“Let’s run as fast as we can,” the second figure said.
Qassem and Hassan ran through the darkness, paying no attention to rocks or potholes.
84
At the opening of Watawit Alley, Sadeq joined them. At the end of it they found Agrama, Abu Fisada and Hamroush around a four-wheeled horse-drawn cart. They all got in, and the horse galloped off, driven by the cabman’s whip. Despite the darkness, the cart raced along, giving off rattling and clopping sounds in the stillness of the night like a string of small explosions, and they looked back, fearful and apprehensive.
“They’ll head for Bab al-Nasr,” said Sadeq in an attempt to reassure them. “They think you’ll hide in the desert, near the graveyards.”
“But they know that you don’t live in the graveyards.”
The speed of the cart made the difference, however, and it gave them the feeling they really were far from danger.
“You did a very good job of organizing everything,” said Qassem with relief. “Thanks to you, Sadeq. If it hadn’t been for your warning, I’d be among the dead now.”
Sadeq pressed his hand in silence. The cart sped on until Muqattam Marketplace appeared in the starlight, shrouded in solitude and darkness, except for the lamplight shining from Yahya’s hut. They cautiously drove the cart to the middle of the square, left it, and walked to the hut. Almost immediately the old man’s voice sounded, asking who was there; Qassem answered, and the voice rose again, in thanks. The two men embraced warmly.
“I owe you my life,” said Qassem.
“It was just a coincidence,” said the old man, laughing, “but it happened in a way that saved the life of a man who is the most deserving of life. Hurry to the mountain—it will be the best base for you.”
Qassem grabbed his hand and looked gratefully and affectionately at his face by the light of the lamp.
“Today you are like Rifaa or Gabal,” the old man said. “I will return to our alley when you have triumphed.”
They headed east from the hut, penetrating deep into the desert, toward the mountain. They were led by Sadeq, who knew the route better than any of them. There was a glow mingled with the darkness that heralded the approach of dawn, and the dew was falling from the sky. From afar came the crowing of a cock, a newcomer’s screech at the birth of a new day. They reached the foothills, and followed them south until they found the narrow passage that led up to their new dwelling place on top of the mountain. They climbed behind Sadeq in a line, one by one, because of the narrowness of the path.
“We prepared a house for you in the middle of our houses,” Sadeq told Qassem. “Ihsan is sleeping there now.”
“We built our houses with sheet metal and burlap,” said Agrama.
“They’re not a lot worse than our houses in the alley,” Hassan joked.
“It’s good enough having no overseer or gangsters among us,” observed Qassem.
They heard voices.
“Our new alley has woken up—they’re waiting for you,” said Sadeq.
They looked up and saw rays of light pursuing the remnants of darkness, and Sadeq shouted at the top of his lungs, “Here we are!” and men’s and women’s heads appeared, there were shouts and trills of joy, and people began to sing, “Put henna on the sparrow’s tail!”
“Look at them all!” said Qassem admiringly, lighthearted with joy.
“It’s a new civilization on the mountain,” said Sadeq proudly. “The population grows every day. All the emigrants from the alley have joined us, with Yahya’s guidance.”
“The only trouble is that we have to make our livings in faraway neighborhoods, for fear of being discovered by someone from our alley.”
When Qassem got to the top, the men greeted him with hugs, the women shook his hand and all voices were raised in welcome, cheers and cries of “God is great!” Sakina was among them, and told Qassem that Ihsan was asleep in the hut that had been prepared as their home. They all walked to the new neighborhood, which was comprised of a square area of huts on a mountain clearing. They cheered and sang, and the horizon was brilliant with exuberant light, like a lake of white roses.
“Welcome to our protector, Qassem!” a man called out.
Qassem’s face changed, and he shouted angrily, “No! God’s curse on all protection gangs! There is never peace or safety wherever they are found!”
All the new faces were turned to him.
“We will raise clubs the way Gabal did, but to achieve the mercy that Rifaa called for. We will use the estate for everyone’s good, until we make Adham’s dream come true. That is our mission—not gang rule.”
Hassan pushed him gently toward the hut that had been prepared for him, and called out to the crowd, “He didn’t close his eyes all last night. Let him get some of the rest he’s earned.”
Qassem lay down on a burlap sack beside his daughter, and was quickly overcome by sleep. He woke up between noon and the early afternoon, his head heavy and his body weary. Sakina brought Ihsan to him, and placed her in his arms. He began to kiss her lovingly, and the woman offered him a jug of water.
“This water was brought to us from the public pump—the same way Gabal’s wife used to fetch it!”
The man smiled; he loved anything that linked him to the memories of Gabal or Rifaa. He looked around his new house to examine the walls, which were covered with burlap and nothing else, and clasped Ihsan to his chest even more tenderly, then stood up and handed his daughter to Sakina. He went out and found Sadeq and Hassan waiting for him, sat between them and said, “Good morning.” He looked over the neighborhood, but he saw only women and children.
“The men have gone to al-Sayida and Zainhum to look for work,” Sadeq explained, “and we stayed behind to look after you.”
His eyes followed the women as they cooked or did washing in front of the huts, and the children as they played here and there.
“Do you think these women are happy?”
“They dream of owning the estate, and the comforts that Lady Amina enjoys,” said Sadeq.
He smiled broadly, and then looked slowly from one of them to the other. “What’s going on in your heads about our next step?”
Hassan lifted his head over his brawny shoulders and said, “We know exactly what we want.”
“But how?”
“We’ll wait for our moment, and then attack.”
“We should be patient, until most of the people of the alley join us, then attack,” Sadeq protested. “That way we can ensure victory on the one hand and low casualties on the other.”
“Yes!” said Qassem, his features jubilant.
They sank into a dreamy repose, which was interrupted by a shy voice. “Food!”
Qassem looked up and saw Badriya carrying a platter of beans and loaves of bread. She gazed at him with her laughing eyes, and he could not help smiling.
“Welcome to my little lifesaver.”
She placed the platter in his hands. “God give you long life.”
She went back to Sadeq’s hut, which was next to his. He felt a tenderness and contentment in his heart, and began to eat heartily.
“I have a good amount of money that will help us when we need it,” he said as he ate. After a moment he added, “We have to go after everyone in the alley who seems ready to join us. There are so many oppressed people who want us to win, and only fear keeps them from joining us.”
The two men shortly left to go where the other men had gone earlier, and he found himself alone. He stood and set out to walk around the place, as if inspecting it. He passed playing children; none of them took any notice of him. The women, however, all greeted him with blessings, and he noticed a very elderly woman with pure white hair, eyes clouded with age and a trembling chin, so toothless that she looked as if she had nearly swallowed her jaws. He greeted her, and she returned his greeting.
“Who are you, mother?” he asked politely.
“Umm Hamroush.”
“Welcome, mother of us all
—how did you decide to leave our alley?”
Her voice was like the rattle of dry leaves. “The best place is near my son.” Then, as if remembering something: “And far from those gangsters.” Encouraged by his smile, she said, “I saw Rifaa when I was a girl!”
“Really?” he asked her, very interested.
“Yes, by your life. He was sweet, and handsome, but it never crossed my mind that a neighborhood address would be named for him, or that they’d be telling stories about him to music!”
“Didn’t you follow him, like all the rest?”
“No, no one knew about us in our neighborhood. We ourselves didn’t know who we were. If it weren’t for you, no one would be talking about the Desert Rats at all.”
He looked at her closely, and wondered: What must our ancestor look like by now? But he smiled gently at her still, while she said prayers for him for a long time, and then he left. He continued walking until he stood at the top of the passage, at the foot of the mountain. He looked out at the desert below, and then at the horizon. Far off were the roofs and domes, scattered landmarks that now looked like one place. He said that they should be one thing, and that it looked so small from above: Rifaat the overseer and Lahita the gangster seemed meaningless from here. There seemed to be no difference between Rifaat and his Uncle Zachary. It would be nearly impossible to make your way from where you are to that turbulent alley if it weren’t for the mansion, which can be seen from anywhere: our ancestor’s house, with its strange wall and tall trees. But he is discredited by age, and dread of him has declined like the sun now sinking toward the horizon. Where are you? How are you? Why is it you no longer seem to be yourself? Those who falsify your commandments are a mere arm’s length from your house. These women and children, far away in the mountain—aren’t they the closest people to your heart? You will regain your standing when you enforce the terms of your charter without overseers’ assassinations or the violence of gangsters; like the return of the sun tomorrow to the highest point in the sky. Without you we would have no father, no world, no estate, no hope.
A sweet voice woke him from his drowsy thoughts. “Coffee, Qassem, sir.”
He turned around to see Badriya holding out a cup in her hand, and he took it.
“Why the trouble?”
“Going to trouble for you is like a vacation, sir.”
God rest your soul, Qamar, he thought, and sipped the coffee companionably. Between sips their smiling eyes met. How delicious the coffee tasted on the mountainside, overlooking the desert.
“How old are you, Badriya?”
She bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she murmured.
“But you know what brought us to this mountain?”
“You!”
“Me?”
“You want to strike the overseer and the gangsters, and make the estate ours. That’s what my father says.”
He smiled. He saw that he had finished the coffee but had not returned the cup to her, so he handed it to her.
“I wish I could give you part of the thanks you deserve.” She blushed, turned away with a smile and ran off.
“Be safe,” he managed to say.
85
Late afternoon was the time for fencing, so the men set out to do their strenuous exercises with wooden sticks. That was after they had come back—men and women alike—with a little money and some simple food, after a long and exhausting day of work. Qassem was the most enthusiastic, and he loved seeing his men’s zeal and energy in preparation for the crucial day. There were strong men among them, but they harbored a love for him that their hate-torn alley had never known. The sticks resounded, clacked and landed in powerful exchanges, and the boys watched and imitated them while the women relaxed or prepared supper. The line of huts had grown longer with the arrival of new men in the new neighborhood; Sadeq, Hassan and Abu Fisada had proved to be expert recruiters. They lay in wait for the men of the alley where they were most likely to be found, and stayed with them until they had persuaded them to join up. They quit the alley secretly, with a hope in their hearts that they had never known before.
“I can’t guarantee that all this activity won’t lead our enemies to us,” Sadeq would tell Qassem.
“The only approach to us is the narrow passage. They’ll be wiped out if they try to come through it.”
His lasting happiness was Ihsan when he played with her, rocked her and sang to her, but this was not the case when she reminded him of his late wife; those occasions immersed him in gloom and the hot sighs of yearning. She had been taken from him at the outset of their journey, and left him prey to terrible depression whenever he was alone; or to regret, as when he had been on the mountainside, the day he drank the coffee, the day of the shy smile, as soft as an afternoon breeze. One night, he could not fall asleep, and he fell prey to tormented depression and insomnia in the dark hut. He got out of bed and went outside, strolling in the open space between the huts, under the stars, to breathe in the sweet night air, the mountain air of the summer midnight.
A voice called to him. “Where are you going at this hour of the night?”
He turned and saw Sadeq approaching. “Aren’t you asleep yet?”
“I saw you when I was lying in front of the hut, and I like you better than sleep.”
They walked side by side to a mountain ledge, and stood there.
“Sometimes I can’t stand being alone,” Qassem told him.
“I can’t ever stand it!” laughed Sadeq.
They watched the horizon, the glittering sky and the earth sunk in blackness.
“Most of your men are married or have families,” Sadeq resumed. “They’re never lonely.”
“What do you mean?” Qassem asked suspiciously.
“Someone like you cannot do without a woman.”
“Marry, after Qamar?” The objection in his voice was as strong as his feeling that the man was right.
“If she were able to make you hear her voice, she would say the same thing I’m saying,” said Sadeq sincerely.
Qassem was disturbed, though excitement boiled within him. “It’s like treason, after her love and caring,” he said, almost to himself.
“The dead can do without our loyalty!”
What does this good man intend? To speak the truth or justify my pleasure? But sometimes truth has a bitter taste. You cannot face yourself with the same candor with which you faced conditions in your alley. He who settles these matters in your life is the same one Who set these stars in the sky. The indisputable truth is that your heart is still beating, as it always has. He sighed audibly.
“No one needs a companion as much as you do,” said Sadeq.
On the way back to his hut, he saw Sakina standing at the door, looking at him questioningly.
“I saw you go out, when I thought you were fast asleep!” she said worriedly.
So intense were his thoughts that he burst out, with no preface, saying, “Look at the way Sadeq is trying to make me get married!”
“I wish I had said it before he did!” Sakina said, as if snatching a long-awaited opportunity.
“You!”
“Yes, sir. It hurts my heart to see you sitting all alone, lonely and thinking.”
“They are all with me,” he said, pointing to the sleeping huts.
“Yes, but you have no one for you in your home, and I’m old. I have one foot on the ground and the other in the grave.”
He sensed that his hesitation was a sign that he accepted what she wanted, but even so, he did not go into the hut. “I’ll never find a wife like her!” he lamented.
“That’s true, but there are some very fine girls!”
They exchanged a look in the shadows, and there was silence. Then the slave said, “Badriya! What a sweet girl she is!”
“That young girl!” he said, surprised, his heart pounding.
“She looks pretty ripe to me, when she brings you food or coffee,” she said, hiding a sly smile.
“You demon!” he
said, turning away from her. “God’s curse on your begetters!”
The news echoed joyfully throughout the mountain community. Sadeq nearly danced, his mother made the desert ring with her trilling and Qassem was showered with congratulations. The whole neighborhood celebrated the wedding, without having to hire any professional entertainers. The women danced, Umm Badriya among them, and Abu Fisada sang in his pleasant voice, “I was a fisherman, and fishing for fish is fun.”
The wedding procession wound around the huts, lit only by the lights in the heavens. Sakina moved to Hassan’s hut with Ihsan, to leave Qassem’s hut for the bride and groom.
86
He loved watching—from where he sat on a skin in front of his hut—as Badriya kneaded dough. She was young, of course, but what other woman had her energy and ability? She stretched, weary, and with the back of her hand pushed back the hair that hung over her forehead. She looked desirable in a way that captivated every fold of his heart, and her blushing face showed that she felt his eyes following her, and she stopped her work, pouting. He laughed delightedly, bent over her, grasped her braid and kissed it again and again, then went back to where he had been sitting. He was happy and carefree, as he always was on the rare occasions when he was free of his friends and thoughts. Ihsan was walking from one place to another nearby, watched by Sakina, who was resting on a rock. There was a burst of noise at the head of the passage, and he saw Sadeq, Hassan and some of his companions coming toward him, with a man he knew as Khurda, the Rifaa community’s garbage collector. He immediately rose to his feet to welcome them, while the women trilled as they always did when a new man from the alley joined them in the mountain. The man embraced him.
“I am with you,” he said, “and I’ve brought my club with me!”
“Welcome, Khurda,” Qassem said. “We don’t make any distinction between one community and another here; the alley belongs to all of us, and the estate is for all.”