In return the colonel received a barely legible letter written in pencil, which ran:
From Tanios, the slave of God, to Colonel
Shaklan, who calls himself lord of Damascus.
God alone is lord of all cities and all creatures. We
do not trust city folk. First agree to our demands, and
have them read out in all churches and mosques,
and put in all the newspapers.
The earth, like the sun, belongs to all men.
Every farmer may plant and eat as much as he needs.
Every man may light a lamp whenever he wishes.
The right to the first night is repealed.
All peasants may wear patent leather shoes.
Colonel Shaklan smiled at the peasant’s naivety, but his advisers warned him that what Tanios was asking was the first step towards communism. Shaklan had better send his troops to kill the peasant leader, they said.
Three thousand infantry set out into the mountains in February 1953. Exactly a week later, Damascus had lost all contact with the expedition. Together with their cannon, military transports, and fifteen trucks carrying ammunition, they had disappeared into the impenetrable green vegetation of the mountains. Two weeks later, a truck reached the capital with the bodies of twenty-three officers. Rumour said that Tanios had cast a spell over the common soldiers, who had shot all the officers and gone over to the rebel side.
It was a devastating defeat. Colonel Shaklan swore revenge, but then, in May 1953, a great rebellion broke out among the Druses in the south of the country. So the colonel had to send his troops there, but he reinforced supervision of the roads in the north with checkpoints and mobile units of men.
The bus driver seemed to be experienced. At every barrier he had replied to the questions put by the NCOs, which were always the same, in a casual and almost bored tone. He seemed to have all the time in the world, and on their way had kept stopping at some shabby kiosk where only soldiers sat around on old wooden crates drinking tea. They all seemed to know him well.
But now that these armed civilians had stopped him he suddenly fell silent and huddled further and further back in his seat. The officer didn’t seem to trust him. He waved the driver’s ID in front of his face. “In my opinion,” he said, “a man who drives more than three times through the region of these godless folk and hasn’t been shot yet is one of them himself. But unfortunately the government in Damascus won’t listen to me, so you can enjoy your life for a little while longer,” he added with an unpleasant grin, and handed the bus driver his ID back. He did not speak angrily or in loud and threatening tones, but with quiet emphasis, and for that very reason his words had the ring of death in them.
When the officer asked Farid’s father his name, he replied in a hesitant, indistinct voice, “Elias … Elias Mushtak, sir.”
“Are you related to Mustafa Mushtak?” asked the officer.
“No, sir, certainly not,” replied Elias, and he felt a stabbing pain in his larynx.
“What makes you so sure?”
“We’re Christians, and Mustafa is a Muslim name,” said Elias, and he knew the officer was acting dumb on purpose to lure him into a trap.
“Your profession?” he heard the officer ask.
“Confectioner,” replied Elias quietly.
“And what’s a confectioner from Damascus doing here?”
“I’m taking my son to the monastery of St. Sebastian. He wants to be a priest.”
“A priest?” repeated the officer incredulously, scrutinizing Farid. “The boy doesn’t look to me as if he’ll be a priest.” He fell silent. Then he asked, casually, “The monastery is in the area controlled by the godless Salman Sufi, am I right?”
“We didn’t know that in Damascus. The news didn’t mention any unrest. I first heard that name in the bus this morning.”
Elias’s voice was gradually growing stronger again in his indignation, as he realized that the authorities were suppressing all news of anything like epidemics and rebels.
“Do you expect the government to put out propaganda for the criminals? We shall soon crush them, but by the Prophet Muhammad, your son’s never going to be a priest. Why would he want to? What’s your name, my boy?”
Elias Mushtak felt the derision in the man’s words like a knife stabbing him. Who gave this lousy Muslim the right to say whether or not Farid had a vocation for the priesthood?
“Farid Mushtak,” he heard his son answer fearlessly. The officer entered the name in his list, as he had with the other passengers. Farid thought it was all for show. Why bother to write down the names of hundreds of people who happened to be driving through rebel territory?
The officer turned to the next passengers. Now Elias took out his handkerchief with a steady hand and mopped his face dry. Soon the officer got out, and the armed men disappeared as quickly as they had come. The column of cars, carts, and trucks that had been waiting behind the bus in silence all this time gradually moved on up the narrow mountain track.
When the bus driver reached the next stop, he parked in the shade of an ancient elm tree and joined the customers in the kiosk. “Fifteen minutes’ rest for everyone!” he called to his passengers. His voice sounded friendly but exhausted. The passengers were grateful to him.
Farid tried not to look at the elm tree. He didn’t want to get out. His father, however, joined the men in the kiosk. Farid closed his eyes, and suddenly he saw the elm surrounded by tall flames.
Back in the Easter vacation in Mala, the flames had blazed through the night. The fire hadn’t gone out until nearly four in the morning, when only the green, right-hand half of the tree was left. No one except his father thought Farid had set fire to it. At the time, however, in the village elder’s house, Elias Mushtak had decided with all the severity of a judge that his son would atone by entering the monastery of St. Sebastian.
Farid was alone in the bus now, except for three chickens cackling faintly and wearily under one of the front seats. They sounded like a distant radio station transmitting in a foreign language.
After a while the engine roared again, and the travellers were quick to get back into the bus. The driver looked in the rear-view mirror and saw that one seat was still empty. He hooted three times, and a pretty young peasant girl climbed in. Farid thought she had the most beautiful ears, eyes, and lips he had ever seen.
Later he kept thinking of what lay ahead of him. He had been told just before they left that the former Jesuit monastery was notorious for its strict discipline, but the most important bishops of Syria and Lebanon had studied there.
Elias Mushtak considered it important that the monastery of St. Sebastian, although officially in Arab hands, still trained its students in the modern but strict Jesuit manner. Strict discipline was exactly what his son needed, everything came too easily to him, Elias had said in defending his decision to Claire. Farid was wasting his clever mind. And he didn’t want him ending up as priest in some lousy little village, he had the makings of a great theologian.
None of these ideas cut any ice with Farid. As he saw it, entering a monastery was a punishment. And what for? The rotten half of a miserable elm tree at the back of beyond.