The rocks carried the echo of those three shots ringing through the mountain ravines. Panic broke out, and before the crowd could scatter there were over ten members of each clan lying severely injured in the church’s inner courtyard.
Musa’s body was trampled by the panic-stricken, screaming men and women running for the gate and safety. Later, curiously enough, many of them didn’t remember the details of the murder as clearly as the saying of a midwife who had, apparently, told Musa weeks before that she had seen him in a dream being trampled by a herd of cattle.
Hasib calmly took his wife’s hand. He walked not to the courtyard gate but through the church. Leaving by its main entrance, he quickly reached his father’s courtyard. Hasib kissed the old man’s hand and received two fervent kisses on his cheeks.
“You showed the bastard what a Mushtak is,” said George, “and by doing so you saved me from hypocrisy. God bless you wherever you go.” And he put a bag of gold lira in his son’s jacket pocket. “Leave everything here and get away. You can buy what you need in Beirut. Kiss your son for me,” he added quietly, and signed to his faithful servant Basil, who led Mushtak’s son and his pale wife to the horses standing ready at the back gate of the large property.
In exactly three hours’ time the couple were over the Lebanese border.
Hasib reached Beirut next morning. He sold the horses, provided himself, his wife, and his four-year-old son George with the requisite papers, and went to America. His first letter home came three months later. And in the years that followed his father learned, greatly to his satisfaction, that two more sons, Jack and Philip, would carry the name of Mushtak on into the next century. But Hasib’s address remained unknown. He knew that Jusuf Shahin had cousins in America.
42. End of a Hope
My God, thought George Mushtak as Hasib disappeared into the western ravine, those two brothers Elias and Hasib are worlds apart. Growing up under the same roof, yet as different as night and day. Hasib had lived far away in Beirut, yet he had always been close to George’s heart. He must have sensed his father’s wishes.
For George Mushtak had been in a quandary. He couldn’t appear uncooperative in front of the two bishops. But Hasib had come along, heroically helped him out of his fix, and then quietly disappeared again.
Three shots! Musa’s blood had flowed like the blood of the dogs that useless good-for-nothing used to run down with his truck.
In his joy Hasib’s father forgot everything else, even the pain that he had felt somewhere near his heart for months. That Easter Day at noon he stood on his balcony, watching the turmoil in the village square, and with his son Salman he had laughed till the tears came at the sight of the Catholic Bishop of Damascus, looking lost as he stood among the shouting peasants and desperately searching for his chauffeur. And when he did catch sight of his black limousine, just see how he wielded his mighty crozier to open up a path through the surging crowd of the faithful! He even ignored his Orthodox rival, who was calling after him to wait. He didn’t feel safe until he was in the back of his car, cursing the barbarians of this village. When someone knocked on the window and cried, “The Orthodox bishop asks you to stop. Please stop,” he didn’t even turn around. His car merely raced away.
Elias had come to Mala that Easter, with Claire and the baby Farid, and hired a small apartment, hoping for a reconciliation with his father. The reconciliation planned between those sworn enemies, Mushtak and Shahin, seemed to be just the right opportunity. At a brief meeting with him, Salman had advised Elias to be friendly to the Shahins.
When the shots rang out and the bishops fled in panic, Elias waited for a while. The village square emptied. Claire didn’t want him to go to his father. She was afraid that some marksman might shoot him down even before he reached Mushtak’s house. But Elias had made up his mind. “It’s now or never,” he said, and left her behind with little Farid.
Endangering his life, he hurried across the square and, with the last of his courage, knocked at his father’s gate. Salman opened it just a crack. Two armed servants stood behind him, and Salman himself had a revolver in his hand.
“What do you want?” he asked curtly, keeping in the shelter of the gateway.
“I want to see my father. I want him to give my son Farid his blessing,” replied Elias, close to tears.
“Wait here,” ordered Salman, closing the gate. His brother stayed outside. It wasn’t long before Salman appeared in that crack in the gateway again.
“He doesn’t want to see you.” There was triumph in Salman’s voice.
43. Butros and Samuel
When Jasmin Shahin’s life ended, years later, at the entrance to a Damascus cinema, nine out of ten inhabitants of Mala thought the killer had been a Mushtak again, but they were wrong. The murderer was sixteen-year-old Samuel, one of the Shahin family. Both friends and enemies of the clan recognized that Jasmin’s story had not yet been told to its end. For a long time there had been rumours in the village that she had fallen in love with a Muslim, a married man, and had eloped with him. Five years later the couple returned to Damascus.
Jasmin got in touch around now with her niece Rana, who was ten at the time, and her nephew Samuel. She was particularly fond of them both, and hoped that through them she might make her peace with her brother Basil, Rana’s father, and her sister Amira, Samuel’s mother. They were the two who had moved furthest from the village and its fanaticism. Basil was a successful lawyer. He had studied in Paris and hated antiquated notions. He despised church and mosque alike. His daughter was a sensitive, sharp-eyed, courageous girl who wanted nothing to do with the village.
And Jasmin loved her nephew Samuel as if he were her own son. He was her sister’s first child; after him, Amira had brought six girls into the world. She loved parties and dancing. There wasn’t a club frequented by the French or by rich Arabs to which she and her husband did not belong, and in spite of her children she still looked as young as on her wedding night in 1934. But she was always short of time, so she had hired two housekeepers who did at least look after the little girls. Samuel hated both the housekeepers, and often spent the night, did his lessons, and ate his meals at his aunt Jasmin’s.
Rana didn’t like Samuel. As she saw it, he was a show-off and crazy about guns. But he was certainly a good shot, a member of the national team. His parents adorned their drawing room with his photographs and cups, as if the six girls didn’t exist at all.
Jasmin nurtured two hopes: she thought that all Samuel needed was loving care to become an affectionate boy himself, and then he might persuade his mother to put in a good word for her, Jasmin, with her mother Samia Shahin who ruled all their lives. After that, she hoped, she might escape the anger of her three brothers Butros, Bulos, and Faris, who still lived in the village. If Samia, Jusuf Shahin’s widow, had given her daughter her blessing then no one, not even Butros, would dare to raise his hand against Jasmin. No one would welcome her in, of course, but they wouldn’t seek to take her life and her husband’s.
Jasmin often went for walks with Rana and told her how much she loved her husband, and how little religion mattered in all decisions of the heart. The best known of all Sufi scholars lies buried in Damascus, Ibn Arabi, who seven hundred years ago cried, “Love is my religion!” The Syrians venerate him so much that they have called the whole quarter of the city around his mosque after him.
But Rana’s parents refused to see her aunt. She was a traitor, cried Rana’s mother, a woman who had abandoned her religion for a Muslim. Her father said nothing, and acted as if he hadn’t even heard his daughter asking him to put in a good word for Aunt Jasmin with Grandmother. Only years later did Rana discover that although Basil had not responded to her at the time out of consideration for his wife, he had gone to Mala in secret and spent a whole night trying to make Samia change her mind.