George Mushtak told them straight out that he had fled here because of the woman at his side. He and she were Christians, he said, but a rich Muslim farmer was determined to marry Sarka by force. He, Mushtak, had chosen to come to Mala because even as a child he had heard of the chivalry and hospitality of the village.
Mobate sat up and took notice. He knew that his grandfather had once found himself in considerable difficulties when he granted the protection of the village to a fugitive. Soon after that, Mala had been surrounded. Its attackers wanted the villagers to surrender the man they were after. Their leader hated him so much that he didn’t even respect the sacred Arab custom which obliges a host to deliver himself up to death sooner than his guest.
The village held out against the attackers for weeks, until their leader and his exhausted warriors finally withdrew. After that, however, the men of Mala had urged their village elder to look twice at the next stranger before giving his word and plunging them all into misfortune again.
“You may have your three days, but do your pursuers know you rode to Mala?”
“No,” replied George Mushtak grimly, “or I wouldn’t have come. I went a long way round, and there’s been no one on my trail for days. I give you my word.”
“Good,” said Mobate, “then in three days’ time I’ll tell you whether you can stay here. Now let us eat and make you welcome.” He clapped his hands, and the meal was immediately carried in, as if the women had been just waiting on the other side of the door. Sarka laughed.
While the guests enjoyed the stranger’s stories and admired his wife’s beauty, the village elder sent three reliable young men to the lookout posts on the mountains, where they could see down into the plain leading to Mala.
When there was still no sign of pursuers three days later, he felt reassured. His guest did indeed seem to have been cautious. They granted him the right to stay in Mala. Only then did the man ride away once more, leading his wife’s horse behind him. Sarka stayed in the Mobates’ house.
The women there liked the beautiful girl, but they were surprised to see that she never prayed. She didn’t say grace with them before or after meals, just sat there smiling. One of the women, feeling suspicious, asked Sarka if she was a Christian. “No,” she said. Nor was she Jewish.
“A Muslim?” asked another woman. Sarka cheerfully shook her head.
“Then what in the world are you?” cried Mobate’s sister Badia.
“Love, love is my religion,” replied Sarka with her clear laugh. And the women were charmed by her sense of humour, never guessing that she spoke the truth.
It was almost a day before George Mushtak came back and carried two heavy saddlebags into the house. They were full of gold coins.
Mobate was very pleased, since a rich man was a godsend for both the village and himself. Soon George Mushtak bought four old houses on the village square, had them pulled down, and instead built a large new property with a grand house, a garden and outhouses. Mobate helped him to acquire fields, barns and threshing floors, and before two years were up George Mushtak could compete with Jusuf Shahin, until now the richest man in the village. But it wasn’t long before the original friendship between the two men turned to enmity. There was much speculation about the reason.
The Catholics in particular were delighted to have the newcomer there. Not only did he get the Catholic church renovated at his own expense, he also backed the Catholics against the hitherto dominant Orthodox Christians. But their delight was premature.
17. Laila’s Decision
In her later years, when Sarka was alone in the house feeling sad, or wandering around at night in the dark, she always remembered herself as a little girl running through the orchard and splashing about in the brook near her parents’ home. She had been called Laila then, the world had been a game, her heart was free and unscarred. It hadn’t yet suffered the wounds of love or worn the chains of fear.
But her memory of the hammam warmed her more than anything else. The details of visits to that splendid bathhouse had remained more vivid in her mind than all the weddings, circumcisions and religious festivals of which she retained only a vague idea. Going to the hammam in Damascus with her mother had been a great event for her, one that came only two or three times a year. Over ten women and twenty girls from the neighbourhood travelled in the big cart driven by a bearded old man. Laila had felt excited anticipation whenever she saw her mother packing everything up: food, sweetmeats, tobacco secretly abstracted from her husband’s supplies, combs, soap, henna and bath towels, although they never used the towels because there were much better ones in the hammam.
Laila could still see it before her eyes: those beautiful rooms, the dome, the tiny windows letting coloured light shine in, and then all the fun of sliding around on the soapy marble floors with the other girls. And the women sitting together, and their stories, the laughter and all that food. Laila was scared the first time she saw the fat lady who was always putting leeches on her breasts, belly, and legs. For a moment she thought they were worms growing out of the woman’s body.
Only later, when Laila noticed her breasts beginning to swell, did she suddenly notice the glint in men’s eyes out in the street, and the women’s whispers in the hammam intensified and became a definite plan. Her mother was the first to say anything to her straight out. Hassan, son of the big farmer Mahmud Kashat, had his eye on her. The old midwife Fatima had told her so. He’d met Laila and liked her. Now he was going to indulge himself by taking her as his fifth wife.
“How many hearts does this man have?” Laila had asked, out of sheer curiosity.
“He’s rich enough to keep ten wives, child, just like his father. With him you’ll be able to fill your belly, wash in clean water every week, lie down in a bed without bugs and lice, and sleep easily. That’s not bad payment for the bit of pleasure you give a man. Look at me. I have to bear that burden by myself, and slave for your father at home and in the fields as well. But you’ll be sharing Hassan Kashat with four other women. His slaves will feed you and pamper you like a princess. And all that for a little carrying on every fifth night,” said her mother, who had lived through years of famine and bloodsucking insects.
The old midwife Kadriye, who was visiting that day, drew on the water pipe that Laila’s mother had prepared for her. Water gurgled in the belly of the pipe. “And his thing isn’t as big as all that. There’s nothing for you to fear. Besides, he’ll go far in the world. A famous soothsayer has prophesied a great future for Hassan. When she saw him,” said the midwife, suddenly waxing enthusiastic, “she seized his hand and kissed it. Alarmed and nauseated, the young gentleman pushed the woman away from him, but she clung to his cloak saying she must do it, she wanted to be the first to kiss the hand of a future king of the Arabs. The young gentleman, oh, wasn’t he just astonished! He gave her a lira and thought she would run off with the reward for her flattery, but the woman looked him straight in the eye and said she didn’t want his money, but he was not to forget her when he became king, as he would one day. Now she was holding both his hands. He would have to climb over a thousand dead bodies to reach his throne, she said, but he was to marry a fifth wife whose sign was the moon and whose name was the night, and that’s you, my child,” the midwife ended her eloquent speech in a kindly tone of voice. She knew that Laila had a birthmark shaped like a crescent moon above her heart.
Laila knew the rich farmer Kashat’s son. He was short, and had a long, dark beard and big ears which didn’t seem to fit his almost dwarfish face at all. His eyebrows were comically crooked. He had an ugly mouth, with the huge lower lip split like a camel’s. Although he was always elegantly dressed, as if he were going to a party, he never laughed, and always walked with a stoop, as if he had all the cares of the world on his shoulders.