45. Amira
It was Amira’s thirty-fourth birthday, as she realized only by chance when she cast a glance at her ID before putting it in her handbag. She visited her son Samuel twice a week, and the soldiers on guard and the prison warders always asked to see that document.
She was surprised to think that she was so old already. In fact no one would have taken Amira for more than twenty-five. Her features resembled her mother’s. The family looks followed two lines: she, her sister Jasmin, and her brothers Faris and Musa took after their mother; Butros, Bulos, Mariam, and Basil were very like their father.
Amira’s large eyes and rounded face emphasized her youthful appearance. She was very feminine, yet she gave the impression of strength.
As she passed a white building in Rauda Street she stopped for a moment at the entrance with its imitation Greek columns. Some kind of restaurant was about to open here. It used to be the Nomade de la Nuit club, and painters were busy obliterating the name, covering it with sky-blue paint. In the 1940s the Nomade de la Nuit had been the club for the richest people in Damascus and high-ranking French army officers. When the French left the country and the number of coups scared off the rich Damascenes, the club folded.
She remembered how shy she had been the first time she went there, because her husband had lectured her endlessly on table manners, and the etiquette of dancing, and subjects of conversation to be avoided if you ever wanted to go to the club again. She had been terrified, because it seemed that anything other than breathing quietly could cause a scandal. Louis was a coward. But fear has never been a good teacher to anyone who wanted to find out about the world.
Three or four visits, and Amira had learned the rules of the game and was popular and highly regarded. Her husband, on the other hand, bored everyone by expressing fulsome and diplomatic agreement before his interlocutor had even finished what he was saying. But he was one of the most respected doctors in the city, and a very good match. Sometimes she felt almost grateful to him, for instance when she looked at herself in the big mirror of her bedroom in winter, wearing nothing but Russian mink next to her bare skin, or when she sat beside him in his open Mercedes driving through the streets of Damascus. There were only three Mercedes in the city at the time. Louis Safran was extremely large and stout, but a chance like that came a woman’s way only once in her life. She had had to take it at once.
Amira had been happy to go to the boarding school run by the sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Damascus, where she ultimately met Louis. And she hated her family, who had more time for their blood feud with the Mushtaks than for real life. Her father took no notice of any of his children but Butros, whom he idolized, and if he did happen to recollect that he had other offspring too, Mariam was his favourite among the girls. He treated Bulos like a stranger and a menial, and ignored Amira entirely. As for her mother, she loved only Faris and Jasmin.
When Dr. Louis Safran came to the school to give the girls lessons in hygiene once a week, he took a liking to her. The other girls said he was old and fat, but he was interested in her, and for that alone she was happy to marry him.
She had never for a moment felt any love for him, and love wasn’t what Louis Safran needed. He wanted children to show off and a wife at his side. She had to be beautiful. Apart from that, he preferred to occupy himself with his rich patients and his expensive and hard-to-get cars.
Louis never complained. He was always smiling, but he could give neither her nor the children any affection because he had none in him. He had once told her that the Safran family regarded kissing as a sign of a primitive nature.
But he was always pleased when she outdid his expectations, for instance at the club. Soon all the most respected members were asking after his wife, if Amira happened not to have come that day, so he always begged her to accompany him, because the members included the fifty most prominent men in Damascus.
And what a surprise when, one evening in 1943, she was chosen as the club’s beauty queen! Over thirty wives had stood for election, four of them Parisiennes. Her husband had been proud as a peacock. That evening she fell in love with Jean-Pierre, a dashing French air force officer, who talked about his adventures until she was lying in his arms in some kind of storeroom. He smelled so virile in his summer uniform. Even as a little girl she had been fascinated by athletic men who wore clean uniforms.
Jean-Pierre was a sportsman, and he captivated her with his ready tongue. French is better for love-making than Arabic, she thought. When her lover said “chérie” or “mon amour”, she always felt a tingling sensation run from her ears down her legs to the tips of her toes.
He was a passionate lover but also a charming rogue. He had a mistress in every city; oddly enough she had been able to forgive him that. “You can’t blame a fox for chasing chickens, mon amour,” he had told her, laughing like a naughty little boy.
Her husband didn’t notice that she was in love with the Frenchman, either that first evening or on any that followed. It was an exciting adventure.
Jean-Pierre was bold. One day he phoned: her children were at school, her husband at his consulting rooms, would she like to go for a flight in an airplane? It was the first time she had known what it was like to see the city and its people from above, and she suddenly had a sensation of lightness in her heart, a kind of sublimity. She felt almost like a goddess.
Her passionate love affair lasted three years. Then her air force officer left the country in 1946 with the French troops, making her no promises.
As she went to the prison that morning, Amira’s heart closed itself against grief. She felt her tears evaporating on their way to her eyes. For she felt she had been let down by both her lover and her son. Jean-Pierre had never told her when he was going to leave Damascus, and her son had chosen to take his uncle Butros’s advice without a word to her.
She never did learn just what had happened. Her husband was always repeating, like a parrot: that’s not women’s business. But suddenly Samuel was “her” son. She ought to have brought him up properly, said Louis, instead of entrusting him to that rustic oaf her brother, who had filled the boy’s head with nonsense.
He would never visit the prison with her. He hid behind appointments and the bonnets of his motor cars, but Amira knew better: it was his mother, the arrogant widow Safran, who had forbidden him to visit his son.
Amira could see her son twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays. She walked from her house in the rich Abu Rummana district to the prison in the old citadel near the Suk al Hamidiye. She needed time to herself. For days, she had felt a strange uneasiness.
What kind of a family was it for whose honour Samuel had sacrificed himself? He was the bravest of all the Shahins. He had done what they all wanted, but no one else dared do it. The others hid behind cowardly excuses. Her eldest brother Butros, who had always despised her way of life, had suddenly turned so friendly to Samuel, and even praised her for raising “such a lion”. Only he didn’t dare say such a thing publicly. He was afraid of his mother. Was that just? The boy was blamed for everything, while the rest of family quickly went back to their own lives, just as if Samuel had done the deed for himself alone. He had told Amira that he kept seeing Jasmin dancing towards him in his dreams. The surprise in her eyes when the shots rang out tormented him.
Her brother the lawyer, Basil, would have nothing to do with the case. It was a delicate business, he said. His mother was suing her own grandson for premeditated murder and wanted his legal assistance. So did his sister Amira. He asked both parties to understand that there was really nothing he could do.