19. From the Beginning of the Road

Whenever the relatives, acquaintances, and countrymen of Fahd al-Ẓāhir saw him, they pitied his condition. They regretted the days he squandered in vain, shook their heads sadly, and said from the depths of their hearts, “May God guide him for the sake of his poor father and his family back home!”

They knew his family’s circumstances in the homeland. Illness had made his father unable to work, though he was the head of a large household. No sooner had Fahd completed primary school than his father borrowed a sum of money and sent him to America, so that the boy might help him against the blows of time. He provisioned Fahd with paternal counsels and a father’s prayers and said, “Look at my condition, my son. In this state I have no defender but God and you to improve it and ward calamity from the family. Go to America, the land of work. Be a man, and remember that I have no hope of relief except through you.”

Fahd reached America. At first he was a young man burning with zeal for his poor father, the head of that large family, and he firmly intended to do everything in his power to help him.

He was a well-bred, handsome young man. Had he put on a dress and a lady’s hat—clean-shaven as he was, with slightly long hair, fair skin, red cheeks, large eyes, and a round face—people would have called him one of the loveliest girls.

At the beginning, nothing occupied his mind but his family’s condition and the course he ought to follow in helping his father. Necessity made him take a salaried position, and he sent his family a third of his earnings. After a while, however, he sent only a quarter; after several months, less than a quarter. Then he left his position in a commercial establishment because his spirit recoiled from confinement and inclined toward independence. Necessity made him take up peddling with a satchel.[70] He traveled from town to town, relying upon his splendid appearance, his fine English pronunciation, and a certain diligence. He aspired to know the foremost American families, from whom he expected great favor, and concentrated all his ambition on becoming a supplier to wealthy households at their summer and winter resorts.

He was so handsome that whenever a woman’s eye fell upon him, its owner said, “Glory to the One who created him!” Such was Fahd al-Ẓāhir. He himself was also infatuated with his beauty and spared neither effort, money, nor time in making his appearance angelic. He believed that outward appearance exerted the whole of one’s influence upon wealthy and eminent people. Thus he could save nothing: everything he earned from his work covered only a portion of what his taste demanded in clothing and adornment. Before long he stopped helping his family. He would send his father even a small sum only after the old man had dried up the inkwells writing relatives and begging them to move his son to rescue him. Fahd’s relatives and acquaintances therefore always lamented what the young man had become. In their hearts they prayed that he might be guided, abandon extravagance, and save enough to help his needy family.

Fahd suffered greatly because he could not help his father. At the same time, an impulse within him drove him to aspire to sudden wealth by means of his handsome face and elegant dress. It was a painful condition in which he could not escape the torment of these two forces. Yet the force that prevailed was his inward urge toward finery and display.

Fahd often spent everything he possessed on his outward dress, while the life within did not correspond to the exterior. You might see him looking like a prince’s son in face and clothing, though he lived in a narrow furnished room with space only for his bed—and, when he stood, his two feet. You might see his suit smart, his shirt silk, and his necktie matching his socks, while the poor man had no underwear. Or, from his elegance, you might suppose he lived in one of America’s finest hotels, when in reality his meal cost no more than thirty cents. This condition tortured Fahd’s heart, wore him down, and kept him diligent in his work, but he never reached his goal.

During his first years he did manage to fill the pages of his address book with the names of the best wealthy families. They approved of him, drew him near, and loved him—especially the ladies, who admired his physical beauty. They bought his goods and gave him letters of introduction to their friends in other towns.

The affair ended in Fahd’s marriage, whose strange circumstances occupied the country’s press. A young man of the description given above chose a bride advanced in years, at least thirty years older than he. Her youngest child was several years his senior. She came from a well-known American family and was the widow of a famous financier. Her family responded to this extraordinary marriage by rising against her and her husband. They brought the matter into court, claiming that she was senile, but their campaign failed. She remained Fahd’s wife and, by right of law, became Mrs. al-Ẓāhir, wife of the elegant Syrian young man Fahd al-Ẓāhir.

Syrians discussed the event in astonishment. They took many different paths in interpreting, approving, and criticizing it. After a few days, however, they cleared it from their heads. Fahd al-Ẓāhir and his wife no longer filled their minds, and he was counted among the wealthy because his wife’s fortune amounted to millions.

There is no doubt that Fahd sacrificed something of himself in order to escape the two forces that tormented him: the force of ambition for a luxurious life, and the force of filial duty toward a poor, sick father whose one hope in life was the success of his eldest son, Fahd al-Ẓāhir.

Today, however, Fahd al-Ẓāhir is divorced. He has neither wife nor great fortune. After spending two years with his elderly wife, there was no arrow left in the bow of his patience.[71] He revolted against his life companion, assisted in the uprising by some of her relatives and one of her sons. They satisfied him with a sum of money so that he would release himself from his lawful wife. After litigation, the affair ended with his divorcing her—or her divorcing him.

When I heard how Fahd’s affair had ended, I marveled that he had withdrawn halfway, despite having prepared himself to travel the whole road. I wished to learn the details, not to discover what inclined him to marry that rich lady, but to understand why he had not remained her husband until she died and he inherited her millions.

I met him and drew him into conversation about what had happened. He told me that necessity had compelled him to marry because he had said to himself, “This lady has passed seventy. However long she lives, she cannot pass eighty—perhaps not even that.” In the end, however, he became certain that his wife was in truth younger than he had thought: she had not yet passed sixty. He therefore said to himself, “Better from the beginning of the road than from its end.”[72]

NOTES

[70] The satchel (juzdān) was the characteristic stock-in-trade of the Syrian immigrant peddler. Goods were carried house to house, and successful peddling could lead to wholesale or retail commerce.
[71] Arabic: lam yaʿud fī qaws ṣabrihi minzaʿ, literally, ‘there remained no place from which to draw in the bow of his patience.’
[72] The final phrase reverses the ordinary logic of perseverance: once Fahd discovers that the road to inheritance may be decades longer than expected, he prefers to quit near its beginning rather than wait for its end.
