Today my old man messed up a batch of pound cakes again. Now all day long we have to choke down this dry, burned stuff! He can’t even sell them to the poor.
It’s been raining for days. Still no answer from the publisher.
December 14 — Nadia’s parents and her two brothers went to a party. I sneaked over to her house, and she showed me where she sleeps. I stretched out beside her on the little bed. She lay quite close to me, and I could smell the perfume in her hair. She knows that jasmine is my favorite flower.
December 15 — Hooray!!! The publisher answered today. His letter was friendly, and he thought my poems were good. Great! He wants to print five of them in an anthology of young poets; the rest weren’t bad either. I am to send him a photo and visit him sometime, whenever I choose.
I’m going to appear in a book as a poet! Blessed Mary, I will light two candles in church for you tomorrow.
My father was bowled over. For the first time in months, he embraced me. He was very proud of me; he had tears in his eyes when he said that at such moments he knew he had not lived in vain. I’m supposed to get a new pair of trousers and take a bath before I go to see the publisher; my dad has even given my mother money for these things. She, however, no longer understands the ways of the world. She thought poets were always starving, and now her little poet is about to get new trousers. Then she began to waiclass="underline" If only her sainted father could have experienced this, how happy and proud he would have been. Then my father grew stern and told her to stop talking about the dead. After all, did anyone give a thought to his old father?
“Now we’ll celebrate,” he said and then made coffee for my mother and me.
“What a father you have; how very much he loves you,” my mother sobbed, wiping the tears from her cheeks with the hem of her apron. Then she pulled herself together, went to wash her face, and we all had coffee. I am to go to Basil, the photographer, to have a good photo taken.
And for all this I have to thank that wonderful man, Mr. Katib!
December 17 — Never has it rained so much as in the past few weeks. The sky seems to have decided to answer the prayers of all the farmers at the same time. This blessing for the farmers is a curse for Damascus. The rain washes the clay out of the roofs and walls and makes the streets muddy. The sewer system in our old part of town isn’t functioning, and last night when the temperature went below freezing, many water pipes burst.
Mahmud and Nadia are very proud that my poems are going to appear in a book.
December 18 — A bitter defeat for my mother! For weeks she has been bugging me to sing in the church choir. For her sake, I went there today. She gave me two oranges as a reward, and this annoyed my sister. Now she, too, wants to sing in a choir, provided she gets a couple of oranges for it.
We gathered in the churchyard at two o’clock. Father Georgios, who is responsible for the choir, came for us. First he wanted to test the newcomers, to see if any of our voices might already be breaking. We had to line up by size, and since I’m already 165 centimeters tall, I stood all the way in the back. We had to sing a couple of Kyrie Eleisons, but each time we did, Father Georgios looked extremely irritated.
“Someone is droning,” he said. He singled out fat Georg in the first row, whispered something to him, and the fatso slinked out with lowered head. Now we had to resume singing, but still he was not content.
“Who is it that’s droning then?” he asked disapprovingly.
We all looked at one another and shrugged our shoulders. Then he divided us into three small groups. Mine was the one that had the drone. I tried to sing as lightly and finely as possible.
Father Georgios nodded his head meaningfully. He came up to me, patted me on the shoulder, and said, “No offense, my son, but your voice is far too deep.” Oh, well, bad luck.
When I came out, Georg was still loafing around outside the door. He laughed at me disgustingly. “Such idiotic croaking,” he said, “I sang wrong on purpose the whole time.” All the way home he screeched into my ears.
When I got home, I was astonished at how many neighbor women were having coffee with my mother. She had rashly told everyone that the priest had personally invited me to join the choir. When she saw me standing in the doorway so early, she looked dumbfounded. When I told her the priest had kicked me out, my mother suddenly ranted and raged against the priest. The other women hypocritically tried to console her— only my mother would hear no more and grumbled, “What does that old crow know about singing?”
December 23 — Owing to the incessant rain, the clay roofs have become sodden; water seeps through and drops into all our apartments. Our ceiling leaks in several places. It’s not so bad in my parents’ room, but in the living room, where Leila and I sleep, it’s nerve-racking. Like everyone else, my father is afraid to go up on the slippery roof to plug up the holes. So there’s nothing for my mother to do but set pots and buckets everywhere. I can’t sleep. I feel like I’m inside a limestone cave. Drip, drip, drip. It drives me up the wall!
P.S.: Mahmud laughed himself half to death when I told him about the choir. He wants to hear the story over and over again!
December 25 — Christmas. Today we had a fabulous meal. My mother really surpassed herself; my father brought home a bottle of red wine, which we all emptied. Even Leila had a little glass.
The Second Year
January 7 — Some of my schoolmates are ill. This weather is really the pits! Leila and Uncle Salim also have colds.
Today Leila had a fever attack. She sat up in bed and began to sing. Raising her right hand, she swayed back and forth, as if she wanted to dance. I laughed, which my mother found absolutely appalling. She threw me out of the room.
Once Leila had calmed down and fallen asleep, my mother reproached me: “A person can go mad from such a high fever, and there you are, laughing like an idiot!”
P.S.: I went to the publisher, but he wasn’t in. He’ll be back on the tenth of January.
January 10 — Today I went to the publishing house. Was I ever trembling; I scarcely made a sound as I stood before the publisher, but there was no reason to have gotten so worked up. He is a little bald man with rather fat fingers; he smokes like a chimney and coughs nonstop. He was incredibly friendly. My fear that he might consider me too young vanished with his first few remarks.
He treated me like an adult, telling me about his problems and about the wonderful books he had already brought out and the others he still plans to. I was surprised to learn he doesn’t own a printing shop. He gave me a beautiful book of poems, then talked about my poems, which he intends to publish in the summer. He read them aloud and said he liked the one about the flying tree best and that he also plans to place it first in the book. I was so happy I could have hugged him!
I walked all the way home; I wanted to be alone. I looked at the bare trees. It was sunny and cold, and I saw myself, hand in hand with Nadia, reading poems in front of a huge audience.
January 12 — The radio drones on and on about war. My father hates war; he says one person has no right to take another’s life. Lately I’ve been having bad dreams and growing more and more fearful.
January 13 — Our religion class was great fun today.
“Why does Jesus have blond hair and blue eyes in all the pictures?” Josef asked the priest.
The priest jabbered something about Jesus radiating peace.