The Dark Side of Love (58 page)

On coming to a bearded doctor he asked, in passing, what would cure his migraine. The doctor hesitated, fearing that the question was a trap. Everyone waited with bated breath for his answer.

“Aspirin,” he said at last, hoarsely, swallowing hard. “Don't smoke too much, no alcohol, and get plenty of sleep.”

The officer laughed and shook his head. His laughter gave all the passengers a moment's respite. Some heaved a sigh of relief, others cast a quick glance at the photos in their ID cards, as if they feared they might find forged papers there.

Farid felt no fear, and even enjoyed the sight of his father's pallor. Elias kept muttering to himself, “We ought to have taken the coastal road, it's safer.” When things went wrong he liked to use the first person plural, as if to avoid taking the blame himself. Claire had recommended the coastal road, but it meant a longer journey, and as usual his father was in a hurry. Farid had to get up at four in the morning, so that his father could be back in Damascus at eight that evening for a meeting of the confectioners' association.

Encouraged by his undaunted passengers, the bus driver had overtaken trucks and other buses on the good blacktop road going north from Damascus. After four hours, he had turned off and taken the protesting vehicle up the endlessly winding country road, which was more detritus and potholes than asphalt.

Worse than the potholes, however, were the many checkpoints. Farid had counted four barriers guarded by soldiers along a twenty-kilometre stretch.

An elderly smith sitting on the other side of the aisle had told Farid's father that the region was under the control of a rebel called Tanios. Whole villages and forests had once belonged to a single clan. The peasants had attacked it again and again, but they had all been butchered until this man Tanios came along. He was a Christian, although hostile tongues said he was in league with the devil. Under his influence, the young peasants suddenly became brave as lions. Even Muslims flocked to join him, crazy men who now bore arms too. What poor soldier was going to hold out against the rebels here for the ridiculous wage of fourteen lira a month?

Only later did Farid learn that until Tanios's uprising, the peasants of this mountain region had not been allowed to have lights in their houses. And every virgin had to spend her wedding night with the landowner – she couldn't be taken home by her bridegroom until next morning. It was the custom of the
droit de seigneur,
entitling the master to the first night.

Tanios was a proud man, and he loved Asma. At their betrothal, he swore to her before friends that Sheikh Mustafa, the mighty owner of the whole area, would never touch her. They were to marry at Easter. Tanios bought black patent leather shoes in the nearby harbour town of Latakia, and at Asma's wish he was going to wear them at the wedding. He spent his entire savings, for he liked nothing in the world better than seeing tears of joy in his bride's eyes.

On the wedding day Asma stared spellbound at his patent leather shoes the whole time. What her bridegroom promised, he performed. Suddenly, in the middle of the
Kyrie eleison
, she longed for the touch of his hands on her naked skin.

But two birds of ill omen were waiting outside the church, Sheikh Mustafa's black-clad guards, saying that they had come to fetch the bride and the patent leather shoes, for only great men might wear shoes like that.

Tanios roared, “Now death will taste sweet as honey!”, and that roar echoed through the mountains for weeks to come. He fell on the two messengers like a lion and killed them. Thereupon hundreds of angry peasants and serfs stormed Mustafa's magnificent estate as if they were drunk on blood, killing him and his three sons. They drove his three wives and ten daughters away. When the peasants saw how easy it was to murder a lord, they conquered two more mountainous valleys.

Only in the valley of the Three Rivers was the onward march of the rebel peasants halted, for here they met with the troops of another rebel called Salman Sufi, who ruled the mountain chain down to the Mediterranean. The government was still partly in control of the road leading through the mountains to the sea, but no more.

The peasants who followed Tanios divided the land and money they had taken between them, and they all bought patent leather shoes to wear every Sunday. And now they also lit lamps in their houses. Asma was the first poor peasant's wife to lose her virginity in a night of love.

When Colonel Shaklan, the son of a small farmer himself, carried out his coup and made himself president, he felt sympathy for Tanios, whose heroic story had spread like wildfire. He wrote him a letter saying that the feudal period was over, the peasants could safely place their cause in the hands of the father of their country and lay down their arms. He, President of the Republic and father of the great Syrian family, gave Tanios his word that the government wished for peace with him. All he, Shaklan, wanted was Salman Sufi's head.

In return the colonel received a barely legible letter written in pencil, which ran:

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.