by Rafik Schami
A week later her mother heard of Farid’s arrest, and gave her spite free rein. All her hatred of the Mushtaks surfaced, and even Rana’s father was glad that their arch-enemy’s son had fallen into the hands of the police. “The Mushtaks are great tacticians, but they have no backbone. They’ll join any party. They’ve already had Hablanists, Dartanists and Shaklanists among them. Today they’re Satlanists, Ba’athists, Syrian Nationalists and communists. There’s always one of them supporting the party in power and another in prison. That way they can be rulers and martyrs at the same time. I’m sure that if the Muslim Brotherhood came to power a Mushtak would convert to Islam like a shot. Subtle, that’s what they are, subtle,” he said in tones of abhorrence.
All these memories were now passing through Rana’s mind on the bus ride. It was at the next stop that she had dismounted when she last saw Farid in his dead grandmother’s house. After a few steps she had reached al-Kassabah Alley and then turned into Misq Alley. He had been waiting for her. His silent grief, his presentiments were as fresh in her mind now as then, when she was lying in bed with him. The room had been overheated, but he was freezing cold.
Now the bus was going through the eastern gate. Then it turned left, and followed the wall of the Old Town before it drove towards the stadium and Abbasid Square.
Rana still could hardly grasp how events in her life had come so thick and fast after that last day with Farid, and she hated herself for being so naïve at the time. She shook her head.
Rami had always been her favourite cousin. Unlike his brothers, he seemed neither particularly religious nor extremely conservative, and he didn’t covet cars and money. His father, Sami Kudsi, was the poorest member of his family, and at the age of thirty had lost his inheritance in bad speculations, but he claimed to be a survival artist, and kept his wife and five children on the little deals he did. As a bankrupt, he wasn’t officially allowed to own anything. His wife said he was a broker, but no one believed that. More likely, it was rumoured, he was a receiver of stolen goods. Somehow he had managed to get his boys a free education in a good Orthodox school, where the five brothers studied and took their final exams one after another.
In retrospect, Rana blamed herself bitterly for having felt so safe with Rami. It was just that he had always understood her, and fanaticism of any kind was not in his nature. So she had told him about the approaches made by his youngest brother Kafi, and both had laughed until the tears came at the shock she had given that religious fanatic.
Of course she didn’t dare tell him about Farid, but at least here was someone she could talk to. The fact that he liked her had not escaped her notice. But Rami had been so pleasant and unassuming. He had just been promoted to first lieutenant, and was having further training at the military academy in economics and logistics. “That means I won’t rise fast in the army, but I won’t fall either. Someone has to look after the practical side,” he said wryly. He had no ambition at all, and devoted his mind to the purchases made by the army, from bootlaces to complete winter equipment. He didn’t like wearing uniform, and did not even carry a gun.
Rami was also the only man who invited her to the cinema or to eat an ice cream without any ulterior motives. Or so she had thought, because that was how she remembered him from their childhood. Why had she been so naïve? Why had she never noticed that she was a woman now, and the way her cousin looked at her had changed?
After Farid’s arrest, when she felt she was stifling in the malicious atmosphere of her parents’ house, she had phoned Rami and asked if he would like to go to the cinema with her. Her mother and brother had no objection to her going out with him – he was the only man they didn’t object to – even if she happened to come home late.
And then the catastrophe happened.
Rami had come to lunch that Sunday. He liked the kebbeh that his aunt baked. Jack was there too. Only her father was away for a week; he had flown to New York to attend a lawyers’ conference.
Rana’s mother had been unusually pleasant to her daughter, and she made the best meat pasty imaginable that day. Kebbeh was the usual Sunday lunch of prosperous Christians, and she had been lavish with spices and roasted pine nuts. She had served Lebanese red wine with the meal. “Wine sensitizes the palate, and my kebbeh is at its best with red wine,” she claimed. At first Rana said she didn’t want any, but then she drank a glass for the sake of politeness, although diluted with cold water and ice.
They laughed a lot. She had seldom seen her mother so relaxed and easy-going. Finally Jack went off to his room, and they could hear his favourite record down in the drawing room, songs performed by the Egyptian singer Abdulhalim, whom Rana liked too.
Then her mother also left the drawing room, saying she would make coffee. Rana laughed with Rami at the ear-splitting sound of the music, and Rami kept refilling their wine glasses. Her head was beginning to feel heavy, but she enjoyed Rami’s company and his jokes.
Suddenly he put his arm around her neck. “Oh, how happy it makes me to hear you laugh,” he said. At first she thought nothing of it, but when he kissed her throat she froze, abruptly stood up and said she was going to ask her brother to turn his music down. But she had taken only one step towards the door when Rami became a wall barring her way. He didn’t do it quickly, but at his leisure. His footsteps were perfectly steady, his outstretched arms did not tremble.
He seized her like someone claiming his own property. At that moment she understood it all. She saw not only the trap and her own stupidity in ever sitting alone in a room with this man, she also understood her family’s plotting, and the misery suffered by women for thousands of years, and she struggled with all her might, but like a trained karate fighter Rami threw her to the floor. It happened very fast. She lay there on the heavy Persian rug, and he lay on top of her, still beaming. “I really, really like your laugh, do you know?” he babbled. His weight immobilized her. Rana felt dazed. “Please,” she begged him. “Rami, please let me get up.” But he became deaf, a deaf brute, kissing her and trying to push his tongue inside her mouth.
“No,” screamed Rana, kicking and turning her head aside so that Rami couldn’t get at her lips. He grinned, and did not become frantic or nervous, but acted as if he had all the time in the world. Gradually he was pressing ever more heavily down on her body, and then she felt his right hand reaching for her panties. She screamed and begged at the same time, but no one heard her.
The pain was like fiery pincers stabbing her. She wept and hit him, but he forced his way further in until she felt dizzy.
When her mother came back after an eternity, she pretended to be surprised, threw herself theatrically on the sofa, and wept. But Rana saw the hypocrisy in her eyes. Jack came running in too, in pretended horror, but instead of being angry he consoled her by saying she had a very good bargain in Rami, he was more than she deserved.
A few days later her father came home. He spoke to his wife first and then to Rami, not to her. After three days he finally came to her room, not to comfort her but to tell her it was her own fault, and she must either die or marry Rami, who had said he was ready to atone for his wrongdoing by taking her as his wife.
Rana cried and screamed, but she had no chance. She felt sick and ran a temperature, but three days later she was dragged into the drawing room, where a priest, who knew the whole story, swiftly performed the marriage ceremony and signed the register. When he asked Rana if she took Rami as her husband, she replied loud and clear, “No,” but her denial was drowned out by a chorus of “Yes” from everyone else present. Rana thought she had gone out of her mind.
She wouldn’t sign the register herself, so her father took her hand and signed for her, while her brother held her other hand in a steely grip. Rana was crying, but no one took any notice.
At that moment she had a vision. For a second she was dead, and when she opened her eyes again a second life began. She felt her heart turning into a cactus.
There was no point drowning in her ow
n tears. Her enemies outnumbered her. They’re rejoicing at your unhappiness, an inner voice told her. You must follow your heart and be a cactus, one that will survive this man who has brought you such misfortune. Your revenge is your memory which will never let you forgive, and when the moment comes you must close your eyes again, die for a second, and then come back to life as Rana once more. And when that happens, the cactus will flower and die.
When she had reached this point in her memories, the bus was just coming to the large Square of Seven Fountains. Rana stood up and went slowly to the door.
The next stop was hers.
206. Josef’s Promise
Claire thought she would not survive Farid’s arrest. Damascus was a desert without him. When the news came, Elias had left the confectioner’s shop at once and gone to see his friends and acquaintances. Many of them were in the highest political positions, but they offered only sympathy and regret. Claire tried at least to find out, through her former school friends, if Farid was still alive and where he was being held. But not until early in the afternoon of the day he disappeared did a distant cousin of Madeleine’s tell her that her son was held prisoner in the secret service building. This cousin was married to one of the Interior Minister’s bodyguards, but even she could do nothing for Farid because he was “a political”.
At first Claire felt relieved. She knew now that her son was not dead. She phoned Elias at once, and on hearing her news he looked around for help all the more urgently. Late that afternoon he came home as pale as a dying man.
“What are friends for?” he asked bitterly, and didn’t wait for her to answer. “To tell you how sorry they are. And is that all? What cowardly times we live in! The boy’s taken a wrong turning and they inflate it into an affair of state. As if my son Farid were any danger to President Satlan!”
At that moment Claire felt boundless love for her husband Elias, whose concern for his only son had suddenly made him forget everything else. She embraced him and kissed him on the lips.
“That’s how it is,” said Elias. “Anyone would think he’d been smuggling the year’s entire harvest abroad, or stealing cars and jewellery in broad daylight, or dumping tons of hashish in police headquarters on the sly. If there’s one thing I wish on those who govern us, it’s for this filthy union to break up, and on the day it does I’ll light thirty candles to Our Lady.”
Claire was laughing and crying at the same time. She kept hugging him. Suddenly he was the young Elias again, the man she had loved so much over twenty years ago. “Hush, or they’ll take you away too, and I’ll be left all alone. And who will I have to hug then?”
Elias kissed her. “I’ll never forgive Satlan and his henchmen, if only for making you sad,” he replied, holding Claire close, for he sensed her despair.
The neighbours visited. They sat with Farid’s parents, all of them downcast, praising the boy who had always been so charming and helpful. The house was full of guests. Even two of Farid’s teachers were brave enough to come; the rest feared that Elias and Claire were under observation, and they would lose their jobs.
Late that afternoon Josef arrived. He whispered to Claire that she must come with him at once. Claire excused herself to her other guests and followed him. “It’s something I promised Farid,” he explained as they came out into the street, and he went ahead of her. She didn’t understand. Josef went upstairs to the flat roof of his house, which had a fence around it. The sun was just sinking, turning large and red.
Two chairs stood in one corner. Josef pulled one out for her. “You sit here,” he told her, and sat opposite her on the other chair himself.
“I promised Farid,” he said at last in a low, husky voice, “that if anything happened to him I’d go to you and bring you here, where he always liked to sit with me. And then we’d both think hard about him, and that would help him.”
Claire sat with her face to the sun. She closed her eyes, and wished she were dead, but a voice inside her said, “Think of the happy times with him. He needs you.” Then she smiled through her tears, and for the first time that day she felt something like hope revive.
207. Dunia and the Bedroom Woman
Rana came to see Claire and told her the whole story of Rami. But Claire was so full of grief herself that she had no room for more sorrow. She soothed Rana, and said Farid wouldn’t love her any the less because she’d been forced into marriage. But first he must survive the prison camp, and apparently President Satlan had said that as long as he was in power, his enemies would stay in jail.
Unlike Claire, Laila had changed towards Rana. She spoke without reserve, criticizing her severely. In her place, said Laila, she would never have married Rami, not even after a rape. It was like a slap in the face to Rana.
A few days later, however, Laila phoned, apologized for her fierce accusations, and invited Rana for a coffee. Rana hoped they could come together again. She had plenty of time on her hands, for Rami was more than occupied with his work. So she went to see Laila, and was surprised to find her house full of women visiting her. At least a dozen of them, all laughing and talking together, had assembled. Farid’s cousin walked around like a queen, with everyone adoring her. One of those present gave a short talk about Arab women in the pre-Islamic period. The speaker’s voice was indistinct, and much of what she said was very disconnected, but Rana at least caught the gist of it: women in the desert before the coming of Islam had chosen their own partners. And they had sat with men, it was the natural thing to do, they joined in conversations with them, and wore no veils. Names were determined by the mother, not the father. The Prophet Muhammad himself was usually addressed by reference to his mother’s name, not his father’s, and was known as Muhammad bin Amina. The man always moved in with his woman partner, not vice versa. The woman could separate from him at any time. It was quite simple, being achieved just by changing the alignment of the tent entrance. And another thing: a woman could marry up to ten husbands. It was known as communal marriage.
A discussion followed the talk, and seemed likely to go on for ever. Rana was bored. After a while she rose to her feet and left. Three weeks later, when Laila asked her to come again, she declined, saying she couldn’t concentrate enough at the moment. She didn’t like to tell the truth, which was that she didn’t think much of these women’s daydreams.
Dunia, on the other hand, was refreshing. Her friend liked to laugh and seemed to rise above everything. She had done as her mother wished and married a rich carpet dealer. Not that she had loved the man; Dunia loved no one but her little dog Fifi, but she knew how to adapt to her husband, and there was a sober and expedient kind of affection in their marriage.
But at Dunia’s wedding everything nearly went wrong. When she talked about that disaster, she made her audience laugh. Two weeks before her wedding, Dunia had suffered an accident while she was exercising. She bled heavily, and the doctor said she had torn her hymen. Her father, who was just back from Saudi Arabia, was horrified when the doctor told him. “If only she’d broken an arm or a leg! But she has to go and break her own hymen! I’m ruined,” wailed the Saudi king’s adviser. He was at a loss. “What will happen now?” he asked the doctor, who was an old family friend.
“Better ask her fiancé to come and see me. I’ll explain for you,” said the doctor.
“You don’t know him. He’s conservative and suspicious. He’ll accuse you of being in league with us,” replied Dunia’s father, and he left the consulting rooms with his daughter. For the first time, Dunia noticed that her father stooped as he walked.
He knew that at the time, and for large sums of money, you could have a girl’s hymen repaired in Paris. Many daughters of the nouveaux riches Gulf families flew to France, pretending that the trip was a vacation, stayed for a couple of weeks and came back virgins, rather like the houris, the eternal virgins of Paradise whose hymens are renewed after every act of love. But there wasn’t time for that. Dunia’s fiancé would have seen through the reason for her sudd
en visit to Paris. Looking decades older, her father sat in the drawing room of his house, waiting for the return of his wife, who had just gone away for a couple of days to visit relations in the country and invite them all to the wedding.
Although it was summer, he was freezing cold. For years he had been kowtowing in the Saudi royal palace, grimly fighting to defend his position against all who envied him, in the middle of the desert and far from his beloved Damascus – and now this had to happen. If he lost face now, he might as well blow his brains out at once.
“Dear God, I’m finished. Help me, and I’ll sacrifice forty sheep to you in Mecca,” Dunia heard her father whisper to himself. Not until her mother came home and took matters in hand did he calm down a little.
She took her daughter to the Old Town to see a strong and sturdy elderly lady who described herself as a “bedroom woman”. Dunia was surprised, for in Arabic this word sounded very like the word for a hairdresser. No doubt the chamber woman did depilate the bride when necessary, in those places where the bridegroom would rather not encounter hair. But her main task was different. On the way to her Dunia’s mother explained it to her daughter, and Rana now discovered for the first time that the profession of bedroom woman had existed in Damascus for centuries.
The bedroom woman attended the wedding at the invitation of the bride’s parents, and while the guests were celebrating she was ready on call. If the bride was frightened and reluctant when evening came, she would slip into the conjugal bedroom and help the bridegroom to “take” his wife. She reassured the newly married girl, caressed her, and if necessary even held her legs apart and cursed and slapped her to make her docile, so that the bridegroom could penetrate her unopposed. She also knew all kinds of tricks to arouse men who couldn’t get an erection. Her good offices made her welcome to the bridegroom’s parents too.
