Rafik Schami - Damascus Nights

"Blessed be the soul of your mother!" reminded Faris.

"Oh, right, that's another story. Well, the president was drinking away when he suddenly remembered Ahmad. He sent for him and spoke to him angrily: 'These guests are all miserly locusts. They're picking the tables clean and the only thing they're offering is their applause! It's a disgrace! And in front of foreign ambassadors! Use your tongue, bigmouth, and see to it that you pull every last piaster out of their pockets, otherwise I'm going to banish you to the desert.'

"Ahmad just smiled. He climbed onstage and addressed the audience: 'Esteemed ladies and gentlemen. Because the contributions are below expectations, our Most Beloved has decided to donate what every man holds most dear: a hair from his moustache.'

"The president stood up and applauded this stroke of genius. A woman in a white dress carrying a small red pillow approached His Excellency. He bent down, and she plucked a hair from his moustache. When the guests saw the president twitch, they all clapped, without realizing they had fallen into a trap.

" 'And now His Excellency would like to know exactly how much the esteemed guests love him. He is putting up for auction one hair of his moustache, and he is anxious to discover how much the noble hair will bring. Whoever wishes to participate in the bidding must pay one gold lira — just raise your hand. And now, let the bidding begin! With a little luck, the most noble hair in the world will belong to you!'

"The guests grew silent. They looked at one another at a loss as to what to do, but then someone raised his hand and offered a hundred gold liras. No luck — his neighbor was already offering a hundred fifty. The first man paid his gold lira and leaned back in his chair, but the bidding didn't stop at a hundred fifty. Next thing you know, people were calling out one thousand, three thousand, six thousand. A team of girls and boys collected the gold liras from those present, and the auction continued. Soon you could hear bids of twenty thousand, even a hundred thousand. The shouting grew louder and louder and angrier and angrier, since everyone now wanted to prove that he loved the president most. Not until three hours later did Ahmad call out: 'Three hundred thousand going once, going twice — sold for three hundred thousand liras! Sir, my congratulations! The noble hair belongs to you. What a prize!' Everyone strained his neck to see who Ahmad was congratulating. It was an ironmonger from Damascus. He went up and accepted the small pillow a little uncertainly. All the guests applauded, although a few felt sincerely sorry for the man.

"No sooner had everyone recovered from all that than Ahmad again walked onto the stage and shouted into the hall: 'His Excellency is pleased with his guests, so he has decided to liven up the evening with a few bets. His Excellency enjoys a little wager now and then. His Excellency would like to bet that no one present will box him on the ear. Whoever dares try will receive one hundred gold liras. Everyone else will again lose one gold lira!' Of course, most of the guests there would have gladly boxed the president three hundred times for that low-down idea, but no one dared try. So they paid one lira apiece, but in their hearts they cursed the soul of the president's father for the way he had reared his son.

" 'Shall we now bet,' Ahmad called out to his president's applause, 'that I can devise a riddle that none of you can solve? His Excellency will permit me to offer half a million gold liras from the National Bank to anyone who can solve the riddle.'

" 'Haifa million?'—'What kind of riddle?'—'Does the National Bank even have that much money?'

"The guests saw the president laugh and nod his head.

" 'Esteemed ladies and gentlemen: I will satisfy your curiosity, but bear in mind, if no one can solve the riddle, then everyone must donate ten gold liras to the Orphans' Fund.'

" 'Go ahead and give us the damned riddle,' someone called out from one of the back rows. The guests laughed and admired the man's courage.

" 'What person,' Ahmad asked, 'can bite his own eye?' Now it was the president's turn to laugh, which he did, slapping his thigh with gusto.

" 'Don't feel bad!' Ahmad consoled the angry public. 'Although none of you can win this bet, you will definitely win the love of the orphans.'

" 'That's not true. I can do it!' a voice cried out. The hall fell deadly silent. The same ironmonger as before stood up.

" 'My good man, no one on earth can do that!' Ahmad laughed out loud.

" 'I can. I can bite both my right eye and my left!' the man shouted back.

" 'Well, then, please come up here and show us how you can bite your own eyes,' Ahmad said to the man with pity in his voice.

"The man climbed onstage and turned to face the guests. 'Here is my right eye!' he said, and he pulled the eye out of its socket and held it up with two fingers. The whole audience gasped, and one or two ladies fainted. Then the man guided the eye into his mouth.

" 'But that's not your real eye — it's made of glass,' Ahmad said with a note of triumph. Most of the guests were still confused, but a couple of people laughed.

"The ironmonger remained undaunted. 'Very well,' he said, 'I can also bite my left eye, and that one is real.' He opened his mouth and took out his false teeth. He snapped them in the air once or twice and then used them to bite his left eye. The guests all whooped with joy — and Ahmad turned pale as a sheet. Because of the foreign ambassadors present, the president had no choice but to pay. And for that he had Ahmad jailed for life.

"I'm sure you remember the time when that president miraculously survived his first assassination attempt and he declared a general amnesty. Well, he even let child murderers out of prison, but not Ahmad.

"He was a good man, this Ahmad, and he was as sharp as they come. Once the chief warden showed up late in the night and ordered us to clean the cell. He kept yelling at us to make the floor shine or else he'd make us lick it spic and span. I asked him for the reason.

" 'The president,' said the warden, 'is coming here tomorrow at ten o'clock in the morning.'

"Ahmad looked at the warden in amazement. 'What's that?' he asked. 'You mean you finally caught the scoundrel?'

"Well, that's it, that's my story. I hope you found it somewhat entertaining."

"My dear," the minister yawned, "that was a thousand and one stories." Then he grinned.

"But be happy," Musa teased Isam, "because if you really were Scheherazade, you would have used up every last one of your stories the first night."

Salim just smiled, stood up, walked over to Isam, and kissed his friend on his moustache.

Isam laughed. He took the two remaining cards and laid them down before the locksmith and the minister. "I'm anxious to know which of you two gentlemen will be our Scheherazade tomorrow night." He gestured for them each to choose a card.

"Well, Excellency, it looks like your

turn tomorrow," Ali said

happily when the

minister drew

the ace.

Faris, the former minister, came from an old landed Damascus family. His father had received the honorary title Pasha from the sultan in Istanbul as a reward for his loyalty to the Ottoman Empire — which invented strange titles by the dozen. But this pasha was a sly old fox. He sensed that the days of the Ottoman Empire were numbered, and so he began to put out feelers toward France. The French consul was a more and more frequent guest, and eventually the pasha became the first confidant of the French representatives who soon replaced the Ottoman regime in Syria. But the seasoned pasha knew that the French, too, would not stay in Syria forever. While continuing to receive the French governor, he secretly funded several nationalist groups, whose clamors for independence were growing louder and louder.