“Who tortured you? And why?” he asked, taking his son by the right shoulder.
Elias told the whole story, laying the blame on Adnan and Mauriac.
“Then now let’s celebrate your homecoming, and I swear to you by my mother’s soul that neither of them will have the strength to reach their own homes tomorrow,” said his father, drinking to his son.
Late that night three men rode towards Damascus behind Elias. They arrived early in the morning. Like his father’s three servants, Elias wore peasant clothes, and they lay in wait for Adnan, who always turned up for work at eight. When he appeared, the men looked hard at him and memorized his face and figure. Then Elias pointed out Mauriac, who came to work at nine with all due ceremony, wearing his uniform.
“You can sleep until midday now,” he told the men, and they lay down beside a nearby stream. He stayed awake himself. He kept thinking of his father, who had insisted on paying out those who had tormented his son. He woke the men around twelve.
“They’ll both come out in half an hour’s time,” he told them. “God be with you.” And he reached for his pistol. They had agreed that he was to stay in the background. The men would attack the two from the store and beat them, and only if they were in danger themselves would Elias give them cover.
Mauriac came marching out of the store first. Adnan, his puny shadow, followed him. Mushtak’s men, well muffled up, let them go about a hundred metres to the first bend in the road. Then the peasants from Mala fell on them, threw them to the ground in silence, and beat them about their heads and knees with iron bars. After that they mounted the horses that Elias was holding for them and rode out of town faster than the wind.
His father’s welcome, however, was a strange one. George Mushtak stood with his face impassive, listening to his favourite servant Basil’s account. When he heard that it had all gone as he wished, he said only, “Good,” beckoned to Elias, and took him into his bedroom. He went to the shelf under the picture of St. Giorgios on the wall opposite the big bed. It was a seventeenth-century original that the bishop had given George Mushtak after he made the Church a large donation.
“Put your hand on the Bible,” he ordered, “and swear not to fuck a woman again until you marry.” Elias was shocked at first. Then he was almost overcome by a fit of laughter. Only his father could utter the words “Bible” and “fuck” in the same sentence. He put his hand on the Bible. He was almost unconscious with weariness after the six hours’ ride.
“I swear,” he whispered, almost inaudibly.
33. Flight
George Mushtak was less and less intemperate in his dealings with Elias now, but he was truly at ease only with Salman. They were almost like boon companions. George’s eyes always flashed with joy and admiration when they rested on his firstborn child. But at least he had made his peace with his youngest son now. Elias had a fine room on the second floor, and was treated with respect by everyone, including his father.
It took Elias some time to recover from his experiences, and then he wondered what to do now. He didn’t want to teach at the school in Mala, although the village priest was pressing him to take the job. But the musty damp of the classrooms choked him the moment the priest so much as mentioned the subject, and in any case he never again wanted to work in the service of any authority, even the Catholic Church.
He briefly contemplated starting a small factory to produce natural dried fruits. But one day George Mushtak suggested horse-breeding, a trade at present pursued by only two families in Mala: the hated Shahins and, in a smaller way, the Mobates. And the future of the Mobate stud farm was uncertain, since the village elder’s three sons had shown no interest in the business.
“The beautiful Samira is crazy about horses, the only one among them who is, but she’s a woman and needs an intelligent man to guide her,” said his father, in an almost conspiratorial tone.
Elias knew Samira only slightly. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was large and imposing, which amounted to the same thing for the peasants of Mala. She laughed a lot, very loudly, and she rode like the devil. Everyone knew that Mobate idolized her, and to the great annoyance of her brothers was leaving her a quarter of his large fortune in his will, just as if she were a man.
Elias had no idea that his father and the village elder had already settled everything. He was to marry Samira and start a stud farm of his own with her. Mobate would provide the thoroughbred Arab horses, Mushtak would contribute three hundred gold lira for the stables.
But it was in that summer of 1935 that Elias met Claire and fell in love. Captivated by her as he was, he was impervious to all else. Every hint his father dropped about Samira went unheard. He nodded amiably, but he wasn’t listening. And even when he was stopped in the village square at noon one day by the handsome lunatic known to everyone as Shams, the man’s strange words did not alarm him at first.
“Brother, don’t marry Samira. She loves me, but her father wants to sell her off to you. Look at me, brother, look at me,” begged the madman, and his wide eyes showed how deranged he was. “Have I done anything to harm you? Is it too much to ask? You can marry all America, but leave me Samira!”
Elias found this conversation embarrassing. “Hush, there’s no need for you to shout. Why would I have anything to do with Samira? I’m happy to leave her to you or anyone else,” he replied.
“No, brother, not anyone else, just me, all right? Just me, right?” cried Shams, laughing, and there was a pleading note in his voice. The saliva dribbled uncontrollably from his mouth, yet he was still as handsome as a Greek god, thought Elias.
Only that evening did he learn that the madman had not, like many Arabs, used the word “brother” as a courteous but generalized form of address, but meant it literally.
“He’s your half-brother,” Salman told him, his tone cold and brittle as usual. “Your mother was unfaithful to my father, and God punished her because he loves George Mushtak. She went crazy, and her son has fits of lunacy.”
“Where does he live? What does he do?”
“He’s worked as a groom for Mobate ever since he turned up here. They say he’s good with horses,” replied Salman.
“And what about Samira? Why did he beg me not to marry her? Does Father have plans of some kind?”
“What do you mean, plans? He has no plans at all. You mustn’t let any chance-come idiot turn your head,” said Salman, lying. He knew very well that Mob ate and Mushtak had already fixed the wedding for Christmas. The only snag was that Samira didn’t like Elias. She often mocked his slight figure and his liking for books, and she thought his affairs with women ridiculous. She dreamed of an immaculate love as Shams passionately understood it. He described such a love wonderfully.
Elias wasn’t interested in Samira either. While the fathers were making their plans he had met, for the first time, a woman who attracted him even though she smelled only of perfume, giving off no aura of desire for him. But her speech was sensuality itself, and when she said “chéri” he could have fainted away with happiness.
She spoke fluent French, which sounded to his ears like civilization, liberation from cow dung and the smell of sweat. There was something in her voice that he had never encountered before. It trembled, it sounded almost hoarse, as if Claire had a slight cold. And when she spoke of Molière, Mozart, or Lamartine her vibrant voice gave him a warm feeling and a great sense of longing.
But he often doubted whether Claire loved him back, for she could suddenly be very reserved, keep her distance, sound noncommittal, and then she was only a cold cloud of perfume. So one day he summoned up all his courage and asked her if she loved him.