Parade of Shadows (5 page)

I was left with the view of the city, which without Graham seemed a little less enchanting. I told myself there were many days of travel ahead, and Graham would be with me.

That evening, when Father and I arrived together at the entrance to the dining room, Father was startled to see Paul Louvois in a white linen suit that glistened across the room.

“What the blazes is that Frenchman doing here?” Father hissed to me. We made our way toward the table where Monsieur Louvois was sitting with Miss Phillips
and Graham. I was sure Father would have liked to dine apart, but a table had been reserved for the tour group, and it would have been poor manners to ignore our fellow travelers. Seeing my father's irritation, I was glad I had not confessed to mentioning the tour to Monsieur Louvois on the train.

Monsieur Louvois made the gesture of kissing my hand and then hastened to pull out a chair for me. He said, “I was explaining to Mademoiselle Phillips that I was here in search of beauty. Now I need search no farther.” Graham shot an amused look my way. Father grimaced.

Edith Phillips, who obviously thought Paul Louvois pompous, brought things down to earth. “Monsieur Louvois says he buys and sells art.”

Monsieur Louvois appeared irritated at the image of himself buying and selling. He explained to Graham, “I make little discoveries for museums and galleries.”

“Ah, here is our schoolmaster,” Graham said, “come to be sure his charges are not up to some mischief.”

Hakki stood over us, counting. “Our party is all present. I am pleased to see you are eating together. Remember tomorrow morning, nine o'clock exactly. It might be best if you all took to your beds early this evening.”

After Hakki left us, we felt like newly introduced children admonished by our parents to “get along nicely.”

Miss Phillips said, “Well, we must make the best of this. For myself, I can get on with anyone—not that I mean to imply any of you are going to be a problem, but we must allow for the fact that we each have our own ways. You all must call me Edith. We are going to be much together, and we might as well be as comfortable with one another as possible. I am here to hunt plants for the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.”

Father was amused by Edith. “I'm sure you'll have us all plucking daisies for you. As to why we are here, I think I can speak for my daughter as well as myself. We are here for nothing more than a little diversion, a distraction from the tedious profession of a solicitor, for my part”—Father avoided Graham's eye—“and an escape from the schoolroom for my daughter.”

I had been relieved to have my father answer for me until I heard him describe me in front of Graham as a schoolgirl. My anger grew so hot that I hardly heard Monsieur Louvois speak of his search for the art of ancient worlds. When it was Graham's turn, he said, “I am here to do some scholarly investigation on the rather obscure tribe called the Druze.” This time it was Graham who would not
look at Father. The room was full of secrets.

Monsieur Louvois scowled at the mention of the Druzes. “Please do not forget to ask the Maronite Christians—those still alive because they were rescued by the French—how they like the Druzes who hunted them down not that many years ago and butchered them by the thousands.”

“The French may have protected the Maronites, but it was the French who incited the Druzes.” Graham had picked up a fork and accompanied his words with sharp thrusts at the tablecloth.

Paul Louvois's mood changed almost at once. “For myself,” he said, “I am happy to assign such morbid investigations to someone else. Life is too short for assigning blame.”

“Quite right,” Father agreed. “We must leave justice to those who govern.”

“That would be the last place I would look for justice,” Graham said.

Father threw down his napkin. “I sincerely hope that our tour will not disintegrate into a series of dreary confrontations on matters over which we have little agreement, no influence, and from what I've been hearing, not a great deal of knowledge.”

“I second that,” Edith said. “I suspect we are all weary from our journey, and we ought to follow Hakki's very good advice and take to our beds.”

In bed that night I was relieved not to be involved in Father and Graham's squabbles and hoped that before the trip was over, I would not have to choose sides.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, when I stopped at Father's room on the way to breakfast, he announced, “I have no intention of subjecting myself to a ‘tour' of a city I know perfectly well. I mean to visit an old acquaintance of mine.”

Left to myself, breathless with excitement at the prospect of seeing the fabled Damascus, I set off to join the others. In the hotel lobby Edith was explaining that she meant to go her own way, but Hakki's obvious disappointment made her relent.

Graham—after first making sure I would be on the tour—informed Hakki that he, too, would join us.

“It is urgent that we keep together,” Hakki said, leading us into the hotel parlor. He pulled the chairs together, transforming the parlor into a little classroom.

Edith placed herself firmly in the middle of the circle
and folded her arms as if prepared to challenge anything Hakki said. Graham, with an amused expression that suggested an adult about to tolerate a child's clumsy recitation, settled down next to me, resting his arm casually over the edge of my chair. Monsieur Louvois chose a chair on the edge of the group. He was elegantly turned out in a tan linen suit, miraculously uncreased. A paisley silk cravat was knotted about his neck. His white curls were still damp and grooved from their morning combing. In his hands he clasped chamois gloves, a white Panama hat, and a walking stick with a silver handle in the shape of a dog's head.

“I am going to tell you all about this city you are now visiting.” Hakki flashed us an eager smile. “Damascus!” he announced, as though we might have thought ourselves in Bombay or Rome. “It is said Damascus is the oldest city in which people have always been living. If you recall your Genesis, you will remember that Abraham, who is our Ibrahim, and his servants pursued their enemy into ‘Hobah, which is on the left hand of Damascus.' In your New Testament your Paul ‘preached boldly at Damascus,' and here in this city he was let down over the wall in a basket to make his escape. Already one of our own little group, Mr. Hamilton, has made his escape. Ha-ha.”

I was sleepy and distracted by Graham, whose hand had
slipped from the back of the chair onto my shoulder. Hakki's droning voice came and went in my head. At first the words were pleasant: Damascus was an oasis to the desert people; a city of streams and canals; a vision of the heaven pictured in the Koran, Islam's holy text; the home of the great princes of Arabia. But soon the voice became the voice of doom—the devastation of the city by Tamerlane, the burning of the Christian quarter. At last, with relief, I heard Hakki deliver a more immediate warning about the drinking water, and then he was leading us into the streets.

I looked longingly at the lively bazaars, sorry to pass them by, for in the life that lay ahead of me there was unlikely to be another opportunity. Hakki hurried us along to the Umayyad Mosque, which turned out to be not unlike the mosque I had seen with Graham in Beirut, only much larger and more ornate than seemed necessary. Hakki carried a long black umbrella, which he used as a pointer to catch our attention or as a standard to muster us when we strayed. “What you are looking at,” Hakki told us with obvious pride, “was once a heathen temple over which was constructed the Church of St. John the Baptist. Indeed, it is believed by some Christians that the head of St. John once rested here. A mosque was then built in the church. For many years both Christians and Muslims entered by the
same door and worshiped together, but for the last thousand years it has been Muslims only.” The latter fact was produced as a recent bulletin and in an apologetic tone.

While Hakki pointed his umbrella here and there and told the story of the Muslim conqueror Musa ibn Nuair's triumphal march into the mosque with his four hundred Visigoth princes, crowned and girdled in gold, Monsieur Louvois slipped away from time to time to examine the pattern of a mosaic or the color of a tile. He did not seem able to keep his hands away from any object that caught his interest.

While he worried Hakki by playing truant, Edith bullied Hakki with questions of a morbid nature. “What do you mean by ‘John the Baptist's head'? Do you mean the skull, or was there some mummification? If not, how could they tell whose head it was?” Edith had all the scientist's tedious insistence on detail, so the striking effect fell apart into a muddle of dull pieces.

Our eyes on Hakki's furled umbrella, we were about to ascend the narrow stairway of a galleried minaret for a view of the city when Graham held me back. “Why don't we leave Hakki to the tender mercies of Edith and Louvois and see something of the city for ourselves? We'll learn much more in the bazaars than in the mosque.”

I was delighted to have the chance to visit the bazaars, whose many booths suggested what I had never before had—unlimited choice. To see it with Graham was a double pleasure. He grabbed my hand, and we ran away like two children, reaching the street breathless and, after the dark mosque, blinded by the sun. We stood for a moment until the world around us emerged from its dazzle.

I said, “You don't seem fond of Paul Louvois.”

“He has a very greedy eye. I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't mean to roll up the whole country and take it home to France.”

We fell into a more leisurely pace and were soon surrounded by small, ragged children demanding baksheesh. “
Ma fish
, I have nothing,” Graham told them.

“Allah yatik,”
they replied good-naturedly. Graham translated this for me: “May God give thee.” Graham appeared to be looking for a certain café. When he finally chose one, I assumed the reason he had singled it out was its pleasant location. The outdoor café was set in the middle of a garden with pomegranate and fig trees, whose leaves spread a dappled shade over the tables and chairs. Just below, a small stream wound in and out of a ravine. It was a pretty stream until you looked more closely and noticed it served as a deposit for broken bottles and clumps of concrete. The café
was frequented by Muslims who sat cross-legged, smoking water pipes and playing some game that looked to me very like backgammon. The men did not look up from their games or their pipes, but I was sure they missed nothing about us.

“What are the pipes they are smoking?” I asked.

“They are nargilehs, or hubble-bubbles.”

The proprietor of the café was perched on a stool near the kitchen, examining us through half-closed eyes. He was wearing European clothes and was clearly a Turk. I would have liked to sketch the man's face. It was all sharp planes and dark shadows, the face of someone to whom surprise would be impossible. As a waiter started for our table, the proprietor stopped him and, climbing down from the stool, came himself. Graham ordered two coffees and then said a few words I did not understand, after which the man did not so much leave our table as withdraw from it.

“What language were you speaking to him?”

“Turkish. I picked up a few words. I've asked him to join us. You don't mind?”

Of course I didn't mind. I could hardly believe that I was in this distant city, sitting in an exotic café with someone as charming as Graham, and about to share the table with a mysterious man.

The man returned carrying a tray on which were arranged three tiny cups of dense black coffee and a plate of six pastries. He produced a smile, but I didn't believe in it.

“Cream tarts,” he said. “They are a speciality here in Damascus.” His English was as thick and sticky as the tarts themselves. He pulled out a chair and sat down, offering the tarts with so much reluctance, I guessed that before bringing them out to us, he had agonized over whether one apiece might not do.

The man tilted his head in my direction as if to ask, Can we ignore her? Something in Graham's demeanor must have suggested they could. In English the man said to Graham, his lips hardly moving, “You are welcome in Syria. We have made contacts, and there will be help along the way.” His voice hardened. “You understand we would prefer to do these things ourselves, but we are all known and watched by the sultan's spies.” In a quick movement the proprietor finished his coffee, and with a curt nod in my direction he left the table, taking away with barely concealed greed the three remaining cream tarts.

When the man was out of hearing, Graham took my hand. I saw the men with the pipes cringe at the liberty.

“Was I right to trust you?” Graham asked. “I must have your word that you won't mention this meeting to your father.”

“Of course you have my word.” I was delighted at his sharing his secrets with me and happy that at last I was beginning to have a life apart from Father.

Graham stood up. “Now it's time I made good my promise to show you the bazaars.” When we left, the proprietor was gone from his perch.

We entered the souk between enormous Corinthian columns. “Hadrian's Temple of Jupiter,” Graham said. “Many civilizations were here before this one.” The stalls that lined the maze of crooked streets sold flatbread; plump, sticky dates buzzing with flies; chests inlaid with mother-of-pearl; swords worked in silver; bloodred Turkish rugs; trays of rosy copper and bright brass scrolled all over with intricate engraving; piles of cucumbers and beetroots, walnuts and pistachios, fragrant cinnamon and cardamom; strange beetles and coiled snakes.

After I haggled over a length of pale green silk for Aunt Harriet and Turkish slippers with turned-up toes for Teddy, we came upon Monsieur Louvois, linen suit rumpled, chamois gloves shoved into a coat pocket. He was carrying on a conversation in rapid French with the owner of a stall where clay and bronze cylinders, no more than an inch or two in length, were set out on a frayed red velvet tray. When he spotted us, he abruptly ended his conversation.

“Ah, there you are,” he said, a guilty expression on his face. “Hakki was
très douloureux
at your departure. Never mind. I too escaped, leaving the poor man with Edith, who was worrying him about the identity of a flower carved in the architrave above a gate. I felt sorry for the man; certainly she was punishing him, but for what I don't know.”

“I don't think Edith cares much for Turks,” Graham said. “I suspect that riding about the desert with Arabs has made her adopt the Arabs' anger at being ruled by the Ottoman Turks.” Graham was anxious to get away, but Paul Louvois caught my arm and drew me into the stall.

“You must see these seals,” he said, urging me. “Contracts here are not signed: A man puts his seal to them. This man has some very old seals that are
parfait
. Let me have the pleasure of buying you one.” Hearing Monsieur Louvois's offer, the shopkeeper's fingers moved quietly as if he were counting.

“I thought you couldn't take old things out of the country,” I said. I was holding a seal on which a leaping stag was carved. It was delicately done and I coveted it, but I meant to be honest and handed it back to the disappointed merchant.

Monsieur Louvois protested. “Something so small as that would never be noticed. It is only a trifle.” When
Graham started to lead me away, he said in a rather nasty voice, “It is said that the British are honest in small things, but they do not hesitate to steal an entire country.”

Graham warned him, “If you insist on carrying these things out of the country, Louvois, you will certainly end up in prison.” When we were out of Monsieur Louvois's hearing, Graham said, “Cheeky, impertinent creature. He'll get us all in trouble with his cravings. The French think they own the Levant and can do as they please here.”

As we passed the Banque Ottoman, Graham paused. “You don't mind if I run into the bank, do you? I'll only be a moment and you'll be quite safe.”

More and more, I was seeing a secret side of Graham. I turned to explore a nearby stall where a young boy, who could not have been older than seven or eight, was sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor, embroidering a jacket. A man sat beside the boy, doing the same work. They had no light and their eyes were screwed up with the effort of working in the darkness. Impulsively I reached into my purse and took out some coins, which I handed to the surprised boy. “Buy yourself some candles,” I said. The man snatched the money from the boy and secreted it somewhere among his robes. “My son does not understand English.” He held out his hand. “Candles are costly.”

I gave him more coins, but I knew the money would not go for candles.

The street boys had watched me handing over money and now began to worry me with pleas for baksheesh. I couldn't recall the words Graham had used to send them away and began to feel panic as they closed in around me, pulling at my dress and my purse. For the first time that day my eagerness to see the city turned to fear at how little I really knew about what I was seeing. I decided it would take many lifetimes to study so old a country, and then it would be just a beginning.

To escape the boys, I turned a corner. Immediately in front of me was a man in a tattered loincloth spinning in circles and howling at the top of his lungs. His body was filthy and crusted with scabs, his long hair was matted, and strings of spittle clung to his beard. His eyes were turned up so that only the whites showed. He threw himself down, writhing in the middle of the dusty road. He was uttering appalling guttural sounds, and his twitchings were bringing him closer and closer to me. I wanted to run, but a crowd was closing in around the man, blocking my escape. For one frightening moment all the distance between Durham Place and Damascus stretched out before me, an endless span with no return. I pushed rudely through the crowd and ran until I
reached the bank, where I searched for Graham with no thought but my need to be with someone of my own kind.

Graham was at the counter, and I hurried to his side. He looked around, and for a moment, before he could mask it, there was an expression of irritation on his face. The man at the counter was leaning toward him speaking in a quick, low voice. “We will see that the funds are passed on to the Young Turks here in the city.” He hastily returned Graham's passport, bowed slightly, and murmured, “
Es-salaam aleikum
.”