There was one particularly dramatic scene in the story. The girl fell sick, but the Arab prisoner who loved her was a doctor. He was horrified by the barbaric Frankish treatment of their sick with the axe and fire. In Damascus, which at the time had the biggest and most modern hospital in the world, patients were treated with medicaments and by the arts of language and music. So he offered to try to cure the girl, although he knew that if he failed he would die, and then she would have her head split with an axe to drive the devil out of it.
She was cured, and they both disappeared into the night before anyone who envied them could harm them and their love.
It had stopped raining outside, and as soon as he had finished his story Gibran left the club with Karime. Taufik was waiting with fifty steaming glasses of tea. Each member of the grateful audience put ten piastres on the tray and took a glass. Matta hesitated, but Taufik handed him one. “You’re Farid’s guest,” he explained. He had already made a mark on his list; after ten such marks, Farid paid him a lira. “Thank you, brother,” said Matta shyly, and he drank his tea and then left. Farid and Josef stayed behind, talking about the performance. “Gibran wasn’t at his best today. He was thinking about his lady love more than the lovers in the story, but it went down well anyway, the audience liked his theatrically amorous show, and that’s what counts,” was Josef’s conciliatory verdict.
A little later, however, he started an argument in which Michel the joiner and Amin immediately joined. “We mustn’t forget that before the crusaders attacked the east, the Arabs were divided into a thousand sects and clans, all at war with each other. Almost like today. And whenever the Arabs were at odds, they offered their countries to foreigners for free,” he claimed. Then he sat down and waited. The fire had been laid.
Michel spoke up for the crusaders. “But we mustn’t forget how the Christians and Jews had suffered for centuries before,” he said heatedly. “Caliph after caliph humiliated them. Caliph al Hakim the Deranged alone destroyed three thousand churches and chapels just before the crusades, forced all Jews to wear a large bell around their necks and all Christians a heavy cross. That needs to be said loud and clear,” he added.
Amin objected that both the Franks and the Arabs had been stupid, and they had both lost. Only the Vatican had profited. The Crusades had not just been wars against Islam, he said, but battles to set the seal on the power of Rome. “It was all about the destruction of power in Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. None of those centres meant anything after the Crusades, and Rome ruled the world.”
“That’s Russian propaganda,” said Michel angrily.
“Those two never could stand each other,” said Josef to Farid, who had kept well out of the argument. Josef rubbed his hands.
“We’ll have to ask Gibran to tell different kinds of stories, not that Crusader stuff,” said Taufik, regretfully shaking his head.
168. Alone
It rained for three weeks, and the mud roofs softened. Water dripped into all the buildings. As usual, the city’s drainage system was overtaxed, and water filled the streets and turned them into large ponds. A few children hopped about in the water, but it was icy cold. When the sun found its way through the clouds at last, Damascus was steaming like a freshly baked flatbread.
The change in the weather had given Farid repeated migraine attacks, but he was out and about all the time. Ever since the union of Syria and Egypt, the communists had been feverishly trying to organize an opposition, but they were completely isolated. The secret service dealt them some severe blows. Their printing press blew up, many Party members and sympathizers were arrested, and the population at large had not a spark of sympathy for the communists. Farid had to take care, for there were secret service informers everywhere.
Josef regretted the persecution of communists, but blamed the Russians for stirring up feeling against Satlan. Otherwise, he just urged Farid to leave the Communist Party as soon as possible.
And now, of all times, Farid had another violent quarrel with his father. Elias Mushtak hated communists. By pure chance, he discovered a large stack of copies of Youth magazine in the cellar of his house. His son had carefully hidden them there, never suspecting that a burst water pipe would bring them to light.
“Here am I, working like a dog,” ranted Elias, “sending him to the elite school, and what does he do? He turns communist! My son,” he bellowed, “turns into a godless slave of Stalin. And why?”
“To fight for justice and freedom for mankind,” replied Farid defiantly.
Elias uttered a bitter laugh. “I could weep for fools like you! So my son wants to save the world? Who do you think you are, boy? Jesus? They crucified him. And who do you want to save? A mob of folk who can’t even flush the lavatory when they’ve filled it with shit? Who look you in the face and rob you at the same moment? You want to save them? Our country needs morality and education, not communism, understand?” His voice was getting hoarse. He ranted for an hour, never letting Farid get a word in. Then he took a sip of water and gave his son an ultimatum. He must leave either the Party or this house within twenty-four hours. But Claire, although she shared her husband’s dislike of communism, intervened.
“Whatever else he is, he’ll always be my son,” she said. “Give him time, and he’ll part with those stupid communists.” Elias controlled his anger, and did not reply.
169. Women Helping Out
Claire was expecting eight women that afternoon. A huge quantity of mini-aubergines grown in the gardens of Damascus had to be cooked, slit open, stuffed with garlic, walnuts, peppers, and salt, and then preserved in olive oil.
The women told stories as they worked, so the time passed quickly, and they met again next day at the next neighbour’s house. Home was no place for their menfolk during these hours, so Claire suggested to both Elias and Farid that they needn’t be back too early.
This banishment didn’t suit Farid at all. He had been glued to the radio for days. There had been a revolution in Baghdad. Colonel Damian, a communist sympathizer, had overthrown King Feisal and proclaimed a republic. Over six thousand US marines had landed in Beirut, and the British had sent a brigade of paratroopers to Jordan to protect its king.
The air crackled with tension. But there was no placating Claire; she didn’t want Farid in the house. The women didn’t feel comfortable with men eavesdropping on their conversations, she explained.
“But I’ll be listening to the radio, and I’d close the door,” he pleaded.
Claire shook her head, gave him five lira, and said, “Go and amuse yourself with Josef.” However, Farid had been at odds with Josef for days because of the Iraqi revolution. Josef claimed that the new regime in Baghdad had been infiltrated by Russian agents.
Farid phoned Laila. She was glad to hear from him, and invited him round at once, since she was going away with her husband on a two-week concert tour in a few days’ time.
His cousin made no effort to hide her dislike of the communists either. She abused Damian of Iraq, describing him as an ass whom the Russians took for an eagle. When Farid frankly told her that he was in the Party, she laughed bitterly and said that just made her hate the communists all the more for exploiting clever, sensitive young people and putting them in danger. In fact, she said, they were even worse than the stupid Oriental dictators. “You don’t fight cholera with the plague.”