by Rafik Schami
"My legs were a little tired. I'm not as young as I used to be, you know. In the old days I used to make it from our street to the mosque in an hour; today it took me three times as long."
"You've just become a tortoise, my Salim, and like a tortoise you're going to live to be a hundred. Didn't I tell you? Once, when you were very sick, the angel of death came to me. 'Well, old woman,' said the cutter of all souls, 'I'll be coming for him soon, and you'll be looking for someone else.' But I haggled with him until he finally took ten years from my life and gave them to you. He called me a crazy woman and hurried to Abdullah the goldsmith. Didn't I tell you the very next morning, how Abdullah had died in the night? You just laughed at me. 'Abdullah? You're crazy, the angel of death won't get far with him. That man has seven souls, just like a cat.' Isn't that what you said? And then what happened? Abdullah lay dead in his bed. His widow's still alive and doing well. The reason so many wives outlive their husbands is because they aren't so foolish as to take life as seriously as their spouses. But I wanted to die first. I was always bored when you were away, and I couldn't stand being bored. That's all. Don't look at me so horrified. I know, I know, not a second went by when you weren't head over heels in love with me. I, on the other hand, found life with you to be very stressful, but never boring. Isn't that love enough? What a beautiful tray."
"I just bought it today. Ours was getting much too old." No sooner had Salim spoken these words than Afifa and two other women strode into the mosque.
"Give it to me, I'll make some coffee for the guests!" Zaida called out, but Salim roared, "No, not for Afifa!" Zaida tore the platter from his hand.
Salim woke up in fright. He clutched all around him. His platter had disappeared. He looked over to the people gathered around the learned man. They were still debating quietly, although a little more heatedly. Aha! Fighting over the booty! They sit there peacefully as can be, waiting until your eyes begin to droop, and then they make their move. A learned man and his students, my foot! More likely Ali Baba sitting with his forty thieves.
Salim jumped up and hurried out. How long had he been asleep? Where was his tray now? When he entered the yard of the mosque, he saw a circle of young people sitting in a distant corner. Two attendants were sweeping the perfectly spotless aisle with large palm leaves. Salim trotted behind them. But the young people had no tray. Salim tried asking them with his hands, but they only giggled in reply.
In a rage, Salim left the mosque and hurried home. His head was throbbing with self-reproach, as well as anger at the entire thieving world—of all the tea trays around, they had to choose his. He had never been the most pious man in Damascus, but in his ire he considered it absolutely shameless to steal in the house of God. His thoughts grew bleaker and bleaker and began to smell strongly of burning tar, although he was just crossing the spice market.
"Uncle, hey, Uncle!" he suddenly heard someone calling. He turned around. A boy was waving to him from the vicinity of the" tiny cafe. He was holding up the platter, and Salim stared at him, practically in shock.
"Uncle, you disappeared so suddenly. This belongs to you, doesn't it?" asked the boy, who came running and gasping for air.
Salim nodded and held the boy, whose face was scarred with pockmarks, firmly by the hand until he dug a lira out of his bag. He handed him the coin.
"A whole lira! My heavens!" the boy cried and started dancing for joy right then and there. As Salim well knew, a cafe errand boy had to work a whole week to earn one lira. The coachman was ashamed he had suspected the learned elder. But Salim could never stay ashamed for very long. Soon enough he was feeling proud of the tea he would serve that evening on his brand-new tea tray. Pride was the best shower he could take to wash away his feelings of guilt.
Salim hurried home, leaving the old bazaar behind
him, and when he opened the door to his room late
in the afternoon, the hustle and bustle of the old
quarter had faded, and all its sights and sounds
were woven into a distant whisper,
as full of life and color and
every bit as rugged as an
Oriental rug.
7
How
one man's
hunger for a dream
kept everyone else well fed
People didn't know much about Junis, even though he had run his coffeehouse near the Bab Tuma for over thirty years. Everyone raved about his Yemenite coffee, his Lebanese arak, his Egyptian beans, and his pipe tobacco from Latakia, but hardly anyone knew where Junis himself had come from.
People did know that in the mid-thirties he bought a dilapidated old dive and expanded it into a coffeehouse—and that he spared no expense in making it the most beautiful establishment in the Christian quarter. But he was jinxed. No sooner had he opened its doors than the magnificent coffeehouse burned down. Debts consumed ten years of his life before he again reached the point where he had been when the fire struck.
Junis was often morose, and almost always in a bad mood. People said he used to be as happy as a clown, but if anyone asked him where his good mood had gone, he would answer drily: "It burned away."
In addition to his bad mood, his excellent waterpipe, and his Yemenite mocha, he was known throughout the quarter for his boiled beans. Stingy as he was with everything else, Junis was remarkably generous when it came to these beans. A few piasters would buy a heaping plateful of this wonderfully filling, and terribly indigestible, dish. If the first serving wasn't enough, all you had to do was walk up to the counter, hold out your empty plate, and whisper, "Adjustment." Without batting an eyelash, the cook would dispense a second, even a third portion free of charge—only an elephant could put away a fourth "adjustment." In no other restaurant in Damascus—or probably in all the world—did the word adjustment have such a meaning.
The kitchen stopped serving in the early afternoon; the late afternoon was reserved for waterpipes and tea; and after the sun set, it was time for the hakawatis. Night after night these storytellers climbed on a high stool and entertained the guests with their gripping tales of love and adventure. The listeners would talk among themselves and interrupt the stories with their comments and quarrels; at times they would even demand that the hakawati repeat a passage they had particularly enjoyed. The hakawatis, for their part, had to compete with the noise. Interestingly, however, the more the suspense grew, the more quietly the hakawati would tell the story. The listeners would then admonish each other to be silent, so that they could follow the plot. When the tale reached its most dramatic moment—for instance, when the hero had climbed up the trellis to his beloved and was hanging from her balcony by his fingertips—a watchman or father would inevitably appear on the scene. Here the hakawati would interrupt his tale and promise to continue the next evening. The storyteller did this so that the guests would come back to Junis' and not go to one of his competitors. Sometimes the listeners got so excited, they would descend on the hakawati, offer him a waterpipe or some tea, and discreetly ask him to give away the rest of the story. But no hakawati dared surrender the suspense; Junis had strictly forbidden them to do so. "Come back tomorrow and you'll find out what happens," was always their answer.
Damascenes tell many anecdotes about quarrels breaking out among the listeners, who often took sides with the characters in a tale. Some would stand by the bride's family; others insisted that the groom was in the right. There are other stories about listeners who were so curious or in such a state of suspense they couldn't sleep. In the middle of the night they would go to the hakawati's house and bribe him to let the hero into his beloved's chamber, or to arrange for the hero's escape from prison. Supposedly only a few hakawatis ever accepted such offers, and then never without first making the listeners swear they would come to the coffeehouse the next day, for by no means could Junis learn of their transaction.
When Junis arrived, Salim had just finished preparing the tea and the waterpipe. The old coachman not only seemed happy
, he looked as if he had grown younger by a couple of decades.
"Were you in the steam bath?" asked Faris.
"Did you have a shave?" inquired Isam.
Salim shook his head. With two fingers of his right hand and the outstretched palm of his left, he showed that he had been out for a walk.
"What a beautiful tea tray, how much did it cost you?" the emigrant asked, admiring the new platter.
"More than twenty liras, that's for certain. Such fine handiwork," stated the minister.
"I could get that exact same tray for fifteen," said Isam, the most experienced haggler among them.
Salim nodded and was pleased with his bargain, which wasn't a true bargain unless everyone else thought he had paid more than he really had.
"So today it's your turn," the minister said to Junis. "But that shouldn't pose a problem for you. You must have heard and seen a thousand stories in your cafe."
"You're mistaken, my friend," replied the proprietor. "The guests don't tell many stories in the coffeehouse; that's why we have the hakawati. He's a professional. Most guests, in fact, have precious little to say."
"That's the first time I've ever heard that," Faris contended. "I thought people went to the cafe day in and day out just to talk."
"Yes, that's what everybody thinks, but if you'd run a cafe for as many years as I did, you'd see I was right. At first it was fascinating to listen to all those people, but the fascination soon wore off, because, really, they all just repeat the same thing over and over. One man is constantly gabbing about his liver, the other is always going on about his unfortunate son. It makes no difference if someone starts talking about cucumbers, because the minute he does, the one with the liver is going to say: 'Cucumbers are bad for your liver. I should know. When my liver was still healthy . . .' and he's back on his subject. Meanwhile, the one with the unhappy son isn't paying the least bit of attention; he's looking out for the slightest opportunity and waiting for a cue that would allow him to start back in on his son. Some people never really talk about anything—they just repeat the same old sentence from time to time. And then I had one customer from up north who came every day and drank exactly five glasses of arak—never four and never six. He would down his first glass in complete silence, but from the second glass on, he was absolutely certain to start composing these stupid rhymes."
"You're never satisfied with anything, are you!" Tuma jabbed.
"You should have heard him: Cheers, Junis!' he would shout, holding up his second glass. 'I'll drink to Tunis!' "
"And with his third glass," Isam laughed, "Cheers Ali! Ill drink to Mali!"
"Yes, that's about the size of it. Every night he would begin with me and end with some major capital. So you can see how much my customers really had to say. Even so, it was a paradise compared to today, when no one so much as opens his mouth inside the cafe. They just sit there dumber than fish and listen to the goddamn radio. At first I thought the radio was a blessing for coffeehouses. I even bought one myself, an expensive one, so I could have some music now and then. But ever since the new regime flooded the market with those portable transistor radios for a measly ten liras, nobody talks in the cafe anymore. In the old days, if there were twenty people sitting in my place, there were twenty prophets. Everyone spoke his mind out loud and no one was afraid of anything. Today you can't tell a joke without someone giving you the evil eye and asking who you meant by 'idiot' or 'jackass.' Anything you want to say, you have to protect yourself first. You have to listen to the latest news, so you'll know whom the regime has just declared friend or foe.
"Yesterday I was at my son's bar. I've been so worried about Salim that I haven't listened to the news in weeks. Well, my son brought me some tea, and I started telling him about my youngest sister. She's married to a Lebanese and has been living in Beirut for forty years. All of a sudden this total stranger butts in and says in a loud voice, 'I wouldn't let my sister marry some Lebanese dog!' My son whispered that the man was from the secret police and that our president had declared Lebanon an enemy country. I had no idea. I was so mad I was boiling over, and I was ready to whack this loudmouth a few times with my cane, to teach him not to insult his elders—but my son begged me not to. 'That would ruin me,' he said, 'they'd shut down the place within hours.' Someone would plant a handful of hashish somewhere, you see, or else a book by Lenin. The police would show up an hour later, and they'd find the hashish and the Lenin exactly where the man from the secret police had stashed them. The place would be closed and its proprietor thrown in prison for ten or twenty years.
"How in the hell are people supposed to talk to each other with all that? The only thing I knew about the mess in Lebanon was that there was fighting. Is that any reason for me to disown my sister?"
Faris, the former statesman, felt uneasy. The coachman's small room had a window facing the street, and although it was icy cold outside, the louder Junis spoke, the more uneasy he became. And that night, Junis was quite agitated and loud. Faris gave Tuma a wink, and the latter nodded, as if to say that he had understood.
"But the hakawatis, they told stories, didn't they? What kind of stories were they?" he asked Junis.
"Oh they told stories all right," said Junis. "I must have heard thousands of them. You know, I had quite a few storytellers over the years. Well, last night was the first time I ever thought long and hard about my hakawatis. Many were bad, but a few were good. Anyone who bored his listeners was bad.
"A story had to taste every bit as good as the food, otherwise most of my guests would get up, pay for their waterpipe, and leave; after all, they could bore themselves at home for less money. It was a bad hakawati who couldn't tell when his listeners were bored. But you know, what amazed me was that the good hakawatis didn't have flying carpets constantly whizzing around, or dragons spitting fire, or witches concocting crazy potions. They kept their listeners just as spellbound with the simplest things. But there's one thing that even a bad hakawati has to have—a good memory. He can never get so worried or carried away that he loses the thread. This doesn't mean his memory has to be as amazing as our Salim's, but it's got to be pretty good, or else he's lost."
"My God, if that's all you need," the barber chimed in.
"Just a minute now. Sometimes I can't even remember what I said two days ago," the locksmith said and laughed.
"No, Musa's right," said the emigrant. "The whole world knows that all Arabs are born with a good memory. They never forget a thing, and that's why they love the camel. A camel doesn't forget anything, either. But it's not always a gift; sometimes it can be a curse. Do you know the story of Hamad?"
"No, but it's not your turn today," the teacher protested.
"Let him tell the story," Isam requested. "I'd like to find out how a good memory can also be a curse. But only if it's all right with Junis, of course—after all, it's his night."
Junis smiled. "Go ahead. We're not in school."
"Okay," Tuma began, "so once there was this farmer named Hamad. One day the village elder was preparing to marry off his only daughter. The wedding celebrations were going to last for seven days and seven nights. The bride's father invited all the people in the village; his generosity knew no bounds. The first night there was roast lamb, aromatic rice, beans, and a salad with onions and garlic. Everything tasted delicious. The guests were enjoying the bountiful feast, and Hamad, who had gone hungry half his life, overdid it. Within two hours he devoured an entire leg of lamb, a huge bowl of rice, and an even bigger bowl of salad.
"Okay, so—late in the night Hamad started having a terrible attack of gas. He was sitting on the floor in the banquet room, and when the gas became unbearable, he tried to get up and go outside to fart, but just as he was standing up he passed wind so loudly it roared. This happened at the very moment the poet was reciting his verse in praise of the bride's grace and charm, and precisely at the line 'Your breath is like a whiff of jasmine!' The people laughed, but the host threw Hamad a look that could an
nihilate. You know, a guest may sooner stab his host with a knife than fart or burp at his table. And yet, in other parts of the world, a host counts himself lucky if his guest happens to burp."
"Those people must be complete idics," said Junis. "At any rate, no one in my cafe would even dare imagine such a thing."
"Well, you know, other countries, other customs," said the emigrant, coming to the defense of burpers of all lands.
"No, it's not proper. Next thing you know, they'll say 'Bless you' whenever you fart," Ali protested.
"Come on, let Tuma finish his story, or else we'll never get to Junis," Faris spoke up.
"Okay, as I was saying, Hamad was so ashamed that he ran out. For days he was so ridiculed, both by the children and the adults in his village, that he couldn't stand it. He packed his things and left for Brazil. At that time there were many Arabs who emigrated to America. Some because they were starving; others, like me, because they were persecuted; and Hamad, just because he had farted.
"He worked abroad for forty years. It's a hard life, I can tell you. Still, Hamad managed to build up a modest fortune. One day he was overcome with longing to see his village, and he paid a mint to travel from Brazil to Syria. As soon as he laid eyes on the fields of his village, he asked the bus driver to stop. Hamad wanted to smell the earth of his home—you know, return to the village on foot, just as he had left it. He strode slowly toward the village, enjoying the fresh air and constantly bending down to touch the earth. When he reached the village cemetery, he was seized with curiosity. He wanted to know who had died while he was away. So he went in and wandered from one grave to the next, reading the names of the deceased and praying for their souls. Then he saw the gravestone of one of his best childhood friends. He was more than a little amazed, since this friend had always been the picture of health. There was no date on the gravestone. An elderly woman was tending a small grave nearby. Hamad went over to her. He didn't know her. 'Salaam aleikum, Grandmother. I've just come back from Brazil and see that Ismail has died. His gravestone's almost gone to ruin. Can you tell me when he died?'
