Butros knew no one in Damascus who could help. Bulos was a simpleton. That fox Faris was on the side of her mother and Mariam. Amira’s sister hid behind her cynicism. And as for her mother! She’d been the cause of all this misery, after all, and now she was suddenly making herself out grief-stricken! Jasmin was the only one of Samia’s children whom she had loved. She had always been unjust. Whatever Amira or her younger sister Mariam did, she had coldly ignored it and talked only of her wonderful darling.
Jasmin was four years younger than Amira and thought she could trample all over her sister’s feelings. She’d always been outrageous. Even at Amira’s wedding, she had tried to attract attention to herself; she was only thirteen at the time, but much too mature for her age. She had performed a series of belly dances, and the men of Damascus reached out to touch her, encouraging her to show even more vulgarity. Amira’s husband’s family, all of them doctors and architects, had been horrified by the girl’s conduct. Her father-in-law George Safran was still alive then, he had turned his face away so as not to see Jasmin, and her mother-in-law Victoria was spitting venom.
Amira had to ask her father to control the brat, and when Jusuf Shahin growled something to his wife Jasmin stopped, sulked, and soon left the festivities with her mother. Instead of boxing the girl’s ears, her mother even covered up for her, saying that she felt dizzy and they’d both have to go home. Shortly after that, she even said the sight of that poisonous creature Victoria Safran, Amira’s mother-in-law, would always give her a headache.
She had tried covering up for Jasmin’s treachery and shamelessness yet again, but then Samuel intervened. Her brother Butros told Amira that the boy couldn’t be sufficiently honoured for getting in ahead of his grandmother’s wicked plan to humiliate the family forever. Samuel, he said, had acted for the honour of the clan, like a razorblade separating a shameful encumbrance from the family name.
Still lost in the labyrinth of her restless thoughts, Amira reached the rusty old gate of the citadel of Damascus, which had seen better days since Saladin’s time. It stood on an arm of the river which was now just a stinking sewer. Rats scurried everywhere, disappeared into their holes, came out of other holes and looked suspiciously at human beings. Amira woke from her daydreams in alarm when one of them crossed the street. It had almost passed over her foot. She must have uttered a small scream in her fright.
Then Shukri, that sun-tanned, bright-eyed young officer smiled at her. He was standing in the gateway watching the passers by. Still smiling, he asked in his deep voice what brought such a pretty princess to this grubby area.
“Fate, First Lieutenant,” replied Amira, almost bashfully. He shook hands with her. His was a strong hand.
“And what’s the name of this fate?” he asked.
“Samuel Safran,” she replied.
“Ah, that courageous lad. Well, just come with me,” he said, knocking softly at the small spy hole let into the right-hand side of the gate.
A soldier opened the gate, and Amira went down the corridors beside the first lieutenant, whom everyone greeted respectfully. Doors swung open, no one asked to see her ID. The officer led her down a passage to a short staircase, and then entered a large, bright room with flowers in it, a large desk, a new sofa, and two chairs.
“Do sit down until the soldier brings your son,” he said politely, picking up the phone and relaying an order. His eyes wandered over her body, and she felt a hot beam of light scorching her skin beneath her dress, not too strongly, but giving her goose bumps. She couldn’t help thinking of her old physics teacher. He always tried to tell them that eyes don’t emit light. Poor old fool, she thought, moistening her lips to make her lipstick shine, and smiling.
46. The Opportunity
Faris told his mother, only a week after the funeral, that proof existed of the fact that his brother Butros had incited that fool Samuel to attack Jasmin. Samia wouldn’t believe it, and still less would she believe the reasons why, as he said, Butros had arranged for his sister’s murder in such haste. His main aim, Faris told her, had been to hurt his mother, because if Samia had been reconciled with Jasmin it would have been a bitter pill for Butros to swallow. He wouldn’t have been undisputed head of the clan any more, the one who made the life and death decisions. Instead, she would have retained the highest authority. So Butros had passed sentence of death on his sister, and he saw that it was carried out.
Samia listened carefully. She had always feared jealousy among her own sons, so she distrusted any negative remarks made by one of the brothers about another.
“Nonsense, Faris! Butros is a man of high calibre. I never disputed his position as head of the clan, but it wasn’t for him or even the President of the state to make decisions about my daughter’s life, that was only for Jasmin herself and God. That’s why we quarrelled. Anything else is just a wicked insinuation,” she reproved him.
Faris kept calm. “He promised him the black stallion,” he replied quietly but firmly, “and a very special pistol. He’ll take the horse to Damascus himself, Butros said, on the day Samuel comes out of prison. Wait, Mother, and you’ll see that your son Faris isn’t lying to you.”
Faris never returned to the subject. Samia tried to be composed in her treatment of Butros, who was being extremely charming to her. But the doubt that Faris had sown in her mind kept returning. Suppose her son Butros really had ordered her daughter’s murder? It was at night most of all that she felt abhorrence for him: a peasant ready to sacrifice a life to win mastery over a dunghill. She discovered that even after decades in Mala she was still a city woman at heart.
One cold day in late February 1951, Amira went to Mala with her husband and young First Lieutenant Shukri, to visit Butros. Faris was able to overhear their conversation from a bedroom above the drawing room of his brother’s apartment. He discovered that Samuel was to come out of jail on 10 April, and a party would be held for him. Amira was going to invite her brothers Butros and Bulos. Their mother refused to see Amira and her husband.
Amira praised First Lieutenant Shukri who, she said, had done so much to ease Samuel’s time in prison, and Butros gave the man handsome presents of wine, honey, and pistachios. From his hiding place, Faris could also see Amira coming out on the balcony with the officer several times to show him the view of the village, while her husband talked to Butros and his wife.
When the visitors went back to Damascus, Faris hurried off to see his mother. “Butros is going to take his finest horse to Damascus on April the 10th, as a present for Samuel when he comes out of prison,” he told her, his voice as quiet as ever.
Samia pretended to take it calmly. “Why, he wouldn’t even give his wife that horse!” she said, laughing. But her laughter was full of uncertainty, and matters turned out worse than she had expected. Butros led the horse out to his horse box and drove him to Damascus on 9 April. He planned to be at the prison gates with the horse early next morning. From her window, Samia watched him leave. His wife and two children sat in the Chevrolet, which also belonged to Butros, with Bulos and Bulos’s wife.
The brothers hadn’t even said goodbye to their mother. They were slipping away like thieves in the night to celebrate a murderer’s release, thought Samia, and Faris encouraged her. She considered Bulos far too stupid to take any responsibility for what had happened, and his morale had snapped anyway from the grief of childlessness. At first it had been thought that his wife was infertile, but then the doctors found out that he was the one who couldn’t father a child. Since then his wife had humiliated him day and night for the injustice he had done her.