Shaklan was fascinated by Prussia, the German army, and above all Hitler. He was impressed by Leni Riefenstahl’s movie Triumph of the Will, which he watched once a week in the private cinema of the presidential palace. He imitated the Germans even in his uniform and the way he staged his appearances.
Shaklan was at the peak of his power in the spring of 1952. He did not yet guess that only six months later rebellions would be breaking out everywhere. Amira felt there could be no better moment than this to help her disgraced brother Butros. In prison, he had shrunk to a picture of misery.
Amira’s lover, First Lieutenant Shukri, advised her to go straight to Colonel Shaklan in this delicate matter. It was beyond his own competence. He had been able to help her with her son’s case, but there was nothing he could do here without burning his own fingers.
“You must pluck up courage and go to the very top. Approach Colonel Shaklan through Captain Tallu, his right-hand man, invite the ruler of all Syria to Mala, give him a magnificent banquet, and then send Butros’s wife and children in tears to kiss his hand and ask for clemency. They may be able to soften his heart that way, because harsh as he can be, the colonel is very sentimental. Particularly about tearful children,” said First Lieutenant Shukri, briefly drawing on his cigarette. “And you can soften up Tallu by giving him a horse. Your brother has plenty of horses,” he added, accompanying Amira to the door of his small apartment in the Midan quarter. As they said goodbye he held her close again, kissed her lips, and swung her up in the air in his powerful arms. He was enchanted, as always, by her femininity. Amira felt dizzy with desire, but she had to go. “Don’t eat me up with your kisses! I must hurry before Louis gets home. We have the Bishop coming to dinner this evening.” She tapped him on the buttocks, and when he looked crestfallen she caressed his face. “Another time, my handsome stallion,” she said, laughing, and she left.
Captain Tallu thanked her for the fine horse, and liked the idea of the invitation. He cast a brief glance at the President’s engagements diary. “You can give him his birthday party on 12 July. For three hundred people. A hundred to come with him, two hundred from the village. Only Colonel Shaklan himself can pardon Butros, because the penalty for smuggling arms plainly says life imprisonment.” Without getting to his feet, he offered her his limp hand. Amira was amazed that such a physically feeble man could be so powerful.
Shukri’s advice was pure gold, thought Amira as she left. If she could get her brother out of jail she would be worshipped like a saint in the village. And Butros’s wife Susan immediately and enthusiastically went along with her suggestion. So far Susan, from a Damascene family, had lived in her husband’s shadow, almost invisible. Now she saw her chance. With this birthday party, she would not only help her husband but defeat her mother-in-law. Everyone would know that her connections reached all the way to the President himself.
12 July 1952 was a hot Saturday. The forecourt of the convent of St. Thecla was sprinkled with water early in the morning and then decorated with loving care. Flowers in pots, rugs, banners and garlands gave it a festive air. Three cooks and countless kitchen maids worked wonders in the great kitchen of the convent, preparing an abundance of everything for the guests. The banquet was to begin at six in the evening, when the temperature had dropped slightly. The President’s seat of honour was protected from the heat all day by a sun umbrella. Marksmen were stationed on every rooftop that had a view of the decorated forecourt.
About fifty officials in civilian clothing checked up on the guests with ruthless lack of ceremony, and many of the locals were indignant about such treatment, but Amira mollified them. It was the usual practice, she said, for men to have a hand put between their legs to see if they were concealing a pistol or sharp knife down there. The inspectors also confiscated any other large implements that looked as if they might pose a threat. “You could strike an ox dead with that,” one of them roughly told an old man, putting his heavy wooden walkingstick aside for safe keeping. It was fitted with a large, wedge-shaped piece of metal, which did indeed look dangerous, but was really just a harmless key, with wards made to fit exactly into the holes that would unlock his door.
Late that afternoon the first black limousine appeared in the distance. A peasant announced the news, and excitement spread. Then came the second, then a third. In the end there were sixty cars. They wound their way up the last few bends in the road like a black snake.
Teachers and pupils from the school stood at the entrance to the village, waving little flags. It was rather a sparse reception committee, but Mobate the village elder had found it difficult to muster even that number, since none of the Catholics wanted to wave to the head of state. Many of them stayed at home out of loyalty to the Mushtaks.
The column of cars churned up hot dust in the faces of the children and teachers, and went purposefully on across the eerily empty village square and so to the festive forecourt, which could be identified from afar by all the banderols and the colourful flags and banners. Up there all the guests were happy to think that the most powerful man in Syria was going to celebrate his birthday with them. Birthdays were never usually celebrated in Mala.
Mobate stood squarely in fourth place behind the abbess, the Shahin family, and the Orthodox notables of the village.
“Colonel, this is the happiest day of my life. Please consider me your loyal servant,” he said, reciting his laboriously learned welcome, and he shook the President’s hand vigorously. The President laughed and looked at the next man in line, the stout sheikh of the little village mosque, who was so scared that he mumbled into his beard a quotation from the Koran which even he didn’t understand. The President smiled.
Apart from Butros’s wife Susan, absent from the reception because she was to make her own entrance, almost all the important men and women of the village were there. Only Samia Shahin was absent, and of course all the adherents of the Mushtaks from the Catholic quarter.
Mariam, Butros’s sister, had come on her own, as usual. Bulos, Basil, and Faris, however, had brought their wives with them at their sister Amira’s invitation. They all wanted to take their chance of a personal meeting with the most powerful man in the state.
Laying on the charm, Colonel Shaklan cracked jokes with the small group of his hosts, telling them that he had often heard of Mala, but had never had time to visit that beautiful village before. And then, when Captain Tallu whispered something in his ear, he thanked Amira for her kind invitation and warm welcome. She took the hand held out to her, curtsied as she had been taught to do at school, although she had never had any occasion to drop a curtsey before, and said in a faltering voice, “We are all your soldiers, O hero of the Republic.”
The seats next to the head of state were carefully allotted. The abbess sat on his right, his friend Captain Tallu on his left. Two bodyguards in black uniforms with their machine guns levelled stood behind his tall chair. No one was to move about behind the President.
The three hundred birthday party guests sat crammed together at the huge circular table that had been set up, but a space about five metres wide was left empty opposite the President so that his view wouldn’t be obstructed. There was also a gap in the huge circle opposite the kitchen. Only carefully pre-selected waiters were allowed to approach the President and serve him. Over to one side, but within view of the large table, about fifty soldiers of his special unit were eating without taking their machine guns off their shoulders.
A single person was coordinating the whole occasion: Amira, who had shown amazing talent for making plans and carrying them out in the last few days before the party. By now she knew all the security officers and soldiers who had been checking the region for three days to defuse any bombs that might have been planted. Amira got on well with all of them except a certain Lieutenant Hamad, she didn’t know his surname. He was really far too old for his low rank, he wore a baggy uniform, and he had an ugly tattooed nose. Lieutenant Hamad was a Bedouin, and Amira didn’t like the Bedouin, whom she considered savages. But he was constantly at her heels, gripping her arm firmly and asking the same stupid questions. He was suspicious and hated Jews, Christians, and women. He was always asking: Where are you going, little lady? Is the cook a Jew? Did he maybe marry a Jewess? You don’t look much like a patriot, do you? Is the abbess an Arab? Why does she speak with that accent? And hundreds of other such questions. He kept grabbing her bare upper arms, and his rough fingers bored into her flesh and left red marks behind.