1. The Autocrat

I had been told that Syrian families—fathers, daughters, and boys—lived on Washington Street, most of them high up in buildings whose lower floors were occupied by shops, mechanized factories, and various offices.[8] I was not surprised that they lived on a commercial street, since I knew that necessary economy drove families to such arrangements. But I wished I might enter into the depths of their lives and read in their pages both a lesson in history and a social truth.

One day toward evening, as I was walking along that street, I came face-to-face with my friend Najīb. The moment we met, he seized my hand and tugged at it.

“Come with me, my friend, and let us visit my uncle’s family at home. He lives on the fourth floor of this building.”

(As he said this, he pointed to a building before us on Washington Street.)

“Your uncle lives here?” I answered. “By God, it never occurred to me that a family could live in this old building crammed with shops!”

“Yes. This is where my Uncle Duʿaybis lives. Come along, so I can discharge the obligation while my uncle is alone in the house. Besides, with you there he cannot force me to stay forever, as he does whenever I visit them.”

“If you have an end in view,” I replied, “I do not mind being the horse that carries you to it.”

(I said this to be agreeable. Within myself, however, I decided to go not for his purpose but for mine: to see with my own eyes how his uncle’s family lived in these surroundings, and who—and what—his uncle was.)

We climbed the stairs. The wooden steps bowed under the tread of our feet and groaned profoundly. The building trembled, and its joints played us a carpenter’s tune. When we reached Uncle Duʿaybis’s apartment, Najīb knocked. We heard a voice command us to enter, so in we went. We offered our greetings, were introduced, and sat down.

His Excellency Uncle Duʿaybis was nearly as tall as he was broad—or as broad as he was tall. Seated in his chair, he left none of the poor thing visible. In every sense of the word he had the form of a Syrian human being, except that his mustaches were the handiwork of a fiercely conservative nature that permitted nothing modern to tamper with its creation.

The nephew talked while the uncle smoked a water pipe. His words emerged swaddled in smoke as both rows of his teeth clamped the wooden mouthpiece. I, meanwhile, was lost in a sea of thought, asking myself: Where have I seen this man, the uncle of my friend Najīb? For some time I drove and flogged my memory, hoping it would recognize the place where I had seen our host. But the accursed thing betrayed me.

As we sat there, the uncle’s wife arrived. She was a middle-aged woman of medium height, sharp eyes, brown complexion, and powerful muscles. She entered frowning, but no sooner had she dropped her heavy satchel on the floor than she exchanged the frown for a lovely Syrian smile. She welcomed her husband’s nephew first and then made an extravagant fuss over me, multiplying the customary courtesies.

She had scarcely finished greeting us when I saw the mass of Uncle Duʿaybis’s body shift a little in my direction.

“Mr. . . . , sir, this is my wife and the mother of the children,” he said. “She is one of America’s heroines. You surely know that America suits none but women. Men like us are only zeros written on the left.”[9]

(He said this laughing, as though making a joke, unaware that I understood him to have spoken the truth.)

I answered courteously: “What you say, Uncle, is quite right. You know better than I do, as the saying has it: ‘One day older than you, one year wiser than you.’”

His Excellency the uncle never tired of smoking. All that time he kept the wooden mouthpiece locked between his teeth. He would utter a sentence, then follow it with a long pull on the water pipe, and the smoke would emerge in two divisions: one through the “Bāb al-Mandab,” the other from “Mount Vesuvius.”[10]

Then the uncle shouted to his wife: “Kalīma! See to supper for the young men.”

When I heard this order, I leaped up in alarm and began entreating the uncle and his wife not to trouble themselves on our account. I was busy, I said, and had Najīb not assured me that the visit would take no more than fifteen minutes, I could not have come with him at all. Najīb in turn began excusing himself, relying on the necessity of accompanying me: I was busy, and he was obliged not to leave my side.

At this the uncle roared at us: “Business, no business—I do not understand such talk. I said you would eat supper with us, and the matter is finished. Now Kalīma will prepare our meal. The girl will be home soon and lay out the drinks. Then we shall spend the evening together, and afterward you may go. Had we been back in the old country—Syria—we would have made you sleep here. But quarters are tight in this country.”

I said earlier that on this visit I was not the horse serving my friend’s purpose, as I had told him and as he believed. In truth, I was a horse serving my own investigation. I therefore turned to my friend and told him that if he wished to stay, I would postpone my business for his sake. The poor fellow was forced to submit to his uncle’s command. I do not know how many curses he composed for me in his heart.

We returned to our chairs. Not five minutes had passed when the gazelle of the household arrived and opened the door. She put her head in, saw us, pulled it back, and hurriedly shut the door, as though embarrassed by the company—or rather by me, since I was the stranger among them. It appeared that she entered the kitchen by a second door, for her father called to her to come through the kitchen entrance into the hall. He encouraged her not to be shy; there was no stranger in their home, he said.

A moment later the mother emerged from the kitchen, pulling by the hand a daughter whose cheeks had turned crimson. When they stood before us, the mother said, “This is our daughter Maryam. She is so shy she blushes at her own shadow. Come, child, do not be embarrassed. This is your cousin, who is like your brother, and this is his friend, who is like your brother too.”

Her mother’s words chased the blush of modesty straight out of Maryam’s head. Finding herself before our little audience, she took courage and became like the daughters of America. She extended her arm and shook hands with each of us in greeting. When she reached her father, she kissed his hand. He did not kiss her, but bestowed his favor on her and heaped blessings upon her.

(He did all this without ever removing the wooden mouthpiece from between his teeth, as though it had been made there—or as though he had been born with it in his mouth.)

I noticed that just before Maryam turned away from her father, she drew out a bundle of dollars and, with consummate swagger, slipped it into his pocket. Then she marched off toward the kitchen to help her mother.[11]

Uncle Duʿaybis smiled at us. “This is my dear Maryam, a daughter unlike other daughters. God be pleased with her! Obedient and hardworking—worth twenty boys.”

He had not finished speaking about his daughter when the door was flung roughly open and a boy rushed in. He threw down in the middle of the room a box that had hung from his shoulder by a strap, left it lying there without a thought, and immediately approached his father, shouting at the top of his voice:

“Papa, I bought the neckties from Ilyās Marqus’s shop, because Kāmil Sulaymān wanted a dollar more. I sold sixteen dollars’ worth today. I spent fifty cents on fare and food.”

For the first time since I had been honored with his hospitality, Duʿaybis took the mouthpiece from his mouth. He pulled the boy to his chest and kissed him with kisses whose musical notes we could hear. Then he took the money, counted it, and put it in his pocket. From a second pocket he produced a quarter and gave it to the boy as a reward, then followed it with another quarter and whispered in his ear that he should go down to the market at once and buy cigars.

(The uncle thought he had whispered to his son, but his voice could be heard more than twenty cubits away.)

The instant the boy took the money, he broke into a run, sweeping the door panel along with him. The walls of the apartment shook under his racing feet. The uncle smiled around the water-pipe stem.

“That boy is a flower among flowers and will make the finest heir. Clever and capable. His only fault is that he is reckless—but it is a shrewd sort of recklessness. That is his mother’s doing: she spoils and pampers him. You know, of course, that Syrians have an ugly habit of indulging their sons and treating their daughters harshly, although here in America the daughters are better than the sons. Every girl is truly worth twenty boys.”

We spent the whole evening drinking until we rose to go, and Uncle Duʿaybis’s tongue never had a chance to warm its chamber in his mouth. At one moment he ordered the mother to bring the mezze; at another he demanded plates from the daughter; at another he told the boy to throw out the cigar ash.[12] When we sat down to the supper placed before us, neither the mother, the daughter, nor even the boy joined us, though my companion and I insisted repeatedly that the uncle allow the household to eat. He declined on the ground that there was no time: they all had duties in the kitchen while we took our meal. Throughout supper his orders followed one another, addressed now to his wife, now to his daughter, now to his son: “Bring the potatoes. Take away the soup plates. Girl, fill the glasses with water. Woman, serve the mister’s plate. Boy, pass the radishes toward your cousin.” And so on through the catalogue of commands.

When it was time to leave, Najīb and I stood and said farewell to the uncle. We asked to take leave of the madam and her daughter, so His Excellency summoned them. They came in from the kitchen displaying their astonishment at our early departure. We made the requisite replies, shook their hands in farewell, and went out in peace.

When we reached the street, Najīb laughed. I had expected anger and resentment because I had so readily agreed to remain at his uncle’s house.

“Did you see how my uncle lives?” he asked.

“Yes, I saw. But I am still trying to remember where I have seen him before.”

He burst out laughing. “You have not seen him. You saw something like him in Marseille.”[13]

I joined him in laughing at the well-placed joke, but insisted that I had seen the man himself before and had merely forgotten where. Then I asked, “What does your uncle do?”

“He gives commanda.” A studied expression of contempt crossed his face.[14]

“Yes, I noticed. I noticed how many orders he gives the household. But what does he live on?”

“What does he live on? Are you blind? Did you not see that his wife comes home only in the evening, bringing him treasures of money? His young daughter swells his pocket with dollars, and even the little boy brings him sixteen dollars every day, perhaps more.”

“Then your uncle’s occupation is to remain at home and keep the water pipe company, so it will not feel lonely.”

“Exactly. Add to that my uncle’s fine taste for military drill. Without his commands, the order of the family would collapse.”

“Quite so. I suppose your uncle now lives in considerable ease?”

“Ease! He is one of the truly rich Syrians, whose wealth is hard gold.”

“If your uncle is rich, as you say, why does he make his wife, daughter, and little boy work?”

“Do not enlarge the subject or weary me with more questions. To spare you the trouble, I shall tell you that my uncle once took a heroic stand after a newspaper printed an article on ‘the selling of women and the idleness of their husbands.’ For the first time in his life, his blood stirred. He began going down to the market and inciting people to march on the newspaper office and cut off the fingers of the man who wrote it. He poured the coarsest abuse on the author who had assailed people’s honor.”

Seeing that he wanted to close the subject, I laughed and tried another approach.

“Your uncle’s family must be happy and in perfect order. He is content, and the family is content. Their peace is not disturbed by any addle-headed notion a wife or daughter might form about liberty, independence, individual rights, or anything of the kind.”

“Yes, as you say. But some years ago something occurred that distressed my uncle beyond measure. His wife fell ill and was taken to the hospital, where she spent two months undergoing treatment and operations. He had to spend a sum of money on her. If only you had seen my uncle then—a mountain of grief!”

At once I said, “Was it perhaps your aunt who was in Roosevelt Hospital in 1917?”[15]

“Yes, Roosevelt Hospital. How did you know?”

I laughed a long laugh and cried out to Najīb, “Now I have it! Now I know where I saw your uncle. Yes—yes, now I remember. Listen, Najīb. At that time I happened to see your uncle at the priest’s. He was asking the priest to write and sign a paper certifying that he—your uncle—was poor, so that the hospital authorities would believe him and not charge him. He had pressed a little something into the priest’s hand in return.

“When I saw him in such agitation, I felt sorry for him. I went up and asked what had happened. He replied that his household was ruined. As though the doctors’ and hospital fees were not enough, he had lost two months of his wife’s work, and she would have to remain idle for two more months after leaving the hospital—a total of four months without earnings.

“Hearing his story, I wanted to comfort him and lighten his burden with a few words. I said that financial loss was not worth considering as long as his wife recovered, and that the loss of money was nothing beside the loss of life. Your uncle made me still sorrier at that moment, for what I said did not please him. He received it as though it were empty of any intelligible meaning. He did not like my opinion. Do you hear?”

Najīb nodded. We had reached the fork where our ways parted.

“Yes, he did not like your opinion, because to him money is worth more than a woman. My aunt had scarcely left the hospital when she resumed peddling satchels despite the doctors’ warnings. Thanks to her physical strength, she conquered her weakness and laughed at the symptoms. Today she is the tigress you saw. If you had not come with me on this unavoidable visit, my uncle would have lashed me with bitter words because I do not permit my mother to peddle as his wife does, and because we live in Brooklyn among respectable dwellings.”

By then I had moved two paces away from my friend. I bade him farewell, then smiled and called back as I walked away:

“Thank God, at last I know where I saw your uncle—not in Marseille, famous for the size of its horses, but in New York.”

NOTES

[8] Washington Street in Lower Manhattan was the commercial and residential center of New York’s early Syrian colony. Its wholesale shops supplied peddlers who worked throughout the United States. See Smith, “Transitional Portraits,” 36.
[9] The Arabic phrase literally makes men “zeros to the left.” A zero placed to the left of a numeral adds no value. The word shimāl can mean both “left” and “north,” a latent joke in a book about North America.
[10] Bāb al-Mandab is the strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden; Vesuvius is the volcano near Naples. The joke turns the uncle’s nostrils and mouth into a strait and a smoking crater.
[11] In the immigrant vernacular of these stories, riyāl commonly means an American dollar. Haddad elsewhere distinguishes smaller American denominations such as cents and quarters.
[12] Arabic māza (now more commonly transliterated mezze): a selection of small dishes served with drinks or before a meal.
[13] The reference to Marseille’s large horses likens the massively built Duʿaybis to a draft horse. The final sentence makes the comparison explicit.
[14] Haddad writes qūmandā, an immigrant loanword built on “command” (and perhaps reinforced by French commande). Najīb answers the question about employment with the joke that his uncle’s only occupation is issuing orders.
[15] Roosevelt Hospital opened in Manhattan in 1871 on West Fifty-Ninth Street. It was renamed Mount Sinai West in 2015. The date 1917 is Haddad’s.
