Sophia, p.20
Sophia, page 20
That night they sat together for a long time, and Aida discovered that Karim lived on Jasmine Street, not twenty
steps from her street. He offered to walk her home, and she nodded and packed up her oud. They walked through the night, the darkness covering them like a cloak. The dusty old lanterns were so weak that they hardly lit anything.
She felt a new feeling starting to bloom inside. There was something about this man that made her heart race. Was it his deep voice that always sounded as though he was thirsty, or the way he lightly touched her hand when he stopped to explain something to her? Was it his eyes that seemed to laugh and cry at the same time, his sense of humor, his love of music, or his deep respect for her? It was all of that and more.
Normally it would have taken them fifteen minutes to walk from the Bab Tuma steps to her house on Abbara Street. That night they took an hour. By the time they were at her house, he had just started telling her a story. She stopped him. “It's unfair to stop just when it's getting exciting. Come in and tell me how it ends,” she said.
He laughed cunningly, as if he had counted on it. Later she would tease him that he had deliberately started his story of a daring drive down a winding road just as they turned into her street, and deliberately got to the exciting part just as they arrived at her door. He vehemently denied any such intention. “Superstitious people would say it was fate, but I think it was pure chance,” was his mischievous defense.
So he went inside with her, and they told each other the story of their lives. As morning dawned and Damascus began to wake up, Aida made strong coffee. “I'm hungry,” she said when the last tiny cup of mocha had been drunk. Karim knew a restaurant on historic Straight Street, not far from the al-Bizuriyya spice market. The owner opened as early as five o'clock in the morning so that shift workers could have their breakfast there. Karim and Aida strolled to the restaurant, and when Aida tripped in the street, he grabbed her hand. She didn't let go, including on the way back through their street. Neighbors and passersby looked at them in surprise. Aida stopped in front of the doorway to her house, hugged Karim, and kissed him on the lips.
“When you've had a good rest, come to my place, I'm cooking for you today,” Karim said and went home with a spring in his step.
Aida woke up around twelve. She was even more tired than before, but she was excited at the same time and wanted to go to Karim's as quickly as possible. First, however, she still had to buy a few things at the grocer's. She was standing before the canned vegetable shelf, looking for corn, artichokes, and peeled tomatoes when her neighbor Walide came up to her. “Look, it's not really any business of mine, but I'm worried about your good name,” she said.
“Why? What have I done that's so bad?” Aida replied jokingly, because Walide could also be very ironic.
“Stop this nonsense. I'm serious. You're getting involved with that godless Karim. The neighbors saw it all.”
Aida was shocked. Walide, of all people, who claimed she was her friend, had just shown herself to be a gossip and a tattletale. Aida had expected Walide to share her happiness.
“Well, that's quite an achievement. I was with him for four hours and you've already got a sermon ready. But there's no need to worry about my reputation. I can do that myself.”
“But you kissed him at the front door!”
Aida was furious at Walide's insincerity. “I'm a grown woman in my mid-fifties, and even if I was seventy or eighty, I'd kiss him at my front door or even in bed. He tastes great, if you must know.”
Walide was so angry that she turned and walked away, but others had overheard the conversation. Aida saw the women eyeing her and pointing. She busied herself with her shopping list, gathered the items she needed, and went to the checkout. “Yes, it's true—she's getting involved with an old Muslim, as if there were no Christian men,” one woman standing in the queue told her friend, just loud enough for Aida to understand every word. Aida packed her shopping in the basket, flashed the two women a poisonous glance, and walked back home with her head held high.
Was Karim a Muslim? She hadn't known about that. He had said that he had banned all organized religions to the museum of his recollections, where they could be admired. But love was the true religion, and that particular one knew neither war nor racism nor the Inquisition. He had adopted the thoughts of the Andalusian Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi, who was buried in Damascus. Aida had disagreed, and couldn't imagine how it was supposed to work. She worried that just another corrupt institution of power might emerge from the most beautiful of all human emotions if it were to become an official religion—just like politicians and the church had later turned Jesus Christ's words of brotherly love into crusades, murder, and manslaughter. Yet it was brave to claim that your only faith was in love.
She had thought that Karim was a Christian. He had drunk wine during the party and he lived on Jasmine Street, where only Christians lived, just like in Abbara Street. But that wasn't completely true... on her street there were also three Muslim and two Druze families. Maybe Muslims also lived on Jasmine Street, and Karim was one of them. His name meant “the Generous” in Arabic—and it could equally have been given to a Jew, a Christian, a Druze, a Yezidi, or a Muslim.
Fine, she thought, he only believes in love, but everybody else sees him as a Muslim. “So what?” an inner voice said, frightening her. Who was talking now—her heart in love or her reason? Or were they joining in unison? What is it about a Muslim that should stop me from loving him? Indeed, even if Karim was a believing Jew, Druze, or Buddhist, who or what prohibited her from loving him? Aida thought of her friends and acquaintances. All religions were represented there... friendship was obviously allowed between people of different faiths. Why was love forbidden?
22
Encounters and Deceptions
Damascus, December 2010
The healer
Several days after his arrival, a healer visited Salman's father. She came at around ten in the morning and, that day, Salman stayed at home because he wanted to see her.
His father waited for her with anticipation. Salman's mother told him that the healer only paid house calls for three patients—his father and two rich, elderly ladies. Everyone else had to go to her and ask for an appointment. His father's privileged position was due to the fact that Salman's cousin, Father Michel Kosma, was her mentor and patron. To Salman's surprise, Marina was a pretty young woman. When she came into the living room, she quietly held out a hand to him and seemed to see right through him.
His father was waiting for her in his room, and Salman heard how she loudly ordered him around. “In the Name of the Holy Virgin! In the Name of the Holy Virgin, get up,” she kept repeating. Soon they both came into the sitting room. His father was walking alone, without his stick and standing straight. “You see, it's your faith, not me, it's your faith that has helped you.”
She knelt in the middle of the sitting room and prayed while Salman's father stood next to her, folding his hands to pray too, seemingly lost in a distant world. The television was on as usual, a report on a literary festival. The report was accidentally funny because several poets from Syria and other Arab countries seemed to be outdoing one another in singing the president's praises. For each poet, only two or three verses were broadcast, all mentioning the president. The Egyptian whom Salman had met on the plane came last. His distressed face now filled the screen. “Pray, great leader, forgive my frankness. Syria is too small. You should lead the whole world!” he shouted into the room. “Forgive me for being so in love, but how can my heart resist? Your beauty has bewitched me.”
The audience in the hall went wild.
“The poor president. This elephant wants to go to bed with him,” Sophia whispered smugly from behind Salman. Barely able to contain himself, Salman ran into the kitchen and burst out laughing there. He thought of the simple carpenter who had sat near the poet in the plane and kept calling him hakawati. Salman didn't know whether Marina could hear him laughing in the kitchen.
After she finished praying, she left. Salman's father held on to her hand. “My nephew, Father Kosma, is coming here tonight. Would you like to join us? We'll be eating together.” He hesitated for a moment. “I mean, you can also bring your husband.” Then he added, “Salman would be happy.” Salman nodded. He was standing behind Marina, and his thoughts were not as pure as his father's.
“Unfortunately, that won't be possible,” she said. “And Father Kosma knows about it, too. Some seventy pupils are coming with their teachers to pray at my place today.” Marina nodded an abrupt goodbye and left.
Salman called Stella. He was still fascinated that he'd seen his father walk again. Stella laughed and told him not to lose his mind just because he'd been back in Damascus for a few days. She had a friend who was married to an Egyptian. He was very modern when he was in Rome, and left-wing. But no sooner did he land in Cairo than he changed completely. He prayed every day, grew a beard, stopped drinking and smoking, and forced his Italian wife to wear a headscarf. Salman felt hurt that Stella would compare him to such a conformist.
Stella didn't seem to understand his anger. She repeated that she didn't believe in this nonsense of healing through prayer. She suspected that Marina wielded power over weak souls, such as his father's, by taking advantage of his gullibility—just like the placebo effect for drugs. The conversation faltered and then petered out to routine pleasantries. This was the first phone conversation that Salman had felt something like alienation from Stella.
The phone rang soon after. His mother picked it up, and her eyes revealed her astonishment. “Just a moment, please,” she said, calling Salman over. “Lamia,” she whispered.
“Yes, hello. What a surprise!” Salman said, drawing a deep breath. Lamia, whom he had worshipped, lived in Homs and had learned of his arrival. “My goodness, you found out so quickly?” he asked her. Lamia laughed. One of her girlfriends had been among the guests who had visited him in the last few days. Lamia told him about her happy life as a housewife and a mother of seven children and about her nice husband. Salman thought she had married a slave master who had turned a bright woman into a dull housewife, but he kept that to himself.
He was bored by Lamia's report. He courteously brought the conversation to an end, hung up, and felt shocked at his indifference.
The evening meal with his cousin, Father Kosma, was disappointing. There was no trace of the once critical spirit of a brilliant artist. Kosma seemed totally convinced by the healer and he cursed the Vatican for refusing to recognize her. His eyes shone when he spoke of her. Salman felt embarrassed and he let out a sigh of relief when the priest left the apartment with his driver.
A few days later, Salman's father sat in his wheelchair again, unable to get up. He was not pretending, he really couldn't. “Miracles don't seem to last long these days,” Salman told his mother.
“That's blasphemy,” she replied quietly, and crossed herself.
~
When Salman woke up the next Sunday, he realized that he had already been in Damascus for a week. He wanted to buy presents for Stella and Paolo, so he set off for the souk al-Hamidiya, the large covered market.
Even after searching for a long time, he couldn't find anything suitable in the market. So he continued on foot to the New City, and the sight of the congested streets and ugly high-rise buildings distressed him. First the Mongols had destroyed Damascus between 1259 and 1300, and now the Damascenes had done it themselves.
Back home that evening, an unexpected visitor turned up—Rita, his former lover. She scolded him for not coming to visit her yet, like he had promised, although she had been to see him every other day. “It reeks of family, morality, and hypocrisy here. You'd be free at my place,” she breathed in his ear when she arrived. Salman attempted not to hear her.
“Yes, sure,” he said almost absentmindedly.
On her first visit Rita had surprised him. He had hardly recognized her. She was now blond and had lost twenty years with the help of a Parisian cosmetic surgeon. Salman was three years older than Rita; he had met her at a party given by a rich fellow student. She was nineteen, with coal black hair and a sensual aura. She always was surrounded by men and wasn't interested in him at first because he had been hopelessly in love with Lamia. At that time, Salman was quite a Romantic—aside from Marxist writings, he read mostly poems about unrequited love, which made up most of traditional Arab poetry.
Lamia loved him, but premarital sex was a mortal sin for her as a practicing Catholic. He promised her that he'd believe in God, Jesus, Moses, and even Muhammad if only she'd kiss him, but she refused. Salman protested. “The early Christians allowed themselves to be devoured by wild animals to convert others to Christianity. And you won't give me even one kiss to drive the darkness from my heart!”
It wasn't just premarital sex that divided Lamia and Salman. She also disapproved of his political commitment. But the more she distanced herself from him, the more he loved her.
Rita told him later that his indifference toward her then had drawn her into his spell. It was his very aloofness that challenged her. She was a born huntress.
Just like the other students, Salman had no idea that the young woman who danced at student parties had married at the young age of seventeen. Her husband was twenty years her senior, a wealthy consultant and horse breeder. Soon after her wedding, she'd found out that her husband didn't have much time for women. He loved pure-blooded horses and young outdoorsmen—she was just meant as window dressing. Half the city knew about his inclinations, and she found her position ridiculous. One piece of advice from a friend was to enjoy the riches and give her heart free rein. “The world is chock-full of young men dying to lie at your feet!”
And so Rita became an erotic adventuress. And since she believed in discretion, she became a comfortably kept woman. Her husband was generous, and she spent money hand over fist. She had lovers from all social classes—that is, until Salman came into her life. She quickly fell for him, but he kept her at arm's length. At first he didn't react either to her presents or her letters. From then on, she was mainly seen in student circles, where the people she met were fundamentally different from her husband's acquaintances.
When Lamia got married, Salman had to come to terms with the fact that his love for her had finally reached an impasse. So he let himself be comforted by Rita, and he liked it. Although he noticed that Rita was in love with him, deep down he remained frosty toward her, which kindled her love even more. She had never known a man who had been able to resist her charms for so long and who cared so little about her money. Without noticing, she had become the victim of her own thrill of the chase.
At the time, Salman was already leading a double life—one public and one in the underground, well concealed. Rita proposed that they run away together to America. She had money enough for both of them. Salman refused. He found her too unreliable. And he didn't want to flee, he wanted to be a part of the Syrian revolution. He could feel the conflict between his political convictions and his association with this wealthy woman whose arrogant words against the world's poor filled him with indignation. Sometimes he would humiliate her in retribution for the downtrodden, but his cruelty seemed only to make her become even more enamored with him.
When he joined the armed resistance, he broke off his relationship with Rita for good and disappeared without saying goodbye. For her part, she vowed never to get involved so deeply with another man, and she once more became the huntress she had been before—only with a scar on her soul.
~
After an hour of social chat, she left early that evening. As Salman accompanied her to the door, she turned to him and gave him a lingering kiss. “Will you come and visit me? I have good espresso,” she said, handing him an elegant visiting card from a golden case. Salman laughed, refraining from reminding her that she had already given him an identical card on her first visit, a few days earlier. “Only espresso?” he said jokingly, caressing her back. He somehow felt sorry for her that her life was so filled with disappointment.
“I swear I'll keep my hands off you,” she said as she left the apartment.
“That old woman has her eye on you. Did you know each other?” his cousin Maria whispered to him when he returned to the other guests. That evening she was seated to his right. Salman was startled and lied, “Only slightly.”
In that moment he heard his mother calling in the corridor: “At long last! Where have you been all this time?” Salman looked up. His cousin Elias had arrived, accompanied by a woman wearing a lot of makeup.
“Oh no! Time to go now,” Maria whispered again, pressing Salman's hand and disappearing quietly.
~
Elias had grown older, but he had hardly changed. “Our prodigal son has finally returned,” he called out. He did not embrace Salman, but gave his hand a squeeze. Salman wondered why his former comrades had shown such deference to Elias, who seemed to grow several inches taller whenever they shook his hand. Had he humiliated them, possibly had them interrogated and tortured? Elias seemed to inspire respect from the other guests, too—a fear mingled with hypocrisy. Some of them called him “Colonel Elias.”
“So this is Salman,” his wife Isabella said. “Finally, a real male in this wishy-washy family,” she called out, uttering a vulgar sound somewhere between a gurgle and a snort. She was probably fifteen years younger than Elias, and Salman took an immediate dislike to her.
Salman's father treated Elias like someone deserving special courtesy. He paid his respects to him and stayed up until shortly before midnight, in high spirits, mixing with the guests in the drawing room. When Salman went to the kitchen to get some wine and told Sophia how amazed he was at his father, she cursed softly. “He wants to show him how grateful he is,” she said, “as if the ten thousand dollars weren't enough.” Salman felt a helpless rage. “Elias doesn't even caress his wife for free. That's why she needs so many lovers,” Sophia added contemptuously.
