Farid kept wriggling out of the proposition, but Josef didn’t forget it. When he reminded his friend for the third time, Farid decided to search the wardrobe in his parents’ bedroom, although he had never done such a thing before. Somehow that bedroom was taboo. Elias didn’t like to see him there, and Claire herself always contrived to visit Farid in his own room before he thought of entering his parents’.
Heart thudding, he pulled the heavy door of the wooden wardrobe open. Farid suspected that he might find a secret compartment for forbidden books behind it. But the book lay in full view inside the wardrobe, wrapped in a red cloth. It was a book not about sex but about famous murders in history, and it said expressly, under the long title, that it was unsuitable for women and young people.
“That’s because authors usually don’t know the first thing about women,” said Josef. “They ought to live here with a house full of females, like me, then they’d find out what strong nerves women have. We men are weaklings by comparison.”
Then he read aloud. The book contained accounts of over fifty murders and the punishments, some of them very cruel, inflicted on the murderers. One such execution imprinted itself on Farid’s mind for ever. It was for the murder of General Kléber, Napoleon’s representative in Egypt. The murderer was a destitute student aged twenty-three called Suleiman al Halabi, a Syrian fanatic from Aleppo, who had come to Cairo on purpose to kill the victorious unbeliever. He made his way into the well-guarded French headquarters and stabbed him.
The French staged his execution as a grisly theatrical show. Suleiman al Halabi stepped up on the huge stage, watched by thousands of spectators. After nights of torture, he was a pitiful sight. But appearances were deceptive.
French music played, and a cannon shot announced the opening of the show. The verdict was read aloud. Four sheikhs accused of being in the plot were beheaded. That was just the prelude. An officer stepped up and explained that the hand raised against France was to be burned, and the man’s screams were not to arouse any pity among the spectators, for the condemned man deserved none.
Two soldiers placed the man’s right hand in a brazier where a fierce fire was burning and kept it in place until it was charred and dropped off. But Suleiman al Halabi neither screamed nor wept. He stood there as if he were in another world, looking absently at his torturers.
The little man never uttered another sound until the moment of his death, even under further cruel tortures.
The French occupying power took a final revenge on the city that had sheltered a man like Suleiman al Halabi by bombarding the Old Quarter of Cairo with cannon fire. More than eight hundred dead were found among the ruins.
“Compared to the stories in this book,” said Josef as he reached the last page four nights later, “what our teachers call history lessons are pure distilled shit.”
88. The Photograph
If he tried to remember the first time in his life when he seriously rebelled against anyone, he always thought of a little photograph of himself that he had had taken when he was a boy. He had been twelve at the time. The photo looked harmless enough. Farid was gazing into the distance, seen at a slight angle in the manner then usual for photographic portraits. There was a touch of melancholy in his eyes, although his gaze was determined, almost defiant. His mouth had made only a faint attempt to sketch the friendly smile requested by the photographer.
That day Farid was wearing a dark brown shirt with a broad collar showing above a fawn jacket. In the photo his shirt looked black and his jacket grey. His wavy hair was combed back.
A week earlier Sarah, Saki’s sister, had told him he had beautiful hair, but it would look even better if he rubbed hair oil in and then combed it. That way it would look more elegant, and its black would be more brilliant than his natural muted near-black.
He couldn’t find any hair oil at home. He fished a lira out of his piggy bank and went to the Armenian barber. Claire beamed at him when he came home, and went straight to find her in the kitchen to see if she’d notice.
“What a handsome boy,” she said, hugging him. Then she looked at him again and kissed him on the forehead. “If I were a young girl I’d fall in love with you on the spot. But alas, I must make way for others now.”
He was rather surprised to see so many baking sheets in the kitchen, full of meat pasties and stuffed flatbreads, and the mountains of vegetables waiting to be cooked. The table was also laden with generously filled dishes of salad, rice, and pine kernels. But Farid had no time to linger and ask questions. He went straight over to see Josef, and was surprised to find that his friend didn’t notice any change in him. Then he met Rasuk, Suleiman, Aida, and Antoinette in Abbara Alley, and they didn’t marvel at the new glory of his hair either. He couldn’t go around to Sarah’s place because her brother was in the street with the others at this moment, explaining why he couldn’t invite anyone home. “We can go there again tomorrow, but today they’re all cleaning like crazy because of this big Jewish festival coming up, and the moment they see someone just sitting they find him work to do.”
Disappointed, and cursing his bad luck, Farid mooched off home again, unaware that his father had invited twenty other confectioners to supper. It was only in the front hall of the house that he heard the cheerful noise from the drawing room. He stood still for a moment, glancing at the inner courtyard. There was no one there. He hurried to the right, past the store-room, and into the kitchen. Claire was there, eating by herself at a small table.
“What’s going on?” he asked breathlessly.
“Your father has invited his colleagues to supper to thank them for electing him.”
“Electing him to what?” asked Farid, looking through the kitchen window and into the drawing room, where the tipsy men had just burst into a roar of laughter.
“Your Papa is the top confectioner in Damascus now. It’s a great honour. No Christian has ever held the post before.”
Farid nodded his head in acknowledgement, and hungry as he was quickly put a flatbread stuffed with meat into his mouth. Then he took a second stuffed with sheep’s milk cheese.
“You should sit down to eat,” said Claire. “Or better still, go and say hello to your Papa and his guests first, and then come back here to have a proper meal.”
“Must I?” asked Farid unwillingly. “Why aren’t you with them?”
“It wouldn’t do. They’re Muslims, and it’s not the Muslim custom to eat with strange women. Off you go, now. You only have to say hello and then come back.”
To please her, he went, although he didn’t want to. When he entered the drawing room, a cloud of smoke and the aroma of aniseed met him. The men were laughing.
“Ah, here comes the crown prince,” cried a fat confectioner with bushy eyebrows. Silence followed his words.
“Good evening,” Farid greeted them, almost inaudibly.
“What on earth do you think you look like?” b ellowed his father, who was enthroned at one end of the table, and he pointed to Farid’s oiled hair. “Say hello nicely to the gentlemen and then come here to me.”
Elias was drunk. Farid felt miserable with rage and shame. He shook hands with all the guests one by one and tried to ignore their mocking remarks about his hair, although he also heard some of them speaking up for him. He went on to where his father was sitting, walked past him to go down past the other half of the confectioners’ association, saying good evening to all the men there as well. He began to feel less flustered, for by now the men had stopped taking any notice of him. They were talking to each other again, and merely gave him limp handshakes. But the last man, who was sitting by the door, held Farid’s hand tightly in one of his own and stroked his cheek with the other.