The Levant Trilogy (57 page)

Simon watched so intently he did not hear when
Guy spoke to him.

'Shall we go?'

Simon, becoming aware of the question, shook his
head. Miserable though he was, he could not leave while Edwina was there, and
so they sat until the sun began its descent towards the west. Near them lay one
of the young women known to officers as 'Gezira lovelies'. Plump, round-faced,
not pretty but with a bloomy look, she stretched and roused herself as a
safragi came to serve her with iced coffee.

To Guy, the whole idle, sensual, self-indulgent
ambience of the pool was unbearably boring. Had it not been for Simon, nothing
would have kept him there, and as the afternoon advanced, he felt he could
tolerate no more of it.

'I'll have to take you back. I'm due at a staff
meeting at five.'

In the car, fearing he had cut short Simon's
pleasure, Guy said: 'We'll come again another day.'

'No, thank you. I don't want to go there again.'

'I expect you felt as I did: messing about there
is just a waste of time?'

Simon was surprised: 'No, I didn't think that. I
felt envious. I longed to be like them.'

Guy was surprised but said to encourage him:
'You will be, soon enough. It's only a question of time.'

'That's what they all say,' Simon said bitterly,
thinking of the time he had lost, the time that had been taken from him.

A few days after the party at the khan, Halal
turned up at the pension with a taxi. The inmates of the pension were still at
breakfast and Beltado, seeing Halal making his shadowy, uncertain way into the
room, began: 'Hi, there, Halal!' then realized the visitor was not for him.
Watching Halal, his case under his arm, moving warily towards Harriet, Beltado
smiled a salacious smile.

'Mrs Harriet, may I sit down?'

'Yes, but my name is not Mrs Harriet. I am a
married woman. My husband is called Guy Pringle.'

'Ah, I understand - so you are Mrs Pringle. I
have come to ask if you would care to make a visit to some place of interest?
The big mosque, or the castle, perhaps? I can tell you about them. I would be
your guide.'

Unable to think of a reason for refusing,
Harriet said: 'I would like to see the mosque.' As she left the pension in
Halal's company, she heard Beltado chuckling with satisfaction.

In the taxi, Halal said: 'I have made bold to
hire this driver for a week in the hope we may make many excursions together.'
After a pause, he added: 'So your husband is in this part of the world? Where,
may I ask?'

'He is in Cairo.'

'So! I presume you are here for a short holiday
only? Tell me, Mrs Pringle how long are you planning to stay in our city?'

'I suppose till my money runs out.'

Taking this for a joke, Halal made a slight,
choking noise intended for a laugh: 'Then I may hope you will be here a long
time.'

Harriet laughed, too, but she knew he felt there
was something odd about her presence in Syria though he had not the courage to
ask what it was.

The taxi stopped at the mosque and Halal
announced: 'We are now outside the great mosque of the Ummayad.'

An attendant, lolling half asleep on a bench,
leapt into life as he saw Harriet and, reaching into a closet, brought out a
black robe which he held out to her.

Halal said: 'I fear you must wear this. He says
to put the hood over your head so it hides your face.'

Disliking the robe, which was dusty and not
over-clean, Harriet asked: 'Why must I wear it?'

'I'm sorry but they fear a lady will distract
the men from their devotions. The men have, you understand, strong desires.'

'You mean they are frustrated. Tell him that you
can't make men chaste by keeping women out of sight.'

Halal stared at her, disconcerted, then smiled,
not knowing what else to do: 'You are an unusual lady, Mrs Pringle. Very
unusual. You think for yourself.'

'Where I come from that's not unusual.' Harriet
shook the robe and laughed: 'This is ridiculous but if I must, I must.' She adjusted
it about her, trying to give it some dignity, then started to walk away. The
keeper croaked a protest and pointed to her shoes. Halal said:

'Ah, I forgot. We must enter barefoot.'

'In Cairo they give you felt slippers to put
over your shoes.'

'Here they are more strict.'

At last they were admitted to the spacious,
sunlit courtyard where the marble flooring was cold beneath their feet. They
paused under the porticos to admire the mosaics.

'See, they are very old, very beautiful,' Halal
said, as though Harriet might not be aware of these facts: 'You must
understand, the cities they portray are not real. The buildings, the forests,
all are fanciful. You will observe that there is no human figure, no animal,
no creature that could be mistaken as an object of worship.'

'Because of the ancient Egyptians, I suppose?'

'I suppose, yes. You can hit the nail very
nicely, Mrs Pringle.' Halal smiled again, more warmly, beginning to approve
Harriet's habit of independent thought. 'Now we enter the mosque proper.'

The vast interior hall, lit only by the glow
from stained-glass windows, was in semi-darkness so Harriet had no clear view
of the men whose devotions were to be protected against a female form. A few
were at prayer but most of them seemed to treat the mosque as a social centre.
They sat on the floor in groups, talking and slipping their amber chaplets
through their fingers. 'Do the women ever come here?'

'Oh, yes,' Halal pointed to a heavy curtain
stretched across a corner: 'They may sit behind there.'

Harriet was glad to have an escort. No one gave
her curious looks or nudged against her or stared into her face with bold,
provocative eyes. She was hidden, the concern only of her protector who was
probably mistaken for her husband. Halal, for his part, held himself with an
air of importance. As guide, he was almost too knowledgeable. Harriet became
weary, standing about while he talked. He required her to 'give attention' to
the lamps of which there had once been six hundred, each hanging from a golden
chain. He started to count them but on reaching a hundred, gave up, saying
apologetically, 'Many have been plundered, I fear. At times there has been much
destruction, massacres and such things, and the mosque is very old. It was
first a Greek temple - the temple of Rimmon spoken of in the Bible - then a
Christian church, and now a mosque. They have beneath this floor a precious
relic: the head of John the Baptist.'

'I'd like to see that.'

'I, too, but it is put away, I think because of
the war. Still, there is another relic. Very interesting. Follow me.'

They came to an ancient doorway, the main
doorway of the early Christian church. Halal stretched out his right arm:
'Behold what is written above! Can you read it?'

'No. I never learnt ancient Greek.'

'Then, I will translate for you.' Holding
himself stiffly, his black case under his arm, he proclaimed with reverence:
'Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting Kingdom and thy dominion endureth
through all generations.' He relaxed and smiled on her: 'That was true in the
fourth century and still true, is it not?'

'Why do you think Christ let the Moslems take
over?'

Halal thought it best to evade this question:
'We must not question the will of God. Now we will visit the old castle.'

Taken for a walk round the castle walls, Harriet
was surprised by her own energy. She was recovering what she had lost in

Egypt: the will to exert herself. When Halal
proposed 'a little drive into the Ghuta' next day, she said: 'That sounds
pleasant.'

'It is pleasant,' Halal earnestly told her: 'The
Ghuta is the Garden - the Garden of Damascus. You will come, then, Mrs Pringle?
Good! I will call for you.'

That evening Dr Beltado leant towards her to say
with a conniving smile: 'I see you have made a conquest.' Knowing he suspected
a liaison had started, she was discomforted, chiefly because Halal had no
attraction for her. She decided that the outing to the Ghuta must be their
last.

The next day Harriet wished she had rejected it.
The sky was overcast and the suburban greenery, heavy with the night's rain,
seemed to her oppressive. She had become conditioned to desert, the nakedness
of the earth, and the orchards and market gardens worried her. Anything might
be hidden among their massed, lush leaves.

'We owe all this,' Halal complacently said, 'to
our great rivers that in the Bible are called Abana and Pharphar.'

'The ones that couldn't cure Naaman?'

'Ah, I could take you to the house of Naaman. It
is now a leper colony.'

'No thank you.'

Halal smiled but, discouraged by her manner, kept
silent until they were beyond the town and driving into the grassy slopes of
the Anti-Lebanon. The sun broke through, the mists cleared and the green about
them became translucent. Harriet, now more appreciative of Halal's hospitality,
said: 'It is beautiful here.'

'Yes, yes,' Halal became eagerly talkative
again: 'And now we come to a very nice café from where we can see Damascus
encircled by gardens as the moon by its halo.'

Harriet laughed: 'You're quite a poet, Halal.'

'Alas, it was not me but another that wrote that
deathless tribute to our city.'

The café, a white clap-board bungalow, was hung
on the hillside, its terrace built out over the slope below. Three young men,
one with a guitar, were seated on the terrace and called to Halal as he passed
them: 'You're out early Halal,' and they looked, not at Halal, but at Harriet.

Halal gave them a cold 'Good morning' and led
Harriet to the rail so she might see rising above the 'halo' of foliage, the
battlements of the castle and the gold-tipped domes and minarets of the
Ummayad mosque.

'Mohammed was right, was he not? This is
paradise. Some say it was indeed the Garden of Eden.'

When Harriet did not speak, he asked, 'Could you
live your life in this place?'

'Yes, if I had to. I feel well here.'

'That is good. And now observe,' Halal pointed
towards the minarets: 'See the very tall one? There Christ will alight on the
Day of Judgement.'

'Christ? Not Mohammed?'

'No, not Mohammed. Mohammed will return to the
rock in Jerusalem from which he leapt up to Heaven. It is in the Mosque of Omar
and still bears the mark of his horse's hoof.'

Behind them, the young man with the guitar had
started to strum a popular Arabic song. He sang quietly: 'Who is Romeo? Who is
Julietta?' Harriet noticed two tortoises crawling near her feet and as she bent
towards them, she caught the eye of the guitarist who gave her a sly, sidelong
glance and smirked. So the song was directed at her.

Halal, seeing her attention diverted, frowned
and spoke to regain it: 'The spring is already here! The anemones are coming
out.'

Looking down at the grass, Harriet saw that a
few buds were breaking and one, more sheltered than the rest, was opening, a
gleam of scarlet.

'In summer, when the evenings are long, we walk
by the river and many young men bring musical instruments. Such things are
common here.'

Before Halal could instruct her further, a
waiter called to him and he led her to a table set with cakes and coffee: 'I
took the precaution of ordering by telephone so there would be no delay.'

The young men put their heads together in wonder
at this precaution. Halal, becoming more confident, asked boldly: 'May I ask
you, Mrs Pringle, why you came here alone to Damascus?'

Ready now for this question, Harriet said:
'Because I was ill in Cairo. The climate did not agree with me. I developed
amoebic dysentery and was advised to come here to regain my health.'

'Ah, I understand. And your husband could not
come with you?'

'No, his work kept him in Egypt.'

'So you will stay till you are restored, is that
it?'

'I will if I can but, to tell you the truth, I
need to earn some money.'

'You need to earn money? E-e-e-e-e!' Halal made
a noise that expressed his astonishment. 'But that is very difficult for an
English lady. And yet it might be possible. I may have an idea.'

'Really?'

'We will say no more. I would not raise false
hopes.'

Driving back into the city, Halal stopped the
taxi and said to Harriet: 'Let us take a little stroll. There is something that
may please you.'

The stroll, up a lane between the backs of
houses, ended at the gate of a graveyard. The graves were so old, the stones
had sunk almost out of sight but in the centre there was a prominent tomb, an
oblong protected by iron railings. A rambler rose, just coming into leaf,
sprawled over the rails and covered the tomb's upper surface. Halal crossed to
it and put his hand affectionately on the stone.

'This is a Christian graveyard and this is the
burial place of Al-Akhtal, a poet and a wild fellow. Because he was a
Christian, he was free to drink wine and he loved to go with singing slave
girls. These things inspired him and he wrote about them.' Halal tittered: 'It
was very shocking, of course, but perhaps enjoyable. What do you think?'

'It sounds very innocent to me.'

'Indeed?' Halal looked pleasurably surprised:
'That, I agree, is how we should see it but most people here are not very advanced.'
He smiled and lifted his eyes to the sky: 'There is the new moon. Do you know
what the Moslems call it? The prophet's eyebrow.'

The moon was brilliant, a sliver of crystal in
the green of the evening sky. Halal, lowering his gaze to her, said solemnly:
'You know, Mrs Pringle, you are like the new moon.'

'Meaning I'm thin and pale?'

'Meaning you are very delicate. When I saw you
in the souk, I thought, "She is so delicate, these ruffians will sweep her
away." Yet, though you are delicate, you shimmer like the moon. You are,
if you will permit me to say it, the wife I wish I had.'

'Oh dear! Surely there are a great many ladies
in Damascus who would do as well?'

'Yes, there are ladies here, very nice but very
simple. For myself, I like them less nice and more intelligent. Tell me, will
you come tomorrow and see the ravine through which the Abana flows?'