by Rafik Schami
"Judges don't understand beans. The neighbor should have gone to prison, not this Armenian. But what am I going on about? You know, they stole so many years of my life ... but we don't want to be sad. Now where was I?"
"About the brave Armenian?" said Ali the locksmith.
"About Ahmad! You were going to tell us why he never bet," the minister grumbled.
Isam looked at Faris a little confused. "That's right, about Ahmad, but let me say just one more thing about the Armenian. Like I was saying, Mehran was not very big. When we finally understood what he was saying, we all laughed and figured he was just a pickpocket. Pickpockets aren't exactly respected in prison, you know, so they always try to make up stories to impress the others. But one day we were in the yard when these two thugs decided to pick on him, just like that, for no good reason—I mean, Mehran, he wouldn't even harm a fly. He never started a fight in all his life. But if someone did him wrong, Mehran never forgave him. He could carry a grudge longer than a camel. In any case, there were these two big thugs out in the yard who could eat him for breakfast, so to speak, without a swallow of tea, and they attacked him. Mehran stood his ground, firm as a rock, and then quick as lightning he flipped the first man, just like a pea, right into the second. Those two thugs went limping around for weeks.
"The strange thing was, though, that Mehran didn't want to be the boss of the cell. The strongest man we had was this boy from Horns. When he saw what Mehran had done he told him right then and there he would give up his place by the window. But, you know, Mehran declined. He didn't want to be anybody's boss."
"His mother must have fed him lion's milk for breakfast," commented the barber.
"Armenians are very brave," Junis confirmed. "I knew one named Karabet. He came to my coffeehouse every day. His Arabic was no better than this Mehran's, but each word was like a whole story. One day—" Junis wanted to go on, but by then the minister had lost his patience entirely.
"And Ahmad, what finally happened with your goddamned Ahmad?" he groaned.
"You're right," said Isam. "I really have to get to Ahmad. When Ahmad was young, he was famous for having a keen nose for wagers and a nimble tongue. He made a lot of money off his poor neighbors whom he drew into his bets. He was such a good talker that the president invited him to his parties in order to keep the guests entertained. There wasn't a better joke teller in the whole prison. But that wasn't all his tongue was good for; it was every bit as sharp as a dagger of Damascus steel. Only Abu Nuwas in his day could be as sharp as that—do you know his story about the chickens and the caliph?"
"No, what story is that?" Tuma wanted to know, but now the minister was rolling his eyes.
"Please, I beg you," said Faris emphatically, "for a few piasters you can buy Abu Nuwas's story of the chickens and the caliph in the bookstore. Let's get back to this damned Ahmad, or whoever he was."
"Of course, you're right, I'm sorry. I will now swear by the soul of my mother that I will finish the story of Ahmad. Where was I. Oh. Right. One day the president and his wife hosted a benefit for poor orphans. For weeks the newspapers wrote about the upcoming event; anybody who was anybody was supposed to be there—the richest merchants, the wealthiest farmers, the heads of the most powerful families, writers, actors, and foreign guests were all going to take part.
"The food was out of this world. The tables were piled high with roast gazelle, peacock liver pate, and pistachio rolls, and the guests applauded the dancers, singers, and jugglers. Well, the president started drinking a lot and, you know, whenever the president was drunk it was dangerous to go near him, there was no telling what he might do. I heard once that he had been invited to Malula and—"
"Blessed be the soul of your mother!" reminded Faris.
"Oh, right, that's another story. Well, the president was drinking away when he suddenly remembered Ahmad. He sent for him and spoke to him angrily: 'These guests are all miserly locusts. They're picking the tables clean and the only thing they're offering is their applause! It's a disgrace! And in front of foreign ambassadors! Use your tongue, bigmouth, and see to it that you pull every last piaster out of their pockets, otherwise I'm going to banish you to the desert.'
"Ahmad just smiled. He climbed onstage and addressed the audience: 'Esteemed ladies and gentlemen. Because the contributions are below expectations, our Most Beloved has decided to donate what every man holds most dear: a hair from his moustache.'
"The president stood up and applauded this stroke of genius. A woman in a white dress carrying a small red pillow approached His Excellency. He bent down, and she plucked a hair from his moustache. When the guests saw the president twitch, they all clapped, without realizing they had fallen into a trap.
" 'And now His Excellency would like to know exactly how much the esteemed guests love him. He is putting up for auction one hair of his moustache, and he is anxious to discover how much the noble hair will bring. Whoever wishes to participate in the bidding must pay one gold lira—just raise your hand. And now, let the bidding begin! With a little luck, the most noble hair in the world will belong to you!'
"The guests grew silent. They looked at one another at a loss as to what to do, but then someone raised his hand and offered a hundred gold liras. No luck—his neighbor was already offering a hundred fifty. The first man paid his gold lira and leaned back in his chair, but the bidding didn't stop at a hundred fifty. Next thing you know, people were calling out one thousand, three thousand, six thousand. A team of girls and boys collected the gold liras from those present, and the auction continued. Soon you could hear bids of twenty thousand, even a hundred thousand. The shouting grew louder and louder and angrier and angrier, since everyone now wanted to prove that he loved the president most. Not until three hours later did Ahmad call out: 'Three hundred thousand going once, going twice—sold for three hundred thousand liras! Sir, my congratulations! The noble hair belongs to you. What a prize!' Everyone strained his neck to see who Ahmad was congratulating. It was an ironmonger from Damascus. He went up and accepted the small pillow a little uncertainly. All the guests applauded, although a few felt sincerely sorry for the man.
"No sooner had everyone recovered from all that than Ahmad again walked onto the stage and shouted into the hall: 'His Excellency is pleased with his guests, so he has decided to liven up the evening with a few bets. His Excellency enjoys a little wager now and then. His Excellency would like to bet that no one present will box him on the ear. Whoever dares try will receive one hundred gold liras. Everyone else will again lose one gold lira!' Of course, most of the guests there would have gladly boxed the president three hundred times for that low-down idea, but no one dared try. So they paid one lira apiece, but in their hearts they cursed the soul of the president's father for the way he had reared his son.
" 'Shall we now bet,' Ahmad called out to his president's applause, 'that I can devise a riddle that none of you can solve? His Excellency will permit me to offer half a million gold liras from the National Bank to anyone who can solve the riddle.'
" 'Haifa million?'—'What kind of riddle?'—'Does the National Bank even have that much money?'
"The guests saw the president laugh and nod his head.
" 'Esteemed ladies and gentlemen: I will satisfy your curiosity, but bear in mind, if no one can solve the riddle, then everyone must donate ten gold liras to the Orphans' Fund.'
" 'Go ahead and give us the damned riddle,' someone called out from one of the back rows. The guests laughed and admired the man's courage.
" 'What person,' Ahmad asked, 'can bite his own eye?' Now it was the president's turn to laugh, which he did, slapping his thigh with gusto.
" 'Don't feel bad!' Ahmad consoled the angry public. 'Although none of you can win this bet, you will definitely win the love of the orphans.'
" 'That's not true. I can do it!' a voice cried out. The hall fell deadly silent. The same ironmonger as before stood up.
" 'My good man, no one on earth can do that!' Ahmad laugh
ed out loud.
" 'I can. I can bite both my right eye and my left!' the man shouted back.
" 'Well, then, please come up here and show us how you can bite your own eyes,' Ahmad said to the man with pity in his voice.
"The man climbed onstage and turned to face the guests. 'Here is my right eye!' he said, and he pulled the eye out of its socket and held it up with two fingers. The whole audience gasped, and one or two ladies fainted. Then the man guided the eye into his mouth.
" 'But that's not your real eye—it's made of glass,' Ahmad said with a note of triumph. Most of the guests were still confused, but a couple of people laughed.
"The ironmonger remained undaunted. 'Very well,' he said, 'I can also bite my left eye, and that one is real.' He opened his mouth and took out his false teeth. He snapped them in the air once or twice and then used them to bite his left eye. The guests all whooped with joy—and Ahmad turned pale as a sheet. Because of the foreign ambassadors present, the president had no choice but to pay. And for that he had Ahmad jailed for life.
"I'm sure you remember the time when that president miraculously survived his first assassination attempt and he declared a general amnesty. Well, he even let child murderers out of prison, but not Ahmad.
"He was a good man, this Ahmad, and he was as sharp as they come. Once the chief warden showed up late in the night and ordered us to clean the cell. He kept yelling at us to make the floor shine or else he'd make us lick it spic and span. I asked him for the reason.
" 'The president,' said the warden, 'is coming here tomorrow at ten o'clock in the morning.'
"Ahmad looked at the warden in amazement. 'What's that?' he asked. 'You mean you finally caught the scoundrel?'
"Well, that's it, that's my story. I hope you found it somewhat entertaining."
"My dear," the minister yawned, "that was a thousand and one stories." Then he grinned.
"But be happy," Musa teased Isam, "because if you really were Scheherazade, you would have used up every last one of your stories the first night."
Salim just smiled, stood up, walked over to Isam, and kissed his friend on his moustache.
Isam laughed. He took the two remaining cards and laid them down before the locksmith and the minister. "I'm anxious to know which of you two gentlemen will be our Scheherazade tomorrow night." He gestured for them each to choose a card.
"Well, Excellency, it looks like your
turn tomorrow," Ali said
happily when the
minister drew
the ace.
11
How
one man
had to hear after death
what he had been deaf to while alive
Faris, the former minister, came from an old landed Damascus family. His father had received the honorary title Pasha from the sultan in Istanbul as a reward for his loyalty to the Ottoman Empire—which invented strange titles by the dozen. But this pasha was a sly old fox. He sensed that the days of the Ottoman Empire were numbered, and so he began to put out feelers toward France. The French consul was a more and more frequent guest, and eventually the pasha became the first confidant of the French representatives who soon replaced the Ottoman regime in Syria. But the seasoned pasha knew that the French, too, would not stay in Syria forever. While continuing to receive the French governor, he secretly funded several nationalist groups, whose clamors for independence were growing louder and louder.
This was how the pasha thought and acted until the day he died, and there were many stories about his shrewdness.
Throughout his long life he was a faithful Muslim, and as such he made the pilgrimage to Mecca many times. There, at Mount Arafat, all pilgrims are supposed to pelt the devil with seven small symbolic stones. The pasha was very meticulous in observing all the other rites, but when it came to the stoning of the Evil One he cast only six pebbles.
"And why don't you throw the seventh stone?" his friends asked him every time.
"I don't want to spoil my relationship with the devil completely," he is said to have answered.
Two days before independence the old man died, but his title lived on in the family for decades, even though the Ottoman Empire had long since collapsed.
Faris was the pasha's youngest, and most sensitive, son. Because he seemed totally unsuited to business as well as farming, his father sent him to study law at the Sorbonne in Paris, so that he could later represent the interests of the family.
The late pasha's wish seemed fulfilled when Faris became a member of the first independent government of Syria. However, instead of administering his office with the benign neglect expected of him, Faris proceeded to nationalize the electric works, the tobacco industry, and other important enterprises. His family was enraged. The working classes hailed the new minister as the "Red Pasha," although all they really gained were higher prices for tobacco, water, electricity, and other products of the newly nationalized industries, which they now ostensibly owned.
Nevertheless, people appreciated Faris' populist gestures. While in office, Faris declined to have bodyguards and chauffeurs like the other ministers. Every morning, he left his house at eight o'clock and walked through the bazaar to his ministry, which he reached at a little after nine. "In the bazaar," he explained, "I can smell how the people are doing."
At the end of March 1949, a certain colonel, equipped with a few antiquated tanks and jeeps, took over the presidential residence. At dawn his followers tore the president from his bed and deposed him. They then moved quickly on to the radio station, where they had to rouse the sleeping doorman. "This is a coup d'etat for freedom and against Zionism," their leader screamed at the doorman, "Syria is on the brink of ruin, and the politicians are to blame!" The poor doorman had no idea what a coup d'etat was, because this was the first, not only in Syria but in all Arabia, and with great concern he turned to the leader and asked: "But what's going to happen to my pension?"
A few minutes after six o'clock the colonel informed the populace, and the whole world, of his honorable intentions; half an hour later he drove to see Faris, whom he knew quite well. The Red Pasha was still asleep, but the impertinent colonel saw to it that he was awakened. Still wearing his pyjamas, Faris entered his large salon, where the colonel was sitting on the sofa with outspread legs. Two younger officers were standing on either side.
"Well, how do you like my coup? Not a single drop of blood spilled. Isn't it a stroke of genius?"
"Excellency, is that your reason for waking me up?" Faris asked sleepily.
"Yes, absolutely—I want to hear what you think."
"If you want to hear what I think, then first send these officers outside. I will not have armed hoodlums breaking into my house," Faris answered sullenly.
The officers protested, but their commander calmed them down and they went out.
"Now, tell me, isn't it magnificent?"
"Of course, Excellency, of course. Except you have opened a door in Syria that you will never again be able to close. What's more, you have dragged me from my bed. And now you had better beware, because the day will come sooner than you think when you will be dragged from yours."
"I'm no civilian," the officer laughed. "I sleep in my uniform, and my pistol never sleeps at all," he said and went outside.
No one in Damascus knows whether or not this conversation actually took place. But two things are certain: Faris was removed from office, and one unbearably hot August night the colonel was arrested by new conspirators, who also wanted nothing less than to save Syria from ruin. The colonel, the brilliant author of the first putsch, ruled for only one hundred thirty-four days. He was dragged from his bed and shot in a suburb of Damascus—in his pyjamas, no less. And the door he had opened in Syria was not shut for many years.
Faris decided never again to join a government. He earned a fortune practicing law and became a respected legal authority. Many judges were supposedly convinced that he would soon be reappointed minister. He never ruled out the pos
sibility, and that only increased his stature in the judges' eyes, so that they were inclined to pay closer attention to his presentations than to those of his opponents.
On this evening, he was the first to arrive, but he looked sleepy. "Do you have any strong coffee?" he asked Salim, who hurried into the kitchen and fixed him a strong mocha. Then the other gentlemen came in, one by one.
"Your stories," said Faris, "have robbed me of my sleep. Last night I was sitting on my terrace, wondering: Why do people tell stories? What is storytelling, anyway? I racked my brains until early in the morning.
"I recalled that when I was minister I knew this old man. He used to bring me my coffee every morning, and every day he told me a little story, just for fun. Unfortunately I never really listened. All I managed to retain were a few bits and pieces, but now when I think of them I find them full of wisdom. It's a pity I didn't know how to listen back in those days. You know, I think all rulers are incapable of listening while they're in power.
