When this tiresome business was dealt with, George called his son to order. “You’re marrying Hanan in six months’ time,” he told him. Salman knew the pale daughter of a rich engineer only distantly, but he knew his father very much better. He agreed. The wedding was to be on the first Sunday of August in 1931.
In addition, their father decreed that six months later Malake was to marry Adel the Lebanese cattle dealer. What he didn’t know was that she had been having an affair with that same man for years. Whenever George mentioned him she appeared indifferent, or expressed nothing but contempt for Adel. Malake knew that as soon as she showed her love for him, Salman and her father would find some reason to prevent the marriage. The Mushtaks were nothing out of the ordinary in that respect. Since time immemorial, parents had refused to sanction a marriage if they found out that it would be a love match. A letter was enough, or a poem, for the lovers to be parted for ever. Half of all Arabic lyric poetry tells tales of such tragedies.
Malake was already over twenty, and she had loved Adel since she was fourteen. But the cattle dealer had to wait until Mushtak’s firstborn son was married. That was what custom demanded in Mala, and Adel waited patiently, because he loved Malake.
They were all to come to Salman’s wedding: Hasib, now studying medicine at the American University of Beirut; Elias from Damascus; and Adel from Beirut, who for years had been regarded by everyone as a good friend of the family. The wedding festivities were to last seven days and seven nights. A bishop and six priests were invited from Damascus to celebrate the nuptial Mass. But the biggest surprise was the arrival of the Patriarch of the Catholic Church. George Mushtak kissed his hand, and was moved to tears when the head of the Church embraced him, laughing. “I know you only asked for a bishop, but I would like to bless your son’s marriage myself in gratitude for all you have done for the Church.”
The villagers couldn’t remember ever seeing a Catholic patriarch in Mala before. But since his great victory over the besiegers of the village, old Mushtak was thought capable of anything. And then he had an unpleasant surprise. The day before the wedding, quite by chance, he found his daughter in bed with Adel. He was extremely angry, not because his fiend of a daughter had seduced the simple cattle dealer, but because Malake ignored propriety and his orders, and insisted on having her own way, just like her mother. So after all Malake had been the first to celebrate her marriage in bed, before her brother, which showed that she didn’t care in the least for any of her father’s decrees or wishes.
Mushtak did not rant and rage, nor did he hit Malake, as he often did when he lost his temper, because this time he feared a scandal. The house was full, the head of the Catholic Church was drinking his coffee in the courtyard under a sun umbrella. Hundreds of people were crowding around him, all wanting to get close to His Excellency, Patriarch of the entire Middle East and the holy city of Jerusalem. He was, after all, the second most powerful man in the Church after Pope Pius XI. They were grateful to the bridegroom’s father for giving them this opportunity.
And now his own daughter was sleeping with that simple-minded cattle dealer. Mushtak swore he would hate Malake for it until the day he died. Today, however, he just stood in the doorway. Malake and her lover froze under the bedclothes when they saw him, and Adel regretted his stupidity in leaving his jacket with the revolver in its pocket out of reach. He expected to die, but nothing happened. Leaden minutes crawled by. Mushtak said not a word, just went on staring at the couple.
“We’ll celebrate the nuptial Mass tomorrow,” he said after an eternity that had, in fact, lasted three minutes. “And after that I never want to see either of you again.” His voice cracked. Those were the last words he spoke to Malake and Adel.
But the two of them ran away that night. Malake was afraid that her father’s henchmen would abduct her and her husband directly after the ceremony, kill them, and bury them in some distant ravine. She knew her father very well.
When Mushtak’s faithful servant Basil whispered the news to him next morning, while everyone was drinking to the wedding, he was surprised by the reaction of his master, who just smiled and nodded. “She’s quicksilver, like her mother, she can’t be held fast,” was all Malake’s father said, and then he took the Patriarch’s hand and led him to his place at the festive table. He was to sit enthroned there with Salman on his right and Hanan on his left.
The village had never seen a wedding like it before. Over a thousand guests celebrated for seven days on end, local people and strangers from the surrounding villages, from Damascus, Aleppo, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Beirut.
Not since it was founded had the village seen so much meat and wine, so many pistachios and sweetmeats. It was said that for those seven days you could smell the aroma of roast meat and thyme ten kilometres away. For seven days, people drank themselves into a stupor on huge quantities of wine and arrack. And finally, at the end of the seventh day, when everyone thought the dream was over, George Mushtak announced that a man didn’t bring a son like Salman into the world every day, and the party was to go on for another whole week.
28. The Transformation of Elias
As soon as he arrived for the wedding festivities, Elias Mushtak was surrounded by young men teasing him, asking if he’d poked all the cooks and cleaning women in the monastery yet. He didn’t answer, but waved the jokes aside. Only once did he lower himself to saying, “That kind of thing just goes on in your corrupt little minds. The brothers and sisters in the monastery are chaste and devout.”
In the village, he heard about his sister’s love affair for the first time. Malake herself told him, asking for his blessing. And Elias kissed her and smiled awkwardly. “The way you describe Adel to me, it’s a love that deserves the blessing of God himself.”
Malake was obviously relieved. She ran off to her lover and told him the good news. She had also taken the opportunity of telling her brother about her plan to escape, and Elias prayed all night that his sister would elude their father’s guards.
On the wedding day, when Malake had gone, he was happy at the festivities for his brother’s sake, but he wasn’t at ease in all the noise made by the drunken guests. He often walked alone along the narrow paths through the terraced fields, and was surprised to find them even more beautiful than he remembered. He spent hours wandering in the hills and valleys, resting under large fig and mulberry trees, and drinking in the view of the landscape.
On the fourth day of the wedding festivities, he was watching a large black donkey in a field repeatedly mounting a pale brown female under an old walnut tree. The donkey was a stray; the remnants of his reins still dangled from his neck. The female donkey couldn’t defend herself. She kicked, hitting the male so often that it must hurt him, but he was in a strange state of intoxication, and didn’t stop until, after the fifth mating, he collapsed, snorted, and licked white foam from his muzzle. At that moment Elias smelled the sexual arousal of the female, who was probably just beginning to enjoy the love-play.
It was a sweetish smell, like faded roses. He felt a curious arousal in himself, a sensation beyond his control. That moment changed Elias’s life for ever. From now on he could scent a woman’s arousal from over three metres away, and he was never wrong. Even if at the last moment a woman sometimes took fright and denied feeling desire, he knew better. His nose was a merciless guide, knowing no consideration or morality.