A few days later he saw the first refugees arriving in Damascus. Someone said they were Palestinians and the Jews had driven them out. People were saying they’d go home again in a few days’ time. But Elias shook his head.
71. An Oasis Called Antoinette
Antoinette Farah was dark-skinned and smelled of almonds. Farid had been playing with her as long as he could remember. She lived not far from him, in the blind alley leading to Josef’s house.
Antoinette’s mother liked Farid very much. She often kissed him, much more often than she kissed her own son. Her husband, on the other hand would rather have seen Farid playing not with his daughter but with his lethargic son Djamil, who was two years older than his sister, but more interested in jam sandwiches than playing games. Farid and Antoinette soon found a way to get rid of Djamil. They told him which of the neighbours was cooking something really delicious that day, and he would be off like a shot to stand at that neighbour’s door with a pleading look in his eyes. Everyone liked his generous parents, and accepted greedy Djamil for their sake.
Like Farid, Antoinette thought their own street very boring. She didn’t know any other girls of her own age there. It wasn’t until later that she made friends with Josef’s sister Josephine, who couldn’t stand her own brother either.
Farid went to visit her whenever possible. As soon as Djamil had a sandwich in his hands, or was off tracking down a good meal, the two of them disappeared into the children’s room. The game that Farid liked best was lying on top of Antoinette, particularly on her back, which made him feel pleasantly hot between the legs. But she didn’t like that. It was Djamil who told him one day that Antoinette loved chocolate and would do anything for it. On his next visit Farid brought a chocolate bar with him and showed it to her. Of course she wanted it at once, and he stammered out what Djamil had told him to say. “You can have it if you’ll let me do what I want to you.”
Antoinette glared furiously at her munching brother, but agreed, and lay on the carpet enjoying the chocolate while Farid rocked back and forth on her back.
Djamil’s eyes were glued to the chocolate bar, and he ignored Farid entirely. When Antoinette had finished it and licked her fingers with relish she shook Farid off. “That’s enough for today. Bring me another bar and then you can ride on me again,” she said calmly, adjusting her clothes.
“That didn’t last long,” he protested.
“You can ride me for an hour for every chocolate bar,” said Djamil. Revolted, Farid turned away from him.
“It may not seem very long to you on top, but it’s ages for me underneath. Want to try?” she asked.
He lay on the carpet and Antoinette climbed on top of him. At first he thought it was amusing, but then her rocking weight felt uncomfortable, and the minutes seemed an eternity.
One summer night the Mushtaks visited the Farah family, and after a leisurely meal the grown-ups played cards. Farid had asked to be allowed to sleep over with the Farah children, and the three of them went off to the children’s room next to their parents’ bedroom on the second floor and played games, looking out of the window now and then at the grown-ups enjoying the cool night air down in the courtyard.
Soon Djamil was asleep, and Antoinette showed Farid her latest discovery. She crawled under her blanket with him and raised her legs to make a tent. Where the wool was thick the roof of the tent was dark, but in some places the blanket let the light of the bright lamp in the room come through.
“Look at the sky, and those are the clouds,” she said in the dim light, and then pointed to a tiny hole in the blanket. Light fell through it. “And that’s my star. It visits me every day before I go to sleep.”
Farid wasn’t sure later how long they had played under the blanket. At some point he fell asleep, and his parents had long ago gone home when he suddenly woke up. He heard moans and laughter. When he sat up in the bed he saw that Antoinette was awake too. He could see her face in the light coming into the room from a lamp in the inner courtyard. She put her forefinger to her lips.
“What’s going on? Where am I?” he asked softly.
“In our house. Perhaps …” she said, and hesitated as a loud moan came from the room next door. Her mother was begging for more, and her father was crying breathlessly, “Yes, yes!” again and again.
“They’re making love,” said Antoinette, smiling. “They do that almost every night.”
“Is your Papa hurting your Mama?”
“No, no, he’s necking with her. And she wants more.”
The sound of the woman’s laughter reassured Farid. Antoinette put her head on his chest and stroked his hand. Finally she crawled over to him and kissed him on the lips. Her mouth tasted of peppermint, probably because she had to clean her teeth every evening. It was nice, and Farid kissed her cheek. Her face was hot, and she kissed him on the lips again, holding his hand tight in hers, almost as if she were praying. He pressed it, and felt that she was perspiring. For the first time he smelled her sweat. That night she smelled of almonds and coffee.
She bared her breasts. “You must kiss me here and then they’ll grow,” she said in the dark, raising herself until her little nipple pushed into his mouth. Farid sucked it, and she laughed because it tickled. “Not so hard, or they’ll grow too big,” she whispered, giving him her other breast.
72. The Hammam
Later, the word Paradise always made Farid think of the time when he was still a little boy and could go to the hammam with his mother. They went to the Hammam al Bakri, near Bab Tuma. Wednesday was the women’s day. Antoinette and her mother were always there.
The hammam was a world of its own. In later years, when Farid saw the paintings of the French Romantics idealizing women in the hammam or the harem, he thought their pictures boring by comparison with what he remembered.
The two most beautiful girls there were Jeannette and Antoinette, although they looked very different. Jeannette had pale skin and green eyes. Antoinette’s skin was dark, almost black. Both were maturing rather early, and at the age of ten they already had small breasts and round little backsides.
Jeannette liked playing in the hammam with a blond boy from Ananias Alley. Antoinette, on the other hand, was interested only in Farid. It was she who explained the difference between men and women to him in one of the empty cubicles. Opening her legs, she showed him her vagina. Farid thought it was a wound.
“Have they cut off your little pigeon?” he asked. Children in Damascus called a penis a pigeon in those days, because they thought it looked as if it were sitting on two eggs.
Antoinette giggled. “No, silly. Women keep their little pigeon and its eggs in a nest inside them.”
He didn’t understand, and she giggled again, but promised to tell him all about it. However, she never did, for directly after this he was torn away from his dream of Paradise. Overnight, he wasn’t allowed to go to the hammam with the women any more. Years later Claire told him how the women would hint delicately to a mother that it was time she stopped bringing her son. He laughed, but at the time, aged nine and suddenly banished, he had wept in the courtyard for a whole hour.
“Your son will soon be needing a bride.” That was how the coded information went. If a mother didn’t catch on, the women put it more clearly. “Next time you’d better bring his father too,” they would say.
Claire had taken the hint. “You can go with Papa from now on,” she had told Farid next Wednesday, and set off alone with her things.
So Saturday after Saturday he followed his father to the baths. Elias always went on his own, and if he met any acquaintances it was by chance. He didn’t mind who was there and who wasn’t. The men always conducted boring conversations about business and war, extravagant and unfaithful women, the government and the weather.