The Harafish

  At once the harafish exploded into life, pelting Samaha with bricks and rubble. The attack halted when the rain began to fall. Blood poured from his wounds, staining his face and clothes. He reeled back, moaning. The stick fell from his hand and he collapsed on his doorstep.

  They swooped on his house. Its inhabitants fled over the roofs, while the harafish looted and wrecked until only a heap of ruins remained.

  30.

  Fath al-Bab’s role in the battle quickly became well known. A legend was born and he was invited to be clan chief. The young man was ill at ease. He was not deluded by the victory into having a false view of himself. He had never held a club in his life, and his fragile body could not withstand a beating from bare fists. “We’ll choose a clan chief,” he said to his supporters, “and oblige him to rule like Ashur.”

  But they were prisoners of their emotions and roared, “You are our chief. Nobody else will do!”

  Fath al-Bab found himself chief of the clan without a struggle.

  31.

  Thanks to two men in the clan—Danqal and Hamida—the clan preserved its standing in the alley and in the surrounding neighborhood. Danqal and Hamida, like most of the other members of the clan, were survivors of the previous regime, but Fath al-Bab maintained absolute authority through his personal charm and the power of the harafish who came out in force to support him, intoxicated by the triumph of their rebellion.

  During this time Nur died and Firdus and her children took refuge with her family—Radi’s branch—having lost most of their riches and gone down the social scale.

  32.

  The people were eager for justice. The harafish were filled with hope and the notables with misgivings. Fath al-Bab was convinced that justice should not have to wait a single day. “We must revive Ashur al-Nagi’s ideals,” he said to his two aides.

  Danqal and Hamida distributed charity, promises, hopes, and the wounds began to heal. Fath al-Bab noticed that they collected protection money and redistributed it in his name, and that the men of the clan still enjoyed their privileges, kept a good part of the money, and lived as heroes and thugs. He was plagued with apprehension. Fearing a gradual return to the old ways, he summoned his men. “What are you doing about justice? What’s happened to Ashur al-Nagi’s covenant?”

  “The situation’s changed,” said Danqal. “We have to proceed one step at a time.”

  “Justice can’t be postponed,” said Fath al-Bab angrily.

  “Your men won’t be satisfied with living like ordinary people,” replied Danqal with a new boldness.

  “If we don’t begin with ourselves we won’t achieve anything,” cried Fath al-Bab passionately.

  “If we do, the whole clan system will be shaken to its foundations.”

  “Didn’t Ashur live by the sweat of his brow?”

  “It’s impossible to bring back those days,” said Hamida.

  “Impossible?”

  “One step at a time,” said Danqal unenthusiastically.

  If he had been a proper clan chief, one word from him would have settled the matter. “What’s the point?” he asked himself sadly. “Seeing that I’ll never have Ashur’s strength.”

  Had the harafish already forgotten their destructive power?

  33.

  In a moment of angry despair, Fath al-Bab announced to Danqal and Hamida that he was resigning as clan chief. The two men were anxious and asked him to give them some time, promising to fulfill his demands. They went to their friend, Sheikh Mugahid Ibrahim. “Our chief’s angry. We don’t share the same ideas. What do you think?”

  “He wants to revive Ashur al-Nagi’s covenant, doesn’t he?” said the old man wrathfully.

  “That’s right.”

  “Give power to the harafish, oppress the notables, make us the laughingstock of the neighborhood!”

  “But he’s threatened to give up being chief,” said Danqal gloomily.

  “Not now!” exclaimed Mugahid Ibrahim. “Let the image of their hopes remain in place until we can be quite sure that they have reverted to their normal state, and completely forgotten their crazy outburst. Give him half of what he’s asking for.”

  “He wants all or nothing,” said Hamida crossly.

  Mugahid Ibrahim pondered for a moment with a scowl on his face, then declared firmly, “He must remain chief for a while. Use force if necessary.”

  34.

  Danqal and Hamida went to find Fath al-Bab in his modest dwelling.

  “We’ve done all we can but we’ve come up against insurmountable obstacles. The men don’t like it. They’re threatening to get nasty,” Danqal told him.

  “But you two are the most powerful members of the clan,” muttered Fath al-Bab in amazement.

  “There are a lot of them and they’re the ones who are against you.”

  “I’ll give up being chief,” he said decisively.

  “If you do that we can’t be answerable for your safety,” said Hamida.

  “Don’t leave the house from now on,” continued Danqal. “One step outside will cost you your life.”

  35.

  Fath al-Bab realized all too plainly the predicament he was in.

  “I’m a prisoner. They’ve got me surrounded,” he complained to Sahar.

  “There’s nothing you can do. Just keep hoping,” sighed the old woman.

  “I can’t stop fighting for Ashur’s beliefs. I’d despise myself forever,” he cried in anguish.

  “What can you do against their power?”

  He paused for a moment, his thoughts confused. “The harafish,” he muttered finally.

  “They’ll kill you if you try and make contact with them.”

  36.

  Fath al-Bab remained under house arrest. Nobody knew the reason outside the clan, and people surmised that he must be ill or have decided to withdraw from the world. He was under surveillance day and night. Even Sahar was not allowed out. He knew for certain that his life depended on the enthusiasm of the harafish, and that he would be of no consequence the day their legend died and they lapsed back into ignominy. The clan grew more vigilant: they kept the harafish under constant watch and committed acts of terror and violence.

  One day Hamida jumped on Danqal, thrashed him, and reigned supreme as the most powerful member of the clan. When he felt sure that the harafish were docile he proclaimed himself chief.

  Fath al-Bab thought his detention would end, since there was no longer any justification for it.

  “What’s past is past,” he said to the new chief. “Let me lead a normal life and earn my living like the rest of the human race.”

  But Hamida refused. “I don’t trust you. Stay where you are, and you can live without having to work for it!”

  37.

  So ended the story of Fath al-Bab and his crusade. A brief burst of sunshine in a long, cloudy day. One morning his shattered body was found at the foot of the minaret. Many wept for him, some rejoiced. People said he was demented with sorrow at having the leadership snatched away from him, and had climbed to the top of his mad ancestor’s minaret in the night and, in an act of profanity, thrown himself into the void.

  So ended the story of Fath al-Bab and his holy war.

  The tenth tale in the epic of the harafish

  1.

  With, Fath al-Bab’s death the alley awoke from its rosy dreams and came up against the hard rocks of reality. The people nursed their sorrows, while the shadow cast by the butcher Hamida grew darker until it blotted out the sun.

  The elite of the Nagi line was reduced to Firdus’ three daughters and her son, Rabi. The daughters married and were absorbed into the general population and the son lived in poverty, his mother having no money to speak of. He worked for the coffee merchant and led an extremely simple life, but nevertheless used to recount the glories of the Nagi family. This gained him nobody’s sympathy. The harafish were increasingly attached to the legendary exploits of Ashur, Shams al-Din, and Fath al-Bab, but harbored resentment tow
ard the rest of the line for betraying their great ancestors’ ideals and joining the ranks of the thugs and criminals.

  Rabi wanted to marry into a respectable family but his requests were turned down and he quickly realized that his origins did not compensate for his poverty and insignificant metier. Poverty exposed faults which wealth generally concealed, such as the fact that he was descended from Samaha with the ugly face, Galal the madman, Zahira the murderess, Zaynat the blond whore, and Nur the call girl. A lineage eroded by debauchery, crime, and madness. This realization plunged him into a profound gloom, and he resolved to spend his life in proud isolation. Firdus died in her sixties, and he had to go and live alone in a cramped two-room flat. He found the complete solitude unbearable, and the squalid neglect which soon prevailed in his bachelor home got him down. So he looked around for someone to do his chores and kind neighbors found him a widow in her thirties, a descendant of the Nagi family, called Halima al-Baraka. She was serious, reliable, passable to look at, and had a strong personality despite her poverty. She cleaned his house, prepared his food, and went to her own home to sleep, but as time went by he developed a liking for her and wanted to make her his lover. She refused point-blank. “I’m leaving this minute, sir, and I won’t be back,” she told him.

  He was all alone again, more miserable than ever, unable to stand the complete absence of emotional attachments, fearing illness and death, and yearning for children. In desperation he proposed marriage to Halima and she accepted with alacrity, all smiles now.

  Rabi Samaha al-Nagi married Halima al-Baraka when he was fifty-three years old. He was happy in his married life. His partner was an energetic housewife, God-fearing and pious, proud to be a Nagi, entranced by the tales of the family’s past glories. She bore him three sons, Fayiz, Diya, and Ashur. Rabi died when Fayiz was ten, Diya eight, and Ashur six, leaving his family penniless.

  2.

  Halima was left to face life alone. Her family being from the poorest of the poor, she resolved to be self-reliant, and use determination rather than tears to get what she wanted. She moved into a basement, made up of one room and an entry, sold a heap of her furniture, and employed her talents as a vendor of pickles and spiced molasses sweetmeats, a beautician, and a door-to-door saleswoman of goods such as women’s hankies and underwear. She had no strong desire to complain and regret the past, and faced her customers with a beaming smile, almost as if she was happy. Sometimes, she allowed herself to dream sweet dreams of an unknown future.

  She sent her sons to Quran school, and when they were old enough Fayiz became a carter and Diya a porter at a coppersmith’s. Life became a little easier, although at past fifty Halima was still chasing work.

  Fayiz was the first of her sons to confront the world. He found it a hostile, unsympathetic place where he was blamed for the crimes of ancestors he had never known. He was tall and skinny with a prominent nose, small eyes, and a strong jawline. He swallowed the insults, kept his feelings to himself, and went about his business. From his mother he learned the glowing side of the family history but outside in the alley he heard about its darker aspects. At home he learned the significance of the mosque building, the fountain, the Quran school, the animals’ drinking trough. In the street he was rudely confronted with tales of the outlandish minaret, and of those splendid houses where his ancestors had lived, which now belonged to unknown merchants and notables. He would stare at them, full of curiosity, and dream, and as he drove his donkey around the old quarter his mind would be full of images of the past.

  So this was the world, but how was he supposed to deal with it?

  3.

  He expressed his irritation to his mother and brothers.

  “Ashur was a saint!” said Halima.

  “The age of miracles is past,” snapped Fayiz, “I’m talking about the property being in other people’s hands.”

  “They were acquired illegally and lost illegally,” declared his mother with passion.

  “Illegally!” he protested.

  “Be content with your lot. What is it you want?”

  “I’m just a donkey boy and you’re a servant to a bunch of scoundrels.”

  “We earn our living in an honorable fashion,” she said haughtily.

  He burst out laughing. He had gone via the bar on his way home and drunk a couple of calabashes of cheap liquor.

  4.

  The youngest boy, Ashur, worked as an apprentice goatherd for Amin al-Ra’i. He collected the goats from their owners and led them out to pasture in the open country, to graze and play in the wind and sun. Halima’s mind was at rest now that her three sons were breadwinners; life smiled at her serenely. The days went by with their little pleasures and familiar sorrows until Fayiz was twenty years old.

  “When are you going to get married, son?” asked his mother in a quiet moment.

  “There’s plenty of time,” he replied with a mysterious smile.

  5.

  One evening Fayiz did not return at the usual time. Near dawn there was still no sign of him. Ashur went looking for him in the bar and Diya in the hashish dens, but they both came back empty-handed. In the morning Halima went to his boss, One-Eyed Musa, looking for news. She found him annoyed and upset. “I’ve heard nothing from him.”

  “Have you been to the police station?”

  “They’ve heard nothing either. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  One day followed another; they waited with uneasy hearts and Fayiz did not return.

  “He’s stolen the cart and run off,” shouted One-Eyed Musa. “Wait till I get my hands on him!”

  “Don’t you trust him after all these years?” cried Halima in anguish.

  “He’s a snake in the grass,” he retorted angrily.

  6.

  Halima and her two remaining sons wept bitterly. Days, weeks, months, passed. Everyone was convinced by now that he’d committed the crime and fled.

  “Once upon a time they stole big houses. These days it’s donkey carts,” scoffed Hassuna al-Saba, the new clan chief.

  One-Eyed Musa sought legal advice from Galil al-Alim, sheikh of the mosque, and Yunis al-Sayis, sheikh of the alley, and they decreed that Halima and her sons should reimburse him for the donkey and cart. Sad and unprotesting, the family paid a fair price.

  7.

  Something happened which was not considered unusual by the alley’s standards, but it shook the family. Halima did the chores in the clan chief’s household for no payment, not even a word of thanks. Nothing strange about that: Hassuna was one of the worst chiefs ever to hold sway in the alley. He exploited even its most poverty-stricken inhabitants, argued with his hands and feet rather than his tongue, and spread terror through the air. For all his strength and villainy, he was as sly as a fox. It was he who forced his followers to take over a little cul-de-sac off the main alley and stop anyone else living there, to prevent an uprising like the one in Fath al-Bab’s time. He built a house for himself at the far end of the cul-de-sac.

  It happened that Halima was late making a tray of sweets because she was unwell, and when she delivered it he swore violently at her and slapped her across the face. She went home with tears in her eyes, but said nothing to Diya and Ashur. However, Diya was in the bar that evening and the owner, Zayn al-Alabaya, said to him, “Don’t you know what happened to your mother?”

  Having received this blow to his pride, Diya tossed it raw to his brother, but confined his anger within the walls of the basement room. Ashur was in the depths of despair. He was a powerful young man, his polite, gentle manner belying his strength. He had a noble head, strong features, dark coloring, prominent cheekbones, and a toughness about his jaw. He found it unbearable cooped up in the basement with his grief, and went out into the darkness, drawn by an invisible hand toward the monastery square and the immortal presence of his namesake Ashur. He squatted there, his head between his knees. The air was deathly still except for the murmuring of the anthems. He listened for a long time, then said
softly, “I’m suffering so much, Ashur.”

  The anthems whispered to him in their mysterious language:

  Bi mehre rokhat ruze mara nur namandast

  Vaz omre mara joz shabe dijur namandast.

  8.

  The insult settled deep inside the two boys, and they neither absorbed it nor shook it off. Ashur grew at an amazing rate, like a mulberry tree. His giant frame and his heavy, attractive features were reminiscent of the first Ashur. The goatherd began to turn heads. Halima worried that his strength would arouse Hassuna’s fears.

  “Forget how strong you are,” she cautioned him. “Pretend to be a coward. It’s easier. If only I hadn’t called you Ashur!”

  But the boy was intelligent and this made excessive caution unnecessary. He spent all day in the open with the goats and his master, Amin al-Ra’i. He never showed his face in the bar, the hashish den, or the café. He only used his strength to endure and be patient. There was no question that the insult had cut him deeply. He was so angry that he pictured the alley crashing about his ears, the dead rising from their graves. But he kept his head, controlled himself, and never forgot the wary, brutish, cruel force with clubs always at the ready. Every time he felt cast down he went to the monastery square and listened intently to the dervishes chanting. “I wonder if they’re praying for us or cursing us,” he mused. “Who can solve these riddles?” He heaved a deep sigh.

  “They keep the doors shut because we’re not fit to cross the threshold!”

  He found Diya shouting with fury in the basement room. “If we weren’t harafish our mother would never have been insulted like that!”

  “It doesn’t matter who you are,” retorted Ashur. “People will always insult you if you let them.”

  “What should we do then?”

  Ashur was silent. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally.

  9.

  Halima feared the consequences of their angry thoughts.

  “What happened to me isn’t considered an insult in our alley,” she declared simply.

  She was determined to see them past this ordeal and thought seriously about getting them married. She had lost Fayiz. Time was rushing by, without hope. The boys marrying would inject a burst of energy into their stagnant life. It would make men of them, more sensible, less tempted by rash schemes.