“What about Gibran?”
“Gibran was a mechanic on a destroyer, but he spent more time in the cells than on board. He was a brilliant mechanic, but he just didn’t get on with the others, and when he lost his temper he used to throw anything he happened to be holding at them. He kept breaking out of jail, and he was always picked up again, until he disappeared once and for all in 1940. People said he’d drowned. It wasn’t until I leased the café here that I saw him again for the first time in sixteen years. He hadn’t drowned at all, unless it was in drink.”
171. The Debts of Venice
The year 1959 began badly. A wave of arrests rolled over the country. Farid’s Party training was interrupted because the man who ran the courses was in prison. He called himself Comrade Bassam, but his real name was Josef Kassis, and he was the son of one of the richest importers in Damascus. Comrade Bassam was a tall, smooth-skinned man with a droning, monotonous voice. He talked nineteen to the dozen, as if he had diarrhoea of the mouth. When he started on about some Marxist concept, Farid always felt an enormous urge to drop off to sleep, and sometimes, with unfortunate consequences, he couldn’t resist it.
“Comrade,” Bassam the Marxist expert had reproved him, “a fighter with no knowledge of economics is just a romantic adventurer. He will betray the working class the moment he gets a chance.”
Farid had no intention of doing that, but all the same he was obliged to agree that Bassam who ran the training courses was right, for if you contradicted him his sermon was immediately dragged out to three times its original length, and the other comrades would hold a grudge against you. So Farid merely complained to Amin privately about the boring Bassam. Amin couldn’t stand him, and called him a rich upstart. “His father imports washing machines, and son Bassam has one in his head, with a drum going around all the time,” he said, grinning.
Under pressure from the government of President Satlan, the Party feverishly extended its activities. Farid had to risk his life distributing pamphlets inveighing against the oppression of communists, and finally even found himself leading the youth organization.
At the end of March, Grandmother Lucia’s health deteriorated. She lived in her own deranged world, as if in a constant fever. The situation upset Claire. One day when she entered the house the whole place smelled of incense, jasmine blossom, and thyme. Claire called for the nursing nun and her mother, but there was no reply. When she finally found her, Lucia was dancing naked around a small fire that she had lit in the middle of the room. She was throwing spices on it and uttering cries of glee. The nun was nowhere to be seen.
After that Lucia slept for three days, and when she woke up she summoned Claire, who was now caring for her round the clock, and asked for notepaper and envelopes. From now until her death she wrote letters, asking the Venetian authorities to return her grandfather’s collection of glass eyes. When that nobleman lost his right eye, he had apparently had three thousand glass eyes made by a famous glassmaker on Murano until he found one that fitted him perfectly.
Farid was afraid of his grandmother’s delusions, and would visit her only in Claire’s company. Whenever he saw Lucia she was surrounded by ancient journals and papers. She wrote the mayor of Venice letter after letter, and to everyone’s surprise received interested replies. In fact they were written by Claire. As Lucia lay in a fever shortly before her death, the postman brought her a letter with the sender’s name given as “Mayor of Venice”. Claire read it aloud. It was written in French, and the mayor was inviting Lucia to spend a week in the city. She would stay in the finest house there as a guest of honour, and could visit the Murano Museum and see the magnificent collection of glass eyes that her grandfather had left to Venice in his will.
Lucia was very weak, but all the same she slowly raised her head and propped herself up on her elbows. “So there are still some decent people left in the world,” she said triumphantly, and her eyes shone with fevered delusion and endless longing for Venice. “But what glass eyes does he mean?” she asked, suddenly at a loss. Then a mischievous smile flitted over her face.
Claire said nothing, and helped her mother to lie down again. That night Lucia slept peacefully, embracing her pillow as if it were a lover, and never woke up again.
172. Paths Crossing
Farid passed the exam for his high school diploma at the end of June 1959, achieving good marks that allowed him to register at the university. He wanted to study mathematics, physics and chemistry, and be a teacher. Josef, whose average marks were not so good, registered to study geography and history. He wanted to go into politics, and was perfectly happy with those subjects. “A politician who doesn’t know anything about history and geography is no use, and will lead his country to ruin,” he said succinctly. He and Farid were the only members of their set with marks good enough for them to study at university.
It had been late summer when the new candidates for further education streamed towards the university. The authorities had put up a low-roofed building outside the entrance to help them deal with the crush. It had over ten windows side by side, like the ticket office at a rail station. The officials received application forms through a slit in the window, and seemed to have the calm of Buddha and the time of all eternity at their disposal, while the young candidates for university places roasted in the full sun outside.
Farid and Josef talked to the other applicants. Many of them came from the country and had never been in Damascus before. They had to go back to their distant villages that evening or spend the night on a park bench, since none of them had the money for a hotel. Some had even brought bread, olives, sheep’s milk cheese, and hardboiled eggs from home so that they wouldn’t have to spend anything on food. All the dialects of the country could be heard. There were two separate windows to one side for women candidates, and all was calm and orderly there. Few women managed to take their high school diploma and then go on to further studies.
A young man called Amran with an expressionless face was just ahead of Josef and Farid in line. He was almost sure, he said, that he wouldn’t be accepted by the university, he thought his marks weren’t good enough. But no one knew if such pessimism was well-founded. The man with him complained of the lazy officials, and enumerated the buses that had already left for his village in the north and those that would still be running from now until evening.
When Amran’s turn came to go up to the window, everyone around heard the humiliating remarks made by a fat Damascene clerk to the peasant’s son, after the poor man had been waiting for four hours.
“What do you expect to do with these results?” asked the sweating colossus behind the glass pane scornfully.
“Study something, anything,” replied Amran, not exactly quietly but in a tone that all could hear. He would be happy with any subject, he continued; the main thing was that a university degree would open gates for him.
“You wouldn’t even get a job as a porter with marks like these,” scoffed the clerk.
“Why not? I’ve passed my high school diploma, and there’s no law saying you have to have certain marks before you can study,” said Amran, in as level a tone as if the point at issue were not his place at university but something of no importance at all.
“Hmm. No, there is not in fact any such law. The university itself decides on its new students, depending on their numbers and average marks. But if we’re talking about laws,” said the clerk in a loud voice, grinning, “you can’t quote me one obliging me to accept you either.”