Broken Mirrors (56 page)

Hend ran to the kitchen and came back with a big head of garlic. Nadim jumped up, got a knife, began quickly peeling the garlic and giving cloves of the raw garlic to his grandmother, who devoured them, an expression of disgust on her face.

“What are you doing?” asked Karim.

“Her blood pressure’s gone up,” answered Nasim. “Her blood pressure’s started to scare us because it goes up so fast.”

“But why the garlic? Don’t you have any medicine? Adizem’s the best. Run to the pharmacy, Nadim, and buy your grandmother medicine instead of this silly nonsense.”

“I don’t like medicine,” said Salma, catching her breath and licking her lips with a tongue that burned with thirst.

Hend said the best medicine for blood pressure was raw garlic; it was something her mother had learned from the late Nasri. “Anyway this garlic doesn’t have chemicals. We buy it from Jalal Turmus.”

“Don’t talk to me about garlic and all that nonsense! What a farrago! I’m a doctor, my dear Mrs. Salma, and at your age everyone should take medicine for blood pressure.”

Hend continued to give her son cloves of garlic, which the boy would peel and feed to his grandmother and the smell spread everywhere, blending with that of the sugar syrup – the scene was bizarre. Facing this comedy Karim felt he was about to burst out laughing; he got up and went to the bathroom, where his laughter faded into a half smile. He washed his hands and face and when he got back Salma’s expression had begun to relax. She had stopped eating garlic and announced that she had to go home. Hend got up and said she’d drive her mother. The two women left and the boys disappeared into the living room to sit in front of the television.

The brothers found themselves alone at the table with its cheese pastries – into which the smells of sweat, sugar syrup, and garlic had been infused – like the heroes of a comedy set in an atmosphere of fake tragedy. Karim looked at his brother and said it was his fault.

“Your wife told you to forget the dessert. Why did you put it on the table?” he asked.

“Damned drink!” said Nasim. “Shit, the woman could have died in front of us and then we’d never have heard the end of it, with Mrs. Hend accusing me of having killed her mother.”

Nasim said the story had begun eight months earlier. Hend had asked him to look for her half-brothers. She’d said she was sure they were in Homs and that Karim had told her how they’d fled from Kherbet el-Raheb during the peasant uprising in Akkar and migrated to the Syrian city closest to their village.

Hend had decided to forget the story, which Karim had told her a long time before, believing the reappearance of the three brothers would only cause her mother pain. But when her mother, who suffered from diabetes, started to show symptoms of high blood pressure, she’d felt she didn’t have the right not to tell her the truth before she died. All Hend knew of the story was what Karim had told her, based on Yahya Nabulsi’s memoirs, written in prison before his death. Also, Karim was abroad and she didn’t want to phone him because she’d decided to forget him; Hend believed forgetting was a decision that had to be taken if life was to go on. When she overheard fragments of the heated discussion between Karim and Ahmad Dakiz about the memory of Beirut, she’d wanted to say the discussion had no meaning – we have to forget if we are to go on living. This was Beirut’s greatness – it was the opposite of all the other cities of the Levant because it was built on the idea of forgetting and drew its vitality from this fact. But Karim’s suggestion that forgetting was why the civil war had repeated itself several times over during a single century was meaningless too. The war kept repeating itself because they were a small people surrounded by greedy neighbors. They were at the crossroads of a disturbed region incapable of solving its problems. That, not memory, was the reason for the war.

When Karim returned to Beirut, he’d questioned Salma repeatedly on her health. He told Hend that he’d noted as a doctor that the woman needed to undergo a full medical examination because her red face and bleary eyes indicated a problem.

Hend had wanted to ask him what information he had on “the three moons,” and whether he’d be able to help her find them. But she did not. She was sure Karim too had decided to forget, and that after his long sojourn in France he wouldn’t want to speak of the past – how else was she supposed to interpret his agreement to return to work in a hospital to be built in East Beirut, stronghold of the Phalangists, against whom he’d fought during the war?

Hend told her husband she didn’t want to get Karim involved in the matter. “You know everybody and you can fix it.”

“But it’s difficult for someone like me to make a trip to Syria. You know I was with the Lebanese Forces and the Syrians don’t like us.”

“I know, but I’m sure you can if you want to.”

He’d returned from Homs two days before that wretched Sunday. He told his wife the brothers didn’t want to see their mother and recounted what had happened when he met them. The same evening his wife begged him to go with her to Salma’s, who wanted to hear the story from him in person. He went and summarized it for her with a single sentence: “The boys don’t want to see you, mother-in-law.” Salma asked no questions. She coughed a lot, her tears flowed, and she curled herself into a ball, repeating over and over again, “I bear witness that there is no god but God and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Prophet of God.” She said it five times. She kept drinking water from a glass placed next to her and repeating the twofold profession of faith, leading Nasim to suppose she wanted to die.

On their way home Nasim told his wife they had to start looking for a solution then and there; the woman’s death shouldn’t take them by surprise or they’d have to tie themselves in knots trying to find a way to bury her in an Islamic cemetery.

“Don’t be so pessimistic! What a way to talk! This isn’t the time. The
poor thing couldn’t ask you a single question, but when I told her the news this morning she drove me round the bend asking about how they looked and their health and whether they were married and how many children they had.”

Nasim told his brother as he poured two fresh glasses of arak that he couldn’t understand why Salma had behaved as though it was a surprise to her – “She had already heard what happened two days before!” He said he’d gone to a lot of trouble to arrange the business of his visit to Homs, “and then we came out of it looking like fools. I ought to have taken you with me so you could see the results of what you did, you and the Tripoli boys. Now the sons of the feudalists look just like the heroes who led the peasants in that silly revolution, and then both sides turned into fanatical Muslims and their women covered their hair, and you came out of it with nothing.”

As usual, Nasim was not telling the whole truth. He hadn’t had to go to any great trouble to get to Homs. He’d simply fixed it with Mustafa Najjar. This Mustafa had been leader of the Syrian Ba’ath Party in Lebanon and, in all probability, now worked for Syrian Intelligence. He was an old colleague of Nasim’s from his drug smuggling days who had also given up his former business in favor of running one that imported Sri Lankan and Ethiopian maids.

Nasim had phoned his old friend, who’d fixed it. Waiting for him in front of the Syrian-Lebanese border post, he’d found the man Mustafa had sent for him. The fellow got into the car next to him and they crossed the border on a military road usually used by Intelligence and not subject to inspections. The escort had stayed with him until they arrived in front of the Hotel Safir in Homs.

The man got out with him and fetched the key to Room 877, sparing Nasim the trouble of having to take out his passport for formalities at the
reception desk. The fellow told him he’d be waiting for him the next day at four p.m. in the lobby of the hotel to take him back to Beirut and gave him a phone number, saying if he needed anything he should ask for Abu Ahmad and he’d be with him in minutes.

Nasim concluded he was supposed to have nothing to do with the hotel management as his account had been settled in advance, and he was free to wander around Homs as he wished.

Mustafa hadn’t been able to come up with residential addresses for the three brothers or their phone numbers but he’d provided the address of the Raheb pastry shop on Shukri Qawatli Street. “Ask anyone in Homs for Shukri Qawatli Street and they’ll show you, but the three most important things in the city are the Dik al-Jinn restaurant on the River Asi, the grave of Khaled ibn al-Walid, and the Nouri Mosque.

“You think I’m going for the tourism?”

“Don’t you need to eat? Go eat on the Asi, best tabbouleh in the world. And I know you like churches. There are two you have to visit – the Saint Mary Church of the Holy Belt and the Church of Mar Elian.”

Nasim arrived at the Hotel Safir in Homs at twelve noon and, deciding not to waste time, took a taxi from in front of the hotel and asked to go to Shukri Qawatli Street. He made the taxi stop at the entrance to the crowded street and decided to walk. He ate a shawarma sandwich he bought from one of the cheap restaurants situated at intervals along the street and walked. He was amazed by the old city – a mixture of Mamluke, Ottoman, and modern – and the aromas which filled the air from shops selling herbs and spices. He walked slowly, reading the names of the shops that ran along either side of the street. Suddenly, he read the name “Raheb Pastries” over a low wooden door. He bent his head and entered, finding himself in a vaulted space gleaming with the black-and-white stone that distinguishes the buildings of Homs. The floor was of white marble, there was a smell of
orange blossom water, and a coolness that emanated from a little pool in the center of the place.

It was crowded with customers. A group of men, their heads covered with white caps, were standing behind the platters of pastry taking orders. He didn’t know what to do. He went forward, stood with everyone else, ordered a plate of cheese pastry, and sat down at one of the tables.

In a few minutes a tall man with a white face, gray eyes, and light brown hair came bearing a small tray with a plate of cheese pastry, a glass of water, and a small flask of orange blossom water. He placed the tray in front of Nasim and said, “You’re from Lebanon, aren’t you?”

“How did you know?” asked Nasim, who noted that the man wasn’t wearing a white cap like the rest of the workers and that his sideburns were graying.

“The boys told me. Welcome, Lebanon, and the scents of Lebanon!”

Nasim took the spoon to eat but noticed there was a question in the man’s eyes.

“Can I ask you a question?” said Nasim.

“Of course,” answered the man.

“The fact is I came from Lebanon specially, because I have a message for the owner of the shop.”

“All’s well, I hope,” said the man, and sat down.

Nasim said he carried a message to the three brothers from their mother in Beirut. He said he was married to her daughter, Hend, that the woman had one foot in the grave, and that her last wish before she died was to see her children, whom she called “the three moons,” and hold them to her breast.

“Salma!” said the man.

Nasim said he understood their position and that of their father, “but to forgive is noble, and Salma is a mother who was deprived of her children.”

The man stood up, then sat down again. He lit a cigarette while Nasim devoted himself to devouring the pastry in front of him.

“What a cheese pastry! You should be proud,” said Nasim, adding that he’d buy two kilos to take back to Beirut.

The man waved to one of the workers, and in minutes Nasim found the table before him covered with three sorts of pastry that he’d never seen before.

“This is bashmeeneh,” said the man. “Layers of wheat baked with country butter between which we put a mixture of sugar syrup and natef. It’s made only in Homs. And this is khubziyeh and this is simsimiyeh. Eat and praise God, as the Beirutis say. Come here, Shukri. Fetch me three kilos of cheese pastry for the gentleman. Put the clotted cream on its own in a cold pack because the gentleman’s traveling to Lebanon, and we’ll need a box of bashmeeneh too.”

The man rested his head on his hand, looked at Nasim for a long time, and then said he was Mokhtar, Salma’s third son. He said he didn’t remember his mother because she’d left them when he was very little. He’d been raised to hate and despise her; he’d never married because he loathed women – all because of her. Yet he too had been waiting for this moment. He said he’d never seen a picture of his mother, which was why he didn’t remember her, but he’d seen her in his dreams and was sure that the phantom which had for so long visited him in his dreams looked like her. When he saw her he’d know her without her having to be pointed out. “I know my mother’s very pretty, a real cutie.”

The story of the three brothers in their exile can excite only pity. They’d spent their childhood without a mother and with their cruel paternal grandfather, who despised his son Qasem because he’d been cuckolded. Their father had been stricken with depression and taken to the bottle. When their grandfather died and authority passed to the drunkard son, he
began behaving like the feudal lords of Mamluke times. His cruelty and the savagery of his behavior toward the peasants were on every tongue. The peasants of Kherbet el-Raheb and the seven villages had never suffered oppression as they did with this man. He seemed to have become a different person. His haughtiness, drunkenness, and depression were replaced by viciousness. He imposed compulsory labor on the peasants, roaming through the farms with a group of rifle-bearing guards. The crack of a whip heralded his coming and people would pray God to protect them from the Devil. He’d even wanted to revive an ancient custom no longer widely practiced, the
droit du seigneur
, and his appetite for food and women knew no bounds.

The people of Kherbet el-Raheb could never forget the savagery with which he treated Salma’s father, Abu Salah. Sheikh Deyab Abd el-Karim had refused to allow Abu Salah to leave his land and prevented him from moving about the village, but when Qasem inherited he took possession of the land that Abu Salah had farmed and threw him out of his house. He allowed his daughters to take their mother in but Abu Salah was forced to remain alone, without shelter or work. He died homeless. He told his wife to go to her eldest daughter, Daad, and remained alone in the open, then vanished. Presumably he died, though no one found his body to wash and bury.