Death of a Monk Read online

  And so I had to pitch the glass a second time, but my body began to tremble mysteriously and my grip on the cup loosened; Father grew impatient, his face enraged even beneath my nuptial canopy, and he grimaced at Aslan the Fickle, grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly to assist me in shattering the glass. The shards pierced my skin, causing spots of red blood to flow down to my hairy forearm.

  I considered plunging into that darkness and pulling down the black screen over my heavy eyes, but Maman in her benevolence hastened to wipe my hands and revive me, and in order not to bring the festivities to a halt she gave a sign to the servants to bring in the singer.

  Since the appearance of the singer was a complete and utter surprise, the students of the Khaham-Bashi had no chance to protest at this part of the wedding banquet and so, as soon as the sign had been given, and while Markhaba, horrified, covered her weeping face and fled, a certain prostitute from one of the local taverns – a woman favoured by the Jews – was ushered in, and immediately the sound of a violin and an oud could be heard, and the whole crowd, apart from the Torah scholars who covered their faces with their hats, cheered and applauded, for this singer – I soon learned – was one of the best-known and adored in all of Damascus.

  My eyes downcast, I thought about the room waiting for me and about the custom of the aunts to wait for the bloodstained sheet to be brought before them and displayed, and I was grateful for my initiative in insisting that this custom be stopped and that they should not wait for me to come to my bride, and I was further grateful that they had agreed to my request, and I sat wondering how I would accomplish this mission, ashamed to be thinking about one organ approaching another organ and how strange this was in my eyes, so that I very nearly raised my voice to sing tearfully with the violin and the oud, when suddenly a wondrous voice reached my ears. It was soft and pleasant, the pure voice of a woman the likes of which I had never heard, for the singer called Umm-Jihan had arrived wearing a dress of feathers which emphasised her ample hips and a pair of sturdy breasts, and she trilled her voice at length and with devotion, and how wonderful it was in my eyes that she was singing the very lines from the old, forgotten poems that I would whisper with my friend Moussa about that almond-eyed lover who walked barefoot among the orchards in the shadow of the moon: he was far from sight, would never be found again; it was the soul who sought him out.

  After that an even more wonderful and beloved thing happened: the beautiful singer who awakened feelings in me that I had never before felt for a woman began tapping her feet and dancing slowly to muffled drums, and then she descended from the small stage built for her by the servants and walked this way and that among the guests, sometimes doubling back, sometimes moving forward with determination then once again turning around, but ultimately her path was towards none other than the blushing groom himself, his heart beating wildly and his cheeks aflame, and she crept slowly towards him like a snake and put a hand to his narrow waist and touched him with her fingers and her tongue, and Aslan whispered her name, Umm-Jihan, Umm-Jihan, for as a result of the spell she had cast upon him he now understood the secret of women and could follow his forefathers and all other men, from Adam to the present, who had performed as was expected of them, and he was not a whit different from them.

  The dance might have lasted much, much longer if it were not for the loud grumbles of complaint and angry shouts and threats of censure issued by the elderly Rabbi Shlomo Harari and his cohort the Khaham Khalfon Attia, good friends of the Khaham-Bashi whom Maman had taken care to send on false pretences to the small synagogue next to the spacious guest room; but now they had returned, complaining loudly and demanding categorically that this abominable dancer be removed. Umm-Jihan swayed her buttocks demonstratively as she moved away from them and her painted eyes smiled secretively behind her mask and beneath her wig, while Father laughed boisterously at the rabbis and said this was intended only to bring joy to the guests and would not happen again; as for me, I filled my lungs in order to preserve the memory of her wonderful scent until the end of time.

  4

  AFTER THE LAST of the flocks of guests departed, or, as the Khaham-Bashi jested, Al’aris b’yakhud al’arus, valmada’ai bitla’u m’thil tiyus – When the groom lays a hand on the bride, like billy goats the guests take their stride – and after they had left behind them the meagre bouquets of flowers they had brought as gifts and the smell of their sweat from joyous dancing and the remains of the banquet, and after the last of the brooms had been returned to its resting place at the end of the hasty cleanup carried out by the servants, only Markhaba and I remained, alone, in the great expanse of the room, utterly and completely silent.

  The choking burden in my throat, which had escorted me through the wedding and festivities, grew larger now, and I said to myself, Aslan, although you are alone on the battlefield there is nothing here but your body, you yourself. Recall that marvellous songbird Umm-Jihan and the desire she awakened in you, and rule over that desire as though it were an axe brandished over the nape of one sentenced to die, and commit this act in one fell swoop, for the hour of your manhood is nigh.

  Markhaba said nothing, merely following after me like a shadow to the fourth room, where the air stood still and there was as yet the lingering scent of servants’ urine, and she uttered some holy words and departed from the room to pass water and empty her bowels. This bug-eyed, pale-faced maiden of the blessings and whisperings seemed less and less a flesh-and-blood mortal to me than the perfect mate for the holy wooden icons that Maman kept hidden in her room.

  While Markhaba dallied, I hovered over our wicker nuptial bed, and there I was, before my first time, standing like a condemned man facing the grave of his own digging, and there was nothing to do but trust myself and my own body, and so I waited expectantly to see what Markhaba would do, and which clothes she would remove from her body, and how she would lie upon the wicker bed, and I feared what would be the wanderings of that organ of my own organs, known familiarly as khanuneh, which was impossible to rule and knew no master or harness.

  All the while my temples throbbed in anticipation of this act, and I began to rouse, in my imagination, the pleasing and attractive image of the dancer Umm-Jihan, and the sound of muted drums and the patter of her catlike feet, and I removed my groom’s shoes and the bandage which Maman had wrapped around my hand, bloodied from the glass, and I entered the bed, about to share it for the first time in my life with a strange body, that of a woman who was not mine, and I wished to evade her and dive into a night of peaceful rest, but then, just as I was wishing for my soul to be sent to the world of dreams and slumber, I felt Markhaba’s hand touching my puny chest.

  Even before I could gather my wits and flee from the room, Markhaba had clutched at my tunic, already demanding that we fulfil the commandment to go forth and multiply, one of the most important commandments decreed upon the Jewish people and, much the same as that Sabbath Queen descending upon the pious as they pray in the synagogue, she uttered blessings over her own body and mine, wishing to bring them together in absolute matrimony and unity, and she desired to remove the tunic from my thin body and conjugate with me, and I was astonished by this rabbi’s daughter, whose ways were the ways of a whore, and I pushed her from atop my body and stepped outside the room in order to take in some air, but I was disconcerted to find Maman, who had been positioned outside the room the whole time, her ear cupped to hear whether conjugation had been achieved, whether the couple had coupled or not, and she chided me and sent me back to the nuptial bed and threatened to call Father, who would pummel me with his fists until I would cease my perverse weakness and my rebelliousness and my shameful behaviour.

  Rakhet alek, The game is up Aslan, was the sole thought that echoed in my head as I was returned to the execution room, where the rabbi’s daughter had already stripped off her clothes under the blanket. She had no male organ, but rather that scarred valley I had expected to find, and she began speaking to me words she had lear
ned from her sisters regarding which actions to perform and which appendages to lift and move about in order to ensure her conception, God willing, and I was frightened by her words and by the deficient, boyish body sprawled next to me and I acquiesced, choiceless, for this was the purpose and the destiny and these were the cause and effect, and there was no escaping them.

  My happy friend, while the image of Umm-Jihan flitted before my eyes I leaned over Markhaba, my wife of an hour, who wished to be impregnated by any means possible, and I touched with wonder her tiny breasts as she held fast to my organ, pulling it near that dark and blocked opening, hidden and tangled, of which there was no way of knowing how to enter or depart from it; all at once my soul fled and the blood drained from my body and I was slack and feeble, plunging like a despondent maiden into the depths of her spinsterhood to avoid being wed to some old sheikh, but Markhaba did not despair, rather, she pressed and twisted my organ, attempting to blow life into it, to awaken it from its dormancy, to restore it to pristine splendour, all the while uttering blessings: Blessed art Thou, Ruler of the Universe, Who firms man’s footsteps and Blessed art Thou, Who girds Israel with strength and resuscitates the dead with abundant mercy. And I, too, was praying, conjuring up the memory of Umm-Jihan of the many delights, but Umm-Jihan appears, drenched in sweat and ragged, clothed in filthy, stinking garments, the look on her face altered – empty and evil – and then a new parade of images arrives unbidden, of shrivelled, ancient women who put my desire to flight, and then finally among them stands a black-haired lad of the Islamic faith and behind him four fat men, their large bellies protruding and their organs erect, and they wish to enter me and I flee from them and run and plunge into my cursed nuptial bed and ask Markhaba for permission to sleep.

  With the arrival of morning I rise to escape that narrow room and Markhaba’s gaze as she recites a blessing over the new day – Blessed art Thou, O God, who restores souls to dead bodies – and I am flooded with relief when I see that no one is stationed next to my door to inquire about the events of the previous evening, and I steal away to the bathing room where I submerge myself in a tub and trickle hot water over my body, but the servants have heard my footsteps and have informed the household that I have left my room, and lo, Maman enters and congratulates me on my first night as a groom and she gazes into the pupils of my eyes to discern whether the fact of my manhood has been etched on to them and suddenly a terrible suspicion takes hold of her and she spreads her jewelled fingers into a fan and shouts, Aslan! How much shame and disgrace can one son bring upon his parents and family! And I tell her that the act required of me is not in the realm of the possible since there is no way of bringing my organ to the tangled jungle of the hole belonging to the maiden referred to as my wife, and Maman commands me to stop speaking and she reproaches me, saying this is an act committed by humans and animals and reptiles and insects and such will Aslan do unto his wife, and a dam of tears breaks forth all at once from my throat, as well as grunts and coughs, and my eyes cloud over, for Aslan does not want this marriage and Aslan does not want this wife, and Aslan cannot enter her, and he requests permission to be freed from these demands forced upon him and upon all men so that he might resume playing the games of his youth and sleeping alone in the bedroom he loved, but Maman does not respond to these impassioned requests, rather, she quickly leaves the bathing room, and a vain hope steals into his heart that perhaps she will return with a notice of the annulment of his marriage in hand.

  The shouts that arise from the avenue of fruit orchards in the garden of our home foretell of my bitter mistake, and while I am still crouching in the tub of water Maman enters the bathing room and behind her I am petrified to see Father, enraged as a thunderstorm, sparks and flashes leaping from his eyes, and he upends the tub and pours the water over me, and as I lie naked in a puddle of water he punches my nose and he is all rage and wrath. Ruakh al’an unik hadihi almarah, he says, Get in there and screw that woman, and I shrink at hearing these vulgar and incisive words that summon their peers, shameful words of debauchery and curses, which arrive quickly, heedless of syntax or rules, shouted one after the other, thundering from Father’s vocal chords, kicking and punching their way forward, and I determine neither to hear nor heed them and I stop up my ears and drop a thick screen before my eyes and the figure of Father is uprooted from my heart to the point that it occupies no place or part of my soul.

  Whatever it is he says, at the end of Father’s discourse I am beaten back to the fourth room to the accompaniment of shouts and pummellings, to where Markhaba is already sitting combing her short hair in preparation for the new day, and she tells me that she is still a virgin and it is incumbent upon me to perform the deed this very day before her father, too, finds out, and that I must impregnate her one way or another, and that we have been commanded to remain in our room until we are successful in our mission.

  Thus were we cloistered for two whole days, during which time I spoke to my organ and promised it all manner of promises and stroked it and pampered it and lavished strengthening creams upon it and chewed herbs and swallowed concoctions, but each time it came time to perform the act and I was expected to bring my organ to that place, my might and vitality ebbed away and it drooped, winking with its one eye.

  With each passing hour of failure and with each unsuccessful attempt, my hatred waxed towards my evil father, who had planned this scheme, and towards my mother, his traitorous partner in crime, and towards Markhaba, whom they had brought to my room and thrust into my life, and I wished her nothing but foreshortened days and dark diseases and strange accidents, and if not her, then that they might visit me.

  My parents took note of these wicked events and a new idea entered their minds, that an evil-eyed curse had been cast upon me by the Harari brothers, who wished to scorn and mock us and hoped to bring about our downfall. There was no other way but to undo this witchcraft.

  The Khaham-Bashi Rabbi Antebi, who was privy to the bitter tears of Markhaba over a husband unable to perform his duty properly, was informed, and it was decided that I should be sent to the Cave of Jobar, known for its curative powers, on the left hand of Damascus, so as to receive blessings for fertility and virility and success in all endeavours from the mystic rabbis there.

  After being dressed in garments of blue to ward off the evil eye and doused in salt to blind the eyes of the zealous, I was taken in some sort of wagon harnessed to a donkey, the sides of which were covered in a thick cloth so that the Harari brothers and the gossiping women would know nothing of this disgrace, and I was transported with Father, Maman and Rabbi Antebi outside the walls of Damascus to a distance of several parasangs through fields of wheat and corn to the small and wretched village from which was meant to sprout my salvation, and our way was accompanied by the singing of a psalm filled with hope: Ascribe for God, you sons of the powerful; ascribe for God honour and might.

  Roughly am I transported among the Arab farmers ploughing their fields to a pitiful building covered entirely in stinking mould where, according to the gossipmongers, the prophet Elijah anointed Elisha, and so the place was called Knis Elisha Alnabi, which people only bother to visit on the Day of Atonement or in times of great distress, and there are women wailing and offering prayers to cure lepers of their leprosy and boils-sufferers from their boils, and Father and Maman and the Khaham-Bashi pray that my organ cease its feebleness and become the progenitor of a great nation.

  Father takes hold of me and attaches a small copper bowl, a tasa, to my belt, and inside the bowl is a kandil – oil with a wick of cotton wool – and a bleary-eyed Jew places in the bowl a large green leaf, and after the cause of my distress is whispered into his ear he nods sadly and begins to versify rhyming prayers that stretch from his mouth like a string of spittle, and he blesses me with all manner of blessings and summons all manner of angels and cautions all manner of Liliths, and from there I am brought to the cave in the cellar of the synagogue and we descend, slipping on the ancient stone
s, and the odour of mould and incense and spoiled milk accosts us, and the tasa with the oil inside rattles against the belt on my tunic, and we reach the depths of the strange and mysterious cave, the floor of which is covered with old and tattered carpets, and once there, Father and the Khaham-Bashi join in the eerie rhyming chants which are peppered with ancient Aramaic expressions, and they encircle me from right to left while beating on leaden beads and raising their hands over my head, and Maman recites a blessing, Ayn alradiyeh tirtad anak, May the evil eye depart from you.

  No one warns Aslan, so he is filled with astonishment when his tunic is lifted from him, exposing his gaunt, hairy body, and the tunic is tossed into a deep well at the side of the cave and then fished out with a long pole and wrung, then returned, saturated, for him to wear for seven days during which he must remain beside his wife in order to enter and impregnate her. And then, the pièce de résistance, Maman dips her snow-white finger, bedecked with gold rings, into a soot-filled trench and smears black soot on my eyelids and nose and cheeks and it is thus, wearing clothing soaked in well-water and crowned with black spots, that I set out on my return from the adventure at the Cave of Jobar to my unloved wife.

  When the wagon returns to my parents’ home I ask permission of them to walk the streets of Damascus as is my custom during sad times and crises, to take pleasure in the River Barada as it flows through mysterious channels under the houses and alleyways and squares, and they allot me time and extract promises from me that upon my return I will end this shameful chapter of my marriage with an act of virility and manliness, and I agree without knowing how I can succeed in keeping my promise.

  This time my feet lead me not to the river as it flows outside the northern walls of the city, nor to the covered spice market, beloved for its myriad sweets and surprises, but rather to the square before the Saraya fortress in the Muslim Quarter, seat of the present Damascus city governor, Ibrahim Pasha, known as Sharif Pasha, where at this very moment, midday, hundreds and thousands of men are engaging in commerce, their hands exchanging money, their feet ensconced in buckled boots, black tarbooshes on their heads, and they are many and awesome, and among them walks Aslan thinking to himself, Lo, as the number of men teeming here such is the number of their organs dangling in front of their bodies, hanging from their loins above a pair of testicles, and they swing as the men walk, some erect, some flaccid, and all these organs belonging to all these men engage in that very same act, slipping in and out, out and in, and not a man among them raises his voice in protest, for this is their task and this is their way, and there is no place for further thoughts or musings in this matter.