by Rafik Schami
A distant cousin helped Salman’s father get a large room here when he came to Damascus from Khabab, a Christian village in the south, in search of work. His father acquired the second, smaller room after a fistfight with his competitors, who were trying to move in even before the corpse of the old lady who used to live there was taken to the graveyard. Each of those competitors told his story, which was clumsily designed to show that the old woman’s one dying wish had been to leave him, the teller of whichever tale it was, the room, so that her soul would rest in piece. Many of them made out that the dead woman was a distant relation, others claimed that she owed them money, but a glance at the hands of those liars showed that they had never in their lives had any money to lend. When the audience had seen through all the stories as lies, and hoarse voices were rising higher and higher, the question was decided by sheer force, and here Salman’s father was unbeatable. He flattened all his rivals and sent them home to their wives empty-handed.
“And then your father put a door into the wall between the two rooms, and so you had a two-room apartment,” Sarah told Salman, years later. Faizeh’s daughter knew everything. “Sarah Know-It-All,” everyone called her. She was three years older than Salman and a head taller.
She was extremely clever, and she could dance more beautifully than any of the other children. Salman had found that out by chance. He was eight or nine, and wanted her to come out and play when he saw her dancing in her own home. He stood motionless in the open doorway, watching. She was deep in thought as she danced.
When she saw him, she smiled shyly. Later she would dance for him when he was sad.
One day Salman and Sarah walked to the long road called Straight Street, where Sarah spent her five piastres on a popsicle. She let Salman lick it now and then, on condition that he didn’t bite any right off.
They were standing at the entrance to their alley, licking the popsicle and watching the carts, bearers, horses, donkeys, beggars, and itinerant traders who populated Straight Street at this time of day. When there was nothing left of the ice but the coloured wooden stick and the red tongues in their cool mouths, they decided to go home. Then a big boy barred their way. “I’m having a kiss from you!” he told Sarah. He ignored Salman.
“Yuk!” said Sarah, disgusted.
“You’re not having any such thing,” cried Salman, getting between Sarah and the colossus.
“Out of my way, midget, or I’ll squash you flat,” said the boy, pushing Salman aside and grabbing Sarah’s arm, but Salman jumped up on his back and bit his right shoulder. The boy screeched and flung Salman against the wall, and Sarah too screamed until the passersby took notice and the big boy had to vanish into the crowd.
The back of Salman’s head was bleeding. He was taken off quickly to the pharmacist Yousef at the Kishleh Road junction. Yousef rolled his eyes and bandaged Salman’s head without asking to be paid for it.
It was only a small lacerated wound, and when Salman came out of the pharmacist’s Sarah looked affectionately at him. She took his hand, and they walked home together.
“You can bite a piece off my popsicle tomorrow,” she said as they parted. What he really would have liked better was for Sarah to dance just for him some time, but he was much too shy to come out with that request.
So now back to Salman’s difficult birth and the old maidservant Olga, who had appeared as if at the Devil’s summons. She had come hurrying up in her dressing gown and slippers, begging the midwife to come to her mistress, whose waters had just broken. The midwife, a pretty woman, on whose fresh, bright appearance her forty years of life had left no trace, had been tending the spice merchant’s sensitive, always slightly ailing wife for months, and she was paid more for each visit than ten poor families could have offered between them. Olga didn’t want to let her mistress down at the moment of greatest danger, she proclaimed in a shamelessly loud voice, and she turned and shuffled away making remarks about riffraff and ingratitude. Faizeh sent two magic spells after the old woman to wipe away the trail of bad luck that certain people leave behind them.
As if the old maidservant’s words had more effect than any prayers, the midwife now lost her temper. Her interrupted slumbers, and the beginning of two labours at the same time, soured her mood. She hated working in Grace and Favour Yard anyway.
However, Olga’s husband Victor, the Farah family’s gardener, gave the midwife a bag full of fruit and vegetables whenever she visited the house. Everything grew well in the rich Farahs’ big garden, but the Farahs themselves loved to eat meat, and served sweetmeats, vegetables, and fruit only out of politeness to their guests.
It was rumoured that the suntanned, wiry gardener was having an affair with the midwife, who had been widowed early. He didn’t look as old as his sixty years, while his wife Olga had been aged by exhaustion. All she wanted to do in bed at night was sleep. There was a small pavilion for exotic plants in the garden, with a door leading straight out into the street, and that was where the gardener saw his many lovers. He was said to give them the fruit of a Brazilian plant that sent them wild with desire. But the midwife loved the gardener because he was the only man who could make her laugh.
On that cold morning, when she saw that the young woman was going to be in labour for some time yet, she left the little apartment to go over to the Farahs’ house. Faizeh tried to stop her in the gateway of Grace and Favour Yard. “Mariam has nine lives, like a cat, she won’t die that easily,” said the midwife, as if to salve her own conscience, because the woman lying on the mattress looked terrible, like everything around her.
Faizeh let the midwife go, tied back her long black hair in a ponytail, and followed her with her eyes until she turned in the direction of the chapel of St Paul. The Farahs lived in the first house on the right.
Day was already dawning, but the dusty street lights in Abbara Alley were still on. Faizeh breathed in the fresh breeze and went back to her friend Mariam.
It was a difficult birth.
When the midwife looked in at around eight, Salman was already wrapped in old towels. The midwife was babbling, and she smelled strongly of spirits. She cheerfully described the Farahs’ pretty newborn baby, a little girl, glanced at Salman and his mother, and croaked into Faizeh’s ear, “Cats don’t die that easily, right?” Then she staggered away.
Next day the inhabitants of Abbara Alley all received a little porcelain dish of pink sugared almonds. Brief prayers and congratulations to the Farah family on their newborn daughter Victoria passed from mouth to mouth. The name was said to have been suggested by the midwife after the parents were unable to agree. And the girl was still known as “Victoria Sugared-Almonds” years later. Her father didn’t give away any sugared almonds on the birth of her brothers George and Edward. Apparently that was because there had been gossip in the alley about a relationship between his wife and his youngest brother. Since from the moment of their birth the two boys looked very much like their uncle, a rakish goldsmith, and squinted just as he did, there was some reason for the ill-natured to gossip.
But all that happened later.
When Salman came into the world his mother did not die, but she was very sick, and when, weeks later, she recovered from the fever, it was feared that she had lost her mind. She howled like a dog, and wept without stopping. Only when her baby was near her did she calm down and stop whimpering. “Salman, Salman, he is Salman,” she cried, meaning that the boy was safe and healthy – so soon everyone was calling the baby Salman.
His father, a poor locksmith’s assistant, hated Salman and blamed him for driving his wife Mariam to madness through his ill-fated birth. After a while he began to drink heavily. The cheap arak made him bad-tempered, unlike Faizeh’s husband Kamil the traffic cop, who sang tunelessly but happily every night when he got drunk. He claimed that he lost a kilo of inhibition with every glass of arak, so that after several glasses he felt as light and carefree as a nightingale.
His wife Faizeh was glad to hear him singing �
�� out of tune, to be sure, but with fiery passion – and sometimes she even sang with him. Salman always thought it strange to hear the two of them singing. It was as if angels were herding swine and singing along with them.
The Jewish vegetable seller Shimon also drank a great deal. He said he wasn’t really a drinker, just a descendant of Sisyphus. He couldn’t bear the sight of a full glass of wine. So he drank and drank, and when the glass was empty the sight of its emptiness made him melancholy. Shimon lived in the first house to the right of Grace and Favour Yard, where Abbara Alley led into Jews’ Street. He could see right into Salman’s apartment from his first-floor terrace.
Shimon drank himself unconscious every night, laughing the whole time as he got drunk and telling dirty jokes, although when sober he was grouchy and monosyllabic. People said that Shimon prayed all day because his conscience pricked him over his nocturnal escapades.
The arak turned Salman’s father into an animal who never stopped cursing and beating him and his mother until one of the neighbours came along and talked the furious man into a calmer state, when his raging would suddenly break off and he could be guided to his bed.
Salman learned while he was still very small to pray to the Virgin Mary, so that one of the neighbours might hear what was going on and come quickly. None of the other saints were the faintest use when you needed them, said Sarah.
Like Salman himself, she was thin as a rake, but she had inherited her father’s beautiful face and her mother’s vigour and sharp tongue. For as long as Salman could remember Sarah had worn her hair in a ponytail – she still wore it that way later, when she was a grown woman – leaving her beautiful little ears free. Salman envied her those ears. Above all, however, Sarah read books whenever she could find the time, and Salman soon came to respect her knowledge.
Once he had laughed at her and the Virgin Mary, and immediately the May bug he was flying in the air on a thread broke loose. The thread, with a small lifeless leg attached to it, fell to the ground. Sarah’s May bug, however, flew cheerfully as long and as far as it liked at the end of its thin thread, and the bony girl whispered to the Virgin to watch over its legs. She brought the May bug down from the sky as often as she liked, fed it with fresh mulberry leaves, and put it in matchbox, then, head held high, she marched into her apartment, which was divided from Salman’s only by a wooden shed.
It was Sarah, too, who first told him about the men who visited Samira when her husband the fuel pump attendant Yousef was not at home. She lived at the other end of the pensioners’ yard, between the baker’s journeyman Barakat and the henhouse.
When he asked Sarah why the men went to see Samira and not her husband, she laughed. “Stupid!” she said. “Because she has a slit in her down below, and the men have a needle to sew up the hole, but then the slit opens again and the next man comes along.”
“But why doesn’t her husband Yousef sew up the slit himself?”
“He doesn’t have enough yarn,” said Sarah.
She also explained to Salman why his father got so angry when he was drinking. It was a Sunday, and when his father had ranted and raged enough, and Shimon and the other men had finally put him to bed, Sarah sat down with Salman. She stroked his hand until he stopped crying, and then wiped his nose for him.
“Your father,” she said quietly, “has a bear in his heart. It lives in there,” she added, tapping his chest, “and when he drinks it maddens the animal. Your father is only its outer covering.”
“Outer covering?”
“Yes, like when you throw a sheet over yourself and dance about singing. People see the sheet, but that’s just your outer covering, and you’re the one in there dancing and singing.”
“And what does your father have in his heart?”
“He has a raven there, but a raven that thinks it’s a nightingale, that’s why he sings so badly out of tune. And Shimon has a monkey in his heart. That’s why he doesn’t tell jokes until he’s drunk enough.”
“What about me? What do I have in my heart?”
Sarah put her ear to his chest. “I can hear a sparrow. It’s pecking around cautiously, and it’s always scared.”
“What’s in your own heart?”
“A guardian angel for a little boy. You can have three guesses which little boy he is,” she said, running off because her mother was calling for her.
In the evening, when he lay down beside his mother, he told her about the bear. His mother was surprised. She nodded. “A dangerous bear at that. You must keep out of his way, my child,” she said, falling asleep.
Salman’s mother did not recover from her sickness until two years after Salman’s birth, but her husband kept on drinking all the same. The neighbourhood women dared not come close to him. Because his father was as strong as a bull, only men could calm him down. Meanwhile Salman tried to protect his mother’s head with his own body, but in vain. When his father was in a rage he would fling Salman into a corner and beat his mother as if he were out of his mind.
Since Salman had begun praying to the Virgin Mary, someone always did come along quite quickly. But that was because Salman screeched at the top of his voice as soon as his father so much as raised an arm. Sarah said that his screeching was so loud it had shortcircuited the electricity in their home next door.
Salman’s mother was grateful to him for making such a noise, and as soon as her inebriated husband came staggering through the doorway she whispered, “Sing, little bird, sing,” until Salman started screeching so loud that sometimes his father didn’t even dare to come in. Even years later, Salman still remembered how glad his mother was to spend a day without being beaten for once. When that happened she would look happily at Salman with a smile in her round eyes, she would kiss him and stroke his face, and then she lay down in their corner to sleep on the shabby mattress.
Sometimes Salman heard his father come in during the night, pick up his mother as if she were a small child and carry her into the other room, and then he heard his father apologizing to his mother for being so stupid, and laughing awkwardly. And then his mother would utter quiet, happy little squeals, like a contented bitch.
Ever since Salman could remember, he and his mother had lived with his father’s alternating hot and cold moods until one spring Sunday when, after church, his father got drunk in the wine bar on the nearest corner and was already beating his mother in the early afternoon. Their neighbour Shimon came to her aid, calmed Salman’s father down, and finally put him to bed.
Then Shimon quietly entered the smaller room and leaned against the wall, exhausted. “Did you know that the dead weaver’s house near the Chapel of St Paul has been standing empty for the last six months?” he asked.
Like all her women neighbours, Salman’s mother did know. “Of course,” she faltered.
“Then what are you waiting for?” asked the vegetable seller, and he left before he had to listen to all the questions on Salman’s mother’s mind.
“Let’s go before he wakes up again,” Salman urged her, without knowing just where they could go.
His mother looked around, rose to her feet and paced up and down the room. She looked at Salman with concern and then, with tears in her eyes, said, “Yes, come on, we’re going.”
Outside, an icy wind was blowing over Grace and Favour Yard, and dark grey clouds hung low above the city. Salman’s mother put two sweaters on him, one on top of the other, and threw an old coat around her own shoulders. Their neighbours Maroun and Barakat were repairing a gutter. They gave the two of them a brief look, never guessing what they were doing, but Samira, who lived at the other end of the yard and was busy today with cooking, laundry, and listening to the radio, suspected something.
“My school exercise books!” cried Salman, worried, as they reached the gate. His mother didn’t seem to hear. Silently, she led him away with her, hand in hand.
The alley was almost empty this cold afternoon, and they soon reached the little house. Salman’s mother opened the
door, which was not locked, and darkness and musty, damp air came out to meet them.
He sensed his mother’s fear, because her firm grip was hurting his hand. It was an odd house. The door led to a long, dark corridor, and so to a tiny inner courtyard in the open air. The ground-floor rooms were wrecked, with windows and doors torn out.
A dark staircase led to the first floor, where the weaver had lived and worked until his death.
Cautiously, Salman followed his mother.
The room was large but shabby, with rubbish lying everywhere, along with broken furniture, newspapers, and the remains of food.
Salman’s mother sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall under the window, which was dim with all the soot, dust, and cobwebs over it and let in only a faint grey light. She began shedding tears. She wept and wept so that the room seemed damper than ever.
“When I was a girl, I always dreamed…” she began, but then she stopped, as if life’s disappointments had drowned even those last words in her mouth, and went on weeping silently.
“Where have I ended up? I wanted…” she said, trying again, but this thought died on her lips as well. In the distance, thunder was rumbling, like heavy stones rolling over a corrugated iron roof. Just before sunset, a fleeting ray of sunlight made its way through a narrow gap between the buildings. But as if wretchedness would not make way for it, it disappeared again at once.
Salman’s mother clasped her knees, laid her head on them, and smiled at him. “I’m stupid, aren’t I? I ought to laugh with you, cheer you up… but all I do is cry.”
Outside the wind blew hard, sending a loose gutter banging against the wall. And then it began raining again.
He wanted to ask if he could do anything to help her, but she was crying again, after briefly putting out her hand to stroke his hair.
He soon went to sleep on a mattress smelling of rancid oil. When he woke up, it was pitch dark and raining heavily outside. “Mama,” he whispered anxiously, thinking she was sitting far away from him.
