Rafik Schami - Damascus Nights

"I just bought it today. Ours was getting much too old." No sooner had Salim spoken these words than Afifa and two other women strode into the mosque.

"Give it to me, I'll make some coffee for the guests!" Zaida called out, but Salim roared, "No, not for Afifa!" Zaida tore the platter from his hand.

Salim woke up in fright. He clutched all around him. His platter had disappeared. He looked over to the people gathered around the learned man. They were still debating quietly, although a little more heatedly. Aha! Fighting over the booty! They sit there peacefully as can be, waiting until your eyes begin to droop, and then they make their move. A learned man and his students, my foot! More likely Ali Baba sitting with his forty thieves.

Salim jumped up and hurried out. How long had he been asleep? Where was his tray now? When he entered the yard of the mosque, he saw a circle of young people sitting in a distant corner. Two attendants were sweeping the perfectly spotless aisle with large palm leaves. Salim trotted behind them. But the young people had no tray. Salim tried asking them with his hands, but they only giggled in reply.

In a rage, Salim left the mosque and hurried home. His head was throbbing with self-reproach, as well as anger at the entire thieving world — of all the tea trays around, they had to choose his. He had never been the most pious man in Damascus, but in his ire he considered it absolutely shameless to steal in the house of God. His thoughts grew bleaker and bleaker and began to smell strongly of burning tar, although he was just crossing the spice market.

"Uncle, hey, Uncle!" he suddenly heard someone calling. He turned around. A boy was waving to him from the vicinity of the" tiny cafe. He was holding up the platter, and Salim stared at him, practically in shock.

"Uncle, you disappeared so suddenly. This belongs to you, doesn't it?" asked the boy, who came running and gasping for air.

Salim nodded and held the boy, whose face was scarred with pockmarks, firmly by the hand until he dug a lira out of his bag. He handed him the coin.

"A whole lira! My heavens!" the boy cried and started dancing for joy right then and there. As Salim well knew, a cafe errand boy had to work a whole week to earn one lira. The coachman was ashamed he had suspected the learned elder. But Salim could never stay ashamed for very long. Soon enough he was feeling proud of the tea he would serve that evening on his brand-new tea tray. Pride was the best shower he could take to wash away his feelings of guilt.

Salim hurried home, leaving the old bazaar behind

him, and when he opened the door to his room late

in the afternoon, the hustle and bustle of the old

quarter had faded, and all its sights and sounds

were woven into a distant whisper,

as full of life and color and

every bit as rugged as an

Oriental rug.

People didn't know much about Junis, even though he had run his coffeehouse near the Bab Tuma for over thirty years. Everyone raved about his Yemenite coffee, his Lebanese arak, his Egyptian beans, and his pipe tobacco from Latakia, but hardly anyone knew where Junis himself had come from.

People did know that in the mid-thirties he bought a dilapidated old dive and expanded it into a coffeehouse — and that he spared no expense in making it the most beautiful establishment in the Christian quarter. But he was jinxed. No sooner had he opened its doors than the magnificent coffeehouse burned down. Debts consumed ten years of his life before he again reached the point where he had been when the fire struck.

Junis was often morose, and almost always in a bad mood. People said he used to be as happy as a clown, but if anyone asked him where his good mood had gone, he would answer drily: "It burned away."

In addition to his bad mood, his excellent waterpipe, and his Yemenite mocha, he was known throughout the quarter for his boiled beans. Stingy as he was with everything else, Junis was remarkably generous when it came to these beans. A few piasters would buy a heaping plateful of this wonderfully filling, and terribly indigestible, dish. If the first serving wasn't enough, all you had to do was walk up to the counter, hold out your empty plate, and whisper, "Adjustment." Without batting an eyelash, the cook would dispense a second, even a third portion free of charge — only an elephant could put away a fourth "adjustment." In no other restaurant in Damascus — or probably in all the world — did the word adjustment have such a meaning.

The kitchen stopped serving in the early afternoon; the late afternoon was reserved for waterpipes and tea; and after the sun set, it was time for the hakawatis. Night after night these storytellers climbed on a high stool and entertained the guests with their gripping tales of love and adventure. The listeners would talk among themselves and interrupt the stories with their comments and quarrels; at times they would even demand that the hakawati repeat a passage they had particularly enjoyed. The hakawatis, for their part, had to compete with the noise. Interestingly, however, the more the suspense grew, the more quietly the hakawati would tell the story. The listeners would then admonish each other to be silent, so that they could follow the plot. When the tale reached its most dramatic moment — for instance, when the hero had climbed up the trellis to his beloved and was hanging from her balcony by his fingertips — a watchman or father would inevitably appear on the scene. Here the hakawati would interrupt his tale and promise to continue the next evening. The storyteller did this so that the guests would come back to Junis' and not go to one of his competitors. Sometimes the listeners got so excited, they would descend on the hakawati, offer him a waterpipe or some tea, and discreetly ask him to give away the rest of the story. But no hakawati dared surrender the suspense; Junis had strictly forbidden them to do so. "Come back tomorrow and you'll find out what happens," was always their answer.

Damascenes tell many anecdotes about quarrels breaking out among the listeners, who often took sides with the characters in a tale. Some would stand by the bride's family; others insisted that the groom was in the right. There are other stories about listeners who were so curious or in such a state of suspense they couldn't sleep. In the middle of the night they would go to the hakawati's house and bribe him to let the hero into his beloved's chamber, or to arrange for the hero's escape from prison. Supposedly only a few hakawatis ever accepted such offers, and then never without first making the listeners swear they would come to the coffeehouse the next day, for by no means could Junis learn of their transaction.

When Junis arrived, Salim had just finished preparing the tea and the waterpipe. The old coachman not only seemed happy, he looked as if he had grown younger by a couple of decades.

"Were you in the steam bath?" asked Faris.

"Did you have a shave?" inquired Isam.

Salim shook his head. With two fingers of his right hand and the outstretched palm of his left, he showed that he had been out for a walk.

"What a beautiful tea tray, how much did it cost you?" the emigrant asked, admiring the new platter.

"More than twenty liras, that's for certain. Such fine handiwork," stated the minister.

"I could get that exact same tray for fifteen," said Isam, the most experienced haggler among them.

Salim nodded and was pleased with his bargain, which wasn't a true bargain unless everyone else thought he had paid more than he really had.

"So today it's your turn," the minister said to Junis. "But that shouldn't pose a problem for you. You must have heard and seen a thousand stories in your cafe."