by Rafik Schami
Salim stood up quickly and handed him the water jug. Junis drank one swallow and calmed down a little. "That of all the people in the world I had to deliver this man up to the hangman grieves me to this day."
"Tell us about it, and lighten your heart," Mehdi said, taking Junis by the arm. "Tell us!" he begged quietly, while Ali gently stroked the cafe owner on the back.
"From that day on I lived with Omar—that was his name. He had good clothes made for me and sent me to school. At first I didn't know anything about him. A housekeeper came every day, cooked, cleaned, and did the wash, and Omar paid her well. He lived alone and chose not to marry. I was allowed to go every where in the house except the cellar. When after a few weeks I asked him where his money came from, he answered, From my gold mine,' and laughed like a devil.
"Once I woke up in the middle of the night. Since it was very hot, I went into the small courtyard to cool off. I saw a light burning inside his cellar, so I crept down the stairs and peeped through the keyhole. There I saw him, sitting at a table, pouring glowing metal into a mold. Next he took out a shiny piece of metal that looked as round and golden as a gold lira, and filed it and polished it for a long time.
'The next day I told him I knew all about his gold mine. He was shocked, but I assured him that I was a deep well, and asked him why he had made only the one gold lira.
" 'One gold lira is enough for one week, and no one will ever find out he answered. For anyone but Omar one gold lira would have been enough for a whole month back then. It turned out he had obtained the finely crafted mold as well as the recipe for the brilliant mixture from an old master counterfeiter who had lived off this craft his entire life; every week he had poured one gold lira and then spent it in a different place. Omar, too, kept traveling north and south to exchange his fake gold liras for real money, and, like the master, he never poured two coins.
"I thought it was stupid. I told him he should make hundreds of them, trade them in, and then retire. 'That way I'd never make it to retirement, my boy,' he answered.
"Well, the years I lived with Omar were the most wonderful years of my life. He was a father and a friend to me, until the day I divulged the secret to a schoolmate. This boy told me we ought to make a gold lira for ourselves every day and sell it somewhere else. Syria was big enough to handle two fake gold liras, and Omar wouldn't suspect a thing. At first I refused, but this damned devil kept pushing me more and more, until finally I agreed to try just one gold coin. So one day, when Omar was away, my schoolmate and I sneaked inside the cellar. We heated up the yellow alloy and poured it into the mold. The gold lira came out looking shabby, and I was afraid, but my friend said that he knew a dealer who was so greedy he'd buy anything, as long as it was cheap.
"Well, two days later, the police not only surrounded the house, they occupied the whole street. They arrested Omar and carried off his entire workshop from the cellar. When an officer asked him rudely what son of a whore had taught him to do that, Omar answered with a smile, 'The Sultan.'
"The next day I hurried to the Damascus prison to see him, but since he was being held as a traitor, he was forbidden to speak with anyone until his sentencing half a year later. I had fake papers made up to change my name and show that I was his nephew since then I've been called Junis. As a relative, I was the first one allowed to see him. I was trembling at the idea of meeting him, but he just beamed at me. I told him I was ashamed to death to have betrayed the one man in Damascus who had given me his love, that I would rather die than see him languish here in prison. Omar laughed. 'Instead of dying and being ashamed for the rest of your life,' he told me, you should use your head and learn: never tell everything you know.'
"Every day I visited him and brought him fruits and snuff. In order to bring him things without being searched, I had to bribe a series of guards. He secretly gave me letters to deliver to various addresses in Damascus. They were all elegant homes, and from them I received answers, which I would smuggle back into the prison. I was exhausted, since at the time I was working in a large cafe where I waited on tables for very little money. I saved every piaster of my wages and tips. I stole from the owner whenever I could, and bought Omar fruits and snuff.
After a month, Omar asked me what I intended to do with myself. I answered: 'I'm not thinking about myself until you're out of here.'
" 'I will be out of here in ten days,' he answered with a laugh. 'So, then, what will you do with yourself eleven days from now?'
" 'I'd like to open a cafe.'
" 'Now listen closely to me. Go down into the cellar and you'll find a big marble slab underneath the wood stove. Lift it up and you'll find a box. Inside this box are two sacks, a big one, filled with hay, which belongs to me, and a small one, in which you'll find two hundred gold liras of the best counterfeit. No man on earth can tell them from the real thing. You'll be safe from the slightest suspicion. They're yours, if you promise me you'll never let any guest leave your cafe hungry or dissatisfied. Ten days from now is Thursday, understand? On Thursday night, bring the sack of hay to the coffeehouse next to the fountain near the Umayyad Mosque. Sit in the first row, listen to the hakawati's story, and then leave. God have mercy on you if you can't keep this to yourself. And woe to you if you open the sack of hay. I will kill you. Do you hear? Kill you.'
"I hurried home and shoved the marble slab aside, and there were the two sacks, but the big sack was so heavy that when Thursday came I had difficulty carrying it. I found the cafe, and no sooner had an old hakawati begun telling the love story of Antar and Abla but Omar walked in. He was wearing a white robe with a wonderful, black cloak and an embroidered silk vest, such as only the most elegant people in Damascus wore back then. He sat down next to me without a word of greeting, and when the hakawati had finished his tale, I stood up and started to leave, just as he had ordered. He grabbed me by my sleeve. 'What's in this sack?' he asked.
" 'Heavy hay,' I answered. He laughed, then hoisted the sack and walked out. He climbed on his horse, which he had tied in front of the cafe, and rode alongside me. I walked slowly down the street.
" 'The police are bound to make a raid tonight. Where are you planning to spend the night?' he asked.
" 'I already have a hiding place for the next few years,' I answered.
" 'Yes, but where can I see you? Tell me where you'll be!' he whispered.
" 'O sir, two mountains will never meet, but two people will find each other if they look,' I answered.
" 'You have learned well. The time in prison was a fair price to pay for that. Keep your word, never let anyone leave your table hungry or dissatisfied!' he called out, then laughed and rode away under a mantle of darkness.
"And as for me, I came to your neighborhood and bought a dilapidated dump. The money allowed me to make it into the coffeehouse that all of you know. But I saw that the food was not enough to keep my guests satisfied. I saw how they would go back home with all their cares and worries. Then one night a guest happened to tell a beautiful story, and the people stayed longer and went home happier. From then on I hired a hakawati every night."
"My God, and did you ever meet Omar again?" Musa asked.
"No," answered Junis, but a smile played around his lips.
"You heard it," said Isam, "the master taught him
—he's never supposed to tell everything he knows."
Junis nodded, relieved. Isam pulled out five cards, and
just as on the previous evening, the
locksmith wanted to be the last
to draw. It was the emigrant
who drew the ace.
8
How
one person's
true story was not believed,
whereas his most blatant lie was
Tuma the emigrant was a vigorous, wiry man of slight build. His gait was more a skip, despite the seventy-five years he carried on his back. He would bound up stairs as if he were a love-stricken fourteen-year-old on his way to see his sweetheart. None of
the other gentlemen looked as young and strong as Tuma, whose entire philosophy of health consisted in taking an ice-cold shower every morning, in winter as well as summer. He always said he felt reborn after his shower.
Tuma came from a village on the coast, not far from Latakia. When he returned from America, not one member of his family was still living in the port city: some had died, and the rest had either moved to different cities or left the country. Tuma and his wife, Jeannette, decided to settle in Damascus. She was a second-generation emigrant, born in California; her mother came from Mexico. Her father, on the other hand, came from the mountains of Lebanon; an only child, he had lost his parents in the massacres of 1860. Sixty years later, shortly before his death, he made his only daughter swear never to return to Arabia, neither by land nor by sea. So when she did return, she insisted on a city with an airport, and Damascus did indeed boast an airport.
Tuma rented a very small house on Lazarists Street. If his wife Jeannette hadn't been so petite and thin, the two of them would never have been able to move at the same time inside the tiny rooms of their doll-house. Nevertheless, in his forty square feet of courtyard Tuma was not to be deterred from constructing the pride and joy of every Arabian palace: what he had been raving to his wife about for thirty years—a fountain ... in this case, no larger than a soup bowl. Surrounding this treasure was a miniature jungle of plants growing out of a thousand tiny flowerpots, which Tuma's clever hands had first fashioned from tin cans and then painted and arranged with such skill that the plants actually made the courtyard appear larger than it was. The only thing that bothered his friends was a plastic penguin, which spat water into the soup bowl in an uninterrupted noisy stream; if it hadn't come from America, then Salim, Mehdi, or Junis would have suggested to Tuma that he throw it in the trash. Or else Isam would have smashed the plastic bird into a thousand and one pieces. Faris and Musa, on the other hand, both agreed that the presence of the ice dweller in the middle of Damascus had a cooling effect on the soul.
Jeannette spoke a broken Arabic, but she said what she thought directly and without the slightest embellishment. Whenever he visited, Salim couldn't get enough of her. He liked the freshness of her language. The neighbors appreciated—and even envied—this petite, gentle woman, for although she spoke so softly she was nearly inaudible, she never had to repeat a word she said. Jeannette had not been eager to leave America, if for no other reason than it meant leaving behind their grown-up children. But Tuma had promised her heaven on earth if she came with him to Syria: she would be his queen, he her slave. At least that's how the neighbors told it. The strong-willed Tuma was never in his life anybody's slave, but even in public he showed his spouse great respect. He was the only man in the neighborhood who walked hand in hand with his wife.
Like many who returned from America, Tuma dressed in a European suit and always wore one of the many hats he had in his possession. They were as beautiful as those worn by the gangster bosses in American movies. And in the winter, when Tuma wore his light-colored raincoat with the collar turned up, Faris often greeted him with the words "Hello, Mister Humphrey Bogart!"
That night, when Tuma walked in the room, his friends were already waiting.
"I see that tonight Tuma's planning to entertain our stomachs as well," Isam joked and made some room on the small table for the tray of cookies Tuma had brought along. Salim gave the emigrant a slightly disapproving eye: an Arab guest does not bring cookies. Tuma smiled, a little embarrassed. "In America," he said, "guests always bring something. Jeannette insisted. She sends you her greetings and says she's dying to know how you like her cookies. She made them according to an old Mexican recipe."
Salim smiled and took one; the others followed. "Now you can get away with any story you want," said Mehdi, laughing. "You've already bribed us."
"Okay, you all know I spent over thirty years in America, but none of you has ever asked why I went there in the first place." Tuma took a swallow of tea. "When the First World War broke out," the emigrant began his story, "I was eighteen years old."
"Eighteen!" Musa interrupted. "You were at least twenty-eight, my dear!"
"Let's call it twenty," the emigrant offered as a compromise.
Musa signaled his acceptance, and Tuma went on with his tale.
"We lived on the outskirts of Latakia. When the Ottoman military authorities called me up, I fled, but I had no idea where to go. Until that time, Latakia had been my whole world. My parents were very poor basket weavers. I had an uncle and an aunt who lived in Tartus, but I couldn't stay with them because their sons had also fled the draft and their houses were constantly being searched by the police.
"I wandered around the city and spent my nights by the sea with the poor fishermen. There were over twenty of us young men staying there. One day in the summer of 1916—I had been hiding there for two years—we woke up at dawn. A large detachment of soldiers was combing the coast, looking for people like me. Some informer had blown the whistle on us. I heard that for every man they caught he got one piaster! Anyone who ran was shot. I could see the soldiers' torches and could hear the cries of those they had captured.
"An Italian freighter was lying anchored off the coast; it had taken on tobacco in Latakia and was waiting for papers to put out to sea. I ran and ran, but the soldiers were closing in. There wasn't a single tree or bush for me to hide behind. I was so afraid, I found a high cliff and clambered up. One slip and you'd fall to your death. From my hideout I could see the flat beach off to my right. The soldiers were driving their quarry into the water and beating them with the butts of their rifles. Then they chained the prisoners together like unruly camels. I lay as flat as I could on the rock ledge. Soon it was light, and the soldiers kept on searching. They set fire to many of the fishermen's huts as a punishment. Even so, I thought my hiding place was safe until one of the soldiers with a pair of field glasses called out from the beach below: 'Bring that dog down here!' and three soldiers started climbing up to get me. My end was approaching—I could see it. The war was in back of me, and in front of me, the sea: two monsters! I didn't know how to swim. Funny, isn't it? We all lived by the sea, but most of my friends were every bit as scared of the water as I was."
"The proverb says: The cobbler goes barefoot, and the tailor is naked," said Faris.
Isam laughed. "You could also say: The fisherman drowns!"
"Okay," Tuma went on, "so the soldiers were cursing out loud as they climbed up to get me. Their clumsy boots kept slipping on the smooth rock. Their sergeant threatened to punish them if I escaped. When there was only about twenty feet left between us, I stood up. The soldiers gently tried to persuade me to spare them the danger. They said they were just poor devils too, who had no choice but to carry out their orders. I took one step in their direction, but then I cried out and jumped into the ocean. I had no idea how high the cliff really was.
"When I hit the water, I started thrashing my arms furiously. All I could hear or see was water. The freighter wasn't far off but the sea kept pulling me down. I struggled like a crazy man. I no longer remember how long I kept going. I just kept shouting, 'I want to live!' and flailed about and flailed about until I had exhausted all my strength. When I came to, I found myself surrounded by friendly faces. I jumped up and wanted to run away, but the sailors calmed me down. They had watched the whole search action, and when they saw me jump, they secretly let down a boat. As long as the ship was anchored their captain had to be kept in the dark, otherwise he'd get into trouble and have to hand me over to the authorities. But the next day the ship set sail for Venice.
"Okay, so in Venice I was able to find work as a porter. There were many Arabs working there. But I wanted to go to America. A cousin of mine lived in Florida. At the time I thought: Well, why not? I'll find him. America's big, sure, but it can't be much bigger than Latakia—and in Latakia you can mention a man's name and before the day is over you've found him." Tuma laughed, took a draw on the waterpipe, and passed it to Sal
im. Then he went on.
"My word, was America bigger than Latakia! I've often told you what hell the immigration authorities put us through. Okay, so it turned out that in the meantime my cousin had moved on to Argentina looking for work. Argentina means 'land of silver,' and my cousin hoped he'd find some in a country that size. You know, when an emigrant needs something to hold on to, a spider web looks like a wooden beam. None of you have ever emigrated, but let me tell you, it's a hard life. Bread was like a horseman, and we emigrants were always racing after him on foot with our tongues hanging out, huffing and puffing, trying to catch up with him. A curse, I can tell you.
"Okay. You've told some fantastic stories. But I experienced so much in America that I won't have to tell you anything but the truth. It often hurts me that so many people here think there's money lying in the street over there. They say that in America things are different: you just bend down and you can pick dollar bills more easily than tomatoes in the fields outside Damascus. And if you tell these people it isn't true, maybe they won't tell you to your face that you're an idiot, no no, but they'll make you feel like one. Look at this man, or look at that one, they say. He spent two years in America and came back a millionaire! It hurts to see the contempt in people's eyes. A neighbor once told me when he was drunk: 'Anyone who makes it in America doesn't come back.' Let me tell you, that may be the case for a lot of people, but not for me. The older I got, the more homesick I became for my Latakia. I never felt any kind of longing for homeland, or fatherland, or any other bullshit—but I had to go back to Latakia. It's like you have to take revenge for the disgrace of running away. You go back to prove yourself as a human being, to show you're stronger than war, stronger than hunger, or stronger than the sea. Meanwhile here they're waiting for you with the question: 'Come on, Mr. America, why don't you buy yourself a villa?' No one asks: 'What did you get out of being abroad?' Last night I thought for a long time about what being abroad had given me, and what it had taken away. That's what I want to tell you about tonight. So please listen as if it were a story. Okay?
