The Harafish

“Lend me a bit more,” persisted Darwish, “and I’ll pay it back when things are easier.”

  Ashur gave him as much as he wanted, even though he was extremely hard-up. Darwish went off toward the archway without a word while a sweet voice sounded from the monastery, singing:

  Ze geryeh mardome chesh nesheste dar khunast.

  14.

  As Ashur drove along in his cart one day he noticed a group of men on some waste ground near the top of the alley. When he drew closer he saw they were building workers congregating around piles of sheet metal, wood planks, and palm branches. Among them was Darwish Zaydan. His heart sank: the man must be building himself a house there. As he passed, Darwish shouted to him, “I’m doing what I can to help the neighborhood.”

  “A man needs a roof over his head,” Ashur responded dryly.

  Darwish laughed loudly. “This is going to be a shelter for the homeless!”

  15.

  “The story’s out. The man’s building a booze joint,” said Hasballah to his father.

  “A bar?” demanded Ashur in shocked tones.

  “That’s what everyone says,” agreed Rizqallah.

  “Lord!” exclaimed Ashur. “My cash helped build it!”

  “Deeds are judged by the intentions behind them,” quoted Hibatallah.

  “What do the authorities have to say?”

  “He must have got a license, I suppose.”

  Ashur remarked sadly, “We haven’t managed to build a drinking fountain or a mosque for the alley yet. So how can they put up a bar?”

  But the bar was well and truly built, and baptized by Qanswa and his men.

  “He’s got protection too,” observed Ashur dejectedly.

  16.

  There was an uproar in the street outside the basement window. Why were they always fighting round here? Ashur sipped his coffee on the only sofa in the room. The lamp was not yet lit. A wintry blast rattled the window. Zaynab looked up from her ironing and said anxiously, “That’s Rizqallah’s voice!”

  “Do you think it’s the boys fighting?”

  Zaynab rushed outside.

  “You’re crazy! Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?” he heard her shouting.

  Ashur jumped to his feet. In a moment he was standing between his sons. They were quiet but the anger remained in their faces.

  “Are you pleased with yourselves?” he demanded.

  Glancing down, he saw a draught board and draughts scattered on the ground.

  “Were you playing for money?” he inquired sharply.

  No one answered. “When will you grow up?” he roared, ablaze with anger.

  He drew Hasballah roughly to him. “You’re the oldest, aren’t you?”

  From Hasballah’s mouth came an alien smell, filling his nostrils, troubling him. He pulled the others to him, smelling their breaths. Ah! He wished the earth would perish with all its creatures.

  “You’re drunk! Bastards!”

  He took hold of them by the ears, squeezing hard, his face twitching with rage. A group of lads formed, watching with interest.

  “Let’s go indoors,” implored Hasballah.

  “You’re embarrassed before these people and not before God?” roared his father in his hoarse voice.

  Zaynab tugged at his arms.

  “Don’t make a spectacle of us in front of this rabble.”

  He let himself be led inside, muttering, “My sons are the rabble.”

  “They’re not children,” she whispered fiercely.

  “They’re no good. Just like their mother.”

  “The bar’s not short of customers!”

  He sank down on the sofa. “It’s no use expecting any help from you.”

  She lit the lamp and put it in the window.

  “I work harder than you,” she said mildly. “If it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t have the cart, and there’d be no one to light the stove for you.”

  “All you’ve got is a tongue like a lash,” he said irritably.

  “The boys have worn themselves out for you,” she shouted back angrily.

  “They’ve got to be taught a lesson.”

  “They’re not children. They’ll leave.”

  She knew the quarrel would soon die down; hurtful words and loving whispers were two sides of the same coin.

  Ashur wondered anxiously what could be done about his children. None of them had done well at Quran school. He and Zaynab had been too taken up with work to give them the attention they needed. Unlike him, they had had no Sheikh Afra to watch over them. They had absorbed the violence and superstitions of life in the alley and its virtues had passed them by. They hadn’t even inherited his physical strength. They were not close to him or Zaynab. Whatever affection they felt was superficial and capricious. In their hearts they had turned against them long ago, although they had said nothing. They possessed no special talents and would remain apprentices all their lives. And here they were rushing to drink in a bar at the first opportunity and not knowing when to stop.

  Sadly he said, “They’ll only bring us trouble and grief.”

  “They’re men,” she replied resignedly.

  17.

  One day as he drove by the bar he heard Darwish’s voice calling out a greeting. This time he did not ignore him, despite the loathing he felt for him. He brought the donkey to a halt and jumped down and stood in front of Darwish.

  “This work is not fitting to your brother’s memory,” he said sternly.

  Darwish smiled sarcastically. “Isn’t it better than mugging people?” he said.

  “Just as bad.”

  “Sorry, but I like risky ventures.”

  “There’s more than enough evil in this alley.”

  “Drink makes bad men worse but it makes good men better. Come in and see for yourself.”

  “It’s a curse!”

  He noticed a female figure moving swiftly around in the bar. “Are there women in there too?” he asked in surprise.

  “It could have been Fulla.”

  He had not seen the woman clearly enough to identify her. He asked again, “Do you have women customers as well?”

  “Of course not. She’s an orphan I’ve adopted. You can’t imagine I’m capable of doing good, can you? But isn’t adopting an abandoned child better than building a mosque?” he added significantly.

  He accepted the taunt without protest. “Why bring her to the bar?”

  “So that she can earn her keep by doing a bit of hard work!”

  “What’s the use?” murmured Ashur dispiritedly.

  He jumped up into the driver’s seat with a shout to the donkey, and the animal was off with a musical clip-clopping of its shoes on the cobbles.

  18.

  Now Ashur could not see beyond the dust of daytime and the dark of night. Every time he came to a bend in the road, he expected a hitch. His eyes would flicker. He would mumble under his breath, “God, let it be good.”

  Was the structure of life irreparably damaged?

  He was about to get into bed just after midnight when he heard a cry outside the window. “Ashur! Ashur!”

  He rushed to open it, muttering, “The children!”

  A shadowy figure peered through the window bars.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Come and get your sons. They’re in the bar fighting over the girl Fulla!”

  Zaynab blocked his path. “Let me go. You stay here,” she begged.

  He pushed her out of his way, stuck his feet into his slippers, and was off like a tornado.

  19.

  His frame filled the doorway. The eyes of drunken men reclining around the walls turned to focus on him. Darwish bounded toward him. “Your sons are going to wreck the place,” he shouted.

  He saw Hibatallah sprawled helplessly on the floor. Hasballah and Rizqallah were locked in a vicious struggle, while the other customers looked on indifferently.

  “Stop!” he roared in a dreadful voice.

  The two youths
separated, looking toward the source of the voice in terror. With the flat of his hand he struck one, then the other, and they crashed down onto the bare earth floor. He stood looking defiantly around at his audience. Nobody said a word. He threw a withering glance at Darwish. “To hell with you and this foul hole of yours!” he shouted.

  Fulla suddenly materialized from nowhere. “I’m innocent,” she muttered.

  “She was just doing her job. But your sons were after her,” said Darwish.

  “Shut up, you pimp!” shouted Ashur.

  “God forgive you,” said Darwish, backing away.

  “I could bring this place down around your ears.”

  Fulla took a step forward and stood directly in front of him. “I’m innocent,” she persisted.

  “Get out of my way!” he said roughly, hardly able to keep his eyes off her.

  He sent his sons staggering through the door one after the other.

  “Don’t you believe I’m innocent?” Fulla asked again.

  Again he had to tear his eyes away from her. “You’re small fry.” Then he turned on his heel to go, without looking at her again.

  In the darkness outside he breathed deeply. He felt that he’d escaped the clutches of evil. The darkness was thick and unseeing. He squinted, trying to make out his sons’ shapes but they had vanished.

  “Hasballah!” he shouted.

  Nothing but silence and darkness. A glimmer of light from the café as he passed, and then nothing. In his heart he knew they would not be back. They would flee their birthplace and his authority. In future they would seem like strangers. Only the sons of eminent families stayed close to their roots in this alley.

  As he made his way in the darkness, he felt that he was bidding farewell to security and peace of mind. He was caught up in a whirlpool of troubled emotions, and fear overcame him, as hard to resist as deep sleep. He told himself the girl must have overwhelmed them with her beauty. He himself had been struck by it. Why hadn’t the idiots married? Wasn’t marriage a religious act, a safety device?

  20.

  Zaynab was waiting for him at the door. Her lamp on the step guided him home.

  “Where are the children?” she asked anxiously.

  “Aren’t they back?”

  She sighed audibly.

  “Let’s hope it’s for the best,” he muttered.

  As he sank down on the sofa, she said angrily, “You should have let me go.”

  “To a bar awash with drunks!”

  “You hit them. They’re not children. They’ll never come home.”

  “They’ll wander around for a day or two, then they’ll be back.”

  “I know them better than you do.”

  He subsided into silence and she started off on another tack.

  “Who’s this Fulla Darwish keeps going on about?”

  He avoided her eyes and said carelessly, “What’s it to you? She’s a barmaid!”

  “Is she pretty?”

  “She’s a whore.”

  “Is she pretty?”

  He hesitated. “I didn’t look at her.”

  She let out a despairing breath. “They’ll never come back, Ashur,” she said.

  “Perhaps it’s for the best.”

  “Don’t you know how young men behave?”

  He said nothing.

  “We have to be tolerant of their mistakes.”

  “Really!” he returned incredulously.

  Suddenly she looked withered, faded, old like the wall by the path, and he mumbled in embarrassment, “I’m sorry for you, Zaynab.”

  “No doubt we’ll feel sorry for each other a lot in the years to come,” she said irritably.

  “In any case, they don’t really need us anymore.”

  “There’s no life in the house without them.”

  “Poor Zaynab.”

  She rested her head in the palm of her hand and said miserably, “I’ve got to work early in the morning.”

  “Try to sleep.”

  “On a night like this!”

  “Whenever you want then!” he said in exasperation.

  “What about you?”

  “What I need is a breath of fresh air.”

  21.

  The darkness again. Haunting the archway. Hiding beggars and tramps. Humming with silence. Embracing angels and demons. Night where the troubled man goes to escape his obsessions, only to become submerged in them. If fear can seep through the pores of these walls, then deliverance is a joke.

  22.

  He emerged from the archway into the little square. He found himself alone with the chanting from the monastery, the ancient wall, and the star-studded sky. He squatted with his head between his knees. More than forty years ago someone had crept along and hidden him in the darkness here. How and where had the sin been committed? What were the circumstances? Was he the only victim? Try to imagine your mother’s dreamy face and your father’s, inflamed with passion. Imagine the honeyed phrases of seduction, and the moment when your fate was decided. There’s an angel and a devil standing beside them but desire is defeating the angel. What does your mother look like? Perhaps like…To arouse such a conflict she must have had clear skin, dark eyes outlined with kohl, delicate features like flowers opening, a slender, magical body, and a gentle voice. And underlying all that there must have been this hidden, blind-rushing, treacherous, rapacious energy, without scruples, admirably suited to its purpose.

  An enticing bait lying in wait while fate looked on expectantly.

  Fifteen years of a man’s life put paid to in an instant.

  He knocked at the monastery door, but it remained closed. He could have forced it easily enough, but he had no desire to. A man wedded to life may as well embrace its children, perfumed with lust. But he was forced to admit that what was happening was hard to believe, and suffer the feelings of a runaway who had finally been trapped. Laughter and tears are equally the stuff of fate. He was a new creature now, plagued by blind desires, madness, and remorse. He begged help from the Almighty, and the wine of temptation flowed through his veins.

  His head grew heavy and he drifted into unconsciousness.

  He saw Sheikh Afra Zaydan standing before his grave. He took Ashur in his arms.

  “Are you taking me into the grave, my lord?” asked Ashur uneasily.

  But he carried him along the path, across the square, and under the archway.

  Something woke Ashur. He opened his eyes and heard Zaynab saying, “Just as I thought. Are you going to sleep here till morning?”

  He jumped up in fright, gave her his hand, and the two of them went off in silence.

  23.

  Suddenly his huge frame filled the doorway. The drinkers’ heavy eyelids flickered and behind their clouded eyes silent questions were exchanged:

  “What’s he come back for?”

  “Is he chasing his sons?”

  “Don’t expect any good to come out of it!”

  He swept his eyes around the place and found a space on the left-hand side of the bar. He crossed over and dropped onto his haunches, acting casually to cover his embarrassment.

  Darwish hurried up to him. “Nice to see you.” He smiled. “Who would have thought it!”

  Ashur ignored him entirely. Fulla came over with a calabash and a paper cone of spiced lupin seeds. He lowered his eyelids and remembered the story of the flood. Then he pushed the calabash aside and paid for the drink without a word.

  Darwish began to look at him strangely. “We’re here to get you whatever it is you want,” he whispered and left him on his own.

  The other customers quickly disregarded him. Fulla wondered what made him keep off drink. She went up to him again and gestured toward the untouched calabash. “It’s really good,” she said encouragingly.

  He inclined his head as if to thank her.

  “I’d keep out of his way,” called a drunk.

  “Don’t you think he’s like a lion?” she answered, laughing, loud enough for Ashur to hear.


  A childish joy descended on him, but he kept his features immobilized. His clothes no longer shielded his nakedness from prying eyes. The whole course of his life, between the day he was found tucked away at the side of the path and this moment as he sat at the bar, shrank to nothing. Its twists and turns were all swallowed up in the surging waves of a new song. In no time he gave in to defeat, exhilarated at the sense of victory it brought him.

  Fulla was standing among the earthenware containers looking at him with interest when Hasballah, Rizqallah, and Hibatallah burst through the door.

  Little trickles of expectation spread through the lazy air and the customers craned their necks to have a better view. Hasballah shouted a greeting. Then he noticed his father. He swallowed and froze. Rizqallah and Hibatallah looked as if the air had been let out of them. All three stood there for a moment in shock, then turned on their heels and vanished. A sarcastic laugh broke the silence. Fulla looked in Darwish’s direction. He said nothing, but annoyance was written all over his face.

  24.

  “Is this going on forever?” asked Zaynab, her face registering protest.

  “What do you suggest?” replied Ashur dully.

  “It’s all very well to ban them from the bar, but is it worth the price you have to pay?”

  He moved his big head in an indecisive gesture and said nothing.

  “It means that you’ve begun to prop up the bar at Darwish’s all day long,” she cried angrily.

  25.

  He was driving along when Fulla came out of the bar and stood in his path. He pulled on the reins, muttering a little prayer for divine mercy. Without a word she leapt gracefully aboard the cart and sat next to him, winding her black wrap around her. Her face was unveiled. He looked at her questioningly.

  “Take me to Margoush,” she said sweetly.

  Darwish appeared in the doorway with a smile on his face and said, “Look after her. I’ll pay her fare.”

  Ashur saw the web closing around him and he didn’t care. He was so happy he felt drunk. All he had learned from Sheikh Afra was crushed under the donkey’s hooves as he drove along, his back molten in the heat.

  “You could easily be chief of the clan, if you wanted,” she said suddenly.

  His face lit up. “Do you think I’m that bad?”

  She laughed softly. “What’s the point of being good when you’re dealing with people who don’t know the meaning of the word?”