‘A Colt-9!’
‘But that one is too expensive for you, Farid. And besides, your gun is still new, hasn’t shot more than two cartridges. I would know. I’m the one who sold it to you.’
‘A Colt-9!’
‘The Herstal-12 is better than the Colt.’
Farid tapped his finger against his temple. ‘My mind’s made up.’
End of discussion. ‘You’ll have it tomorrow.’
‘How much?’
‘540 liras. I swear on my honour I’m only making a profit of 40 liras. I’ll split it with you. 520. My final offer.’
Farid smiled. He knew the man was a liar, but he liked him.
‘I’ll pay you half now. Give me another month for the rest.’
He wasn’t rich, Farid, but he always paid.
They always gave him time to pay.
His friends found out about it. They demanded to see the Colt-9. They enjoyed flipping it over in their hands and wrapping their palms around its wide handle and closing their fingers around it. Some of them would take aim at an imaginary target and then lower it, shaking their heads admiringly, without explaining the reason for that admiration. Farid never took his eyes off of the gun as it moved from one of his buddies’ hands to another, for fear it might get scratched or fall to the ground. He didn’t relax until he got it back and slipped it into the holster attached to his belt.
His toy. His work of art.
Badwi al-Semaani, Farid’s father, had made his work of art, with his own hands. With the help of two mules, he dragged the stone out from the Ayntourin quarry and plopped the stone down in front of his house, beneath the eucalyptus tree. He chiselled it after getting home from work on the construction sites or on rainy days and holidays. A whole year it cost him, chiselling and refining it. A mortar that was meant only to be seen with the eyes, as he used to say. He didn’t allow his wife to pound and tenderise meat in it, not even once. He made another mortar for her to pound meat and make kibbeh.
Farid, on the other hand, bought his work of art. The Colt-9. He deprived himself of everything for three whole months. Master Boulos gave him 200 liras a month, which Farid withdrew early, one lira after another, long before the end of the month.
Farid never tired of feeling the revolver at his hip every time he found himself alone behind the measuring table. It distracted him from his work. He would stop putting buttonholes in the shirt he was working on in order to polish the gun. He would take hold of the handle and raise the gun up above his face, letting it shine in the light coming in through the open window that overlooked the street. He wanted to make sure there wasn’t a speck of dust clinging to it. He would puff on it repeatedly only to shine it up again with the lining of his jacket, just as people do to clean their glasses.
Master Boulos was worried about him. When he entered the shop, signs of worry were all over his face. He grabbed the trousers away from Farid again, put the iron aside, and prodded him in the chest. ‘You were at Sheikh Melhem’s funeral at the Church of Our Lady yesterday, weren’t you?’
‘I was. He was one of my mother’s relatives.’
Master Boulos knitted his eyebrows in reflection. With a faint smile, Farid added, ‘Nothing happened at Sheikh Melhem’s funeral. People exaggerate. Who told you about it?’
Master Boulos simply sighed.
Nothing happened . . .
They had shown up with their family zaeem. No one knew who invited them to the funeral. Twenty men came, not more. They surrounded the zaeem the whole time, never taking their eyes off him for a second. They frowned as they walked, casting fiery looks at the others. Their elegance caught Farid’s eye immediately. The youthful zaeem was a lawyer who had recently graduated from the Jesuit University in Beirut. They said he had met with Sir Anthony Eden when he came to Beirut the year before as part of a tour of Middle Eastern capitals to drum up support against Abd al-Nasser. Farid had seen pictures of him pasted on the walls before, but this was the first time he had seen him up close. He never imagined him to be as short as he was standing there before him, wearing those brown and white shoes Farid hadn’t yet been able to afford. Farid would order a pair of those shoes one day, after the Colt-9 and the pure silk tie. Farid could recognise real silk from its sheen. Three or four of the young zaeem’s attendants sported sherwal trousers and wore fezzes on their heads. The weather was hot. It was the middle of May. Everyone was wearing a jacket. Some, who may not have owned a summer jacket, came wearing their winter suits, intensifying the heat and the nervous tension.
And so, upon every hip there was a gun.
Under each jacket, a gun.
And tucked into every sherwal’s cummerbund, there was a gun, too.
The same was true in the case of Farid’s cousins and their supporters. The Semaani clan outnumbered their enemies and were in their own neighbourhood, on the road to their church. If only those congregating around their young lawyer zaeem would make one mistake. If only they would.
The pushing and shoving started when the procession entered a narrow street. Shoulders bumped shoulders. All that was heard was the sound of feet hitting the newly applied asphalt on the church road. The zaeem’s attendants seemed to be trying to clear a path for him by shoving back all those bodies pressing against him in the narrow passageway. They were insisting on keeping a cushion of space around him.
People’s faces appeared more and more worried. Farid saw a number of men, those who were not relatives and had no need to be there, leave the procession. They scurried down the small narrow streets that branched off left and right from the main road. They ran off without looking back; peace-loving types who preferred to go back to their homes. The only thing that could be heard during that time was the singing of the hymns by the religious brotherhood as they carried the Cloth of Divine Mercy at the front of the procession.
Farid’s gun was loaded. The Colt-9. As soon as he felt threatened, he identified a target for himself. He knew at whom he would shoot and he planned out specifically how he would act – in which direction he should charge, what he would do with his left hand, and how he would not even give the young lawyer’s attendants enough time to protect him with their bodies. He would shoot him in the head. Three times at least, and the remaining shots he would use for cover as he withdrew. The zaeem was almost pushed along by them rather than walking unaided. The brothers finished their hymn as they led the way to the door of the church. There was a silence in which all one could hear was the heavy breathing of the men and the bustling of bodies. The crowd reached the church’s wide courtyard, which allowed people to spread apart, though the threatening looks continued even at a distance.
No, nothing happened at all.
Some of the women in the back rows had not even been conscious of the pushing and shoving; they carried on with their usual chatter as the procession spread out bit by bit along the road leading to the church.
Sheikh Melhem’s funeral was merely a rehearsal for what was going to take place in less than a month, in June, at another funeral in another village perched over one of the commanding heights of the nearby mountain.
Master Boulos had almost lost hope of putting Farid on the right path. The only thing left for him to do was to encourage him to emigrate.
‘Why don’t you go to Australia, Farid? You have lots of relatives there who are doing well, don’t you?’
The sewing pins in Farid’s mouth prevented him from answering.
‘Look at your brother Shafiq. He doesn’t get caught up in all of that.’
Farid smiled mockingly. No, Shafiq was not someone Farid wanted to emulate.
Master Boulos did not have any illusions concerning the future of the tailoring profession. It was not going to provide for any future generation after his own. What had happened to the shoemakers would happen to the tailors, too. The shoemakers went and destroyed the contents of the new ready-made shoe shop that opened on the main street of the town and the police escorted them to jail. But what
good did that do? The shoemakers showed some bravado, but the tailors were much more cowardly. Master Boulos knew every single one of them. It was a difficult profession and Farid was not good enough at it.
‘They say Australia is really nice,’ Master Boulos added.
Many of Farid’s generation emigrated. Some of them suffered a lot. They went alone, putting their faith in God, without a single relative there to greet them. Some of them slept under the open skies during the first days, on church benches or in public parks. As for Farid, his trip would be guaranteed from A to Z. The program was all set:
He would leave Lebanon at the beginning of summer, or in October, as he wished.
He would board the ship in Beirut. A long journey, but enjoyable.
His uncle would send him travel expenses. He would pay the money back at his leisure once he was there, after he started working and getting paid. In Australia, people were paid weekly.
He had work waiting for him in the factory. There was demand for workers in Sydney.
He could go into tailoring if he wished, but they told him that over there it was considered a woman’s job, in general. Or into shoemaking if he wished, and when he was able to save up some money, he could open up a laundry or small grocery store of his own.
They had sent him a picture of all of them together, and a picture of their house with the white wooden railing, and also a picture of a kangaroo carrying its baby in its pouch. We live on the beach, they wrote him, in the Coogee suburb in Sydney. Sometimes the waves reach the front steps of our house. In the summer we sit under umbrellas sometimes while the waves splash over our feet.
They asked him to bring them a souvenir: a small stone from their house in the town.
The last letter he received contained a picture of his cousin. She had a wide face and a full figure; she was smiling. She looked like his mother.
She’s waiting for you, they wrote on the back of the picture.
He imagined her waiting for him, sitting on a rocking chair while the waves splashed over her feet.
They sent him the money from Australia, without waiting for an answer from him. They tried to encourage him that way.
His aunt bored everyone there, constantly showing his picture with his American hat tipped to the side and going on about how handsome he was.
‘I don’t like travelling by sea. Who would trust his soul to the waters?’ Farid said, after he had finished marking the pattern into the cloth with pins.
He was lying, and Master Boulos knew he was lying.
The hours were long, and tailoring work was slow. The only way to entertain oneself was with talk. Talk about girls and marriage, this time around.
‘Either travel or look for a nice girl . . .’
Nice girl? No. Farid was not good at that. Love required an eloquent tongue, and he was not good at talking.
Khawkh al-dibb, the Bear Plum. That was Farid Badwi al-Semaani. That was what he was called by people at the coffee shop. No one was spared their barbs. The sharp-tongued men goaded him, but they feared what he might do.
A bear plum looks appetising, light green with a tinge of pink, but no one would dare bite into one, because they’re far too bitter to eat.
‘Here comes Bear Plum!’ Sometimes they would say it loud enough for him to hear, when they spotted him coming out of one of the narrow streets leading to the coffee shop. ‘Welcome, Bear Plum,’ they would say and he would sit down with them, smiling without malice, so he could silently watch them play cards. They all played cards. They would lose and get angry, or win. Farid, however, remained a spectator. Someone said he didn’t know the rules of the game and just watched anyway. But he only acted as if he didn’t know how to play, so that he would be able to leave after a few minutes and go back to the tailor’s shop. Master Boulos accused him of always looking down at his shoes, then claiming he didn’t like the way they shined, an excuse to put his tailoring aside and go to the café. There he would whistle for the shoeshine boy who would follow him inside and start shining his shoes. Farid would demand that he use ample polish and brush well, especially at the heels.
Tailoring was a difficult art for him. All that concentrating tired him out. He would mark the material with tailor’s chalk, and put a stitch with needle and thread at the crease of the trousers’ hem. He used tricks, like making the buttonholes with extra fine thread. He had thick fingers that didn’t obey him. If he needed to thread a needle, he would try for a long time, and then call someone to thread it for him. Frustrated, he would go to the café while Master Boulos pretended not to notice.
Moving from one profession to another in the span of a single generation was not an easy thing for Farid to accomplish. First there had been the mules, with all the prodding and loading them up with heavy bundles, and lighting a fire under their tails if they lay down, or hitting them until their legs started to bleed, or even biting their ears as his uncle used to do, to force them to stand up. From there he went to sumac-coloured stone, and then to fine English wool, in one fell swoop.
Bear Plum didn’t care what people said.
He could take a joke, but he never lowered his eyes from anyone’s. Just looking at him seemed to him an attempt to intimidate him. He was easy-going but unemotional.
They tested him at Umm Raymond’s Restaurant. They were sitting at the next table drinking arak and eating: Saeed Ibrahim and Antonios al-Khoury. He and Saeed eyed each other. Saeed Ibrahim was dangerous. You couldn’t take him lightly. They stared at each other. Not the slightest blink. The dare dragged on. Farid would not look away. Impossible. The other customers left one at a time. No one wanted to die by mistake.
The President of the Republic was trying to renew his term. That was what was rumoured, even though he hadn’t announced his intentions yet. The tailor’s apprentice Farid al-Semaani supported the renewal, along with his whole family, including the zaeem. He’d heard the itinerant newspaper seller shouting out the day’s headlines as he walked through the alleys, and that was enough for Farid. He never bought the newspaper, because he could read only with difficulty.
The president’s opponents were losing in the regional elections one after the other. Cheating, pressure, and bribes – that’s what they said.
The North District still remained. Elections would take place in two weeks.
Farid was going to send the money back to his aunt with the first person travelling to Sydney. No. He didn’t beg anyone for money. He was satisfied with his situation. He would return the money because he was staying. Farid Badwi al-Semaani, twenty-four years old, mother’s name Susaan Wardeh, 182 centimetres tall, distinguishing marks: wart on left cheek. He was staying so he could sit in the evenings in a small restaurant owned by a woman in her fifties who still had traces of her beauty left. He would sit with a friend of his or a cousin before two skewers of grilled goat’s meat and a plate of hummus. They would clink their glasses before the first sip of arak mixed with water. They grimaced as they drank, each gulp of the 100-proof arak like bitter punishment. Farid didn’t eat and didn’t talk, and if he did eat after repeated invitation from his companion, it would be very little. A bite or two and that was it. At dinner, instead of eating he smoked many Lucky Strike cigarettes. By the third glass of arak, his face turned bright red, and he would withdraw deeper and deeper into himself. He would listen to his friend and not talk. Perhaps he was trying hard to listen to some buried voice inside himself that was saying obscure things to him. Beset by a strange feeling, he would raise his glass again and sail off into the distance.
Night time always brought him back to her.
Night was a pimp, no way around it.
He tried in vain to free himself, but she was his life’s joy.
The night, food on the table, Lucky Strikes, arak . . .
And her.
Farid al-Semaani was staying for his family’s sake, maybe, or maybe for the sake of his passion for fighting and the Colt-9. But he was definitely staying for her. He w
as staying in order to hum some ataaba verses quietly to himself at eleven o’clock at night and then excuse himself and walk away. His friends knew what he was up to. They wished him good luck with smiles on their faces. They knew.
He would walk through the darkness – the only thing he feared – worrying about the possibility of gunfire and getting shot. He would head towards the river, cross the stone bridge and walk along the dirt road adjacent to the monastery, next to the cactus plants that led to her small house, the one with the blue windows. Every night she left the back door open for him. The smell of cow manure reeked from a nearby yard. She would wait for him in her transparent pink nightgown, completely naked underneath. He loved to get there and see her totally naked under her nightgown. She didn’t like it. He insisted, though, and she never refused him any request.
She would hear the creak of the back door and know he had arrived, so she would hurry to take off her panties and bra before he came into her bedroom. Her only request was that he keep quiet so as not to wake the children asleep in the next room. He would remove his gun and the two clips, placing them on the chair next to the bed, and then he’d take her by the shoulders and she’d close her eyes, shuddering with pleasure. She didn’t dare demand he marry her, for fear that he might stop coming to her. He would gaze at her with a stern look that hid wild desire. With the 100-proof arak still lingering in his head, he would throw her onto the bed without taking off his clothes. Men didn’t take off their clothes. The first few times, she surrendered to him the same way she had surrendered to her husband. Then one of her neighbours who knew about her secret taught her to resist.
June Rain Page 4
