The Dark Side of Love (65 page)

“Who are they?”

“Nutcases. Let's go, the others are waiting,” said Marcel. He led Farid on along a narrow corridor, past discarded furniture, implements, and large pots and pans.

“Harmless nutcases born a few centuries too late. The one stretching all his limbs out was a famous theologian once, until he started having conversations with God. He and the others are stashed away here like these pieces of furniture,” said Marcel, pointing to an old cupboard.

When they left the west wing and went down the central corridor, Marcel mentioned that they were right above the bedrooms where the monks and the Fathers slept.

“But don't worry, they wouldn't hear a herd of elephants down there. This ceiling is very well insulated, and when they couldn't get the third-floor bedrooms warm enough in winter they thought it was because of the height of the rooms. They built in false ceilings lower down, and those are well insulated too,” he assured his friend. “All you ever hear is the mice and rats who fall through cracks in the attic floor, and scurry about on top of the false ceilings until they die. There's no way for them to get out of the trap. It can be horrible.”

Now Farid heard soft whispering behind a mountain of old furniture. He stopped, rooted to the spot, but Marcel tugged his sleeve. “Come on, those are my friends,” he said.

Five of the older boys were sitting in a niche behind the cupboards on old couches and armchairs. They were smoking and drinking wine from a large beaker that was passed around in a circle. A candle on a large tin plate burned on the table in the middle of the party. Beside it lay photos of naked women dating from the 1920s. Farid saw another shabby piece of card bearing the inscription “The Nightclub”.

“This is my friend Barnaba, he's another lunatic, he ought to be a member of our nightclub,” said Marcel. Farid had to smile.

“Can he be trusted?” asked a thin boy, scrutinizing Farid suspiciously.

“He's okay,” replied Marcel, sitting down on a large couch. He signed to Farid to join him there.

Marcel was appreciated in this circle; no one teased him or made snide remarks. Farid took a couple of puffs at the cigarette that was being handed around, but had to cough, for it was curiously sharp in flavour. The wine, on the other hand, was sweet and sticky.

They spent about an hour up there, cracking jokes about the Fathers and nuns. It was cold in the attic, but the boys didn't seem to notice. Farid didn't feel at ease. This was not the kind of company he liked, and he was glad when the meeting ended.

Next time Marcel invited him to join them at the Nightclub, he thanked him but said no, he'd rather sleep. After that night, however, he often lay awake for a long time, staring into the darkness and thinking of the gang at home in Damascus, of Josef, and the attic above the aniseed warehouse. What were his friends doing now?

On Ash Wednesday, 3 March 1954, the world of the monastery fell silent. The idea was that you spent seven days cleansing your soul. To Farid, it was a misfortune. He loved the sound of words, the music of language, and regarded silence as the province of death, not life.

But Abbot Maximus thought otherwise. His remarks announcing the advent of a period of silence sanctified it. “Only when your lips are closed do you hear the voice of the heart,” he said, smiling kindly and looking around. “We learn thoughtfulness and patience best in silence. And only in stillness, dear brothers in Christ, do we find our way to the light.”

Observance of the commandment of silence was strictly supervised. “One word and you're made to kneel down on the spot,” said Marcel, “and you have to stay there until the bell goes for the next meal.” He himself had once had to kneel on the ice-cold stone floor for three hours.

Everything fell silent. Even the chattering sparrows avoided the
inner courtyard, for the heavy silence scared them away. The monastery became a house of deaf mutes. School and work were in abeyance. It was a week of meditation for all right-thinking people. The church and the library were open to everyone.

Farid almost lost his mind in this silence, but the sight of someone kneeling cured him of any wish to speak. The outward calm left his mind in turmoil. He didn't want to be a priest. Why was he here at all? He dreamed of exploring the world and its secrets, he could be a pilot or a sea captain. So what was he doing behind these dank walls?

The inner courtyard, where the monastery pupils and the Fathers walked without making a sound, seemed positively ghostly in the evening twilight. Farid sat on a bench for a long time watching their silent perambulations, with a yawning void inside his head. He went into the church and immersed himself in the details of the large paintings. Just as he reached St. Giorgios the bell rang for supper, bringing release. Farid cast a last glance at the dragon. The creature looked pitiful, and he felt sorry for it. The horse was muscular, yet wrongly proportioned in some way. Its hindquarters occupied almost a quarter of the picture, and St. Giorgios seemed to be driving his spear into the dragon rather lethargically.

After supper Farid fled to the library, where he found Bulos, who seemed to be buried in a book. Bulos looked up, a smile tried to form on his lips, but he suppressed it and went on reading.
The Rise of Nations
, said the title on the cover of his book.

That evening Farid discovered Jules Verne's first novel,
Five Weeks In A Balloon
. And suddenly a week's silence was no longer a threat. He spent twelve hours a day reading now. Sometimes he even missed a meal to follow an exciting incident to its conclusion. During that week, he realized that books could be a life-raft in an ocean of silence and grief. And when he lay in bed at night with his back aching from sitting and reading so long, he felt Rana's hand in the darkness and travelled with her through the world of the stories he had read.

Jules Verne had been merely the one who opened the door, the magician who revealed the world of books to him. Soon after that, Farid was wandering through nineteenth-century France with Balzac, India with Kipling, Russia with Tolstoy, America with Jack London.

But in the middle of that week of silence, Laila's letter arrived. Brother John handed out the mail without a word. Farid was startled when the monk – in his usual rough style – just threw the letter down on his book and went on.

Rana understood him and would love him for ever. Clever Laila had skilfully smuggled him the message that he longed to hear between the lines of her letter. The camouflage was brilliant. Her seven-year old daughter Rana, wrote Laila, idolized him and spoke of nothing but her dear Uncle Farid who was in a monastery. She wanted to join a convent herself later, and be a nun in Africa. Farid grinned when he imagined the satisfaction on the censor's face.

He had been writing Rana a letter every month since September, and sending it via Bulos under cover of another letter to Laila. The bus driver was extremely happy to have the lira that Farid paid him for every delivery.

And Laila answered once a month. So as not to attract attention, she sometimes signed her letters with the name of her mother Malake.

A great peal of bells announced the end of the week of silence. Farid took more pleasure in regaining the use of language than in the festive meal served that day.

The day was set aside for recreation. All the gates were open, the inmates could go out and take walks around the monastery. For a moment, the world was a whole dimension larger.

Farid spent a long time standing in front of the glass cases in the library where the valuable scrolls with the poems of seventh-century St. John Damascene were kept.

The saint was also known as St. John of the Golden Mouth for his lyrical style. A short account of his life lay beside one of the scrolls. His right hand had been severed by a blow from a sword during a pogrom, but the story went that he picked it up, put it back on his arm, and finished writing his poem.

Brother Gabriel made fun of this heroic legend. However, when Farid asked about the large greasy marks on the scrolls, his face darkened. They had been left by the sardine cans of the peasant rebels who captured the monastery in the 1930s, drove the monks out, and misused the building as their barracks.

“They couldn't make anything of the scrolls, so they used them as tablecloths,” said Gabriel. “They wreaked havoc here in the monastery for two years, until the French army of occupation drove them out. When the monks returned they found a sad scene of destruction. It took three million dollars and four years of work to restore the monastery. That's why our Abbot pays protection money rather than face such devastation again.”

“What kind of protection money?”

“We're in the region dominated by the rebel Salman. He's fought off all attacks by the government to date. His headquarters in the Eagle Mountains is impregnable, and he's absolute ruler here. He demands fifty thousand lira every year, and we pay up. In return, his bandits can't so much as pick a blade of wheat from our fields.”

“Fifty thousand – why, that's a vast sum!” said Farid in amazement.

“Yes, indeed, but every painting in the church, the marble altar, the library, they're all priceless treasures. And what does the money matter? We can live in safety,” replied Gabriel.

“Do the bandits stick to your agreement?”

“Salman's a decent man at heart. A pity he's a Muslim. He is a great Sufi and admires Christ more than many a Christian.” Gabriel hesitated, as if he felt awkward about going on. ‘But unfortunately he admires him with a weapon in his hand.”

“And how does he get the money? Do his robbers come to the monastery?” asked Farid curiously. That interested him more than the elevated ideas of the rebel Sufi.

“No, no,” said Gabriel. “I take it to him in his citadel. He insists on that, to show that he and not the monastery is the ruler here.”

“What?
You
mix with the robbers?”

“It's not as exciting as you may think. The monastery sends word that I'll be coming, then I go, I hand over the money, I get a sealed receipt and come back.”

Farid felt very restless. That night he waited until the monk on supervision duty was asleep, and then got up and sat on the broad window sill. It was a warm April night, and the windows were open. The full moon turned the sea into a silver platter with a fishing boat slowly gliding over it. The sea was as still as if the moon had calmed the soul of the waves.

Out there, somewhere in the Eagle Mountains, was an invincible rebel who was popular with the poor, and was said to be so small of stature that if an egg fell out of his trouser pocket it wouldn't break when it hit the ground.

How can such a small man lead robbers, Farid wondered? Perhaps he enchants them with the power of his tongue and they never notice his size.

Farid had clearly sensed that Gabriel secretly liked Salman, even if the rebel did blackmail the monastery for large sums.

The sea was glittering strangely, as if stars had fallen into it. Suddenly Rana was there. “Can you hear me?” he whispered drowsily.

Very little news made its way to the monastery in the summer of 1954. They heard that Shaklan had been toppled, but it was another year before the monastery felt the first results of his fall. The rebel Tanios, he of the patent leather shoes, was happy with General Batlan's new government, for the President had appointed one of his sons as agriculture minister. Tanios laid down his arms and allowed governmental troops to pass through his own region and surround the second and far more dangerous rebel, Salman. The fighting went on for weeks, and it was said that the rebels fought fiercely, but when their leader Salman was captured and shot in an olive grove, they surrendered. Only the women would not capitulate, and defended their last bastion, a small and ruinous fortress. For a long time the soldiers dared not attack; horror stories were told about the rebels' women. But when they stormed the fortress, greatly outnumbering its defenders, they found out that all the women had committed suicide.

The defeat of the rebels was a relief to the monastery. No more protection money had to be paid from now on.

October was almost as hot as August that year. For once, the pupils in the monastery were allowed to go on an excursion to the sea, escorted by Father Constantine the music teacher. They had to walk in line, two by two, but they could choose who to walk with. Farid joined Bulos, who had just received a letter from his mother by courtesy of the bus driver. All the way down he was swearing at the stepfather who beat her.

“I could murder him. A fragile woman like that, he sits on her chest and breaks three ribs. And what does she do? She tells the doctor she fell off a ladder while she was doing housework.”