June Rain (6 page)

He would board the ship in Beirut. A long journey, but enjoyable.

His uncle would send him travel expenses. He would pay the money back at his leisure once he was there, after he started working and getting paid. In Australia, people were paid weekly.

He had work waiting for him in the factory. There was demand for workers in Sydney.

He could go into tailoring if he wished, but they told him that over there it was considered a woman’s job, in general. Or into shoemaking if he wished, and when he was able to save up some money, he could open up a laundry or small grocery store of his own.

They had sent him a picture of all of them together, and a picture of their house with the white wooden railing, and also a picture of a kangaroo carrying its baby in its pouch.
We live on the beach
, they wrote him,
in the Coogee suburb in Sydney. Sometimes the waves reach the front steps of our house. In the summer we sit under umbrellas sometimes while the waves splash over our feet.

They asked him to bring them a souvenir: a small stone from their house in the town.

The last letter he received contained a picture of his cousin. She had a wide face and a full figure; she was smiling. She looked like his mother.

She’s waiting for you
, they wrote on the back of the picture.

He imagined her waiting for him, sitting on a rocking chair while the waves splashed over her feet.

They sent him the money from Australia, without waiting for an answer from him. They tried to encourage him that way.

His aunt bored everyone there, constantly showing his picture with his American hat tipped to the side and going on about how handsome he was.

‘I don’t like travelling by sea. Who would trust his soul to the waters?’ Farid said, after he had finished marking the pattern into the cloth with pins.

He was lying, and Master Boulos knew he was lying.

The hours were long, and tailoring work was slow. The only way to entertain oneself was with talk. Talk about girls and marriage, this time around.

‘Either travel or look for a nice girl . . .’

Nice girl? No. Farid was not good at that. Love required an eloquent tongue, and he was not good at talking.

Khawkh al-dibb
, the Bear Plum. That was Farid Badwi al-Semaani. That was what he was called by people at the coffee shop. No one was spared their barbs. The sharp-tongued men goaded him, but they feared what he might do.

A bear plum looks appetising, light green with a tinge of pink, but no one would dare bite into one, because they’re far too bitter to eat.

‘Here comes Bear Plum!’ Sometimes they would say it loud enough for him to hear, when they spotted him coming out of one of the narrow streets leading to the coffee shop. ‘Welcome, Bear Plum,’ they would say and he would sit down with them, smiling without malice, so he could silently watch them play cards. They all played cards. They would lose and get angry, or win. Farid, however, remained a spectator. Someone said he didn’t know the rules of the game and just watched anyway. But he only acted as if he didn’t know how to play, so that he would be able to leave after a few minutes and go back to the tailor’s shop. Master Boulos accused him of always looking down at his shoes, then claiming he didn’t like the way they shined, an excuse to put his tailoring aside and go to the café. There he would whistle for the shoeshine boy who would follow him inside and start shining his shoes. Farid would demand that he use ample polish and brush well, especially at the heels.

Tailoring was a difficult art for him. All that concentrating tired him out. He would mark the material with tailor’s chalk, and put a stitch with needle and thread at the crease of the trousers’ hem. He used tricks, like making the buttonholes with extra fine thread. He had thick fingers that didn’t obey him. If he needed to thread a needle, he would try for a long time, and then call someone to thread it for him. Frustrated, he would go to the café while Master Boulos pretended not to notice.

Moving from one profession to another in the span of a single generation was not an easy thing for Farid to accomplish. First there had been the mules, with all the prodding and loading them up with heavy bundles, and lighting a fire under their tails if they lay down, or hitting them until their legs started to bleed, or even biting their ears as his uncle used to do, to force them to stand up. From there he went to sumac-coloured stone, and then to fine English wool, in one fell swoop.

Bear Plum didn’t care what people said.

He could take a joke, but he never lowered his eyes from anyone’s. Just looking at him seemed to him an attempt to intimidate him. He was easy-going but unemotional.

They tested him at Umm Raymond’s Restaurant. They were sitting at the next table drinking
arak
and eating: Saeed Ibrahim and Antonios al-Khoury. He and Saeed eyed each other. Saeed Ibrahim was dangerous. You couldn’t take him lightly. They stared at each other. Not the slightest blink. The dare dragged on. Farid would not look away. Impossible. The other cu­­­­stomers left one at a time. No one wanted to die by mistake.

The President of the Republic was trying to renew his term. That was what was rumoured, even though he hadn’t announced his intentions yet. The tailor’s apprentice Farid al-Semaani supported the renewal, along with his whole family, including the
zaeem
. He’d heard the itinerant newspaper seller shouting out the day’s headlines as he walked through the alleys, and that was enough for Farid. He never bought the newspaper, because he could read only with difficulty.

The president’s opponents were losing in the regional elections one after the other. Cheating, pressure, and bribes – that’s what they said.

The North District still remained. Elections would take place in two weeks.

Farid was going to send the money back to his aunt with the first person travelling to Sydney. No. He didn’t beg anyone for money. He was satisfied with his situation. He would return the money because he was staying. Farid Badwi al-Semaani, twenty-four years old, mother’s name Susaan Wardeh, 182 centimetres tall, distinguishing marks: wart on left cheek. He was staying so he could sit in the evenings in a small restaurant owned by a woman in her fifties who still had traces of her beauty left. He would sit with a friend of his or a cousin before two skewers of grilled goat’s meat and a plate of
hummus
. They would clink their glasses before the first sip of
arak
mixed with water. They grimaced as they drank, each gulp of the 100-proof
arak
like bitter punishment. Farid didn’t eat and didn’t talk, and if he did eat after repeated invitation from his companion, it would be very little. A bite or two and that was it. At dinner, instead of eating he smoked many Lucky Strike cigarettes. By the third glass of
arak
, his face turned bright red, and he would withdraw deeper and deeper into himself. He would listen to his friend and not talk. Perhaps he was trying hard to listen to some buried voice inside himself that was saying obscure things to him. Beset by a strange feeling, he would raise his glass again and sail off into the distance.

Night time always brought him back to her.

Night was a pimp, no way around it.

He tried in vain to free himself, but she was his life’s joy.

The night, food on the table, Lucky Strikes,
arak . . .

And her.

Farid al-Semaani was staying for his family’s sake, maybe, or maybe for the sake of his passion for fighting and the Colt-9. But he was definitely staying for her. He was staying in order to hum some
ataaba
verses quietly to himself at eleven o’clock at night and then excuse himself and walk away. His friends knew what he was up to. They wished him good luck with smiles on their faces. They knew.

He would walk through the darkness – the only thing he feared – worrying about the possibility of gunfire and getting shot. He would head towards the river, cross the stone bridge and walk along the dirt road adjacent to the monastery, next to the cactus plants that led to her small house, the one with the blue windows. Every night she left the back door open for him. The smell of cow manure reeked from a nearby yard. She would wait for him in her transparent pink nightgown, completely naked underneath. He loved to get there and see her totally naked under her nightgown. She didn’t like it. He insisted, though, and she never refused him any request.

She would hear the creak of the back door and know he had arrived, so she would hurry to take off her panties and bra before he came into her bedroom. Her only request was that he keep quiet so as not to wake the children asleep in the next room. He would remove his gun and the two clips, placing them on the chair next to the bed, and then he’d take her by the shoulders and she’d close her eyes, shuddering with pleasure. She didn’t dare demand he marry her, for fear that he might stop coming to her. He would gaze at her with a stern look that hid wild desire. With the 100-proof
arak
still lingering in his head, he would throw her onto the bed without taking off his clothes. Men didn’t take off their clothes. The first few times, she surrendered to him the same way she had surrendered to her husband. Then one of her neighbours who knew about her secret taught her to resist.

‘Men like to be resisted,’ she said. ‘Try it. Squeeze your thighs shut, flee from him. You’ll see.’

He would become aroused and roar out. He’d bite her and leave red marks on her back with his fingers. Another woman said she had cast a spell on him, that she had bewitched him. Some of his friends said she was the love of his life. He would hit her over and over again. He would lift her up high and throw her back down, then throw himself on top of her until she finally gave in and begged him to stop. He’d spend the whole night at her house there in the small neighbouring village, his gun always close at hand. His eyes would pop open and his ears would perk up the moment he heard the slightest rustle or meow. He loved the feel of her, couldn’t get enough of her, and couldn’t sleep.

He couldn’t imagine ever experiencing a greater pleasure in life than returning from the young widow’s house as the light of dawn began to shimmer. He walked along the road at a leisurely pace, embraced by the tall poplar trees that were engulfed in the transparent white mist rising from the river and etching designs on the trees reminiscent of the embroidered veils on the angels’ heads in the icon of the Virgin at church. He whistled as he walked, but the birds didn’t fly off or stop their chirping, as if they’d grown accustomed to him slowly passing through in the early mornings, his head held high as he passed the cactus plants and crossed the river over the stone bridge, a blissful mood ushering him into a new day.

Chapter 4

Eliyya left the house every day around ten.

‘Eliyya sleeps a lot. Why is that?’ they asked Kamileh, as though her son had no right to be lazy.

He walked along looking right and left like someone discovering the Gang Quarter for the first time. The youngsters in the neighbourhood whispered to each other whenever he passed by.

‘There he is.’ They knew him from his website ‘eliano.org’ where they had read a quote attributed to some German philo­­sopher whose name they couldn’t pronounce, followed by a recipe for onion soup – and the right red wine to pair it with. The blonde American girl in the swimsuit wasn’t with him. They said she looked like Gwyneth Paltrow. They had hoped to see her.

He walked alone. He appeared lost, wandering around aimlessly.

They tattled on him to Kamileh the very first day.

‘Where have you been all this time?’ she asked him when he came back at noon.

‘I was walking the streets.’

She didn’t believe him. ‘You came all the way from there, from the other end of the world, just to walk the streets?’

He smiled.

‘What’s that you’re carrying on your shoulder?’

‘That’s the custom over there. Men carry handbags.’

‘What’s all that you’re drawing and writing down in the notebook?’

He laughed.

‘Why do you draw old houses and little kids?’

‘The news reaches you all the way over here?’

‘You’re lying to me,’ she said, getting more serious. ‘Why did you come back from America?’

‘I came back to see you,’ he said, trying to lighten things up. ‘Madame Kamileh.’

‘If you came back to see me, then sit with me here at home. You act like it’s not your house. This is your property. It belongs to the Kfoury family.’

He was unable to coax even the hint of a smile of satisfaction out of her.

Every morning she woke up at five and went to the balcony ready for battle. She paced back and forth as if on guard duty. She didn’t touch the flowers or pat the soil as she had been in the habit of doing, but rather whispered to the shouting children to move away from the window. Even though she was too far away for it to make any difference, her hand would go up in disapproval every time she heard a warning blast from a car horn down at the treacherous corner where there was at least one accident a week. If a neighbour asked her about him, she would put her hand on her cheek and close her eyes, signalling that he was still asleep, and motion to her neighbour to stop raising her voice.