Rafik Schami - A Hand Full of Stars

How often I wish Uncle Salim never should die.

September 20 — Today I had a good idea. I wanted the Black Hand to write a threatening letter to my father so he would not take me out of school. Mahmud wrote a few lines:

Dear Sir, Not that we have anything against you, but you simply must not take your clever son out of school It would be expressly against the will of our gang. In spite of the love we have for you, we must warn you against it!

I thought the message sounded stupid. We might as well have been inviting my old man to a party! I suggested we use stronger language and really make a threat, but Mahmud refused. He respects my father more than his own.

Josef sneered at the word clever. I told him straight out that he’s just plain jealous that I’m first in the class. We argued quite a bit.

“This gang shits,” he cried, “if all it aims to do is solve its members’ family problems.” He walked out.

I’ve had enough. A gang that doesn’t even want to protect its own members! Mahmud suggested we secede and let Josef go on by himself.

Funny, we are the best of friends, but our gang has not yet survived one autumn. How do adults do it?

September 21 — “The mosques are built of marble, while our shacks crumble and hurl their clay on our heads. The sun plays in the courtyards of the mosques, and people suffocate in damp, dark holes.” Enraged, Mahmud told me about his uncle who lives with his entire family in one room. The room has only one window, which once looked onto open space, affording the family some light and air. Now a rich sheik from Saudi Arabia has erected a mosque in the space. The high walls of the new building are so close to the houses that they block the view from all the windows. The protests of the community do no good, for the sheik has powerful friends.

For a year Mahmud’s uncle has not gone into the mosque.

September 22 — The street merchants always extol their wares in a splendid way, which is sometimes also comical. The masters among them are the sellers of fruits and vegetables.

“A hiccup after every bite! Quinces!”

“In you nests the dew, Figs!”

“My tomatoes painted their cheeks and went for a stroll!”

“The bees will go pale with envy! Honey melons!”

Only the tarragon, which we get cheaply and fresh and have on our table at lunch every day, comes off badly.

“Tarragon, you traitor!”

Why traitor? I asked my mother, and she said that tarragon grows not only where you plant it but also creeps under the earth and turns up in your neighbors’ field.

All the merchants exaggerate. Not only do they seem to care for their fruits conscientiously; they even seem to know them personally. Some of them grossly overstate all the things they have stuck in the ground on behalf of their mangy heads of lettuce.

The man who sells fish is the true master of embellishment. Over and over again he talks about a huge fish he once caught in a distant sea. It irritates Uncle Salim.

“The fish weighed 120 kilos and 150 grams!” the fish seller reported. It’s not the 120 kilos but the ridiculous 150 grams that bother my old friend!

“This I don’t believe!” Uncle Salim says. “It was at most 120 kilos and 10 grams on the scale!”

The two strange old birds argued over it a long time.

September 25 — Today we gave it to an old tourist. He came strolling down our street with his wife and wanted to photograph us — all ten of us kids. We grinned into the camera. He took several shots, while fat Georg ran around wildly with Hassan. The stupid fool pulled out a dollar bill and told Georg that the money would be his if he knocked Hassan to the ground. Georg doesn’t understand a word of English, but upon seeing the green bill immediately figured out what the guy wanted. For a piaster, Georg would even throw his mother to the ground! He was on the verge of running after slightly built Hassan again, but Josef was quicker. He grabbed Georg around the neck and cried out to the tourist in English, “No! I’ll give two dollars to watch your wife box your ears. Then I’ll take the picture!”

Josef lunged for the man’s camera. The man’s wife laughed heartily. In Arabic I explained to Georg why the man looked so appalled. The idiot was so pleased that he rammed into the man’s side and ran off. The man staggered around and had a hard time keeping our dirty hands away from his camera and out of his trouser pockets. Cursing, he ran down the street.

September 26 — Today Georg made me lose my salary (all four pounds). That swine! Gone, my money and my dream of going to the movies.

I was standing outside his door, raving about the film I wanted to see.

“Do you want to double your money?” he suddenly asked me.

“What kind of question is that!” I replied. “Of course!” Idiot that I am.

“You know Toni, the gynecologist’s son. He likes to bet and has a lot of money. He’s got bundles of bills in his pocket, so what difference does the loss of a pound make to him? Eh? None whatsoever. A stupid boy. He says he can guess all the cards without touching them. Before your very eyes he buys a new deck of cards. You shuffle them; then he looks at the pile and tells you what the top ten cards are. He claims things always go his way.”

“And what happens when they don’t?”

“If he gets one wrong, you win. I don’t know whether he’s telling tales or whether what the others say is true,” the lousy creep whispered, knowing exactly how to suck me in.

“What do the others say?”

“That his father gives him X-ray pills so his eyes can even see through walls.”

“Rubbish! But tell me, why don’t you double your own money?”

“All I have is a few piasters, and Toni won’t take a bet under one pound,” he said.

“Good, let’s go!” I had become curious about this dunce.

“But what’s in it for me? After all, I’m the one who told you about it. Three piasters for every pound you win?”

“One piaster. No more. It’s my money that’s at risk.”

Georg accepted, and we walked to Olive Lane. There the fat hippo Toni stood at the edge of a little playground. But he didn’t want to play. He said he’d just lost three times and now he didn’t feel like it.

Georg implored him, and Toni finally agreed under one condition, that I pay for the next deck of cards. To myself I thought, what difference does buying the cards make if I win? So I went to the shop around the corner and bought a deck of cards for one pound.

I really must be uniquely stupid. I could kick myself. No ram in the world is so dumb as to also bring the butcher a knife.

I opened the pack and shuffled the cards for a long time; then I laid the neat, tidy stack on one of the stairs. I gave Georg one pound to hold, and Toni drew a thick wad of bills out of his pocket and also handed Georg a bill.

“Withdrawing from the bet counts as a loss,” Toni said, as though he were an old hand. Then he gazed at the pile and whispered, “Queen.”

I turned the card over, and in fact it was a queen.

Again the hippo concentrated, and I thought, now Lady Luck will deal him a blow for his arrogance. But my fingers went stiff when I turned over a jack, just as Toni had predicted. Ten times he guessed right, and I lost the pound.

A donkey avoids the pit it has once fallen into, but I? I stumbled even more willfully into the next catastrophe. I raised the stakes to two pounds. Toni invited me to buy new cards, but since he hadn’t laid a finger on the old ones, I didn’t want to. I made Georg stand farther away from me. Some people bring bad luck. I wanted to know if that’s what the problem was. I shuffled the cards thoroughly; then I laid them on the step. Again Toni guessed correctly ten times.