The Dark Side of Love (85 page)

He met her some ten times in the six months after that first meeting, in the Café Vienna. They always sat at the same table, talked, dreamed of a strong, united Arabia led by Satlan, drank coffee, and kissed.

Fatima loved voices. She didn't mind what people looked like at all, so long as they had good voices. She told Josef that even in her mother's womb she had graded her relations by the sound of their voices, and she hadn't changed her mind to this day. She couldn't resist Satlan's voice, or Josef's either.

From a distance, Josef looked spectrally thin and ugly, but when he spoke Fatima felt elated, light at heart. And there was another reason for her to like Josef's company: his clever mind left no room for boredom. He was amusing and laughed at himself. “The fire in his heart,” Fatima told Farid once, “has melted any fat he ever had on him.”

Fatima was passionately pro-Satlan. He promised the rise of a great nation moving on to pastures new, and to her he was not so much a politician as a saint. He spoke directly to her and millions of other women in every speech he made, urging them to rise and fight. That was why she had been one of the first Syrian women to stand side by side with men, united in a sea of sympathy for Satlan. And suddenly some men at that October demonstration in 1959 had placed the thin boy whose voice made her go weak at the knees on their shoulders and carried him with them. She had loved him ever since.

One day her mother took her aside, and told her it had come to the ears of her brothers Isam and Ahmad that she was keeping company with one of those godless Christians. Fatima reassured her mother, saying those tale-bearers were just blinded by hatred. The man with whom she'd exchanged a word or so at the bus stop outside her
school was her girlfriend Rashide's brother. “Those two fools are so stupid they don't even know that Rashide is a Muslim,” said Fatima scornfully.

Her mother, a kindly and devout woman, patted her head. “I told your brothers, Fatima is a good girl and a true believer! You just keep your mind on school and not on men.”

Fatima was sure that her brothers couldn't have found out about Josef, and were just full of spite because their sister venerated Satlan, while they both belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was equipped by the Saudis with money and arms to be used against him.

That stupid bearded couple of brothers would never get on her trail, she thought on the way to the Café Vienna.

It was a sunny but very cold March day, and she was looking forward to seeing Josef. She changed from one bus to another three times, always checking carefully in case anyone was following her. She felt that she was not observed. But appearances were deceptive.

“It's crazy,” she told Josef later in the café, still thinking of her mother. “Muslims and Christians can fight each other, trade, mourn, celebrate, live and die with each other, they're just not allowed to love each other. And if a couple do dare to love all the same, the answer is death. Arabs are more consistent on that point than in anything else.” And she squeezed Josef's hand so hard that his fingers hurt.

“I hate the idea of delivering anyone up to death because I love them,” said Josef. “I'd feel like someone inviting an innocent person to come for a drive in a car, even though he knows its brakes aren't working. The whole idea sends me crazy. A Christian does a Muslim woman no good by loving her. Sometimes I hate myself for it.”

“And what about your own life? It's not you luring me into danger, it's love, but I wouldn't want it any other way.”

“Aren't you afraid?” asked Josef.

“No,” said Fatima, and she thought of her Aunt Sharife, who had fallen in love with a Damascene Jew and now lived happily with him in New York. In fact she was happier than anyone Fatima knew. She laughed.

“What's the joke?” asked Josef.

“It's said that your enemies' curse is a blessing for forbidden love,”
replied Fatima. “And there isn't another woman in my entire large family who's as happy as Aunt Sharife.”

“Do you really think our love has any chance of surviving that pack of fanatics?” asked Josef. He had no idea that Farid would be asking Rana the same question a couple of hours later in the Sufaniye Park.

“Of course,” said Fatima. “We just have to want it enough, as the great Satlan says. Without a strong will, love is just a longing felt by the weak.”

Fatima's answer sounded to Josef like a quotation from all the slushy love films that his mother saw week after week in the cinema. She always enthusiastically told him the plot later. As a rule, it was the man who said such things in the films. Josef grinned at the idea of finding himself in the wrong kind of movie.

He paid, and was first to leave the café. Fatima wasn't going to go out into the street and take the bus home until ten minutes later.

Whistling, Josef strolled along the street to the stop for the Number 5 bus home, never guessing that he had just seen Fatima for the last time. Two bearded figures, silent as shadows, were following him.

Near the Fardus bus stop, Josef passed the time by reading the headlines of the newspapers displayed at a kiosk. Suddenly a smell of decay met his nostrils. It came from a bearded man roughly pushing in between him and the newspaper stand. Nauseated, Josef took a quick step to one side.

Years later, he was still blessing his sensitive nose for saving his life, for just as he flinched away from the stench, the bearded man turned around and stabbed him. The knife went into Josef's right shoulder instead of his heart. Josef kicked his attacker in the balls and shouted, “Help, one of the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to murder me!” Three men standing near the kiosk rushed the bearded attacker, but his accomplice, lurking nearby, struck out at them with a chain, enabling himself and the would-be murderer to escape. They both got away unrecognized.

Josef's wound was worse than the doctors had thought at first. He was in hospital for weeks, and there was a danger that his right arm would be paralysed, but he was lucky, and it healed up, although the scar always throbbed badly in winter.

When Josef first left home again without his arm in a sling, he tried to get in touch with Fatima, but it was as if the earth had opened and swallowed her up.

Only much later did he discover that her brothers had kept her imprisoned in a dark cellar in their parents' house for months, until she agreed to marry a rich relation in Kuwait. She went to live there with the man's other three wives, and never saw her own city of Damascus again.

DAMASCUS, 1956 – 1960

Rana phoned and said she had to see him. Farid was to keep the Sunday after next free, because Kamal Sabuni would be inviting him to a small party. “And Dunia has promised me to do all she can to make sure her brother doesn't forget about you.”

Two days later, sure enough, Kamal invited him. Dunia arranged for Rana and Farid to be able to get away from the party for an hour on their own.

Rana was very cheerful that afternoon. She laughed exuberantly at her brother, and just as much at a neighbour who, she said, was chasing all the married women of the neighbourhood, making very offensive remarks, even to her own mother. “And then he turns out to be jealous,” she went on. “Woe to any man who smiles at
his
wife. Most women don't like these importunate advances of his at all, including Warde. But she's a clever woman, with a tongue like pepperoni. First she tried politely turning him down, but that just made him keener than ever. One day he seized her by the arms and said he was going to have a nibble of her some time, just to compare her with his wife and see which of them tasted better. Warde smiled, freed herself from his embrace, and said, in as loud a voice as she could manage, ‘Not a bad
idea, but you can always ask my husband's opinion. He's tried us both.' After that he let her alone.”

When Rana told a story Farid was always captivated. Her voice was soft but a little husky, as if she had a slight cold.

They had settled comfortably on the couch in Dunia's room. Farid, who was lying on top of Rana, tried to bite her lower lip, but she wouldn't let him. “I have to tell you about something I did in the last two weeks.” She kissed him.

“Later,” he said, kissing her back.

“No, not later. I can't tell you about it outside this room, or on the phone.” Rana tickled him to make him stop.

Reluctantly, he let her go, sat on the edge of the couch and pulled her dress back down over her knees. Rana smiled, clasped her hands behind her head, stretched luxuriously, and then lay there, totally relaxed.

“My mother's been sleeping very badly these last few months,” she began.

“My heart bleeds for her,” said Farid sarcastically.

“Oh, do be quiet! Her mind was absolutely set on marrying me off, and finally she won my father over too, just as I'd feared. But who do you think they picked for me? Even in my worst nightmares I'd never have expected it to be my cousin Kafi. He's my Uncle Sami's son. Do you remember Sami Kudsi who was always doing shady business deals? That's his father.”

Farid shook his head at the mere idea.

“Anyway, he has five sons and they're all in the army. The youngest, Kafi, is my own age. A religious fanatic, quite dreadful. I always thought he was certain to found a sect of his own some day. As he sees it, the Catholic Church is a hotbed of atheists and you Catholics are well on the way to damnation. Once, much to my mother's delight, he said that Catholics and Protestants are all devil-worshippers. He's always trying to convert people. Very embarrassing – and to think someone like that is my cousin!

“So my mother didn't just want to be rid of me, she wanted to punish me by inflicting this fanatic on me. I knew making a fuss wouldn't help. I had to keep calm about it.

“On his first visit I made myself up like a tart. As for him, he came in uniform, looking incredibly old and stiff-necked. Of course my mother noticed my trick, and said thank goodness Kafi would cure me of all that vain frippery. And he smiled, very sure of himself, and launched straight into a sermon on the decline of morality.

“Suddenly my mother went away, and Jack, who never usually takes his eyes off me, disappeared too. There I was, left alone in the drawing room with this bore. I was full of plans for making him dislike me. So I told him I didn't really believe in anything, but I was thinking of converting to Islam just for fun, because I thought Christianity preached too much suffering and abstinence for this life, short as it is anyway.

“Instead of being shocked, my cousin Kafi, who could send anyone to sleep, suddenly turned really enthusiastic. He was dead set on preserving me from such a mistake. He didn't come just once a week any more, he came every day, hanging around with a stack of religious tracts to convince me that Orthodox Christianity was the right way. And my mother beamed at me because her nephew praised my frankness and my clever mind.

“When I was alone with Kafi again, I told him coldly that I couldn't stand him, and any marriage between us would bring him only grief. But that made him even keener, and he said oh, that was as nothing by comparison with Our Lord's suffering on the cross, and for love of the Lord he would bear the cross of my dislike.

“I was beginning to panic now. For days I couldn't think about anything but ways to shake off this leech. He brought me huge quantities of Arabic editions of
Reader's Digest,
all going on about the miracle of love and marriage. The
Reader's Digest
was where he got every miserable thing he knew. I was in a trap.

“Then I found a chink in his armour after all. There's nothing he fears more than strong-minded women. The kind of women he likes are poor weak souls who need him to save them, but he'd see a woman who has power, or would like power, as a major disaster. I'd listened to him long enough to find that out.