The Dark Side of Love (122 page)

A day later he was given water and allowed to use the lavatory. When he came back Mahdi was sitting on the chair, grinning at him. The soldiers chained Farid's hands and feet, and fastened the ends of the chains to iron rings welded to the head and foot of the plank bed. Farid remembered the camel he had seen as a child.

Mahdi slowly took off his sunglasses. At that moment Farid recognized him, and at last he was able to identify the voice that had seemed familiar to him all this time.

“Bulos,” he whispered, near tears.

“So we meet again, but in the right circumstances,” retorted Bulos, grinning. Paralysing fear took hold of Farid.

“Bulos,” he whispered again. “It's you.”

“Yes, indeed, Mr. Mushtak, it's me. Your clan murdered my father, you betrayed and almost destroyed me. Now I'm about to pay you and your clan back.”

“What do you mean, murdered? Who murdered whom?” asked Farid with the last of his strength. He was utterly baffled.

“Your uncle Hasib shot my father just for a moment's joking with Hasib's wife, an American whore. Don't you know about that? My father was unarmed. Never heard of it?”

Farid shook his head.

“I actually believe you. Yes, how would you know? My father was Musa Shahin from Mala, Jusuf Shahin's fifth son. Does that mean anything to you?”

Farid was knocked backward by the shock. He nodded, as if dazed. Of course. Rana's Uncle Musa had been shot dead that Easter Sunday in 1941 when the bishops were trying to reconcile the two clan leaders.

“And then my mother, my sister Mona, and I were plunged into misery. I was five. As a widow, my mother had to go back to her skinflint of a father, who humiliated her and us day and night, until she married that monster who forced us to turn Catholic. It was misery
of the genuine Mushtak kind, my mother always said. All those nights when I was tormented, all the tears my mother shed, all the wretchedness I had to bear – I swore I'd pay a Mushtak out for it some day, and what do you think? When I was almost on the point of forgetting, following the way of Jesus Christ and loving my enemies, up popped a Mushtak who betrayed me. You did all you could to ruin me, but you were out of luck. I bore the torture and the questioning, I hated you every second of it, as much as I'd loved you every second before that. There's nothing worse on earth than discovering that you love a traitor.” Mahdi's face was dark and pale at the same time.

“I never betrayed you. You wouldn't stop to hear that neither Gabriel nor anyone else ever learned a word about you from me. Stupid coincidences must have confirmed your ideas all that time, they fed your suspicions of me, but I suffered badly enough myself. In the end I left the monastery in a much worse state than you,” said Farid.

But his hopes of explaining, or at least arousing a little pity, disappeared when Bulos merely grinned unpleasantly and shook his head. “So there you are. My mother was right when she said the Mushtaks were master liars and slippery as vipers, but it does me good to listen to you now, seeing you chained up like a dog. It was a lot of work getting you taken to Tad. You won't escape me now. No one can hear you. This is the only place where no microphones or cameras keep watch. You're going to live for a long time here, suffering so much that you'll wish for death ten times a day.”

He stood up, knocked twice on the door, and then calmly sat down again. Two large guards came in and hit Farid until he lost consciousness.

Farid went through hell for four days. And every day he hoped to reach Bulos's heart and arouse some pity in him, but his archenemy came back again and again only to tell him about the torments inflicted on him, Bulos, by the Mushtaks. Sometimes he talked about his stepfather, and the merciless revenge he himself had taken on the man later, when he was an old, broken failure. Humiliated by Mahdi, he had hanged himself in the cellar of his factory after it was closed down.

One morning Farid heard a soft knocking. He listened. “Farid,” said a familiar voice, but he couldn't quite identify it.

“Farid, it's me, Nabil. Can you hear me, Farid?”

“Nabil, my friend, what are you doing here?”

“I'm on duty as a substitute here for half a day. My comrade's okay, he's keeping a lookout for me.”

“Nabil, please help me. I'm dying.”

“How can I help you? We don't even have a key to your cells, and this one has the stoutest door of all, you can't even push a piece of paper under it.”

“Listen carefully, Nabil. You can save my life. Is there any way you can get to Damascus in the near future?”

“Yes, I have three days off, starting tomorrow, because I spent a week outside working on the camp fortifications.”

“Listen: go to my mother. We live opposite the Catholic patriarchal residence in Saitun Alley, near the east gate. My mother's name is Claire. Tell her they must do everything they can to get me out of here, because a son of the Shahins is trying to kill me.”

“Whose son?”

“The Shahins. They're my family's sworn enemies, and it's their son who has power here. And he wants to kill me. Did you get all that?”

“Of course. Let's hope I don't find your mother at home, because then I can go to your father at the confectioner's shop, and while he's listening to me I can eat half of what's in his window. Did I tell you that as a child I sometimes spent all my pocket money on a nightingale nest?”

“You did, yes,” replied Farid, smiling faintly, and then he sank to the floor by the door and listened to the young soldier's confidences as he talked of his wish for a swift end to his military service.

Finally Farid asked the soldier to repeat everything he was to tell Claire, and Nabil did not disappoint him.

Two days later Farid was running a high temperature. He heard a knock at the door, but he couldn't get up. One of the soldiers on guard came in and gave him water. Farid was so weak that he couldn't even talk. “Poor devil,” said the soldier, trickling something liquid into his mouth. “My God, what are they doing to you? And you think you can destroy the state with those shaking hands, you idiot? You're only a poor lost child.” He leaned Farid up against the wall, went out and called to his colleague. “Do you have a painkiller tablet? If not, go and find one.” The other man whispered something. “Yes, you'll get your bloody cigarette! Hurry up, will you, the man's dying,” shouted the soldier by way of reply.

Mahdi didn't show up for three days. When he came back, Farid had to some extent recovered his strength.

He was surprised by Mahdi's detailed knowledge. The commandant seemed to have found out about everything he did in his entire life. He could repeat, word for word, many of Farid's letters and many conversations with his Party comrades. But he obviously didn't know about Rana.

Mahdi seemed to enjoy telling Farid about his own career, and how cleverly he had jumped all the dangerous hurdles and cleared his enemies out of his way. After that final examination for his high school diploma he had gone home. By then his mother and sister had moved to Safita, a pretty little town where his stepfather was unsuccessfully trying to start an arrack distillery. Mahdi was to study chemistry and help to make arrack later. But his heart was set on studying law. He had dreamed of being a just and good judge, and he went to Damascus to get a place at the university there. Just before his examinations he fell passionately in love, but his stepfather was on his heels and turned his inamorata's parents against his own stepson. A little later the young woman broke off her relationship with Mahdi.

He put the woman out of his mind, and registered to train at the police academy. From there he was detailed for duty with the secret service, and as his logical and ruthless mind was outstanding his boss sent him to Moscow for further training with the KGB. In fact
Mahdi's crafty superior officer, who hated communism, wanted to discover just what the KGB was up to among the young Syrian officers. Mahdi was duly recruited by the KGB, and told everything to his boss in Damascus, a cousin of his present superior officer Badran.

“But why did you convert to Islam? Badran and the rest of the government aren't notably Muslim,” said Farid, still hoping these conversations might bring his torments to an end.

“Because religion has never mattered to me at all, or at least not since the monastery – but no, it never really did. I happened to be born into the Orthodox community and then I was forced to turn Catholic. I had all the qualifications to take a hand in the running of the country, a little Islamic phrase and my foreskin were the only obstacles, but not for me. Snip, snip, I was circumcized within five minutes, I recited the phrase, so Bulos became Mahdi, and I can only say that in point of fact all reasonable people from Badran to Shaftan and even President Amran, devoutly as they pray for the cameras, couldn't care less about any kind of religion. They get tanked up, they fuck any orifice they can find. Religion is a good way of controlling fools,” he said forcefully, and then he grinned and stood up. He knocked at the door, and the gates of hell opened for Farid. He begged Mahdi to spare him that day because he felt so wretched. He kissed his hands and boots, as ordered by one of the guards, but Mahdi only laughed. Another guard struck Farid in the face and ordered him to bark. Farid barked and wept until the guard hauled him along by the ear and said, “Not like a dog, like a donkey.” The man stank of alcohol.

Farid imitated a donkey, and had to keep it up for half an hour until he was lying on the floor exhausted. Then came absolute darkness, in which he once again saw the camel with fear in its eyes as it stood tethered in the courtyard of the caravanserai. When he came back to his senses he was alone. It was an eerie feeling. For the first time he doubted his own perception, for he had not seen or heard Mahdi and the two guards leave the cell. Farid looked at his arm. He saw the mark of a second needle, red and itching, on his right wrist, but when had they given him the injection?

When Claire had heard what the soldier had to say she thanked him with a gift of fifty lira, twice his monthly wages, and urged him to tell Farid she wouldn't rest until he was free. The soldier went straight to Bab Tuma and spent ten lira on nightingale nests from Elias's confectionery shop.

Claire went to her husband immediately and told him everything. Elias froze. “Those bastards the Shahins,” he said. The message was clear to him. A member of that family who was either a high-ranking officer or a depraved criminal must have found his way to Tad and was trying to kill Farid.

Claire had never seen her husband so angry before. “I'm going to the Patriarch, and even if it costs me all I have those Shahins won't murder my son,” he cried in his distress. At that moment Claire admired her husband, who was small of stature but could become a lion within seconds.

Elias immediately phoned the Catholic Patriarch. There was desperation and fury in his voice. The experienced old churchman knew that he must help his friend, and asked him to come and see him at once. He listened to what Elias told him, and spoke reassuringly. Then he telephoned George Salamoni, one of the richest and most audacious Christians in Damascus. Half an hour later that smooth-spoken whisky importer arrived in person. The Patriarch explained, and asked for his assistance, since Elias gave so much support to the Catholic Church.

Salamoni thought for a moment. “There's only one person who can help, but he'll be very expensive,” he said calmly.

“There's no price I wouldn't pay to save my son,” replied Elias.

“Come with me, then,” said the whisky merchant, and took his leave of the Patriarch. His black Mercedes was parked outside in the yard.

“The President's brother Shaftan is the most corrupt man in the world, but he does what he says he'll do,” said Salamoni, driving off. “We'll go straight to him. Fundamentally, he's the secret ruler of this country.”

Elias knew that Shaftan was the head of the special unit that had built the ring of defences around Damascus, but he would never have expected to meet the President's brother where Salamoni was taking him.

Salamoni wanted to know all about Farid. If what Elias said wasn't true, he added, he couldn't guarantee anything. Elias briefly told him what Claire had said. Salamoni nodded thoughtfully.

“I thought Shaftan was outside Damascus with the troops,” said Elias, as Salamoni reached the Abu Rumanna quarter. There were no barracks here, only the villas of the richest Damascenes and the foreign consulates. Salamoni laughed. “He's been here for a month in a palace that he bought for ten lira from Bardana, a rich textiles dealer.”

“Ten lira? You must be joking,” said Elias.

“I seldom joke,” replied Salamoni, “but you'd sell your house for a single lira if a cold-blooded man put his pistol to your temple, and you knew he was brutal enough to sit his ten-year-old son on his lap to watch the executions of his enemies, just to toughen the boy up.”

“And he lives here?” asked Elias.

“No one knows where he lives, but he has his secretariat here, and if you state your request and the matter's important enough you can see him in person. If not, his employees deal with it.”

The house was impressive, and two helicopters stood on the lawn of the large garden. At the entrance Salamoni gave the soldiers in their combat uniforms his name, and a few minutes later a young lieutenant came running down the steps.

“Monsieur Salamoni,” he said breathlessly, “forgive me for keeping you waiting, but all hell's let loose today.” He greeted Salamoni, and shook Elias's hand without interest.