret. We only have images for what’s incomprehensible.’

  ‘Imagery. I see.’

  ‘So I don’t know what happens after we die. I don’t know if dreaming of heaven is the same as being in heaven. Only God knows.’

  They’d come to the burnt mouth of the tube station and moved beyond it to council blocks curtained by trees, half a mile further. Then there was a circle of shops – a pub, a newsagent’s, a halal butcher – around a rearing white war memorial chiselled with the names of local boys fallen in the Great War, boys whose families had by now moved further out into the suburbs. The memorial ringed by low fence railings, which were violated by mountain bikes and chains, sheets of newspaper, cans. Gabor and Muntaha turned here, Gabor again slowing himself, and started back.

  ‘And what of judgment?’ Gabor asked.

  ‘I believe in it, in the principle of it. Islam says we have an angel on each shoulder, one to record good deeds and one to record the bad. Everything we do is written down, and at the end we see it all, good or bad. I don’t know how it happens. Are those real angels with wings, or metaphors for our conscience? I don’t know, but I believe in them.’

  Gabor’s head was all ear. He absorbed her words, her clear ringing voice, stored her for remembering. His powerful heart was blotting paper. Soaked her all up, her skipping flowery smell, the thick tock of her shoes on the pavement, the bobbing of her face parallel to his chin.

  ‘The idea of the record,’ he said, ‘corresponds to a lot of NDE accounts. Near-Death Experiences. A lot of people who die and come back say they’ve seen their lives played out in front of them. But that could be endorphins in the stressed brain. It’s not hard science.’

  ‘Whatever happens,’ said Muntaha, ‘something happens. I’m sure of it. I don’t need the Qur’an to tell me. Something must happen afterwards, otherwise… otherwise it would just be absurd. And in some way there’s justice in what happens.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Hoping so, believing so, that’s all Islam is. To have faith in the unseen. In mysteries known only to God. God not as a person as He is in Christianity, but as the Absolute. If we believe there’s justice from an absolute perspective, and believe this perspective really exists, even if we can’t see it or understand it, then we can surrender to it, and we’ll be at peace.’

  The sun was sinking leisurely into a smooth deep sea of crimson. It was excess of pollutants that made the anticipation of dusk so beautiful, but it was beautiful nevertheless. Gabor’s head floated in the sky.

  ‘This is a true story,’ he said. ‘My mother told me, and she isn’t a mystical type at all. Quite the opposite. Much too down to earth for her own good. Anyway. She had a friend whose husband was dying, and she was sitting with her in the hospital. In a waiting room. There was a vase of flowers on the table in front of them. They were sitting there talking when suddenly the flowers spun round the table. I mean the whole vase moved around in a circle. By itself. It can’t have been a hallucination because they both
saw it. And like I said, you’d have to pump my mother up with a load of drugs before she’d have a hallucination. They looked at each other, and a moment later a nurse came in to say the man, the husband, had died. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s what my mother saw. My mother who’s a staunch atheist. Who doesn’t believe in anything she can’t see. You can’t imagine a more empirical person.’

  Muntaha smiled up at him. ‘It doesn’t sound ridiculous at all.’

  He smiled back. He saw the flowers whirling on the hospital table, the colours merging into one. She breathed. He breathed.

  They arrived again at the tube station entrance. Winds and odours gurgled up from its throat.

  ‘Do you want to go home?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you want to do?’

  ‘I should go back.’

  ‘Then I should go home. This has been an inspiring conversation.’

  ‘It has. I needed it. It’s good to talk about these things.’

  Gabor looked into her dark eyes. ‘If I can do anything. If you want to come round, or I’ll come to you. Somebody to talk to. Anything at all.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  They shook hands. Her large hand inside his.

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘Thanks for coming, Gabor. It’s nice of you.’

  She walked back to her father’s house noticing flying insects and leaves and the red light reflected in people’s faces. All these were signs, meaningful and important. Signs of what exactly she couldn’t tell. But she didn’t need to tell. Signs speak for themselves.

  Back she marched to the plodding niceties of the mourning ritual. Back to an outraged Hasna who had lost now two husbands to weakness of the heart, whose eyes (already making plans for redecoration) would escape around the room to her friends wobbling on white plastic chairs – repeating ‘God be merciful’ and ‘may the years be added to yours’ – and to the fierce young wives of Ammar’s friends, who didn’t know the traditions and so didn’t know what to say.

  Muntaha, filled up with oxygen, briskly galloped the stairs. Another twenty minutes is all it took, expressing gratitude, saying goodbye. It was easy to get away. She had the sorry excuse of a husband to go to.