This uncle, in Jehar’s eyes, had no fidelity in his nature, no sense of right or wrong whatever. He had complained that Jehar sat all day over one glass of tea and how was he to make a profit if everyone behaved like that? Such a shameless and avaricious person was no use to anyone; he simply cluttered up the earth. It had sometimes come to Jehar’s mind that he might put an end to this miserable man if a good chance presented itself, but he was uncertain how the girl would take it, whether she would trust herself to him, whether there were others with whom she might seek refuge…
Meanwhile he found ways of talking to her, though never for long. She came for water to the pump that was near the office of the German engineers, where he had first seen her; sometimes on these occasions she was alone and would have some little while for talking, or listening rather—she said very little. The small kitchen where the coffee and the tea were made had a door that gave onto the outside yard, which had always a dark smell of soot and hot metal and spent steam from the shunting of the engines, but which nevertheless was kept open because of the heat from the stove in that narrow place. Keeping a wary eye out for the uncle, who was generally behind the counter inside, taking the money, Jehar would cross the tracks and come to stand at the open doorway, and by these means he sometimes succeeded in talking to her for a few minutes, with the clangor and hissing of the shunting bays on one side and the voices from the café on the other.
Such scattered moments did not make for conversation as this is generally understood, and Jehar had seen from the beginning that he must find one single topic, one that could be resumed at every opportunity, which would in effect, in spite of all interruptions, make an unending story. He found it in a vision of their future together. This, with all that it contained of happiness and fulfillment, was situated in the town of Deir ez-Zor, on the right bank of the Great River, which he had seen when working on the rafts that carried the pitch upstream and downstream from the black fields of Hit.
He described the town to Ninanna, the green islet in the midst of the stream, the permanent bridge that went from one bank to the other, the six white minarets that rose above the roofs of the houses, the great mass of gardens and palm groves and cultivated fields that extended along the river for many miles to the east. Memory and invention combined with love to make him eloquent. Their future at Deir ez-Zor was an amazing story, and no one had ever told her such a story before. She listened at first with her face turned from him; but gradually, as the story took on more and more wondrous detail, she would look directly at him, beguiled alike by the repetition of what was already familiar and the constant addition of what was new. She would sometimes ask questions, and when he answered Jehar would add something more to the story, some novelty that had not been there before. No less than twelve pillars supported the bridge, and these pillars were of stone. The town was lawful and orderly; no one went in fear of his property or his life. Not only was there a garrison of Turkish soldiers, but peace was also ensured by the Bejt Ftejjeh, a very powerful and numerous family long settled in this region, who had prospered under Ottoman rule.
Many members of this family worked in the government offices, he told her, and they gave a sympathetic hearing to Arabs. The Government House was situated on the river, and it was tall and white with many windows, and it had a wide courtyard. There were always two guards at the gate, in uniforms of blue and red. Deir ez-Zor had several primary schools and a high school and a polytechnic school—their sons would have good instruction. And there was land. To the north of the town were the gardens of as-Salhijjeh, the property of the Pasha, the Turkish overlord, but much of it neglected because the Pasha lived in Baghdad and came rarely.
This Pasha entered increasingly into the story, becoming always more corpulent. He sat there in Baghdad, eating halvah and pastries filled with honey and cream and kebabs of every description, getting fatter and fatter and making Jehar, who did not get enough to eat in these days, feel hungrier and hungrier as he invented the dishes. He puffed out his cheeks to make her laugh; he had no idea what the Pasha looked like, or whether he truly existed, but it was obvious that soon he would cease visiting his lands altogether. He would become totally immobile, and Jehar acted out with staring eyes and rigid head this stricken immobility of the overstuffed Pasha. Laughter came easily to Ninanna, widening her eyes, replacing the look of wonder that the story had brought to them.
A piece of land could be rented for the price of the tax on it; the flush wheels that brought the water from the river could be repaired, the irrigation channels dug out again… In these snatched moments, amid the dirt and din of the rail yards, these two, who had not once touched each other, who owned nothing, created together a land full of promise, an earthly paradise.
Jehar knew he was gaining ground with the girl; he could see it in her eyes. But the knowledge brought him no peace, rather the contrary, increasing his sense of what he stood to lose. It was a pattern familiar to his experience and his general sense of the nature of life, the crushing of human prospects, just when they seem auspicious, by some stroke of fate, something not envisaged, unpredictable. He had known it often enough in his gambling days, this dark game of fate. It troubled his sleep now; he dreamed of unmaskings, disguised enemies, trusted faces turning ugly.
Driven thus, he visited the uncle in the small shed he called his office, where, in addition to a table made of planks scavenged from the yards and a single chair, there was a low pallet against the wall, because this shed served also as the uncle’s sleeping place.
Standing before the seated man, taking care to speak respectfully and show no sign of the contempt and hatred in his heart, glancing around cautiously in the hope of seeing something in the nature of a strongbox where the takings from the café might be kept, Jehar offered his services in any capacity the uncle might choose, as watchman, caretaker, sweeper, handyman. He would ask for no payment, only board and lodging. However, they would agree on a nominal wage, and this would be regularly deducted from the hundred gold pounds, and so, week by week, the debt would be paid and in the end Ninanna would be his.
It had seemed, as he sketched it out in his mind beforehand, a reasonable proposal. It would require patience and self-control, but he would be able to see the girl every day; he would be able to watch out for possible rivals; he might succeed, before the debt was paid, in persuading her to run away with him to Deir ez-Zor. In any event, he would be well placed to kill the uncle if he went back on the agreement or tried to make a whore of the girl or sell her to someone else. Yes, it had seemed eminently reasonable. But the fabulist is not always the best judge of his own fables, and the more hope he has in them, the more he is likely to deceive himself. Well before the uncle’s ugly smiling, Jehar had realized that the story would fail to convince.
The uncle chuckled in a way that seemed evil to Jehar. He was a heavy man and would remain quite still for long periods with his small eyes almost closed below the fringe of his headcloth. In fact it was he who had served as Jehar’s model for the palsied Pasha of Baghdad. He opened his eyes now, however, to look at the man before him. “Do you take me for a fool?” he said. “I am to give you free board and lodging for months on end and as a result of this generosity lose the bride-price? What work is there here for a watchman or a sweeper except to watch for coins that he can sweep into his pockets?”