Rafik Schami - A Hand Full of Stars

January 12 — One day my old friend, so dear to me that I call him “Uncle” Salim, said to me: “What a pity I can’t write. I have experienced so much that was important. Today I no longer know what has kept me for years from sleeping at night.”

“But you know quite a lot, Uncle,” I comforted him.

“No, my friend,” he said. “Of the landscape, nothing will remain but the mountains, and later only their peaks will be visible, and all of it will sink into the mist. If I had learned to write, I would have the power to preserve the mountains, fields, and valleys, and every single thorn on the stem of a rose. What wonderful people the Chinese are!”

I was surprised Uncle Salim had suddenly landed among the Chinese. When I asked him about it, he explained: “By inventing paper, the Chinese made it possible for the art of reading and writing to be accessible to everyone. From the temples of scholars and the palaces of kings the Chinese brought writing to the streets. They are marvelous.”

And so, after tea at Uncle Salim’s, I decided to keep a journal. I forget a lot. I can’t even remember the name of the mother of my first girlfriend, Samira. My head is like a sieve.

I want to write every day!

January 21 — Today I helped my father in the bakery. Two of his employees weren’t there. So he had to knead and shape the dough himself, and then stand at the oven. I took care of the cash register. As a rule, the customers bring their own shopping bags. Whoever forgets gets his bread wrapped in newspaper.

Early in the morning the shop was peaceful. I read the newspaper, even though my father complained, saying I ought to take care of the bread. But I’m used to his griping, and besides, I know when it’s one of his serious requests and when it’s just one of his fits of grumbling. I went on reading, and then I saw the little article about journal writing.

“A journal is a rearview mirror.” I thought about this for quite a while. Somehow or other it went along with what Uncle Salim had said. (To my shame, I must admit that since I started to keep this journal, I have written no more than one page. I’ve only been talking about writing.) The article went on in an amusing way, saying that only a few people can keep an honest journal. Others lie, although the worst liar among them still has a mirror later — a distorting mirror, as at a fair, and one can laugh about it. I never lie without good cause. Mostly only because grown-ups don’t understand me.

I am fourteen years old, and I swear I want to keep on writing. I have a hiding place for the journal where no one will find it. That’s why I can write from my soul.

January 25 — I want to jot down what our quarter in Damascus looks like. My parents have moved three times since I was born, and I no longer know exactly how the previous houses looked. The street we live on now is rather narrow. It is in the eastern part of the city. Near my house is St. Paul’s Chapel. Many tourists visit the place from which the apostle Paul took off and went to Europe.

Our houses are built of clay. Several families live in each one, and every building has an interior courtyard, which belongs to all the families; here they come together to talk and laugh and sometimes to quarrel. Mainly the adults keep to the courtyard. The street belongs to the children, the beggars, and to itinerant peddlers. Every house has two stories; the roofs are flat and almost all the same height, so you can walk from one roof to another without any trouble.

I still remember the morning we were sitting on our terrace, eating breakfast, when suddenly a young man peered down from the roof. He wanted to know where the door to the house was. My mother showed him. He leaped onto our terrace and from there ran to the stairs and out into the alley.

My mother was just bringing the teapot from the kitchen when two policemen suddenly appeared.

“Have you seen a young Palestinian?” one of them asked.

“A Palestinian? No! Have you no shame, forcing your way into our house! There are women and children here!” my mother cried out.

The policeman apologized, and both of them turned to go. My mother poured tea and went on eating her breakfast as if nothing had happened. Her behavior astonished me.

In the afternoon I had to ask her, “Why did you lie?”

“The young man looked very worried. He has a mother, and she wouldn’t report you if you were running away from the police!”

“And how do you know that? Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I’m a mother.” She smiled and kissed me on the forehead.

February 10 — I have three friends: Uncle Salim, who is seventy-five years old; Mahmud, who is fifteen; and Josef, who is fourteen, exactly my age.

For most of his life Uncle Salim drove a coach, so he tells great stories about robbers, kings, and fairies. He has seen a lot and has survived several famous robbers and kings and, yes, perhaps fairies as well. Uncle Salim, Mahmud, and I all live in the same house. Josef’s house is just opposite ours.

Mahmud and Josef have never been outside Syria. I have. I spent two years in a monastery in Lebanon. My father sent me there to make a priest out of me. Every poor family tries to turn a son into a clergyman, because a priest commands respect and gives the family a good reputation. After two years I gave it up.

The pupils came from various Arab countries, but we were forced to speak French. So each newcomer had to take a crash course in that language, and then, after two months, he was no longer permitted to speak a single word of Arabic. If he did, he was given a small, round piece of wood, with the letter S (which stood for signal) on it. He had to hide it on his person and secretly wait for some new victim to foist it off on. If he betrayed himself in any way, the other pupils would know he had the signal and avoid him like a skunk. No, he had to accept it quietly and slink around until someone or other unsuspectingly spoke Arabic in his presence. In this way, we were all educated as little spies. Whoever was last to possess the wooden disk had to eat his supper kneeling.

Having the signal was an odd feeling I will never forget. It seemed very warm in your pocket and gave you power over the others. If you got it early enough in the day, you had a lot of leeway. I showed mercy if my would-be victim was someone I liked. But I’d press it gleefully into the hand of an ass-kisser. After a while, secret gangs formed. I belonged to one made up of five students. We vowed to help one another. You couldn’t slip the wooden disk to anyone in the gang, so if one of us had it, the other four basked in security and made full use of the opportunity to speak Arabic.

One of the priests got wind of our gang. He railed against using the signal to turn the pupils against one another. But he was laughed off the teaching staff, and the war of the gangs went on.

Some gangs evolved into commandos; members even took the signal at their own peril when it fell into the hands of a less brave member of their gang. Then they would go searching for a victim. Supper was around six, and it was considered a heroic act to take the thing into your possession with only an hour left. One of these kamikazes, an Egyptian, pressed it into the hand of a teacher when the teacher said in Arabic, at a quarter to six, that he was dying of hunger. The other teachers gazed into his palm, stunned. Then they announced the rule against speaking Arabic didn’t apply to them; teachers were not part of the game. And so on this evening the little Egyptian had to eat kneeling. This was the first time the pupils showed respect to anyone who had to do so. We pressed his shoulder as we passed by.