Josef laughed. “Nadia doesn’t want me to die of a heart attack, she’d rather I died of a stroke. Those kids and private tuition! They just don’t want to learn anything. They’ve already been to Venice and New York, London and Paris, they’re burned out at the age of fourteen. And you think they’d want to learn geography?”
“Calm down,” said Farid. “I don’t know if they need teachers or tractors more down in the south, but I’d have liked to stay here,” he added, and boarded the bus, because the driver was already starting the engine.
He looked gloomily out of the window, envying everyone who could stay in Damascus. He had no idea that one of the most exciting periods of his life was just beginning.
227. First Signs
Dunia was the first to notice that Rana wasn’t well. Four weeks after Farid had left, she visited her friend without phoning first, and was alarmed. Rana seemed desperate, and was letting herself go. She said she hurt all over, but the doctors hadn’t found anything, and her husband was always cross with her. He said she was plain lazy and addicted to reading books. Rami had locked the books away, and he locked her studio on the flat roof too. She wasn’t even allowed to read newspapers and magazines. Instead, she had to learn crochet and knitting from his cousin Majda, and his sister was supposed to teach her to bake cookies and iron properly.
Rana showed Dunia her efforts. They were very clumsy. “An elephant could knit better than me.” She laughed and cried by turns. Dunia was bewildered, but she knew Rana couldn’t stand that stolid housewife Majda.
Finally she encouraged her friend to get up, wash, and smarten herself up, and by the time Rana was ready Dunia had brought some kind of order into the apartment and cleared up the garbage lying around everywhere. Rana seemed to have lost all her joie de vivre, as if she had given up entirely.
They went to Sibki Park. “You ought to go on vacation with Rami,” said Dunia. “You need a little fresh air, that’s all, you want to get out of your own four walls.”
“Rami can’t take a vacation. He has to stay here and make sure he keeps his job.”
“But you’re not yourself at all,” Dunia told her forcefully. “Why don’t I talk to him?”
Dunia knew that discussing his wife’s psychological condition with a Syrian was like trying to square the circle. Psychological sickness was regarded as a disgrace to the whole family, in particular a woman’s husband. So all psychological problems were denied, only total derangement was recognized — and for that there was the al-Asfuriye mental hospital. All the same, she was prepared to speak to Rami. Rana shook her head. She felt guilty because she couldn’t love him but was just a burden.
“Are you sure?” Dunia pressed her.
“Yes, thank you, I must deal with this by myself. First I have to get his cousin off my back. I have to or I’ll kill myself with one of those knitting needles.”
Dunia began phoning her friend every day. After some time she thought Rana seemed better, and invited her to come around to her place when several other young women were visiting.
When she arrived five or six of Dunia’s neighbours were sitting around her new record player, drinking coffee and talking. Rana didn’t know any of them. Dunia put a new Beatles record on and invited her friends to dance. She’d been to London with her husband, she told them, and she learned the new dances there. The women were delighted, and once their hostess had cleared away all the vases and little tables she showed them the latest steps. Rana smiled wearily, but didn’t feel like joining in. Even when the women, led by Dunia, tied scarves around their hips and began swaying in an oriental dance, she stayed where she was. “I have to think,” she said.
“Music and thinking don’t go together. Music wants to get into your body, make your nerves swing and your heart beat like a drum,” said Dunia, who danced with wonderful eroticism. But Rana was not to be persuaded.
Later, the women all prepared a refreshing tabbouleh salad, the dish for which Damascus is famous, but she had no appetite. She just sat there trying to be polite, but the women’s cheerfulness got on her nerves. After a while she asked her friend to drive her home. Dunia was one of the first women in Damascus to hold a driving licence.
“I long so much for Farid,” said Rana when they stopped outside her house. “I haven’t seen him since he went to the south. Somehow he’s going further and further away from me. I feel so lost. And then there’s my husband demanding his rights as if I were his slave.”
Dunia tried to soothe her friend, helped her to undress, and was about to leave when Rami came in. He was surprised to find her visiting, but was charming and polite. Finally he accompanied her to the door and offered her his hand.
“Rana needs a doctor, urgently. She’s sick,” said Dunia quietly.
Rami withdrew his hand. “She has everything she could wish for. She’s just bored,” he replied, narrow-lipped, and all trace of friendliness vanished from his face. Dunia was afraid that if she said any more he might take it out on Rana for letting him down in front of other people. She swallowed. Rami looked at her, incensed, and closed the door after her without another word.
228. Radicals
Farid was glad to get out of the bus intact when it arrived in Daraa. The driver had been overtired. He had a night shift behind him, and then had to go on driving without a break because his colleague was sick. Farid, sitting to his right, had noticed how he kept nodding off at the wheel, so he talked steadily to him for two hours.
The dusty town of Daraa was the last stop of any size in the dry Hauran plain. From here, the road wound up towards the Golan Heights. The landscape became more precipitous, but also more colourful because of all the little rivers. The uniform brown of the steppes disappeared as soon as they were past the first bend in the road. Not only was the land fertile in the triangle between Jordan, Israel, and Syria, smuggling flourished more than any other trade. But like the wretched town of Daraa, the shabby villages along the way were evidence not so much of poverty as of the absence of any pleasure in life. Despite the fertility of the region, the houses were dilapidated, the roads neglected. Children ran barefoot after the bus, throwing stones. The peasants’ children had no underwear at all, those of the Palestinian refugees wore whatever their mothers had made from the white cotton sacks which contained the flour and rice donated to them. The coloured emblems of the donors stamped on the sacks lasted for ever: the famous American hand-print, the Australian hopping kangaroo, the Canadian maple leaf.
The little bus had been cobbled together, with much Syrian ingenuity, from parts of at least fifteen brands of vehicle. Amazingly, this technical marvel stayed in one piece as it groaned its alarming way up the mountains, and jolted like a rock falling unpredictably down to the valleys again. After exactly two hours the bus had reached the village of Shaga. The passengers applauded enthusiastically.
It was Friday and the school was closed. Farid was to start teaching on Saturday. There was no hotel or boarding house in the village, and only a few buildings had electricity. Strangers spent the night with the village elder, so Farid asked the way to his house. The bus driver told him to get in again and drove him to the door. It turned out that the village elder was a generous host, who offered to let the new teacher stay with him for free, but Farid thanked him and declined.
In the spring of 1965, the village was still twenty kilometres from the Israeli border. The area was under strict military control; the bus had been stopped three times, while soldiers carefully checked the passengers’ papers and asked where they were going. The peasants knew just what to expect, and no one was travelling without ID. Shaga had both an elementary school and a large new middle school, the only one in the whole region. Many of the pupils had to cross valleys and climb mountains on their way to school early in the morning, and arrived for lessons exhausted.