The Dark Side of Love (78 page)

Two days later the whole quarter was rejoicing. The Syrian Jules Gammal, a young Christian officer stationed in Egypt for training, had rammed the French naval destroyer
Jean-Bart
off Port Said with his torpedo boat, dying a martyr's death. His portrait, swiftly painted in oils on canvas, was hung up everywhere. All of a sudden the entire
quarter felt joyful release. The young officer's death had resolved the guilt feelings of the Christians. “Our own Jules Gammal has liberated Egypt,” they told each other. It was not in fact true, but to them he was a hero who had stopped all the Europeans in their tracks. Later on streets, squares, and schools all over the country were named after him.

The facts were that the young officer died in a desperate action against the superior forces of the French and British, who had landed in the harbour city of Port Said at the northern end of the Suez Canal. He set out at random with his torpedo boat. The fires of hell were spewing out from the horizon at the city, whose inhabitants would not surrender.

Finally he rammed the French destroyer
Jean-Bart
with his explosive vessel. The destroyer was not sunk, but the impact rendered it unable to manoeuvre. It was not until three hours later that a second fast torpedo boat blew it up.

Neither Jules Gammal nor anyone else, apart from a single British Navy man, knew that he very nearly took all the war strategists to their deaths with him. His torpedo boat raced past the British warship H.M.S.
Tyne
with only three metres between them. All the British and French war chiefs were assembled on board, only one sailor was standing in the bows. He saw the boat and shouted, but his voice was drowned in the noise of the engines and explosions ringing out in the Suez Canal. He watched the boat race on until it rammed the French warship and went up in flames.

“What about that, then, Stinker?” cried Josef three days later, looking in at the butcher's shop. Mahmud had no customers at that moment, and was reading a book about pre-Islamic poetry. He looked up in surprise. After all, he knew Josef and Farid. His assistant was standing there with his head bent, looking like a beaten dog.

“Now, now, Josef! Who do you mean by Stinker?” asked the butcher, displeased.

“Your butcher's boy was going to set our quarter on fire. He thinks we Christians are traitors.”

“Who? The fool said that?” Mahmud put the poetry book down on the chopping block and turned to his apprentice. “This lad can't even
tell fillet steak from ground beef – so now he's meddling in politics?” A ringing slap landed on the boy's face. “You bastard, insult my customers, would you?” And a second slap landed on his other cheek.

“I'm sorry, master. I'll never talk politics again. I kiss your hand, spare me your blows,” the boy begged, submissively reaching for his master's arm. The butcher shook him off like a fly, and turned to Josef and Farid. “It must have been a mistake, but if he does it again just let me know, and I'll cut off his balls and throw them to the dogs.”

Chess ranked highest among the games played at the club. Drafts and dominoes were played by the very old and very young members, but card games were forbidden. They were regarded as primitive games of chance that merely caused quarrels and enmity. No one would commit himself about backgammon. It wasn't forbidden, but it wasn't encouraged. Taufik who ran the café was not pleased about that.

“It's only because the committee members don't play it well,” he said scornfully. Farid could play a great many games – chess, draughts, dominoes – but no one in his family used to play backgammon. It had been forbidden in the monastery. Josef knew how to play, but it was forbidden in his home too. A game for the lazy, said his father crossly.

One day Farid came into the club and saw Josef and Taufik sitting at the backgammon board. He watched the two of them, fascinated. Josef was cursing quietly because he was losing game after game. The variant they were playing was called
Frandjiye,
the Frankish game. When it ended with a score of 5 – 0, Taufik suggested other variants, and Josef decided on
Maghrebiye
, the Morocco game. But after half an hour Taufik was victorious again, although only just.

“Perhaps we ought to try
Mahbusse
, the prisoners' game. You beat me twice running at that one recently.”

Josef waved the idea away. “The dice aren't falling well for me today.”

“What kind of a game is it?” asked Farid.

“An annoying one,” said Josef, “but it gets you addicted.” He stretched.

“It's a complete philosophy,” said Taufik. “Take a look. Chess is iron logic and strategy. A game that leaves no room in it for life, luck, or chance. The whole world praises it because it is indeed a game for clever people. I don't play chess. It's too cold and calculating for me. If you play against a pro you don't have the slightest chance, he'll destroy your army in meticulously planned moves. But with backgammon, as in life, everything is still possible. And there's something else about it too – look, this is what Gibran showed me.

“Two players represent two lives, two dice are two ways to go. Each dice has six numbers on it.

Each set of two numbers opposite each other on the dice add up to seven. Seven is a holy number.

“Each side on the backgammon board has twelve triangles, known as points, twelve spaces for the twelve months of the year. Between them the players have twenty-four points, as many as the day has hours. They play with thirty pieces, which are the days of the month, half of them black for night and the other half white for day. Or you could say for grief and joy, for happiness and sorrow.

“The player tries to use skill, and in contrast to the game of chess he must consult his luck, his oracle, before every move: he must throw the dice, and the victor can quickly become the loser and vice versa, sometimes not until the last minute. The greatest luck in throwing the dice doesn't help you if you play without skill. And that,” he concluded his description, “that's life.”

That evening Farid asked Taufik to teach him the rules of all the variants of backgammon. And for the first time he had a glimpse of
what lay behind the mask of the apparently unassuming licensee of the café.

Entirely unexpectedly, Rana phoned. The Greek vacation was over. She wanted to see him, she said, and she had good news too: her Aunt Mariam was flying to Milan for a week to buy the latest fashions for her shop. Rana was to water the flowers and keep an eye on the apartment. In return her aunt would bring her a leather bag from Italy.

“I'd have done it for free, anyway,” cried Rana excitedly. He could enjoy Rana's company seven times, thought Farid that first evening, when he had done his school homework and was on the bus. He could hardly believe his luck. They could be together and undisturbed for three or four hours every day. Jack suspected nothing. Rana was right: those hours were stolen from Paradise, and beyond the grave would surely be docked from their time there.

Later, at the worst moments of his life, Farid was to think of those days again and again, and the extraordinary peace that he knew only near Rana. He felt both safe and light as air, so that at some moments he almost thought he could fly. Rana was only a few months older than he was, but she was always a little way ahead of him. He loved talking to her, and was never for a moment bored. And then there was her hair, and her eyes! He loved to kiss her on the lips. They were always sweet, and had her own special fragrance.

He liked it when she read aloud to him. He himself loved to tell stories, but she preferred reading. During those seven days they read
L'Étranger
and
La Peste
together. Even years later, he always thought of Rana's voice in connection with the works of Camus. And in those days Rana told him for the first time how, whenever she had been with him, she waited as long as she could before showering, so that she could take the smell of him to bed with her.

She also confessed that it was he who had taught her the joys of kissing. No one in her family ever kissed.

“What, never?” exclaimed the surprised Farid, who couldn't go a day without kissing his mother.

“No, as I said. My mother doesn't kiss anyone, not even Jack, and he's her favourite. She certainly doesn't kiss me.”

“What about your father?”

“He once patted my head when I wasn't well, but he's incapable of hugging anyone. And if you hug
him
he doesn't know what to make of it. It was you who taught me that kissing is nourishment just like bread, water, and olives,” she said.

When Farid took her in his arms and kissed her for a long time, she laughed. “Kind sir, you'll eat me up!” And then she tickled him. “I said kissing was nourishment, understand? Not Rana Shahin.”

“Very well, madame, very well, but somehow your kiss is a strange kind of nourishment, because the more I have of it the hungrier I am.”

During that week Farid came to know the thousand reasons why he loved Rana. Her way of laughing at anything fascinated him. On their last afternoon in Aunt Mariam's apartment, she told him how badly disappointed her father had been by the Greeks, and she couldn't stop chuckling. “He expected every taverna proprietor to be a grandson of Socrates, every bureaucrat a descendant of Plato, every poor baggage carrier to be Diogenes in person.” And she described the way her brother had given himself alcohol poisoning with the sweet wine of Samos. He had to stay in bed for three days, and his Mama had stayed in bed too, to be on the safe side. Her father never wanted to hear the word retsina again.

Then they sat in the kitchen drinking tea, while Rana read aloud the last few pages of Camus's
La Peste.
Suddenly Farid gave a start. He felt icy cold.

“What's the matter?” she asked.

“How late is it?” he asked in return, because he had left his watch at home. He was white as a sheet.

“Just after six. Aunt Mariam won't be back until tomorrow,” she reassured him.

“All the same, we ought to go.”

But Rana wanted to finish the book. She felt very peaceful; she had already cleaned the apartment and removed all traces of their presence.

Next moment, however, they both started in surprise. Through the open kitchen doorway, they saw Aunt Mariam carefully pushing her large suitcase into the apartment. Mariam froze when she saw Rana with a boy. Then she recognized Farid, and forgot all about her case.

“I don't believe it,” she said, slowly coming towards them. She left the front door of the apartment open. “How dare you meet a Mushtak in my apartment?” she cried, hoarse with anger.

Question after question whirled around Farid's mind. Had someone given Rana away? Was that why her aunt had come home early? What was he to do? He couldn't leave Rana alone now. How could they calm this Fury down?

The two young people stood there as if turned to stone.

“But Aunt Mariam,” said Rana, to break the silence, “we were only drinking tea and reading a book.”

“You have brought a Mushtak into my most private place! Is he brave enough to take me into his parents' bedroom? Well, is he? I trusted you, I asked you to do me this small service, and you bring a Mushtak into my apartment!”

“But Aunt, I thought you'd understand us. We're young, we were born here in Damascus, what can we do about the feud between our parents and grandparents? Farid and I have both sworn never to go to Mala again,” she went on, almost pleadingly.

“Tell him to get out of my apartment. I will never in my life exchange words with a Mushtak.”

Farid left the kitchen, walking past Rana's heavily perfumed aunt.

“And now for you, madame!” screeched Aunt Mariam. “Isn't it enough that Jasmin had to die? Isn't that enough for you? Do you
want another murder in the family? Don't interrupt me,” she snapped when Rana merely raised a hand. “Your brother Jack was right. You're playing with fire. He told me someone had told him you were friendly with one of those Mushtaks. He's going to keep a close watch on you. And if he catches you with that Mushtak, it's him and not you that he'll shoot. Is that what you want? If you're after another bloodbath, then go on meeting this boy, but never come into my apartment again.”

Farid waited in the stairwell outside the open front door. It was already dark.