Josef was bewildered. Khuri was an ardent pro-Satlan man, like himself, and a radical socialist. As they were friends, he went on asking questions until Khuri admitted that yes, he had in fact seen it all, and the weapon hadn’t been a knife but scissors. Finally he found them and showed them to Josef.
“So why did you lie about it?”
“I can’t get one of us into trouble,” said Khuri, and Josef was just about to correct him, saying that Suleiman’s father had never supported Satlan, when he understood. By “us” the socialist Khuri did not mean adherents of Satlan, but the Christian community.
Two days later the army carried out its coup. General Mutamiran announced that Syria was now free, and nothing stood in the way of the liberation of Palestine any longer. It was 8 March 1963.
216. “Youth”
Drinking coffee with Claire by the fountain in the morning was a special pleasure to Farid. He always gave himself an hour for it, and then the rest of the day could follow. He would hear news from her about the seething life of the quarter, and the rumours going around the Old Town, rumours that the students did not pick up.
But Claire was also a good listener. She always seemed to know his timetable, and asked sensible, interested questions about exams and practical work, his lectures and his grades. However, she never asked questions about his political activities, but waited for him to tell her of his own accord. His father took no interest in him. When he heard from Claire in 1965 that she was giving a small party to celebrate Farid’s diploma in natural sciences, Elias was amazed by the speed with which his son had completed his studies, even after losing two years during his time in the prison camp.
Every day Farid was deep in a book as he travelled to the university. The bus ride was a good time to read. He always had a novel and a book of poetry with him, and every time the bus was about to pass the street where Rana lived he raised his hand, glanced quickly at the last house on the right, and murmured a soft greeting.
One day in May he got out at the university bus stop, breathing in the scent of flowers in the nearby museum garden. He still had the taste of the cardamom which his mother added to coffee in his mouth. Then he saw skinny young Comrade Nagib who’d been snubbed at the Communist Party training course. He was already halfway up the steep path between the bus stop and the university gates. Farid quickened his pace to catch up with him, and as if Nagib had felt his eyes on his back he turned and stopped, suddenly recognizing his comrade.
“Hello, how are you?” asked Farid, out of breath.
“Fine. You’re studying here too?” asked Nagib.
“Yes,” he said. “I was going to get in touch with you through the Party, because I’ve decided to take on Youth. What you said that day at the meeting fascinated me, but I was too much of a coward to say so.”
“Who isn’t?” said Nagib quietly. “But are you sure you want to edit Youth?”
“No, I’m not sure, but I’ll give it a go anyway. The Party leadership claims that the magazine is free, and produced by young people for young people. So I can always use that rope to hang the censors.”
“Good heavens, and you call yourself a coward? God save us, or rather Lenin save us from your sort of courage,” he said. “By the way, in real life my name is Isa.” He offered his thin hand, which seemed to consist only of skin and bone. “I know you’re Farid. I’ve heard a lot about you,” he said, surprising his comrade.
From then on they met in the cafeteria twice a week, and then went on long walks. Isa was a voracious reader and a sceptic.
Farid’s official appointment by the Central Committee was some time coming. In the interim, he and Isa designed a complete issue of Youth. It was to have sixteen pages containing news, jokes, puzzles, accounts of historical events and contributions on sexuality, love, and other subjects. The second issue was almost ready too when Farid finally got the job. His request to have Isa on the editorial team was granted, but the committee rejected the idea of conscripting a woman comrade to write on women’s questions. Isa and Farid therefore thought up a way to get around the committee’s refusal. They would ask women friends of theirs to write on the subject, and then publish them under the pseudonym Farisa.
The first issue came out in October 1963. Over five thousand copies were distributed, and requests for more came in from all over the country. For the first time in the history of the Syrian Communist Party, its secret press had to do a second print run. And for the first time the official Syrian organs of the press mentioned the illegal communist journal. The state cultural magazine printed a long quotation from a forceful article on the poor state of the Arab film industry, written by Farid after intensive discussion with Josef. “How is an Arab film ever to work up any credible tension,” he had said, “if every film has to satisfy all Sunni, Shi’ite, Druse, Jewish, and Christian censors from Morocco to Saudi Arabia? Never a word of criticism of Islam, no scene showing a Christian quarreling with a Muslim, no scene in which a Jew is right about something, none in which a woman invites a man to come to bed with her. No film dares to caricature a dictator, no film may show that its heroes can drink wine without actually being criminals. No film ever shows that a child can be right and its parents wrong. What’s left but a heap of garbage? And there’s really no need for Zionism to condemn that — which is the favourite explanation our directors give for their failure — or for imperialists to condemn it either, the favourite explanation given by our Minister of Culture. Such films fail entirely on their own demerits. Not just abroad, but here in our own country too.”
Readers’ letters were encouraging, and contained a great many unsolicited contributions. Isa and Farid were delighted, and included two excellent pieces from women living in the north of the country in the second number, one about forced marriage and the other about the role of sexuality in women’s liberation.
It was a great surprise to Farid that while Rana refused to write for Youth, Laila was keen to do so. And Josef took enormous pleasure in providing a contribution. “I’m almost beginning to think of joining the Communist Party,” he said, “but I think I’ll wait, because after producing such a good journal you won’t grow old in the Party yourself.” And he laughed as he always did, not knowing that those were prophetic words. The Central Committee let only two more issues appear, and then came down heavily on Youth.
The first trouble was over a joke that the Central Committee misunderstood. It was in the answer to a riddle in the first issue. The riddle was: how do you make four evangelists into three musketeers? The answer, allegedly sent in by a reader in Damascus with the very common woman’s name Farisa, was, you cut out Stalin. The merging of the names Farid and Isa was an easy conundrum for the Committee to crack. Farid was made to feel the disapproval of those in high places at a short meeting with a member of the Central Committee, but he also saw how cowardly the man was; he didn’t dare to say he was angry because, as a Stalinist, the answer to the riddle insulted him. Farid told Isa about it, but instead of being pleased his co-editor suddenly turned pale.
Years later, when he thought back to this period, Farid was still wondering whether the Central Committee had been asleep, or whether it let those three issues come out uncensored on purpose to get rid of him for good.