“To tell you the truth I completely forgot about feisaliyeh. Anyway it’s silly stuff — burma shaped into triangles that the people in Tripoli came up with to put one over King Feisal I, the one who was friends with a British spy called Lawrence and who made an about-face and ran as soon as the first sound of a bullet was heard at Maysaloun. Why would you bother with feisaliyeh? Look and see what I did bring.”
Khaled opened the three boxes and said they were the best sweet pastries in the world: “Pastries and revolutionaries are all Tripoli produces.”
“The girls are pretty too, and don’t forget the scent of bitter orange blossom,” said Karim.
Khaled explained the three kinds of pastry, which bore unusual names.
“These are Hookers, these are Angels’ Balls, and these are Bear’s Turds.”
“See what a vulgarian you still are?” said Karim. “And yet you come here this evening to teach us how to behave!”
“No, I swear. Those are their real names!” He showed him the names written on the colored paper in which the three boxes were wrapped.
The two friends laughed as they ate the nammoura, which the people of Tripoli call Bear’s Turds, the shmeisa, which they call Angels’ Balls, and the basma stuffed with Aleppo pistachios that they call Hookers. Karim asked about the origins of the names but Khaled shrugged his shoulders indifferently. “How should I know, Brother Karim? That’s what everyone calls them in Tripoli. Now you must have realized why I can’t give up — who could leave behind these gorgeous Hookers and come to Beirut to be unemployed?”
Khaled asked for bread so he could eat the pastries, explaining that ever since he was a child he’d always eaten pastries wrapped in hot bread that his uncle fetched from the bakery. “I used to think it was because we were poor but then I discovered that the poor were right, they taste better like that and they fill you up.”
They ate the pastries with bread and drank the tea and Khaled told Karim he was expecting a child and that Hayat was the greatest woman in the world because she understood him without him having to say anything.
He told him of his experience at Shaqif Castle: when he was there he’d kept thinking of Tripoli with its crusader castle of Saint-Gilles, which overlooked the city and topped the cliff above the Abu Ali River, and he said he’d had no choice but to return.
“I know what I did with your essays wasn’t right, but honestly, doctor, it fitted. If ideas are to stick together they need glue. We took off the Marxist glue, put on a new glue, and they stuck. Maybe Islam’s better, because it’s stronger. Anyway that’s how I found rest and the boys found rest, and I wish you could see how happy the people of Qubbeh are. Now people aren’t pleased with us just because we’re tough guys and defend their rights, they feel we’re part of them. Now, at last, we’re like the fish in the sea.”
“But Khaled …”
“Just say you were with us before and you’re sticking with us. Isn’t this guide to Islamic action your book?”
“But I don’t want to become a Muslim like you!”
“Why not? Take Abd el-Messih, he became a Muslim and a Shiite and his Christian wife refused to let him divorce her. He told her, ‘It doesn’t matter. I’ll go on supporting you and I’ll marry my sweetheart,’ and so he had two.”
“And are you going to take another wife alongside Hayat?”
“God forbid! One only: ‘And if you fear you will not be equitable, then only one’!”
Karim said Abd el-Messih had been wrong. He thought the man had become a Muslim so he could live with the woman he loved, which wasn’t a problem, but he’d pushed it too far, which was. What did it mean for a Christian intellectual to become a Muslim in these times? It was a covert invitation to kill Christians, and that was insanity, especially in a multi-sectarian society such as Lebanon’s.
“God forbid!” said Khaled. “You Christians have been placed under the protection of the Muslims.”
The conversation devoured the evening without their realizing it. It was close to one when Karim said he had to sleep because his shift at the hospital started at six the next morning.
“You go and sleep in the bedroom and I’ll sleep here in the living room. I’ll heat water early in the morning if there’s electricity. Don’t forget to turn it off before you go or the pump will burn out.”
“There won’t be electricity tomorrow. Don’t worry about it. You sleep in your room and I’ll sleep here.”
Karim spread a sheet on the living room couch, placed a cushion on it and covered it, and went into his room. But he came out again wearing pajamas to find Khaled in his underclothes, preparing to get under the covers.
“What’s up?” asked Khaled.
“Nothing. I came to say good night, and that tonight you’re under my protection.”
“We all need the protection of the good guys,” answered Khaled, laughing, and he turned out the light.
At last Karim understood why the veiled woman who had come to visit him a week after Khaled’s murder had said she was “under his protection.”
Hayat had come wearing a long black chador that covered her from head to toe and carrying her baby, Nabila, who was four months old, in her arms.
When he opened the door she said she was Hayat, Khaled’s wife.
“Please come in, sister. This house is your house.”
She came in but didn’t sit down. She said Khaled had told her to go to Danny. “He said, ‘If anything happens, go to Danny. Danny’s like a brother to me and more, and he’s married and has a little girl. You can have a nice talk with his wife while things are being worked out.’ I went to Danny, and stood in front of his door for three hours. I rang the bell and heard movements and felt someone was watching me through the peephole but he didn’t open the door. I thought maybe he hadn’t recognized me because I was wearing a chador. I don’t usually dress like this, our kind of veil is different, but I thought this way no one would know me. We were in great danger. I took the chador off my head and I rang the bell and said, ‘I’m Hayat, Khaled’s wife.’ I heard the same movements and felt the same eye but no one opened the door. I covered my head again and thought, ‘Just be patient, there’s no one inside because it’s not possible Danny won’t open the door. Danny slept at our house about ten times, he can’t have forgotten us.’ I sat down and waited on the steps and then I got so desperate I came to you. God is my sufficiency and the best of those on whom to depend. Do you know where Danny is?”
This was the first time Karim had met Hayat. She was indeed “the woman of light,” as Danny had called her — an inner beauty manifested itself in honey-colored, almond-shaped eyes, slightly raised cheeks, eyebrows that seemed to have been drawn with a fine pen to overarch the eyes and contain the light that radiated from them.
Karim said he didn’t know where Danny was.
“I’m under your protection, Brother Karim. I spent an hour looking for your house. Khaled, God rest his soul, described to me where it was and I didn’t like to ask anyone so as not to raise suspicions. I have to find Danny today.”
Karim’s assessment was that Danny hadn’t opened the door because he didn’t want to see anyone. The man had gone into seclusion and even stopped answering the phone since hearing of his wife’s decision not to go back to him. But he thought it a strange paradox: Hayat said her life was threatened and she’d decided to leave Tripoli, and Danny knew that. Why then hadn’t he opened the door?
Karim felt embarrassed with the woman standing there hesitating. He told her he knew nothing about Danny but he could leave the apartment to her and go somewhere. That was the only solution.
Hayat noticed the terror that had overtaken Karim. His hands were trembling and the words came out jerkily from between his lips, as though he was stuttering. She realized his invitation wasn’t heartfelt and was made worse by the fact that she was looking not for refuge but for psychological and moral support.