In the afternoon — by which time all the meat was sold — the butcher rose from a brief siesta and strolled through the village and past his shop with his goats, about ten of them, and his sheep, taking them to the nearby fields to graze on thyme, thistles, basil, parsley, grapes, roses and anything else they found. That was what made the meat he sold so popular. The surprising thing, however, was that as they passed his shop the goats looked at it, stopped, bleated in agitation for a moment, and only then did they obey the butcher’s imperious call.
“The nanny-goats know all about it. They don’t just wail like the sheep, they’re telling their friends exactly where they’re going,” said Claire, who affectionately called the animals “the Devil’s daughters”.
84. Secrets
The school vacation hadn’t even begun when Farid realized, in horror, that his father had planned the summer ahead for him in every detail. If Elias didn’t want to go to Mala he thought up some reason to keep his family in Damascus too. This time it was repairs to the house that Claire must supervise, since he had more than enough to do at the confectioner’s shop. There were ten weddings imminent in the Christian quarter alone, and he had to provide mountains of sweetmeats for each of them.
“And I’ve found you two jobs,” he casually told Farid, as if the matter had only just crossed his mind. “You’ll spend the mornings with Abdullah the calligrapher, and the afternoons with the perfumier Sheikh Attar. He’s the best creator of fragrances in town. You’ll like working with both of them.”
“Why two?” asked Claire. “Wouldn’t one job be enough?”
Elias ignored her. “You start with Abdullah at nine on Monday.” Farid knew the calligrapher’s workshop; Abdullah was a friend of his father’s. Whenever he went there with Farid they spent some time together, and Elias sometimes felt embarrassed about it and bought some examples of fine calligraphy, usually quotations from the Koran. Later, at some suitable opportunity, he would give them to his own Muslim customers, since he wasn’t about to hang up passages from the Koran at home.
“So where’s the perfumier’s shop?” asked Farid, knowing that his father wouldn’t put up with any protests.
“Ten minutes’ walk from here, on the way to the Buzuriye. You’ll learn a lot from old Sheikh Attar, he’s a real magician.”
The calligrapher was a shy, stiff, elderly gentleman. Farid had to start by polishing the workshop until it shone, and then he spent several days learning how to clean, sharpen, and trim pencils, pens, quills, and reeds and set them out for his master. Weeks passed before Abdullah finally said anything about calligraphic script itself. “It is the shadow of the voice,” he said quietly, and handwritten script must be as clearly formed as shadows under the Arabian sun.
Farid learned what the calligrapher told him, made tea for him and his customers, fetched water and ran errands for his master. It was very hard work. All the same, he was happier there than at the perfumier’s shop, where he went after the siesta. At first he liked Sheikh Attar’s smile, but then he found out that it was only a mask. The man was cold as ice. He just wanted to use Farid as cheap labour. He put a seat outside the shop for him, and the boy was supposed to encourage passers by to go in and visit the master perfumier. But Farid himself was never to enter the place.
When he told Claire about it in the evening she didn’t believe him, but next day she checked for herself, watching from a distance and seeing her son sitting on a stool outside the shop, looking forlorn. The sight did away with any scruples she might have had.
“This is not what we sent him here for. He isn’t learning anything at all,” she informed the perfumier in civil but determined tones.
“I don’t have any other job for him,” replied the master, with his mask-like smile. “I can’t let anyone into the secret of my perfumes.”
“Then we’ll part company, with thanks for your hospitality,” said Claire, patting Farid on the shoulder. “Come along, let’s go.”
They went to eat an ice at the Bakdash ice cream parlour in the Suk el Hamidiye, and then set cheerfully off for home. Claire said she would tell Elias about the end of this particular job that evening.
But Farid enjoyed going to the calligrapher, and Abdullah himself liked his young employee and his interested questions. He even began to smile a little. And when the summer was over, he had at least told the boy about the mistakes that a calligrapher must not make, and had agreed that the boy could go on coming to help him out any time.
So during the following school year Farid continued his training with the calligrapher. Whenever he felt like it he took the bus to go and see Abdullah, who always gave him some work to do. Usually it was filling in the characters on large advertising posters. The master painted the outlines of the characters with a thin brush, and the rest of it was tedious, time-consuming work, but it taught Farid patience.
He spent six weeks with Abdullah next summer too, before going to Mala with Claire and Elias for their vacation. From then on Abdullah even gave him exercises to take home. Usually he had to write out certain sayings in one of the seven different kinds of script that he now knew.
Later his master taught him the technique of calligraphic reflection. This was pure pleasure to Farid, and quite often it made him forget the time entirely. Playing with reflections fascinated him so much that even at home he could sit up until late at night over a picture in which a triangular calligraphic figure was reflected six times around the centre of a circle, producing a geometrical game and a maze for the eye to follow.
His father was deeply moved when, at Christmas, Farid gave him a calligraphic version of the name “Elias Mushtak” in the form of a circular ornament. The script was in gold on an olive green background; both were his father’s favourite colours. Elias couldn’t take his eyes off the picture.
“Did you do that all by yourself? Did Master Abdullah help you?”
“No, no, I did it by myself here at home. I’m sure Master Abdullah would find all sorts of mistakes in it. I’d rather you didn’t let him see it,” said Farid, smiling awkwardly.
Elias gave his son ten lira that day. He had never given him so much money all at once before. “Go and buy yourself the best paints, brushes and pens. And if the money isn’t enough, come back to me,” he said. Two days later his name in Farid’s fine calligraphy was hanging in a frame on the wall over the cash desk at the confectioner’s shop.
Farid scribbled and practised on every piece of paper that he found. Before two years were up he was known as “the boy with the beautiful handwriting”. He was only eleven.
He didn’t guess what his reputation might do for him. Girls weren’t very interested in the pieces of paper on which he wrote their names in curving script, but their mothers suddenly discovered his talents. They asked him in, turned on the charm for him, and after a while they came to the point. Would he write a letter for them, please? Those were strange sessions, in rooms where the daylight was dimmed because the women drew their curtains to guard against the neighbours’ prying eyes, and sent their children out to play in the street when they were going to tell Farid what was on their minds. They had loving letters to send their absent husbands, sons, siblings, and friends.
At first he just wrote down everything the women poured out to him, but as time went on he reworked the texts himself so that they really did sound like love letters. Later came a third phase in which he listened only to the main points and then used his own intuition to write the love letter. Once he had found the right way to say something he repeated it word for word to all the husbands. Their wives rewarded Farid with chocolate, delicious rolls, and candies, and if they were really delighted with their letters they even gave him a hug.