Faris did not think his two younger brothers Basil and Musa were dangerous either. Basil was a boarder at the French school in Damascus, and wanted to go to Paris and continue studying there when he left school. And Musa planned to start a haulage company. His father gave him his first truck when he was nineteen. Jusuf Shahin saw this as a way of bringing the transport routes between Mala and Damascus under his control. However, to the end of his life, which was a short one anyway, Musa thought more about women than his business.
Their father was well aware of his son’s love affairs. He gave him a year’s leeway and then made him marry Rihane from the seaport of Latakia, a pretty woman who hated life in the village. The wedding was in 1933, and when they were married Rihane kept pestering her husband to move to Latakia. He could build up his haulage business there, she said. To bind Musa to her she bore him two children. The first was a girl called Mona, after the mother of Jusuf, the head of the clan. The second child was a boy. Musa called him Said, “the happy one”. But the children made Musa neither domesticated nor faithful. He was said to have a mistress in every village on the Damascus road. And in the end it wasn’t his dangerous driving over potholed winding roads, but a pretty blonde American woman who, unintentionally perhaps, summoned the angel of death to Musa. The angel came on 7 April 1941.
Soon after Musa’s death his widow received a large sum of money for her husband’s share in the family property, and in the village elder’s house she signed a document giving up any claim to the inheritance for herself and her children. She moved to Latakia with Mona and Said, before long she married the manager of the arrack distillery there, and from then on she bore his surname, Bustani. She wanted no more to do with the Shahin clan.
Faris’s three sisters were no danger to his ambitious plans either. Women had no say in affairs out in the country. For that very reason, Samia had sent all three girls to the boarding school run by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Damascus: first Amira, then Mariam, and finally her youngest daughter Jasmin. So Faris knew that only Butros need be regarded as a serious rival. But it was also clear to him that if he, Faris, tried to oust him, his brother wouldn’t for a moment hesitate to kill him. So he set about it very slowly. Faris first formed his plan in the summer of 1935, when he was only twenty-one years old. He had to wait nearly twenty more years before his chance came. But then he took it without hesitation.
41. Musa and Hasib
Plenty of attempts were made in Mala to reconcile the two clans, but none of them came to anything, and the last, undertaken by two bishops, ended in disaster. Yet it had been hoped that a sign from heaven might perhaps bring the blood feud to a peaceful conclusion.
The bishops of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches of Damascus felt that the enmity between the two families was disgraceful, particularly as the village lay in the middle of a Muslim region. Increasingly dramatic reports of events there greatly distressed the two dignitaries. Visitors from outside were stigmatized as enemies of one of the churches just for donating a piastre to the other. Quite often nuns and abbots refused to let foreign delegations visit their convents and monasteries because the foreigners had been to see their rivals first.
In 1941 there was only a week between the Catholic and Orthodox celebrations of Easter Sunday. The Orthodox Church was celebrating the resurrection of Christ in accordance with the Julian calendar on April 7th, the Catholic Church in accordance with the Gregorian calendar on April 14th. So the two bishops had agreed that festivities to mark the reconciliation should go on all week and thus remain in the peasants’ memory for ever. As a sign of fraternization they agreed to celebrate Mass together on Easter Sunday at the beginning of the festivities, close to the Catholic church of St. Giorgios, and later have lunch in the Orthodox convent of St. Thecla. On the following Sunday the village priests would celebrate divine service near the convent of St. Thecla with both clans, and have lunch outside the church of St. Giorgios.
On that Sunday, 7 April 1941, many of the inhabitants of Mala wept tears of emotion, for there had never been such a fine, magnificent church service in the village in their lives. It was held out in the open, in the village square.
All the Mushtaks and Shahins had travelled to Mala, and invited all their friends and allies. There were not two thousand but seven thousand people in the village that day. The sky was blue, the sun shone as if it were summer. After the solemn service, both bishops gave the assembled congregation their blessing and opened the Easter celebrations. Musicians played flutes, lutes and drums to accompany the dancing. Then, at about midday, there was to be a long, solemn procession to the great convent of St. Thecla, where cooks had been preparing for the arrival of the crowds for a week. But it all went wrong.
Around eleven, three shots were heard. The first killed Musa Shahin. His murderer was Hasib Mushtak, George’s second son, who had come to Mala from Beirut especially to be with his father on this difficult day.
Hasib had studied medicine at the American University of Beirut. He had been a gifted schoolboy, and Mushtak sent his son to study in Beirut rather than Damascus because in his opinion, “You won’t learn to be anything better than a butcher in Damascus.” Hasib had completed his studies with the highest distinction in 1937. After that he was going to work at a Beirut hospital for another three years while his American wife Dorothea finished her studies of Arabic. He came home to Mala as often as he could, for he loved the village and his father. And Mushtak was fond of his clever son and his wife, who spoke better Arabic than many an Arab.
Malicious tongues, backed by slanders cleverly spread by the Shahins, claimed that old Mushtak’s daughter-in-law didn’t take his fumblings seriously, but that Hasib didn’t like it. He was extremely touchy if anyone even looked like getting too close to his wife, and he was regarded as very jealous.
After divine service that April day in 1941, there was to be dancing and singing until it was time for the reconciliation banquet. The best place to be was the inner courtyard of the church of St. Giorgios. Soon the two bishops were enthroned on the terrace, watching the dancers near them with benevolent smiles. The spectators stood very close together, arrack was handed around, donated by the two rival clans and symbolically mixed by both bishops in large bottles to make a single beverage. The aniseed spirit, fifty percent proof, soon took effect.
Musa, Jusuf Shahin’s third son, although married and the father of two children was, as already mentioned, a skirt-chaser. He had kept touching the tall American woman that day, and was pleased to find her so easy-going.
Musa was a handsome, dashing man. The blonde woman probably liked the awkward charm of his advances. To her, he seemed like a little boy, and she was amused by his attempts to speak English, here at the end of the world. But Musa took her laughter to mean that he was irresistible. He put his hand inside the American woman’s blouse. Hardly anyone noticed, but Dorothea suddenly froze rigid with shock.
Hasib, who was slightly tipsy, broke off his conversation and hissed at Musa to leave his wife alone. But Musa, now babbling in his cups, retorted with the humiliating remark that anyone whom old George Mushtak fumbled was fair game for all.
Hasib didn’t say a word. He left his wife there and disappeared. The Shahin supporters around Musa laughed in a rather muted way, so that the bishops wouldn’t notice. But not for long. Hasib was very soon back again. He aimed at his adversary’s forehead, and the last laugh froze on Musa’s lips.