A man would enter the shop by himself. When someone headed to Nishan’s it wasn’t because he was looking especially handsome, it was because he was planning for the picture that would be shown at his funeral or hung in a central place in his house after his death. They had suddenly begun to worry that they would pass from this life without leaving behind a picture to remind their families of them. The man would stand before Nishan’s lens with all his weapons, even if he didn’t have one knife that cuts in his whole house, as they said. He’d give special attention to his moustache, and inspect himself in the mirror first. A frown was an absolute must that appeared spontaneously on the man’s face as he stood menacingly in front of the camera lens as if looking into the eyes of his archenemy. The more Nishan asked him to stay still so his picture wouldn’t come out blurry, the deeper he frowned.
They began asking him to come outside to take a picture of as big a group of friends as could fit into a circle around a new car, or to take pictures of a bride and groom in their home surrounded by bouquets of flowers and ululations. Women began to appear later on when men’s dispositions improved and they started bringing their wives and children along with them. The entire family would come and stand together in their best clothes. Whenever they bought new clothes, they began to come and pose for the photographer in them. He’d ask them for a small smile. The children would go along with it first, followed by the wife. It was a difficult thing for a man to show his teeth, so he would keep his serious expression. He asked them to smile and tried to get them to all look in his direction. A stray look at something that caught their attention in the general surroundings behind the photographer or beside him was one of the mistakes a successful photographer had to avoid. Then they started having children’s pictures taken all by themselves — at First Communion in their angelic outfits or on Palm Sunday, tearful and holding candles taller than themselves. Or they would bring them to him and pose them on a wooden horse wearing a Mexican sombrero. Nazaret competed with him. He’d take pictures of children in the pilot’s seat of a colourfully painted wooden airplane. Women didn’t dare come to him all alone except in circumstances they couldn’t avoid, such as getting ID and passport photos taken once those became common.
Nishan left them all behind and went down to the city. He spent the nicest days of his life there. Life there was easy. People went about their business with a mixture of light-heartedness, acceptance and cunning. But now he had come to the end of the road. Defeat was written all over his shop window: dust and two pictures with faded colours — a groom with his bride dressed in her white gown, and a child carried on someone’s shoulders holding an olive branch in his hand. The studio had reverted into nothing more than his morning conference room. He couldn’t stand the loneliness of his house. The only metal letters of ‘NISHAN PHOTOS’ that hung over the door to his shop that still remained were a crooked ‘SH’ and a steadfast ‘A’. The damned tremors had got the better of him, and his hands were no longer going to obey him and hold the camera. The shaking was his true downfall, not the rise of speedy photo labs as was rumoured.
The travelling coffee vendor always passed by him twice — once when he arrived at nine o’clock to pour him a hot cup of bitter black coffee from the pot in his right hand, and once after his long tour around the market place to retrieve the empty cup and to collect what he owed him. Nishan would welcome an old friend who shuffled between the cafés in Al-Tall Square. Someone who’d set out to do some official business and got lost would come into his shop, someone who’d made the trip from the high mountains and whose thick accent preceded him. He’d open the door for him and in he would come, bringing in the smell of grilled meat from the neighbouring restaurant. He’d be trying to buy excise stamps or asking how to obtain a copy of a police record. Around one-thirty, Nishan would lock the door and go to lunch and that would be all, as he wouldn’t return until the next morning.
The future scenario was well-known; he had even participated in deciding on the details. No sooner would he shut his eyes — and the time would come soon, considering the disease that was destroying him, having lived more than thirty years with diabetes — than his wife would sell the shop to the owner of the barbecue restaurant next door who persistently offered to buy it at least once a week. She wouldn’t sell the house furniture but give it to his sister living in Beirut for free. He told her more than once to give the furniture to his sister for free and not to sell it to anyone. He knew his wife was stingy. He requested that she bury him in the Armenian Orthodox cemetery, after he’d bought a small plot there. He liked the smell of that city the way a person likes the smell of people he loves. And she should go to live with her son and his family who’d gone ahead of her to Canada. A hundred years in Lebanon were enough for the Davidians. Now it was that distant cold country’s turn.
Eliyya poked his head inside the shop while holding the door open with one hand and reading the name he was asking about from the paper he held in his other hand. The rest of his body remained outside as he poked his head in as if he were looking into a well. Nishan didn’t look up to find out who was asking the question until he heard his name. He usually answered lost inquirers holding administrative papers in their hands with a wave of his hand or a brief word without even looking at their faces. It had been a very long time since anyone had come into the shop looking for the owner. People had their pictures taken at the photo booth a few metres down the road and only opened Nishan’s door to inquire where to find a photocopier for their documents or because they thought he had one in the store.
‘Yes, he’s here.’
‘Could I to talk to him?’
Excessively polite.
‘Why sure thing, come in, habibi!’ Nishan recognised Eliyya. ‘You’re from Barqa, aren’t you?’
Nishan could recognise them. He knew them from their sharp accents and the looks they gave — those same harsh looks they had when they had entered the church that day.
‘I’m looking for some pictures!’
‘Pictures of who, baba?’
Nishan still didn’t speak good Arabic, even though he’d been born there, or maybe he’d just become used to those insertions — ‘baba’ between this word and that word, or ‘habibi’ at the end. He uttered them often in order to establish his identity, and so they would classify him as neutral.
‘Pictures from Burj al-Hawa.’
Most likely the Burj al-Hawa incident. The very same. He spent one hour of his life there and it had become the story of his life. To the day he died. But nothing could prevent Nishan Davidian from skirting the issue one more time.
‘I take pictures of people. Men, missus… I don’t photograph a village, baba. Go see a watercolour artist, he’ll paint nature for you. Red-tiled roofs. There are lots of those artists, they’re good…’ Without meaning to, he exaggerated his Armenian accent. That old feeling of fear had come back to him, so he sought refuge in his accent and his Arabic almost turned into a bout of broken drivel.
‘You were in Burj al-Hawa that Sunday…’
But matters got a little better when Nishan felt for some unclear reason that the man standing in front of him didn’t have bad intentions and didn’t want to harm him. He interrupted him. ‘How did you know? You weren’t even born then… How old are you, habibi?’