Farid felt safe in the dark salon, as if he were in a deep cavern. There were seldom any other customers, and those who did come were old Armenians who engaged in heated debate with Karabet. Here, in this secluded shop, the boy learned to know the world through pictures. Until now life outside his own experience had been only sound and words to him. Elias read nothing but his newspaper, and seldom picked up a book. Claire was a passionate reader of novels. Only years later did she too discover the world of illustrated magazines.
In Karabet’s salon Farid saw photographs from distant lands: wonderful beaches, mountains, deserts, lavishly laid tables, exotic fruits, and all in colour. Actors and politicians, scientists and daring adventurers suddenly had faces too, and he looked at them so often that he felt almost familiar with them.
76. Cats and Bandits
The banisters on the staircase were a metre away from the roof of the aniseed warehouse, and the drop between them was four metres. Once Farid had landed safely on the warehouse roof he could make his way to the gang’s meeting place unobserved. The other four members walked over the flat rooftops of Damascus too, light of foot and soundless as cats, and met in the attic, which had been disused for years. A large wooden table and a few old chairs had been stored up there for ever. The owners of the building never came up to the attic, and several steps were missing from the stairway leading up from the courtyard of the whole large property.
At Farid’s second meeting, Josef brought out a fat book with a black cover. It contained descriptions of all the secret societies in the world. He never said how he came by such books. Some nights he read chapter after chapter aloud, while the others sat on the large chairs with their legs tucked under them, listening. Farid never met anyone who read aloud better than Josef, either before that time or after it. His husky voice increased the sense of mystery and made his hearers shiver. When he stopped for breath, the air was crackling with the boys’ desire to hear what came next.
At such moments Farid felt how easily he could take off from the earth and fly, light as a feather, to the times and places that Josef brought to life. He felt a particularly close link with the boy on those nights, one that he never felt later with other friends, even those who shared his hiding places when he went underground.
Their tasks were carefully allotted. Azar was responsible for inventions. Josef called him “Gaber”, after the inventor of algebra. Suleiman was to keep on the alert for any rumours. He was nicknamed “Bat”, because he listened to everything in silence. Josef himself was responsible for research into conspiracies and secret societies, and Suleiman dubbed him “Massoni”, freemason. Farid was given what he himself thought far too grand a title, but Josef, who thought he was very brave, gave him the job of defending the gang and called him “Kamikaze”. Rasuk was to report news, and was called just “Journalist”. Their names stuck even when the gang broke up.
Meetings always went on until dawn. Then the boys slipped off over the rooftops, like cats returning from their nocturnal rendezvous, and back to their beds.
77. A Series of Coups
When day dawned over Damascus on 31 March 1949, two armoured cars followed by two jeeps and four army trucks coming from the south reached the Old Town, where they divided into two groups. An armoured car, a jeep, and two trucks drove to the Prime Minister’s house, the other vehicles went to the radio station.
When the armoured car braked sharply outside the Prime Minister’s house, the soldier on sentry duty woke abruptly from an uneasy doze. A sturdily built colonel climbed out of the car. The sentry saluted.
“This is a coup,” said the colonel. The soldier didn’t know what that meant. It was the first time in Arab history that anyone had mentioned such a thing.
“Shall I wake His Excellency?” asked the soldier uncertainly.
“No need,” replied the colonel, turning to his own soldiers, who were now standing to attention. “Fetch him out,” he shouted excitedly.
Two men ran past the sentry into the palace and up the stairs. After a short time the Prime Minister could be heard swearing. Accompanied by the two soldiers, he came out of the house and stared at the colonel without a word. He knew the man: Husni Hablan was an unprincipled servant of the French who had also been in touch with the German Nazis in secret. A worthless character.
The Prime Minister was the scion of an ancient and aristocratic Damascene family, and had insisted on getting correctly dressed before going outside with the soldiers.
“You’ll go on trial for this insult. And you won’t get out of jail again this time,” he finally said, in angry tones. Like the sentry on duty, he failed to understand the situation.
Husni Hablan laughed. “You and your trials — you can lick my arse! I’m the law now, and you’ll be going to jail yourself because I say so.”
The Prime Minister was deeply offended by the colonel’s language. “Take him away,” ordered the leader of the coup, and the soldiers, though still rather hesitantly, led away the man who had just been their prime minister. As if dazed, he walked to the jeep and sat down in his black suit between two unwashed soldiers.
“And now for that other idiot,” cried the officer, telling his column to drive to the hospital where the seriously ill President was waiting for a stomach operation.
Soon the ten men who until now had been the most important people in the state found themselves in prison. That same morning the radio station broadcast some Austrian marching music and then the first communiqué from Husni Hablan, leader of the coup. The Damascenes, who had always hated their governments, rejoiced and danced for days.
Colonel Hablan moved into the palace with his wife and promoted himself to Field Marshal two weeks later. When he discovered from an illustrated magazine that field marshals always carried a baton, he ordered one made of pure gold from a jeweller. The baton, Hablan decreed, was to be large and its shape unique. But the jeweller, though he was pleased to have the order, had never seen a field marshal’s baton in his life, so he modelled it on a rolling pin that he happened to have bought the previous day because he liked its shape.
The Syrians, with their talent for ridiculing all their rulers, said the dictator was under his wife’s thumb. She was always waiting for him with a rolling pin when he came home drunk after visiting whores, and now he’d show her a thing or two!
Husni Hablan acclaimed his own rise to power enthusiastically and often, especially at the American and French embassies. But he soon sensed that the French and Americans wanted to keep him down. He turned away from these allies, feeling suspicious of them. Then he met Anton Saade, an ambitious young adventurer who admired and tried to emulate Hitler. His supporters called themselves Syrian Nationalists, wore black shirts, and copied the swastika as their symbol, but giving it rounded corners that made it look like a toy windmill. The ambitious Saade wanted to unite Lebanon, Syria, parts of Palestine, Iraq, and Jordan under Syria’s leadership. As dictator of Damascus, Hablan applauded the young nationalist’s brilliant idea, and hoped for more respectful treatment from the French and Americans once it was a fait accompli.