“He’s a prodigy of nature,” a young officer told her. “He can sniff out truffles and gunpowder three metres away. He used to make his living selling truffles, but then the President discovered him and found out about his wonderful nose.” Hamad had already saved the President from three assassination attempts, the officer added, so no one must touch a hair of his head.
The party began. A small group of girls in folk costume did a dance, a singer did his best to perform a hastily written verse celebrating the hero Shaklan’s birthday, and Mobate insisted on making a short speech saying nothing at all. Then two of the Shahins’ grooms, riding the finest horses, did equestrian tricks in the middle of the large circle surrounded by the tables. Tallu had tears of emotion in his eyes.
Finally the meal was brought in: prettily arranged platters of delicious appetizers, fragrant warm bread, drinks cooled with chunks of ice. A whole truckload of ice had come in from Damascus the day before.
Next the main course was served: lamb stuffed with rice, pistachios and raisins, roasted until it was nicely browned, along with excellent salads, and as if all that wasn’t enough it was accompanied by mountains of kibbeh, tabbuleh, and stuffed vine leaves.
By agreement with the security officers, Amira had planned for Susan, Butros’s wife, to appear about nine o’clock with her four children Jusuf, Bulos, Taufik and Barbara. Then the abbess would ask His Excellency to give her a hearing, whereupon Susan and the children were to kneel down in front of the table and ask the President to show clemency to Butros, head of their family and the breadwinner. After that they’d see what happened next.
The President’s bodyguards and close friends knew that he was a heavy drinker. He might make pious speeches in support of Islam, and he was very good friends with the Saudi royal house, he went on pilgrimage and he prayed in public, but at the same time he loved Irish whiskey. Amira had bought a whole bottle of the best whiskey for him in a Damascus delicatessen.
That evening, however, President Shaklan was trying the sixty-percent strength arrack distilled in Mala, cooled with ice, and he liked it so much that he partook freely. Later he had heavy red wine served, brought at the abbess’s request from the convent’s own wine cellar. It was a sweet, sticky wine with a seventeen percent alcohol content, and was usually drunk from tiny glasses as an aperitif.
Just before eight Colonel Shaklan cracked a small joke, which Tallu, who knew him well, saw as an indication that in two seconds’ time the light in his master’s brain would go out. In the darkness now falling over him, the President looked at the abbess and told her, “You’re a lovely gazelle. Like Leni Riefenstahl.” Then he collapsed face down on the table. Tallu swiftly propped him up again.
The President came back to his senses for a moment or so and was alarmed. “What happened? Don’t let anyone leave the room!” he shouted across the square. His words echoed back from the rocks in the silence that had followed the crash as he collapsed. “Don’t let anyone leave the room!”
Then the President lapsed back into unconsciousness. He went to sleep lolling sideways in his chair. As if at a word of command, the soldiers of his special unit, who had been laughing and eating just now, took the safety catches off their rifles and moved two or three metres closer to the guests. The abbess sat there white and rigid as an unpainted plaster statue.
It was already getting dark, the last brightness in the sky would disappear any moment now. Large lights came on. The whole table was brightly illuminated, like a film set. But it was a silent film.
Just before nine the unsuspecting Susan came tripping up the steep path from the Shahin property to the square where the festivities were taking place. She reminded her children once again not to forget that the way they behaved now could save their poor father. Jusuf, the eldest, was seventeen, Bulos was fifteen, Taufik fourteen, and Barbara twelve.
But when Susan and the children reached the square, they stopped in alarm at the sight of the soldiers holding at bay the birthday guests around the figure of the President, who was slumped at a strange angle in his chair. For an instant Susan thought he had been shot. The bodyguards in their black uniforms standing stiffly behind the chair reinforced that impression.
“The President’s dead,” Jusuf whispered into his brother Bulos’s ear.
“Keep your mouth shut!” his mother hissed quietly. Barbara giggled with excitement. And Taufik, fascinated, looked at the soldiers in their camouflage gear.
Amira saw her sister-in-law and hurried to meet her. The security officers wouldn’t let anyone else move about freely, and she was trying to reassure everyone that the party would soon resume. Mountains of fruit, ices, and nuts were ready in the kitchen. Amira’s long black hair lifted behind her in the cool breeze that made it a little easier to sit waiting in suspense.
“Go back with the children,” she told Susan breathlessly. “The President’s drunk, he’s sleeping it off. We’ll have to wait. I’ll send you word when he wakes up again.” There was a note of pleading in her voice, for she could see the bitter disappointment in her sister-in-law’s face.
“All right, we’ll go back,” said Susan, narrow-lipped. “Let’s hope this wasn’t for nothing. That fine horse, all that money!”
“But I want to wait here,” insisted Taufik, who would have liked to stay with the soldiers. Without a word his mother took him by the ear, and he shrieked, although it hadn’t hurt him in the least. He was probably toying with the idea that the soldiers might come to his rescue, but no one took any notice of him, and when Jusuf kicked his backside he ran down the steep path, howling.
His grandmother Samia had heard the shouting in her room, and suddenly the rancour vanished from her heart. Smiling broadly, she said with malicious glee, “This is about to go wrong, like everything Amira touches!” And if anything she was understating it.
Out in the square, the President was still asleep. Soon Captain Tallu, who seemed to know just how long his master’s slumbers would last, followed his example. But the guests couldn’t even talk, and when all the carafes and jugs of water were empty they were offered nothing more to drink. They just sat there in an oppressive silence, staring into space.
A room in the left wing of the convent, with a window looking out on the square, was commandeered as a temporary control centre. The security officers sat feverishly discussing every step to be taken. It was something new, even for them, to see their lord and master suddenly fall asleep in public. But they knew how bad-tempered he was when woken from a nap. Messengers ran down to the officers in the square to whisper instructions, soldiers hurried upstairs with news of the latest developments.
At about one in the morning, when it grew cold, the nuns found lightweight blankets in the convent so that two soldiers could cover the President up carefully, leaving only his head free.