Sarmada Read online

  “He blew up, screaming at us, ‘Whoever feels like getting buried today, just stay right there for one more minute!’ He was deadly serious, you could see he was in torment and there was no way to soften his heart. We were terrified ourselves, so we turned to leave. He called after us, in a strangled voice, ‘Look, listen here!’ When we turned back to look at him, he said…” Father Elias stopped to take a sip of the bitter tea. His ordinarily forthright expression was roiled as he told me the story of that day, which he'd long since buried in the depths of his heart. “Nawwaf said, ‘Anyone who tries to protect her is going to give his mother a reason to grieve today. Just stay out of it.’ He fired a couple of more bullets into the air to emphasize his point.

  “I prayed to Our Lady. And all of Sarmada prayed for Hela and her brothers. That was the most we could do… I guess, maybe we could've done something, but there was no one who felt they could do anything at the time.”

  After Father Elias had regained some of his customary good humor, I left him promising I'd come back to see him and the others, whom I thought of as my family, very soon. As I walked away, I asked myself: Is anything clearer now? Does there even have to be a story here at all? And yet, I'd come across something enticing, even seductive, in the way the villagers told their stories, in that melange of confession, atonement, and senseless chatter. I headed over to the oldest shop in the village, where people gathered to exchange the latest news and gossip. Mamdouh, the shopkeeper, welcomed me warmly just as he'd always done every time I returned, and we sat down together on the bench in front of the shop. I asked him about Hela's brothers.

  “What do you want to know about them for?”

  “No reason in particular,” I said. “I'm just curious. What happened to them? Who were they? Anything really.”

  He poured the coffee and began: “I was just a young boy back then, you know, about seven or eight years old. I remember they used to come to the shop when my father was alive. I was terrified by the look of them, but my father—God rest his soul—always treated them very kindly. I asked him about them once and all he said was, “Son, there's nothing more precious in life than your honor and your good name. God help them.”

  “They'd come to the shop and give a one-word greeting, if that. Sometimes they wouldn't say anything at all, or they wouldn't return our greeting. They bought what they needed, usually paying in eggs or milk. Some of them would just up and disappear for a while; they were off trying to track her down. They even used to pay a reward to anyone who brought them information about her whereabouts. I saw them once, just in front of the shop here where we're sitting, they gave some Bedouin a hundred lira to go looking for her.”

  Salama came over, carrying his rusty shovel; I hardly ever saw him without it. He joined us at the front of the shop and, as usual, made a few sarcastic comments, and took up the story where Mamdouh had left off. He explained that it was all Sarmada's fault. That all the villagers were to blame for what'd happened in one way or another. “For a whole year after she ran off with that stranger, no one dared talk about it or take pleasure at the brothers' bad luck. And then, slowly with time, no one felt bad for them anymore. People started to say that it was their own damn fault.

  “A group of us went to see them: the Druze Initiates from the mountains, the village shaykhs, Father Elias, the archbishop; we all went over to talk to them. We tried to get them to move on with their lives. We told them that none of us were questioning their manhood. All those men of the cloth, all those local dignitaries reeled off parables and words of wisdom about God's will and submitting to fate and begged the brothers to forget about their sister. They told them that all they had to do was disown her and that her Creator would judge her for what she'd done. Everything's part of God's plan, they said, you've got to accept it. Nawwaf, the eldest brother, wasn't going to hear it, he was stubborn.”

  Salama said he could still remember exactly what Nawwaf had said to one of the shaykhs who told him to be reasonable, to have some perspective and obey God's will: “‘This has nothing to do with God, Shaykh,’ he answered softly. ‘It's a lot bigger than God.’” Old man Salama was all worked up and he was making wild circles in the air with his shovel: “Well, naturally the shaykhs and the other village elders weren't going to sit there and listen to all that blasphemy, so they just up and left, and let the brothers find their own way out of the wilderness of heartache back to right and reason. Not long afterwards, the brothers abandoned their family house in the center of the village and moved out next to Majlis Hamza to get away from everyone else.”

  I asked the other people at the shop about Azaday, the guy who'd stolen Hela away. Some of them had nothing but contempt for him, but a few others talked about him more ambiguously, more deferentially. As more and more people came to the shop, the conversation expanded to include other versions of the stories, with everyone pitching in with his or her individual contribution. Some people remembered the story as their families had passed it down, while others had lived through the events themselves. A few had heard about what the couple had done and were full of respect for their courage. At that point, Shaykh Shaheen, the village elder, spoke up: “Murder is a sin. You know, by running off and marrying someone outside the faith, she was really just returning to her origins.”

  “What do you mean?” we asked him. The shaykh had to choose his words carefully: he wasn't allowed to reveal to us, the Uninitiated—we who'd not yet received the secrets of our faith—any specifics about the sect's esoteric wisdom.

  “The Druze call to faith was first made back in 408 AH, you know, 1018 AD,” said the shaykh. “It was announced to all the different denominations, sects, and religious communities in Fatimid Egypt and it spread into the Levant and the Taim Valley in particular. The creed was first set down by Hamza ibn Ali al-Zuzani, causing a schism with the Ismaili Shiites, whom they called ‘The Belated Shaykhs.’ It was the first time in the history of Islam that polygamy was forbidden. Then the call to faith was completed in 436 AH. Anyone who joined the faith afterwards had to write out a formal declaration and swear that they held no remaining affiliations to any other sect or religion, and that they would never again hold such affiliations until the end of time, not even when their souls underwent periods of transmigration, which we call ‘Episodes of Revelation.’ Since at the time, a number of perfidious souls hid among the new Druze and pledged their faith, in every life and in every generation a number of non-Druze souls must be culled. These people leave the community of the faithful. They return to their origins, marrying outside the faith, and therefore, killing a woman who leaves the faith is obviously a sin; on the contrary, we should welcome their departure. It's simply a kind of automatic cleansing of the community, a purification of our blood and minds.” His view was supported by the Holy Epistles of Wisdom, which gave a religious justification for the act of leaving the custody of the closed community. It absolved the runaway for turning her back on the faith without any need for bloodshed.

  “Well, then, why didn't the Mansour brothers accept it?” I asked the shaykh.

  “It was all about tradition,” he replied. “Custom. To those who can't comprehend—or even appreciate—reason, sometimes tradition can seem more important than religion itself.”

  “Do the Epistles of Wisdom say anything about whether killing is ever justified?” I asked.

  The shaykh was resolute in his wisdom. “One isn't even allowed to strike or rebuke. This, too, is immoral and will not be tolerated. For us Druze, with our special understanding of God's oneness, all men and women are equal. Men aren't women's keepers. A man isn't allowed to have more than one wife, and women have the same rights of inheritance as men, or as specified in the will of the deceased. A Druze woman enjoys the same freedoms and is bound by the same obligations as a Druze man. Moreover, men aren't allowed to divorce their wives, or even threaten to. If he does, he can never take her back; it's unforgivable to even say the word. This is intended to make divorce as difficult a
s possible.”

  As I was saying goodbye to the people at the shop, Raifeh Umm Ibrahim came up to me and whispered, “I was a friend of Hela's. She told me all her secrets. I even went with her a few times when she went to see him. He was such a stunning boy, just gorgeous. Nobody could resist him.” I walked with Raifeh as far as Poppy Bridge and along the way she painted a picture of the boy who'd snatched Hela away. “He was so kind. His secret, his magic, was that he was a stranger. Strangers are always desirable, and Hela wasn't the only girl who was in love with him. He cast a spell on every girl in Sarmada. He was like a window onto a different world, colorful and exciting, not boring like this place here.”

  Picture fragments began to come together as the scene formed mosaic-like before my eyes. I knew I was getting closer to Hela Mansour. At last, I'd arrived at something that resembled—if only superficially—the story Azza Tawfiq had told me. Yet it was still disconcerting: these kinds of stories were always traveling from person to person, being taken up—in a way, transmigrating. There was nothing to do but dig deeper, to extract more from more people, to jog memories to see what people had lived through at the time, to find out what they remembered about Azaday, and what happened to him.

  The Sarmadans all said he was a wanderer from North Africa, one of those folks who went from village to village selling combs, lucky charms, and candied flattery, carrying around ancient maps to look for clues in their search for hidden treasures. He arrived in Sarmada and set up camp. There he polished brass, repaired pots and pans, and decorated amulets with the magic ink he'd inherited from his soothsaying ancestors in the Aures Mountains. People said he could interpret the secret code of Dahiya bint Lahiya, the seer of al-Bata al-Zanatiya, the greatest of the Amazigh tribes. Now, of course, the seer initially won her fame by resisting the armies of the Muslim conquerors to avenge the murder of her lover, Kusayla ibn Lamzam, but she remained a symbol of the Amazigh spirit throughout the early periods of Islamic rule in North Africa. Legend ascribed to her all manner of fantasy and mystery and she became the authority upon whom all who chose to spend their lives among the occult sigils that could unlock the talismans of life relied.

  Azaday was a member of the Lamzam family and could trace his lineage all the way back to that Amazigh general himself. The man who'd died defending the Aures back before Islam had extended its rule over the whole of North Africa. And yet, beneath the ashes, the Amazigh character remained. Azaday, who'd been brought up in the circus of the Auresian landscape, cut a striking figure in small-town Sarmada. He could move a broom with his eyes and take a sand grouse flying along in a migrating flock and bring it crashing down to the ground in front of his audience. He played a strangely shaped wooden guitar that made Daham the leper's dog howl all night long, even though it'd been dumb for years. Once he was done amazing Sarmada with his marvels, he'd sit down and sing to them with his enchanting voice. They were crazy about his songs, which remained in their heads for weeks on end. He even won the respect and approval of the five brothers, who were charmed by his many talents. The middle brother went so far as to invite him over.

  They stayed up all night, getting drunk with the help of a bottle of matured arak. Hela came in, carrying a huge tray bedecked with all manner of mezze. She sat opposite Azaday, the Algerian come to the East—although they called all North Africans “Moroccans”—and examined him silently. Her gaze was all curiosity; it was her love of discovery, her heart laid bare. Something about him caused her to forget all the advice Druze girls were given: beware strangers, for there's no happily-ever-after for Druze who stray outside the confines of the sect.

  He was thirty-one and vigourously—arrestingly—masculine. After a second glass of arak, he started to sing a strange ballad called Aynuva and Ghariba, and the wide and empty room filled with his mesmerizing voice. Mysterious Amazigh words that carried the mountain air of the Aures, and which none of them could understand—apart from “beast” and “O Father! O Father!”—faded into nothingness. They asked him to explain the lyrics, so he did his best to find Arabic equivalents.

  O Father, open the door!

  Daughter, silence your bracelets' clanging.

  O Father, I fear the beast in the woods!

  Me too, dear daughter, me too.

  His songs transformed the house into a trap of gentle affection. Hela was being worn down, and as she sat there across from the door, her heart opened up wider and wider; the bolts of good counsel be damned. The song carried her off to another clime and when he turned to look at her, a secret thread began to stitch her destiny to that of this vagabond Berber. He could feel her stare swirling around him and he knew that his extraordinary journey—from the Algerian mountains in remotest North Africa to Sarmada—had all been for this: to delight in that gaze as it set his heart alight. He'd promised himself that he'd be nothing but a neutral observer, only an itinerant earning his daily bread and seeking out his roots here in the Levant; she made him want to go back on his word.

  A band of young Africans were playing music in front of the statue of Saint Michel and people had gathered around to listen. Nonetheless, neither the sound of banging drums and clattering shakers, nor an African voice filling the air, could keep me from listening closely as the physics professor continued her tale. I was beginning to doubt whether folk memory alone could have produced all those astonishing details, preserved all those expressive images and reflections from one generation to the next. She'd buried the little cowbell, her will, and her mother's bracelets beneath the mulberry tree and walked out of the house to face them. She continued, recounting all that her memory granted from beyond the grave.

  They'd run away to Damascus and got married there. They used fake names because they were being hunted by a team of dogged trackers, but it was difficult to disguise their true identities as they'd failed to cross the border and get false papers printed. Because of her father's legacy as a hero of the Great Revolt, all those with higher authority in the mountains spread the word at the border passes that Azaday was a dangerous criminal who was wanted by the security forces, and so they were harassed everywhere they went. They became a couple of easy targets, who were ever vulnerable to blackmail and the threat of exposure. It wasn't very hard to figure out who they were, what with his Algerian accent, and it was all but impossible for them to hide out.

  There was nothing left for them to do but to take refuge with the Shammar tribe of Bedouins for a while. Azaday spent years trying to get them into Iraq and Turkey to no avail and twice they fell into the hands of Camel Corps soldiers whom her brothers had bribed. They never stayed in one place for more than a week, and constantly being on the run had ground them down completely by the time they reached Zabadani. They remained there for a week with the smugglers and then Azaday daringly crossed the border into Lebanon and back alone to make sure it was safe. He returned ecstatic and hopeful: they'd cross the border with the smugglers. He'd tested the route himself and confirmed that nothing could go wrong. Promise shone once again in the distance and announced an end to their days of banishment. They would get as far away as they could, and go back to Algeria. Dreams surged out before her. Hela smiled, but there was some sadness in her eyes. She'd bet against time. She'd got news of her brothers from the itinerant peddlers and coppersmiths who passed through Sarmada, but the overwhelming relief of a death forestalled was undeniable all the same. She'd heard about what had happened to them, how they'd abnegated and consecrated, and now it was time to decide: vanish or go back?

  Azza Tawfiq laid out in detail the events of that night. Azaday was thunderstruck when Hela told him she'd had enough and had decided to go back. “I can still hear his voice, the echo of his words, how he begged me to stay, not to be stupid and go back. He started cursing in Amazigh and pleading with me in my mountain Arabic. He tried everything he could to get me to change my mind: charms, begging, threats and promises. I answered every attempt with a single refrain, uttered calmly but firmly, ‘I have to go back.’ He los
t it. He started beating his head against the wall. He tore at his clothes. He threw himself at my feet.

  “‘I have to go back...’

  “He grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. He squeezed my hands, his nails dug into my skin.

  “‘I have to go back…’

  “I just couldn't explain to him that I'd made my decision for the good of us all. I wanted to give him the chance to have a life free of fear. We'd been moving from town to town for months on end. We'd tried our luck in every inch of Syria, from the north to the south, from the coast to the desert, scrambling like stalked prey. The mere hint that someone else nearby was from the mountains made us run off in a panic. My brothers' plight had won the sympathy of everyone in the Druze mountains and the news that they'd isolated themselves from the rest of society had spread beyond the region and won them pity beyond the sect. Not a single person who heard the story forgave me for what I'd done. I'd been sentenced to death for the lives of five of Sarmada's best. We were cursed. There was nowhere left for us to go, not in Syria, maybe not even in the whole world.

  “I knew how stubborn my brothers could be. They'd inherited that bloody-mindedness, that severity, from our forefathers; it was like a masochistic ritual with them. It was like I was committing murder a thousand times a day. There was nothing I could do except go back and let them live again. I held him that night. It was an agony I'd only ever felt twice in my life: the day my mother died and the day Princess was put down. For a moment, I felt that perhaps we could make it to Beirut and from there to somewhere safe and that I could be as happy as the rest of God's creation, but I just didn't want to go on anymore.”

  At dawn, she slipped out of the rented house in Zabadani without waking him and went to Damascus. There she caught a bus from the Bab al-Musalla station and reached Sarmada on Tuesday evening after a light rain. She walked to her old house to pray that God would be merciful to her mother, and to commemorate her old life, to ask the old place to forgive her, and to bury her will. She then continued down the path that ran alongside Princess' cliff to face them in the square like a lamb leading itself to the slaughter. She'd left him behind, the man who'd been so good at inventing stories, at dazzling even the most frigid hearts, and a dozen things besides. The man who aroused wonder wherever he went, who sold potions and handkerchiefs perfumed with good fortune, who played that strange guitar and sang songs he made up on the spot in that enchanting voice, who interpreted dreams. He was sound asleep when she left him. He'd finally gotten her to promise that she'd go to Beirut with him in a couple of days. She knew it was a lie when she said it.