by Rafik Schami
Noura jumped slightly, but she did not go away. She watched the naked man slowly sit up, look around, and retrieve a fragment of his dark trousers to cover his genitals. A beggar picked up the glasses, which were still intact although they had been thrown a long way, and took them to the naked man. He got to his feet and, paying the beggar no more attention, went into his shop.
At home over coffee in the living room, when Noura breathlessly described the incident, her mother was unmoved. Their fat neighbour Badia, who came to visit every day, put her cup of coffee down on the little table and laughed aloud.
“It serves that heartless cross-worshipper right. That’s what comes of raising his prices,” hissed Noura’s mother. Noura was shocked.
And Badia, amused, told them how her husband had said that near the Umayyad Mosque a Jewish tradesman had been dragged naked to Straight Street by a crowd of young people, and was abused and beaten there to the sound of howling voices.
Noura’s father was late home, and when he arrived his face was drained of all colour. He looked grey, and she heard him arguing for a long time with her mother about the young people. Godless, he called them. He did not calm down until supper time.
Years later, Noura thought that if there had been anything like a crossroads on the way to her parents, then on that night she would have decided to go the way leading to her father. Her relationship with her mother always remained cool.
The day after the incident, Noura was curious to find out how the man with the glasses could live without a heart. The sky was clear now for hours on end, with just a fleet of little clouds sailing over the ocean of the heavens. Noura slipped through the open front door of their house and went along the alley to the main road. She turned left, and passed the big grain store, which had an office with big windows on the side facing the street. Next to it was the big warehouse into which workmen carried jute sacks full of grain, and then weighed them and stamped them.
As if nothing had happened, the man was sitting at a desk covered with papers, well dressed in dark clothes again, writing something in a big book. He raised his head for a moment and looked out of the window. Noura immediately turned her face away and hurried on to the ice-cream parlour. There she took a deep breath and turned round. This time she avoided looking into the office as she passed it, so that the man couldn’t recognize her.
Years later, the picture of the man lying naked in the street still followed her into her dreams, and then Noura always woke with a sudden start.
“Yousef Aflak, Grain, Seed-Corn” she read some time later, when she could decipher the words above the entrance to the store, and soon after she found out that the man was a Christian. It was not that her mother hated him in particular, but as she saw it anyone who was not a Muslim was an unbeliever.
The sweetmeat seller Elias with the funny red hair was a Christian as well. He was always laughing and joking with Noura, and he was the only person in her life who called her “Princess.” She once asked him why he never came to visit her, hoping that he would call one day with a big bag of brightly coloured sweets, but Elias just laughed.
There was another Christian working at the ice-cream parlour, Rimon. He was odd. When he had no customers, he would take his oud down from the wall, play it and sing until the parlour was full, and then he would call out, “Who wants an ice?”
So Noura worked it out that her mother didn’t like Christians because they were odd and they always sold truly delicious things to eat. Her mother was thin as a rail, seldom laughed, and ate only when she couldn’t avoid it.
Noura’s father often told her mother, in tones of reproof, that she soon wouldn’t even cast a shadow. In old photographs she had attractive curves and looked beautiful. But even Badia, their stout neighbour, was soon saying she was afraid that the next breath of wind would blow Noura’s mother away.
When Noura had nearly come to the end of Class Nine at school, she heard from her father that Yousef the grain merchant had died. The story went that before his death he had spoken of losing consciousness for a moment at the time when the young men were tormenting him, and at that moment, as if in a film, he had seen that his daughter Marie and his son Michel would both convert to Islam.
No one took him seriously, because just before his death the old man was in a delirium. He had never been able to accept his daughter Marie’s decision to marry a Muslim after a stormy love affair. The marriage ended unhappily later.
And he had been angry with his only son Michel for a long time before his death, because Michel did not want to take over the running of his grain business, but planned to be a politician instead. However, Yousef ’s dream came true, for fifty years later, just before his own death, Michel, now an embittered old politician in exile in Baghdad, said he was converting to Islam, and he was eventually buried in that city under the name of Ahmad Aflak. But that’s another story.
Ayyubi Alley was in the old Midan quarter to the southwest of the Old Town, but outside the city walls. It smelled of aniseed, but Noura thought it was boring. It was short, with only four buildings in it. Noura’s parents’ house was at the very end of the street, which was a blind alley. The windowless wall of the aniseed store dominated the right-hand side of the street.
Badia lived in the first house on the left-hand side of the street with her husband. He was tall and shapeless, and looked like a worn-out old wardrobe. Badia was Noura’s mother’s only woman friend. Noura knew Badia’s nine sons and daughters only as grown-ups who always said a friendly hello to her, but hurried past like shadows, leaving no trace. Only Badia’s daughter Bushra lingered in Noura’s childhood memories. She liked Noura, kissed her whenever she saw her, and called her “darling.” Bushra smelled of exotic flowers, so Noura liked it when she gave her a hug.
A rich, childless, and very old married couple lived in the second house, and had hardly any contact with the rest of the street.
A large family of Christians lived in the house next door to Noura’s. Her mother would never say a word to them. Her father, on the other hand, exchanged friendly greetings with the men of the family when he met them in the street, while her mother muttered something that sounded like a magic charm to protect her in case these enemies cast one of their own spells on her.
Noura counted seven or eight boys in the Christians’ house, and not a single girl. They played with balls, marbles, and pebbles. Sometimes they romped happily around all day like exuberant puppies. Noura often watched them from the door of her house, always ready to slam it the moment one of them came close to her. As soon as two of the boys, rather older and taller than the others, set eyes on her they used to make gestures suggesting that they would like to hug and kiss her. At that point Noura hurried indoors and watched, through the big keyhole, as the boys fell about laughing. Her heart raced, and she dared not go out again all day.
Sometimes they behaved really badly. When Noura was on her way back from the ice-cream parlour or the confectioner’s, the boys would suddenly appear and bar her way like a wall, demanding a taste of her ice or her lollipop, and threatening not to let her pass until she gave them some of it. Only when Noura started to cry did they disappear.
One day Elias saw this scene as he happened to be sweeping the street outside his shop and glanced down the alley. He came to Noura’s aid with his big broom, scolding the boys. “If one of them ever dares to stand in your way again, just come to me,” shouted Elias, loud enough for the boys to hear. “My broom is just itching to get at their backsides.” It worked. From then on, the boys stood aside whenever they happened to meet.
Only one of them didn’t give up. He often whispered to her, “You’re so beautiful. I want to marry you right away.”
He was fat, with white skin and red cheeks, and he was younger than Noura. The other, bigger boys, the ones who made eyes at her, laughed at him.
“Idiot, she’s a Muslim.”
“Then I’ll be a Muslim too,” said the boy desperately, earning himself a re
sounding slap from one of his brothers. The fat boy’s name was Maurice, and another of them was called Jirjis. Funny names, thought Noura, and she felt sorry for the fat boy, who was howling out loud now.
“Why not? I’ll be a Muslim if I want to, and I like Muhammad better than I like you,” he shouted defiantly, and the other boy gave him a second slap and a hefty kick in the shins. Maurice sniffled, and kept looking at Noura’s house as if he could expect rescue from that quarter.
Soon a woman called to him from indoors, and he went in slowly, with his head bent. It wasn’t long before Noura heard his mother shouting at him while he pleaded with her.
After that day Maurice said no more about getting married. He avoided meeting Noura’s eye, as if that might make him fall sick. Once he was sitting at the entrance to his house, sobbing, and when he saw Noura he turned to the wall, crying quietly. Noura stopped. She saw his big, dark red ears, and realized that someone had been hitting him. She felt sorry for him. She went closer and very gently touched his shoulder. Maurice abruptly stopped crying. He turned to her, smiling from a face covered with tears and snot, which he had spread over both cheeks with his sleeve.
“Noura,” he whispered, astonished.
She blushed and ran home. Her heart was thudding. She gave her mother the bag of onions that she had bought from Omar the vegetable seller.
“Did the vegetable seller say anything?” asked her mother.
“No,” said Noura, turning to the front door to see what Maurice was doing.
“You look so upset. Have you been up to mischief?” asked her mother.
“No,” replied Noura.
“Come here,” said her mother. “I can read it all over your face.” Noura was badly frightened, and her mother scrutinized her face as if reading it and then said, “You can go. You haven’t done anything bad.”
For years Noura believed that her mother really could read any wrongdoing in her face, so every time she had met the fat boy she looked in the mirror to see if it showed. To be on the safe side she scrubbed her face with olive soap, and then rinsed it off thoroughly.
Her mother was a strange woman anyway. She seemed to feel responsible for the whole world. Once Noura’s father took her and her mother to a party where dervishes were dancing, and Noura had seldom felt as lighthearted as she did that evening. Her father too seemed to be floating above the ground with delight. One of the dervishes danced with his eyes closed, and the others circled around him like planets circling the sun. But all her mother saw was that his robe had several dirty marks on it.
On religious festival days her parents and the other Muslims in the street decorated their houses and shops with coloured cloth. Rugs hung out of windows and over balconies, flower pots stood outside the entrances to the houses. Processions went through the streets, singing and dancing. There was fencing and fighting with bamboo canes in some of the processions, others staged a fireworks show, and rosewater rained down from the windows on passersby.
The Christians celebrated their own festivals quietly, without coloured cloths or processions. Noura had noticed that difference very early. The church bells rang a little louder on such days, that was all. You saw the Christians in their best clothes, but they had no fair or giant wheel or coloured banners.
Christian holidays also came at the same time every year. Christmas at the end of December, Easter in spring, Whitsun in early summer. Ramadan, however, wandered all through the year. And if it was in high summer there was no bearing it. Noura had to go without even a bit of bread or a sip of water from morning to evening, even when the temperature was forty degrees in the shade. Maurice was sorry for her. He whispered to her that he too was fasting, so that he would feel just as wretched as she did.
She never forgot the day when Maurice caused a certain amount of confusion for love of her. She was fourteen then, and Ramadan was in August that year. She was fasting, and it was hard. Suddenly the neighbours heard the call of the muezzin and fell on their food. Only Noura’s mother said, “That can’t be right! Your father isn’t home yet, and the cannon hasn’t been fired.”
Half an hour later, they did hear the muezzin calling over the rooftops, and a cannon shot rang through the air. Her father, who soon came home, said people had broken their fast too soon because of a fake muezzin call. Noura knew at once who was behind it. An hour later two police officers knocked on the Christian family’s door, and there was shouting and tears.
Of all the feast days and holidays, Noura liked the twenty-seventh day of Ramadan best. On that day heaven opened, said her father, and for a little while God heard the wishes of mankind. Ever since she could remember, she had been restless for days before it every year, wondering what to ask God for.
He had never, in fact, granted a single one of her wishes.
God didn’t seem to like her. However, fat Maurice told her God was sure to like beautiful girls, but he couldn’t hear their voices. And Maurice knew why: “The grown-ups pray in such loud voices that night that it gives God a headache, and heaven closes before he’s heard even a single child’s wish.”
Sure enough, her father gathered his friends and relations together in the courtyard that night, and together they asked God out loud to forgive their sins and grant their wishes for health and happiness. Noura looked at the assembled company, and knew that Maurice was right. She suddenly called out loud, right in the middle of the prayer, “And dear God, please send me a bucket of vanilla ice cream with pistachios.” The praying people laughed, and in spite of repeated attempts they couldn’t say any more prayers, because one or another of them kept interrupting their devotions by bursting into laughter.
Only Noura’s mother feared divine retribution, and she was the only one to come down with diarrhoea next day. Why, she wailed, did God have to punish her of all people, although she had hardly laughed at all? Noura’s mother was very superstitious. She never cut her fingernails at night, to keep bad spirits from punishing her with nightmares. She never ran hot water into the washbasin without calling the name of God out loud first, to make sure that the spirits who like to live in the dark water pipes didn’t scald themselves and punish her for it.
From then on Noura wasn’t allowed to pray with the grown-ups on the twenty-seventh night of Ramadan. She had to stay in her room and make her wishes quietly. Often she just lay on her bed, looking out through the window at the dark and starry sky.
She noticed, when she was quite young, that on those festival days her father seemed to be haunted by a strange grief. He, whose word gave fresh heart to hundreds of men in the mosque, and whom all the shopkeepers in the main street greeted respectfully when he passed – sometimes even interrupting their conversations to ask him for his advice – he, her powerful father, was unhappy after the festive prayer every year. He stooped his shoulders as he went to the sofa, hunched down on it and sobbed like a child. Noura never found out why.
2
After Salman’s difficult birth on a cold February night in the year 1937, misfortune dogged his footsteps more faithfully than his shadow for years. The midwife Halimeh had been in a hurry when he was born. Faizeh, the traffic cop Kamil’s lively wife, had woken her in the night to come to her friend Mariam, and so the midwife arrived at the little apartment in a bad temper, and instead of encouraging Mariam, a thin young woman of twenty, as she lay on the dirty mattress in labour with her first baby, she snapped at her not to make such a fuss. And then, as if the Devil were bent on displaying his entire spectrum of malice, along came Olga, the rich Farah family’s old maidservant. Faizeh, a strong little woman, crossed herself, because she had always been afraid that Olga had the evil eye.
The Farahs’ handsome property lay right behind the high wall of the dusty courtyard full of miserable hovels known as Grace and Favour Yard.
It was a place where people who had come from all points of the compass and were stranded in Damascus could live. The yard had once belonged to a large property with a magnificent house and big
garden, as well as a spacious tract of land with workshops, stables, granaries, and dwellings for over thirty servants who worked for their master in the fields, the stables, and the house. After the death of the Farahs, who had no children, their nephew Mansour Farah, a rich spice merchant, inherited the house and garden, while the many fields and the pure-bred horses went to other relations. The yard with its many dwellings was left to the Catholic church on condition that indigent Christians were taken in there, so that, as the will touchingly phrased it, “no Christian need ever sleep without a roof over his head in Damascus.” And before a year was up the rich spice merchant had built a wall too high to be climbed, cutting off his house and garden from the rest of the property, which now offered refuge to a set of destitute persons the mere sight of whom made that fine gentleman feel sick to his stomach.
The Catholic church was happy to have this large yard in the middle of the Christian quarter, but was not prepared to spend so much as a piastre on repairs. So the hovels became more and more dilapidated, and the people who lived there patched them up as best they could with sheet metal and mud bricks, cardboard and wood.
They went to a great deal of trouble to gloss over their poverty a little with pots of brightly coloured flowers, but the ugly face of want peered out of every corner.
Although the large yard was in Abbara Alley, near the east gate of the Old Town, all those years it was isolated like an island of the damned. As the wooden gate was burnt as fuel by the indigent inhabitants, bit by bit, until only the open stone archway was left, no one else living in the street outside willingly went in to visit the poor there. Over the years, they remained strangers to each other. Grace and Favour Yard was like a little village that had been uprooted by a stormy wind from its old place on the outskirts of the desert, and blown into the city complete with its inhabitants, its dust, and its skinny dogs.
