by Rafik Schami
"I did get rich living abroad, but not so much with money as with a second life. I think there was one Tuma who died when he jumped into the ocean and another Tuma who was born on board that boat. In my first life I used to be scared of my own shadow, but when I walked off the deck of that ship I went into the New World like a lion. What more did I have to lose? From then on, the greatest danger was no worse than the cackling of a hen. So, being abroad gave me a courage I had never known.
"Also, in Latakia we lived like bees—the individual didn't count, the clan was everything. It gives you a feeling of security, but it also ties your hands and feet up. In America people live like gazelles, everyone for himself, even if they travel together. You're on your own, but you're also free to try something new. Over there you get in a boat and row across the river all by yourself. Here if you want to cross the river to some new shore you have to pack everyone in the boat first: two grandfathers and two grandmothers, your father and mother, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, not to mention all the in-laws."
"You're forgetting preacher and imam," Faris added, nodding his head in agreement.
"If I can't take along our waterpipe and our Arabian mocha as well," Isam added with a serious expression, "I couldn't care less about any new shores."
"Okay, that's not a bad idea, but unfortunately it's impossible. But let me get back to America! In Latakia I might have met a few foreigners working on the boats, but in America I lived with Greeks, Chinese, Africans, Poles, Jews, Italians, and you name it—from any country in the world. There you meet people who had lived completely different lives before. And not just poor devils, either. You meet distinguished people working on the docks right next to you—people who'd never lifted a thing in their life. I even met Kahlil Gibran."
"You mean the famous poet Gibran?" Faris asked incredulously.
"Yes, Gibran. We were both living in New York. I met him in 1921 at a reading. He was a good man whose language and voice just streamed into my heart the first moment I heard him and filled it with peace. But while he was still alive there were many jealous people who attacked him and tried to smear his reputation. They wouldn't even leave his private life alone. But what harm can a fly's shit do to an elephant? And in his soul Gibran was as big as an elephant. One day we were in a small bar. He was very sad and he asked me how he should defend himself against his enemies. They wouldn't give him a single day of peace. Imagine, the great scholar Gibran asking me, a simple dockhand, what he should do. I told him to do just what my grandfather had done: my grandfather confounded his enemies because he kept going straight ahead.
"I bought all of Kahlil's books and had him write a fine dedication. 'To my friends Jeannette and Tuma,' he wrote. My wife loved him as much as I did. When he died of cancer in 1931, many Arabs and Americans mourned his passing. To this day my wife shows the books to every guest, and I agree with her when she says they're the greatest treasure we have.
"Okay, so what did I get out of living abroad and what did I lose? You know, before I went to America, I used to love to talk. I can still remember how I lost two jobs in Latakia because I talked and sang too much. I didn't know what a word was really worth until I traveled abroad and lost my voice. Words are invisible jewels; the only people who can see them are the ones who've lost them. Salim knows this better than anyone."
The old coachman nodded pensively.
"But losing your voice in a foreign country is worse than never having had one. Salim understands exactly what I mean. It's a particularly bitter form of dumbness, for those who are born dumb can speak with their hands, their eyes, their head. In fact, they speak with everything but their tongue. But we foreigners have it as bad as the hero of Mehdi's story. What was his name again? Shafik?"
"No, Shafak," Mehdi corrected.
"At first everything is dead, just like with Shafak. I hadn't learned to talk with my hands any more than Salim. Then suddenly I was in America. But I stayed voiceless for a long time, even after I could speak English."
"Why was that?" Mehdi wanted to know.
"How are you going to talk to people who don't have the faintest idea about the things that really matter to you? I went to America with the heart of a lion and the patience of a camel, but courage and patience were no cure for being mute. Being abroad gave me the tongue of a child, and soon it gave me a child's heart to match. You know that heart and tongue are made from the same flesh. And I spoke with the heart and tongue of a child and the patience of a camel. But no matter what I told them, they treated everything I said as a fairy tale. The Americans have a huge country, but they know very little about the rest of the world. They called me a Turk, even though I explained a thousand times that Syria is a separate country, that it only borders on Turkey. What's the difference, most of them said, you're all Turks; On the other hand, they insisted that I know exactly where they came from, down to the side of the street where they were born. In New York, bitter foes sometimes live jammed right next to one another, and woe unto you if you confuse one side of the street in Harlem with another. Or try to explain to an American that you're both an Arab and a Christian. They'd find it easier to swallow Aladdin's lamp.
"Once I was taking the train on my way to visit a friend named Mahmoud el-Haj. He was an engineer at an electrical appliance plant."
"El-Haj from Malula?"
"No, Mahmoud came from southern Lebanon. Okay, so the trip takes thirty hours by train. At one point this American comes into my compartment. He gives me a friendly nod, and I'm looking forward to a conversation that will make the trip a little shorter. But that was too much to hope for. 'Are you a Turk?' he asked.
" 'No,' I said, 'I'm an Arab.'
" That doesn't matter, as long as you're a Muslim. I've recently converted to Islam. Ashhadu anna la ilaha ilia Allahu wa anna Muhammadan Rasulu Allah.' The American recited the words of his creed to me, but that one sentence was all the Arabic he knew.
" 'Okay, that's fine for you, but I'm not a Muslim. I'm Christian, you know?'
" 'Hmm,' he says. The young American was confused and thought for a long time. Then he gave me a disapproving look. 'So you're not really an Arab, you're a Mexican!'
" 'No, I'm not, I'm as Arab as they come. There's a poet in every generation of my family.'
" 'Hmm,' he said again, sighing, and was again silent for a long time. 'But if you're an Arab, then you have to be a Muslim, that is for sure!'
" 'No, nothing is for sure. In Arabia there are Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druses, Baha'is, Yezidis, and many other religious groups besides.'
" 'Hmm,' he repeated and looked at me. By now he was completely unnerved. 'No, all Arabs are Muslims. After all, they're the ones who invented Islam!' He was very disappointed, as if the Arabs had left him in the lurch with his Islam."
"Are Americans stupid, or was this man's deck just missing a few cards?" Isam wanted to know.
"No. You know, Americans are no more stupid and no more smart than Arabs. You won't believe it when I tell you about the skyscrapers in New York!"
"And why not? I've seen pictures in the paper!" Junis said reassuringly.
"Okay, but I'm positive you won't believe me when I tell you that Americans don't haggle when they buy things!"
"What do they do, swat flies?" Isam sounded indignant.
"No, but when you go into a store, you just look at the price tags, you pay, and leave."
"Now you're making fun of us," Isam objected.
"No, I didn't believe it at first, either, but after I had learned the language, I went into a big store, six stories high. You could find everything you wanted: clothes, food, toys, material, paint, radios."
"So it was a bazaar. All in one building?" Musa asked amazed.
"That's right, a bazaar all in one building, except you can't haggle. I can tell you don't believe me, even the eyes of my dear friend Salim are accusing me of lying."
Salim felt he had been caught and smiled.
"Okay, so I went in. I wa
nted to buy a jacket. I found one I liked and took it to a saleslady. 'How much does this jacket cost?' I asked.
"The woman looked at me in astonishment. 'You can read it right there, mister. It's written on the tag: fifty dollars,' she said in a friendly way.
" 'That's very true, that's what's written on the tag, but life is a conversation, dear lady—question and answer, give and take! I'll pay twenty,' I told her, like anyone here would start the bargaining.
" 'Give and take? Question and answer?' She was so bewildered she was stammering. But then she calmed down and started speaking very loudly; she must have thought I was hard of hearing: Jacket costs fifty. Half of one-hundred-dollar bill!' And to make things absolutely clear, she pointed to the price on the tag again.
" 'Is that your last word? All right, I'll pay twenty-five, so you can say you've made a good deal.'
" 'What do you mean, last word? Twenty-five? It says fifty. Can't you read? Five-oh!' the lady screamed and wrote the number fifty on some wrapping paper next to the register.
" 'Okay, okay, I don't want to disappoint a charming young lady like you, and have you think I'm stingy or something. I'll pay thirty,' I told her, because I wanted to help her. 'I'm a new customer here, and if we can reach an agreement today, then I'll be a regular from now on,' I added—words guaranteed to break the last resistance of any dealer in Damascus.
"But now this woman was completely flabbergasted. 'A regular? What are you talking about? Listen, mister, I'm just doing my job here. The jacket costs fifty bucks. Take it or leave it,' she snapped impatiently.
"That made me mad. But I heeded the advice I once heard from my father: 'If the seller's so dumb he doesn't come down on the price, then raise your offer a little and say you're going. If he's so dumb he still doesn't get the idea, then just walk out slowly and don't look back. Don't let him know you're attached to the thing. That's written in the Bible: Thou shalt not turn around! Then he's bound to call after you and lower the price a little.' My poor father, he never saw America! So I raised my offer to forty dollars and told the woman, 'If you're not interested in doing business today, I'll go to someone else and buy the same jacket for twenty dollars.' I laid the jacket down and walked out slowly, without turning around. Any seller in Latakia or Damascus would have called after me and tried to save the deal, but she didn't say a word. In thirty years not a single person ever called after me. I gave up trying to haggle."
'There's no way on earth I could live in America," Isam moaned.
"You're also not going to believe me when I tell you that the Americans keep their cemeteries clean and tidy and even decorate them. Whenever it's sunny they go walking in the cemetery."
"Oh, come on, now you've really broken your promise about telling us the truth—these are plain fairy tales! Walking in the cemetery?" Junis was indignant, and the others shook their heads as if they felt sorry for the emigrant. Ali was just putting a large piece of wood in the stove when he heard the word cemetery. "May God protect us from all harm!" he prayed. Only Faris knew from his student days in Paris that Tuma wasn't lying, but the former statesman preferred to keep silent and let Tuma endure the wrath of the others all on his own.
Salim thought the emigrant was lying, but he just smiled at how desperate Tuma must be if he wanted to pass this lie off as truth.
"I swear by Saint—" Tuma began, to lend some support to his statement about walking in the cemetery.
"For heaven's sake, don't swear!" Junis yelled at him. "We don't want anything to happen to you."
"Oh my God," Tuma moaned in despair while the others laughed out loud.
"A graveyard is a place of ruin," said Junis, fuming, "and not a place of pleasure. Just look at our cemeteries! In time they decay, just like the bones they shelter under the earth. Earth to earth, say the Holy Scriptures, and not earth to pleasure palace. What crazy soul would build a cemetery to last? Any Arab would sooner forget about death today than tomorrow!''
'The Americans, too, but in a different way," Tuma shouted back. "They act as if death didn't matter to them, and they go walking in its place as if they'd completely forgotten about it."
"I'm only going there once," said Musa, frowning on the heated quarrel. "Have you heard the story about the test of courage that was held in a cemetery?"
"Which one?" asked Isam, who knew a number of similar stories, which in Damascus were mostly told on cold winter nights.
"The one with the chicken!"
"No, I don't know any with a chicken. Please, go on and tell it! Maybe you'll inspire Tuma," Isam requested and patted the emigrant on the shoulder.
"There once was a bet," Musa began, "where the winner would be the one who could go to a fresh grave at dusk and calmly eat a chicken stuffed with rice, raisins, and pine nuts. The challenger accused a whole village of being cowards and offered a large sack of money as a reward for the hero who came back with the bare chicken bones. All the respected men in the village lost the bet, for those who actually managed to sit down in the graveyard lost their courage when a pale hand came out of the earth and grabbed at the food and a voice roared from the grave, 'Let us have a taste!' Naturally no one knew that an accomplice of the challenger had hidden himself beforehand in the empty grave.
"One day a poor half-starved, emaciated devil came forward. The villagers split their sides laughing when he asked, 'Is the chicken fresh?'
" 'Yes,' they told him, 'a fresh chicken is prepared every time.'
"So the man went without the slightest hesitation to the designated grave. Then he sat down, tore the chicken in two, and started devouring it. When the hand came out of the earth and the voice roared, the man just turned away and shouted back, 'First the living have to have their fill, then the dead can have their due!' But the hand grabbed at the chicken once again. So the man jumped up and began stomping on the hand until the accomplice in the grave begged for mercy.
"The man walked back to the village with the bare bones. People hoisted him up on their shoulders, and the village elder held a great speech in his honor. But the man just kept burping and complaining, 'The chicken wasn't fresh at all.' "
Tuma laughed. "Well, you are incorrigible, but in any case, the Americans live differently—and they didn't believe me any more than you do when I told them about how we live. They, too, accused me of telling fairy tales. They couldn't believe that we really ride camels and eat figs, or that we celebrate weddings for days and days and mourn the dead for even longer, but never celebrate our birthdays."
"Why should anyone celebrate his birthday?" Isam interrupted. "And, besides, if you know your own birthday you'll just get older and older. I, on the other hand, feel twenty years younger today than I did ten years ago."
"But for the Americans a birthday is more important than Easter," Tuma again picked up the thread. "And they'll celebrate a birthday on the fourth floor despite the fact that a neighbor's just died on the third. They didn't believe me when I told them we have professional storytellers in our cafes. All they did was laugh at me. And they didn't even want to hear about the steam bath."
"What's the matter with them," wondered Ali, "are they barbarians?"
"No, but people don't believe what's new to them, and any miracle becomes what the Americans call 'old hat' if it lasts a couple days. And now you're not going to believe me when I tell you that the Americans treat dogs better than they treat human beings."
"Look, why don't you just go on and tell us a real fairy tale instead of feeding us these lies about the Americans. I'm only putting up with them because your cookies are so good," Junis gibed.
"No, what he says about the dogs is true, I know that from France," said the minister, at whom Tuma had glanced imploringly. "The French don't really treat their dogs better than people, but they do pamper the little mongrels!"
But Faris' defense of Tuma only poured oil on the fire, and soon Salim began clapping his hands and laughing.
"Don't try to confuse the issue with all your talk of Franc
e and America," said Junis. "Next you're going to say that dogs are waited on in restaurants. 'What will you have, Mr. Dog, for your entree? Today I especially recommend my right thigh with thyme and tomato sauce!' " The men all laughed, and Salim threw himself onto his bed and gripped his stomach. Tears were streaming down his red cheeks.
"No one said anything about a restaurant!" said Tuma, annoyed. "But, in America, dogs do have over twenty brands of food!"
"I trust they have barbers as well?" Musa taunted.
"No," Tuma lied, and hated himself for doing it; on his way to Salim's he had solemnly undertaken to tell only what he had personally experienced in America—and now he had broken his oath. For years he had been longing to open his heart to his friends.
He had known it would be difficult, but he never imagined the old men would resist so fiercely.
"What about a dog cemetery?" Ali suddenly wanted to know.
"No, no," Tuma lied, out of exhaustion and desperation. He looked at the faces around him and thought how lucky Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed really were, not to have had such companions. Now he determined simply to lie to them. "Okay," he said and sighed with relief, "I still wanted to tell you about this one unusual man. I worked for him as a bookkeeper for ten years. As a young man he'd been very poor, but he was a sly devil and completely without scruples. The wars had made him rich, and he traded in anything that could be bought and sold. He wasn't exactly a miser, but he didn't put much stock in idle talk. Whenever you mentioned someone, he'd ask, 'What does he sell?' And if you told him the man didn't sell anything but was a very important person, he'd ask, 'What's his price?' You couldn't tell this moneybags a thing without his asking for the price.
"Okay, so during our lunch break we used to sit in the yard and swap stories about our countries. But all he ever did was laugh at us. 'You'll never get anywhere that way. Buying and selling—that's all a man needs to know,' he scoffed.
