Maps of the Soul

Chapter 7

No sooner had you uttered the sentence than you regretted it. The situation was already laden with wretchedness, and there was no need for further humiliation, if only for the sake of the man before you, torn by hardship and shame.

Abdel Mowlah said quickly, “You can at least kill yourself if you want. Suicide in a situation like this is an act only single men such as yourself can commit. As for me, it would be a crime my children would pay for. They are my flesh and blood and I would be leaving them behind, so how can I kill half of me and leave the other half to a life of suffering?”

Evening had begun to creep into the place, bringing a refreshing breeze that drove away the heat of the day. The man brought out a mat and spread it out in front of the hut. He sprinkled some water around the mat to settle the dust, which passing feet might disturb, and invited you to sit with him while he busied himself lighting the little stove to prepare tea. The dirt indeed settled, but the water that he sprinkled over the earth made tiny puddles, and whenever the neighbours’ children stepped in them, chasing after one another in play, they splashed your face with muddy water.

The little charcoal stove emitted thick smoke while Abdel Mowlah blew on it, aided by a piece of cardboard to fan the fire. He placed the tea kettle on the stove and then went into the hut. He came out carrying the sack he used to beg. He emptied all of its contents onto a length of cloth, among which were dried figs, dates, three pieces of bread, onions, carrots, cucumbers, peppers, two squashed tomatoes, and a handful of unshelled peanuts. He sorted them out by type, then prepared a knife and plate to cut the onions and tomatoes with some cucumbers and green peppers, making a salad known by the people of the city as “Charmoula”, which was the favourite dish for supper in Tripoli.

Abdel Mowlah placed the tea in front of you and handed you a piece of bread, inviting you to partake in the food, saying, “Blessings are abundant, as you can see, so don’t be bashful and eat your fill.”

You excused yourself from eating or drinking anything, especially after a flock of sheep led by a young shepherd passed by, splashing the remaining water onto you and the bowl of charmoula. Your hand would not consent to reach forth and take any of this “abundant blessing”, as Abdel Mowlah had called it.

The sight of the food and the way Abdel Mowlah gobbled it down upset your empty stomach, which turned with a great rumbling noise, demanding other kinds of food than this.

“Blessings are abundant as you see.”The sentence rang wickedly in your head. It was as if the man were boasting of what he had attained through begging. The whole thing disgusted you. You got up and left him, hastening back to the Shushan Agency.

You knew that you had exhausted your right to sleep at the agency. One of the truck drivers who supervised the agency had told you that you could stay no more than one or two days at most, making it necessary for you to find, in this short period of time, a hole in which to take cover, or perhaps a crack in the city walls in which to sleep. If it came to that, you would be no less determined to find a place of shelter than the rats, lizards and cats who made the city their home.

The next day, after collecting firewood, you went on your daily rounds in search of work, keeping in mind the problem of finding a place to sleep. In Kushat al-Safar, you came across an old man making shoes. He raised his eyes to you and searched your face with his two narrow eyes while you stood in front of his store gazing at the many beautifully decorated oriental shoes he displayed on a wooden shelf in front of the store. In the casual tone you used on such occasions, you asked him if he had any work for you. But before he was able to reply, your sixth sense told you that this man, with his kind, fatherly look, was the man that you had been looking for, and that you would find in him the solution to your problems. Your sixth sense became certain of this when he took a nail from between his lips and hammered it into the heel of the shoe placed over an iron foot and asked, “Where are you from, my boy?”

For the first time, you heard a response that didn’t indicate an outright refusal. The man had asked you which village or city you came from, so he must be interested in you, giving you and him a chance to talk together and get to know each other.

Beside him, you saw a chair meant for customers to sit in when he measured their feet, and you felt that after that question, you were entitled to use it. So you sat down after shaking his hand and answered his question, saying, “My name is Othman al-Sheikh and my village is Awlad Al Sheikh to the south of the Western Mountain.”

“And who does not know Awlad Al Sheikh, if only because it produced the legendary hero ‘Al-Fourty’?” said the man.

Al-Fourty was the nickname the people had given the highwayman who had harried the government in recent years. After the Italians defeated the resistance, the highwayman launched a one-man crusade on them. He would seize cars loaded with weapons headed for the south and redistribute some of the captured arms to the poor people of his tribe in the desert regions. The people therefore considered him a hero and named him Al-Fourty in the Italian language before he fell into the hands of the police, who took him to the city so that he might be tried and given a long prison sentence.

“Are you from the south or the north side of Awlad Al Sheikh?” asked the man.

You realized that the man was well-informed about your village, for only the villagers themselves, or someone with a sound knowledge of the area would realize that the clay and plaster houses, clustered together tightly, were divided between a north and a south side of town.

You said, “It’s obvious that you know Awlad Al Sheikh well, sir. I’m from the north side.”

“Then you are a drinker of donkey milk!” said the man.

In the days when rivalry and enmity had broken out between the two sides of the town, the people of the south side started a rumour that the residents of the north side drank donkey milk, which caused them to be born stupid, lazy, and dim-witted.

You laughed when you saw that he was laughing and had spoken to you amicably. Still, a little apprehension washed over you because this conversation linked you to highwaymen and dim children weaned on donkey milk. It seemed out of keeping with work that required someone reliable, trustworthy, and intelligent. You relaxed a little when he asked you if you knew how to read and write, because he needed someone to record the names of the clients who owed him money, and those to whom he owed money, and when you told him that you had completed the study of the Quran, his face lit up with satisfaction, though he didn’t say a thing.

He went on to mention some of the well-known merchants from your village, whom he had previously done business with, finding them to be models of honesty and integrity. He made special reference to three in particular, and you told him that you knew them, and that everyone in the village was a cousin to you, meaning that even those merchants were relatives of yours.

“Then I can complain about you to them if you neglect your work,” he said jokingly.

You were so happy that you almost got up from your seat to kiss his hands out of gratitude because he had accepted you as a worker in his shop without asking you how much you wanted in wages. It was a tiny shop, seeming no wider than a hand’s breadth, but no matter. You would spend long hours with your back and neck bent over, holding nails in your mouth like the old man, who had developed a hunch in his back from the excessive bending he did whilst driving the tiny nails into the heels and soles of shoes. It didn’t matter, this job was meant for you, even the metal foot standing in front of the store owner had guided you to him.

You later found out that your master’s former assistant had started his own shop on Gharby Street. This sparked dreams of you one day owning your own shop, making shoes and having your own assistant. You gazed for a long while at the shop, which acquired a new beauty and elegance.

The shoemaker specialized in making a type of Tripolitanian shoes with elaborate engravings and designs. Women’s and men’s shoes with roses in gorgeous colours made from a fine transparent fabric gave the shoes a distinctive look. He hung the shoes around him, covered the walls with them, and sat among them looking as if he were in the middle of a rose garden rather than a shoe shop. He had placed some of them on a wooden shelf attached to the store front to the left of the door, and another similar shelf to the right. The shop was like a museum of traditional arts and crafts.

You wanted to ask him to let you start that instant, but before you could open your mouth, he told you that you would begin in a couple of days, when the next month of the Christian calendar began. But his words didn’t deter your resolve to begin work immediately, starting tomorrow. You told him that you would be willing to work tomorrow without pay, thinking more of finding a place to sleep than of wages. Moved by your enthusiasm, the man noddedin consent.

Leaving the shop, you saw Tripoli with new eyes, not those of someone who had been looking for work since the minute he arrived, but those of someone with a good job who had earned the right to walk through the streets the way anyone else might, cheerfully watching the people, looking at the buildings and markets and shop windows, enjoying a leisurely stroll without any goal other than relaxation and sight-seeing.

Until then you hadn’t eaten a single hot meal in Tripoli, nor a complete meal even after working as a firewood gatherer because you had placed more importance on the jilbab you had bought, and you were left with only enough money for your habitual dinner of bread and tea. At that moment you felt your empty stomach hankering for a sumptuous plate from the popular street restaurants from which wafted aromas of garlic and spices. But it could wait, because despite your stomach’s craving for food, you were overcome with joy at now having a job and shelter, and because you felt that whatever your stomach ached for, whatever you saw through the windows of sweatshops that made your mouth water, whatever you saw in store fronts which sold clothes which you yearned to wear, was yours for the taking in the future. You were in no hurry, for you had acquired permanent work to earn money, and you would soon be able to eat this food, and wear those clothes like the people of the city, and felt you at at last become one of them.

With great enthusiasm for your new profession, you began your work the next morning in the shop of Haj al-Mahdy. You discovered that overhead in the shop was a space where Haj al-Mahdy stored his thread and leather, the raw materials of his trade. He had made a false ceiling for the store, half a metre from the real ceiling. You saw that it was big enough to hold you and if you climbed a few wooden steps, went in hunched over, and wormed out a place between the leather skins and looms, you could sleep there. It didn’t matter to you that the shop lacked all amenities necessary for a person’s life, because the nearby mosque of Sidi Mahmoud, which was open night and day, would make up for these shortcomings. As for food, you would have to live on dry meals and wait for the occasions when the Haj ate dinner in the shop and shared with you hot food that he brought from home.