“What are you trying to say? We have to be patient until we can find a way to be together. Rana didn’t want to give me up, and I’ve stayed unmarried for her sake myself.”
“Yes, but you go out, you have work, you’re politically active, and she’s a prisoner here within her own four walls. It’s unjust. And that’s not all. There’s also the fact that she can’t come to terms with the situation. Here’s my husband on one side, she says, there’s my lover on the other. She’s living on a high springboard, and every time it sways she feels sick. I’ve tried and failed to get her to go easy, take life as it comes. She’s waiting with her bags packed, but you never bring the air tickets to set her free.”
“And now you blame it all on me instead of her husband, who won’t let her study or paint! As if love and not the idiocy of men who beat and imprison their wives were a sin,” said Farid indignantly.
“No, I’m not blaming anyone. I’m only desperately trying to find some way out of this for my dearest friend, because I can see she’s getting more and more desperate. And I think you’re the only one who can save her, but you must act fast. Yes, perhaps I am blaming you for something, your cruel inactivity. What are you waiting for? In your place and hers I’d have been off and away long ago.”
“But you’re not in my place and hers. We ran away once and failed, that’s why I’m trying to change the dreadful conditions that destroy us all,” said Farid. However, he didn’t sound very convincing.
“You don’t mean that seriously, do you? Have you just swallowed Mao’s Little Red Book, or what? We’re in the heart of Arabia here, not China or Cuba. Nothing ever changes here. If you really want to save this wonderful love of yours for Rana, you’d better hurry up before it’s too late.”
“So what makes the Chinese any better than us? What do they have that we don’t? A third leg?” Farid’s voice was sharp, but he spoke quietly, because the café was full.
“Perhaps, perhaps,” said Dunia sadly, for she could see that she was getting nowhere. She said no more for a moment, and then, lowering her voice, went on. “I have about ten thousand dollars in a special account. If you two need it to run away, it’ll be my wedding present to you.”
“That’s sweet of you, and we’ll certainly ask you for help when the moment comes. But tell me, how are you yourself?” he said, changing the subject, feeling bad about speaking so angrily to Rana’s faithful friend.
“Oh, I’m fine. I’ve adjusted to life, and my husband does a lot to keep me in good humour. Successfully, as you can see.”
Farid left the café knowing that Rana’s friend was more human and approachable than he had ever thought. Dunia watched him go until the crowd swallowed him up. She marvelled at her clever friend Rana, who could love such an apathetic man so passionately.
230. Song of the Cicadas
Farid was still in the school building late in the evening. He was planning to correct Grade 8’s chemistry test and then look in on Adib for a game of cards. He had a solid table to work at here in the school, and electric light; his lodgings had neither. Husni appeared in the doorway saying he was going to make fresh tea in half an hour’s time.
When he came back, he sat down, stared at his tea glass, and said more to himself than Farid, “They sent us here to be rid of us. Either you give notice after a year of this hell, or the Israelis give you the coup de grace.”
Husni was certainly not a kindred spirit. He was conservative and strictly Muslim, but he was kind to the children and sorry for them. Every week lessons were interrupted for hours, if not days, because the Israelis or Palestinians were involved in some operation. For many children their way to school was dangerous, potentially fatal. A secret war was being waged in a strip of land twenty kilometres wide on both sides of the border, and as if by mutual consent Damascus and Tel Aviv never mentioned it. Before Farid’s arrival the pupils and their teachers had dug a trench where they sheltered during attacks. They had learned to run for it fast and crouch there close together. The sight moved Farid to tears. They kept their hands over their ears for fear that an exploding bomb might deafen them. Farid and two other teachers went into the trench with them every time; the others drank tea with the principal.
Once an Israeli helicopter hovered over the trench, and a soldier waved when Farid looked up. The helicopter was less than five metres above the ground, and made you feel as if a whirlwind might suck you up. Farid was furious, because the children were screaming in terror. He shook his fist at the pilot and yelled at him for God’s sake to go away, but his voice was lost in the infernal din. The Israeli showed his own middle finger, and finally turned away.
In the village they told fantastic tales of special bombs that “pupped” and bore other bombs, and a cream that made you invisible. They said the Israeli soldiers rubbed it over themselves so that they could track down armed Palestinians in the villages and shoot them.
There were several camps of Palestinians around the village. The farmers disliked these irregulars because they trampled over their fields and held target practice among the fruit trees. To make matters worse, the Israelis moved into the area around Shaga after every Palestinian operation, pursuing their enemies all the way to the valley beyond the village, and the Syrians never fired a shot at the Israelis. Intent on striking at the irregulars, the Israelis dropped incendiary bombs into the fields where they suspected they might be lurking, and destroyed the harvest. The local crops were tomatoes grown for the canning factories in Damascus, wheat, tobacco, and fruit of particularly fine quality.
No one paid the farmers for the loss of their harvest, so many became smugglers and left their orchards and fields to the Palestinians and Israelis.
The principal poured tea. It was already after six in the evening.
“Aren’t you going home today?” asked Farid.
“I keep a thin mattress here, that’s all I need in summer. I have to write my reports for the Ministry, and I’ll never get it done at home. That’s why I’m working a night shift,” he explained, sipping the strong, sweet tea.
“What reports?” asked Farid, surprised.
“Oh, it’s a ridiculous business. I’m transferred here for disciplinary reasons myself, but I have to write a report on every single one of you others. I mustn’t be too positive, or they won’t trust me, or they’ll say I give a good report to anyone close to the Muslim Brotherhood. They know I’m supposed to belong to them, just because I’m a believer. I hate doing these reports, so I keep postponing them, but I’ve just had the second reminder. The third would mean my salary was docked.”
Now Farid knew why the principal had invited him to drink tea. “You want to know what to write about me.”
The principal didn’t look at him. “The others have already written everything down for me, and I hardly know you, so I didn’t want to be unfair to you.”
Farid laughed. There was something tragi-comic about the situation. The same neglectful government that left the village children without school books would send three reminders that an informer’s report was due, as if the future of Syrian culture depended on it.
“Oh, just go ahead and be negative about me!” he said. “Tell them I don’t like the place and I keep complaining of the injustice suffered by all the farmers here. Say I keep complaining of the bad roads, and I …”
“That won’t interest anyone, my dear colleague,” Husni interrupted him. “In Damascus they want to know what you’re doing here, what you talk about, and how I assess your political affiliations. So?”