One Friday in the late summer of 1925 a farmer stopped there with his horse-drawn cart, which was heavily loaded up with watermelons. The farmer asked for the Mushtak family’s residence. He, his cart, and his two horses disappeared through the great gateway, and when he came out again hours later the cart was empty. Soon the village elder learned that the hundred German Mauser rifles had arrived, together with a hundred crates of ammunition.
That winter was bitterly cold. But a volcano was seething in Mushtak’s soul. Not until spring 1926 did he finally see his time coming, and that was just when everyone else in the village was sure he had backed the wrong horse. When rumour said that seventy thousand French soldiers had landed in Syria, armed to the teeth, and law and order would soon prevail again, he disputed it. Now of all times, he told them, when the rebels and bandits would be withdrawing to all four points of the compass, Mala must be on its guard.
But most of the village elder’s friends thought as he did: Mushtak just didn’t want to admit that his purchase of the weapons had been a mistake. They whispered behind his back that loneliness since his wife’s death had embittered him, and his hatred for Muslims had made him blind. Not a few laughed to themselves to think of the high price he had paid for those guns.
Only one man did not laugh: Jusuf Shahin, his arch-enemy. He didn’t think that bandits would attack Mala either, but when he heard of the rifles in his adversary’s house he had a number of weapons brought over the mountains of Lebanon and, after discussion with the Orthodox convent of St. Thecla, he had them stored in the grotto there.
“May St. Thecla bless the guns,” he said to the abbess as he took his leave, placing a friendly hand on her arm, “and guide the bullets on their way to the hearts of Christ’s enemies.” And then he smiled, because he was sure she thought he meant the Muslims. As he saw it, however, there was no greater enemy of Christ than Mushtak.
Summer passed slowly; the air was hot and dusty. George did not feel inclined to go out in the village square. The other men cast him malicious glances, for it had never been as peaceful in Mala and its surroundings as it was that year. Even in the village itself, people were friendlier to each other than usual these days.
He wondered whether it might not have been wiser to go about the matter as his arch-enemy did. Very few people knew about the large quantity of guns stored in the convent.
At the end of August he woke from a nightmare, bathed in sweat. Day was only just dawning. The children were still asleep. He dressed and left the house with his revolver and his field glasses strapped to his belt. It was still dark when he reached the gate. He looked left, as if he knew that someone over there was watching him. His manservant Basil, relieved, waved from the window of the little hut where he lived in the yard of the property. He kept better watch on the place than the three dogs who roamed free there at night. Mushtak could sleep easily now that he knew nothing escaped Basil’s eyes. He had given him a gun and permission to shoot any intruder. His blood feud with the Shahins left no room for any carelessness.
Soon word of this arrangement had gone around the village, and when two young men tried to play a trick on the watchman, apparently for a bet, Basil fired his gun without warning. He hit the pair of them in the buttocks. They had to endure the mockery of the villagers for weeks on end, and from then on no one ventured to set foot in the yard without sending word first. Even when a complaint was laid with the police and they came to search the place, the police chief politely informed Mushtak the day before, telling him that the CID from Damascus was going to search his property for hashish in the morning.
Three jeeps drove down the quiet street to the house at dawn. The ten policemen had brought chisels, a large axe, and saws to dispose of any obstacles they might find in their way. But the gate was open and the dogs in their kennel. Sullenly, the officer went all over the property with his men, but of course they found nothing.
“George Mushtak has dealt in anything that makes money, but never hashish. It is beneath his dignity,” George told the police officer, “and so whatever bastard laid that complaint knows.” He always spoke of himself in the third person when addressing a social inferior.
The officer, disappointed by his failure, said nothing. He drank the coffee that the housekeeper had given him, and as he left gratefully pocketed the ten lira pressed into his hand by Mushtak, who said almost paternally, “Buy your children some candy.” The police officer took the strong hand of the master of the house and whispered, “Jusuf Shahin.” George Mushtak merely nodded.
The CID officer knew that by giving away the name he might cause a murder, but he hated peasants and the very smell of them. In the city, he would never have revealed the identity of a man who had laid a complaint, not for all the money in the world.
That incident was now two years in the past. Ever since, Mushtak’s men had been doing their utmost to repay Jusuf Shahin in his own coin, but none of what they had suggested so far pleased their master. He didn’t want his enemy’s horses or barns, his house or his yard, all he wanted was to strike him to the heart so that the scoundrel would finally keep quiet.
That morning at the end of August 1926, when Mushtak set out at dawn, he closed the gate behind him and walked towards the ravine. It was very quiet, but his mind was seething. He quickened his pace. He was sweating. Soon he was struggling for breath, for the path climbed more steeply all the time.
It was half an hour before he reached the top of the rocky ridge. Mala lay in its shadow, and he had a wide view from here. Still breathing heavily, he raised his field glasses and turned them south. His dry lips moved. Almost inaudibly, he said, “I know you’re coming. Here I am, come along. You’ll find your grave here. I know you’re coming!” There was a pleading note in his voice.
But the distant prospect disappointed him. The rising sun swept the grey from the sky, and a soft blue replaced it. George Mushtak, however felt nothing but an oppressive emptiness. He lowered the hand holding the field glasses, looked around him, and walked slowly home.
Resistance in the south of the country was weakening by the day. The men who had assembled in the village elder’s house heard the news on the radio, and breathed a sigh of relief. Two days later, when even Great Britain officially stepped in against the fleeing rebels, ranging itself on the side of France, the entire rising collapsed.
Mushtak withdrew into his property and kept to his darkened bedroom. His son Salman was anxious, but Malake reassured him: the old patriarch was sound as a bell, she said, it was just that his heart was full of longing for something, and none of them, not even she, knew what it was. This time at least it was nothing to do with Shahin. It seemed as if he wanted to answer someone back, settle an old score with him, and he was sick with that longing because he feared he would take it to the grave with him unsatisfied.
One afternoon in September he emerged from his room, sat down on the bench outside the house, took a deep breath and said, “They’ll soon be here.”
“Who’ll soon be here?” asked Salman, who was mending a rent in a saddle on the terrace. He was planning to ride out and pick a basket of ripe grapes. The best grapes in Mala were September grapes, which tasted like drops of honey surrounded by a thin, aromatic skin.
“The bandits. They attacked Daisa today, plundered the village and set fire to the convent of St. Mary. It was on the radio. Those ungodly villains shot fifty men and abducted over twenty women,” replied his father almost cheerfully.
“Who was it? And what did the French do?” asked Malake, stirring a spoonful of honey into her peppermint tea.