“If you are an honest man,” said George, ignoring his followers’ indignation, “you’ll be taken over the mountains tomorrow, and from there it’s two days’ journey to Beirut and the sea. But if you are lying you’ll wish for death not once but twenty times over.” Then he sat down on a stool in the middle of the circle that his men had formed around the prisoner.
“Now, tell me something in confidence. Since you say you hate Kashat, you won’t mind what happens to him. So when does Hassan Kashat always leave his tent?”
“Only once. At midnight exactly he inspects the front to make sure his sentries are on watch. He has two adjutants with him, no more.”
“What are the adjutants’ names?” asked George Mushtak.
“Ahmad Istanbuli and Omar Attar,” replied the man.
“What about the Khairi brothers?” asked Mushtak, to the surprise of his men.
“Mustafa fell in the first week, and Yunus a few days ago,” replied the prisoner.
That same night, George followed hidden ways winding through the terraced fields of the green valley to the bandits’ camp. He knew the narrow paths like the palm of his hand. He often had to go to his fields by night and divert the water of the little river to his land.
Mushtak loved the night hours. By day, he left the irrigation of the crops to his men, but after dark he liked to be in charge of the water himself. He would leap, light-footed, from sluice to sluice, smiling when the water followed him. Sometimes he ran along the dry bed of the channel, anticipating the gush of water that must go the long way around through the sluices before it raced forward like a flock of hungry sheep.
This evening he was accompanied by his son Salman; Nagib, the village elder’s bold youngest son; and Tanios, the baker from the Orthodox quarter. Not only was Tanios one of the strongest men in the village, Mushtak also wanted to use him as an eyewitness to report back to his enemy Shahin’s supporters on what he, Mushtak, was planning to do in the next few hours.
Even years later, Salman would say how his father suddenly looked young again. On the way to met his deadly enemy Kashat he strode out so fast and vigorously that his son and the other two men had difficulty keeping up with him. Soundless as shadows, they moved past the guards of both front lines that night, and finally they lay in wait for Kashat. He appeared around midnight, a small figure on his way to the furthest outposts of his guards. There were two tall men with him.
When Hassan Kashat reached the ancient walnut tree a moment before his companions, Salman and his father leaped out and flung him to the ground. The other two men from Mala killed the adjutants in silence. Hassan Kashat was frightened to death. He couldn’t even call for help, for Mushtak was already stuffing his headcloth into his mouth as a gag.
“You filthy rat, what did I tell you? I’ll get you, I said! It’s taken me twenty years, but I have you now. All those nights I’ve been waiting for this moment, and now you’re in my hands. You’ll die like a dog on a dunghill,” he cried, hoarse-voiced, and with Salman’s aid he actually did drag the bandit leader, who seemed paralysed, to a heap of dung that he had brought to his field before the siege began. This particular field was just beyond the walnut tree.
It was a clear night, and the full moon shone brightly. The bandit leader looked pitifully pale now. “Do you see this lion my son?” Mushtak continued, clapping Salman’s shoulder and kicking his enemy in the kidneys at the same time. “I got him on Laila. I slept with her and she gave me four children. This lion is my firstborn. Look at him! Can you see his eyes? Aren’t they the eyes of Laila?” he asked, kicking Kashat again and again.
His captive shook his head, and desperately tried to avoid the kicks as he lay on the ground.
“How could my mother help it if Laila and I were crazy for each other? Why did you kill my mother? And my sister Miriam? Why did you torture her like that? Before my mother’s eyes!” cried Mushtak, and then he rammed his knife into his prisoner’s belly, pushed him down in the dunghill, and pulled the gag out of his mouth. Kashat widened his eyes, tried to gasp for air and scream, but a fistful of dung was stuffed into his jaws, and Mushtak went on stabbing until his victim’s body went limp. At last he stood up, exhausted and weeping.
Only when he felt Salman’s hand on his shoulder did he say, quietly, “Let’s go.” But Nagib the village elder’s son had another good idea. After brief discussion, all four of them began shouting in Arabic with a southern accent, “The Christians have attacked us! Our leader Hassan Kashat and his adjutants Ahmad and Omar have been murdered! Listen, everyone! Our leader is dead! Run for your lives!”
Slowly at first, then faster and faster, loud cries from Kashat’s own men echoed through the camp. Panic broke out. Mushtak and his three companions made haste to get back to their village. Once there, they quickly summoned all the men, lit torches, and rode down into the valley on their horses and mules, guns in their hands. They drove the fleeing bandits ahead of them, killing many.
When day dawned, the valley was full of corpses down to the Damascus road. All the abandoned horses and weapons were taken to the village square of Mala, but the bodies were put in one of the remote caves. They were walled up inside it, and the entrance was covered with earth. One of the dead was the chief of the Rifai clan, Muhammad Abdulkarim, who had been at the harvest festival. Kashat had obviously persuaded him that there was good loot to be had in Mala.
People were already coming to the village square at dawn to dance, drink wine, and shout for joy. They had all entirely forgotten the prisoner, but Mushtak finally found the man lying tied up under a fig tree.
He had the prisoner released from his bonds, gave him three gold coins, and called out good wishes for his crossing to America as he left. Then he dropped on the bench outside the door of his house, exhausted and happy, in the firm belief that no less than God had been at work in this victory. And George Mushtak wept for the sublimity of that hour.
27. Weddings
Little by little, Salman had taken over the farming of the land. At first he followed his father’s advice and grew all kinds of crops: vines, maize, olives, tobacco, wheat. Like all the farmers, he also raised cattle. But then he went to visit his youngest brother at the monastery and met one of the monks who was an expert on agriculture, and advised Salman to mechanize his farm and switch to products for the export market. Salman made the change at the end of the twenties. Old Mushtak cursed the export market and the French monk’s advice, and it took Salman years to convince him of the merits of the new idea. “You’re either a big farmer or a big loser these days,” he kept explaining.
So he turned the farm into a modern agricultural business, right on the Damascus road, and specialized in roses, almonds, tobacco, and apples. He sold the rosebuds to the perfume industry in France, the almonds went to a marzipan factory in north Germany, and the tobacco to the Netherlands. Day and night, Salman lived for his dream of a thoroughly modern business. He was the first to bring a cross-country vehicle and a tractor to the village. The villagers laughed at Salman, but soon other farmers were wondering whether they too might not be able to take their produce to the capital as fast and get it there as fresh as he did, thereby saving themselves the tedious drive with a donkey and cart.
In time old Mushtak came to trust his son, and enjoyed being driven by that strong, sun-tanned, blue-eyed young man through the village in the open jeep.
Young women liked Salman’s blue eyes and dry humour too. When he was twenty, one girl even tried to commit suicide over him. Her life was saved, but her relations spread the story that Salman had made her pregnant. No one ever knew whether that was true. The one certainty was that she came from a penniless family, and that was also the reason for the rumour that old Mushtak had paid her cousin a large sum of money to marry her quickly.