The Road from Damascus

by Robin Yassin-Kassab

  ‘I’m Aisha,’ she said, lifting her hand from his thigh to shake.

  He took it. ‘I’m Sami.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Sami.’

  She sustained her smiling, unbroken as a river’s flow. Liquid black eyes unblemished. The whiteness of her teeth. The pinkness of her tongue. It was revelatory to Sami to remember that a human could be pure. He couldn’t name her smell but it was inside him like spring-cleaning. Molecules of her floating inside his brain, sparking receptors.

  She asked him, ‘Any experience of this kind of work?’

  ‘No. Well, I don’t know what it’s going to be really, but no anyway. I was trying to be an academic until recently.’

  ‘Academic? That’s interesting. I think it’s sales. I’ve done a little. It’s all right if you keep thinking positive. I need this one, though. No money in the bank. I need this one.’ She flicked crossed fingers between their noses. ‘I need it, God,’ she prayed.

  The blonde returned, bearing papers. ‘Welcome,’ she said, to Sami’s eyes, then Aisha’s. She dropped her gaze to give instructions, and kept it dropped as she turned and sashayed away. An efficiency of skirt-bound buttocks.

  They each had a form to fill. Name, Age, Birth Sign. Then an open question: How Much Do You Want To Win?

  Sami Traifi, Sami wrote. Virgo. He put twenty-seven for age. How Much Do You Want To Win? He answered in genre: One Hell Of A Lot.

  He waited for Aisha to finish. She wrote a paragraph about winning in tiny letters, the pen pushed hard into the resistance of her folded leg.

  ‘Aisha. That’s a Muslim name.’

  ‘Don’t know. It’s Aisha Smith. My Mum says it’s African, Aisha. You Muslim?’

  ‘Well, in a way. By birth, yeah.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ A sporting smile.

  ‘Aisha was the name of the Prophet Muhammad’s favourite wife.’

  The blonde returned, face to carpet. ‘I’ll gather these,’ she said, ‘if I may.’ And next into Aisha’s eyes, Sami recognizing this contact to be scripted: ‘Welcome, Ee-sha. It’ll be your turn first.’

  Aisha rose, smoothing herself down. As he watched her legs recede, heels striking the tiled floor, Sami felt a twinge of fear on her behalf. Deer hooves clacking on concrete.

  Someone came forward to meet her, tall and padded, suited like a mukhabarat man. Neck erupting from a tight, white collar, and a fleshy chin, a roast-tomato tan on tumescent nose and cheeks. Sunken green eyes, pools bordered by red anemones. His moist forehead bulging. Creamed brown hair. He slapped at Aisha’s palm like she was a male. Like a rugby player in the bar. ‘Antony,’ he said.

  Left alone, Sami sat forward, thinking American artifice to put him in the mood for the new economy. Cartoons in technicolour, novelty, fast food, gadgets, gloss. Muffled rave through the wall. Aisha’s neat shape engraved next to him.

  No more than two minutes passed and she was back, overshadowed by Antony’s bulk.

  ‘Thanks a lot now.’ He dismissed her. ‘That’ll be all for today.’ His smile slapped on like sunscreen.

  Sami stood. Again she presented her hand. A fact, unarguable.

  ‘I know you’ll be selected,’ she told him. ‘You have personality.’

  Her face was curved and full like the stages of the moon stitched together, but seamless. Her skin didn’t mask any of her emotion, which made her vulnerable in this environment. She was upset, and she also wished Sami well. Genuine on both counts. No script. Old-fashioned, really.

  Sami took his turn, swinging into the mid-Atlantic shake-slap presented him.

  ‘I’m Antony. In charge of this operation. On the peak of the pyramid.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Antony.’ First names are important. The mask of intimacy.

  ‘Firm shake. I like it.’ Antony smiled into Sami’s eyes to indicate the liking. ‘Please step this way.’

  He sat in an imitation-leather armchair on one side of an empty desk, Sami on the other side, on a plastic chair. On the wall behind there was a portrait of Antony framed in imitation gold leaf. Lines like rays or roots were drawn downwards from the photograph into a descending base of more photos, fifty or sixty, passport sized. In the portrait Antony beamed as he was beaming now.

  ‘Sami, my brother.’ Raising his head from Sami’s form. ‘I call you brother because we’re a family here at Pyramid Power. You can think of Pyramid Power as your home. Now. You say you want to win one hell of a lot. Can you expand?’

  ‘Not so much want,’ Sami said, ‘as need.’

  Antony cocked his head with worry. Sami noted it, and inspiration flowed.

  ‘Not so much need,’ he said, ‘as desire. Desire strong enough to be need. I’m already a winner. Let me out there, I’ll bring home the trophies.’

  ‘I like it!’ Antony congratulated him. ‘Sami, Sam. You know what the S stands for?’

  ‘Success?’ Sami offered.

  ‘That’s another possibility. Not what I was looking for, though.’

  ‘Er… sales?’

  ‘Sex, Sam, sex. That desire you mentioned, very aptly. You’re a… think of yourself as a penis, yeah?’

  ‘OK.’ Sami grinned.

  ‘Seriously. A throbbing member, Sam.’ Thin lips curled. ‘I’m going to set you free. You’re going to penetrate the world out there, find the sale, and–boom!’ A handclap. ‘Orgasm, Sam. Sex, Sam.’

  ‘I’m ready for that.’

  ‘I know you are. I know more than you think.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘This is S for safe sex. You don’t lose, Sam. I’m going to give you twenty quid just for returning home this evening, sale or no sale.’

  ‘OK, then. Thanks.’

  ‘You’re on board.’ Antony springing erect, hand groping in his pocket. ‘I’m gifting you something special now. Something – I jest not, Sam – something sacred.’ Extending a silver key across the desk. ‘The key to the manor. The key to the future.’

  Sami took it. Smeared his fingerprints on it.

  ‘Thanks a lot.’

  ‘One more thing, Sam.’ A low, confidential tone. ‘The beard will have to go. You know what they say about beards?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Beards bedevil business.’ Antony sympathizing. ‘Off with it by tomorrow, OK?’

  ‘Sure. It’s only recent.’

  ‘Good. Jules will guide you.’

  With a flapping of palms markedly less feel–good than the interview, the blonde directed Sami from the office and through the Uninitiated room. Through the door and to the next. Initiated.

  ‘Your key,’ she said, pointing at his pockets.

  Sami unlocked the door.

  The sound dipped into a hollow.

  ‘Sam!’ announced Jules.

  ‘Welcome!’ A crowd of perhaps thirty in integrated greeting. Not much space between them. A high frequency of blacks. And Bengalis. The whites breaking off into accents of recent arrival –Spanish, Slavic – as the music rose again, and Jules steered Sami to a square-headed black.

  ‘Scoop. He’s yours.’

  They did the knuckle thing.

  ‘Right, Sam. Let me give you lesson one.’

  ‘Your name’s Scoop?’ Sami shouted.

  ‘Skittle. Pyramid name’s Scoop.’

  ‘I’m Sami, with an “ee”.’

  Jules stood diagonally to him, glaring. Skittle followed Sami’s incomprehension to its source, and whipped back, furious.

  ‘Keep to the fucking pyramid name!’ Skittle, Scoop, mouthed, then recovered himself. ‘All right. Lesson one,’ he said. Probably said. Too much clickety bump in the background – into which Jules had dwindled – for aural clarity. ‘The Three Ps. Means Package, Present, Promote. That’s a philosophy, Sam. You know anything about philosophy?’

  The lesson lasted until Antony bounced in, red and wet. With a body twist and an upper cut he shouted, triumphant, ‘Pyramid Power!’ And the initiated shouted it back, with spittle and breath.


  ‘The pyramid.’ Antony quietened them, broodily scanning their half of the room. ‘A sacred structure. A power structure. A way,’ he whispered, uptilting his fat chin, ‘a way up.’

  There was awe in the air, but it hadn’t reached Sami. What was wrong with him that he couldn’t share people’s enthusiasms? The awe hung viscous, until Antony snapped it down.

  ‘All right. Sisters and brothers. It’s another morning. It’s time again for me to tell you a tale. The tale of me, your leader.’

  He spoke with a weariness.

  ‘You’ve heard it before. You hear it every morning. And to tell you the truth it’s a tale I get more than a little bored of telling. Until I reach the end. Why bored? Because it could be anyone’s story, the first bit. It’s probably the story of most of you, change a few details. So I’ll be brief. The details not being in the least bit interesting, or in the least bit important. Just background. You’ll have noticed, by the way, that I didn’t ask any of you about your backgrounds when you first ascended these stairs. Because I know. It’s happened to me. I’ve been there. And it isn’t in the least bit important.’

  A pause which indicated both humility and hard experience. Then a sigh.

  ‘Right then. Let’s get on. Me, in my case, I was in Australia. And I thought, to put it bluntly, I thought I was fucking God. Oh yeah. Fucking marvellous. And there’ll be no more cursing because it doesn’t fit the package that we are, so I won’t be having it, but just to let you know my mindset at the time. I was a fucking king. On top of the fucking world. Right. That’s what I thought.’

  He allowed a pop-eyed chuckle.

  ‘Right. I thought I had the world sussed. Lying on the beach. Drinking beer. Smoking the wacky backy. Girlfriends. Books. Oh yeah, books. Tell you what, thought I was Jean-Paul Sartre, a philosopher.’

  And on that word he became more toxic.

  ‘A philosopher, for God’s sake. A beach-arse philosopher. Until one day, a simple thing, my tooth started hurting me. Really hurting. And I didn’t have the cash to go to the dentist. So I ask my so-called friends to help me out, and it’s all, sorry Antony, man, like be cool, yeah, but there’s no moolah for you. But I’m in agony, I’m crying with it, and they’ve disappeared, so I’ve learnt something. I’ve learnt, there’s no friendship, there’s only respect. And I commanded none. Which depressed me. I wanted to come home. But I had no cash for the ticket. What I was, was helpless. What I was, was nothing. I was shit, that’s what I was. No cursing, but making allowances for the mindset, for my new awareness of my basic situation. I was shit. Worth nothing.’

  At last Sami felt a mild splashing of emotion. He cupped it protectively inside himself, to keep it safe, to be one with the others.

  ‘So I was shit slopping around on the beach, when I met someone. Jeff.’

  A collective lightening, and some gasps of relief. Jeff was a known deity.

  ‘Jeff. You’ve seen his picture. That man was my saviour. At the present moment – and I jest not – one of the wealthiest people in the world. He gave me the cash to have a haircut, and sent me to work. In three days I’d made enough to have my tooth fixed. That was three days of smiling through the agony, good training, three days of packaging the pain. Then it was steady ascension. Learning what value meant. Getting on the second tier, the third, respecting myself, being respected, the fourth tier, the fifth.’

  It became a mass-participation exercise, the counting. ‘Sixth!’ called Antony and the initiated in chorus. ‘Seventh! Eighth! Ninth!’

  ‘And where am I now?’ Antony at top volume, straight-backed and glistening.

  The response came: ‘At the apex!’

  ‘What car do I drive?’

  ‘You drive a Porsche!’

  ‘What star hotel do I sleep in?’

  ‘Five!’

  ‘Where’s my third home?’

  ‘Paris!’

  ‘That is correct.’ Antony wound it up. ‘Don’t be shy to imitate. This is your future too, if you really want it. This, and more than this. You see, I’m at the apex of our family here. But there’s a bigger pyramid.’ He made a modest shrug. ‘There are people above me. Internationally. Globally. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Horatio.’

  Jules flicked a wall switch. Music exploded, high notes and a woman’s voice rolling in sugary orgasm.

  ‘Now. If you want it. Come forward! Cross the line!’

  They crossed in pairs and threes, disappearing fast through the door. Skittle pulled Sami’s forearm and they moved forward together.

  Antony laid a heavy hand on Sami’s shoulder as he passed. ‘Remember, Sam. A penis. Out you go. The lady’s opening her legs.’

  Out into the surprising sobriety of the London morning. To the frenetic stepping of a train station, echoes and glass and lights beneath a high Victorian roof. Skittle paid for two tickets. They found seats, and their train shunted out and over a bridge. Elevated, Sami looked on the surrounding city, glimpses of Thames like silver foil, the knobbly mould of towers on hilly horizons, concrete vistas of cruel mechanism. It struck him, he didn’t know why, as magnificent. He admired it as you admire a boxer dealing his opponent brain death.

  Sami told Skittle, ‘Antony said I was a penis.’

  ‘Wow.’

  Sami laughed.

  ‘No, man. That’s profound. That’s a teaching. Think on it. Look for its significance.’

  ‘I think it’s sales talk, Skittle.’

  ‘Scoop. Call me Scoop. He knows more than you think.’

  ‘Where do you live, Scoop?’

  ‘Lewisham. But my first aim is a beach house in Jamaica.’

  They gloomed into the suburbs. Red roofs and melancholy green parting occasionally to reveal kids on bicycles, delivery vans, minicabs. Intermittent cloud above, shadows and light strobing over the streets like the hands of a clock. A sky tasting of rain but not quite releasing it, sighing up its tears.

  Square-headed Skittle, eyes pouched in suspicion: ‘How old are you, Sam?’

  ‘Thirty-one. Getting older every day.’

  ‘Not twenty-seven, then.’

  ‘You’ve read my form. I wanted the job. It looks like a young people’s place.’

  ‘You lied. That’s bad.’

  He settled back, arms folded, not tall enough for the seat.

  ‘Skittle…’

  ‘Scoop. Shouldn’t have told you that. You’re a slow learner.’

  ‘Scoop, then.’

  ‘Scoop the moolah, you see? Scoop the deal.’

  ‘How much money you make in a day?’

  ‘Not much, yeah? But I’m still learning. You’re my first subordinate. Which means I’m on the second tier of the pyramid. Which is more important at this stage. Which means I won’t even be doorstepping that much longer. You do well, I’ll get more. Then you get subordinates. And I’ll be in the office, watching the cash grow.’

  ‘Well, perhaps. What music you into?’

  He was into hardcore gangsta rap. The conversation lasted them to an outer suburb, in the green belt, almost a town in its own right. The squat pink public buildings of the centre were shaped like slices of pie. Beyond these the streets were winding, leafy, and white.

  Their products were a never-experienced-before range of phone-cards and membership of a super-exclusive sports and leisure club. Skittle spent two hours showing Sami how it was done, although he never made a sale. The housewives flinched as they opened the door. From Skittle’s black skin, the piss of stained Lewisham walkways tainting him, and needle-strewn playgrounds, rain and desperation. The city they thought they’d escaped, that magnificence in Sami’s eyes, still chasing them out here.

  Sami would have preferred to be accompanied by Aisha. He initiated a fantasy to help him smile behind Skittle. Unstocking her hard legs. White garters and knickers rustling on ebony. Purplish up close. Tingle of returning sex against the groin of his borrowed suit trousers. Aisha, fading to dark
wheat, morphing into Muntaha. Heavy breasts. The wind wept a burst of drizzle. Sami stopped himself.

  Skittle had brought a boiled potato for lunch. ‘Don’t really have enough to go round,’ he said. Sami struck off on his own, to a minimarket near the station where he bought a bag of carrots, and a public toilet where he washed them. In the afternoon he knocked on doors, peering past chain locks, talking above the barking of dogs. When the sky finally let itself go, in thick waves of hysteria, he sheltered in the station waiting room. Skittle turned up at five, soaked, having made six sales. Commission of thirty quid.

  ‘It was your beard stopping us this morning. Wrong image. And your attitude, Sam. Yeah, but I’ve still got faith in you. Antony wouldn’t have chosen you otherwise.’

  Antony was flaccid at the end of the day, cheeks deflated and skin greyed. On his empty desk surface there was a wrap. Most probably coke. He caught Sami’s gaze on it.

  ‘That’ll keep me up, Sam, my brother. Want some? So make some sales. Earn your tootle tomorrow. The beard. The beard’s in the way.’

  Past seven thirty and the sales rave continued in the Initiated room. Commitment. Faith. But not for Sami. He wasn’t quite that badly off. Today had been an indignity too far. With his compensatory twenty in his pocket he descended the ascension stairs, for the last fucking time.

  But for immediate cash, and a sense of action, he had another option. A one-off. Dr Schimmer had told him about it.

  ‘One of my, aa, scientific friends. A table companion, Professor Fencestoat. He requires, aa, guinea pigs, for which he pays very well. It is what you might call, aa, weird science, more neurotheology than neuropsychology. Interesting study for one of your background.’

  Sami made the call.

  Two mornings later he was looking into Fencestoat’s inverse triangle of a face, a slight face atop a slight body, sloping from a comparatively wide forehead to a pointed chin. The temples hollow enough to house shadows, and a perfectly bald dome, with bad patches of scalp and complicated bumps – a phrenologist’s paradise.

  Fencestoat was introducing the topic.

  ‘A tendency towards or against religious belief can be inherited, just as blue eyes or bad temper can be. In other words, as far as ideology is concerned, it’s nature as well as nurture. We’ve known that for a long time.’