The Dark Side of Love (96 page)

Although it was summer, he was freezing cold. For years he had been kowtowing in the Saudi royal palace, grimly fighting to defend his position against all who envied him, in the middle of the desert and far from his beloved Damascus – and now this had to happen. If he lost face now, he might as well blow his brains out at once.

“Dear God, I'm finished. Help me, and I'll sacrifice forty sheep to you in Mecca,” Dunia heard her father whisper to himself. Not until her mother came home and took matters in hand did he calm down a little.

She took her daughter to the Old Town to see a strong and sturdy elderly lady who described herself as a “bedroom woman”. Dunia was surprised, for in Arabic this word sounded very like the word for a hairdresser. No doubt the chamber woman did depilate the bride when necessary, in those places where the bridegroom would rather not encounter hair. But her main task was different. On the way to her Dunia's mother explained it to her daughter, and Rana now discovered for the first time that the profession of bedroom woman had existed in Damascus for centuries.

The bedroom woman attended the wedding at the invitation of the bride's parents, and while the guests were celebrating she was ready on call. If the bride was frightened and reluctant when evening came, she would slip into the conjugal bedroom and help the bridegroom to “take” his wife. She reassured the newly married girl, caressed her, and if necessary even held her legs apart and cursed and slapped her to make her docile, so that the bridegroom could penetrate her unopposed. She also knew all kinds of tricks to arouse men who couldn't get an erection. Her good offices made her welcome to the bridegroom's parents too.

“But what does that have to do with me?” Dunia asked her mother just as they were reaching the house of the bedroom woman, who heard Dunia's anxious question, and smiled. “Give your husband enough liquor, and when he wants to take you to bed say you're
scared and you're going to scream. Get him to call for me, and then you must calm down and show willing. That's all you have to do,” she firmly told Dunia.

Dunia herself was surprised by her mother's confidence and composure as the wedding night came. Her father, on the other hand, was pale as a corpse. He looked so sad that her brother Kamal said, jokingly, someone ought to tell the old man he wasn't at a funeral. Of course Kamal hadn't been allowed to know the tale of Dunia's hymen, and nor had anyone else.

When the bridegroom entered the bedroom he was swaying from all the liquor that had gone to his head. He was surprised by his bride's excessive timidity when she asked him not to come any closer or she'd scream. Allowing her the favour she asked, he sent for the bedroom woman. He had been told by his own mother, only a little while before, that he should ask for the woman's services so that the party could go on, undisturbed by excessive screaming.

The bedroom woman arrived, whispered something to the bridegroom, and he began to undress. Then she assured Dunia that it wouldn't hurt at all, and would very soon be over.

“It was very funny,” said Dunia, “there was my husband, dead drunk, dancing around in circles and undressing. He looked much more handsome naked than with his suit on, and I wanted him – he smelled so good, too – but the woman stood between us, held my legs apart as if she were going to look inside me, and took hold of my husband's thing. He was enormously amused by that, he kept laughing all the time, and he didn't see what she was doing. I felt him come inside me, but it didn't hurt. Before I could come to a climax, however, the chamber woman cried out, “Congratulations, O lion among men, on this pearl of virginity!” And she began ululating at the top of her voice, and uttering cries of joy and good wishes. While we were washing, she took the sheet with a big bloodstain in the middle of it out to the guests, and they all danced and sang with joy over my clear demonstration of virginity.

Where the bedroom woman came by all that blood was her own secret. But anyway, my husband, my parents and his, and all our friends and relations were pleased. That night my father took my
mother's arm with tears in his eyes and told her, “I'll never forget what you did. You have saved me.” And next morning he flew back to his king in Saudi Arabia, a happy man.”

Josef's studies did not demand much of him. He had to be present only in geography classes, because there was practical work to be done there. He knew more about history, on the other hand, than his professors did, so instead of attending lectures he was often to be found in the Café Havana on Port Said Street, where journalists and politicians met. Anyone who ever wanted to engage in these professions had to graduate in the “Havana Academy”. Since Josef's heart beat for politics, the café gave him far more interesting contacts than any lecture.

He liked the street, where there were many other restaurants as well as his favourite haunt, besides cinemas, stores selling Indian goods, and coffee bars. The Café Brazil was a meeting place for men of letters. You could also choose from several famous confectioners' shops, and most of the newspapers published in Damascus had their offices here. But he particularly liked the Librairie Universelle, a bookshop that had imported excellent literature from all over the world ever since the days of the French occupation. The owner knew him well, and would even get him banned titles. Conveniently, the shop was just opposite the Café Havana.

One fine day in autumn Josef was just coming out of the café, and was about to cross the broad street with its many traffic lanes, when he saw his father getting out of a tram and making purposefully for a nearby building. By now his father was almost blind. He rang the doorbell, and soon disappeared into the house. Josef stopped in surprise in the middle of the street. A bus driver had to brake sharply, and swore. Josef, startled, waved an apology. He went up to the unobtrusive door between two large display windows. The ancient copper plate on it said, in almost illegible lettering, “Khuri”. The name meant nothing to him.

When he came home, he asked his mother if she knew a family called Khuri. Madeleine looked up in surprise.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because my father went into a house with that nameplate, and I've never heard of the family before.”

Madeleine laughed. “Think nothing of it. He's only visiting his lover.”

Josef felt anger rise in him. “Do I ever dismiss any of your questions like that, Mother?” he replied, and was about to walk out of the room in a huff, but Madeleine took her son's arm and said, “Don't be so prim and proper. I'm telling you the truth. Rimon has loved Marta since childhood. She was a beauty, and she thought your father was a wonderful boxer. Her husband Sarkis Khuri, one of a noble family, controlled all the cocoa imports, and he was the biggest chocolate manufacturer in Damascus too. He spent some of his money on sponsoring Rimon, because he believed in your father's strength, and in all his interviews your father had to mention that he drank cocoa every morning.

“Marta fell madly in love with your father. But Rimon wasn't planning to sleep with a woman whose husband was his sponsor. The three of them met every week, and Rimon adored Marta and Marta adored him, but in thirty years it never came to any more. Then her husband fell sick, and he lost his money at exactly the time when your father was building huge palaces and earning large sums. Suddenly Mr. Khuri was dependent on Rimon's help, which your father gave generously, and he also made sure that the childless couple received a small pension from the Catholic community. But there's nothing worse than an impoverished nobleman. Khuri wasn't a bit grateful to your father, but saw him as an enemy. And he was always making snide remarks and saying he was sure that Marta and Rimon were deceiving him. However, the two of them just went on sitting next to each other, and even in
forty
years they never touched.

“But your father inherited poor eyesight from his mother, who went blind at the age of forty. He was terribly short-sighted when he was thirty, and from then on his eyes got worse and worse. Perhaps you remember that about ten years ago, when he could hardly see at all and kept on stumbling over things, I begged him to go and see an
oculist. After a few days he came home with a pair of glasses, and he was very pleased, because not only could he see where he was going better, he could see the dice when he played backgammon too. He went about as proud as a child with its first pair of patent leather shoes.

“But three days later he came home without his glasses. He didn't tell you children why, but he's never kept anything from me. He'd been horrified when he was suddenly able to see his beloved Marta so clearly. As I told you, she'd been a beauty once, but she hadn't aged well. She had growths on her nose, her hair was thin, and her hands had warts all over them. Rimon had never noticed that over the years. So that day he threw the glasses under a tram.”

Rana heard the news that Farid was free from Laila, the morning after his return. She phoned his house at nine. Claire laughed. “You're faster than a gazelle,” she joked, and felt life flowing through her veins again.

Farid had just woken up. His first night in freedom had been a short one. Matta and his fiancée Faride had been the last guests to leave, at about one in the morning. They wanted Farid to be witness at their wedding, and had been waiting for him all these months. Farid was deeply moved. He laid a hand on Matta's head. “Of course I will,” he said. “You only have to name the day.”

“We already have. Matta has been fixing a new day with the priest every three months, hoping for your release. Last time the priest advised us to ask a different witness,” said Faride. “Thank God I was there too, or Matta would just about have murdered him. He told the priest never to make such a suggestion again, but to pray for his brother Farid to be set free. Now we've picked the first Sunday in December, and if that date suits you we'll get married at last.” All the time Faride was talking, Matta looked at her lovingly, and now he nodded happily.

“Then that's agreed,” said Farid, and he got to his feet and marked Sunday, 3 December with a large cross.

He had been tired when he went to bed, but his feelings were in such turmoil that he could hardly sleep. He was smiling at the scene with the priest as Faride described it, imagining Matta's fury and the cleric's pale face. What a loyal, staunch friend Matta was! Then, at the end of the evening, came the news of Rana's forced marriage. And the place was so noisy! Damascus at night pulsated with an incredible volume of sound for someone who had spent over a year out in the desert. All Farid had heard in the prison camp were the screams of the prisoners and the cry of jackals. The desert swallowed up everything else. But here the city never seemed to sleep, and finally, when there was no one left in the streets calling out or hooting car horns, the muezzin began calling the faithful to prayer.

Farid woke up, and went into the courtyard barefoot. Claire was sitting by the fountain. He asked quietly who it was on the phone. She spoke into the receiver. “He must have picked up your scent, he's just asking who you are. Shall I tell him?”

Rana laughed.

“Hello, dear heart.” Farid greeted her, in the words he had been repeating over and over for months on end.

“Hello. Do you still want to see me in spite of everything that's happened?” she asked shyly.

“Every day,” he said. “Your marriage means nothing to me, and if it doesn't mean anything to you either then let's see each other.” Those were the very words that Rana had been hoping for months to hear.

She told him the way to where she lived.

The city was in a bustling mood, it was beautiful, picturesque October weather, and the Damascenes felt something like liberty again for the first time in years. Farid didn't think that General Amilan, who had sent Satlan packing, was any better than his predecessor, but the people's hopes of democracy were almost tangible, and the release of all political prisoners made an encouraging start. The old Syrian political parties and the newspapers banned by Satlan emerged into the light of day again.

Damascus is at its loveliest in autumn, thought Farid. The cries of
street sellers and the swallows in the sky sounded like melancholy songs of farewell.

The university was to open its doors again in two weeks' time. What a pity, Farid thought, that all his dreams of going through his studies there with Rana close to him had been dashed by her forced marriage.

Some things had changed since his disappearance. Josef had told him, in rapid staccato telegraphese, that the Interior Minister of the time had closed the club after Gibran did something stupid. Now they were trying to get permission to reopen it. Gibran had been arrested, and after a short while was handed over to the al-Asfuriye mental hospital, where he was still a patient.

“What about Karime?”

“She doesn't want to hear any more about Gibran. She had to bear a good deal of humiliation because of him, and now she just wants to be left alone.”

Late that night Amin had phoned. He was in Aleppo in the north of the country, he said, and wanted to congratulate Farid on his release and remind him that, now everything was out in the open again, it was time for him to take up the battle once more. Amin told him that he and four other communists had managed to escape from the much-feared prison camp in Tad. He had found shelter with a family in Aleppo who were nothing to do with politics, but had guts. Then he said that he had fallen in love with Salime, the eldest daughter of the family, and they had married three months ago. He would very much like to see Farid, he added, but it was better for him to stay in Aleppo, where he had a lot of work laying tiles.