At home, Zacharia ate the two kilos of fish on the terrace by himself, and when he had eaten enough, his wife and the children might be allowed to scrape what was left off the bones.
His children hated this large, ugly man with the scarred face and huge nose who turned up once a month, put everyone in a bad mood for two days, and at twelve noon precisely on both those days sat on a stool, looking as round as a barrel, and ate all that fish, smacking his lips.
One day when their father came home again the three brothers Sami, Hani, and Kamil, with several other children from their street, searched the whole quarter for cats and caught over twenty. When Zachariah finally sat down on the terrace, waiting for his fish, the boys stole close to the steps up to the terrace with the cats. The animals could smell the delicious fish dinner and were restless, but the children petted them and calmed them down.
Then Bahia came out with the steaming, fragrant platter, and Zachariah hadn’t swallowed his first mouthful before twenty hungry cats suddenly chased up. He was sitting with his back to the steps, and for a moment didn’t know where all the mewing came from. When he turned around, he froze with his mouth full and wide open. The cats looked at the white flesh of the fish hanging out of this large creature’s mouth, and mewed their hungry hearts out.
Zachariah’s eyes were wide with anger, and he yelled so loud that even three buildings away the neighbours stopped whatever they were doing in alarm. The poor cats had never heard such roaring before either, and froze in mid-leap.
Then Zachariah ceremoniously reached for his slipper, which was too small for him and just hung from his toes for the look of the thing. His reaching for a shoe, a threatening gesture familiar to all the cats of Damascus, released them from their paralysis and sent them racing away again in all directions, like lightning. Only one scarred, black tom who had lost his tail jumped up on the table with a death-defying leap, snatched a fish from the platter, and ran away. Zachariah went back to his fish dinner.
A year later he fell severely sick with fish poisoning. There was much whispering in the street. Some said Bahia had poisoned him, others spoke of “that disease”, without saying what it was, for they believed that if you said the word “cancer” out loud you would get it yourself.
When Zachariah recovered, the skinflint made bad worse by turning fanatically religious. He had given up his job as a cook, and now he went to Mass every day. One day he told his wife that he was going to leave half of all he had to the Catholic Church. As he couldn’t read or write himself, he said he had already asked the priest to draw up a will.
Bahia consulted with her women neighbours for a long time, and in the end she made an ingenious plan. Josef’s mother Madeleine, in her neat handwriting, drew up another document in which Zachariah revoked all previous wills. It was witnessed by three women: Madeleine, Azar’s mother Aziza, and Suleiman’s mother Salma.
Zachariah died early one morning in the summer of 1958. His widow Bahia sent the children to school, took her husband’s right hand, which was still warm, and pressed his thumb down firmly on an ink pad and then on the will. That was the legally recognized signature of all illiterates at the time.
A week later Father Basilius politely asked the widow if she would like to discuss her husband’s will with him. He had a copy of it himself, he said. “Many children in Africa and Asia are waiting hopefully for your late husband’s generous donation,” he added unctuously.
“Oh, your reverence,” smiled Bahia, “you didn’t know my husband and his moods. He drew up a new will and left his property to his three children, leaving me and the Catholic Church right out of it.” And she made a great business of looking for the document and showing it to the priest, who had turned pale. After that he had some difficulty in finding his way back to the Catholic presbytery in Saitun Alley.
188. Matta’s Fiancée
Kamal and Josef had been playing backgammon with Farid, who lost. They had gone home and he had put the game away. He was just going to lie down for half an hour when the bell rang. Matta and his fiancée were standing at the door.
“Brother,” began Matta happily, and then stopped. The woman beside him greeted Farid with a hearty handshake and stepped into the house, almost dancing for joy.
“So you’re Farid. Matta reveres you like a saint,” she said. Faride was much more feminine than her handshake and his mother’s description had led him to expect. She was lively and bright, and had all the qualities that Matta lacked.
“Brother,” said Matta after a while, and his fiancée Faride stopped talking in mid-sentence to attend to him. “We’re getting … married at Christ … Christmas. We’re …” Farid sensed what a strain his friend found it to get the words out. “At … Christmas,” Matta repeated. “Brother, we’d like you to be … to be our witness.”
“There, what did I tell you? It’s only with you that he speaks more than three words together. How happy I am!” rejoiced Faride, standing up to kiss Matta on the forehead and both eyes.
189. The Night of Jokes
The atmosphere in the club was gloomy. Amin had been arrested as he left home. Rasuk was being interrogated because of Elizabeth, and two other neighbours from their street had been tortured for a week, apparently because they had been confused with a couple of dangerous criminals. But word was going around that there were arbitrary arrests in almost every street, to intimidate the population.
Spring had been very late in 1960, but now it was suddenly like summer. The nights were warm. At the club, they decided they could sit outside again.
It was after eight o’clock when Gibran came to the club that evening on his own. “Karime is visiting her ancient old aunt,” he said briefly, when Taufik asked him. Josef was glad. He didn’t like Karime, and thought she was eating Gibran alive. It was a fact that since the old seaman fell in love with her, he hardly came to the club any more.
But when Gibran said she was visiting her old aunt a number of the members laughed, for in the spring of 1960 to say, “So-and-so is visiting his aunt,” was code for, “So-and-so is in jail for political reasons.”
“Karime and politics?” he replied, shaking his head. “That’s like fire and water. She can’t even bear to hear the news. I have to come to the café to find out what’s going on in the world.”
That day it was Butros the tiler who opened the door to the jokes told in Damascus on such mild evenings, and it wouldn’t be closed until dawn. “An American, a Frenchman, and a Damascene went to hell,” said Butros. “After a year they asked the Devil if they could phone home and tell their families they had ended up there, so it wasn’t worth the trouble of lighting candles or giving charity to the poor on their behalf any more. The Devil agreed. The American talked on the phone for five minutes, and when he came back the Devil said that would cost him a thousand dollars. When the Frenchman too came back after five minutes, the Devil asked him for the same sum of money. As for the man from Damascus, he spent two hours on the phone, because his entire family wanted to talk to him, and they were all keen to know if you had to pay rent in hell, and what kind of fuel kept the eternal fires burning. When he came back, the Devil said, ‘That’ll be twenty cents.’