Damascus Nights

8 How one person's true story was not believed, whereas his most blatant lie was

Tuma the emigrant was a vigorous, wiry man of slight build. His gait was more a skip, despite the seventy-five years he carried on his back. He would bound up stairs as if he were a love-stricken fourteen-year-old on his way to see his sweetheart. None of the other gentlemen looked as young and strong as Tuma, whose entire philosophy of health consisted in taking an ice-cold shower every morning, in winter as well as summer. He always said he felt reborn after his shower.

Tuma came from a village on the coast, not far from Latakia. When he returned from America, not one member of his family was still living in the port city: some had died, and the rest had either moved to different cities or left the country. Tuma and his wife, Jeannette, decided to settle in Damascus. She was a second-generation emigrant, born in California; her mother came from Mexico. Her father, on the other hand, came from the mountains of Lebanon; an only child, he had lost his parents in the massacres of 1860. Sixty years later, shortly before his death, he made his only daughter swear never to return to Arabia, neither by land nor by sea. So when she did return, she insisted on a city with an airport, and Damascus did indeed boast an airport.

Tuma rented a very small house on Lazarists Street. If his wife Jeannette hadn't been so petite and thin, the two of them would never have been able to move at the same time inside the tiny rooms of their doll-house. Nevertheless, in his forty square feet of courtyard Tuma was not to be deterred from constructing the pride and joy of every Arabian palace: what he had been raving to his wife about for thirty years — a fountain… in this case, no larger than a soup bowl. Surrounding this treasure was a miniature jungle of plants growing out of a thousand tiny flowerpots, which Tuma's clever hands had first fashioned from tin cans and then painted and arranged with such skill that the plants actually made the courtyard appear larger than it was. The only thing that bothered his friends was a plastic penguin, which spat water into the soup bowl in an uninterrupted noisy stream; if it hadn't come from America, then Salim, Mehdi, or Junis would have suggested to Tuma that he throw it in the trash. Or else Isam would have smashed the plastic bird into a thousand and one pieces. Faris and Musa, on the other hand, both agreed that the presence of the ice dweller in the middle of Damascus had a cooling effect on the soul.

Jeannette spoke a broken Arabic, but she said what she thought directly and without the slightest embellishment. Whenever he visited, Salim couldn't get enough of her. He liked the freshness of her language. The neighbors appreciated — and even envied — this petite, gentle woman, for although she spoke so softly she was nearly inaudible, she never had to repeat a word she said. Jeannette had not been eager to leave America, if for no other reason than it meant leaving behind their grown-up children. But Tuma had promised her heaven on earth if she came with him to Syria: she would be his queen, he her slave. At least that's how the neighbors told it. The strong-willed Tuma was never in his life anybody's slave, but even in public he showed his spouse great respect. He was the only man in the neighborhood who walked hand in hand with his wife.

Like many who returned from America, Tuma dressed in a European suit and always wore one of the many hats he had in his possession. They were as beautiful as those worn by the gangster bosses in American movies. And in the winter, when Tuma wore his light-colored raincoat with the collar turned up, Faris often greeted him with the words "Hello, Mister Humphrey Bogart!"

That night, when Tuma walked in the room, his friends were already waiting.

"I see that tonight Tuma's planning to entertain our stomachs as well," Isam joked and made some room on the small table for the tray of cookies Tuma had brought along. Salim gave the emigrant a slightly disapproving eye: an Arab guest does not bring cookies. Tuma smiled, a little embarrassed. "In America," he said, "guests always bring something. Jeannette insisted. She sends you her greetings and says she's dying to know how you like her cookies. She made them according to an old Mexican recipe."

Salim smiled and took one; the others followed. "Now you can get away with any story you want," said Mehdi, laughing. "You've already bribed us."

"Okay, you all know I spent over thirty years in America, but none of you has ever asked why I went there in the first place." Tuma took a swallow of tea. "When the First World War broke out," the emigrant began his story, "I was eighteen years old."

"Eighteen!" Musa interrupted. "You were at least twenty-eight, my dear!"

"Let's call it twenty," the emigrant offered as a compromise.

Musa signaled his acceptance, and Tuma went on with his tale.

"We lived on the outskirts of Latakia. When the Ottoman military authorities called me up, I fled, but I had no idea where to go. Until that time, Latakia had been my whole world. My parents were very poor basket weavers. I had an uncle and an aunt who lived in Tartus, but I couldn't stay with them because their sons had also fled the draft and their houses were constantly being searched by the police.

"I wandered around the city and spent my nights by the sea with the poor fishermen. There were over twenty of us young men staying there. One day in the summer of 1916—I had been hiding there for two years — we woke up at dawn. A large detachment of soldiers was combing the coast, looking for people like me. Some informer had blown the whistle on us. I heard that for every man they caught he got one piaster! Anyone who ran was shot. I could see the soldiers' torches and could hear the cries of those they had captured.

"An Italian freighter was lying anchored off the coast; it had taken on tobacco in Latakia and was waiting for papers to put out to sea. I ran and ran, but the soldiers were closing in. There wasn't a single tree or bush for me to hide behind. I was so afraid, I found a high cliff and clambered up. One slip and you'd fall to your death. From my hideout I could see the flat beach off to my right. The soldiers were driving their quarry into the water and beating them with the butts of their rifles. Then they chained the prisoners together like unruly camels. I lay as flat as I could on the rock ledge. Soon it was light, and the soldiers kept on searching. They set fire to many of the fishermen's huts as a punishment. Even so, I thought my hiding place was safe until one of the soldiers with a pair of field glasses called out from the beach below: 'Bring that dog down here!' and three soldiers started climbing up to get me. My end was approaching — I could see it. The war was in back of me, and in front of me, the sea: two monsters! I didn't know how to swim. Funny, isn't it? We all lived by the sea, but most of my friends were every bit as scared of the water as I was."

"The proverb says: The cobbler goes barefoot, and the tailor is naked," said Faris.

Isam laughed. "You could also say: The fisherman drowns!"

"Okay," Tuma went on, "so the soldiers were cursing out loud as they climbed up to get me. Their clumsy boots kept slipping on the smooth rock. Their sergeant threatened to punish them if I escaped. When there was only about twenty feet left between us, I stood up. The soldiers gently tried to persuade me to spare them the danger. They said they were just poor devils too, who had no choice but to carry out their orders. I took one step in their direction, but then I cried out and jumped into the ocean. I had no idea how high the cliff really was.

"When I hit the water, I started thrashing my arms furiously. All I could hear or see was water. The freighter wasn't far off but the sea kept pulling me down. I struggled like a crazy man. I no longer remember how long I kept going. I just kept shouting, 'I want to live!' and flailed about and flailed about until I had exhausted all my strength. When I came to, I found myself surrounded by friendly faces. I jumped up and wanted to run away, but the sailors calmed me down. They had watched the whole search action, and when they saw me jump, they secretly let down a boat. As long as the ship was anchored their captain had to be kept in the dark, otherwise he'd get into trouble and have to hand me over to the authorities. But the next day the ship set sail for Venice.

"Okay, so in Venice I was able to find work as a porter. There were many Arabs working there. But I wanted to go to America. A cousin of mine lived in Florida. At the time I thought: Well, why not? I'll find him. America's big, sure, but it can't be much bigger than Latakia — and in Latakia you can mention a man's name and before the day is over you've found him." Tuma laughed, took a draw on the waterpipe, and passed it to Salim. Then he went on.

"My word, was America bigger than Latakia! I've often told you what hell the immigration authorities put us through. Okay, so it turned out that in the meantime my cousin had moved on to Argentina looking for work. Argentina means 'land of silver,' and my cousin hoped he'd find some in a country that size. You know, when an emigrant needs something to hold on to, a spider web looks like a wooden beam. None of you have ever emigrated, but let me tell you, it's a hard life. Bread was like a horseman, and we emigrants were always racing after him on foot with our tongues hanging out, huffing and puffing, trying to catch up with him. A curse, I can tell you.

"Okay. You've told some fantastic stories. But I experienced so much in America that I won't have to tell you anything but the truth. It often hurts me that so many people here think there's money lying in the street over there. They say that in America things are different: you just bend down and you can pick dollar bills more easily than tomatoes in the fields outside Damascus. And if you tell these people it isn't true, maybe they won't tell you to your face that you're an idiot, no no, but they'll make you feel like one. Look at this man, or look at that one, they say. He spent two years in America and came back a millionaire! It hurts to see the contempt in people's eyes. A neighbor once told me when he was drunk: 'Anyone who makes it in America doesn't come back.' Let me tell you, that may be the case for a lot of people, but not for me. The older I got, the more homesick I became for my Latakia. I never felt any kind of longing for homeland, or fatherland, or any other bullshit — but I had to go back to Latakia. It's like you have to take revenge for the disgrace of running away. You go back to prove yourself as a human being, to show you're stronger than war, stronger than hunger, or stronger than the sea. Meanwhile here they're waiting for you with the question: 'Come on, Mr. America, why don't you buy yourself a villa?' No one asks: 'What did you get out of being abroad?' Last night I thought for a long time about what being abroad had given me, and what it had taken away. That's what I want to tell you about tonight. So please listen as if it were a story. Okay?

"I did get rich living abroad, but not so much with money as with a second life. I think there was one Tuma who died when he jumped into the ocean and another Tuma who was born on board that boat. In my first life I used to be scared of my own shadow, but when I walked off the deck of that ship I went into the New World like a lion. What more did I have to lose? From then on, the greatest danger was no worse than the cackling of a hen. So, being abroad gave me a courage I had never known.

"Also, in Latakia we lived like bees — the individual didn't count, the clan was everything. It gives you a feeling of security, but it also ties your hands and feet up. In America people live like gazelles, everyone for himself, even if they travel together. You're on your own, but you're also free to try something new. Over there you get in a boat and row across the river all by yourself. Here if you want to cross the river to some new shore you have to pack everyone in the boat first: two grandfathers and two grandmothers, your father and mother, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, not to mention all the in-laws."

"You're forgetting preacher and imam," Faris added, nodding his head in agreement.

"If I can't take along our waterpipe and our Arabian mocha as well," Isam added with a serious expression, "I couldn't care less about any new shores."

"Okay, that's not a bad idea, but unfortunately it's impossible. But let me get back to America! In Latakia I might have met a few foreigners working on the boats, but in America I lived with Greeks, Chinese, Africans, Poles, Jews, Italians, and you name it — from any country in the world. There you meet people who had lived completely different lives before. And not just poor devils, either. You meet distinguished people working on the docks right next to you — people who'd never lifted a thing in their life. I even met Kahlil Gibran."

"You mean the famous poet Gibran?" Faris asked incredulously.

"Yes, Gibran. We were both living in New York. I met him in 1921 at a reading. He was a good man whose language and voice just streamed into my heart the first moment I heard him and filled it with peace. But while he was still alive there were many jealous people who attacked him and tried to smear his reputation. They wouldn't even leave his private life alone. But what harm can a fly's shit do to an elephant? And in his soul Gibran was as big as an elephant. One day we were in a small bar. He was very sad and he asked me how he should defend himself against his enemies. They wouldn't give him a single day of peace. Imagine, the great scholar Gibran asking me, a simple dockhand, what he should do. I told him to do just what my grandfather had done: my grandfather confounded his enemies because he kept going straight ahead.

"I bought all of Kahlil's books and had him write a fine dedication. 'To my friends Jeannette and Tuma,' he wrote. My wife loved him as much as I did. When he died of cancer in 1931, many Arabs and Americans mourned his passing. To this day my wife shows the books to every guest, and I agree with her when she says they're the greatest treasure we have.

"Okay, so what did I get out of living abroad and what did I lose? You know, before I went to America, I used to love to talk. I can still remember how I lost two jobs in Latakia because I talked and sang too much. I didn't know what a word was really worth until I traveled abroad and lost my voice. Words are invisible jewels; the only people who can see them are the ones who've lost them. Salim knows this better than anyone."

The old coachman nodded pensively.

"But losing your voice in a foreign country is worse than never having had one. Salim understands exactly what I mean. It's a particularly bitter form of dumbness, for those who are born dumb can speak with their hands, their eyes, their head. In fact, they speak with everything but their tongue. But we foreigners have it as bad as the hero of Mehdi's story. What was his name again? Shafik?"

"No, Shafak," Mehdi corrected.

"At first everything is dead, just like with Shafak. I hadn't learned to talk with my hands any more than Salim. Then suddenly I was in America. But I stayed voiceless for a long time, even after I could speak English."

"Why was that?" Mehdi wanted to know.

"How are you going to talk to people who don't have the faintest idea about the things that really matter to you? I went to America with the heart of a lion and the patience of a camel, but courage and patience were no cure for being mute. Being abroad gave me the tongue of a child, and soon it gave me a child's heart to match. You know that heart and tongue are made from the same flesh. And I spoke with the heart and tongue of a child and the patience of a camel. But no matter what I told them, they treated everything I said as a fairy tale. The Americans have a huge country, but they know very little about the rest of the world. They called me a Turk, even though I explained a thousand times that Syria is a separate country, that it only borders on Turkey. What's the difference, most of them said, you're all Turks; On the other hand, they insisted that I know exactly where they came from, down to the side of the street where they were born. In New York, bitter foes sometimes live jammed right next to one another, and woe unto you if you confuse one side of the street in Harlem with another. Or try to explain to an American that you're both an Arab and a Christian. They'd find it easier to swallow Aladdin's lamp.

"Once I was taking the train on my way to visit a friend named Mahmoud el-Haj. He was an engineer at an electrical appliance plant."

"El-Haj from Malula?"

"No, Mahmoud came from southern Lebanon. Okay, so the trip takes thirty hours by train. At one point this American comes into my compartment. He gives me a friendly nod, and I'm looking forward to a conversation that will make the trip a little shorter. But that was too much to hope for. 'Are you a Turk?' he asked.

" 'No,' I said, 'I'm an Arab.'

" That doesn't matter, as long as you're a Muslim. I've recently converted to Islam. Ashhadu anna la ilaha ilia Allahu wa anna Muhammadan Rasulu Allah.' The American recited the words of his creed to me, but that one sentence was all the Arabic he knew.

" 'Okay, that's fine for you, but I'm not a Muslim. I'm Christian, you know?'

" 'Hmm,' he says. The young American was confused and thought for a long time. Then he gave me a disapproving look. 'So you're not really an Arab, you're a Mexican!'

" 'No, I'm not, I'm as Arab as they come. There's a poet in every generation of my family.'

" 'Hmm,' he said again, sighing, and was again silent for a long time. 'But if you're an Arab, then you have to be a Muslim, that is for sure!'

" 'No, nothing is for sure. In Arabia there are Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druses, Baha'is, Yezidis, and many other religious groups besides.'

" 'Hmm,' he repeated and looked at me. By now he was completely unnerved. 'No, all Arabs are Muslims. After all, they're the ones who invented Islam!' He was very disappointed, as if the Arabs had left him in the lurch with his Islam."

"Are Americans stupid, or was this man's deck just missing a few cards?" Isam wanted to know.

"No. You know, Americans are no more stupid and no more smart than Arabs. You won't believe it when I tell you about the skyscrapers in New York!"

"And why not? I've seen pictures in the paper!" Junis said reassuringly.

"Okay, but I'm positive you won't believe me when I tell you that Americans don't haggle when they buy things!"

"What do they do, swat flies?" Isam sounded indignant.

"No, but when you go into a store, you just look at the price tags, you pay, and leave."

"Now you're making fun of us," Isam objected.

"No, I didn't believe it at first, either, but after I had learned the language, I went into a big store, six stories high. You could find everything you wanted: clothes, food, toys, material, paint, radios."

"So it was a bazaar. All in one building?" Musa asked amazed.

"That's right, a bazaar all in one building, except you can't haggle. I can tell you don't believe me, even the eyes of my dear friend Salim are accusing me of lying."

Salim felt he had been caught and smiled.

"Okay, so I went in. I wanted to buy a jacket. I found one I liked and took it to a saleslady. 'How much does this jacket cost?' I asked.

"The woman looked at me in astonishment. 'You can read it right there, mister. It's written on the tag: fifty dollars,' she said in a friendly way.

" 'That's very true, that's what's written on the tag, but life is a conversation, dear lady — question and answer, give and take! I'll pay twenty,' I told her, like anyone here would start the bargaining.

" 'Give and take? Question and answer?' She was so bewildered she was stammering. But then she calmed down and started speaking very loudly; she must have thought I was hard of hearing: Jacket costs fifty. Half of one-hundred-dollar bill!' And to make things absolutely clear, she pointed to the price on the tag again.

" 'Is that your last word? All right, I'll pay twenty-five, so you can say you've made a good deal.'

" 'What do you mean, last word? Twenty-five? It says fifty. Can't you read? Five-oh!' the lady screamed and wrote the number fifty on some wrapping paper next to the register.

" 'Okay, okay, I don't want to disappoint a charming young lady like you, and have you think I'm stingy or something. I'll pay thirty,' I told her, because I wanted to help her. 'I'm a new customer here, and if we can reach an agreement today, then I'll be a regular from now on,' I added — words guaranteed to break the last resistance of any dealer in Damascus.

"But now this woman was completely flabbergasted. 'A regular? What are you talking about? Listen, mister, I'm just doing my job here. The jacket costs fifty bucks. Take it or leave it,' she snapped impatiently.

"That made me mad. But I heeded the advice I once heard from my father: 'If the seller's so dumb he doesn't come down on the price, then raise your offer a little and say you're going. If he's so dumb he still doesn't get the idea, then just walk out slowly and don't look back. Don't let him know you're attached to the thing. That's written in the Bible: Thou shalt not turn around! Then he's bound to call after you and lower the price a little.' My poor father, he never saw America! So I raised my offer to forty dollars and told the woman, 'If you're not interested in doing business today, I'll go to someone else and buy the same jacket for twenty dollars.' I laid the jacket down and walked out slowly, without turning around. Any seller in Latakia or Damascus would have called after me and tried to save the deal, but she didn't say a word. In thirty years not a single person ever called after me. I gave up trying to haggle."

'There's no way on earth I could live in America," Isam moaned.

"You're also not going to believe me when I tell you that the Americans keep their cemeteries clean and tidy and even decorate them. Whenever it's sunny they go walking in the cemetery."

"Oh, come on, now you've really broken your promise about telling us the truth — these are plain fairy tales! Walking in the cemetery?" Junis was indignant, and the others shook their heads as if they felt sorry for the emigrant. Ali was just putting a large piece of wood in the stove when he heard the word cemetery. "May God protect us from all harm!" he prayed. Only Faris knew from his student days in Paris that Tuma wasn't lying, but the former statesman preferred to keep silent and let Tuma endure the wrath of the others all on his own.

Salim thought the emigrant was lying, but he just smiled at how desperate Tuma must be if he wanted to pass this lie off as truth.

"I swear by Saint—" Tuma began, to lend some support to his statement about walking in the cemetery.

"For heaven's sake, don't swear!" Junis yelled at him. "We don't want anything to happen to you."

"Oh my God," Tuma moaned in despair while the others laughed out loud.

"A graveyard is a place of ruin," said Junis, fuming, "and not a place of pleasure. Just look at our cemeteries! In time they decay, just like the bones they shelter under the earth. Earth to earth, say the Holy Scriptures, and not earth to pleasure palace. What crazy soul would build a cemetery to last? Any Arab would sooner forget about death today than tomorrow!''

'The Americans, too, but in a different way," Tuma shouted back. "They act as if death didn't matter to them, and they go walking in its place as if they'd completely forgotten about it."

"I'm only going there once," said Musa, frowning on the heated quarrel. "Have you heard the story about the test of courage that was held in a cemetery?"

"Which one?" asked Isam, who knew a number of similar stories, which in Damascus were mostly told on cold winter nights.

"The one with the chicken!"

"No, I don't know any with a chicken. Please, go on and tell it! Maybe you'll inspire Tuma," Isam requested and patted the emigrant on the shoulder.

"There once was a bet," Musa began, "where the winner would be the one who could go to a fresh grave at dusk and calmly eat a chicken stuffed with rice, raisins, and pine nuts. The challenger accused a whole village of being cowards and offered a large sack of money as a reward for the hero who came back with the bare chicken bones. All the respected men in the village lost the bet, for those who actually managed to sit down in the graveyard lost their courage when a pale hand came out of the earth and grabbed at the food and a voice roared from the grave, 'Let us have a taste!' Naturally no one knew that an accomplice of the challenger had hidden himself beforehand in the empty grave.

"One day a poor half-starved, emaciated devil came forward. The villagers split their sides laughing when he asked, 'Is the chicken fresh?'

" 'Yes,' they told him, 'a fresh chicken is prepared every time.'

"So the man went without the slightest hesitation to the designated grave. Then he sat down, tore the chicken in two, and started devouring it. When the hand came out of the earth and the voice roared, the man just turned away and shouted back, 'First the living have to have their fill, then the dead can have their due!' But the hand grabbed at the chicken once again. So the man jumped up and began stomping on the hand until the accomplice in the grave begged for mercy.

"The man walked back to the village with the bare bones. People hoisted him up on their shoulders, and the village elder held a great speech in his honor. But the man just kept burping and complaining, 'The chicken wasn't fresh at all.' "

Tuma laughed. "Well, you are incorrigible, but in any case, the Americans live differently — and they didn't believe me any more than you do when I told them about how we live. They, too, accused me of telling fairy tales. They couldn't believe that we really ride camels and eat figs, or that we celebrate weddings for days and days and mourn the dead for even longer, but never celebrate our birthdays."

"Why should anyone celebrate his birthday?" Isam interrupted. "And, besides, if you know your own birthday you'll just get older and older. I, on the other hand, feel twenty years younger today than I did ten years ago."

"But for the Americans a birthday is more important than Easter," Tuma again picked up the thread. "And they'll celebrate a birthday on the fourth floor despite the fact that a neighbor's just died on the third. They didn't believe me when I told them we have professional storytellers in our cafes. All they did was laugh at me. And they didn't even want to hear about the steam bath."

"What's the matter with them," wondered Ali, "are they barbarians?"

"No, but people don't believe what's new to them, and any miracle becomes what the Americans call 'old hat' if it lasts a couple days. And now you're not going to believe me when I tell you that the Americans treat dogs better than they treat human beings."

"Look, why don't you just go on and tell us a real fairy tale instead of feeding us these lies about the Americans. I'm only putting up with them because your cookies are so good," Junis gibed.

"No, what he says about the dogs is true, I know that from France," said the minister, at whom Tuma had glanced imploringly. "The French don't really treat their dogs better than people, but they do pamper the little mongrels!"

But Faris' defense of Tuma only poured oil on the fire, and soon Salim began clapping his hands and laughing.

"Don't try to confuse the issue with all your talk of France and America," said Junis. "Next you're going to say that dogs are waited on in restaurants. 'What will you have, Mr. Dog, for your entree? Today I especially recommend my right thigh with thyme and tomato sauce!' " The men all laughed, and Salim threw himself onto his bed and gripped his stomach. Tears were streaming down his red cheeks.

"No one said anything about a restaurant!" said Tuma, annoyed. "But, in America, dogs do have over twenty brands of food!"

"I trust they have barbers as well?" Musa taunted.

"No," Tuma lied, and hated himself for doing it; on his way to Salim's he had solemnly undertaken to tell only what he had personally experienced in America — and now he had broken his oath. For years he had been longing to open his heart to his friends.

He had known it would be difficult, but he never imagined the old men would resist so fiercely.

"What about a dog cemetery?" Ali suddenly wanted to know.

"No, no," Tuma lied, out of exhaustion and desperation. He looked at the faces around him and thought how lucky Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed really were, not to have had such companions. Now he determined simply to lie to them. "Okay," he said and sighed with relief, "I still wanted to tell you about this one unusual man. I worked for him as a bookkeeper for ten years. As a young man he'd been very poor, but he was a sly devil and completely without scruples. The wars had made him rich, and he traded in anything that could be bought and sold. He wasn't exactly a miser, but he didn't put much stock in idle talk. Whenever you mentioned someone, he'd ask, 'What does he sell?' And if you told him the man didn't sell anything but was a very important person, he'd ask, 'What's his price?' You couldn't tell this moneybags a thing without his asking for the price.

"Okay, so during our lunch break we used to sit in the yard and swap stories about our countries. But all he ever did was laugh at us. 'You'll never get anywhere that way. Buying and selling — that's all a man needs to know,' he scoffed.

"One day an immigrant from Crete asked to hear an authentic Arabian love story. This man was like our Salim. He loved stories more than anything else.

I wanted to tell him the story of Kais and Leila, but he knew that one — also the one about Antar and Abla. He had heard them before, from other Arabs. Okay, so I told him about the sad fate of a young woman who hadn't wanted to marry her cousin because she was in love with the village smith. My grandfather had told me the story a long time ago. In fact, he had lived it, because he was the village smith.

"So the workers listened, and one or two of them cried, even though they had never been in Arabia. But Mr. Wilson — that was the man's name — just stood by the door, pretending to be engrossed in his stock reports. After I'd finished, he laughed himself silly over my heroes' sufferings and sorrows. 'My dear Thomas'—that's how they say Tuma in English— 'what's the point of this idiotic story?' Then he went on with what was for him a very detailed explanation: 'All the happiness that's taken you hours to describe in your story I can buy in five minutes: I can buy your beautiful woman — and the Arabian horse to boot. For a few dollars I could have someone kill the stubborn father of the bride who refused to give his consent. What's the big deal? You don't need a story for all that, just plain hard work.'

" 'Mister, there's a lot of things that nobody on earth can buy,' I answered bitterly, since he had made light of my grandmother's suffering and her courage.

"He laughed. 'Such as what?'

" 'Such as a single moment of happiness, even one as fleeting as the wind,' I answered and walked out. I could still hear his laughter ringing out behind me.

" 'You can buy wind, too, my dear Thomas! My portable fan costs ten dollars and fifty cents,' he roared whenever he saw me over the next weeks.

"Well, Mr. Wilson was successful. Stock reports and news about wars and droughts were all that interested him; he detested stories. And so the years passed. One day his wife suddenly left him. He was absolutely miserable; nothing could change her mind, neither threats nor money. Mr. Wilson was so unhappy he completely lost his will to live. For days he wouldn't eat. He just hung about the office, dead to the world. He refused to wash or shave. After three days we informed a close business associate of his — he had no other friends. Well, this Mr. Eden was a man of the world and he happened to like Wilson. He hurried to see him and took him to some island for a vacation. Okay, so Mr. Wilson was already over fifty, and as much as he liked to boast about buying happiness, he was basically an unhappy man who had never found any peace.

"Well, he went with his friend and stayed away for a month. When he came back, he was suntanned and happy. Following his friend's advice, he resolved from then on to enjoy a leisurely breakfast every morning, to swim for at least an hour every afternoon, to have a long massage every day, and every evening to take a young woman to a restaurant and the theater, or to the movies. In the office he started reading all the New York tabloids. We brought him every bit of rubbish that was printed on paper. He read the colorful pages and laughed.

"One day he read that the costliest thing in life was time. It was worth more than gold and jewels. Mr. Wilson remembered me and had me sent for. 'You're right, my dear Thomas, time is worth more than gold. It says so right here!' He showed me the picture of a healer whose hands had the power to prolong life by years. The healer was supposedly one hundred fifty years old. But his face was as smooth as an eighteen-year-old's. Mr. Wilson's eyes grew bright when he told me everything he now intended to catch up on. So he went to this healer and paid a large amount of money to have his life prolonged by one year. From then on, Mr. Wilson lived very happily. Whether just by a fluke or not, the very next day he fell in love with a young woman who brought him even more happiness. But no more than nine months had passed when he called me in a second time. Again he looked worried. He was concerned he might die too soon, now that he had tasted happiness. He tried to persuade the healer to sell him twenty years, but the healer refused. He could only sell time by the month, as he had so many customers waiting in line.

"A few days later, Mr. Wilson again appeared somewhat relieved. He had gone to great effort and spent a huge amount of money to buy two and a half months from the healer. The miracle man assured him that only Henry Ford could buy more than that.

"Well, the months of happiness passed quickly and made Mr. Wilson's lust for time even greater. Two days before the time he'd bought ran out, he caught pneumonia. But he refused to go to the doctor. Instead he sent for the man with the miraculous hands, but it turned out that the old healer had died the week before.

"Mr. Wilson's secretary raced back to him in the hope of convincing him to send for the doctor after all. But when Mr. Wilson heard the news, he cried out like a wounded animal. He died the very next day."

Tuma looked at the pale faces of his listeners, and a smile curled briefly around his mouth.

"Now that's a story!" Junis raved, "My friend, you really have seen the world!"

"It's true," said Musa. "Nobody could make up a story like that. You have to experience it!"

"The great Napoleon knew what he was talking about when he said a man must spend three years abroad before he really becomes a man," Faris added.

"That was easy for Napoleon to say," Tuma answered drily. "I'm sure he didn't say it in New York Harbor or on the Hudson River on some rainy day so cold you curse the hour you were born."

The friends went on talking about time and happiness late into the night, but Tuma didn't hear a word. He was mulling over his disappointment, over the fact that the others had not only accepted this lie as plain truth, they had even praised it — whereas all he had done was cobble together a story from a small announcement in the New York Times and the names of presidents and prime ministers.

Shortly after twelve, Isam started to lay out the

cards, but the old barber tapped him on the shoulder.

"Leave it, my friend. After such a wonderful story,

I'm craving to tell one myself. I will volunteer to be

the ace tomorrow, if no one minds." The

minister and Isam didn't mind. And Ali

the locksmith? He was so relieved

he whooped for joy:

"Wonderful!"