It was about three when Farid reached Rana on the telephone. She was at home alone, and he told her the plan he had been working out for months.
“Wonderful,” said Rana, feeling that she was near the gates of heaven. “There’s only one thing I want to ask you: let’s not leave before September the 6th.”
“Why not?”
“Because my husband is flying to Moscow for two weeks on the 5th. I shall need a day’s rest before we finally leave.”
“Right, but by then you must have your passport and all your documents translated into German by a sworn interpreter.”
“I already have my passport, but why German? I thought we were flying to Paris.”
“Officially we still are. I’ll tell you all the rest of it once we’re in safety,” said Farid.
It was easier than Farid expected to get hold of two skilfully forged passports. Josef didn’t ask why he needed them. “Muhsin will do them for you, they’ll look more genuine than the real thing,” he joked, “but he’s expensive.” Farid didn’t mind about the price.
The forger did not have a sophisticated workshop, but was the possessor of a brilliant mind and felt no respect at all for his employer. He was a hard-working civil servant with the registration and passports office, and had a taste for overtime unusual in such jobs.
Muhsin Sharara was a Muslim, but as he was a bookworm he happened to have read the Gospels, where he found the story of the raising of Lazarus. That had been in the early sixties, when President Satlan began on his great wave of arrests. People would pay a thousand dollars — a fortune then — for a “good” passport. He listed all registrations of the deaths of children, and began selling passports. Only two things weren’t quite right about them: the passport photo and the fact that the real bearer of the holder’s name had died decades ago. Muhsin had erased the entry of his or her date of death from the register with an ink remover that was little known at the time. Everything else in his passports, including the rubber stamp and the signature of the head of the passport office, was genuine.
So at the end of August Farid was in possession of four passports: two real ones and two forged ones in the names of Sarkis and Georgina Shammas, a married couple. The two real passports contained visas to go and study in Germany.
295. The Wound and the Trap
Farid soon settled in again. The voice of Feiruz on the radio was part of every morning, like the first coffee with Claire and the cry of the muezzin from the nearby mosque. But he noticed that the Damascenes had withdrawn into a cocoon of silence, because they were afraid. They talked a lot and were always cracking jokes, but only to cover up for that silence.
One hot August day Farid didn’t feel like doing anything much. He was standing in the doorway of the house, watching two dogs scuffle for a bone in the shade. Suddenly Matta came running down the street, stopped in front of him, and told him, still breathless, that he knew for sure now that Bulos had betrayed him in the monastery.
“Let’s not talk about it. It’s over,” said Farid, for Matta had already spent the whole of the last few days searching like a man possessed for the proof of Bulos’s treachery. Only Bulos could have given him up to the police when he ran away from the monastery that second time. Matta’s tone was not heated. His voice was cold, and he set out his evidence meticulously.
“The police must have known. They were waiting for me at the last barrier before the main road. And I can do my sums well enough to be sure that only two people knew I was running away: you and Bulos,” Matta ended his argument, and nodded thoughtfully. “Why does he want to destroy us? Why? What have we ever done to him?”
“Perhaps because in his own way he loved us and couldn’t hold us. He didn’t want you to leave. You were his greatest support, and he loved you. At first he liked me too, but he got on my nerves, and then he found out that I’m a Mushtak, while he was and is a Shahin.”
“My dear brother, what on earth do all those books of yours teach you? Bulos loved no one, not even himself. He abused my trust, and I was a fool,” said Matta bitterly.
But he had a touch of the wily fox about him now. Mahdi discovered nothing of what he was thinking, but Matta had acquired Bulos’s wife as a customer, ran errands and carried purchases for her, asking little money. Since then she had taken to telling him about her husband’s loveless ways and her own loneliness.
“Would you like to help me?” asked Farid at the end of August.
“Of course. What do you want me to do?” replied Matta.
“Look closely at this ticket,” said Farid, showing him an air ticket made out by the French airline.
“So?”
“That’s my flight for 14 September. I’m flying with Air France at twenty hours exactly on that day. Can you remember that? Sunday, 14 September.”
“Of course I can remember it. That’s the Feast of the Holy Cross in Mala, but I haven’t been there for years,” said Matta.
“And you won’t be able to go this year either, because you and Faride must come to the airport to see us off.”
“Of course we’ll come, but what does that have to do with the air ticket? Why did you show it to me?”
“I want you to be sure to let Bulos know I’m flying with Air France that day,” said Farid.
Matta’s face showed anger. “Brother, what do you take me for?”
“My most loyal friend. If you tell Bulos that, you’ll be doing me and yourself a favour. You’ll have nothing to fear. He can’t touch me now. Believe me, this will just make him drop his mask and show his ugly face, but he won’t get his hands on me again. You’ll be helping me enormously by pretending to be so naïve that you give him that news without stopping to think about it. It will keep him concentrating on the airport and not even thinking about any other route. Okay?”
“And you’re sure I’ll be helping you by letting that traitor know exactly when you plan to fly?”
“Yes, absolutely. You’ll save me by fooling him.”
“You’re also sure that at this moment you’re in full possession of your wits?”
“As sure as I’m certain that your name is Matta and you’re as loyal to me as a brother. But you mustn’t give Bulos the information too obviously. He’s more suspicious than a rat. You must be cunning as a fox yourself, and then just go to the airport with Claire on 14 September.”
“Swear to me that you’ll be in safety then. Swear by the health of your mother.”
“Why my mother?”
“Because as a communist you could put your hand on the Bible and swear to any lie.”
“I swear by the health of my mother, by the light of my eyes, and by Rana’s life that you will be helping me greatly by letting Bulos know, as soon as possible, that I’m leaving the country on 14 September.”
“I’ll do it,” said Matta, and there was a curious gleam in his eyes.
An opportunity came along ten days before that. He had delivered an order to Bulos’s wife, who was laying in large stocks of provisions from the spice market: herbs, grain, oils, and olive oil soap. She asked him when he would be able to bring her the twenty kilos of small pickling aubergines she had ordered from the village of Qabun, and Matta replied that he’d do it this week if she liked, because he would be busy from Monday to Saturday next week working for the Mushtaks. “They’re giving a farewell party on the Saturday for their son Farid, and I’ll be transporting all they need for it with my Suzuki.”