by Rafik Schami
‘Why does he have to pay so little?” asked the American and the Frenchman indignantly.
‘It was a local call,’ explained the Devil.”
“I know a better one,” said Gibran. “One morning the Interior Minister, who is brother-in-law to the President, was passing the monument to a national hero when he heard the bronze statue complaining, ‘What an ungrateful government we have! I lost my young life fighting the colonialists, and now I’ve been standing here for fifty years. My legs ache. I have varicose veins. And that general over there gets to sit on a horse!’ And the monument pointed to the statue of the last President, who had died in a car crash soon after his successful coup. ‘What did he ever do for the Fatherland?’ the national hero went on. ‘He led some stupid coup, and he couldn’t drive a car properly. And now he has a noble Arab steed. I want a horse too.’
The Interior Minister went off to the Palace of the Republic, where he told the President’s assembled cousins, sons-in-law, and brothers-in-law, ‘Our national hero Ismail wants a horse!’
‘What? Our hero who? Ismail who died fifty years ago?” cried the company, and they fell about laughing, because they knew how fond the Interior Minister was of arrack. The President jumped up. ‘It’ll be the worse for you if you’re lying,’ he said. ‘I want to hear this for myself.’
So they both strode out of the Palace, and as they approached the monument they heard the bronze man complaining at the top of his voice, ‘A horse, I said! Don’t you idiots understand plain language? It’s a noble horse I want, not a donkey!’
Everyone spluttered with laughter except Josef.
“Not bad, but mine is even better,” claimed Michel the joiner. “One day Satlan sends his favourite ministers out hunting. He is very fond of monkeys, and he says whoever brings him a monkey will get to be Vice-President.
“After a few days, the Foreign Minister and the Finance Minister come back empty-handed. ‘There are no monkeys in Syria,’ they explain.
“Then along comes the Interior Minister, proudly leading a donkey. ‘But that’s not a monkey,’ protests the President. “It’s a donkey.”
‘You just wait until my men have questioned it, and you’ll see how quickly it confesses to being a monkey,’ replies the Interior Minister. So he’s the one who gets to be Vice-President.”
Gibran wasn’t owning himself beaten. ‘You won’t improve on my next joke. I had it from a beggar for the price of a cigarette. There’s this supporter of the President who goes for a walk with his wife. He sees a street seller on the avenue sidewalk, with all kinds of pictures of singers, saints, and politicians for sale.
‘How much is the big picture of Jesus?’ he asks.
‘Ten lira.’
‘What about the picture of President Satlan?’
‘One lira.’
‘One lira? Don’t you think it’s outrageous to charge ten lira for Jesus and only one lira for the picture of our beloved President?’
‘Crucify him and I’ll sell his picture for fifty,’ says the street seller.”
Josef thought this was a tasteless joke, but all the others except Suleiman were on Gibran’s side, and they accused Josef of having no sense of humour. Josef was out on a limb, for the mood in Damascus had changed since the wave of arrests began. More and more dislike of Satlan and the Egyptians was being expressed these days.
When they parted, Taufik embraced old Gibran and whispered to him and the others, “God preserve us from the consequences of our laughter.”
Neither Gibran nor the others knew how prophetically Taufik had spoken.
BOOK OF LOVE V
Happiness often lies in delaying misfortune.
DAMASCUS, SPRING 1960
190. The Man Who Saw With His Ears
“I should have known I couldn’t steal so many happy moments and get away with it,” said Rana to her friend Dunia, “but I was intoxicated by love and thought no further than the end of my own nose. I didn’t want to see the black clouds of misfortune looming. I just enjoyed what time I could spend with Farid as if it would last for ever.”
Back then in the spring of 1960, when she was studying and could meet Farid often, she had discovered how little a human being needs to be happy. Farid was easily pleased. When he made tea she felt he was in an invisible Paradise because he smiled at her so cheerfully, rubbing his hands and dancing around the little teapot. And when he poured the tea into warmed glasses, he beamed all over his face. He was always thinking of ways to entice laughter out of her. He was addicted to her laughter, the way other men are addicted to hashish or alcohol. He knew no other sound in the world that fell so refreshingly on his heart, like a waterfall.
Then there was the incident with Uncle Mahmud the blind beggar. He was a small man with a friendly face, not yet fifty but prematurely grey, and was known as “Uncle” out of affection and respect. Rumour said he was a Sufi scholar. Rana didn’t know if that was true, but she was sure he had the keenest ears in the world. He could recognise all who spoke to him by their voices, even if he was standing in one of the busiest streets in the city.
One evening she was just coming out of the cinema with Farid, and as they passed Uncle Mahmud she said hello and put twenty piastres into the blind man’s hand. “Rana,” he cried, “what a coincidence! Your Papa was here just two minutes ago.” Rana looked up, and saw her father a few metres away, looking into a shop window. She turned swiftly and went away in the other direction with Farid. Her heart was thudding, her temples throbbed. Finally they found a safe corner, and watched her father until he got into his car and drove away.
“Thank you for saving us,” whispered Farid in relief, giving the beggar fifty piastres.
“Saving you? What do you mean? And who are you?” asked the beggar, putting the coin in his pocket. “I don’t know your voice.”
“This is my friend Farid,” Rana explained.
“Ah, I understand,” said the beggar, laughing. “Well, no harm can come to you as long as blind guardian angels watch where you go.”
From then on he always greeted Farid by his name. One Sunday afternoon, Farid and Rana were just coming out of their favourite café when they saw Uncle Mahmud slumped outside the entrance to a building.
“Are you all right?” asked Farid, concerned.
“I’ve been mugged, but I’ll be better soon. Can you two help me home?”
Uncle Mahmud could hardly walk, and Farid kept asking him if he didn’t want to go to a doctor or to hospital. The blind beggar said no.
“There were these three men. They said they were police, and I tried to sound harmless, cracking a small joke and laughing a little. I’m a fool, I ought to have noticed that there were three of them. The city police patrol these parts, but they always come one at a time, and they’ll usually look the other way, or just say you’d better clear off for a while because of a minister or a state guest driving by. But several policemen all at once? I ought to have shouted for help in that busy street, but they overpowered me and dragged me into a small van. They wanted money. Some idiot had told them I was rolling in it. They hit me and threatened to strangle me, but since I didn’t have anything there was nothing I could give them. They took what money I had from my pocket, threw me out of the van and raced away.”
Uncle Mahmud lived in a room at the top of an old house. It was extremely clean and tidy. Rana was surprised. She nudged Farid, and without a word indicated what she was thinking. Farid nodded.
“My neighbour Salime helps me out,” said the beggar, as if he had seen Rana and Farid discussing his room in sign language.
“Mahmud, Mahmud!” they heard a woman’s voice suddenly calling from the inner courtyard. The blind beggar went to the window and called back, “Hello.”
“Where have you been all this time?”
“Don’t worry, a couple of friends brought me home. You’re welcome to come up and meet them. Then you can tell me later what they look like.”
He left the window and
sat down on the edge of the bed, pushed the toe of his right shoe against his left shoe until it came off, and then reached into it with a mischievous smile. He straightened up with three lira notes clutched in his fist.
“My safe. The fools never thought of that.”
Next moment Salime, the wife of the owner of the building, came in. On hearing that Mahmud had been attacked she embraced him, kissing his forehead, cheeks, and then his lips for a long time. “What trouble you do get yourself into!” she kept saying.
Mahmud’s hands sank into the woman’s soft arms and equally soft buttocks. To Rana, their lack of inhibition seemed odd and embarrassing. She looked at Farid. He pressed her hand.
“Oh, they were just small-time idiots, my little pigeon,” the blind man reassured Salime, burying his head in her ample bosom.” I learned a lesson today – never go with anyone unless someone I know is with me.” He gave Salime a long kiss. She tenderly slapped his hand as it tried slyly to slip between her legs.
“Now that’s enough,” she whispered affectionately. “What will these young people think of us?”
Salime loved Mahmud. He lived in her house for free, and she looked after him as well as her husband and her two boys.
“Has he ever played you his flute?” she asked Rana and Farid. “I’m sure you’d enjoy it.”
“Oh, Salime, it’s not something they’d like …”
But when Rana and Farid asked him, he did play for them, and it was the kind of music that makes you think of the great expanses of the desert and its silence. Mahmud didn’t so much play his flute as caress it, he spoke to it, he put all of himself into it, and the mute wood came alive, unfolding its melodies and giving them back to him.
Salime was greatly moved, and looked ecstatic, but then her husband called and she had to leave them.
“God took my eyes from me, but he gave me better ears and an internal clock instead. He is merciful. He doesn’t let something disappear for no reason. I see with my ears and I can feel the time in my heart,” Mahmud explained to them later as they sat together for a little longer.
At last Rana and Farid left the house hand in hand. Rana was going to walk the last part of the way back to the street on her own, and then take a taxi home. Farid was to go in the opposite direction, and find another street where he could catch his bus.
Outside the building it was pitch dark. Farid drew Rana close once more, and kissed her mouth for a long while. “You are my time to me,” he whispered, and kissed her yet again.
191. Karime
“Karime leaves Gibran sated and lethargic, and she’s eating his brain,” claimed Josef. “Since he fell in love with her he tells such stupid stories.”
Other members of the club spoke ill of Karime too. She had only been satisfying her hunger for love with the old seaman, they said, she had bought him to warm her cold bed. However, Karime’s love wasn’t a single thread of emotion, but an entire skein of very different yearnings.
With her, Gibran led a life free of care. In return, he banished boredom from the widow’s handsome house, opened the mouldering windows in her heart, and blew fresh air in. And she yearned for all the stories he told, she enticed the words out of him, and saw new landscapes rise before her where the two of them went walking. He loved the care with which she went about everything. No one had ever shown such consideration for him before. She, for her part, liked his sometimes painful honesty, which was refreshing after years of lies from her husband. And she liked Gibran’s courage in taking a positive view of young people. He showed her that old age is more easily kept at bay by an ever-inquiring mind than by any creams and lotions.
That first evening with him at the club was something she would never forget. Gibran had insisted on taking her. She felt it was an impossible idea. What would she do in such company, at the age of sixty? “Laugh,” he said. She was sure she would disappoint him, and felt nervous.
Gibran was a huge, gnarled oak tree. He might let her get him into a good suit, a new shirt, and new shoes, he might let her persuade him to shave his stubbly chin, but inside he was still the same wild, undomesticated tree. But now he was asking her to leave the protection of her familiar snail shell. She felt weak at the knees. Suppose the young people laughed at her and cat-called? It wasn’t considered normal for old people to fall in love. Her neighbour Alime, whose venom made a cobra’s appear like mild and milky coffee, had seen Gibran in a pair of silk pyjamas on her balcony, and next thing she was shouting abuse of the enamoured widow to another woman three buildings away. Her voice was loud enough for not only Karime and Gibran to hear her but even the President of the country away on his state visit to Moscow. Gibran took it calmly. “We’ll be famous. The names of Karime and Gibran will go together like Madjnun and Leila or Romeo and Juliet,” he said encouragingly.
In the end she went with him, trembling, and suddenly it had all seemed quite simple. After five minutes she felt the warmth among the young people. And when they were home again she made love with Gibran for many hours, until the dawn of day. At last she fell asleep in his arms, and felt as if she were in a sailing boat.
Karime also loved Gibran because she liked to care for him. She thought it a shame for such a fine man to live in poverty. When she first visited him she had wept. A room, bare apart from a shelf with a few books that were falling apart, an iron bedstead with a stinking mattress and pillows stiff with dirt, a bedside table and two or three raffia stools, and that was all. He didn’t even have a wardrobe; his few worn-out shirts and trousers hung from nails. A man who had seen the world as Gibran had couldn’t possibly stay in this dump.
And in addition she liked him because he wasn’t bitter. He loved humanity. “In spite of everything?” she asked. “Because of everything,” he replied.
Most of all, however, she appreciated Gibran because he knew how to treat women. He could caress Karime with his eyes so that she burned beneath her skin with longing for the touch of his hands. And he could always make her laugh. She loved him because he spoiled her as her husband never had; he had slept with her merely to satisfy himself. Loveplay with Gibran had been a bridge for Karime, a way to forget how much had separated her from her husband. She had been young when they met, and he had lavished gifts on her that made her soft and willing, but he could never work on her senses to make music as Gibran did.
And unlike her late husband, Gibran liked listening to her. She had told him more in a single year than she ever told her husband in twenty. With her husband, she had never been able to speak of her past. Her adventurous youth was interred on the altar of marriage. From then on, she had been obliged to play the part of happy wife to a rich, respected man.
Gibran, on the other hand, always encouraged her to tell him about her experiences as a young singer. At that time she had called herself Bint el Sahra, “daughter of the desert”, not just to arouse the curiosity of the public but also to spare her family shame, for women singers were then regarded as whores. Karime told Gibran how she had sometimes started brawls when she appeared in cafés and nightclubs, when one of the men drank a glass too many and climbed up on stage to kiss her, thus making the others envious or even jealous, and chairs would go flying through the air. Karime and her accompanists joined in with a will until the place was wrecked. Gibran never tired of hearing such stories.
Their happiness, however, lasted only two years, and during those years Gibran and Karime seemed to be growing younger and closer together all the time. The two of them would even sing duets for a whole evening, and you could hear that Karime still had a wonderful voice. But early in the summer of 1960, a terrible thing happened and ruined everything.
192. Breathless
Rana had expected anything but the stalker that late afternoon. She had been to the cinema with Farid. The chance came out of a clear sky, and Farid had responded at once. Half an hour after her phone call, he was holding her hand in the dark auditorium of the cinema. Friends had recommended Kazan’s film East of Eden
, with James Dean in the lead. Rana thought the story harsh, and unlike her school friends she didn’t find James Dean virile, but rather effeminate. But she was deeply moved by the character of the rebel Cal whom he played, a man who both respected and fought his father, as Farid did.
Later, when they left separately, Rana watched as her lover was making his way to the bus stop. It was at that moment that she saw the man. He was the same age as Farid and herself, he was leaning against a lamp post, and he wolf-whistled at her. He wore expensive American clothes and had combed his oiled hair into an Elvis Presley style. Rana didn’t like either Elvis or Bill Haley, with their ridiculous greasy locks. Her favourite male singer was the Egyptian Abdulhalim, and most of the other girls in Damascus were his fans too. He had a warm, melancholy voice, and looked like any poor Arab boy in love, not like the smooth and slippery Elvis.
She had first seen the stalker at the beginning of the school year outside the parliament building, where she met her friend Silvia every morning. He had followed them, and Silvia made the mistake of turning around. She had even smiled at him, and then he was glued to them until they reached the school gates.
He was still there at midday. Silvia said boys were like hunters and beggars. “Each of them has his own preserves. This one’s obviously set his sights on us.”
