“The doctor will be here soon,” said her husband, and for a moment she thought someone must have had an accident.
BOOK OF LAUGHTER IV
He who sows suspicion reaps traitors.
DAMASCUS, 1965 — 1968
242. Poetry
When Josef’s favourite poet, Nuri Hakim, was arrested, the intellectuals in the Café Havana said Hakim was lucky, for President Baidan, after all, was more humane than his predecessor, and hadn’t had the poet’s wife arrested too, or his three children, or his father.
Many of the guests in the Café Baladi didn’t know who Hakim was, but they knew he was accused of blasphemy. He could consider himself lucky, for Al-Hallaj had been crucified for making similar remarks, and Hakim was still alive.
The intellectuals in the Café Kanyamakan, who sympathized with the Muslim Brotherhood, denounced President Baidan as weak, and suspected that he hadn’t flung the poet into prison at all, but hidden him away in a villa with a bodyguard to protect him from the anger of the faithful.
The intellectuals in the Café Journal suspected provocation instigated by the Israelis. At a time when Damascus, under the courageous President Baidan, was challenging imperialism, along comes someone publishing a poem in a state newspaper full of linguistic errors, stylistic howlers, and injuries to the religious feelings of mankind, and getting it past the censor.
Josef mourned at length for the frail little poet, and pinned the poem to the wall beside his bed. Religions were works of art, and should not be practised but admired in museums, Nuri Hakim had written. He was condemned to fifteen years in jail.
243. Adding Up the Truth
Munir was a born mathematician. He shone in his department at the university, and if his professors respected anyone, they respected him.
He was always coming into the cafeteria telling people things he had found out, and Farid had discovered then, for the first time, that maths was not a dry subject. When Munir proved mathematically why something in politics or the economy didn’t work, you were soon in fits of laughter.
One day he came in with a thick exercise book, looking as if he hadn’t had much sleep.
“Look at this,” he said. “I’ve just been working it out: our country loses as many working days a year because of Ramadan alone as Britain has lost in all its strikes since the Second World War.”
No one could believe that, but Munir set out all his statistics and calculations. It was obvious that during Ramadan the entire country was operating on the back burner. A Muslim Brother waxed indignant and attacked Munir, but they confined themselves to verbal fencing, to the amusement of the students in the cafeteria.
But one day Munir had worse on his mind. He used to listen to the news every morning before coming to the university, and one day he began meticulously writing down the losses allegedly suffered by Israel in its military confrontations with the Arab countries or the thirteen groups of Palestinian freedom fighters. Since January 1965 the Palestinians had been plastering the walls of the city of Damascus with reports of their huge successes, never guessing that Munir was carefully writing it all down.
One April morning in 1967 he came into the cafeteria, climbed on a chair and asked for silence. Because it was Munir the students did fall silent at once, although they wouldn’t usually even in the lecture hall.
“Dear friends and comrades,” he began, almost inaudibly.
“Louder!” shouted his fellow students at the back of the big room. Munir cleared his throat. “Dear friends and comrades!” he repeated. “It is my privilege to announce that Israel has finally been defeated. According to the casualty figures of the dead on all fronts, there isn’t a single Israeli left capable of bearing arms. Any survivors are severely injured and lying in the ruins of bridges, buildings, and the burning remains of their military vehicles, helicopters, and tanks, all destroyed by our brave men, so now we must allow humanitarian aid to get through to those poor wounded Israelis, as we’ve been in duty bound to do ever since Saladin’s time.”
A day later he disappeared. His father made valiant efforts on his behalf, and was even willing to sign a statement saying that his son had been crazy from childhood on. He thought it would be only a formality enabling the state to save face if it let Munir go after accusing him of disseminating pro-Israeli propaganda.
But his father was wrong. Munir really had gone crazy.
BOOK OF HELL II
Those who come to Tad are lost. Those who leave Tad are reborn.
TAD, 200 KM NORTH-EAST OF DAMASCUS, APRIL 1968 — APRIL 1969
244. The Way to Golgotha
From Damascus they drove along the main road as it wound north through the bleak landscape like a black snake in flight. After about twenty kilometres the column of trucks turned off along into the road going east. When the camp of Gahan was left behind, they all knew their destination: Tad.
Night fell like a heavy cloak on the earth, and the trucks jolted over potholes and rocks. The light of the headlamps danced wildly across the plain.
They were a hundred and fifty prisoners in four trucks, accompanied by several small transporter vans each carrying ten armed soldiers.
Farid crouched on the floor of the truck with his eyes closed. Those terrible days passed through his mind again: the shock as he sat in the kitchen reading the newspaper, and suddenly heard the noise of the police wrenching the front door of the apartment off its hinges. Then being handed over to the secret service next evening, an elaborately staged performance. They acted as if he were an Israeli general. He sat at the back of the police car with his hands and feet bound, with an officer on each side of him.
Through the windshield he had seen people bound for home, laden with shopping bags, laughing and gesticulating. It was still chilly outside, but you could already feel that spring was coming. People walked with a livelier step, took their time, strolled for pleasure.
“See that, you bastard?” asked the officer to his right, in a strong southern accent. “Any of them interested in you? You want to liberate those donkeys? They’d sell their country and their honour for a bag of candies.”
“And their mothers into the bargain,” agreed the man on Farid’s other side. He had a scarred, fleshy face, like a crook in a bad caricature. The driver cast a nasty glance at the pair of them in the rear-view mirror.
“Yes, right,” said the first secret service man, returning to the subject. “And back home they’ll get under the shower, stuff their bellies, goggle at a crime movie on TV, and screw all night. And you’ll be executed before you’ve had any fun out of life at all.”
Farid felt desperate. He longed for Rana, and was ashamed of himself for not listening to her in time.
After torture and interrogation, he was finally tried by a military tribunal in the cellar of the secret service building, and was condemned to life imprisonment in a labour camp. His crime was described as conspiracy against the Fatherland. He had not been allowed a defence lawyer.
When he woke up again on the flatbed of the truck, day was beginning to dawn. It was cold. The trucks were still driving with their headlamps on. They were just coming to a hilly region, and they stopped briefly at a barrier. Brakes squealed. Beyond the rusty barrier the road ran on through the endless sand like a dark and broken thread.