Opposite the control centre, in the right wing of the convent building, the lieutenant with the tattooed nose sat alone in a room that he had requisitioned as his office. From there, he watched the comings and goings in the square. He too had to be asked for permission to bring the blankets, to allay any suspicions he might have.
Amira was running back and forth, and when the nocturnal cold increased she asked the officers whether at least the older guests, still sitting on their uncomfortable chairs, might not be allowed to go home. The officers sent a soldier to ask the control centre. He quickly came back with the answer no. Amira felt contempt in the peasants’ weary eyes.
Her husband Louis had already dropped off to sleep. He was never awake after midnight, even at the club. Her brother Faris grinned at her. She went over to him. “What am I to do? Please help me,” she pleaded.
“He who leads a donkey to the top of a minaret must lead it down again,” he replied. She hated this proverb, much-cited by her mother: quintessential coldness of the heart wrapped up to look like wisdom. Her brothers Basil and Bulos were just sitting there too, but at least they showed some sympathy. The hours dragged slowly by.
Amira was standing in the middle of the circle of tables. Lost in thought, she looked up, and suddenly thought that the abbess had smiled at her and signed to her to come closer. Later she realized that in her weariness she had just imagined it, for even the mistress of the convent had fallen asleep with her eyes half-closed. As Amira took a step towards her she suddenly felt a strong hand pulling her back by her shoulder. A young soldier was smiling awkwardly at her, and showed her where she was to go. Looking up, she saw the lieutenant with the tattooed nose standing at his window. He beckoned her to come up to him.
Ever suspicious as he was, he probably feared she might assassinate the President, she thought, and she laughed on her way up the marble staircase leading to his room. Perhaps she ought to pretend a little, and then ask his advice. Many primitive, small-minded people feel obliged to show magnanimity if you flatter them enough.
She knocked. The door immediately opened, and a rough hand reached for her soft arm. He pulled her into the room so brutally that she lost her balance and stumbled. A blow to her neck sent her flying forward over an empty desk.
“Christian whore! Why are you always stirring up trouble? Why can’t you let it alone?”
She didn’t understand. She couldn’t straighten up either, because he had grabbed her by her long hair, twisting it swiftly into a ponytail, and was keeping her upper body pushed down on the desk top with his free hand. “Don’t move or I’ll kill you,” he spat. She didn’t know what this was all about, but next moment the Bedouin was pulling her panties down and thrusting himself into her. She felt pain. Everything inside her was dry; she couldn’t even weep. A slap stifled her scream. “Be glad I’ll waste my time on you. I ought really to have you shot. You lured our President into a trap. It’ll be the worse for you if his enemies discover that our master drank strong liquor in this Christian dump. I’ll slit you open with my own hands,” he groaned in a savage voice, hitting her on the back of her head.
She felt terrible fear rising in her. Suddenly she understood why her lover Shukri hadn’t wanted to come to the birthday party for the President. He had explained his reasons, but she had reacted indignantly and said he just wanted to let her down. However, Shukri had repeated patiently, “I love you, but I don’t like attending such occasions. Rulers are beasts of prey, and when they eat and drink deep, they can strike out blindly and break your neck. I’m not taking part in anything like that until I’m a colonel, and then I’ll be a beast of prey myself.”
“This is the only kind of language the likes of you understand,” said the lieutenant with the tattooed nose, bringing her back from her thoughts into this dark room where she lay on her stomach over the desk, while this monster thrust faster and faster into her from behind. Suddenly he grunted like a boar.
When the man with the tattooed nose let go of her hair and collapsed into an armchair, she pulled up her torn panties and ran out. He didn’t try to stop her. She hurried downstairs and along a corridor to the lavatories, where she threw up. Then she spent a long time washing herself, rinsed her mouth with gurgling water, spat it out, and finally ran a broken comb lying beside the mirror through her hair. Finally she left the place.
About four in the morning Colonel Shaklan woke with a start. Amira was sitting hunched on a chair beside her husband. She had stayed awake the whole time, afraid that the lieutenant with the tattooed nose might attack her again. She had chosen a place where the monster couldn’t see her from his window.
“Who gave the murderer my address?” shouted the President, his eyes red and confused. He roared it out in such a loud voice that everyone who had nodded off woke up.
Captain Tallu hurried up and immediately took the President to his car. On the way Shaklan told him how he had dreamed, yet again, of a young Druse from the south shooting him at the door of a villa in Brazil. He was still dazed by this recurrent nightmare. So he took no notice of anyone, not even the abbess standing there in the light of dawn offering him her hand. He didn’t say goodbye to his hosts, but ignored them all as if they were insects or pebbles.
Captain Tallu, relieved that the party was over, laughed and told Shaklan at length about a book that he had just finished reading. It was called The Dreams of Rulers. “Napoleon,” said Tallu, “had a recurrent dream of swimming back and forth between Corsica and Sardinia. And Hulagu Khan, who conquered Baghdad in the year 1258 and had the greatest library in the world of his time thrown into the Tigris, was always dreaming that he had turned to stone and was a statue standing at the foot of a mountain, facing the sea. Longing for that unattainable distance stabbed him to the heart, and he was angry with the gulls that kept landing on his head and shitting on him.”
They both laughed and got into the armoured car. The other servants of the state and those representatives of its power who had come to Mala with the President followed in the other black limousines. And in the village, two hundred voices cursed both the President and the Shahin clan.
Basil, the Mushtaks’ faithful servant, had watched the whole thing from a place where he had been hiding. When the President and his men left, he waited a little longer and then went quietly down the alleys to the village square. Day was only just dawning when he opened the gate of the large Mushtak property. He couldn’t wait to tell his news, so he woke his master and told him, with a grin, about the humiliation of the Shahins and their supporters.
The grateful Salman kissed his faithful employee’s weary face, and felt stronger than ever before in his life. He decided to donate a large sum to the church of St. Giorgios next Sunday, the thirteenth of July, in thanks for God’s grace.
Amira went back to Damascus with her husband without saying goodbye to Susan, who was still waiting. From now on she wore her hair very short, which suited her even better, and she never told her lover Shukri about the man with the tattooed nose.
Shukri, to bring this part of the story quickly to its close, truly loved Amira and remained unmarried for her sake. But Amira didn’t want to leave her husband. Shukri made his career in the army, and even rose to the rank of general in 1966. A year later, however, he and a handful of other officers were shot when they tried an amateurish coup, and failed miserably.
At the end of July 1952, two weeks after the disastrous birthday party, Butros Shahin was found stabbed to death in his prison cell. No one ever found out who did it. His widow left Mala for ever, and went to live in Damascus with her three sons and her daughter. She never wanted to see any member of her husband’s family again.