The Syrian Sunset, page 6
They spent two weeks of afternoons in her room on the top floor with views of the city and Qasioun. In coupling, she moved constantly like a butterfly and entirely silent, even as she arched. Then as satisfying, even more, they talked. He had joked about her lovemaking, “You don’t want God to hear.” She fired back, “He knows, is laughing. Anyone who’d create this world and then step aside and let us destroy it, has to be a jokster. You’re on the side of the destroyers.” He knew because she challenged him, that he could love her in a way he did not the deferential Fatima. After six days she said, “One more week and it’s not because I like the pool so much.” As the sun set, they explored the city.
Twice he returned to the orphanage, which with his personal funds had become a permanent edifice with a doctor who visited several times a week. The first time she refused to see him. On the second she was gone but had left a note for his inevitable return. When he lifted it to his nostrils it carried the Damascus Rose perfume he had bought her. As he broke the red wax seal it was like ripping open his heart. In block letters:
DON’T UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED TO NEVER LEAVE
At the window, on occasion, like now, he dreamed in all his silence hid, of them walking again through the lilies on Qasioun. Today he had ratcheted up his betrayal of Kassem with the premature chemistry set. Betray Fatima, well he already had, hadn’t he, and was doing so again in remembering Margaret in the lilies. Margaret was now in the small village of Saydnaya placing orphans with the nuns in the vast mountaintop Our Lady of Saydnaya Convent. She was thirty kilometers north of Damascus and in his hubris, he liked to tell himself she wanted to be near though he doubted that was true. He could not abandon Fatima, his plans and especially Kassem, so he loved in his memories and from afar followed her life.
✽✽✽
Two years later, Fuad and Kassem hiked slowly up a steep incline on Mount Qasioun.
“Dad, this is hard. I’m tired,” Kassem whined.
“Okay, ten minutes rest, then higher.”
Fuad followed Kassem off the trail into the dry brush, let the boy wander while he absorbed the view. Most of the city slept in houses of one and two stories, stone or white stucco. A few tall office and government buildings, and slender minarets reached higher into hazy sky, the air hemmed in by low brown hills to the south and this northern range. Nearer clusters of newer tall stone apartment blocks, mostly ten to twelve stories high, formed long rows. The only trees clustered along the base of the mountain. Fuad turned. Housing gradually had crept up the mountain covering a third of the way, all low structures that blended into Qasioun’s flank. Higher was brown, with long stretches of white stone, the flat peak at 1,200 meters sprouted the tall red and white antennae of Syria’s television and radio stations.
Kassem called out with excitement, “Dad, I found you a great discovery. A rattlesnake hole.”
Fuad hurried towards him; this time he was the one frightened. “Show me.”
Kassem bent and thrust his forefinger near the mouth shaped like a tiny tunnel with small pebbles and loose dirt pushed from the inside camouflaging the entrance. Surprised and pleased that the boy was not scared, Fuad did not grab his hand and said softly, “Let’s move a little bit away and not offer him that finger for lunch.”
Kassem laughed hard. “I couldn’t possibly taste good. Mother wouldn’t let me have dessert. You think if we wait, he might come out?”
The spring sun beat down, the air dry. “I think he’ll wait until its cooler.”
“All right. Let’s see what else I can find.”
Kassem skipped up the narrow trail. They approached a bulldozed road cut horizontally in the face of the mountain like a fire road. There were no structures here to protect from a blaze. Beyond government construction rose. Two armed soldiers stood near them at this end of the wide dirt path.
“Why can’t we go there?” Kassem asked. “It’s flat. I’m tired.”
The domain of Air Force Intelligence, even Fuad could not pass without prearrangement. “It’s a fire road,” Fuad lied. “To protect homes and forests so the fire fighters can get in.”
“That’s good,” the boy said.
“Look around and tell me why what I just told you doesn’t make sense.”
Kassem was puzzled, then his face brightened. “No trees grow this high. It’s all, like rock.”
“Good.”
“Would soldiers guard houses that aren’t built yet?” Kassem asked.
“Maybe if it was the president’s palace but otherwise no.”
“Dad, I don’t understand what you want. I’m a nine-year-old kid. Can’t we just hike?”
At such moments Fuad slowed and made a turn. “Of course. What I want is for you to challenge what you think you see and what you’re told.”
“Even if you tell me.”
“Even what I tell you.”
“Tzababa, I can do that for sure.”
“We’re almost at the lookout. Want to go? We’ll be alone there.”
“Yes!” Kassem thrust a forefinger in the air. “I like being alone. I think it’s important.”
“Why?” Not that Fuad disagreed.
“Gives me time to think and I’m away from the dumb things the boys say. They talk about what girls do with sex. It’s all lies.”
“How do you know?”
“The girls are good. They wouldn’t do such things. And they’re too young. The boys try and be bigger than they are. It’s stupid. But I don’t care. Anyway, when’s my new chemistry set coming? It’s taking like forever.”
Fuad had not told him it arrived this morning because he had been eager to move his legs and feared the boy would refuse to hike.
“Soon,” he said. “I’m certain.”
“Can I throw stones down the mountain, just where there are no people?”
“Of course.”
Kassem bent and ran his eyes along the terrain and looked for flat ones.
Fuad eyed the compacted dirt road. Long ago, Hafez had initiated chemical weapons research. A few buildings already rose of this division of the Scientific Studies and Research Center. Fuad was monitoring the progress of Institute 3000, the new center here for the development and manufacture of chemical and biological weapons. Air Force Intelligence had begun simultaneously to court the China Precision Machinery Import-Export Corporation to obtain missile components for their delivery, as part of a broader affair.
Fuad’s eyes moved to the new construction. Since Hama, he had observed as few others the aphrodisiac of annihilation.
He watched the boy start back down the mountain without asking. He watched the boy stop, put two feet together and leap over admittedly a very low and short boulder. Fuad felt little guilt at what he was doing thus far. Though how far Kassem would run in rebellion when it all spilled out worried him.
CHAPTER 4
2011 – A GIRL’S BOX
On foot from the north, in his general’s uniform, Fuad approached the Bab al-Salam, The Gate of Peace, one of the seven still trod Roman portals into the Old City. The Romans had called it the Gate of the Moon for the way the orb hung over Qasioun. A semicircle of alternating black basalt and white limestone curved along the entrance passageway in the formidable brown arch. New white stones smoothly replaced the crumbled brown crown, new by Damascus reckoning, these from the 12th Century Ayyubid Dynasty. The towering wall of Old Damascus continued to his left. As Fuad entered, he ran his hand along the dark arch, the stone smoothed with age maybe a bit like him, he hoped. Fuad felt rudderless, unable to steer in this civil war that flooded the country everywhere beyond the bulwark of Damascus. With whole suburbs flattened, the finest fleeing and the rest gasping for breath in these waters, despair nearly pulled him under too. He was headed for a buoy.
Inside the deep arch, long dresses, small carpets and leather purses hung from rope stretched inside the venerable gate. He emerged into a slant of light in an open space and then entered the covered marketplace. He reached the eastern section, the oldest part of Damascus, farthest from the cooling Mediterrean breezes; the temperature rose as the sun beat on the arched tin roof high overhead. Fuad skirted around a donkey laden with twin burlap bags of apricots, hooves in clacking harmony on the stone.
A small trowel in his pocket, Fuad wove through a maze of tiny backstreets onto the narrow and dimmed Tal Elhijara Street. He stopped at an old door with metal workings. The same alternating white and black rectangles of the Bab al-Salam circled the wood. Two lanterns, one on each side, remained on in the parsimonious daylight. As Fuad entered, the heavy door opened quietly on greased hinges. The 300-year-old-house, once the fiefdom of one of Damascus’ most prominent Jewish families, had been stripped bare but over time resuscitated into the 17-room Talisman Hotel.
Fuad eased into the remarkable open-air courtyard, silent now; since the uprising tourists wandered elsewhere, in streets where they needn’t be concerned about what might descend from a helicopter. The upper half of all the walls had been reinvented a deep red. From there, alternating horizontal lines of black and white stone descended to the ground. A row of tall windows with glistening wood frames marched all around. A low white wall circled an active fountain. Iron tables and chairs painted white rested on a sparkly white marble floor, red diamond shapes matching the upper walls set in alternate stones. Fuad had to hand it to Bashar and Asma; who popping over from Washington wouldn’t think them an up and coming couple.
In 2007, Bashar and his British beauty, who knew how to throw a party on any continent, swept Democratic star, Nancy Pelosi, and her Congressional bloodhounds, distracted by the redolent scents of the Old City, into this courtyard. At lunch, either from the grand table or later tete-a-tete, Bashar reminded the Americans that post 9-11, he had honored their rendition requests and introduced their terrorists to the age old Syrian traditions of persuasion. With feigned hurt, he told the politicians that he did not find it fair, after welcoming these terrorists and rushing over all they could no longer contain, that he was being pilloried for assisting resistance movements like Hezbollah and Hamas.
“Syria wants a long-term dialogue, not a one-two-three-four solution,” Bashar, master of speech that sounded like he was saying something, intoned in his British English. It seemed Americans believed it was impossible to lie in a British accent.
“Of course, we do too,” the politicians responded, rather than observing
After dining, Asma who had strategically selected this venue, provided the perk of a personally accompanied tour of the ancient Old City, from the pounding of metal workers on the dark covered Street Called Straight, to the leather goods alleys where they picked up souveniers for a song.
Asma had arrived with the intent of holding hands with Bashar in spectacular change, the Princess Diana of Damascus. He too genuinely pledged a Syria better than his father’s. But Bashar cowered in a dark cave of insecurity, vacillation and meekness. When the regime jackals circling him came near, he threw them red meat. The anointed brother, Bassel, had parachuted from planes, commanded an armored brigade, and shined at a Soviet military academy where he learned the language at night in his room from atypically beautiful instructors who frequented the local bars. Known as ‘The Golden Knight’ of equestrian fame, sans a lance for now, early on he rose to command presidential security. He had been groomed with all the fine brushing given to Syria’s prize-winning Arabian stallions.
Bashar escaped the army altogether. Only when hauled back from London after Bassel’s recklessness, was he escorted into the military academy at Homs to print credentials for the influential martial class. Since Hafez was 64 and not getting any younger, in a lightning five years Bashar was raised to colonel in the elite Republican Guard. The following year, in June 2000, Hafez’s thirty-year iron grip on the Syrian presidency was released with his death. Bashar stepped immediately into the general’s sizeable shoes. To silence the grumbling of those who required talent, old commanders were escorted into retirement and replaced with young Alawite officers, who repaid Bashar with unflinching obedience.
A graduate in economics from King’s College in London and in 2000 about to enter Harvard for her MBA, Asma met Bashar that year and instead lashed her star to his. She told everyone, and meant it, that she turned around from crossing the Pond to reform Syria with her husband. In November, she packed up and headed east. The following month they married. Rumors swirled of her private frustration and anger at the brutal response to the uprising, but none surfaced about whether she regretted jettisoning Harvard. Though of Syrian heritage, she had arrived wide-eyed and naive. In her designer suits and Christian Louboutin’s, she was eager to reach out to the people. She shed those heels to enter rural homes, sat on the floor and ate from communal plates with her hands.
Early on, she was genuinely perplexed. On a visit to the ruins of previous conquerors, those Greek and Roman, at Apamea near Hama—when Syrian reporters hastened to her press people for instructions on what to print, she was speechless. She learned the ropes and steadied herself on them. During one of her interviews at the presidential stronghold, she sat smiling as Bashar interjected to Vogue Magazine that he had chosen eye surgery because there was very little blood. Fuad felt there was a lot Bashar preferred not to face.
In a second courtyard, Fuad passed the sizeable swimming pool with the same red and stone facades, and iron tables and chairs. White tablecloths dropped gracefully from these. Brass lanterns sat on the two long lengths of the low marble wall surrounding the pool, leaving the width unobstructed on one end for children, and the other for diving. Bashar wasn’t going anywhere other than to the annual Al-Sham Arabian Horse Festival at the Old Damascus Show Grounds, their hooves commemorating the trampling of the French Mandate over Syria in 1946. Fuad believed they’d have been better off with Bassel’s fortitude in the palace.
Fuad had yet to see a guest or anyone at all. The war propelled dignitaries, observers, the press and the UN chemical weapons inspectors— when allowed in and then stymied with Arab delay, more coffee and further profuse apologies—to the Sheraton in Ummayad Square and the nearby Four Seasons Hotel. Both offered the westerners familiar whiskeys in all the bars, expensive beds and the added comfort of military guards stationed around the new perimeter fence at the Four Seasons.
A small garden remained at the back of the hotel ringed with rose bushes, and as Fuad knew, untouched in the renovations. Long benches completely adorned by blue and yellow mosaic tiles awaited guests seeking privacy, contemplation, or respite from a partner. Fuad counted to the fourth from the left of the gnarled red rose bushes and sat next to it. Just then the tinny voice of a muezzin called through a minaret loudspeaker for afternoon prayer, followed by one after another in harmonious cacophony. For a moment Fuad, already on the ground, had the urge to touch his forehead to the marble floor to leave everything whirling inside him and join not God, without doubt Margaret’s jokester, but the long tradition of his desert people in worship.
Again, Margaret had arrived, like an old friend unexpectedly knocking on his door. For a moment, he let himself wonder if something more with her was conceivable? Fifteen years ago, she had married in Beirut, a French orthopedic surgeon from Medecins Sans Frontieres. Sometimes she accompanied him to postings abroad, and others worked and waited in Lebanon. A decade ago, though that civil war had long quieted, an errant Christian shell exploded their apartment while she was delivering a child to adoptive parents in the coastal city of Batroun. Shattered, she soon returned to Lyon but not before agreeing to see him. They met equidistant at Baalbek in the grape region of the Bekaa Valley. The long fertile depression stretched between the pines and plunging rivers of the Lebanon Mountains, and the taller snow-covered parallel Anti-Lebanon Range to the east, the border with Syria mostly running along the crest of the range. Mount Harmon in the Golan Heights rose imperiously from the southern end of the Anti-Lebanon Range. She had always wanted to see the imposing Roman ruins at Baalbek.
Her cross no longer swung from her neck. This time, in mourning, they did not touch other than to embrace at the fore and aft of meeting. They trod up the hills and down to the 2nd Century ruins of the Temple of Bacchus and Temple of Jupiter, intact Corinthian columns with Ionic bases, not unlike the Acropolis in weathering the storms of man.
“I think of you from time to time,” he had said with considerable understatement, as they sat atop a toppled Corinthian column crown at the entrance to the Bacchus temple, legs dangling.
“Only from time to time?” she asked, and at that moment, finally smiled. She had let the gray seize its lined place in her hair, averse to any artificiality.
“If I said all the time, I’m afraid you’d bolt to the sea.” He looked away to avoid her eyes. “Often would not be exaggerating.”
“How is your wife?”
“There is early dementia in her family. I see some of it already. She denies it. It’s worsening. Her mother and several aunts ended up early in treatment hospitals.”
“I can never come back to the Middle East,” Margaret said. “The suffering is bleeding from my eyes. I will find something else in Lyon. Maybe teach young children. I have loved twice in my life. Maybe, it is enough. Since I’ve been around children so often, I didn’t want to have any. Needed the quiet at home. Maybe I should adopt an orphan myself?”
“I’m not sure there’s ever any real peace. When I am uncertain, weary, my son is my reason to go on.”
“I thought that might happen,” she said.
“You’re the only one.”
“So you chose well in us both.”
“May I write you?” he asked.
She looked at the dancing Maenads on the stone parapets, literally joyous raving ones, the female followers of Bacchus. She was not sure she would ever feel ecstasy again though supposed most of this suffering would eventually escape from her to land on and torment another.
