“Don’t let it bother you. He’s not in a good mood today,” Salman consoled him. But Elias felt angry with his father, who had given such threadbare reasons to explain why he couldn’t take him to the monastery in Damascus himself.
“That’s all right,” he said, close to tears. He looked over his brother’s head, and at that moment he saw his sister, who was four years older than him. She was trying to reach him to say goodbye. But their father slapped her face, pushed her back into the courtyard and quickly closed the door so that she couldn’t get out again.
“Look after Malake. Our father will kill her yet,” Elias said quietly to his brother. Salman glanced at their father, standing stiffly in front of the gate of his property, and smiled.
“Father wouldn’t kill anyone, but Malake is a stubborn goat,” he replied.
Their father had never liked Malake either. There had been frequent beatings, but only for the two of them. Just two days ago he had hit Malake during a meal for secretly taking a bite of his own piece of bread. Mushtak had strictly forbidden that kind of thing. Everyone’s share of bread was handed out. Not that there was any shortage of food, but Malake’s father believed you took years off another person’s life if you bit into his bread. Elias thought this superstition was ridiculous, but Malake didn’t. “It’s not superstition. I’m always eating his bread in secret. Sometimes he catches me at it, that’s all.”
The bus driver, who had hooted five minutes ago and was now roaring his engine, switched it off and went to have another cup of tea with the barber.
“This could go on for ever,” said Salman.
“You don’t have to stick around,” replied Elias, who was finding his brother’s presence more and more of a nuisance, and as if Salman had just been waiting for him to say so he shook hands and hurried back home.
Just then Elias saw his sister running out of a side street. He admired her for her dauntless courage. Malake was beaming all over her face when she came up to him. Old Mushtak, however, gave a start of surprise on seeing her and spoke to Salman, who had just that moment reached him. His eldest son turned briefly, then took his father’s arm and led him into the house.
Breathless, Malake flung her arms around Elias’s neck and wept. “He didn’t want to let me say goodbye properly. But you’re my own dear brother.” And she sobbed out loud. He began to weep too, not with emotion, not because they were parting, but with the fury of desperation because he couldn’t protect his sister. Elias knew that when Malake was home again all hell would be let loose. She had defied her father’s orders to stay indoors and climbed over the wall. Several men had certainly seen her do it, and would have laughed at Mushtak. If a girl made her father look ridiculous, that was reason enough to kill her.
Malake seemed to guess what he was thinking. “Oh, my dear brother,” she said. “‘I don’t feel the blows. I pray while he’s beating me.”
“You pray?” asked Elias, surprised.
“Yes, I pray, I beg the Virgin Mary to make his hand decay and drop off while he’s still alive. And then, while he’s hitting me, I think how miserable he’ll look sitting there and begging me for a sip of water.”
The engine of the bus was revving up as she kissed him for the last time. Then she jumped out of it, and for the first time he saw that she was barefoot.
24. A Reception
There was unrest throughout the country, and uncertainty everywhere. The French and the British had taken the Arabs for a ride. In the secret Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 they had divided up the Middle East between them, even before the Arabs could enjoy the fruits of their revolt against the Ottoman Empire. The countries were recolonized, with Arabia chopped up on the negotiating table in the interests of the two great powers.
One dusty July day in 1920, French troops marched into Damascus, and they stayed until 1946 — a quarter of a century of uprisings, banditry, and fighting between powerful clans.
A week after the French arrived, their High Commissioner, General Gouraud, invited all the important sheikhs and clan chiefs to a reception. And they all came, for it made no difference to them whether the ruler in Damascus spoke Turkish, Arabic, or French. What mattered was that their own clans were not enfeebled and passed over in favour of others. They suspiciously scrutinized the seating order and the presents that the general gave them. They understood not a word of his brief address, and still less could they get their heads around the fact that all the French officers had brought their wives to the reception, as if to give the ladies a look at the defeated natives. Gouraud even had his daughter with him too. The women were pretty and silent, like little Chinese porcelain figures.
The general gave each clan chief a new French sporting gun and a compass, and his guests were as delighted as children with these amazing little clocks that always pointed north. Many of them were playing with their magical devices even during the reception, turning them around and around and roaring with laughter.
It was high summer, and the big table groaned under the weight of the delicacies prepared by Arab cooks. To the horror of the Frenchwomen, the Arabs ate with their bare hands. They slurped and smacked their lips, and soon the tables had grains of rice, pieces of bread and food stains all over them. But none of the Arabs touched the red Bordeaux that was served with the meal.
“Why do you drink only water?” General Gouraud asked the man next to him, Sheikh Yassin Hamdan, head imam of the Ummayad Mosque. He himself raised his glass and drank with relish.
The question surprised Sheikh Yassin. He wondered for a moment if the general could really be as ignorant as he sounded.
“Because the Koran forbids us to drink wine,” he replied through his interpreter.
The general grinned, and pointed to the red grapes that the sheikh was eating.
“It is His Excellency’s opinion,” said the interpreter, “that you eat grapes, yet wine comes from grapes.”
The sheikh glanced at the general, who was looking at him blurry-eyed after his eighth glass.
‘True, wine comes from grapes. But his daughter comes from his wife. Does he therefore sleep with his daughter?”
This bon mot later went the rounds of Damascus as if the sheikh’s answer had crushed Gouraud. However, the general remembered nothing of what was said that evening. He was too drunk.
His mission had been to win over the clan chiefs to accept French rule, for if they were well disposed then their subjects would make no more trouble. So he told his adjutant to telegraph Paris, saying: “Mission completed. Clan chiefs well disposed to France. Said not a word about their dead.”
25. The Novice
It was late in the evening when Elias finally reached Damascus. The bus had had problems all the way, and its inexperienced driver had been unable to do anything but swear at the engine. About twenty kilometres outside Damascus the bus finally broke down. Beside himself with fury, the driver began throwing stones at his own vehicle and cursing his mother.
Finally, all the passengers had moved to the load area of a truck where twenty sheep had to make room for them. Elias was disgusted because one of the animals had diarrhoea, and the stinking floor of the truck was filthy with it.
The truck driver had to deliver the sheep to various different destinations, disappearing into the house each time for a tea, while his passengers waited in the hot truck.
Elias was drenched with sweat and tired when he finally knocked at the monastery gate. An inscription in Latin letters over the entrance said: Omnia ad maiorem Dei gloriam. He didn’t understand a word of it. While he waited he thought of his sister Malake and prayed for her.