The Dark Side of Love (71 page)

“Accident? You miserable hypocrite! I've been told three different versions within an hour. What do you do to these poor boys? They're children, and you turn them into careworn old men. So you strapped my son to his bed instead of sending him straight to hospital? I'll take you to court for this.”

There was an awkward silence. Gabriel's face was grey.

“My son is coming with me, right away. He has to go to hospital, and you'll give him a good report for this year's work.”

“But madame, we can't do that. The school year isn't over yet,” Gabriel pointed out.

“In that case I'm getting in touch with my cousin in the police to lay charges of child abuse against you. And then you might as well close this monastery down. I have no more time to spare, I'm going to pack my son's case now, and if you haven't brought me that report by the time we leave you must hold yourselves responsible for the consequences. Don't say I didn't warn you,” she snapped, and she left the office with Farid, holding him close to her side.

The case was quickly packed. With relief, Farid threw the habit on his bed. He was back in his own clothes again, but he still looked terrible. His sickness had left him thin, so he could still fit into his old trousers, shirt and jacket, but they were all too short in the arms and legs, and made him look like a scarecrow.

Gabriel was standing at the monastery gates with an envelope in his hand. “I hope you'll reconsider this. Barnaba has been an excellent student. Some of the other pupils have been a bad influence on him, but from now on I am sure he'd enjoy life here.”

Claire said not a word. She quickly tore the envelope open and read the report. It satisfied her. “Right, there we are,” she said, turning to Farid and ignoring Gabriel.

“Goodbye, Barnaba,” said the monk quietly, and he turned and walked away.

There was a taxi waiting at the monastery entrance.

The tiny town of Manara was a fishing port with a few houses, a high street, a school, and a police station. The only hotel, a yellow, single-storey building with small balconies, looked out on the beach. A sign hanging crooked bore the inscription: Hotel Panorama.

“On a clear day you can see Cyprus from here,” the hotelier said.

The double room had a balcony, and was plainly furnished but clean, the price so low that you suspected no tourists ever came this way. The little town was not attractive. Everything seemed to be rusting away. The small harbour, built by the Greeks two thousand years ago, was no longer of any importance in modern times, and was gradually falling into ruin. The bay was stony and the coast a steep, dark grey, bleak and rocky landscape. A tiny beach had been laid out in the twenties, but otherwise Manara consisted only of a row of houses along the main street. The inhabitants lived more from passing trade than on what little fish they caught.

There was a story that five hundred years ago a shipwrecked sailor, cast up on this inhospitable coast, had built the lighthouse,
manara
in Arabic, and lived in it, keeping the lamp burning night after night and making sure that it sent enough light out to sea. He was said to have saved many lives. One day he rescued a woman who had jumped overboard from a ship to escape her husband. The woman took a liking to the lighthouse keeper, and the two of them lived happily together until, one stormy night, they rescued another shipwrecked sailor, a sea captain whose ship had broken up in the high seas off the coast. It was the woman's former husband. He had changed a great deal in the meantime, and the woman liked him again. But she didn't want to leave the lighthouse keeper.

So the sea captain opened a restaurant in the bay, close to the harbour, and the woman lived in the lighthouse for three days and at the restaurant for three days. She liked to spend the seventh day by herself.

The present owner of the hotel was a descendant of the captain. In the evening he cooked Claire and Farid a wonderful fish dish, perch with black olives, garlic, white wine, herbs, and olive oil, and he entertained his guests for a long time with his stories.

But something seemed to be weighing on Claire's mind, and kept her from going straight back to Damascus. On the third day, feeling restless, Farid asked her what the matter was.

She looked at him for some time. “I wanted a little peace and calm to prepare you for seeing your father again. I'm extremely glad you're
out of that prison, but Elias thinks differently, so he's disappointed. He'd have liked to see you end up a bishop,” she explained, a smile hovering around her lips.

“I can set your mind at rest there,” said Farid, “I couldn't care less if he's disappointed. He almost ruined my life with his crazy ideas and that monastery. Why doesn't he go and join it himself?” And he laughed at the thought of his father in a black habit, with his head shaved.

“Oh no, he's not as bad as all that. That's what makes it difficult for me. I'm right on your side, but I love him, and I know he's a good man. However, he was very deeply wounded by his own father, and I don't want you to inherit those wounds. Try to understand me. I'd like to keep you from inheriting that Mushtak temper of his and wasting your own precious life fighting him, the way he lost his own happiness and humour and lightness of heart in fighting his father.”

Farid did understand Claire, but he was not to be so quickly mollified. He thought his father a coward, pretending to be disappointed instead of admitting his mistake. The hell with him, he thought.

“He may be a good husband to you, Mama, but if men had to pass a test to see if they were suitable to be fathers Elias Mushtak would have failed it.” He grinned at his own idea. Claire smiled too, but she shook her head.

“No, no,” she said, “I won't have that. You mustn't bear a grudge even if he does make mistakes. He's your father, and he's anxious about you. Disappointed, yes, but when I left he told me to indulge you a little on the way home. Your father can be different from the way you know him.”

This conversation was leading nowhere, and to escape such a blind alley Farid asked his mother about Matta.

“Oh, the poor boy,” Claire replied, “they left him in a very bad state. He had a terrible time in a mental hospital, where they treated him with electric shocks, and then two months ago he came to Damascus. But crazy as he may be, he knows one thing for certain: he never wants to go back to Mala. He's living with his aunt in Masbak Alley, quite close to us. He's broken psychologically, but physically active. He works running errands for several souvenir shops and a few families,” she added.

“What's his aunt like?” asked Farid.

“Nice, very nice. She has no children, and she's glad to have a quiet young man about the house. Who knows, perhaps going crazy saved him. She treats him as lovingly as if he were her own son. In Mala he'd have been living in stables and caves and infested with lice. But now he's indispensable to a number of people, because when Matta does something he does it thoroughly. He's at the door on the dot every morning, asking for his errands, and he carries them out conscientiously.”

“What kind of errands?”

“Oh, getting in everything a household needs when the woman of the house doesn't have time for it.”

“Are you generous when Matta does something for you?”

“That's another story; he won't take money from me. He says he owes you his life, he'll never forget all your goodness to him, you're his only brother on earth. So I go to see his aunt on the quiet and give her double what he asks from other people, which heaven knows is little enough. What
did
you do for him that was so good?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I was nice to him, that's all.”

It was late when Claire and Farid returned to the hotel on their fourth evening, feeling exhausted. Claire was looking forward to that evening's fish dinner. Promising aromas were wafting out of the kitchen.

Farid stood on the balcony for a while, looking out at the sea over which so many conquerors had come. The wind had died down. Fishing boats and sailing ships seemed to be glued to the shining surface of the water.

That night's fish dish was a sight to gladden the eyes, it was music to the palate, in short, it was a work of art on which Italians, Greeks, Turks, and Arabs had worked for several centuries.

“Do you begin to feel like going home?” Claire asked later, in the dark. The balcony door was open, and the surging breakers of the sea sent a cool breeze into the room.

“Yes,” said Farid. “I'm better. Now I want to see Rana as soon as I can.”

“Ah, yes,” smiled Claire. “We haven't talked about Rana much, have we? Are you still fond of her?”

“Oh yes. I love her,” he replied.

“She loves you too. Your cousin met her at an ice-cream parlour in the Suk al Hamidiye. She flung her arms around Laila and kissed her passionately. Laila felt quite uncomfortable. It was for you, Rana said, and Laila was to pass it all on.”

Farid smiled. “It's crazy,” he said. “Crazy to be in love with someone and not even able to show it. I feel like a dog who wants to wag his tail and doesn't have one.”

“If I know you, you'll be barking out your love for all to hear, so go to sleep now, my handsome little dog.”

He turned over, and soon he heard Claire's regular breathing.

DAMASCUS, 1956 – 1960

When Farid got out of the taxi with Claire that afternoon he took a deep breath, savouring all the aromas of his street. Bitter orange and lemon trees grew in the interior courtyards of the houses, roses, oleander, and jasmine. He knew he wouldn't be able to see Rana at once, but he decided to get up as early as possible next morning and wait for her on her way to school.

He wanted to call in on his friend Josef, but Claire insisted on him going to see his father at the confectioner's shop first. Farid was afraid of that encounter, but not visiting him would have meant more trouble.

“You wait, he'll be pleased,” she said as Farid turned back once more at the door of the house. He strolled slowly off to Bab Tuma. Nothing here had changed. Posters for the candidates in past elections were still stuck to the walls, showing a set of men with artificial smiles on smooth faces that gave nothing away.

The confectioner's shop looked to Farid majestic, but he thought his father seemed smaller than he remembered him. Elias was busy putting the finishing touches to a large order, packing sweetmeats into boxes with the firm's elegant logo.

“Hello, Papa,” called Farid, trying hard to seem cheerful. Elias Mushtak looked up, murmured a greeting, and devoted himself to packing up his pastries again. Farid stood waiting, but his father, who was talking to everyone else, didn't deign to look at him a second time.

“Can I help, Papa?” Farid asked at last, helplessly.

“Go over to Salman and fold sheets of card with him,” replied Elias, without looking up from the scales on which he had just put a number of filled puff pastries.

Disappointed, Farid joined the young employee in the stockroom and helped to fold twenty more boxes bearing the shop's logo. When they were ready he went back to the shop itself, where Elias was still at work behind the scales. Farid waited at the counter for his father to say something, but he seemed to have been struck mute.

“Tell your mother I won't be home until nine today,” he growled at last. “I have to go to a meeting of the confectioners' guild. You needn't wait supper for me.”

Farid went home feeling angry. When he told Claire about it tears rose to his eyes, and he hated himself for it. He quickly washed and went to see Josef.