Everything changed for Hussein when he reached high schooclass="underline" by that time he was no longer an idealistic boy, but had grown strong and athletic. A woman in her thirties fell in love with him, and within a few months she had transformed him into her bodyguard, escorting her on mysterious errands. He stayed with her for days at a time in the apartment she rented that overlooked the Mezzeh highway and he would return exhausted from being kept up all night. He wouldn’t brook any discussion with his father; when he was bombarded with questions, he packed a suitcase and left for weeks, and no one in his family knew where he’d gone.
Hussein left school before finishing his high-school degree and settled happily into his new life. The night of their big fight, he was insolent to the father who was only trying to help him. After calmly telling him that they had to speak as equals, Hussein explained, in blunt language, that he had no desire to repeat his father’s small-town life of teaching and respectability. He said he hated the world of weaklings; he wanted to live among the powerful. He would creep into their lives and become one of them; he would share their wealth, sleep with beautiful women, travel to different countries, and live in a mansion in the richest part of town.
His father proceeded cautiously in this discussion. He explained the concept of strength of mind, but was mired in customs and traditions that couldn’t convince his son. As for Hussein, he spoke harsh truths that couldn’t be denied. He pointed out Abdel Latif was the most highly regarded geography teacher in the school, and even so his meager salary alone couldn’t keep the family afloat for two whole weeks. His wife was forced to earn a paltry sum shelling peas and beans and peeling garlic for the grocery stores in the rich parts of town. Hussein added coolly that he didn’t want his wife to peel garlic and chop vegetables for rich women in exchange for a few pennies.
Hussein went on. He told his father quietly that Abdel Latif might know all about Brazil and the topography of the Alps, but he didn’t know what went on in his neighbors’ houses. He didn’t know that in this utopia, families sold their daughters to rich Arab tourists who demanded some enjoyment while passing through (of course, legitimized by a temporary marriage contract), and he didn’t know that women who worked in the civil service would go out with men in exchange for a pair of shoes, and they didn’t have to be expensive ones. His father choked at this and no longer knew how to defend his way of life. He stood accused, along with all the sons of his generation, of the fear and cowardice that had brought his country to the point where it was willing to sell its daughters.
This sort of talk was unheard of in Abdel Latif’s house. In the silence following Hussein’s tirade, he wondered if his father might not die of shock that very moment. Abdel Latif couldn’t believe that this was his son, not yet nineteen—a young man caring nothing for the values his father prized above everything else: honor and integrity and morality. Before Hussein got sluggishly to his feet and left the house, he declared these values worth no more than his mother’s plastic slippers and suggested his father accompany him for a few days to see the real marvels of the city. But Abdel Latif had long since refused to ride in Hussein’s car, a Golf 1976 that his lover had bought to make it easier for him to accompany her and her friends on their private errands. His clients weren’t stingy when it came to encouraging Hussein to fulfill their special requests—an extra pinch of hashish or a few grams of cocaine—with alacrity; besides, all Hussein really ever wanted was enough cash for dinner in a restaurant in Bloudan with a girl who was wearing only a skimpy negligee under her coat.
Abdel Latif managed one last sentence. He told Hussein that he couldn’t be both a pimp and his son. Hussein took exception to the word “pimp.” He took out his identity card and scratched out his father’s name: “I’ll write ‘shit’ in its place,” he said as he stormed out, leaving nothing but confusion in his wake.
None of Hussein’s family saw him for two years after that. Abdel Latif forbade anyone from mentioning his name. He judged what had happened to be reason enough to consider his son dead. Sometime later, a woman who didn’t give her name called to inform them that their son was an inmate at Adra Prison, something to do with drugs.
Hussein, who had been his father’s pride and joy, had become his shame, and Bolbol was no good as a replacement: his weakness and anxiety had never exactly endeared him to Abdel Latif. This didn’t especially bother Bolbol. No one ever bets on the weak. Strength of mind, that quality of which his father used to speak so highly, was Bolbol’s only departure from the weakness that otherwise seemed to define his character, but the fact was that Abdel Latif had only really valued Hussein’s physical strength and refused to lay a wager on Bolbol’s mind. Bolbol was happy to be overlooked; he didn’t want to be a racehorse, and he didn’t have the energy to realize the dreams of a family that struck him as not only defeated, but one whose defeat only grew larger with each passing day—larger in every heart and in every corner of their home.
Hussein’s cruel words shocked them with facts they had been doing their best to avoid. They had been living in this small town for many years, but they were still outsiders. Despite their perpetual belief that they weren’t poor, in truth they were not at all well off, as most families working in the public sector weren’t. Everything around them, everything their father had built, Hussein turned to rubble in seconds. Their father hadn’t had the courage to live in Damascus, for fear of getting lost; he liked gatherings where everyone was somehow linked by familial or party ties. He couldn’t bear the thought of being a stranger in a large city, but in the end he’d still become the stranger he had never wanted to be. At first, whenever Abdel Latif was mentioned by a native of S, they reiterated his connection to Anabiya: it wasn’t easy to escape that identity, but even this would pass in time. Returning to Anabiya was no longer feasible. It seemed very far away; as if all his friends had died or had forgotten their childhood, or indeed anything that linked them with Abdel Latif as members of the same generation.
After Hussein left the house, their father was silent for three days. He didn’t leave his room and ate only a few morsels. His wife was indifferent to the behavior of both. Bolbol soon thought it might be a good idea for him to get away for a while himself; Abdel Latif wouldn’t be able to get past what had happened as long as he knew Bolbol, his other son, who had witnessed everything, was around. Bolbol asked permission to travel to Anabiya, as he did every year, to spend a few days with his kindhearted aunt Amina—a good way to keep himself from being underfoot. He told his mother, “I’ll be back in a week, and everything will be fine again.”
His grandfather’s house in Anabiya was long gone. There was only a collection of relatives left there, most of whom had forgotten some time ago that Bolbol’s family ever existed, particularly after Abdel Latif refused to participate in their various and venerable family feuds, which he considered a backward practice for the latter half of the twentieth century. Only Aunt Amina had continued to care. On Bolbol’s visits she would tell him their family history, and he would try to piece together the story of his father’s flight from his village and his family. The story his aunt always told had parts missing, and she stopped at the first mention of the three knights, as they were known in the village: Abdel Latif and his cousins, Jamil and Abdel Karim. They were the first young men in the village to get their high-school diplomas, tramping the muddy winter lanes half barefoot to reach the school in Afrin, which in the early sixties was still a small, clean town. It required the strength of a mule to make that journey every morning and to return every night. Beneath the pouring rain, the three would cross the fields on foot, sometimes sleeping at a friend’s house or in a mosque when floods closed the road. They couldn’t afford to rent a small room in town, and their determination to finish school forced their families to save small amounts to cover their fees.