A Hand Full of Stars Read online

  Praise for The Calligrapher’s Secret

  “Warmly observed, richly detailed, and often bold and exciting, Schami's fine portrait of life in Damascus, Syria, in the middle of the 20th century is filled with a compelling set of characters. Noura is a Muslim girl who looks like Audrey Hepburn. Rami Arabi, her father, a noted sheikh, is frustrated that those who attend his mosque ‘treat God like a waiter in a restaurant.’ Salman is a Christian boy, hated by his drunkard father and devoted to his dog, and to Noura. Nasri Abbani is a wealthy man from an important family, but also a hopeless playboy, his business kept afloat only because of his clever clerk, Tawfiq. When Nasri sets foot in the studio of Hamid Farsi, the leading calligrapher in all of Syria, tragic and wondrous events are set in motion that will affect all in the most emphatic ways. Schami, born in Damascus, is one of Germany's most respected writers, bridging Arab and Western culture with his exquisite storytelling. A novel to be savored….”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “A literary masterpiece… a sensual homage to Damascus… you only wish it were a never-ending story.”

  —Sabine Tesche, Hamburger Abendblatt

  “Schami’s new novel shows Syrian society in all its colorful facets and touches all the reader’s senses.”

  —BR Online

  “What a book! And what a theme that unites it: rebellion against the impossibility of love, against religious hatred, and against intolerance.”

  —Brigitte

  “The Calligrapher’s Secret is an exquisitely colorful universe of stories and a mirror of Syrian society in the 1950s.”

  —Denis Scheck, ARD Das Erste Television

  Praise for The Dark Side of Love

  “Like the mythopoeic India of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, the main protagonist of Schami’s encyclopedic, jigsaw puzzle of a novel is a country: Syria… Schami gives voice to the entire chorus of Damascus life… Schami, a major international talent, has a broad range, from the scatological to the sexually comic to the painful, and with this extraordinary book deserves to establish an American audience.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review and a PW Pick of the Week)

  “...may turn out to be the first Great Syrian Novel. The Dark Side of Love illumines almost every side of love, as well as fear, longing, cruelty and lust. Darkness and light alternate like the basalt and marble stripes on Damascene walls, and the novel's structure is just as strong...as expansive, as comprehensive, as War and Peace.”

  —The Guardian

  “Extraordinary, exquisite, and entirely its own creature...Readers will not be disappointed by his expert pen...Romance, mystery, family saga, political exploration The Dark Side of Love takes on many shapes. This is an enthralling page-turner that will invite readers to find out how the pieces fit together; it also offers prose as succulent as sweetmeats that begs to be savored.”

  —Foreword Magazine

  “Romeo and Juliet meets Arturo Pérez-Reverte and John le Carré in the dusty streets of Damascus… A rewarding and beautifully written, if blood-soaked, tale.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “An important contribution to Syrian literature… readers will enjoy rambling through the streets of Damascus, a city that Schami clearly loves and evokes effectively and affectionately.”

  —Library Journal

  Praise for Damascus Nights

  “Timely and timeless at once.”

  —Malcolm Bradbury, The New York Times Book Review

  “A picturesque collection of tales… wonderfully contemporary.”

  —Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “A highly atmospheric, pungent narrative.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A master spinner of innocently beguiling yarns, slyly oblivious to the Western cartographies of narrative art and faithful only to the oral itineraries of the classical Arab storytellers, Rafik Schami plays with the genre of the Western novel, and he explodes it from within.”

  —Anton Shammas

  “This wonderful book is enlightening and endearing, witty and wise… Highly recommended…”

  —Library Journal

  A Hand

  Full of Stars

  by Rafik Schami

  translated from the German by Rika Lesser

  An imprint of Interlink Group, Inc.

  Northampton, Massachusetts

  This edition first published in 2012 by

  INTERLINK BOOKS

  An imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc

  46 Crosby Street, Northampton, Massachusetts 01060

  www.interlinkbooks.com

  Copyright © by Beltz Verlag, Weinheim und Basel 1987, 2012

  English translation copyright © by Rika Lesser 1990, 2012M

  Cover illustration copyright © Root Leeb, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic/digital means and whether or not transiently) without the written permission of the copyright owner. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Schami, Rafik, Date

  A hand full of stars.

  Translation of: Eine Hand voller Sterne

  Summary: A teenager who wants to be a journalist in a suppressed society describes to his diary his daily life in his hometown of Damascus, Syria.

  [1. Syria—Fiction. 2. Diaries] I. Title.

  PZ7.S3337Han 1990 [Fic] 89-25991

  ISBN 978-1-56656-840-1

  First published in the United States in 1990 by

  Dutton Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.

  Originally published in Germany in 1987 by Belz Verlag

  under the title Eine Hand voller Sterne

  Printed and bound in the United States of America

  To order or request our complete catalog, please call us at 1-800-238-LINK,

  or e-mail: [email protected]

  to Marie and Therese,

  my sisters

  R. S.

  The

  First

  Year

  January 12 — One day my old friend, so dear to me that I call him “Uncle” Salim, said to me: “What a pity I can’t write. I have experienced so much that was important. Today I no longer know what has kept me for years from sleeping at night.”

  “But you know quite a lot, Uncle,” I comforted him.

  “No, my friend,” he said. “Of the landscape, nothing will remain but the mountains, and later only their peaks will be visible, and all of it will sink into the mist. If I had learned to write, I would have the power to preserve the mountains, fields, and valleys, and every single thorn on the stem of a rose. What wonderful people the Chinese are!”

  I was surprised Uncle Salim had suddenly landed among the Chinese. When I asked him about it, he explained: “By inventing paper, the Chinese made it possible for the art of reading and writing to be accessible to everyone. From the temples of scholars and the palaces of kings the Chinese brought writing to the streets. They are marvelous.”

  And so, after tea at Uncle Salim’s, I decided to keep a journal. I forget a lot. I can’t even remember the name of the mother of my first girlfriend, Samira. My head is like a sieve.

  I want to write every day!

  January 21 — Today I helped my father in the bakery. Two of his employees weren’t there. So he had to knead and shape the dough himself, and then stand at the oven. I took care of the cash register. As a rule, the customers bring their own shopping b
ags. Whoever forgets gets his bread wrapped in newspaper.

  Early in the morning the shop was peaceful. I read the newspaper, even though my father complained, saying I ought to take care of the bread. But I’m used to his griping, and besides, I know when it’s one of his serious requests and when it’s just one of his fits of grumbling. I went on reading, and then I saw the little article about journal writing.

  “A journal is a rearview mirror.” I thought about this for quite a while. Somehow or other it went along with what Uncle Salim had said. (To my shame, I must admit that since I started to keep this journal, I have written no more than one page. I’ve only been talking about writing.) The article went on in an amusing way, saying that only a few people can keep an honest journal. Others lie, although the worst liar among them still has a mirror later—a distorting mirror, as at a fair, and one can laugh about it. I never lie without good cause. Mostly only because grown-ups don’t understand me.

  I am fourteen years old, and I swear I want to keep on writing. I have a hiding place for the journal where no one will find it. That’s why I can write from my soul.

  January 25 — I want to jot down what our quarter in Damascus looks like. My parents have moved three times since I was born, and I no longer know exactly how the previous houses looked. The street we live on now is rather narrow. It is in the eastern part of the city. Near my house is St. Paul’s Chapel. Many tourists visit the place from which the apostle Paul took off and went to Europe.

  Our houses are built of clay. Several families live in each one, and every building has an interior courtyard, which belongs to all the families; here they come together to talk and laugh and sometimes to quarrel. Mainly the adults keep to the courtyard. The street belongs to the children, the beggars, and to itinerant peddlers. Every house has two stories; the roofs are flat and almost all the same height, so you can walk from one roof to another without any trouble.

  I still remember the morning we were sitting on our terrace, eating breakfast, when suddenly a young man peered down from the roof. He wanted to know where the door to the house was. My mother showed him. He leaped onto our terrace and from there ran to the stairs and out into the alley.

  My mother was just bringing the teapot from the kitchen when two policemen suddenly appeared.

  “Have you seen a young Palestinian?” one of them asked.

  “A Palestinian? No! Have you no shame, forcing your way into our house! There are women and children here!” my mother cried out.

  The policeman apologized, and both of them turned to go. My mother poured tea and went on eating her breakfast as if nothing had happened. Her behavior astonished me.

  In the afternoon I had to ask her, “Why did you lie?”

  “The young man looked very worried. He has a mother, and she wouldn’t report you if you were running away from the police!”

  “And how do you know that? Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. I’m a mother.” She smiled and kissed me on the forehead.

  February 10 — I have three friends: Uncle Salim, who is seventy-five years old; Mahmud, who is fifteen; and Josef, who is fourteen, exactly my age.

  For most of his life Uncle Salim drove a coach, so he tells great stories about robbers, kings, and fairies. He has seen a lot and has survived several famous robbers and kings and, yes, perhaps fairies as well. Uncle Salim, Mahmud, and I all live in the same house. Josef’s house is just opposite ours.

  Mahmud and Josef have never been outside Syria. I have. I spent two years in a monastery in Lebanon. My father sent me there to make a priest out of me. Every poor family tries to turn a son into a clergyman, because a priest commands respect and gives the family a good reputation. After two years I gave it up.

  The pupils came from various Arab countries, but we were forced to speak French. So each newcomer had to take a crash course in that language, and then, after two months, he was no longer permitted to speak a single word of Arabic. If he did, he was given a small, round piece of wood, with the letter S (which stood for signal) on it. He had to hide it on his person and secretly wait for some new victim to foist it off on. If he betrayed himself in any way, the other pupils would know he had the signal and avoid him like a skunk. No, he had to accept it quietly and slink around until someone or other unsuspectingly spoke Arabic in his presence. In this way, we were all educated as little spies. Whoever was last to possess the wooden disk had to eat his supper kneeling.

  Having the signal was an odd feeling I will never forget. It seemed very warm in your pocket and gave you power over the others. If you got it early enough in the day, you had a lot of leeway. I showed mercy if my would-be victim was someone I liked. But I’d press it gleefully into the hand of an ass-kisser. After a while, secret gangs formed. I belonged to one made up of five students. We vowed to help one another. You couldn’t slip the wooden disk to anyone in the gang, so if one of us had it, the other four basked in security and made full use of the opportunity to speak Arabic.

  One of the priests got wind of our gang. He railed against using the signal to turn the pupils against one another. But he was laughed off the teaching staff, and the war of the gangs went on.

  Some gangs evolved into commandos; members even took the signal at their own peril when it fell into the hands of a less brave member of their gang. Then they would go searching for a victim. Supper was around six, and it was considered a heroic act to take the thing into your possession with only an hour left. One of these kamikazes, an Egyptian, pressed it into the hand of a teacher when the teacher said in Arabic, at a quarter to six, that he was dying of hunger. The other teachers gazed into his palm, stunned. Then they announced the rule against speaking Arabic didn’t apply to them; teachers were not part of the game. And so on this evening the little Egyptian had to eat kneeling. This was the first time the pupils showed respect to anyone who had to do so. We pressed his shoulder as we passed by.

  February 26 — Uncle Salim often tells stories about fairies. Today he said they have long been living in Syria. He’s spoken with them often. They remain underground, in springs and mountain caves, becoming visible only when they speak.

  “And why haven’t I ever seen a fairy then?” our neighbor Afifa, who always knows better, interrupted him.

  Because you never give anyone a chance to speak, I would have said. But Uncle Salim wasn’t unkind in the least. He looked at Afifa thoughtfully. “You are right. I haven’t seen any either in forty years. The last one told me that they could not stand automobiles, because fairies speak very softly.”

  Uncle Salim makes strange claims. He says the fairies have bewitched not only the pyramids but also all the ravines in the mountains. According to Salim, the warm springs in the south are the fairies’ subterranean baths.

  March 10 — Today we punished a motorist who refused to understand that we don’t like it when a car speeds down our narrow alley. Josef lay in wait up on his roof, and when the show-off turned around at the end of the alley and raced back down it, honking, Josef flung a stone at the car. The motorist got out in a rage, but there was no one in sight. He cursed when he saw the dent, then slowly drove out of the alley.

  March 20 — Mr. Katib is a terrific teacher. His predecessor taught us to fear and respect language; Mr. Katib teaches us to love it. Earlier we had been told that imagination resided in exaggeration alone, but now Mr. Katib teaches us that fabulous tales transpire in the simple events of our everyday lives. Our previous teacher never let us describe the fragrance of flowers or the flight of swallows. All he ever wanted us to write about were fantastic banquets, birthdays, “experiences.” But not a single one of us from impoverished homes has ever experienced an exceptional birthday or a great feast.

  I will never forget the pupil who, in my opinion, wrote the best composition. We were supposed to describe a banquet.

  Whenever guests show up at our house—and they often appear out of nowhere—my mother shares everything she has with them. My mother always
cooks so much, I think she is constantly expecting visitors. When we have guests, we eat with them, and in their honor my father drinks two glasses of arrack, to be sure the guests will join him in a drink.

  Had I described it truthfully, I would not even have gotten a D on my composition. So I went running to Uncle Salim, because he had taken many rich people to celebrations and parties in his coach. Once there, he would often sneak into the kitchen and eat with the cooks and the house staff. He described exactly what was served and how, the beverages people drank, and everything they talked about. A few pashas and princes (which no longer exist in Syria) came marching into Uncle Salim’s stories, but I replaced them with the chief of police and even a judge (no judge has ever seen the inside of our apartment!). I wrote that my mother served them a roasted gazelle, stuffed with almonds, rice, and raisins. And of course I recounted the words of praise the judge uttered about my parents’ meal and the arrack. It was funny to have only a bit of dry bread in my knapsack during recess but to go on about roast gazelle. None of my schoolmates laughed. They just stared at me with their mouths open. I got a B and listened, just as much a zombie, to the stories of the others, in which bishops, generals, poets, and traders suddenly joined hands in our poverty-stricken dwellings.

  Chalil alone did not play along. When it was his turn, he told the story of what had happened when he asked his parents what a banquet was. His mother immediately went into raptures, at the same time bemoaning her bad luck in having married such a poor man as her husband, despite having been courted, when she was young, by many suitors who were richer. Chain’s father became hurt and angry; he said he would have been a rich man long ago had he not been forced to feed her large and voracious family (twelve siblings, father, mother, and grandfather). A colleague of his had a good wife, and on the same salary as his they had built two houses. Then Chalil’s mother yelled at his father that her parents always brought a lot with them when they came, and that if he didn’t buy arrack, he could have scraped together the money for a home long ago. His parents argued a long time. Each of us saw our own families reflected in Chalil’s.