Rafik Schami - A Hand Full of Stars

The series begins, and the beastly character describes with pleasure how he strangles grannies and grandpas, mugs passersby, steals food out of the mouths of babes and abuses them. He makes faces and lets himself be photographed with disheveled hair and a stubbly beard; the newspapers sell out.

Now comes the third episode, the last. On the radio and in the newspaper, the editor concludes it without keeping his word, without saying the man is an actor. The man’s neighbors avoid him; many people spit at him. Even merchants won’t sell him anything; his face is better known in the town than the president’s. The poor devil goes back to the radio station again and again, but the editor will not see him. When, after hours of waiting, the actor finally manages to get in, the editor promises that tomorrow or the next day he will publish the truth. After a month, the man is a complete wreck. In the end, the tattered, starved actor lies in wait for the editor and slays him. The newspapers publish a fourth installment, the radio airs a fourth episode, and the neighbors breathe more easily now that the man is finally behind bars.

Mahmud forgets nothing. Whether a theater will ever perform this play is another matter. I have told Habib and Uncle Salim about it, and they are enthusiastic. I didn’t much like the part about the neighbors, but Mahmud says that people will believe anything if they hear it often enough.

June 24 — We have all known sorrow. Last Wednesday, there was a lot going on in the bakery. No sooner had I finished my noon rounds and was about to rest than the axle of the dough machine broke. My father was actually quite calm and replaced it with one he had in reserve. He was just saying, “We have all earned a nice pot of tea,” when a police car pulled up in front of the bakery. Two policemen hurried out, stationed themselves at the door, and barred it with their machine guns. A man in a fine suit slowly got out of the car and gazed at our bakery. Nervously my father dried his hands on the edge of his apron and whispered, “Blessed Mary, protect me! Blessed Mary, stand by me!”

The elegantly dressed man was about thirty. He asked for my father by name, and as my poor father answered him, without moving a muscle in his face the man said, “Come along!”

“What have I done, sir?”

“You needn’t be afraid if you haven’t done anything,” the man answered very softly, and by gesturing — it was no more than a tiny wink of an eye — commanded the policemen to drive the grumbling customers away from the door. At once the two officers pushed people with the butts of their guns. My father looked on, horrified. I had never seen him so pale.

“Where to?” he asked helplessly. “I mean, should I remove my apron and take a jacket along?”

“Yes, that would be better; take your jacket along,” the man said.

“Blessed Mary,” my father whispered. He took his jacket from the hook, threw his apron in the corner, then stroked my hair. “Don’t be afraid, my boy. I’ll be right back,” he murmured and went out.

When one of the policemen handcuffed my father, my paralysis left me. I rushed outside and grabbed my father’s jacket, trying to pull him away as he was being thrust into the car. One of the policemen hit me, but I held on tight and cried for help. Then he struck me in the belly and I reeled backward. Two of the bakery workers caught me. One of them called out loud, “You filthy dogs. He is still just a child!”

The car sped away. The frightened neighbors hurried by, and the florist brought me a glass of water. “Drink this, my boy. It’s good for shock. Only God remains on high. All assholes plummet down!”

That night we could not sleep. My mother wept, and the neighbors came in shifts and sat up with her. Uncle Salim didn’t sleep either. At four in the morning, without saying a word, he accompanied me to the bakery. He took over the cash register, letting the employees advise him what to do. I made deliveries to my customers and shot back to the bakery like an arrow. I no longer felt the least bit tired. I didn’t want to leave my old friend alone any more than necessary; he is over seventy-five and nearsighted. But all day long he made jokes and reassured the customers that my father would soon return.

For four days they worked my father over. Twice they toyed with a pistol at his temples, threatening to shoot if he did not tell the truth. When my father declared over and over that he didn’t even know what they wanted from him, they pulled the trigger. The pistol was not loaded, but my father fainted. There’s something he didn’t do when they beat him up: He did not cry and did not beg for leniency. But he did see other prisoners break down.

“Say who you are,” a policeman demanded of an old farmer. The poor devil uttered his name, and the policeman beat him until he got the desired answer, “I am a dog! I am a traitor!” And when another one called out “For God’s sake,” his torturer laughed, took a second cudgel, and said, “Take this, for God’s sake.” My father wept like a child when he told us this. Uncle Salim kissed his eyes and held his hand.

Four days the scoundrels beat my father, until they discovered they had confused him with a lawyer who had worked against the government and who happened to have the same name.

Uncle Salim doesn’t buy this story. “They hit you to make our knees go weak. They know very well that your father and your mother have different names and that you are a baker,” he said and cursed the government.

I had never been so proud of my father as I was today. Since the beating, I love him as never before. It’s good I didn’t run away. My parents could not have survived that; the first thing my father would have done upon returning was ask for me.

I will never forgive the government. “Whoever forgives injustice, gets more injustice,” Uncle Salim said when I confided to him my hatred.

Father has asked us not to tell anyone about the torture, because the pigs threatened to torment him for months if he said a word about it to anyone. But I told Mahmud, and he thinks as Uncle Salim does. A wave of indiscriminate arrests is rolling over Damascus, bringing many people grief and humiliation.

I almost forgot, but before I finish for today, I must write something about this. When Uncle Salim turned over the receipts from the four days, my father wanted to pay him for his work, but the good man declined to accept even a single piaster. Then I begged my father, for my sake, to invite him to dinner with us every Sunday.

Uncle Salim accepted this invitation with his usual wit. “I would love to, because then I can tell my friend some of my foolish stories; he’ll forget about his food, and I’ll get two portions.”

June 26 — Nadia slipped me a letter. She wrote quite lovingly of how she had just heard about my father last night. Her father said that many suspects had been arrested and interrogated and that once again the government had averted a coup. She says she despises her father, a man who licks the ass of each successive government. Great!

June 29 — I wanted Habib to tell me about the wave of arrests that was going on, but I didn’t want to tell him about my father. Since he lives a little ways from us, he hadn’t witnessed it. I asked, and Habib only grew still; he did not answer. After a while he asked if I had read the Gibran. I shouted that Gibran was of no interest to me just now; I wanted to know about the arrests because a friend of mine had been detained for no reason. He kept silent and looked sorrowfully into my eyes.

“For no reason? Since when does this government need a reason to torture people?” He laughed like a madman, stood up, and banged his fist against the wall. I was scared, because the whole time he was staring at me with wide-open eyes. I would have liked to get out of there. But then he calmed down.