A Hand Full of Stars Read online

  Suddenly the ball hit the water pipe, which fell to the ground, luckily without shattering, but tobacco was strewn all over. Salim cursed the snot-nosed brats who deprived him of his pleasure. The children’s father felt insulted. He offered Uncle Salim a pack of cigarettes and said he shouldn’t make such a big deal over a pipe.

  “You really ought to teach your children that I, too, have a right to one square meter in front of my door and to one hour of peace a day,” Uncle Salim cried.

  A wild fight ensued. The truck driver called Uncle Salim a conceited pasha. Uncle Salim went mad and cursed the man out. My father heard the argument and asked my mother to hurry and make a big pot of coffee. He rushed down in his pajamas and tried to talk to the truck driver and then to Uncle Salim. Both of them calmed down a little, and when my mother served the coffee, the dispute was forgotten. Abdu’s wife brought Uncle Salim a splendidly decorated water pipe.

  May 22 — Nadia is back! At last I have seen her again! And just now she secretly pressed a thick envelope into my hand, containing letters she wrote me during this whole difficult time. Feebleminded imbecile that I am, I doubted her love. I could kick myself! She loves me!!!

  I have never read such beautiful, sad letters. Now I also know why she was acting so strangely. Her brother had seen us kissing and had told her father. The barbarian had hit her and locked her in her room, threatening to punish the whole family if she said a word to anyone. Nadia had to eat alone there; her father only unlocked her door in the evening so she could go to the toilet. Later he let her go out, but only with her two brothers following after her like dogs. They gave her such a fright, telling her that she should only know what Mahmud and Josef say about her, since I was always boasting about her to them. (This is not true; I have scarcely told the two of them anything about Nadia!) She doubted me and was so scared she got sick. Then her father sent her to her grandparents in the country, where she had peace and felt her love for me even more strongly. She wants to meet me, but her brothers won’t leave her alone.

  I have to be careful that nothing happens to Nadia.

  May 23 — Uncle Salim is a very bad cook. He never really learned how, and he is far too proud to ask anyone’s help. My mother and the other neighbor women are always thinking up new ways to see that the proud widower gets something good to eat.

  “You understand a lot more about food than my husband. He says this has no taste; please try some of it and tell me your honest opinion.”

  “I burned my tongue drinking coffee. Just taste this little dish and tell me if anything’s missing.”

  “Today, after fifteen years, I’ve finally succeeded in making this difficult recipe. I would like to hear you praise it.”

  “You won’t believe it, but today I saw the Blessed Virgin in a dream, and she said to me, ’Give a plate of beans to the person you love best outside your own family; otherwise you’ll get the measles for the second time.’ Uncle, there’s no one I love more than you, and I don’t want the measles.”

  Uncle Salim ate to ward off the measles, to confirm a husband’s opinion that his wife could cook like a dream, to determine whether perhaps a pinch of coriander— which could just as well have been left out—was missing, but every week he got a splendid meal.

  May 28 — I always read Nadia’s letters over and over again. In one of them she writes, “Even if they tear my heart out, I will love you with all that remains.”

  I told this to Mahmud, who was ashamed of having had such a bad opinion of her. We absolutely must devise a way that I can meet her without her parents catching on.

  June 10 — For twelve days I haven’t written a word!

  I suspect, although I’m not entirely certain, that Mariam is having an affair with Habib. Today she was at his place. Habib was in a state; he was curt and did not want to let me in, but Mariam said, “He’s a good boy!”

  Somehow her remark is eating at me. I’m not a good boy! What does she mean by that? I have to know! Perhaps Habib is the cause of her sudden fits of cheerfulness. What a dope I am to think she loves me! A good boy? What does she know anyway?

  June 14 — Mahmud has written his second play. The protagonist, of course, is Ahmad Malas. A gruesome story:

  An editor at a radio station has become famous, but he no longer gets any ideas. A colleague gives him a tip. Go to the prison, he tells him; the inmates will gladly tell stories for a pack of cigarettes and sometimes even free of charge. Spiced up a bit, the stories could be quite torrid. And what a sensation it would be if one of the prisoners were to stand at a microphone and talk about all the murders, thefts, and frauds he had committed. Everybody listening would flip. If the editor could get hold of some photos of the prisoners, he could also publish the stories in a newspaper and kill two birds with one stone.

  Mahmud describes the editor as someone who kills himself—but no birds—with two stones. The editor goes to the prison, but the inmates will not speak before a microphone for all the money in the world. They have suffered enough over the years and have had enough trouble already because of some statements they’d made. After much hemming and hawing, a few prisoners do agree to tell their life stories, provided that the editor only takes notes and does not name any names. He consents to this and collects a heap of material, most of it pretty boring. Nevertheless, spiced up and condensed into one character, the awful picture of a beast emerges.

  A colleague gives the unimaginative editor a second tip. There are many old actors with piles of debts and no jobs who could play the part of the criminal. After a long search, he finds an old actor who agrees to do it, providing that at the end of the series the editor comes clean about everything.

  The series begins, and the beastly character describes with pleasure how he strangles grannies and grandpas, mugs passersby, steals food out of the mouths of babes and abuses them. He makes faces and lets himself be photographed with disheveled hair and a stubbly beard; the newspapers sell out.

  Now comes the third episode, the last. On the radio and in the newspaper, the editor concludes it without keeping his word, without saying the man is an actor. The man’s neighbors avoid him; many people spit at him. Even merchants won’t sell him anything; his face is better known in the town than the president’s. The poor devil goes back to the radio station again and again, but the editor will not see him. When, after hours of waiting, the actor finally manages to get in, the editor promises that tomorrow or the next day he will publish the truth. After a month, the man is a complete wreck. In the end, the tattered, starved actor lies in wait for the editor and slays him. The newspapers publish a fourth installment, the radio airs a fourth episode, and the neighbors breathe more easily now that the man is finally behind bars.

  Mahmud forgets nothing. Whether a theater will ever perform this play is another matter. I have told Habib and Uncle Salim about it, and they are enthusiastic. I didn’t much like the part about the neighbors, but Mahmud says that people will believe anything if they hear it often enough.

  June 24 — We have all known sorrow. Last Wednesday, there was a lot going on in the bakery. No sooner had I finished my noon rounds and was about to rest than the axle of the dough machine broke. My father was actually quite calm and replaced it with one he had in reserve. He was just saying, “We have all earned a nice pot of tea,” when a police car pulled up in front of the bakery. Two policemen hurried out, stationed themselves at the door, and barred it with their machine guns. A man in a fine suit slowly got out of the car and gazed at our bakery. Nervously my father dried his hands on the edge of his apron and whispered, “Blessed Mary, protect me! Blessed Mary, stand by me!”

  The elegantly dressed man was about thirty. He asked for my father by name, and as my poor father answered him, without moving a muscle in his face the man said, “Come along!”

  “What have I done, sir?”

  “You needn’t be afraid if you haven’t done anything,” the man answered very softly, and by gesturing—it was no more than a tiny
wink of an eye—commanded the policemen to drive the grumbling customers away from the door. At once the two officers pushed people with the butts of their guns. My father looked on, horrified. I had never seen him so pale.

  “Where to?” he asked helplessly. “I mean, should I remove my apron and take a jacket along?”

  “Yes, that would be better; take your jacket along,” the man said.

  “Blessed Mary,” my father whispered. He took his jacket from the hook, threw his apron in the corner, then stroked my hair. “Don’t be afraid, my boy. I’ll be right back,” he murmured and went out.

  When one of the policemen handcuffed my father, my paralysis left me. I rushed outside and grabbed my father’s jacket, trying to pull him away as he was being thrust into the car. One of the policemen hit me, but I held on tight and cried for help. Then he struck me in the belly and I reeled backward. Two of the bakery workers caught me. One of them called out loud, “You filthy dogs. He is still just a child!”

  The car sped away. The frightened neighbors hurried by, and the florist brought me a glass of water. “Drink this, my boy. It’s good for shock. Only God remains on high. All assholes plummet down!”

  That night we could not sleep. My mother wept, and the neighbors came in shifts and sat up with her. Uncle Salim didn’t sleep either. At four in the morning, without saying a word, he accompanied me to the bakery. He took over the cash register, letting the employees advise him what to do. I made deliveries to my customers and shot back to the bakery like an arrow. I no longer felt the least bit tired. I didn’t want to leave my old friend alone any more than necessary; he is over seventy-five and nearsighted. But all day long he made jokes and reassured the customers that my father would soon return.

  For four days they worked my father over. Twice they toyed with a pistol at his temples, threatening to shoot if he did not tell the truth. When my father declared over and over that he didn’t even know what they wanted from him, they pulled the trigger. The pistol was not loaded, but my father fainted. There’s something he didn’t do when they beat him up: He did not cry and did not beg for leniency. But he did see other prisoners break down.

  “Say who you are,” a policeman demanded of an old farmer. The poor devil uttered his name, and the policeman beat him until he got the desired answer, “I am a dog! I am a traitor!” And when another one called out “For God’s sake,” his torturer laughed, took a second cudgel, and said, “Take this, for God’s sake.” My father wept like a child when he told us this. Uncle Salim kissed his eyes and held his hand.

  Four days the scoundrels beat my father, until they discovered they had confused him with a lawyer who had worked against the government and who happened to have the same name.

  Uncle Salim doesn’t buy this story. “They hit you to make our knees go weak. They know very well that your father and your mother have different names and that you are a baker,” he said and cursed the government.

  I had never been so proud of my father as I was today. Since the beating, I love him as never before. It’s good I didn’t run away. My parents could not have survived that; the first thing my father would have done upon returning was ask for me.

  I will never forgive the government. “Whoever forgives injustice, gets more injustice,” Uncle Salim said when I confided to him my hatred.

  Father has asked us not to tell anyone about the torture, because the pigs threatened to torment him for months if he said a word about it to anyone. But I told Mahmud, and he thinks as Uncle Salim does. A wave of indiscriminate arrests is rolling over Damascus, bringing many people grief and humiliation.

  I almost forgot, but before I finish for today, I must write something about this. When Uncle Salim turned over the receipts from the four days, my father wanted to pay him for his work, but the good man declined to accept even a single piaster. Then I begged my father, for my sake, to invite him to dinner with us every Sunday.

  Uncle Salim accepted this invitation with his usual wit. “I would love to, because then I can tell my friend some of my foolish stories; he’ll forget about his food, and I’ll get two portions.”

  June 26 — Nadia slipped me a letter. She wrote quite lovingly of how she had just heard about my father last night. Her father said that many suspects had been arrested and interrogated and that once again the government had averted a coup. She says she despises her father, a man who licks the ass of each successive government. Great!

  June 29 — I wanted Habib to tell me about the wave of arrests that was going on, but I didn’t want to tell him about my father. Since he lives a little ways from us, he hadn’t witnessed it. I asked, and Habib only grew still; he did not answer. After a while he asked if I had read the Gibran. I shouted that Gibran was of no interest to me just now; I wanted to know about the arrests because a friend of mine had been detained for no reason. He kept silent and looked sorrowfully into my eyes.

  “For no reason? Since when does this government need a reason to torture people?” He laughed like a madman, stood up, and banged his fist against the wall. I was scared, because the whole time he was staring at me with wide-open eyes. I would have liked to get out of there. But then he calmed down.

  “Ask your father if he needs anyone in the bakery. I would so much like to work for him, to work for a loaf of bread,” he said as we parted.

  A strange fellow this Habib!

  July 10 — Today I know that Mariam loves Habib! It was my own doing, but now I regret my eagerness. She loves him and not me. My doubts have plagued me these last few days. Though I love Nadia, I still wanted to know Mariam’s feelings for me and for Habib. Yesterday I asked if she loved him. She said she didn’t. She said she thought he was a very nice man but had no further interest in him whatsoever. (My God, how she stressed this!) She said she liked me but that I’m very young. She’s right. But she still loves Habib.

  Yesterday I told her how my father was tortured, and I asked her not to repeat this to anyone. She had not known what had happened, though she had wondered why for four days I hadn’t had any time for her. Habib hadn’t even noticed!

  July 11 — Today I brought Habib his bread and wanted to get on with my rounds, but he insisted I spend some time with him. He was drunk again, as he so often has been lately. I did not want to disappoint him and so I went in. He made me some tea and suddenly asked why I had not told him my father had been arrested and tortured. Just now I don’t know how I came up with the reply, “Because you work for the official government newspaper.”

  Never in my life will I forget how he looked at me! Not only was he filled with surprise, sorrow, and rage, but a kind of shame was mixed in. I looked away because I knew my answer had hurt him deeply. Softly he murmured that he would not be able to work for the paper much longer. It would be the death of him. Many of his friends had been arrested, and he wasn’t permitted to write about it. He spoke of his loneliness; his voice became sadder and sadder, but he did not cry. Without shedding a tear, he described how the previous regime had tortured him and shot his wife, how he had fled the country and returned only when his party had come into power. In the interim his friend had become editor in chief, and an important editorial post had been arranged for Habib. But in less than a year he had a falling out with his friend, who had turned the newspaper—just as the previous governments had—into a scandal sheet. And Habib relinquished his dreams of a lovely house and a company car. Many journalists have fled, but Habib is already fifty years old; he’s tired of running and just wants to go on living.

  All at once I felt compassion for him. Within half an hour all the fear I’d had of him in the previous months was gone; I lit a cigarette. Habib didn’t even notice.

  “What will you do?” he asked as I left.

  “You will soon see,” I answered tersely.

  July 22 — I spoke to Mahmud, and we’ve decided on a course of action against three spies who live in our neighborhood. Nadia’s father resides on our street; the second man lives on the same s
treet as the school; the third one, near Habib’s apartment.

  Mahmud didn’t want to say anything to Josef, since Josef is becoming more and more zealous about the army. We drafted a brief message and signed it in the name of the Black Hand: Don’t forget this, you spies! We are like camels. We forget nothing, and one day you will be punished.

  July 29 — The fox is said to be the cleverest animal on earth. But I think man is foxier than the sliest fox. Mahmud demonstrated this today.

  Mahmud’s father always buys two kinds of tea: one that is cheap, for the family, since his nine children drink huge quantities every day, and a fine Ceylon blend for himself. He keeps the latter under lock and key.

  Today Mahmud’s mother took eight of her children to visit a friend; Mahmud stayed home. His father returned from work, washed himself, and made his tea. Suddenly he discovered there was no sugar in the house. As he feared for his precious tea, he put it in the cupboard with wire-mesh doors, locked the doors, and hurried to the shop around the corner to buy some sugar.

  Mahmud observed him all the while from my window, and when his father was out of the house, Mahmud crept into the kitchen. Adroitly he stuck a straw through the mesh, pushed the teapot lid aside, and slurped and savored the tea. Because the tea was still very hot, he blew between gulps, but this did not prevent Mahmud from emptying the pot. With the straw still in hand, he rushed over to my room. We waited until his father came back wheezing.

  Never in my life will I forget his father’s face when he took the pot out of the closet and looked into its empty belly. First he pronounced two well-known charms from the Koran against evil spirits, but then he paused and cried out: “Mahmuuuuuud! Come here at once!” When Mahmud appeared at the door, looking innocent as a lamb, his father stared at him and laughed, “Have you burned your mouth at least?” Mahmud nodded mischievously.