“Farid without any bint or bin.”
“Just Farid, plain as dry bread.”
“If you’re hungry, I have bread, olives, cheese, canned tuna and a few tomatoes here,” he offered, hoping she would stay.
“I’ll be back once I’ve shaken off those two vultures,” she agreed, as carefree as a child fixing to come and play with another.
Two hours later she was back.
231. Sharifa
She ate like a lioness, laughed like a little girl, and was as lovely as a Greek statue. Farid couldn’t take his eyes off her, and had hardly any appetite. They sat in the courtyard under the vine, where his landlady had placed an old wooden table, Sharifa on a wooden bench, he in a wicker armchair opposite her. As they ate, he listened to her story.
Her Bedouin tribe was one of the poorest of all, and lived in the steppes between Jordan and Syria. She had been lucky enough to marry the man she loved, but he soon went off to Damascus looking for work, and after a while he sent her letters from Kuwait. He had planned to spend only two years working there, and then come back as soon as possible, but he’d been away for six years now. He had left her behind with her parents, for his contract didn’t allow him to take his wife with him. But there was nothing for her to share at home but hunger. So she had to work as a picker during the tomato harvest, ten piastres for each ten-kilo crate, and by the time you’d earned a whole lira you had no back and no hands left. The sun burned pitilessly down, and the supervisors were shouting at the pickers all the time because they didn’t want to keep the trucks waiting long.
She slept out of doors, and men pestered her every night, but the twenty women pickers had formed an alliance and slept close together to protect themselves. Now, however, work was interrupted every other day, and then she didn’t get any money, so she was planning to go to Damascus tomorrow, hoping to work in peace and earn something there. All her worldly goods were in a poor little bundle that she had put down behind an oleander in the courtyard, feeling ashamed of it.
“May I stay the night here somewhere?” she asked, as darkness fell.
“Of course. I’ll bring you a mattress and sheet, and you can sleep here, but only for tonight, because my landlady will probably be back tomorrow.”
Farid made her a bed in the open air, and showed her where she could wash. Then he went to bed too. He saw her washing thoroughly and singing softly as she did so, and then she slipped under her own covers. He felt a great desire to hold her close and kiss her lips, but next moment he felt ashamed of himself. After a while he fell asleep.
It was pitch dark when he felt her hand on his cheek. He didn’t know how long he had been sleeping.
“Do you want me?”
She was naked, and without waiting for an answer she slipped into bed with him. He lit the oil lamp. She smiled shyly and hid her face under the covers, baring her perfect back. Farid lay back on his pillows, feeling wretched.
“You’re in love with a woman. I noticed right away. Other men try to grab me before they’ve said three words together, but you’re already spoken for,” she said, laughing. She kissed his nose and nestled close to his chest. Soon after that she fell asleep. She lay there before him like a beautiful child, and he stayed awake for a long time. Only as day began to dawn did he sleep too.
When he woke she was already gone. So were his wristwatch, his stocks of sugar, flour, and oil, and all his underwear except what he had been wearing the day before. The mattress and sheet had gone with her too. She had left him only twenty lira in his wallet.
“Generous!” he said, and smiled.
232. Illusion
5 June 1967 was a perfectly ordinary Monday. Farid was going to discuss the main points of the physics test that he had given his three grades the previous Thursday, and had now corrected. Considering the situation, his students were doing well. They had stopped just learning by heart, and were genuinely trying to understand what he told them. Their average marks were generally satisfactory.
The humid heat made him get up early, and a strange restlessness drove him out of doors. As he walked through the fields, he was thinking of Rana and Claire. When his mother said goodbye to him on Friday two weeks ago, she had been crying. “You go further and further away. I hardly ever see you, I feel I’m chained to the spot here. I wish I could go with you, cook for you, take ten novels with me and tell Elias I won’t be back until I’ve read them all. And then I’d read more slowly than a short-sighted turtle.”
But Farid didn’t want her here. It was dangerous. Only two weeks ago, a cannon ball had hit a bus during a Syrian army manoeuvre. Luckily the bus was empty, and its driver had come off with no worse than a fright.
Around seven o’clock Farid entered the schoolhouse. Husni was just rolling up his thin mattress and putting it away in a cupboard. He looked like a ghost in his washed-out pyjamas.
Farid went into the Grade 8 classroom. He was to give the first two lessons here, and he liked to be first so that he could welcome the children himself.
Lessons for all the grades began with extraordinary punctuality that morning. Hardly anyone was absent. But just after eight-thirty, MIG 23 jet fighters thundered over the school. Soon after that the janitor looked in at the door and shouted, “War’s broken out!” Farid froze. For weeks before both sides, Arabs and Israelis alike, had been clamouring for war, and now it had come. All the same, for a moment he felt almost surprised, as if no one had believed that this war could really begin.
Husni and two teachers standing close to him were praying in the yard, looking up at the sky. Later, they said they had been shouting the kursi verse from the Koran after the jet fighters so that God would protect the planes.
In less than an hour the children had left. The radio in the principal’s office was broadcasting songs, communiqués, and pro-war speeches. It was clear that the region would soon be declared a restricted military area, so Husni recommended all the teachers to go home at once themselves.
Salman gathered Fadi, Adib, and Farid around him. “Let’s go a little way together,” he whispered. Farid felt that this boded no good. His heart was thudding wildly. Almost two years ago he had joined the Radicals group, gone to training camps run by the Palestinians in the summer vacation, even fought in a nocturnal operation against Israeli positions in the summer of 1966. Salman was head of the Radical teachers in Shaga, and he was a tough character.
“We must go to our bases along the border. Our liberated territories and the farmers will be delivered up helpless to the Israelis there,” he said quietly but firmly.
“Of course. Let’s go,” replied Fadi. “Now.” He seemed amused to realize that he had just involuntarily quoted the name of their organization’s journal.
“Our comrades think the situation is very critical. If a Syrian government shows its famous cowardice once more, all we can rely on is a popular uprising, and we must stand shoulder to shoulder with the peasants. After that no one in Damascus will be able to govern without us. But the peasants are unprepared, and our men and women don’t get more than four hours’ sleep a day. There are far too few of us.”
Farid had never before heard a more comprehensive and credible analysis of a situation delivered within five minutes.
“Then we must do it, come what may. The peasants deserved our support against the Israelis,” said Adib, but his voice and his hesitant manner reflected his inner turmoil.
“I think it’s a bad idea. I’m not going along with it,” said Farid, feeling as forlorn as if he were falling into a deep hole. “I’m not questioning your courage and bravery, but I’m afraid. I’m just plain afraid, and not ashamed of it, because my doubts are based on the superior forces of the enemy. Haven’t we spent hours discussing what a guerrilla ought to do in his moment of weakness? Who says we have to die for a state that’s repellent to us?”