Farewell, Damascus Read online

  Why didn’t I tell anybody what I was planning to do? Well, whatever the reason was, I didn’t, and that’s that. Maybe it was because I knew nobody would be able to keep my secret. There’s a story about a king who used to tell his secrets to the river frogs for fear that if he confided in anyone else, his confidence would be followed by a dagger in his back. I guess I want to be like him.

  For the third time Zain made up her mind to ring the doorbell. But while she was still deliberating, the door was opened by the doctor’s wife, who worked as his assistant. Zain suspected that the woman had seen her through the peephole and knew how long she’d been standing there since, as she opened the door, she said irritably in broken Arabic mixed with French, “We’ve been waiting for you. Come in.” As if in hopes of winning her approval, Zain stepped inside with a cheery “Bonjour” instead of the more common sabah al-khayr.

  The doctor’s wife pointed to a chair near the waiting room entrance and, speaking to Zain in French, said, “Sit here. I don’t know what made you stand outside our door that way without ringing the doorbell. Or is it not working?” Zain sat down, but pretended not to have understood what she said. When making the appointment, she’d posed as the semi-illiterate daughter of a dancer at the Siryana Nightclub. She’d told the doctor she’d been raped by her mother’s lover and that although her mother didn’t know she was coming to see him, it was through her mother that she’d learned about him since she had a record of previous abortions. Will Baba be mad at me if he finds out what I’ve done? I’ve already caused him more than enough misery.

  As she sat down, wild stallions went galloping through her head. As if she were recalling the past in preparation to die— or maybe, in preparation to survive—her memory went on a free-for-all. She thought back on how, when she’d insisted on marrying somebody she was madly in love with, her father had been furious. He’d said she was just a teenager who didn’t know what she was doing. It looks like he was right.

  But actually, he’d been more sad than angry. He’d been sure the marriage would be a failure, but, starry-eyed lover that she was at the time, Zain hadn’t understood why. She’d honestly thought she knew better than her forty year old father, and better than everybody else, for that matter. When he reminded Zain that she was just seventeen years old, she informed him that she’d grown up and understood the world now. He hit himself in the face, and it pained her. Then her beloved groom’s upper crust family had intervened in support of the marriage, though all they really wanted was for him to settle down and stop giving them trouble.

  I really put my father in an awkward position. Socially speaking, he couldn’t refuse the family. At the same time, he couldn’t say he approved of the family but didn’t approve of the suitor because of what he knew about him. After all, there was bound to be a ready reply: Don’t worry. Once he’s married, he’ll straighten himself out! So my hard-working dad spent a fortune on my trousseau, including a top-of-the-line wardrobe. It was so top-of-the-line, in fact, that the cheapest items came from the ritzy Hayek’s Department Store, which had opened recently in the building that overlooks the Barada River downstairs from the Akhbar al Yawm newspaper. The trousseau also featured embroidered nightgowns from Rahibat Tailor Shop, and a Christian Dior wedding dress like the one Cinderella wore in the fairy tales I’d studied at the Lycée Francais on Baghdad Street.

  When the women from the groom’s family, who wore the highest heels on the social ladder, came to look at the trousseau in keeping with tradition, they oohed and aahed over my luxurious stash, since it was synonymous with my value to my father and, more importantly, the value of the groom’s family. After all, the groom’s father was a pillar of the famed Quartet Company.

  My dad was a little boy when he lost his father, the owner of a corner store behind the Umayyad Mosque near our house in Ziqaq Al Yasmin. He’d spent his youth in poverty because some of his uncles had commandeered his share of the corner store in their capacity as his guardians. My grandmother had to work as a seamstress in order to provide him with an education. He worked hard too, and ended up studying medicine in Paris. It pained my dad to have high-class folks look down on us. Or, to be more precise, it pained him for me to be looked down on by my in-laws. So he tried to outdo them, and he would have managed if it weren’t for the fact that the house they bought and furnished for us was in the upscale Hayy al-Ra’is, or President’s Quarter, so named because, as my fiancé’s mother informed me smugly, it was where then President Shukri Quwatli lived.

  This string of events passed before Zain’s eyes like a flash of lightning. But no, she wasn’t going to back down. She had to go through with the abortion no matter what physical or psychological misery might follow it. She was terrified, of course. She imagined herself running scared toward the operating table through a jungle filled with crocodiles, snakes and huge tarantulas. But as scared as she was, she knew she had to erase this man from her life. She didn’t want to give birth to a child who’d have to grow up without a mother the way she had. She knew only too well what that was like. She didn’t want him to be the father of her child. She never even wanted to see him again, and if she did see him, she hoped she wouldn’t recognize him.

  Where is that doctor, anyway? Why does he keep me waiting like this, at the mercy of my fears and thoughts?

  She knew she had to find her “second engine,” the one her dad had told her about years earlier.

  I was ten years old, and my dad and I had gone on a “farewell to summer” walk that took us from Bloudan, to Baqin, to Zabadani. As we hiked down dusty side paths on our way back, I started to give out. Even though I wanted to please my father, I collapsed beside a spring, exhausted and thirsty.

  “Get up now,” he said.

  “I can’t,” I whimpered.

  “Come on,” he urged. “Start up that second engine of yours. It’s something you do with will power. I know you’ve got it. For all we know, you might have a third one, a fourth one, or even more than that! Get up and run this time instead of just walking. Remember how strong you are.”

  I didn’t understand a word my dad had said apart from the fact that I had to get up. So I did. I learned how to get up again. But later, when I made up my mind to marry Waseem, I used my second engine against him.

  Zain had met Waseem for the first time three months before her seventeenth birthday at the Arnous Library, next to the clinic, and it had been love at first sight. Fueled by a million engines, her infatuation with him was fiery, fierce, and wild. Nothing could have stood in its way. On account of it she waged all-out war on her family. And her decision to leave him now was just as fierce and unstoppable as her determination to marry him had been before. When she realized she had to leave him, they’d been together a little less than a year. Some of that time had been spent in a dreamy courtship between Mount Qasioun and the romantic Candles Restaurant, and some of it in the throes of bitter matrimony. Once their week-long honeymoon was over, her days were spent rushing back and forth between the library, the university, and the house, where she’d head straight for the kitchen to cook, only to end up dozing off at the table from sheer exhaustion. I thought to myself: Is this daily and nightly frenzy what they call marriage? If it is, then I don’t want it, and I can’t take it. What I’d wanted was a home of my own where I wouldn’t be bothered by aunts, neighbor ladies, and the ideas they stuff into your head in Ziqaq Al Yasmin. But all I’d done by getting married was trade one form of oppression for another.

  These memories flashed through Zain’s head as she waited to be seen by the doctor. She didn’t give the necklace a second thought, but she did wonder momentarily: Do I really want to do this? It wasn’t long, though, before she realized she had no choice but to cut every last tie with that awful mistake. She had to put the past behind her and face whatever lay ahead. The last thing she needed was a child that would end up being a battleground between her and her husband.

  In search of a solution, she had started by inquiring ind
irectly about the different ways of getting an abortion. She’d claimed she was asking for a friend of hers who’d gotten pregnant by a coworker who already had two wives, and children, and had just wanted to have a fling with her. I can’t believe how easily I make up stories and scenarios about people who don’t even exist. By the time she’d heard all the gory details about the things some women go through to get abortions, she was quaking in her boots. She could hardly imagine subjecting herself to that kind of torture.

  She got the low-down on everything: from a method called the “mulukhiyah skewer” to hitting yourself in the belly with the big stone mortar people used to grind meat. Then finally, she caught wind of a rumor that a certain well-known doctor who taught in the Faculty of Medicine did abortions secretly in the clinic annexed to his house, and that his French wife, a nurse, was his assistant. The physician in question, Rahif Manahili, was somebody Zain had known since she was a little girl. The fact that he was a university professor inspired her confidence, as did the fact that given his social standing, he would be as afraid of a scandal as she was of bleeding to death!

  So she went to see him. She didn’t tell him, of course, that she was the daughter of his lawyer friend, Amjad Khayyal, for fear that he might refuse to deal with her. Instead, hoping he didn’t remember her, she told him her father had died and that her mother was a dancer at the Siryana nightclub, but that she had a diamond necklace she could pay him with. She claimed to have stolen the necklace from her mother, who was sure to accuse one of her lovers of taking it.

  His wife had made her an appointment, and now here she was. The doctor might have had some qualms at first. However, his wife had seized at the opportunity. And who could have blamed her? She was a foreigner fed up with life in Damascus, and probably wanted the money to improve her own lot.

  There was no going back on her decision to divorce. She could still hear her sister-in-law’s insults ringing in her ears. I’d be rushing back and forth trying to get everything done and she’d describe me contemptuously as “a fireball in the street, a limp rag in the kitchen!” Well, I’m not going to be in his kitchen anymore!

  I’m going to devote full time to my studies and my clandestine writing projects.

  The doctor came in and, in a reassuring voice, said, “You’ll need to get undressed and put on this white robe. Don’t worry. Everything will be just fine.”

  Taking off her diamond necklace, Zain offered it to him, saying, “Thank you. I’ll rest a bit, and then get ready.”

  To her surprise, he seemed hesitant to take the necklace. Does he recognize me as his friend’s daughter, the one he used to hold in his lap when she was a little girl? My mother’s early death made me grow up fast, or at least that’s what people have always told me. And he always seemed happy to be able to have “grown-up” conversations with me. So maybe he does know who I am. Just as the doctor seemed about to return the necklace to Zain, his wife walked in and snatched it. So, does he remember me, or not? If not, then why would he have hesitated the way he did? On the other hand, he wouldn’t have wanted me to know he recognized me, since if I knew, I’d be agitated during the operation. Whatever the case, his wife grabbed the necklace, and when he reached out to stop her, she scolded him in French, thinking Zain wouldn’t understand. She reminded him that they needed to save up some money before they moved to Paris so that they could buy a clinic on Foch Avenue. He said nothing.

  I got the same feeling the first time I came to see him—the feeling that he knows who I am. But how could he? Did my father invite him to the big wedding bash they put on for me at the Orient Palace Hotel? Even if he did, I doubt he realizes I was the bride that day. Granted, it seems odd that he would have been reluctant to accept a diamond necklace that was worth a small fortune. But what if, as rumor has it, he’s actually a good-hearted man?

  Zain got undressed, slipped into the white, shroud-like medical gown, and recited a prayer of repentance her grandmother had taught her when she was a little girl who’d never stopped to think about her own death. As she went through the motions of undressing and putting on the gown, a collage of images, voices, sounds and scenes went running through her head, juxtaposed on top of each other as though somebody were projecting several films at the same time onto the same screen. Before putting on the gown, she sniffed it to make sure it was clean, and nearly burst out laughing at herself. What an old-fashioned Damascene lady I am, wanting to make sure her burial shroud is clean! And am I really going to die? Forgive me, O my soul, for all the sins I’ve committed in the name of love! The doctor’s wife led her gently down a corridor and into a room lit by nothing but a lamp mounted over a narrow, elevated metal-frame bed with metal stirrups at the foot of it. She gestured for Zain to lie down and put her feet in the stirrups.

  Zain was gripped with terror. The place bristled with scalpels, scissors, probes and sterile gauze. Never in her life had she seen such a torture chamber. Her panic attack was interrupted by the doctor’s entrance. Taking her hand reassuringly, he asked his wife in French, “Did you remember to give her the tranquillizer?”

  She replied. “I was afraid that if I gave it to her earlier, she might not have been strong enough to walk. She’s been shaking like a leaf. I’ll give it to her now.”

  She then proceeded to plunge a needle into the arm of a puny, fragile girl who was scared to death of shots.

  Clearly wanting to put her at ease, the doctor explained, “This is a tranquillizer that will help the anesthesia work more effectively and keep you from feeling any pain. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you as though you were the daughter of a dear friend.”

  If she hadn’t been so panic-stricken, she would have paused to contemplate the meaning of that last phrase. But at that moment, all she could see was that he had laid her out naked on a Shakespearian stage to peals of thunder and flashes of lightning. Or was I just delirious from the shot? The doctor’s wife placed a mask over her face, and a disgusting odor filled her nostrils. But in the woman’s eyes Zain perceived an endearing tenderness. She heard a voice tell her in French to count down from ten to zero. She couldn’t go on pretending not to understand, so she started counting out loud. She heard her voice echoing, and then little by little it faded out. Or rather, Zain herself faded in and out, in and out. She hurt, but she couldn’t scream. She felt a hot skewer going through her. Then she went on fading out, fading out…

  I’m walking through a raging storm surrounded by howling wind, flashes of lightning, and peals of thunder. King Lear is walking beside me, and as he curses his fate and his foolish ways, I hear myself saying with him, “Thou wilt break my heart!” Regretful for what I’ve done, I tremble with fright. I’m the one who cast myself into this wasteland, and I want desperately to run away. Is it all over? Why do I hear myself talking? Why can’t I keep quiet? Why is my spirit as scattered as my thoughts? I hear the voice that I always hear when I write, the one that gives pep talks to the coward that lives inside me. A voice that sounds like mine—or is it the voice of my mother as she lay on her death bed?—says to me: Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. I listen intently, and the voice is all I can hear. Then, as my nose and mouth are covered again with the mask that gives off the nasty odor, I hear the doctor say, “More anesthesia. Give her more anesthesia,” and suddenly I decide: I’m not going to be afraid! I’m not skinny and fragile! I’m a boulder on Mount Qasioun that isn’t afraid of the rain, since it’s the rain that washes me clean. I’m not afraid of the lightning and thunder, either, since they come out of me. I’m a boulder next to Qubbat Al Sayyar. No probe could ever penetrate me, and no lightning bolt could set me on fire. I’m a living boulder.

  As Zain repeated these things to herself, she heard the doctor repeat, “Give her more anesthetic,” and her mother’s soothing, “Don’t be afraid” as she slipped away on her death bed. She was a little girl again, collapsed beside the spring along the path between Bloudan and Zabadani as her father admonished her, saying, “You’re a big g
irl now. You’re ten years old! Rev up that spare engine of yours!” She felt a searing pain in a sensitive part of her body. Was it the dreaded mulukhiyah skewer she’d heard horror stories about? What was going on? A voice echoed again, “Give her more anesthetic.”

  I alternately sink and float. I’m not going to scream or moan.

  I’m a boulder on Mount Qasioun. Nothing can crush me. The rain, the wind and the lightning bolts pass through me, but they can’t shake me. For ages I’ve been a boulder next to Qubbat Al Sayyar. I hear myself moaning. No, I’m a boulder on Mount Qasioun that feels no pain. I’m not hurting anymore. I’m fading… I see myself laughing with my dad. Then I doze off. After a while I wake up to the sound of a voice reciting a Shakespeare sonnet: “To die: to sleep. No more, and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, ‘tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d.” I realize it’s my own voice I’m hearing and that I’ve got to be quiet. Even so, either my own voice or somebody else’s repeats in English, “I am not dead. I am alive.” I try in vain to keep my mouth shut. That mask with the stinky smell is about to suffocate me. I’ll just give in to it and relax. I may be a boulder, but even boulders surrender to the storm. In fact, they embrace it, become one with it. I am the storm. The lightning and thunder are coming out of me, out of the boulder. I fade out. I wake up to the sound of my own moaning. I don’t know how long I’ve been in this state. I keep floating and sinking. An earthquake is convulsing the Qasiounian boulder, which I see as separate from me.

  Half in pain, half numb, half awake, half alive, Zain heard somebody’s voice. It was her own voice. She heard herself reciting something. But what was it? What had she been blabbering about?

  Whatever it was, she kept on, and couldn’t shut herself up.

  She opened her eyes. She saw a strange face. Oh my God.

  It’s the doctor. She saw another face. The nurse is gawking at me in horror as though she just saw a landmine right in her path. Apparently I’m not a boulder anymore, since I see now that I’ve been raving deliriously and need to be quiet. But no: I’m not going to shut my mouth anymore. I’m going to say I’m in pain, that I’m miserable, defeated, and disillusioned. So, is it over yet?