55. Beirut, or Deliverance
Two days later Claire and Elias fled to Beirut, where they married in a small chapel. Their witnesses were Elias’s sister Malake and her husband, who had been living in Beirut since their own elopement in 1931.
At first Elias and Claire hid away in a little hotel by the harbour. They didn’t want to stay with Malake, because it was embarrassing to show their love and passionate longing in her house. They made love, wandered along the boulevard by the sea, and ate grilled fish in small restaurants. Then, as if it were a ritual, they lay in the warm sand on the beach and looked up at the sky for a long time.
“What did your fiancé do for a living?” asked Elias.
“He was a bodyguard,” said Claire, a little surprised, because she had told him that on the first day they met.
“Thank God he wasn’t a good bodyguard, or I wouldn’t have had a chance,” laughed Elias.
They hid in the harbour city for three years. At the time it sheltered thousands of refugees, soldiers of fortune, and adventurers. For many of them Beirut was the final stage on their journey, the last they would see of Arabia before they left for America.
Elias thanked his sister for all her help, but he was careful not to spend too much time in her house. He was afraid his father would soon get on his trail. Claire had enough money for the first few months. After they had left their first hiding place, the hotel, they lived in two modest rooms in the Daura quarter. And they still lay on the beach every evening and enjoyed the sight of the infinite starlit sky.
Only Lucia had been taken into the secret of their plans for flight, and she fell for none of the charming tricks employed by George Mushtak when, with his injured pride, he tried to find out where the couple were hiding. She put on a convincing performance as an indignant mother, and in private laughed at the old farmer.
Claire found work as an interpreter for a shipping company. Elias took a job with a confectioner called Gandur, the father of one of his old school friends in the Jesuit monastery. At first Elias just worked as an assistant, but soon he was enjoying it so much that he learned the trade and its mysteries thoroughly. Before two years were up he was a master of the craft himself.
Gandur the confectioner was a clever businessman. He recognized his young employee’s talents, but Elias was far too ambitious to agree to run the branch shop that Gandur was planning. He wanted to go back to Damascus.
When Claire had her first miscarriage, Lucia too urged them to return. After the second miscarriage she came to Beirut herself, and was horrified by her daughter’s condition. She wasn’t happy with the treatment Claire was getting at the hospital, and talked earnestly to Elias until he gave Lucia his word to return to Damascus as soon as possible, for the sake of his wife’s health.
“But what will my father do?” he anxiously asked.
“Oh, we’ll bring him around to it. His feelings are a little hurt, that’s all,” she said. “Apart from that he wouldn’t hurt a fly.” But there she was wrong.
56. Autumnal Atmosphere
They were lying on the beach surrounded by the warmth of the spring night. It already felt like summer. An easterly breeze carried the fragrance of flowers from the mountains out to sea. Elias held Claire’s face in his hands and kissed her eyes. At that moment she felt that a second little heart had begun beating inside her.
“I think I’m pregnant again,” she whispered. Elias could have embraced the whole sky. But an invisible hand clutched her heart. She was anxious. Her two miscarriages were still too close: the pain, the fear, and the empty feeling when it was all over. Elias felt for her, and was very affectionate.
Claire remembered the times after her miscarriages. Elias came to the hospital straight from the confectioner’s after work every day, exhausted, and sometimes fell asleep on the floor beside her. He felt for her hand again and again in the night, whispering quiet words of love so that the others in the ten-bed ward wouldn’t wake up.
Then he slipped out at five in the morning, unwashed and without any breakfast, and went to work. It was touching to watch him leaving the ward with such a youthful spring in his step. Every day Claire fell in love all over again with the small man who could quote any French poet by heart, and now he was working in a confectioner’s shop and still kept cheerful.
The other women envied her Elias, who brought them all chocolates every evening. And they loved his wonderful laugh.
Claire’s third pregnancy came at a most inconvenient time. They had planned to return to Damascus early in June. Suddenly she was afraid to go back, but Elias’s cheerfulness dispelled all dismal thoughts and smoothed out the rugged mountains between Beirut and Damascus into gently rolling hills.
News came from Damascus that her father had been suffering from severe pneumonia since April. She cried a great deal, imagining him sitting in his prison cell and coughing. He had been in jail for three years, and didn’t want his wife to visit him. Their only contact was through his cousins, who fetched money and clean clothes from Lucia for him, and told her how he was. He had a sunny cell, they said, and the prison governor played backgammon with him all day. With the money that Lucia sent him Nagib was able to pay an army of servants and bodyguards, who ensured his safety and made life much easier for him. But out of pride he wouldn’t let his wife see him behind bars. Lucia was more than happy with that arrangement.
The move back to Damascus was the beginning of a lucky streak for Elias. He spent three hours explaining his plan to Claire’s mother at her kitchen table, showed her his calculations, and asked her for a loan of a hundred thousand Syrian lira. Lucia said she wanted ten percent interest, but after tough negotiations she accepted five. Elias could offer only his handshake as a guarantee.
“But if I give you my hand it’s worth more than an agreement with the National Bank of France,” he said quietly, and very courteously.
“The Mushtaks keep their word,” agreed Lucia, standing up. Ten minutes later she came back with a packet. “You can count them. There’s a hundred and ten thousand there. The extra ten thousand are a present; even if you’re just renting a place to live you should furnish it in style, because a confectioner lives by his reputation for prosperity. You’ll bring me five hundred lira in interest on the first of every month.”
Elias was touched, and also full of admiration for his mother-in-law, who was so trusting and generous to him, while at the same time surreptitiously raising the interest by half of one percent. He smiled, and she understood without words that her son-in-law had already worked it all out to the third decimal point. Lucia patted him on the shoulder and said, as he left, “No bank will accept your love for my daughter as surety for a mortgage, you know.”
Elias did not reply. Only on their way home did he tell Claire what had been going on in her mother’s kitchen while she was reading in the drawing room.
“And she let you have the hundred thousand?”
“A hundred and ten, and now I’m setting to work on my plan,” replied Elias.
Autumn of the year 1938 was mild and long. Damascus is at its most beautiful in that season. It wasn’t so hot now, and the swallows were filling the air with their farewell songs before they left for Africa. Damascus was colourful for the last time, as if the city were showing its full beauty once more before falling into profound, grey hibernation. Claire had known that atmosphere from her childhood. But this autumn, she believed, would remain in her memory as the best of her life. Her father was freed from prison after serving three years.