Nasibe sensed no change in Elias, because he still wanted her in bed. Perhaps he didn’t make such wild love as before, but he was more affectionate than any other man she knew. Above all, he was very courteous to her, and Nasibe regarded courtesy as one of the cornerstones of love. In the evening he even took her out, and they went walking through the Christian quarter together. He just didn’t want her to take his arm.
She stayed with him for five days, cooking, washing, and ironing, and looking forward to his return every evening. Elias was especially courteous to her now, for the very reason that he no longer desired her. He thanked her for every little thing. But she was losing all her power of attraction for him. He tried hard to find her interesting in some kind of way, and drank when he was with her so that he could give his instincts free rein, but even drunk he couldn’t make love to her as wildly as he did a few months ago.
She smelled of strong rosewater, sour milk, and rutting billygoats. Even when she put on makeup he thought she looked rustic. She used too much of everything, as if the world were short-sighted and colour-blind. Everything she said and did reminded him more and more of Mala. And Nasibe became more rustic all the time because, out in the street, she noticed that she was inferior to the city women.
He was glad when she left. She had wanted him to take her to the bus, but he pretended he had an urgent inventory of the store to draw up. However, she did not, as he had hoped, sense his coolness. He could feel that when she embraced him in tears behind the door as they said goodbye, and whispered to him almost pleadingly, “Think of me, my little stallion. I’ll look forward to your decision. We suit so well together. Did you notice too? Five days, and we haven’t spoken a cross word.” And her eyes became a gushing fountain of tears.
32. Adnan’s Revenge
Mauriac was supposed to be on three days’ leave, but suddenly there he was in his uniform. It was after five in the afternoon. He had never before turned up in the store at that time of day, after working hours. Elias had just invited a workman whom he liked to drink a glass of wine with him in a back room. They were sitting among the crates, sipping their wine and eating roasted peanuts from a little dish. The man’s name was Burhan, and he was very poor. He worked as a porter, making ends meet as best he could, but he had a quick and clever wit. Elias liked his pointed remarks. A small sack of peanuts had split open that day; he had distributed the contents to the porters, except for this last handful, and then he asked Burhan to stay and chat with him after work. Like Elias himself, Burhan was a bachelor.
Adnan had seen it all from the doorway. But soon after that he left, and Elias hadn’t been sorry to see him knock off work early. There wasn’t anything more to do. Now, however, Adnan was standing behind the furious Mauriac with a spiteful grin on his face.
“A manager thieving!” shouted Mauriac. “Caught you in the act, you lousy Arab.”
He took no notice of the porter at all, and indeed turned his back on him and seized the shocked manager’s hand as if he feared Elias might run for it. Burhan quietly made himself scarce, and no one paid him any attention. Elias stood there in front of the open bottle of red wine and the dish of peanuts.
“You thought I wouldn’t notice what a thief you are. But you were wrong, and you’ll be punished for it.”
Then he laughed as if he had exactly the right idea for a punishment in mind. He turned to Adnan. “Tell the commandant of the men on guard that I need two good strong fellows.”
Adnan went off and soon came back with two tall guardsmen, both Syrians.
“Hold the thief tight,” said Mauriac, and in pleasurable excitement he whispered an order to Adnan, who disappeared into the equipment room and soon came back with a funnel and a small hosepipe.
“And now a bucket of pour.”
Pour was short for pour chien, “for the dog”. It was the codeword in the store for a cheap red wine given only to the common soldiers when there was something to celebrate. The two Syrians held Elias’s hands, one on each side, and pulled his arms apart so that he slumped between them as if he had been crucified.
Then Adnan roughly forced the hose into his mouth, and Mauriac, laughing, poured the wine into it down the funnel. “Here, drink up,” he said, still laughing. Elias thought his end had come. Years later he was still saying that at this, the worst moment of his life, he had understood all the misery of the Arabs. Three Syrians slavishly helping a corrupt, cowardly French officer to torment their fellow countryman.
He swallowed and swallowed, tried to get his breath back and choked, but Mauriac went on pouring. The wine flowed out of the corners of his mouth and down over his throat and chest. Mauriac poured the entire contents of the bucket down through the hose until Elias lost consciousness.
When he came back to his senses, he was lying on a dirty mattress in a dark room. He sat up, his head heavy. His skull was buzzing and there was a bitter taste in his mouth. He didn’t know how he came to be in this room or how long he had been lying there.
Slowly, he went out of it. The room was in a poor peasants’ house, behind their living room. An old man sat with his wife beside the small hearth, and they were feeding the fire with thin pieces of wood. Elias didn’t know either of them. He sat down on the first stool he saw.
“Thank God, you’re alive,” cried the man. “My wife thought you’d die soon.”
“Where did you find me?”
“In the ditch at the roadside, not far from Damascus,” said the woman. “We were just coming home from market after selling our walnuts and dried figs,” her husband added.
Elias quickly recovered, went back to Damascus, fetched a few possessions from his room, and set out for Mala.
The village knew by now was that he was doing splendidly with the French, and was said to be a store manager. George Mushtak felt a certain pride in that damn son of his who wouldn’t let anything get him down, but kept on fighting. He had decided to bury his hatred and forgive the boy next time he came to visit.
Elias came home a broken man, carrying a single case, so he was much moved when Mushtak sent Salman to tell him he could come and receive his father’s blessing. He ran upstairs. His father was sitting on the big couch like a king, and Elias’s eyes filled with tears when he kissed Mushtak’s hand and asked his forgiveness.
“I forgive you everything! You are my son, and you have my blessing,” said George Mushtak, equally moved. Salman and his wife were standing in the doorway.
“Why are you standing there like a couple of plaster dummies? Fetch us wine, bread, olives, and cheese, and we’ll celebrate!”
The word “wine” was unwelcome to Elias’s ears, and indeed he never in his life drank red wine again.
“Water for me, please,” he begged.
“Why? You’re a man, aren’t you?” asked his father, and there was anxiety in his voice.
“Yes, Father, but some red wine gave me bad blood poisoning,” Elias replied. He stopped for a moment, and then realized that he was going the wrong way about it. He must be frank. “Father,” he said, “I’ve been tortured. They poured five litres of wine into my belly down a hosepipe.” He fell silent as Salman and Hanan carried in two large trays laden with olives, preserved aubergines and sheep’s milk cheese. George Mushtak gestured to them to put it all down and keep quiet.