The Dark Side of Love (28 page)

Late that afternoon the first black limousine appeared in the distance. A peasant announced the news, and excitement spread. Then came the second, then a third. In the end there were sixty cars. They wound their way up the last few bends in the road like a black snake.

Teachers and pupils from the school stood at the entrance to the village, waving little flags. It was rather a sparse reception committee, but Mobate the village elder had found it difficult to muster even that number, since none of the Catholics wanted to wave to the head of state. Many of them stayed at home out of loyalty to the Mushtaks.

The column of cars churned up hot dust in the faces of the children and teachers, and went purposefully on across the eerily empty village square and so to the festive forecourt, which could be identified from afar by all the banderols and the colourful flags and banners. Up there all the guests were happy to think that the most powerful man in Syria was going to celebrate his birthday with them. Birthdays were never usually celebrated in Mala.

Mobate stood squarely in fourth place behind the abbess, the Shahin family, and the Orthodox notables of the village.

“Colonel, this is the happiest day of my life. Please consider me your loyal servant,” he said, reciting his laboriously learned welcome, and he shook the President's hand vigorously. The President laughed and looked at the next man in line, the stout sheikh of the little village mosque, who was so scared that he mumbled into his beard
a quotation from the Koran which even he didn't understand. The President smiled.

Apart from Butros's wife Susan, absent from the reception because she was to make her own entrance, almost all the important men and women of the village were there. Only Samia Shahin was absent, and of course all the adherents of the Mushtaks from the Catholic quarter.

Mariam, Butros's sister, had come on her own, as usual. Bulos, Basil, and Faris, however, had brought their wives with them at their sister Amira's invitation. They all wanted to take their chance of a personal meeting with the most powerful man in the state.

Laying on the charm, Colonel Shaklan cracked jokes with the small group of his hosts, telling them that he had often heard of Mala, but had never had time to visit that beautiful village before. And then, when Captain Tallu whispered something in his ear, he thanked Amira for her kind invitation and warm welcome. She took the hand held out to her, curtsied as she had been taught to do at school, although she had never had any occasion to drop a curtsey before, and said in a faltering voice, “We are all your soldiers, O hero of the Republic.”

The seats next to the head of state were carefully allotted. The abbess sat on his right, his friend Captain Tallu on his left. Two bodyguards in black uniforms with their machine guns levelled stood behind his tall chair. No one was to move about behind the President.

The three hundred birthday party guests sat crammed together at the huge circular table that had been set up, but a space about five metres wide was left empty opposite the President so that his view wouldn't be obstructed. There was also a gap in the huge circle opposite the kitchen. Only carefully pre-selected waiters were allowed to approach the President and serve him. Over to one side, but within view of the large table, about fifty soldiers of his special unit were eating without taking their machine guns off their shoulders.

A single person was coordinating the whole occasion: Amira, who had shown amazing talent for making plans and carrying them out in the last few days before the party. By now she knew all the security officers and soldiers who had been checking the region for three days to defuse any bombs that might have been planted. Amira got on well
with all of them except a certain Lieutenant Hamad, she didn't know his surname. He was really far too old for his low rank, he wore a baggy uniform, and he had an ugly tattooed nose. Lieutenant Hamad was a Bedouin, and Amira didn't like the Bedouin, whom she considered savages. But he was constantly at her heels, gripping her arm firmly and asking the same stupid questions. He was suspicious and hated Jews, Christians, and women. He was always asking: Where are you going, little lady? Is the cook a Jew? Did he maybe marry a Jewess? You don't look much like a patriot, do you? Is the abbess an Arab? Why does she speak with that accent? And hundreds of other such questions. He kept grabbing her bare upper arms, and his rough fingers bored into her flesh and left red marks behind.

“He's a prodigy of nature,” a young officer told her. “He can sniff out truffles and gunpowder three metres away. He used to make his living selling truffles, but then the President discovered him and found out about his wonderful nose.” Hamad had already saved the President from three assassination attempts, the officer added, so no one must touch a hair of his head.

The party began. A small group of girls in folk costume did a dance, a singer did his best to perform a hastily written verse celebrating the hero Shaklan's birthday, and Mobate insisted on making a short speech saying nothing at all. Then two of the Shahins' grooms, riding the finest horses, did equestrian tricks in the middle of the large circle surrounded by the tables. Tallu had tears of emotion in his eyes.

Finally the meal was brought in: prettily arranged platters of delicious appetizers, fragrant warm bread, drinks cooled with chunks of ice. A whole truckload of ice had come in from Damascus the day before.

Next the main course was served: lamb stuffed with rice, pistachios and raisins, roasted until it was nicely browned, along with excellent salads, and as if all that wasn't enough it was accompanied by mountains of kibbeh, tabbuleh, and stuffed vine leaves.

By agreement with the security officers, Amira had planned for Susan, Butros's wife, to appear about nine o'clock with her four children Jusuf, Bulos, Taufik and Barbara. Then the abbess would ask His Excellency to give her a hearing, whereupon Susan and the children were to kneel down in front of the table and ask the President to show
clemency to Butros, head of their family and the breadwinner. After that they'd see what happened next.

The President's bodyguards and close friends knew that he was a heavy drinker. He might make pious speeches in support of Islam, and he was very good friends with the Saudi royal house, he went on pilgrimage and he prayed in public, but at the same time he loved Irish whiskey. Amira had bought a whole bottle of the best whiskey for him in a Damascus delicatessen.

That evening, however, President Shaklan was trying the sixty-percent strength arrack distilled in Mala, cooled with ice, and he liked it so much that he partook freely. Later he had heavy red wine served, brought at the abbess's request from the convent's own wine cellar. It was a sweet, sticky wine with a seventeen percent alcohol content, and was usually drunk from tiny glasses as an aperitif.

Just before eight Colonel Shaklan cracked a small joke, which Tallu, who knew him well, saw as an indication that in two seconds' time the light in his master's brain would go out. In the darkness now falling over him, the President looked at the abbess and told her, “You're a lovely gazelle. Like Leni Riefenstahl.” Then he collapsed face down on the table. Tallu swiftly propped him up again.

The President came back to his senses for a moment or so and was alarmed. “What happened? Don't let anyone leave the room!” he shouted across the square. His words echoed back from the rocks in the silence that had followed the crash as he collapsed. “Don't let anyone leave the room!”

Then the President lapsed back into unconsciousness. He went to sleep lolling sideways in his chair. As if at a word of command, the soldiers of his special unit, who had been laughing and eating just now, took the safety catches off their rifles and moved two or three metres closer to the guests. The abbess sat there white and rigid as an unpainted plaster statue.

It was already getting dark, the last brightness in the sky would disappear any moment now. Large lights came on. The whole table was brightly illuminated, like a film set. But it was a silent film.

Just before nine the unsuspecting Susan came tripping up the steep path from the Shahin property to the square where the festivities were
taking place. She reminded her children once again not to forget that the way they behaved now could save their poor father. Jusuf, the eldest, was seventeen, Bulos was fifteen, Taufik fourteen, and Barbara twelve.

But when Susan and the children reached the square, they stopped in alarm at the sight of the soldiers holding at bay the birthday guests around the figure of the President, who was slumped at a strange angle in his chair. For an instant Susan thought he had been shot. The bodyguards in their black uniforms standing stiffly behind the chair reinforced that impression.

“The President's dead,” Jusuf whispered into his brother Bulos's ear.

“Keep your mouth shut!” his mother hissed quietly. Barbara giggled with excitement. And Taufik, fascinated, looked at the soldiers in their camouflage gear.

Amira saw her sister-in-law and hurried to meet her. The security officers wouldn't let anyone else move about freely, and she was trying to reassure everyone that the party would soon resume. Mountains of fruit, ices, and nuts were ready in the kitchen. Amira's long black hair lifted behind her in the cool breeze that made it a little easier to sit waiting in suspense.

“Go back with the children,” she told Susan breathlessly. “The President's drunk, he's sleeping it off. We'll have to wait. I'll send you word when he wakes up again.” There was a note of pleading in her voice, for she could see the bitter disappointment in her sister-in-law's face.

“All right, we'll go back,” said Susan, narrow-lipped. “Let's hope this wasn't for nothing. That fine horse, all that money!”

“But I want to wait here,” insisted Taufik, who would have liked to stay with the soldiers. Without a word his mother took him by the ear, and he shrieked, although it hadn't hurt him in the least. He was probably toying with the idea that the soldiers might come to his rescue, but no one took any notice of him, and when Jusuf kicked his backside he ran down the steep path, howling.

His grandmother Samia had heard the shouting in her room, and suddenly the rancour vanished from her heart. Smiling broadly, she said with malicious glee, “This is about to go wrong, like everything Amira touches!” And if anything she was understating it.

Out in the square, the President was still asleep. Soon Captain Tallu,
who seemed to know just how long his master's slumbers would last, followed his example. But the guests couldn't even talk, and when all the carafes and jugs of water were empty they were offered nothing more to drink. They just sat there in an oppressive silence, staring into space.

A room in the left wing of the convent, with a window looking out on the square, was commandeered as a temporary control centre. The security officers sat feverishly discussing every step to be taken. It was something new, even for them, to see their lord and master suddenly fall asleep in public. But they knew how bad-tempered he was when woken from a nap. Messengers ran down to the officers in the square to whisper instructions, soldiers hurried upstairs with news of the latest developments.

At about one in the morning, when it grew cold, the nuns found lightweight blankets in the convent so that two soldiers could cover the President up carefully, leaving only his head free.

Opposite the control centre, in the right wing of the convent building, the lieutenant with the tattooed nose sat alone in a room that he had requisitioned as his office. From there, he watched the comings and goings in the square. He too had to be asked for permission to bring the blankets, to allay any suspicions he might have.

Amira was running back and forth, and when the nocturnal cold increased she asked the officers whether at least the older guests, still sitting on their uncomfortable chairs, might not be allowed to go home. The officers sent a soldier to ask the control centre. He quickly came back with the answer no. Amira felt contempt in the peasants' weary eyes.

Her husband Louis had already dropped off to sleep. He was never awake after midnight, even at the club. Her brother Faris grinned at her. She went over to him. “What am I to do? Please help me,” she pleaded.

“He who leads a donkey to the top of a minaret must lead it down again,” he replied. She hated this proverb, much-cited by her mother: quintessential coldness of the heart wrapped up to look like wisdom. Her brothers Basil and Bulos were just sitting there too, but at least they showed some sympathy. The hours dragged slowly by.

Amira was standing in the middle of the circle of tables. Lost in thought, she looked up, and suddenly thought that the abbess had smiled at her and signed to her to come closer. Later she realized that in her weariness she had just imagined it, for even the mistress of the convent had fallen asleep with her eyes half-closed. As Amira took a step towards her she suddenly felt a strong hand pulling her back by her shoulder. A young soldier was smiling awkwardly at her, and showed her where she was to go. Looking up, she saw the lieutenant with the tattooed nose standing at his window. He beckoned her to come up to him.

Ever suspicious as he was, he probably feared she might assassinate the President, she thought, and she laughed on her way up the marble staircase leading to his room. Perhaps she ought to pretend a little, and then ask his advice. Many primitive, small-minded people feel obliged to show magnanimity if you flatter them enough.

She knocked. The door immediately opened, and a rough hand reached for her soft arm. He pulled her into the room so brutally that she lost her balance and stumbled. A blow to her neck sent her flying forward over an empty desk.

“Christian whore! Why are you always stirring up trouble? Why can't you let it alone?”