Sarmada Page 5
I ambled over to my old house and went in. With new eyes, I discovered mulberries, pomegranates, prickly pears, a chicken coop, and a pen for sheep and goats in our garden. Versions of me appeared: the baby, the child, the teenager. I watched time flow. Who had I been? How come I hadn’t known him before? I’d spent all that time struggling to change who I was, to run away from myself; masquerading in a different language, a different guise, to be accepted by another place, another time. I examined the small, dented bell, ignoring a torrent of phone calls. I began to discern my inner self, to see the deformed masks I’d been wearing for all those years fall away. Time, it seemed, had passed over our house; it had passed over Sarmada entirely. Things had only gotten smaller, and worn out.
I went up to the second floor, my favorite room upstairs in my grandfather’s house; it was my childhood stamping ground. The plains of the Hauran ran down to the horizon, bordered by a vast and rocky stretch of basalt that continued deep into the heart of the Lajat. Old sounds, images, and smells came toddling forward and a loss-laden epiphany throbbed within me. A voice came over the village loud speaker: “We regret to announce the passing of Farida bint Fadda. May God show her mercy and comfort those she leaves behind.”
The town broke out in whispers: how crass! Whoever decided to broadcast the news of Farida’s death had clearly intended to ridicule her passing. The sounds of mourning wrenched me away from Hela Mansour, Azza Tawfiq, and my momentary fancy of sinking into memory, and returned me to reality. I realized—with a start—that it had been a week and I still hadn't told anyone in Dubai what I was up to. I'd come under the pretext of work and was actually meant to be in Damascus, not here. Tenacious reality set me back on track: I called my boss and told him there'd been a death in the family. I asked for a week off, promising to make up the time I missed, and he grudgingly gave in. I answered a text from the physics professor, who said she wished she could be there with me and see what I was seeing. I told her I'd bring her a Sarmadan surprise and turned off my mobile.
I walked downstairs and joined a group hurrying over to Farida's place. I asked why they'd cheapened her death by announcing it like that, but the only person who'd answer me was Salama. “Farida was free-spirited,” he said. “She opened her door to every young man in the village. She slept with any man she felt like. God have mercy on her. Her secret's with the Lord and she's his problem now.”
“What do you mean ‘She opened her door to every man in the village?’”
“She was a whore, son!” he barked at me. “Don't you get it?” He stormed off, muttering to himself and leaning on his battered old shovel.
People were getting louder and louder until they were almost shouting. The village, normally oppressed with silence, was rife with tension. I walked toward the uproar. A group of men were carrying the corpse and improvising a slapdash funeral service; the shaykhs had refused to pray over the body. She was buried that evening far outside the town limits. Other people, meanwhile, rummaged through all her possessions. The time had come to settle the score for her liberal youth. It was like a group assassination of someone who'd tried to break through the strictures of all that was accepted and approved.
I couldn't understand why no one had said anything about Farida while she was still alive. Why hadn't they put her on trial or killed her even? They'd all consented to Hela Mansour's murder after all; they'd stood by and done nothing. How exactly does memory get passed on from one generation to the next? How does it pass down the stories of scandal, of those who've violated the tyranny of hidebound sectarian and tribal law? How could the people have tolerated a woman who'd corrupted all the young men in Sarmada year after year? She'd allowed them to express their manhood directly through her body rather than through masturbation, or having sex with farm animals, or exploring male bodies and discovering the anal and phallic thrills of gay sex. Classic Freudian questions, but in a place so secretive and so harsh, the ready-made answers can't help but seem silly. If Farida had lived in the West, she'd have been prosecuted, and maybe even locked away for life as a child molester. True, they weren't exactly children, although they were under eighteen, but some people got married as young as fifteen in the village. A whole generation of men in Sarmada crossed into manhood over her body's bridge. But in the East—and maybe specifically in Sarmada—what she'd done was more like saint's work, and the trial only took place now that she was dead.
Let's put moral judgments aside for a moment and tell the tale from the very start. Let's try to put the story back together, and maybe Sarmada will give me a few more clues to help me try to understand how I fit in with these people who made me who I am, who imprinted their rashness on me, who nursed me—though I don't know from where—with the waters of rage, fear, joy, and gloom.
Farida struck my thoughts like a bolt of lightning, driving out Azza Tawfiq, Hela Mansour, and everything else that had happened, or at least setting them aside for later. I was pelted by the memories swirling around me and by the memory of that delightful day. Farida appeared to me, as I tried to remember her, the way she looked when I was ten years old.
I had an aunt who was the most famous seamstress in the whole region. She used to receive her customers in her bedroom, which she’d made into a workshop, and she used the south-facing room as a fitting room. I used to love that room and often slept there. I discovered that the women weren’t embarrassed to change in front of me because I was so young, especially not when I pretended to be asleep. The ritual of covertly watching the women undress was my little secret. It was thrilling, although I didn’t yet know why. Except Farida had figured me out; she knew I used to watch her undress. One day, she came in as I was pretending to be asleep, with the covers pulled over my head except for a tiny gap through which I could see her body. With her inimitable delicacy, she slowly stripped off her blouse and squeezed her breasts together with a knowing smile. I felt a stab of pain as she undid her bra and let one of her pomegranate breasts spill out. It bobbed slightly and fell still. She tucked her breast back into her bra and began to take off her skirt in a kind of striptease. She pinched her skirt and slid it down to the floor, shimmying her hips, exposing her oaken torso, which rested on tender and bulging thighs of an intoxicatingly dark brown. Aware that she was being watched by a young voyeur, she twirled around completely, showing off her African-round bottom. Her underwear did nothing to conceal it, just divided it into two equal halves that each called out to me wildly. Her vulva nearly pushed through her shiny black panties; the top was rounded, but you could make out the beginning of her slit and at the sides there were a few red bumps from frequent shaving. The sight of her nakedness destroyed me. A hyena was whooping inside of me. I felt numbing pulses tickling my pelvis. And here was my first erection, come to herald the beginning of a tortuous relationship between me and that skinny body lying beneath the sheets, completely covered but for a tiny aperture on that hot summer day.
When she heard the deep, hot, reptilian panting I couldn't hold back, she grinned. She tried on the new dress and then quickly took it off. She put her own dress back on and on her way out, crept up to my lair and tore the covers off my sweaty face. She laughed loudly, causing my aunt in the next room to ask if everything was all right. She winked at me and smiled the sweetest sinful smile. “What would you say if I told your aunt, you little runt?” And walked out. Those were the only words I ever heard her say.
Of course, I told my aunt about it and was immediately banished from that exquisite ambush. She screened off the fitting room and forbade me from ever going in there again. Farida remained a longed-for fantasy, which faded with time until I forgot all about it—only to remember it tonight. The only reason I'd been brought here was to bury Farida, I felt, or rather to revive her, to bring her back to life—for that alone. The professor's voice echoed in my mind, as she repeated Einstein's saying, reminding me to free myself, to open my memory and live life up to the very fullest: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, the
y are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”
2
Farida
Not two weeks after Hela Mansour returned to the village by the southern road to face her terrible fate, Farida arrived in a Land Rover. She was absolutely stunning: she had big, kohled eyes and long dark lashes, she was tall—taller than five foot eight—and svelte, and she had a beguiling gait. If she'd been born nowadays, she'd have certainly become a model. This was the woman who would change the emotional texture of Sarmada for years to come, back before she was consumed by oblivion, before her life came to an end on this very evening.
I had to return. Sarmada had become Scheherazade, weaving the story of my home, so that I could come to realize, unsettlingly, that everything I'd ever done in my career had been nothing more than a reaction, a reflex without grounds. And grounds here means only one thing: belief. I saw Sarmada in a new light. Farida had thrown open the windows of my memory. A single sentence out of my childhood and a few dozen conversations stored away in the hearts and minds of the villagers, that was what I had to dredge up. As I rescued those memories from the darkness, Sarmada burst upon me in all its seductive charm, its force, its depth, and its captivating plainness.
Sarmada had been through a bitter winter in the year that Farida came; and two years after the Six-Day War the country was still suffering from its defeat. A terrible emptiness had engulfed the village, its people, the trees and the stones, in a heavy silence. After Hela’s murder, most people in Sarmada had an uncomfortable, choking feeling. The image of her being slaughtered had tainted the village mood; it was depressing, and the air was heavy with guilt. Places, like people, live and feel: they hate, they love, and their moods deteriorate. They get bored, too. You can walk into any town or city in the world and figure out its mood before you’ve even drunk your first glass of the local water.
Salama explained to me what it was like. “Like having a hairball stuck in your throat.” “If it hadn’t been for Farida, I don’t think we’d have ever been happy again,” he added, whispering. I asked people about Farida. I loitered around streets and hangouts. I met people, listened carefully, wrote and took notes—all acts of opportunism that weighed on my soul and made me think again and again about how blind I’d been. How had I overlooked all that was happening around me? Was it really true that all this life, all this coming and going, and the anger and uproar, had been here beside me the whole time? Was it true that the great questions and poignant answers had been with me for more than thirty years while I was busy chasing dreams in Paris and delusions in Dubai?
I looked anew at every proudly solid stone, at the trees and streams. I was amazed by the gutters coming down off the roofs, which were tiled with stone, cement, and mud. I wandered through the desert of stories. I gathered everything up and saw that it made a banquet with enough for everyone: the banquet of life, most likely. But I'd better disappear and let the place tell its own story. I'll watch from a distance, silent but with every sense piqued. I won't interfere; I'll simply record it all and send it to the physics professor waiting for me in Paris.
The people of Sarmada were living with pain that stabbed at something inside of them. A kind of remorse had taken hold of many of those who'd witnessed Hela Mansour's murder; it was a feeling that they, too, were butchers. Hela Mansour had taken away something they'd gotten used to. She'd refused to give them the dignity of a secret story to pass around behind her back, something to chew the fat over, to embellish or pare down as required, as they'd done over those many years since she'd run away with her Amazigh lover. No, instead, she'd proclaimed her return and lanced the boil herself. She'd decided for herself how it would end and surrendered to fate without reservation. They wanted a new story, something to wipe away the trace of that disgraceful death. Their lives were as meaningless as they'd ever been and the place simply couldn't take the guilt much longer.
It surely didn't help that they couldn't bring themselves to forgive the Mansour brothers for what they'd done. They tried the best they could, but they still harbored a vague disapproval. Quietly and deeply confused, the brothers withdrew, and over the next few years each would suffer his own individual collapse. The youngest emigrated to Colombia after experiencing the ecstasy of Farida's body and then being denied her love. Two of the brothers were drawn to Khalwat alBayada, the hermitage of ascetic Druze shaykhs in Lebanon, who—cut off from the world and worldly life for the rest of their lives—were free to unlock the secrets of the Epistles of Wisdom and write commentaries on the Unique Text, while they waited on the doorstep of God's house in case He should choose to purify their hearts. Five years later, the fourth brother was to die fighting in the October War, and Nawwaf was left alone. He returned to the house in the center of the village and stood guard over the shadows. He spoke to the mulberry tree and at every full moon, he wept and, as if howling, repeated over and over, “Forgive me, Hela, forgive me...”
The day Farida arrived in Sarmada with Salman al-Khattar, the driver and gambler, she was twenty-six. He brought her back in his famous car after he'd spent three nights in the eastern district. The man risked everything, as though he didn't care if he won or lost but played only for the thrill of the bet. It was a habit he'd learned from life itself: nothing's worth holding onto. He spent money with a kind of lunatic generosity, living by the motto: Spend and ye shall receive! On that particular occasion, just as he was about to fold the rubbish hand he'd been dealt, he spotted that magnificent figure walk up, dazzling, the faint light falling over her as she crossed the courtyard of the mountain house. His mood did a complete one-eighty. Luck showered him with considerable winnings and, in fact, right at that moment it began planning a whole new destiny for him.
The card sharps from the neighboring village of al-Manabi had come together that night; they were known for their skill and for turning anything and everything into a bet. No matter what happened in the village, it was always met by the question “Care to make things interesting?”
But he, Salman al-Khattar, that is, had no trouble winning at sette e mezzo, poker, blackjack, and baccarat. Not only the Queen of Hearts, but the Queen of Clubs was smiling at him. One unlikely hunch after another never betrayed him and the pile of cash and valuables in front of him got bigger and bigger.
Muaz, whose house they were playing at, bet everything he had: his wife’s bracelets, the Rado Diastar watch he’d won off a guy in Beirut, and yet the guest kept on winning. Even when Salman got nervous and figured it’d be safer to lose a few hands, Lady Luck had other ideas; the pile of money, watches, gold necklaces, and wives’ bracelets only grew. The more he tried to lose, the more winnings came flowing in. In the end, the men of the house and the gamblers of al-Manabi lost everything. Salman packed all his winnings into a hessian sack and got ready to leave. He didn’t want to patronize those hardened gamblers; after all, offering to give them back some of what he’d won would’ve been worse than winning it in the first place. He tried to stay calm and to hide his excitement; he’d never won so much in his life! And that was when Farida strolled up, bold as anything, electrifying the tension among them. As they tried to scrape up the shame of their losses, she baldly announced, “The jackpot’s still up for grabs.”
They looked up. She was all defiance, all insistence, and any standing they’d felt evaporated in an instant. “One last hand,” she said to Salman. “You win, you get to keep everything and you get to marry me. You lose, you give it all back… but you still get me.” Her poor uncle didn’t know what to think. His jaw dropped and all he could do was wait to hear an answer. Salman didn’t need to be asked twice: those big, bold and desiring eyes had stirred his heart and filled his mind with a sweet and sticky madness.
As chivalrous as any nobleman, he emptied his winnings out onto the table and said, “I lose. Go get ready.” He threw the empty sack on the floor and turned to the others. “Tell the shaykh he’s got a ceremony to perform.”
She drove away with
him, leaving her cousins and relatives behind. They couldn’t hide how happy they were that she’d saved them from the idiocy they’d brought on themselves; they’d almost been forced to unload a pistol clip into the lucky stranger's skull. Bitterly, but with grim smiles, they sat down to divide up what they'd wagered.
She arrived in Sarmada, stepping down from the Land Rover in her crimson dress, which, along with her timid gait, her giraffe-like neck, and her lovely, big eyes, stayed embedded in the memory of many. The first person to lay eyes on her was Aboud Scatterbrains. His jaw dropped and his eyes glazed over; her beauty—which would soon be the death of him—undid him. A number of nosy people came to Salman al-Khattar's house to ask about this vision of loveliness who'd come out of nowhere. “Who is she? What's she doing at the al-Khattar's?”
Salman's mother, Fadila, put an end to the questions: “The wedding party's next Thursday. It'll go on for three nights.”
Sarmada danced until dawn. The village needed to forget the bloodbath that had taken place two weeks before and the fear that had bound many in its chains. On foggy days, they could see Hela Mansour's headless ghost roaming through the village after midnight, trying to collect her scattered innards. Wellwishers came from all the neighboring villages, al-Mantar, al-Harash, al-Qita, al-Matukh, and Sufuh al-Rih. Everyone knew Salman al-Khattar, the “chauffeur,” the noblest, handsomest, best-respected driver in the mountains. They could spot that Land Rover of his from a mile away. It was an ambulance for the sick and a coach for brides and grooms, it transported the isolated, and sheltered the aimless and those between paths. Salman was an adventurer: he had a legend and a woman waiting in every hamlet, and in every town some buddies to play cards with or to smoke hash, which grew in abundance in the volcanic soil until the Revolutionary Government got involved and decided to uproot everything and plant wheat instead. Salman still knew how to get his hands on “God's high,” though, which was what they called a joint.