Farid didn’t have to explain that he had been transferred for disciplinary reasons, for it appeared that no teacher ever came willingly to Shaga. All twelve of the staff were exiles, and they all said they had been unfairly banished.
Husni the principal, a gentle-natured man of gloomy appearance, gave him a sobering account of the situation. It was downright impossible to teach properly in Shaga, he said. The other teachers nodded, with wry smiles. The pupils had no money for books, and those sent by the Ministry of Culture for this poverty-stricken region had been lost somewhere on the way. Moreover, there couldn’t be anything like a normal school day when operations by Palestinian guerrillas on the border, followed by punitive Israeli actions and manoeuvres by the Syrian armed forces, turned the area into a battlefield every other week. In addition most of the children had to help their parents by night, smuggling arms, hashish, and cigarettes. He could only ask their new colleague not to pitch his expectations too high, said Husni, but at least to teach the poor devils the bare essentials.
The principal talked non-stop, but humorously, and since he mentioned Allah and his Prophet more often than necessary Farid guessed he was a Muslim Brother, and that was why he had been sent here.
The other teachers listened, looking relaxed, and drank the dark, sweet tea brought by the janitor. “Einstein himself,” said Husni, in conclusion, “would have grown up to be nothing but a smuggler or the member of a Palestinian commando group if he’d lived here.”
It was just before nine when the teachers went to their pupils, who had been waiting for an hour. On the way they introduced themselves by their names, subjects, and the reasons why they had been sent here. Farid was to teach chemistry, physics, and mathematics to the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, thirty-two hours in all over six days. He soon realized that so far as the students’ achievements were concerned, they were hopelessly backward, but their curiosity was great, and in practical matters they were equal to any young Damascene of eighteen.
“Children here grow up very quickly. They don’t just live every day, they have to survive it. That’s sad, but it matures them quickly. If you see death before your eyes all the time you want to taste life as soon as possible,” said Adib, a pleasant man who taught Arabic. He had been moved here from Daraa after calling for an uprising against the corrupt governor of the southern province. First he spent a year in prison, then he was banished from Daraa for five years.
Farid tried to teach his pupils the essentials, and was amazed to see how fast they picked things up. At the end of every lesson he gave them ten minutes to ask questions and look for answers with him. He tried to satisfy their curiosity about natural phenomena, which made him realize how slight his own knowledge was.
They asked how rainbows were made, and why water in the sea looks blue although it is has no colour. They wanted to know why Eskimos went on living in the biting cold instead of moving to warmer climates, or why the Bedouin almost died of thirst in the desert, yet still stayed there. They asked where the wind comes from, and why we don’t all fall over when the earth turns. They wanted to know how and why the borders of countries were drawn, and who had taught bees all over the world to build hexagonal honeycombs. Soon Farid’s pupils were ready to give up their break period to go on talking in the classroom, and he felt that he was really teaching for the first time in his life.
But he also realized that their questions were stretching him to his limits, and he saw all that Damascus University had failed to do in educating him. He had followed the equations of Einstein, Planck, Rutherford, and Schrödinger, he had passed tests and written essays on them. But what use was that in Grade Seven of this God-forsaken school, a place with no proper chalk, a place where the pupils had to manage without textbooks and exercise books, but all the same wanted to know why the sun goes on burning and never gets any smaller?
He went wearily back to his modest furnished room, lit by a sooty oil lamp that smelled of kerosene. But he was glad of his friendly landlady, an old widow who often went to Daraa to see her married sons and daughters there. Then the house with its little inner courtyard was all his. He liked to sit in the shady corner under a vine, looking at the old apple tree and the poor flower pots.
Claire and Rana complained that he hardly came to Damascus at all, but his only day off was Friday, and ten hours of travelling there and back were too much of a strain for him to get through the whole week after it, teaching three classes with forty pupils in each. So he usually stayed in Shaga, exploring its surroundings so far as the army would allow. Most of his colleagues did the same; only the principal and two other teachers came from Daraa, and went back to their families at the weekend.
Since Shaga was a very boring little place, with no café or restaurant or cinema, the teachers met almost every evening in someone’s room. Their antipathy to the government was a link that held them together despite their very different views. They played cards or backgammon, and when they had played games long enough they drank tea and told jokes, or confided their sorrows to one another.
Farid soon became particularly close to three young teachers: Adib taught Arabic, Salman taught history and geography, and Fadi was the art and sports teacher.
Outside school he discussed politics, morality, and violence with them. One day Adib cautiously asked him if he’d like to read the Radical movement’s newspaper. Farid couldn’t believe his eyes. It was called Now, and it was the logical and indeed the radical continuation of his own ideas as expressed in Youth. The paper was poorly printed, but the articles were full of wit, and frankly criticized conditions in the Middle East. The newspaper deliberately leaned on the Qarmates who had founded a Soviet-style republic in Arabia in the tenth century.
After reading it carefully, Farid decided that the ideas of the Radicals were somewhere between Russian anarchism and Cuban armed conflict. They wanted to make Syria a country without exploitation, without an army, and without privileges. Men and women were to be given absolute equality in all their rights and duties, particularly in the right to divorce. Religion was to be separate from the state, and declared the private business of every individual. Marriage would be performed by the state independent of any religious affiliation. People were to live and love freely, without fear and without war, they were to be able to say what they thought openly, and determine everything themselves through direct democracy, rather than being ruled by parties or clans. Farid had dreamed of just this for a long time. Now he suddenly saw young people with weapons in their hands trying to put his ideas into practice.
229. A Meeting
“If you really love Rana, then either run away with her or make a clean break,” said Dunia vehemently. She had found out that he was in Damascus, called him, and now they were sitting in a café near the parliament building. Dunia had grown very plump, and only her face still reminded him of her former beauty. “Her love for you is making her sick. She’s reached the point where she thinks of living with her husband as unfaithfulness to you, and it makes her suffer. Every time she meets you she feels hopeful, but then you disappear again. I don’t need particularly sharp eyes to know when you’ve been with her. Do you think this is any way to behave?”