She rode through the mountains calling her lover’s name out loud to the wind, as if she didn’t just want to enjoy its sound in her ears but were telling the wind to carry her cry to him.
She stayed away from Aleppo for three years, but when her father fell sick she took her two children, Butros and Bulos, and went north, full of anxiety. Jusuf didn’t want to go with her. When she arrived, her father came to meet her with outstretched arms, smiling mischievously. Not a sign of sickness about him.
“If your husband had come along too, I’d have had to take to my bed,” said the old gentleman, confessing that he had longed to see her but didn’t like visiting Mala. Her mother had suggested the letter about his poor health. He spoke like a child describing a successful prank, slapping his thigh with delight.
He was a born city dweller. He didn’t mind in the least that he couldn’t tell the difference between mules proper, a cross born of a male donkey and a mare, and hinnies, the offspring of a stallion and a female donkey or jennet, nor could he distinguish between rye, wheat, spelt, and oats. Even with his eyes blindfolded, however, he could identify any variety of tea from the first sip. And he could also converse with a Turk, an Arab, a Frenchman, and an Italian in their mother tongues.
Being back home with her parents was a strange feeling for Samia in the first few days. She glided around the rooms of the big villa, light as a fairy. Her parents let her have the whole east wing, with its bathroom, bedroom and drawing room, and its own kitchen. She had the services of two women who looked after her sons Butros and Bulos all around the clock. It was only after a while that Samia saw, with alarm, how old her father had grown. He seemed to have shrunk, he was thin, almost frail, his hair was white as snow. Her mother, on the other hand, was the same as ever: reserved, stiff, correct in everything she did.
Suddenly there stood her lover in her drawing room doorway. She was just reading a French magazine. He was tall, slim, and had a breathtakingly beautiful smile on his face. She felt dizzy.
“Holy Mary Mother of God,” she whispered.
“No, only Samer Khuri,” he replied, laughing. She blushed and could hardly get to her feet. He took her hand and helped her up from the couch. Then Samia’s lips touched his mouth with its wonderful fragrance. She breathed in the scent of her beloved, and dissolved in transports of delight. When she came back to her senses they were lying in her bed, drenched in perspiration.
She went back to Mala tormented by her memory of those hours in his arms. She was hungry for him, and at night, when darkness and silence fell over the village, her heart fluttered like a bird trying to escape from its cage.
After that she went to see her parents every year. Soon both she and Jusuf thought of her the visit to Aleppo as normal. Fifty-one weeks of loneliness and one week of ecstasy.
39. The Struggle
For years she felt guilty towards Jusuf. He wasn’t jealous, he always showed her respect, and let her visit her parents every time without asking any questions at all. She felt she was behaving badly. Jusuf, on the other hand, seemed to her proud, lofty, and inscrutable, and that made him interesting to her, not that he cared in the least for her interest.
He liked the company of his pure-bred horses better than anything. He was a successful breeder; even the richest Arab and French owners had to go on a waiting list to get a horse from Jusuf Shahin’s stables. He had an infallible instinct for the mating that would produce generation after generation of even finer horses.
He seemed to live for his horses alone. His clan respected him and his enemies feared him. And unlike his arch-enemy George Mushtak, whose reputation as a fornicator was known to everyone, who had fathered at least sixty bastard children and even in his latter days was still grabbing at bosoms or behinds in a very undignified way, Jusuf, so the villagers considered, behaved properly around women. There were no whispered rumours about him.
One night Samia woke from a nightmare. The moon was full. She sat up in bed, bathed in sweat. At first she was afraid that something had happened to one of the children. In her dream she had seen the house burning and heard her children’s voices behind the impenetrable flames. But when, with her heart beating fast, she went into their room, which was close to hers, her two boys were sleeping as peacefully as little angels. She went back to her room, but a sense of uneasiness came over her again. “The horses!” She leaped up. Without a sound, she went downstairs and crossed the dark yard to the dimly lit stables. There she froze. At first she heard only her husband’s whispering and moans, then she saw him.
He was lying over the young stable lad Ahmad’s back. Jusuf was thrusting himself into the boy, caressing him all the time, lavishing on him the loving words and kisses that he had never given her. The boy was awkward and sullen, and wouldn’t keep still. Her husband, ruler of the large Shahin clan, was begging the stable lad for a little affection like a man deeply in love.
So that’s it, she thought on the way back to her room. He likes slender young men.
She never mentioned Jusuf’s inclinations to him, but after that night her conscience no longer pricked her, and her relationship with her husband was more serene. Jusuf enjoyed life with Samia at his side. She gave him eight healthy children, and brought them all up to became clever men and women. But now and then it struck him that in any quarrel all his offspring, except for his firstborn son Butros, took their mother’s side. He thought it was just the vagaries of fate, and because of it he avoided any argument with his wife in his later years.
The horse-breeder never realized that the children’s affection for their mother arose from her care for them in childhood. Samia had the midwife Amine’s insight to thank for that. “Only those who have their children’s hearts have the future,” the woman told her in passing one day. Amine was illiterate, but she had the wisdom of thousands of years behind her.
40. Faris the Patient
Jusuf was the undisputed head of the clan. After him came not his brother Tanius, who had tuberculosis, or his wily youngest brother Suleiman, but his firstborn son Butros, who used bribery and blackmail to unite all their relations behind him. In his lifetime Jusuf invited the most important men of his clan to visit him, and made them put their hands on the Bible and swear that they hoped their arms might wither if they turned against his son Butros after his death.
That was the worst day of Suleiman’s life. At the urging of his mother, a severe widow who was under the spell of her eldest son Jusuf, he had to promise his obedience in a loud, clear voice when it came to his turn. Suspicious as Jusuf was, he embraced him and called to those present, “You have been witnesses: my dear brother Suleiman will follow my son, in his own interests and those of us all. And the life of anyone who turns against him is forfeit, and not worth an onion skin to you. Are you of the same opinion?” And they all gave their consent.
Butros was brave and generous as long as you obeyed him. Unlike his father, however, he was pitiless as a scorpion to those who deserted him: silent, cunning, and deadly.
But Faris, Jusuf’s third son, considered himself the future head of the clan. He realized that the greatest obstacle in his way was not his father but his eldest brother. The second eldest presented him with no problems. Bulos was simple-minded, and didn’t seem to mind whether he held power or the udder of one of his many cows in his hands.