Farid read a great deal, and since his French was perfect he was able to translate short texts for his comrades. Before a year was up he was voted onto the editorial committee of the youth magazine. His job was to write about literature and culture; other members wrote on economics and history, and others again on contemporary politics.
Working on Youth was a great responsibility, and one that spurred him on to try gathering together the best, most audacious, and most revolutionary short stories and poems of world literature, and offering them to the journal’s young readers. A few months later he was praised by the Central Committee, which reported that many readers turned to the literary page first.
In those weeks he lay awake at night, wondering why people didn’t fight for their freedom. The basic principles of socialism, as he gleaned them from his reading, were so illuminating, and not at all far from Christ’s own ideas, yet when he tried to talk about them, people acted as if he were offering them drugs or pornographic pictures. Some were polite, others snapped angrily and asked him to spare them such dangerous naivety.
Farid liked working on the journal, but after a year he still couldn’t describe anyone on the editorial team as a friend. He felt a strange chill, a wall dividing him from them. Quite unlike the infuriating Josef, who worshipped Satlan, hated communists, and yet was still close to Farid.
166. The President’s Jacket
The communists were convinced that the union of Syria and Egypt, which was rushed through in 1958, had been a bad and over-hasty idea. Satlan, they pointed out, was a confirmed anti-communist, and the government had brought him to Damascus in such haste only to crush communism. Sure enough, persecution of the Party soon began, and the majority of its Syrian leadership went into exile in Moscow.
When Satlan came to Damascus, Josef was keen to seize his chance and approach that charismatic figure. He begged Farid to go with him, because he was afraid to be on his own. However, the Communist Party had strictly forbidden any of its members to attend occasions held in honour of Satlan. All the same, Farid went to the ceremony with Josef, and when one of his Party comrades claimed later to have seen him from his balcony among the jubilant crowd, Farid denied it and mollified the suspicious underground fighters by pointing out, “Every other Damascene looks like me.”
It was a beautiful spring day when Satlan was to drive through the city streets in an open car. Schools took the day off, packed their pupils into buses, and went to join the happy throng. Factories and offices were closed. The Christian elite schools were not enthusiastic about union with Egypt, but as everyone knew that the leadership was firmly in pro-Egyptian hands, and the majority of the government were close to the Muslim Brotherhood, they too gave their students and teachers the day off, leaving it to them to decide whether they took part in the rejoicings or stayed at home.
The streets of the New Town were lined with crowds even at nine in the morning. Soldiers stood along the carriageway, making sure that no one left the sidewalk. Josef and Farid managed to push and shove their way through to the front row. Finally they were standing in a good spot, and agreed that as soon as the President’s big limousine showed up they would rush forward to greet him. Recently the newsreels had repeatedly shown pictures of a smiling Satlan shaking hands with his admirers. To shake hands with the President himself was Josef’s dream.
Along came the black Cadillac. Josef ran that way, with Farid after him. The car was surrounded by rejoicing, dancing men, all shaking the President’s hand. Farid pushed Josef closer to the car, which was moving forward at the pace of a tortoise. They avoided the soldiers who were now busy trying to keep the rest of the happy crowd away from the road. “Let us through,” cried Josef, reaching out his arms to Satlan. Farid saw the President close up. He was much taller, and his skin much darker than they had expected. And he was talking to his two vice-presidents, while he shook the hands held out to him.
Suddenly one of the joyful crowd turned and struck out ferociously at Josef and Farid. It was confusing. Josef called him angry names, thinking he was just selfish and wouldn’t let anyone else near the President, but that was a mistake. Speaking an Egyptian dialect, the man summoned another in a white shirt and told him to “deal with” these two troublemakers. Only now did Josef realized that all the dancing, happy figures were really secret service men. This realization came too late. Blows went on raining down on them both until the car had moved away. Then the men left them and ran after it.
Josef and Farid went home with headaches and a rushing in their ears. Just before they parted, and Josef turned into Abbara Abbey, he mumbled, through swollen lips, “But I did get to touch his jacket.”
167. Gibran’s Love
The rain was pouring down outside, but it was warm in the table tennis room, for Taufik had kept the oil stove turned right up since that afternoon. Damp, chilly weather was very bad for his friend Gibran, who had a cold.
When he went to see if the stove was still on around seven o’clock, the hall was already full to the last row. There was only one person missing: Gibran. His chair on the knee-high platform that the joiner Michel had made for the club was empty.
Taufik went out once more to look up the street. A few dim street lights did little to illuminate the darkness, and there was no sign of Gibran. Taufik cursed him and went back into the hall, drenched. He was sure the seaman was getting drunk somewhere again.
However, he was wrong. Gibran turned up punctually at eight, with Karime. Many of the company knew her. Her late husband had been one of the richest jewellers in the city, and had left her a large fortune. She was now in her late fifties, but with the help of thick make-up, modern jewellery and clothes in bright colours tried to look at least two decades younger. Unfortunately she didn’t succeed. The youthful beauty with which, as a penniless singer, she had turned the jeweller’s head so that he cast his family’s disapproval to the winds, had faded forever.
Gibran was a new man. He looked frailer and more elegant. This evening he was wearing a blue suit over a wine-red roll neck pullover of fine wool, with new shoes and a beret that suited him very well. He was even freshly shaved and perfumed.
“Gibran’s been plundering the jeweller’s safe,” Taufik whispered to Josef and Farid with a touch of envy.
The old sailor escorted Karime solicitously to the front row, and asked a boy there to give her his seat. Then, standing in front of the platform, he told a love story from the time of the Crusades. It was the first time anyone had heard Gibran tell a story standing up.
The story itself was not particularly exciting, but the staging of it by the two lovers was impressive. Gibran seemed to dwell in particular on all the scenes in which the hero held his beloved in his arms, or caressed her, and enjoyed acting it out with Karime in front of the audience. It was touching and comical to see the old sailor come to life, so anxious to tell an impressive story that he exaggerated his postures, gestures and mimicry like an actor in a silent movie. He pressed both hands to his heart, and kissed Karime’s hand so ardently that there was perfect silence rather than merriment in the hall. Karime played along, and the game really did rejuvenate her. You couldn’t have wished for a better actress to play the Frankish girl who fell in love with an Arab prisoner in the crusaders’ camp.