Again and again Farid found friends who would quietly take him in, and in time he found that he could spot the secret service men sitting in cafés, pretending to read the paper. Reading the paper in a café is an art, and Farid could tell whether a man was doing it for pleasure or in the line of duty.
His money was beginning to run low, and after three days without food he called Laila from a café. It was a risk, of course, in spite of all his precautions. Who could tell whether informers didn’t know everyone’s secret signals by now?
She had told him a way to ask her for help in case of need, without saying a single give-away word: he was to let her phone ring three times, hang up, then let it ring five times, and finally three times again. That meant they were to meet at the Café Fredy near the Central Bank in an hour’s time.
Laila appeared punctually at the appointed place, and inconspicuously approached his table. She was as pale as on the day of her father’s death, and kissed Farid on the cheek.
“I’ve missed you,” she said. “How are you?” Then she felt ashamed of herself for asking such a question.
“Wretched. I have to find some way out of this,” he said. “I have three or four problems to solve at the same time. I must leave the country, and I want to get away to France with Rana as soon as possible. Claire has given me enough money for that.” Farid hesitated. “You might be able to help me by reassuring her, bringing me my papers from the embassy, and getting a good forger to make me a passport. Josef knows a brilliant man. He’s expensive but he does good work. When I have all those things I must get across the mountains to Beirut somehow. Once I’m over the border and I have my papers for the university, I can get a visa in the French Embassy there.”
“That wouldn’t be difficult to start with, since no one’s after me. The only thing is that as soon as I set foot in your house I’ll be kept under observation, though surely not for long. When they see it was just a family visit and I’m going home again like a good girl, not acting as a courier, they’ll leave me alone again. But you’ll have to be patient. I won’t get back to you until I’ve rustled up all the things you need. Meanwhile you can lie low in an apartment belonging to one of my best friends. She’s in the US on a lecture tour at the moment, she won’t be back for three months. Change your appearance, grow a moustache, let your hair grow longer than usual. And mingle with people. No one will recognise you. Go shopping, get some good clothes, cook yourself something nice, and relax. It will be all right.
And by the way, the neighbours above you are rich students from Saudi Arabia. They’re not interested in anyone else in the building, and they don’t know any of the others there. The neighbours below you are old and hard of hearing, but I’ll drop in today and let them know a cousin of my friend is staying in her apartment for a few weeks, and he needs to be left in peace because he’s writing a book.”
Laila looked into Farid’s eyes. She did not, as usual, feel his erotic attraction. He was a helpless child now, her child, and she would protect him as she had in the past when she first held him in her arms.
A flicker of hope flared up in him when he entered his new hiding place, and after a hot shower he slept soundly again for the first time in weeks. But two days later that hope was destroyed. By chance, a woman in the building next door saw someone slipping into the apartment by night. She took Farid for a burglar and alerted the police. The young CID officer who made the arrest, First Lieutenant Sidki, was astonished when a Major Mahdi Said of the secret service phoned later to congratulate him. “You have taken a dangerous terrorist out of circulation.”
241. Lonely Night
Rana had heard only briefly from Laila, and suddenly she was alone with her horror. There was no one she could talk to. Dunia was away, Claire was too desperate herself for Rana to hope for any comfort from her, and Laila wasn’t answering the phone or opening her door. Claire explained that she felt guilty about Farid’s arrest. She ought to have warned him about the over-zealous neighbour.
Night lay heavy on Rana. She couldn’t sleep. What are they doing to him now, she wondered? The Radicals are in a worse position than anyone because they took up arms against the regime, like the Muslim Brotherhood. They’ll torture him, and here I am lying in a soft bed next to a spineless army officer who’ll do anything not to rub the authorities up the wrong way.
Her head felt as if it would explode. She got out of bed. I ought to have hidden Farid here, she told herself. No one would have thought of that, and if they did I’d have been arrested too, and my misery would have come to a fitting end. She drew aside the curtains over the bedroom window. The neon lights over the cinema sign were turned off, but she could clearly make out the striking face of Anthony Quinn as Zorba the Greek.
Barefoot, she left the bedroom, quietly opened the door leading up to the top floor, and stopped for a moment. A fresh breeze drew her on and up. On the roof, she breathed more easily. A few cars were driving by down below, nearly all of them taxis picking up drunks from the nightclubs and taking them home at this time of night. Farid would certainly be in the camp for “dangerous elements”, as the government and her husband described their political opponents — somewhere far away in the desert. He might be asleep at this hour, but did he think of her when he was awake? She listened for his voice calling inside her, but she couldn’t hear anything.
Someone in the building next door was trying to find a broadcasting station. His radio babbled a symphony of many different sounds. When it stopped abruptly, an alarming silence filled the sky. Rana closed her eyes, and imagined Farid lying on the couch in her studio.
Two cats were hissing at each other on a nearby roof. Then the darkness swallowed them up. “Where are you, my darling?” she whispered. An airplane rent the silence. The windows of her studio vibrated. She wanted to take only one plane flight, with Farid out of this country, never mind where so long as she was with him. But his feet dragged so heavily. He clung to Damascus. The city was a part of his soul, though to her it was a cage. She saw the world outside, but couldn’t get out through the strong mesh of the wire netting.
She went to the edge of the roof and looked through a gap in the wooden fence. All windows were shut now. People were sleeping behind them, with their daytime masks and their false teeth lying on their bedside tables. She had a mask too. She wasn’t wearing it now, but it was always ready to hand, and she put it on whenever her husband or anyone else came near her.
“Farid,” she whispered, “can you hear me? You must stop wanting to change things! Listen to me. Let people live the lives of their own time, and let us save our love.”
Rain began to fall. She sat down on a chair; she wasn’t cold. Over the last few years he hadn’t been able to leave the rest of the world behind as he once did. He suffered when he was enjoying her company because the outside world was suffering. He wore a mask too, but he thought it was his real face, and that saddened her. When day dawned she began to freeze. Only now did she notice that she was wet to the skin.
“Come, my child,” said her father, taking her hand. She was happy, smiled at him, and went downstairs almost hovering, she felt so light. If her mother and Rami hadn’t been standing there she would have thought she was in a dream.