Next Monday Farid got a medical certificate in Damascus saying he was unfit to work for a week. On Wednesday, punctually at ten in the morning, he was in the waiting room at the French Embassy, elegantly dressed, on Claire’s advice. The cultural attaché was fascinated by his French, and when Farid explained that he had spent three years with the Jesuits the man laughed. “Then I can call you mon frère. I spent four years with the order too, though not in a boarding school. My father hated the Church itself, but he thought highly of the training and discipline in Jesuit schools.”
“The very part of it that gets on their pupils’ nerves,” replied Farid frankly, and the attaché nodded. At the end of the interview he shook hands with the young Syrian in a friendly way. “I’ll do all I can to see that you get a place to study in Paris,” he said, and he sounded as if he meant it. “You ought to receive notice of permission within two weeks.”
Elated by his success, Farid wanted to share his pleasure with someone. Josef was away with his pupils on a four-day school trip to Palmyra, so he called Laila and invited her to lunch.
“Let’s meet at the Ali Baba in an hour’s time,” she said.
“Fine, so long as you’ll let me pay. I have plenty of money and something happy to celebrate,” he told her.
“Wonderful. I can do with celebrating something happy,” replied Laila, sighing.
She entered the restaurant at the appointed time and smiled at Farid. She was more beautiful than ever, but sad. For months she had been at odds with her husband, who had come back from Athens last summer a changed man, but wouldn’t talk about it.
Farid told her only that he would be leaving the service of the state at the end of the year. “The Mushtaks don’t make good civil servants,” said Laila. “My sister Barbara is sick of it too. She’d like to leave her job, but her husband won’t hear of it.”
Laila let her cousin’s good mood infect her, and forgot her own troubles over the delicious meal, which lasted more than three hours.
As the bus home was approaching the stop near his street, Farid took a quick look down Saitun Alley, and then stayed sitting where he was. Three cars were always parked next to his parents’ house; they had now been joined by two more. One was in the middle of the road, right opposite the entrance to the building. Only secret service men parked like that. And there was a Landrover at the turning into the street, although parking there was strictly forbidden. Now Farid saw two men in it. They were extremely poorly disguised.
He did not get out until the next stop, after the eastern gate, strolled inconspicuously back and looked at the cross-country vehicle again. Yes, no doubt about it: the secret service.
So he turned down Ananias Alley. His mind was in turmoil. What had happened? Only recently a small rising had easily been nipped in the bud, so Amran was firmly in the saddle. Then why more arrests, after that insignificant shoot-out in a barracks? Two officers, allegedly financed by Iraq to lead a coup against Amran, had been arrested in mid-February by the President’s brother and his special units, and were annihilated along with their supporters.
Since his expulsion from the Radicals last summer, Farid had avoided all political activities. He wanted no more to do with any of it. Nationalists, communists, fundamentalists, Radicals, adherents of the Iraqi regime had all been arrested on a grand scale. Even Palestinians ended up in jail the moment they disregarded Amran’s orders not to encourage any anti-Israel operations on Syrian soil. Some called the dictator a coward, but he didn’t want anyone or anything endangering his power. So in those early years, he avoided any confrontation with Israel, and the Palestinians had to keep their heads down and stay quiet.
But why was the secret service on Farid’s trail? Had old communist or Radical documents fallen into the hands of the police during one of their many raids, and had his name featured there? Or had someone informed on him? He was sure he hadn’t committed any crime, but how was he to explain that to the men who were after him?
A thousand questions were racing through Farid’s mind when he unexpectedly found himself standing at Matta’s door. His friend had just been making tea.
“Brother, how pale you are! Come in. Faride and I will be happy to drink tea with you — come in!” Matta said in friendly tones.
“They want to arrest me again,” said Farid, and he didn’t know why his tears were falling.
“You can stay here, brother, and anyone who touches you had better watch out,” replied Matta.
“No, that won’t do me any good, or you and Faride either. They know that we’re friends and come from the same village. But you could do me a favour. Can you go to our place on the quiet and see if my suspicions are correct? Here’s a hundred lira, buy two sacks of potatoes and one of onions at a vegetable dealer, phone Claire and tell her you’ve bought what she wanted. Just to be on the safe side, so that she won’t show any agitation while the secret service men are in the house. Our own Fiat is parked outside it, Dr. Rahbani’s Ford, and the pharmacist Sadek’s new Renault. Do you know him?”
“Yes, of course. His beautiful wife Hanan is a good customer of mine,” said Matta proudly.
“Good. And right now there are two strange cars there too, not by chance, I’m sure. I’d like you to look at them carefully, but be sure not to say anything. They’re not fools.”
“Don’t worry, brother,” said Matta, and he turned to Faride. “And you look after my dear brother, little pigeon, and calm his fears.”
She kissed him on the forehead. “Look after yourself, dear heart. I’m very proud of you,” she told him.
Matta came back two hours later. The secret service men weren’t in the house but sitting in their cars. They had searched him and tried to intimidate him with trick questions, but Matta had acted dumb. Finally he was allowed to take the potatoes and onions into the house, but not to speak to Claire. When he insisted that he wanted to be paid, and started shouting, the men allowed her to give him the money under their supervision.
Farid kissed him and Faride as he left, and went to Straight Street, where he took a taxi and gave the driver an address in the Midan quarter.
He was a hunted animal now. And the hunters after him were invisible; any civilian, including the taxi driver, could be one of them.
Why had everything gone wrong? Who was pursuing him?
“Hotel al-Nasim,” said the driver, rousing him from his thoughts.
The hotel belonged to a distant cousin of Josef’s. He was discreet. When he saw Farid he understood without any need for words, and made no difficulties.
Farid had ten such addresses stored in his memory. People who could be relied on, who hated dictatorship, and who weren’t directly connected to him in any way. But he couldn’t stay anywhere for long. His best camouflage was to keep moving. Only the time between one and five in the morning was peaceful, and he would lie down to sleep exhausted, desperate, and often hungry.
He fled through Damascus, a hunted man. The secret service had men checking all the ways out of the city. Farid soon forgot to think about his bad luck. He didn’t think of Rana or Claire either, he thought of nothing at all, as if he had lost every idea except one: survival.
On the run, he came to know all the streets very well. Damascus, that beautiful, light, and spacious city had become an overpopulated village. Hundreds of thousands of peasants had fled to the metropolis. The men who had seized power were peasants like them, and that attracted people. Tenement buildings were going up everywhere, and the government turned not just one but two blind eyes to illegal construction work in the slums on the outskirts of the city.