He laughed as well. “Touché! You beat me this time, but only to an extent. It is true that I am the example of extreme wretchedness, but what counts is how all this will end. The end is still unknown and I might find the answer in paradise. I happen to have a long history with paradise. My mother used to talk to me about it as if she had been there. I fell deeply in love with it, my mind spellbound by its vision. It became my fascinating dream, the magical paradise where one could see, hear, and talk to God, a garden with rivers, music, and eternal youth.
“But let’s go back to my mother’s conversation and how she managed to live after my father’s death. I asked myself this question but could not answer it. We used to leave our house every day, visit the saints’ tombs and the shops, buy whatever we needed, and then return home, where my mother busied herself with housework, while I went to my earthly paradise, among the cats and the chickens. Sometimes our neighbor visited us. I did not have relatives and neither did my mother. To this day, I have not found out if she had money. She dressed in black after my father’s death and cried whenever she was alone. I often discovered her crying. And finally I understood the relationship between her crying and my father’s disappearance.
“‘Don’t you say that my father is in God’s hands?’ I asked her. She nodded approvingly. ‘Why do you cry then?’ I asked.
“‘I know it is wrong to cry, Jaafar, but tears flow despite myself.’
“This did not discourage me from pursuing my daily adventures. I would proceed joyfully, collecting eggs, chasing mice, and defying the jinn. My adventures lasted for a whole year after my father’s death, and then I became attracted to the stories told at the sound of the rabab in the coffeehouse located under my window. I listened to them with great interest, as much as I could understand them, and I saw fights break out between the supporters of the different heroes of the legends. From the same window I watched bullies fight in weddings, and my admiration for them equaled my admiration for the jinn. I dreamed long of becoming a bully in case I failed to become a jinn.”
“Have any of your childhood dreams been fulfilled?” I asked.
“Do not make fun of me, and be patient. I want to talk to you about love in the time of the legend.”
“But the time of the legend is not the time of love!”
“I experienced love at age six,” he said. “I liked to sit in the midst of girls during Ramadan nights. The only serious beating my mother gave me was because of love, when I had seduced a girl my age and took her to a wooden box and pulled down the cover. No sooner had I settled down than I was surprised by someone removing the cover. When I looked up, I saw my mother’s shocked look and felt her braid touch my face. By the way, it was a very long braid and I used to play with it whenever I could. I would undo it, tie it, and twist it like a rope. My mother was undoubtedly beautiful, and, as I have already told you, were it not for her beauty, the tragedy would not have happened in the first place.”
“Tell me about childhood love,” I said.
He laughed. “It seemed like an aimless pastime, but I do remember that it was filled with sharp reactions. It was almost like being drunk.”
“This is abnormal!”
“I am not a moralist, but I can assure you that sex was not an overpowering factor in my life. It played a decisive role during a specific time only. During my childhood, however, it contributed in its own limited way to the creation of the legend, but the legend received an unexpected and fatal blow. One day I woke up alone without my mother’s help, and I became aware of that when I saw her deeply asleep, lying face down. I was happy to have the opportunity to wake her up for the first time. I placed my mouth close to her ear and called her name a few times, but to no avail. She did not respond. I shook her gently, calling her at the same time. Gradually my voice rose and I shook her more strongly, but received no response. I went on stubbornly trying to wake her up, my voice filling the room. I was desperate, and ended up leaving the room. I took a pomegranate from a dish and went up on the roof. Peeling the fruit, I ate its amber seeds and gave the bitter part to the chickens.
“I saw our neighbor. We talked, and the conversation turned to my mother and the way I had left her in her room. The neighbor questioned me carefully and finally asked me to open the apartment door for her. She rushed to my mother’s room, bent down, and then struck her breast with her hand, shouting, ‘What a calamity! Oh Umm Jaafar!’ She came to me, lifted me, and held me against her chest. Then she took me to her house. Her behavior saddened and oppressed me, reminding me of similar behavior when my father had disappeared for good. I cried, saying, ‘I want my mother, I want my mother.’ I spent two miserable days in our neighbor’s house. They were the worst days in the time of the legend. At the end of the second day the neighbor calmed me down and said, ‘Do not worry, Jaafar, God is merciful and compassionate.’
“I said, desperate, ‘I understand, my mother went to be with my father.’
“Her eyes filled with tears and she whispered words of encouragment. ‘God is with you. He is the father and the mother. He is everything.’
“Her husband intervened, saying, ‘Something must be done, even if it means going to the government.’
“His wife replied, ‘Even a stone would feel sorry for him.’
“Days passed while I lived absentmindedly, lost in my thoughts, until the neighbor announced cheerfully, ‘Rejoice, my dear, God is merciful. You will be going to your grandfather.’
“I did not understand anything she said. I was hearing the word ‘grandfather’ for the first time.”
4
Surprised, I asked him, “For the first time?”
“Yes, for the first time.”
I asked again, “He was never mentioned during your mother’s lifetime?”
“Never, though he lived in the same neighborhood.”
“Why did she keep you in the dark about him?”
“Maybe because she was upset with him. Anyhow, our neighbor explained the relationship to me and told me that he was my father’s father. His house was not too far from Margush, and in a way it was a familiar place, as my mother and I often walked by its high walls on our way to al-Hussein.
“I remember that I once asked my mother about the wall that stretched up quite high, like a mountain in front of the vaulted roof of the judge’s house. She explained briefly and hastily, saying, ‘It is a prison where criminals spend their lives in darkness.’
“The wall was not isolated from the other houses, in keeping with the tradition of design in popular neighborhoods, where the houses of the poor and the rich are adjacent. Nothing could be seen of the house or its garden. The only thing visible was the wall, which overlooked the treasury. It was a stone wall, long and high, truly like a prison wall or the wall of a citadel, and its door opened onto a dead end.
“I saw the garden for the first time when we crossed the gate. I had no knowledge of gardens, had not even seen a plant, except for a palm tree in the square where the judge’s house was located and a cactus tree in the cemetery. My ears filled with the singing of a nightingale and the chirping of other birds. The branches were filled with those multicolored birds flitting around. I saw a flock of pigeons hover over a tower behind a vine-covered trellis. The tower overlooked a creek that crossed the garden from one side to the other. A gardener holding a basket in his hand was standing in the middle of the garden, his legs sunk into the ground up to his calves. I was overwhelmed to the point of intoxication by the mixture of heavenly scents that invaded my nose. Mesmerized, I could hardly contain myself from expressing my enchantment at the top of my voice. I walked down a path bordered by colorful flowers, on my way to the salamlik.