“Not at all. She’ll still have pride of place.”
Atris burst out laughing. “You know very well I’ve just got married for the third time!”
“We’re not going to argue about one woman more or less, but there’s a bit of a problem with this one…”
Smiling, Atris broke in: “You mean she’s upper class?”
“Does everyone know, then?” exclaimed Sulayman in alarm.
“Love has a powerful scent!”
“What do people say?”
“Who cares what they say?”
“What do the harafish say?”
“To hell with the harafish,” said Atris exuberantly. “Your faithful followers will dance with joy.”
Sulayman interrupted him sternly. “You’ve got the wrong end of the stick, Atris,” he said, “Sulayman al-Nagi will never change.”
The glow of enthusiasm faded from Atris’ face. “The lady’s going to share Fathiyya’s basement, is she?”
“Whatever happens, Sulayman won’t change. The truth of the matter is,” he went on after a pause, “that you’re all as dissatisfied with justice and equality as the notables are!”
“What other clans put up with having as little as we do?”
“Sulayman will never change, Atris,” he persisted.
7.
Said al-Faqi conveyed Sulayman’s request to al-Samari who granted it with alacrity. In his heart al-Samari despised the carter and his humble origins but was eager for this alliance with the great chief, lord of the alley and oppressor of the rich. His only condition was that his daughter and her new husband should occupy a wing of his house until he could build her a suitable house of her own. Sulayman had no objection. Fathiyya was dumbfounded and wept bitterly but submitted to her fate. The rich were overjoyed, the harafish apprehensive, but Sulayman announced that he would not change.
The wedding was celebrated with a feast the like of which the alley had not witnessed before.
8.
Thus an alliance was formed between the clan chief Sulayman and the notable al-Samari.
“A holy alliance of power and prestige,” commented Sheikh Said.
He had been well rewarded for his efforts, despite Sulayman’s repeated declarations that he would never change. But life had taken on a new taste, and the clouds swelled with the waters of Paradise. Some women, Sulayman told himself, were like salty white cheese, others like butter and cream. The fragrant odor made him drunk; the smooth skin caressed and soothed him; the sweet voice sent him into ecstasies. Lighthearted elegance filled his life. Spending several days each week in the Samari house, he discovered the pleasure of family gatherings, the warmth of a soft bed, the smoothness of fine cloth, the splendid luxury of hot water in a comfortable bathroom, curtains, cushions, quilts, ornaments and objets d’art, carpets and rugs, jewelry and precious stones, and, above all, sumptuous meals, varied meats, magical sweets. The chief of the clan marveled at how this enchanting paradise could exist in a tumbledown corner of the alley. Outside he preserved his normal appearance and insisted on continuing to work for a living as usual. To the people of the alley he acted with the humility he still associated with true greatness. But he noticed a new wind beginning to blow in the calm air, stirring up sparks which threatened to start fires all over the place. Sharp eyes could see his gut swelling with good food and drink. Around his secret paradise people began to talk, especially his followers. For the first time he felt obliged to distribute a share of the protection money to them on feast days, in the greatest secrecy, and without doing noticeable damage to the poor. He felt he was taking the first step down a hateful, slippery road and beginning to stray from al-Nagi’s way. It appalled him as well that he was living in such luxury at the Samaris’ while Fathiyya and her daughters continued to eke out a drab, bleak existence in the basement room. So once again he put his hand in the public funds and showered them with presents, descending a step farther down the slippery slope.
“I’m not really doing anything to harm the poor,” he would say to console himself.
But his conscience would not leave him in peace and his life was clouded with nagging worries. Saniyya began to insist that he give up his trade and hire someone else to drive the cart. He proudly refused, trying to exert his authority like the strong man he was. She pretended to give in, leaving the insidious, destructive power of her love to do its work.
Whenever Sulayman felt he might be changing, he said resolutely to himself, “I haven’t changed and I never will.”
9.
At the Samaris’ dinner table he came face-to-face with the men of rank and prestige in the neighborhood. Previously they had avoided him because they were afraid, or preferred a quiet life. Now they looked at him trustingly, like people watching a lion at the zoo.
They drank toasts and the blood coursed boldly through their veins; the first glimmers of hope appeared.
“Perhaps you thought we could only submit to you if you used force,” said the owner of the caravanserai. “Don’t you know, master, that in the long run justice is valued by those who lose by it as well as by those who gain from it?”
“Who loses?” Sulayman asked hesitantly.
“You’ll be glad to know you’ve saved us from hatred, envy, and from being robbed!”
“But,” the coffee merchant picked up the thread, “we find in your perfect justice a hint of oppression.”
“Oppression?” asked Sulayman, frowning.
“You oppress yourself and your followers.”
“What’s wrong in you having your fair share?” asked the herbalist.
“You shed your blood to defend our honor, after all,” remarked his father-in-law.
“The chief and his men are notables, or that’s how it ought to be,” said the grain merchant.
“No!” objected Sulayman. “That’s not how it was in my father’s or grandfather’s time.”
“If your grandfather hadn’t gone to live in the Bannan house the alley would never have known what it meant to be wealthy and successful.”
“He was a greater clan chief than he was a notable,” persisted Sulayman.
“The clan chief was made to be a notable. Strike me dead if I’m wrong!”
He laughed derisively, overcome by the wine’s heat.
10.
Saniyya gave birth to two sons, Bikr and Khidr, and Sulayman enjoyed what he considered true fatherhood at last. The construction of Saniyya’s new house was completed and he spent happy times there, marred only by his obligatory visits to Fathiyya’s basement. Saniyya ruled his heart completely, just as she dominated the household. As time passed she worked on his emotions like a powerful drug. He stopped working and let one of his men take his place. He increased the handouts to himself and his followers, who little by little set up house closer to the notables and abandoned or neglected their simple occupations. The poor were not forgotten altogether but their share in the wealth diminished. The alley’s glowing image changed; people began to ask what had happened to Ashur’s legacy, to Shams al-Din’s honesty. The clan was on its guard and threatened those who expressed their discontent. Saniyya raised Bikr and Khidr in luxury and comfort, then sent them to the Quran school and prepared them to go into business; neither of them showed any signs of wanting to succeed his father. When they were in their late teens she bought them a grain business and set them on the path to becoming respected and influential merchants.
Sulayman avoided fights whenever he could and eventually chose to make an alliance with the chief of the al-Husayn neighborhood to save himself the trouble of facing hostile attacks alone; the alley rapidly lost the dominant position it had enjoyed since the time of Ashur.
The giant’s appearance changed completely: he wore a cloak and turban and used a light carriage for his outings, forgot his principles and drank to the point of depravity, and put on so much weight that his face swelled like the dome of a mosque and his jowl hung down like a snake-charmer’s pouch.
; Every feast day, when Sheikh Said came to wish him well he used to say, “May all your days be blessed, Master Sulayman…”
11.
The two brothers, Bikr and Khidr, were not much alike. Bikr had the beauty and grace of his mother and always appeared cheerful and arrogant. Khidr had inherited his father’s prominent cheekbones and his height, but seemed more sensitive. He may have been less arrogant than his brother but nobody would have called him modest. From growing up in the Samari house the two of them had learned good manners and elegant, refined ways; their knowledge of the alley where they lived was confined to the view from the high balconies of their home, and they had never set foot on its uneven paving stones. They ran their business from a luxurious room in the house, only meeting the most important clients and leaving the daily transactions with the public to their subordinates. They didn’t understand their father. Although they only saw him at his most imposing, they were not convinced of the worth of his position and did not entirely respect it. They had no idea that, without his influence, their business would have failed, and their employees and the merchants they dealt with would have made fun of their naiveté: they gained experience and skill in the most agreeable conditions, unaware of their good fortune.
12.
One evening the family sat around the silver-plated stove in the drawing room. January sat on its icy throne and a chill drizzle had been falling since early morning. Sulayman looked at his elegant, slender sons wrapped in velvet house robes, then, smiling faintly, said, “If Ashur al-Nagi could see you now, he’d disown you.”
“Even a king would envy them,” retorted Saniyya, gazing at them with love and admiration.
Sulayman said gloomily, “They’re your sons. Neither of them will want to take my place.”
“What makes you think I’d like them to?”
“Don’t you have any respect for my position?” he asked dully.
“I respect it as I respect you,” she said, changing tack deftly, “but I don’t want to expose my sons to such dangers.”
What was the point of quarreling? What was left of the covenant of the Nagis? His older daughters had married harafish; his youngest, brought up with the advantages of his elevated status, had married a so-called respectable man and her children would be as alien as her father had become to his origins. His conscience had relaxed, his greedy body had abandoned itself to temptation and abuses of the flesh. To object in these circumstances would be farcical.
His son Bikr said, “Anyhow, our ancestor Ashur liked the good life!”
“Who are you to think you understand Ashur?” asked Sulayman angrily.
“That’s what they say, father.”
“Only those whose hearts have been touched by the divine spark can understand Ashur.”
“Didn’t he take over the Bannan house?”
“It was the dream he had and the covenant that were miraculous,” said Sulayman furiously.
“He didn’t need a dream to tell him to run away from the plague,” said Bikr rashly.
The blood rushed into Sulayman’s face and he shouted, “Is that any way to talk about al-Nagi?”
The newly refined Sulayman turned abruptly into a wildcat and it was as if Ashur had been resurrected.
Saniyya started in fright and said sharply to her son, “Your great-grandfather was a holy man, Bikr.”
“You’ll never do anything worthwhile,” his father raged at him.
He left them to retire to his room and Saniyya said to Bikr, “Never forget that you are Bikr Sulayman Shams al-Din Ashur al-Nagi!”
“That’s right,” murmured Khidr.
Still smarting from his father’s rage, Bikr said, “But I’m also a merchant, and a Samari.”
13.
Saniyya decided to marry off her firstborn. She liked the look of Radwana, daughter of Hajj Radwan al-Shubakshi, the herbalist, and proceeded to arrange the engagement. Bikr had never seen his fiancée but trusted his mother’s judgment.
Radwan al-Shubakshi was very wealthy, had fathered many children, and loved music and entertainment.
The marriage was celebrated and the young couple settled in a wing of the Samari house.
14.
With Bikr’s marriage a new beauty entered the house. Bikr loved her passionately from the first night. She was tall and slender with blue eyes and golden hair; the one thing that vexed Bikr—in a superficial way—was that she was the same height as him, and appeared taller when she wore high heels.
“You’ll find she’ll tend to fill out,” his mother reassured him, “and with time she’ll be as plump as her mother.”
The young bride was embarrassingly shy and hardly looked anyone in the eye. But as time passed she began to take in her surroundings and fix her giant of a father-in-law and her brother-in-law Khidr with disconcerting stares.
“The bride’s not settling in,” said Khidr to his mother one day.
“She’ll settle when she starts having children. I know these rich girls,” she said, smiling. “Wouldn’t you like me to find you a nice girl like her?”
“Not before I’m twenty,” said Khidr. Then, noticing the dark Persian eyes gazing at him from a hanging rug, he hesitated, and added, “And I prefer golden hair and blue eyes.”
Saniyya held out her coal-black plait of hair and asked him with a smile, “Is black hair no longer acceptable?”
15.
Radwana and Khidr struck up a brother-sister relationship and he helped her gladly whenever Bikr was away on a business trip. In this way he made the acquaintance of her youngest sister, Wafa. She was small and dainty and very beautiful, but she had chestnut hair and hazel eyes. It occurred to him that Radwana may have been suggesting indirectly that he marry her and he was afraid of annoying her if he refused.
One day his mother asked, “Do you like Wafa?”
“She’s a nice girl, but she’s not for me,” he said firmly.
“I thought she’d be just right,” murmured his mother regretfully.
“I’m afraid Radwana will be angry if she finds out,” he told her.
“Radwana has some pride. She wouldn’t put her sister up for sale,” answered Saniyya, “and marriage is all a matter of luck anyway.”
16.
Bikr went away on a business trip which was to last several days. When Khidr returned from the shop in the evening he found Radwana standing at the door leading to her apartments. They greeted one another and as he turned to go she said, “I want to ask your advice.”
He followed her into the sitting room and sat down on a divan. She sat facing him and looked at him in silence as if not knowing how to begin. The drowsy perfume of incense hung in the air. He began listening to the rustle of the silence.
“I’m here to help,” he prompted.
Still she said nothing. Then noticing his impatience, she began, “I don’t know how to put it. Are you fed up with being with me already?”
“Not at all. It’s just that I’d like to help.”
“I don’t want anything more than that,” she said mysteriously.
He waited, uneasy beneath the glow of the bright eyes. Conjectures jostled around in his head. Had he missed something? Was she going to make an embarrassing suggestion?
“I’m at your service.”
In a strange voice she said, “You don’t know the situation I’m in so I forgive you for trying to hurry me.”
“Let me put your mind at rest.”
“Do you think that’s possible?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Avoiding his eyes, she asked, “Have you ever been defeated?”
“I don’t think so. But what do you mean? Who’s your enemy?”
“I have no enemy. It’s a defeat from within.”
He nodded his head, still confused.
“When you confront yourself and fail,” she went on, more boldly. “When you accept that you’re destroyed, I suppose you could say.”
“God forbid!” he said, fro
wning. “Be honest with me, think of me as your brother.”
“No,” she said emphatically. “My brothers are somewhere different.”
“But I’m your brother too.”
“No, you’re not. You should hear the whole story.”
“I’m all ears,” he said eagerly.
Clearly tense, she began, “When I was a girl in my father’s house I used to see you from time to time and I heard someone saying you were one of the clan chief’s sons.”
He nodded without speaking, feeling strangely disturbed. Radwana continued, “I never saw Bikr at all. That’s just the way it was. I didn’t even know you had a brother. It’s nobody’s fault.”
The strange presentiment grew stronger. Fears spilled into the incense-laden air and he summoned up images of Bikr, and his mother and father; the whole family came to hear the strange tale.
“Why don’t you say something?”
“I’m listening to you.”
She laughed with embarrassment and said, “But that’s the end of the story.”
“Then I didn’t understand it.”
“You mean you don’t want to.”
“I do,” he protested, secretly despairing.
“Then I’ll tell you in words of one syllable,” she said with a bold, calculating glance at him. “One day my mother told me that Saniyya al-Samari had asked for my hand for her son.”
She raised her eyes to the ceiling; her long white neck was like the silver candelabra. Something screamed at him that such beauty was created to destroy him. That sorrow was heavier than the earth, more pervasive than the wind. And that a man could only breathe freely in exile.
Gently, sweetly, submissively she confessed, “It was very hard for me to hide my joy.” Then, almost as if she were singing a song, “I never doubted it was you.”
He flinched and remained mute.
“That’s the story. Now do you understand?” she demanded.
“You were lucky you got the better brother,” he said in an unsteady voice.
“Are you talking like that because you’re afraid?” she asked, gently reproving.
“No. Because it’s safer.”
“You’ve always been affectionate toward me.”