As Farid hauled the empty basket after him he began shedding tears. Suddenly he saw a pupil four or five years older than him, standing behind a pomegranate tree.
“Come here!” he called.
“Do you mean me?” asked Farid uncertainly.
“Of course,” replied the pupil, grinning. “Give me that basket and watch me.”
For a moment Farid thought that the older boy who had so unexpectedly come to his aid was a guardian angel in a habit.
“My name’s Bulos,” said the pupil, taking the basket from him. He filled it with dusty soil and shouldered it so that the basket hid his face. The monastery pupils leaning against the scaffolding were still laughing and didn’t notice him. Bulos walked rapidly towards them and emptied the basket over their heads. Taken completely by surprise, the boys coughed and spat as they tried to knock the dirt out of their habits. One began shouting that he would complain of Bulos. That seemed to be just what Bulos had been waiting for; he jumped at the boy and twisted his arm behind his back.
“Come on then, let’s go straight to Abbot Maximus, and you can tell him how you were ganging up on your comrade Barnaba with those lousy builders, and you watched and laughed when they tormented him. What do you think Abbot Maximus will say about that?” he inquired, hitting the boy on the neck. By now the pupil was begging not to be taken to the Abbot.
“Then you and the other idiots here can apologize to Barnaba,” ordered Bulos, letting him go. “And all I have to tell you,” he added, turning to the master builder, “is that if you treat one of the boys so badly ever again I’ll make very sure the Abbot fires you. I promise you I will.”
The man went pale, as grey in the face as his own cement, and just nodded.
“Right, you can have a few peaceful days with these rats now,” Bulos whispered to Farid, and he went away.
That evening Farid looked for his guardian angel in the refectory, and saw him sitting at the eleventh grade table, deep in a discussion with one of his companions. Farid went up to him, tapped his shoulder from behind and said, “Thank you very much.” Bulos turned and beamed at him.
“Oh, it’s you! Everything okay?”
“Yes, thanks to your help,” replied Farid.
“It was nothing. I just couldn’t stand by and watch the way they were treating you.”
The bell rang, and Farid hurried back to his own place. Then the bell rang a second time, and all the pupils rose to say grace.
From that day on he met his rescuer daily in every free moment he had. Bulos was intelligent and wily, but extremely distrustful. He was proud of his Syrian origins, and despised the Arabs. They were just Bedouin, he said, who had destroyed the great civilization of his forebears the Assyrians with their swords. Farid didn’t understand any of this.
Bulos didn’t talk much, and you never knew exactly what he was getting at, but he always seemed to know what other people were thinking. And when you saw his blazing eyes you guessed that he would shrink from nothing.
“So why are you here?” he asked Farid on one of their first walks together in the monastery gardens.
Farid didn’t want to talk about the burning of the elm tree in Mala. “My father wanted me to come,” he said. “He never got to be a theologian himself, so I was supposed to make his dreams come true for him. I’m afraid he’ll be disappointed. I’m not cut out for the life here.” He shrugged, and shook his head.
“Nor am I,” said Bulos, “but I’ll have to put up with it. My stepfather won’t let me back in his house. He made me go into this monastery so that he could be alone with my mother. I was in the way. Now I’ll have to stay here until I take my high school diploma, but after that I’m going to study law.”
“Why law?”
“With a law degree you can get to be a high-ranking police officer or a judge. I’d be happy with either,” he replied, narrow-lipped, and looked into the distance. Farid could well imagine that at this moment, in his mind, Bulos was torturing his stepfather.
At the end of September Farid wrote his mother his first letter home of any length. So far his letters to his parents had consisted only of five lines of polite clichés and an assurance that he was all right. Now he wanted to give a fuller account.
Dear Claire, dearest Mother,
I’m all right. There’s a lot to learn here, particularly French, but I’ve already made friends. One is called Marcel, he’s a born joker, another is Butros, a good friend. The third is called Gabriel and is a clever man. And the fourth is my guardian angel Bulos. I’m sorry, I can’t tell you their surnames; surnames aren’t used here in the monastery. It seems they’re secular, so to everyone except myself I’m Barnaba. The monastery never gives the same name twice, which means there’s no danger of any mix-ups.
Marcel is the funniest of my friends, and Bulos is the most interesting of them all. Bulos gets on well with his mother, but very badly with his stepfather. His own father was killed when he was little. Isn’t that dreadful?
His stepfather doesn’t let Bulos’s mother visit her son very often. He misses her, but he’s a guardian angel to me.
I wanted to write so that you’d know I’m not choking to death in this dreary monastery, and I love you and miss you very much. I miss your cooking too, what with the inedible food they give us here. Apparently enjoying good food is a sin. I pray for you every day, Mama, asking God to forgive you for enjoying the pleasures of life. Greetings to Papa.
Your son in exile.
Farid
Next day he was summoned to one of the Fathers whom he didn’t know, Father Istfan. When he told Bulos this, Bulos frowned. “Did you write anyone a letter?” he asked. Farid was alarmed.
“They call Istfan ‘the Inquisitor’,” Bulos explained. “He censors all letters. There’s nothing for you to worry about, but your letter will be handed back to you. Every pupil goes through this — it’s a baptism of fire. But only idiots fall into the Inquisitor’s hands a second time. His halitosis is enough to cure idiocy on its own.”
Father Istfan more than lived up to his reputation. His expression was alarmingly gloomy, and he had very bad breath which made Farid think of something decomposing.
“Your letters,” he began, taking the folded sheet out of an envelope that had been slit open, and on which Farid recognized his own handwriting, “will be handed in to us in unsealed envelopes in future. We will be happy to advise you how to write them, so as to make sure there’s nothing in them to give your parents cause for concern, and we can point out any spelling mistakes. There are a number of untruths here,” he said slowly, breathing out air from the graveyard inside him. “First: Gabriel is a Brother, not some playmate of yours. Second: your name is Barnaba and not Farid. Third: exaggerations will only confuse your parents. Bulos is a pupil here, not anyone’s guardian angel. Fourth: you write that life here is dreary. That is not true. If you are bored, there are plenty of things you can do for the common good. My son, I wouldn’t like you to make your parents anxious with such exaggerations. And fifth, I see that you are in the best of health, so what you say about the food is clearly nonsense. You should describe life here honestly and in positive terms.”
Farid’s fury stifled the words in his throat. He took his letter from the Inquisitor’s hand and stormed out, with tears in his eyes.
“They check up on everything, but you have to write home at least six times a year,” said Bulos, who was waiting outside for him. “It’s compulsory. Anyone who doesn’t write attracts their attention, and they suspect him of smuggling letters.”