Another woman, whose husband was also an officer, was begging God to save him. Even if he came home without arms and legs, she’d a hundred times rather that than be left a widow. Saliha looked at Rana and rolled her eyes.
“You said it, dear neighbour, you said it,” remarked Saliha’s husband, Captain Mahmud al Samawi (retired), encouraging the desperate woman. Rana drank a glass of fragrant tea, and felt safer under the solid vaulted roof of the cellar. You could hardly hear the airplanes here. Mahmud was sure the Arabs would win. “It’s just a case of a couple of days, and then the Arab colossus will be washing his feet in the sea off Tel Aviv.”
The retired captain’s voice drowned out the radio in the corner. As every news item came through he felt further confirmed in his beliefs, and lectured the women. Sometimes he corrected the newsreader.
The howl of sirens made its way down into the cellar. “There, hear that? Now the anti-aircraft defence is answering back,” he cried. Drops of his saliva landed on the face of the woman next to him. Disgusted, she wiped her cheek. “We’re already in the firing line,” she finally remarked.
“No, no. Those are ground-to-air rockets and high velocity four-bore guns sifting their way through the aircraft, ratatatam … ratatatam …” explained the captain, spraying the woman again with each “ratatatam”, until she moved elsewhere.
“Are you worried?” asked Saliha quietly.
“Yes,” said Rana. She was thinking of Farid. She had called his mother three times. Claire had been very nice to her, but was in dreadful anxiety herself. Her boy still hadn’t phoned, she had said despairingly last time.
“I know, if my husband went away I’m sure I’d worry too, but then he never does,” said Saliha, who always had a feeling that Rana and Rami were not happy together.
Through the cellar window, they saw people hurrying by outside. Jubilant shouting was heard. If they had caught the gist of it properly, a hit had just been scored on an Israeli fighter. A nearby explosion shattered the building. Rana was grateful for Saliha for letting her sit here among the other women instead of having to stay in her house alone. Her mother had called that afternoon, asking if she would like to go to her brother Jack’s place. Her parents had already gone there, after swiftly hanging up white sheets on their rooftop, as the Israeli radio station was advising the Damascenes to do. Of course no one in the capital would admit it, but it was a remarkable fact that hundreds of thousands of people thought of nothing but whiter than white laundry in these days of the war. Her parents were going to stay with Jack “until things clear up,” as her mother always put it when she was at a loss. Rana’s brother had made a lot of money with shady import deals, and at the age of twenty-five, three months before the war, he had bought a villa in a village near Damascus. Rana never visited him.
An hour later Saliha exchanged glances with Rana. “We’re going to fetch bread and cheese and a few olives. We’ll be right back,” she called out. Rana rose to go with her just as a jet fighter was breaking the sound barrier above the buildings.
What would life be worth without Farid? Rana asked herself hopelessly as they went upstairs. It was almost two in the afternoon by now. “May I make a quick phone call?”
“Of course, the phone’s in the drawing room. I’ll be in the kitchen having a cigarette.”
Farid still hadn’t come home. Her fear grew. She felt ridiculous as she hung up. It was childish to try to reassure Claire by saying nothing could happen to Farid because they both loved him.
Saliha carried the large tray with sheep’s milk cheese, olives, preserved eggplant, tomatoes, and curd cheese, Rana the smaller one with the teapot and tea glasses rinsed with hot water. The women were delighted. Saliha’s husband ate nothing, just drank tea.
Time crawled by, and the retired captain became more and more intolerable. He kept talking about his own heroic deeds. Rana noticed that Saliha seized every opportunity to go up into the house and smoke a cigarette. Around six in the evening they both went up again to prepare supper. Rana breathed a sigh of relief, for she couldn’t rest down in the cellar. She asked Saliha if she could phone again, and shed tears when she heard Farid’s voice at last.
She ran happily into the kitchen.
“Everything all right?”
“Everything all right,” she said. And while the homely lentil dish mujadara was cooking, Saliha took her up to the second floor to show her pictures of her childhood. Rana pretended to be interested, but her thoughts were far away. Gradually darkness fell over Damascus. The sky was quiet now. From where they stood they could see into a nightclub with its windows open because of the heat. An Oriental dancer was moving between the tables, all of them occupied. Early as it was in the evening, the men seemed to be drunk already.
“That’s Rihane. My husband sits here for nights on end. That window is his television,” said Saliha.
“How does he get up to this floor?”
“He had a special elevator from France built in. That way he can follow me right up to the third floor.”
Rihane was still looking across at Saliha’s house, as if she missed her audience there. She didn’t seem to be moving her feet but hovering between the tables, and she elegantly avoided the many hands trying to grab parts of her body.
“Disgusting, isn’t it?” said Rana on the way to the kitchen.
234. Sobering Up
The Arab media kept the lie going for another whole day before it collapsed like a house of cards. The defeat had been devastating. Within six hours, Israel had destroyed all the airfields and air forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan without meeting any resistance worth the name.
Ahmad Said had fallen silent. On the radio they began preparing the population to face the worst disgrace in its history. Josef had his most severe crisis yet. His beloved Satlan turned out to be a fool, the man mainly responsible for this defeat. Josef didn’t want to see anyone. Even Farid couldn’t get through to him. Nadia said on the phone he needed peace and quiet.
On the third day Rana called Farid. Surprisingly, Rami had come home. He was hiding away in the bedroom, crying like a little boy who has lost his toys.
All the members of the government had fled from Damascus. They were hiding in Aleppo, or according to many news reports even in Baghdad. On the third day of the war, when the first Israelis reached the Suez Canal, the Egyptian government had asked for a ceasefire. Thereupon the Israelis attacked Syria and Jordan. Within two days they took the West Bank and the Golan Heights. They were less than a kilometre from the village square and the school in Shaga. Not a single high-ranking Syrian army officer was to be seen anywhere along the whole front.
White bedlinen fluttered on all the rooftops of Damascus. But the Israelis didn’t arrive. They had conquered three times the area of their own country, and long-term occupation of great cities like Cairo and Damascus could have devastating consequences, so they refrained. Farid walked the streets, observing the people of the city. They were depressed and ashamed. He couldn’t make up his mind where to go, he drank a coffee here, a tea there, and listened to conversations. Then he phoned his cousin Laila, who was delighted to hear that he wanted to come and see her.
Later, he wandered with Laila through the houses of the quarter where the rich lived. She had the keys of her customers who had fled from Damascus and asked her to water their flowers. None of them had forgotten to leave white sheets fluttering from their balconies or rooftops, as the Israeli radio station had advised.