The Harafish (4 page)

18
.

Now Ashur could not see beyond the dust of daytime and the dark of night. Every time he came to a bend in the road, he expected a hitch. His eyes would flicker. He would mumble under his breath, “God, let it be good.”

Was the structure of life irreparably damaged?

He was about to get into bed just after midnight when he heard a cry outside the window. “Ashur! Ashur!”

He rushed to open it, muttering, “The children!”

A shadowy figure peered through the window bars.

“What's going on?” he asked.

“Come and get your sons. They're in the bar fighting over the girl Fulla!”

Zaynab blocked his path. “Let me go. You stay here,” she begged.

He pushed her out of his way, stuck his feet into his slippers, and was off like a tornado.

19
.

His frame filled the doorway. The eyes of drunken men reclining around the walls turned to focus on him. Darwish bounded toward him. “Your sons are going to wreck the place,” he shouted.

He saw Hibatallah sprawled helplessly on the floor. Hasballah and Rizqallah were locked in a vicious struggle, while the other customers looked on indifferently.

“Stop!” he roared in a dreadful voice.

The two youths separated, looking toward the source of the voice in terror. With the flat of his hand he struck one, then the other, and they crashed down onto the bare earth floor. He stood looking defiantly around at his audience. Nobody said a word. He threw a withering glance at Darwish. “To hell with you and this foul hole of yours!” he shouted.

Fulla suddenly materialized from nowhere. “I'm innocent,” she muttered.

“She was just doing her job. But your sons were after her,” said Darwish.

“Shut up, you pimp!” shouted Ashur.

“God forgive you,” said Darwish, backing away.

“I could bring this place down around your ears.”

Fulla took a step forward and stood directly in front of him. “I'm innocent,” she persisted.

“Get out of my way!” he said roughly, hardly able to keep his eyes off her.

He sent his sons staggering through the door one after the other.

“Don't you believe I'm innocent?” Fulla asked again.

Again he had to tear his eyes away from her. “You're small fry.” Then he turned on his heel to go, without looking at her again.

In the darkness outside he breathed deeply. He felt that he'd escaped the clutches of evil. The darkness was thick and unseeing. He squinted, trying to make out his sons' shapes but they had vanished.

“Hasballah!” he shouted.

Nothing but silence and darkness. A glimmer of light from the café as he passed, and then nothing. In his heart he knew they would not be back. They would flee their birthplace and his authority. In future they would seem like strangers. Only the sons of eminent families stayed close to their roots in this alley.

As he made his way in the darkness, he felt that he was bidding farewell to security and peace of mind. He was caught up in a whirlpool of troubled emotions, and fear overcame him, as hard to resist as deep sleep. He told himself the girl must have overwhelmed them with her beauty. He himself had been struck by it. Why hadn't the idiots married? Wasn't marriage a religious act, a safety device?

20
.

Zaynab was waiting for him at the door. Her lamp on the step guided him home.

“Where are the children?” she asked anxiously.

“Aren't they back?”

She sighed audibly.

“Let's hope it's for the best,” he muttered.

As he sank down on the sofa, she said angrily, “You should have let me go.”

“To a bar awash with drunks!”

“You hit them. They're not children. They'll never come home.”

“They'll wander around for a day or two, then they'll be back.”

“I know them better than you do.”

He subsided into silence and she started off on another tack.

“Who's this Fulla Darwish keeps going on about?”

He avoided her eyes and said carelessly, “What's it to you? She's a barmaid!”

“Is she pretty?”

“She's a whore.”

“Is she pretty?”

He hesitated. “I didn't look at her.”

She let out a despairing breath. “They'll never come back, Ashur,” she said.

“Perhaps it's for the best.”

“Don't you know how young men behave?”

He said nothing.

“We have to be tolerant of their mistakes.”

“Really!” he returned incredulously.

Suddenly she looked withered, faded, old like the wall by the path, and he mumbled in embarrassment, “I'm sorry for you, Zaynab.”

“No doubt we'll feel sorry for each other a lot in the years to come,” she said irritably.

“In any case, they don't really need us anymore.”

“There's no life in the house without them.”

“Poor Zaynab.”

She rested her head in the palm of her hand and said miserably, “I've got to work early in the morning.”

“Try to sleep.”

“On a night like this!”

“Whenever you want then!” he said in exasperation.

“What about you?”

“What I need is a breath of fresh air.”

21
.

The darkness again. Haunting the archway. Hiding beggars and tramps. Humming with silence. Embracing angels and demons. Night where the troubled man goes to escape his obsessions, only to become submerged in them. If fear can seep through the pores of these walls, then deliverance is a joke.

22
.

He emerged from the archway into the little square. He found himself alone with the chanting from the monastery, the ancient wall, and the star-studded sky. He squatted with his head between his knees. More than forty years ago someone had crept along and hidden him in the darkness here. How and where had the sin been committed? What were the circumstances? Was he the only victim? Try to imagine your mother's dreamy face and your father's, inflamed with passion. Imagine the honeyed phrases of seduction, and the moment when your fate was decided. There's an angel and a devil standing beside them but desire is defeating the angel. What does your mother look like? Perhaps like…To arouse such a conflict she must have had clear skin, dark eyes outlined with kohl, delicate features like flowers opening, a slender, magical body, and a gentle voice. And underlying all that there must have been this hidden, blind-rushing, treacherous, rapacious energy, without scruples, admirably suited to its purpose.

An enticing bait lying in wait while fate looked on expectantly.

Fifteen years of a man's life put paid to in an instant.

He knocked at the monastery door, but it remained closed. He could have forced it easily enough, but he had no desire to. A man
wedded to life may as well embrace its children, perfumed with lust. But he was forced to admit that what was happening was hard to believe, and suffer the feelings of a runaway who had finally been trapped. Laughter and tears are equally the stuff of fate. He was a new creature now, plagued by blind desires, madness, and remorse. He begged help from the Almighty, and the wine of temptation flowed through his veins.

His head grew heavy and he drifted into unconsciousness.

He saw Sheikh Afra Zaydan standing before his grave. He took Ashur in his arms.

“Are you taking me into the grave, my lord?” asked Ashur uneasily.

But he carried him along the path, across the square, and under the archway.

Something woke Ashur. He opened his eyes and heard Zaynab saying, “Just as I thought. Are you going to sleep here till morning?”

He jumped up in fright, gave her his hand, and the two of them went off in silence.

23
.

Suddenly his huge frame filled the doorway. The drinkers' heavy eyelids flickered and behind their clouded eyes silent questions were exchanged:

“What's he come back for?”

“Is he chasing his sons?”

“Don't expect any good to come out of it!”

He swept his eyes around the place and found a space on the left-hand side of the bar. He crossed over and dropped onto his haunches, acting casually to cover his embarrassment.

Darwish hurried up to him. “Nice to see you.” He smiled. “Who would have thought it!”

Ashur ignored him entirely. Fulla came over with a calabash and a paper cone of spiced lupin seeds. He lowered his eyelids and remembered the story of the flood. Then he pushed the calabash aside and paid for the drink without a word.

Darwish began to look at him strangely. “We're here to get you whatever it is you want,” he whispered and left him on his own.

The other customers quickly disregarded him. Fulla wondered what made him keep off drink. She went up to him again and gestured toward the untouched calabash. “It's really good,” she said encouragingly.

He inclined his head as if to thank her.

“I'd keep out of his way,” called a drunk.

“Don't you think he's like a lion?” she answered, laughing, loud enough for Ashur to hear.

A childish joy descended on him, but he kept his features immobilized. His clothes no longer shielded his nakedness from prying eyes. The whole course of his life, between the day he was found tucked away at the side of the path and this moment as he sat at the bar, shrank to nothing. Its twists and turns were all swallowed up in the surging waves of a new song. In no time he gave in to defeat, exhilarated at the sense of victory it brought him.

Fulla was standing among the earthenware containers looking at him with interest when Hasballah, Rizqallah, and Hibatallah burst through the door.

Little trickles of expectation spread through the lazy air and the customers craned their necks to have a better view. Hasballah shouted a greeting. Then he noticed his father. He swallowed and froze. Rizqallah and Hibatallah looked as if the air had been let out of them. All three stood there for a moment in shock, then turned on their heels and vanished. A sarcastic laugh broke the silence. Fulla looked in Darwish's direction. He said nothing, but annoyance was written all over his face.

24
.

“Is this going on forever?” asked Zaynab, her face registering protest.

“What do you suggest?” replied Ashur dully.

“It's all very well to ban them from the bar, but is it worth the price you have to pay?”

He moved his big head in an indecisive gesture and said nothing.

“It means that you've begun to prop up the bar at Darwish's all day long,” she cried angrily.

25
.

He was driving along when Fulla came out of the bar and stood in his path. He pulled on the reins, muttering a little prayer for divine mercy. Without a word she leapt gracefully aboard the cart and sat next to him, winding her black wrap around her. Her face was unveiled. He looked at her questioningly.

“Take me to Margoush,” she said sweetly.

Darwish appeared in the doorway with a smile on his face and said, “Look after her. I'll pay her fare.”

Ashur saw the web closing around him and he didn't care. He was so happy he felt drunk. All he had learned from Sheikh Afra was crushed under the donkey's hooves as he drove along, his back molten in the heat.

“You could easily be chief of the clan, if you wanted,” she said suddenly.

His face lit up. “Do you think I'm that bad?”

She laughed softly. “What's the point of being good when you're dealing with people who don't know the meaning of the word?”

“You're still young.”

“No one's ever treated me like a child,” she replied caustically.

He frowned. The attentive stares directed at his precious cargo had not escaped him. “Why are you going to Margoush?” he asked her abruptly.

When she did not answer, he regretted his slip of the tongue. She asked him to stop at the entrance to Margoush alley. “I wish the ride had been longer,” she said. Then as she started to walk away, she looked back and added, “But it will soon be nighttime!”

Ashur patted his donkey on the neck and whispered in its ear, “Your master's finished.”

26
.

At first light he stormed into the bar. Darwish woke up, protesting loudly. He was taken aback when he saw who his visitor was.

“What brings you here?” he asked.

Ashur pulled him to his feet and stared wildly at him. “There's no way out,” he muttered.

“Why have you come, Ashur?”

“You're malicious and evil. You know very well why I've come,” said Ashur roughly.

Darwish rubbed the back of his neck, squinting at him through reddened eyes.

“I should be starting work,” he mumbled.

“I've decided to take her,” said Ashur, jumping in with both feet.

“There's a time for everything,” smiled Darwish.

“But as my lawful wedded wife…”

Darwish's eyes widened in surprise and the two men glared at each other silently. “What's this all about?” murmured Darwish.

“It's not what you think.”

“Have you gone mad, Ashur?”

“Maybe.”

“I can't manage without her,” said Darwish, tiring of the conversation.

“You'll have to!”

“Have you thought of the consequences?”

“It makes no difference.”

“Don't you know that all the men in the neighborhood…” began Darwish with a vicious air.

Fulla interrupted him from her couch, making it clear that she had heard the whole conversation. “What are you trying to tell him? If he'd wanted you to give evidence, he'd have asked you!”

“You'll be the laughingstock of the whole place,” shouted Darwish, erupting into anger.

“He can look after himself,” Fulla shouted back.