That night the gang met in the attic and decided to get their own back on the policeman. But it was a week before Azar could put his wily plan into practice. It was a mild summer night. The policeman was sleeping next to an open window with his pillow almost on the sill when something suddenly exploded right beside him. When he sat up with a roaring in his ears, there was a second explosion. This time he saw a bluish globe of fire floating towards him out of nowhere.
“War, it’s war,” he cried. He pushed his wife from the bed to the floor and flung himself on top of her. The woman, frightened to death, cried angrily that he had crushed her ribs; he’d better get off her at once, she said, and go and see to the children. However, they were sleeping peacefully in the back room, which looked out on the inner courtyard, and like all the neighbours had heard nothing.
Azar’s idea had been to put zinc and hydrochloric acid in a bottle to make hydrogen. He blew two balloons up with the hydrogen, fitting them over the neck of the bottle. The balloons rose into the night air without a sound, while Azar and Suleiman, down in the street, held their long, thin strings and manipulated them. Large firecrackers hung just under the balloons. When the right moment came Azar put a match to one of the strings, which had been soaked in kerosene. The flame shot up it and ignited the firecracker. The force freed the balloon, and it rose towards the sky. The second firecracker was just a little too close to its hydrogen balloon, which went off with a huge bang immediately after the firecracker had ignited. But by that time Azar and Suleiman were well away.
109. Festival of Sacrifice
Farid was just twelve when he ventured into the Muslim quarter on his own for the fist time. He knew from school that this was the day when the Muslims held their great festival of sacrifice. Josef didn’t want to go with him; he thought it would be too noisy and dirty for him there.
Although they lived so close to each other, the Muslim way of life and celebrations were very different from Christian customs. To Farid, Muslims seemed like an exotic race of people who were somehow more physical, colourful, noisier, more forthright than Christians. Later he found another way of putting it: they were more natural.
The cries of the street sellers at their fairground stalls sounded more cheerful than usual. All the houses were decorated, with coloured cloths and rugs hanging from their balconies like banners. Groups of people kept gathering around two or more men performing mock fights. Farid saw a couple of young men in traditional robes, carrying curved swords and small, round, steel shields. They hopped and danced and struck the paving stones with their swords, making sparks fly. Then they attacked one another. It was all well rehearsed, and blows fell only on their swords and shields in a prearranged rhythm.
A few metres away a man was making his horse dance. The horse was decorated too. The man assured onlookers that it was an Arab, although many of them volubly expressed their doubts of his claim, for Arabs are proud horses and run like the wind, but would never dance. Anyway, the animal had much too plump a body for an assil, a genuine Arab horse.
Elsewhere, a fight with bamboo canes looked much more dangerous than the swordfight. The two combatants carried long, thin canes and hard, round leather shields padded with cotton. They met in the middle of a circle formed by the spectators, kissed one another’s fingertips, and took three steps back to show that they were cautious and respected their opponents. Finally they began, each dancing around on his own and striking his shield or the ground with his cane. The canes whirled through the air with a whistling sound that gave you goose bumps. Finally the men went for each other, and the blows they gave were real and not just for show like those in the swordfight. A referee was in charge of the fight and gave the sign when it came to an end.
When the two men acknowledged the applause, gasping for breath, Farid saw the red weals left by the canes coming down on their arms, necks, and faces.
Farid moved on, and for the first time he saw a shadow theatre. Damascus was famous for them at the time. There were none in the Christian quarter, but the Muslim boys at school were always going into raptures about the shadow theatre. A small stage with a screen behind it had been set up in a café, and the place was full. Adults and children alike sat there, enjoying a play about the shadow figure Karagös, a character who was always playing tricks but lost out every time. Farid was surprised to find that the narrator behind the screen on which the shadows moved didn’t care about his language or the sensitivities of the audience. His story was full of terms like “son of a whore”, and “pimp”. The main characters in the story had arses rather than backsides or buttocks, and they didn’t break wind but farted, very loudly. One of them could even work a mill with his farting and keep his whole family on the proceeds. The spectators laughed and slapped their thighs. Suddenly they were all like children. Farid didn’t quite understand what the play was about, but he couldn’t help chuckling too, because Karagös kept doing everything wrong and coming off worst.
The whole quarter was out in the streets celebrating. The houses seemed empty. Christian festivals were the other way round: the streets were empty then, and the houses full of visitors who moved at least once from one building to another, to go on celebrating somewhere new.
Farid happily roamed the streets, eating something now and then, drinking juice and airan, a chilled yoghurt drink, buying himself bags of pumpkin seeds, and several sweetmeats dripping with fat and syrup. He didn’t realize that he was slowly but surely giving himself indigestion. However, although he had terrible diarrhoea that evening he thought he’d never had a better time than at the Muslim festival of sacrifice.
110. Riding a Bicycle
Bicycles were expensive in Damascus at the beginning of the fifties. They were imported, usually from England or the Netherlands, and they cost a fortune. Two or three men at the most in any street owned such a luxurious means of transport. However, there was a bicycle hire place in every quarter. The man who hired out bikes in the Bab Sharki district had his shop on Straight Street, right between Saitun Alley and Abbara Alley. He was a Muslim, and bad-tempered, he looked a mess, and he was always working away on his bicycles. Farid couldn’t remember ever seeing the man drinking tea, smoking cigarettes, or simply sitting about. He was always bent over one of his bikes, or pumping up one of countless tyres. He wasn’t uncivil, but he was taciturn, and in Damascus that was regarded as unfriendly. However, people bought and hired bicycles from him because he asked less than his rival in Bab Tuma. And his bikes were sturdy.
Farid was fascinated by bicycles, but he couldn’t ride one, and didn’t feel brave enough to hire a bike and learn. Azar and Suleiman had learned very quickly. How they did it no one knew, but it was as if they had been riding bikes all their lives. Suleiman could even ride with his hands free, or stand on the saddle and spread his arms. Azar could fling the front wheel up in the air and ride on the back wheel alone. It all looked so easy, but the moment Farid so much as touched the handlebars of a bike it seemed to want to fall over, or at least go in a different direction. It wouldn’t even let him push it.