TALES OF THE MAHJAR Ḥikāyāt al-Mahjar ʿAbd al-Masīḥ Ḥaddād AI-assisted English working edition, 2026. See the edition notice in the front matter. Tales of the Mahjar Ḥikāyāt al-Mahjar ʿAbd al-Masīḥ Ḥaddād A complete English translation with an introduction and critical notes Source text: ʿAbd al-Masīḥ Ḥaddād, Ḥikāyāt al-Mahjar (New York: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Tijāriyya al-Amrīkiyya, 1921), as presented in the Hindawi Foundation digital edition (2021). Translator’s Introduction Published in New York in 1921, Ḥikāyāt al-Mahjar is an early book-length attempt to make the Arabic-speaking immigrant community in the United States the subject of modern Arabic fiction. Its author, ʿAbd al-Masīḥ Ḥaddād (1890–1963), had emigrated from Homs in 1907. Five years later he founded the Arabic newspaper al-Sāʾiḥ (The Traveler), which he edited for decades and which became closely associated with the New York Pen League (al-Rābiṭa al-Qalamiyya).[1] Haddad’s stories grow out of that journalistic world: they are direct, conversational, observant, and repeatedly framed as things the narrator saw, heard, or learned from acquaintances. The title resists a fully satisfactory one-word English equivalent. Mahjar names both emigration and the place or condition of expatriation; in literary history it also denotes the Arabic literature produced in the Americas by emigrants from the Arabic-speaking provinces of the late Ottoman Empire. This translation therefore retains mahjar in the title while using “diaspora,” “emigration,” “exile,” or “immigrant world” according to context.[2] Haddad’s “Syrians” are not coterminous with citizens of the present Syrian Arab Republic. In the period represented here, “Syrian” commonly covered emigrants from Ottoman Greater Syria, including people from territories that later became Lebanon as well as modern Syria. The collection’s New York center is the immigrant commercial district around Washington Street, but its characters also travel through the American “interior”—Haddad’s term for places beyond the port metropolis—and appear in Ohio, New England, Florida, and elsewhere.[3] Their most common work is peddling and the wholesale trade that supplied it, an occupational pattern well documented in the history of early Arab immigration.[4] These are social sketches with a satirist’s eye. Haddad returns to money, credit, status, gendered labor, marriage, education, language, and the immigrant’s divided attachment to “the country” and America. His narrators frequently intrude as witnesses, yet the stories rarely collapse into simple moral verdicts. Their comedy depends on mismatched registers: elevated literary Arabic alongside Levantine speech, Arabicized English and French, Ottoman titles, proverbs, biblical turns of phrase, and deliberate malapropisms. The translation aims to keep that friction audible. Colloquial dialogue is rendered in flexible spoken English without assigning it a modern American regional dialect; conspicuous loanwords and mistranslations are retained or glossed when they carry the joke. The Arabic base text for this edition is the legally available Hindawi Foundation text and PDF, checked against the publication information of the 1921 New York edition. Hindawi’s contents list comprises Haddad’s preface and thirty-two titled pieces. Paragraphing and parenthetical asides are preserved; punctuation is lightly naturalized for English. Names are given in readable transliteration in the narrative, while the introduction and notes use a simplified scholarly transliteration where helpful. No attempt has been made to conceal the racial, ethnic, gendered, or class language of 1921; where a historical term is liable to mislead a present-day reader, a note supplies context rather than silently rewriting the passage. Note on the Text and Notes Footnotes serve four limited purposes: to identify historical people, places, institutions, and titles; to explain proverbs, biblical or literary allusions, and culturally specific practices; to record wordplay or marked Arabic/English code-switching; and to clarify an uncertain or deliberately nonsensical expression. Ordinary foreignness is not annotated. “Translator’s note” is implicit unless a source is named. Money words require special caution. Haddad often uses riyāl as an immigrant vernacular term for a dollar rather than as the name of a Middle Eastern currency. The translation accordingly gives “dollar” where the American setting makes the referent clear, while notes flag passages in which the wording itself matters. Contents Preface 1. The Autocrat 2. In the House of the Dead 3. The Pessimist 4. Simʿān the Votary 5. Clotheslines 6. Nothing to It 7. Money Talks 8. Buried Alive 9. Our Tares, Not Their Wheat 10. The Long-Bearded Man 11. A Son of the Age 12. Khunfushār in America 13. We Have Learning; Fools Have Money 14. Everyone’s Acquaintance 15. The Shortest Way 16. The Two Legalists 17. The Bey’s Misery 18. A Son Out of His Time 19. From the Beginning of the Road 20. The Statue of Liberty 21. From the Bear into the Pit 22. As We Have Become, So Shall You 23. Faith in Humanity 24. American Civilization 25. Tales of Romance 26. No Difference Between the Two 27. May God Bless Him—and Keep Him Away 28. Nature’s Servant 29. Hope and Pain 30. The School of Exile 31. In Second Class 32. By the Sweat of Your Brow NOTES [1] Benjamin Smith, “Transitional Portraits: Syrian Immigrants of the North American Mahjar in ʿAbd al-Masih Haddad’s Prose,” Mashriq & Mahjar 7, no. 1 (2020): 27–53, https://doi.org/10.24847/77i2020.247, esp. 27–30. Smith gives Haddad’s birth year as 1890 and records his arrival in New York in 1907 and the founding of al-Sāʾiḥ in 1912. [2] Arabic mahjar, from the root h-j-r, denotes a place of emigration and, by extension, emigrant or diasporic life. In literary history al-adab al-mahjarī refers especially to Arabic writing produced in North and South America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. [3] On the historical scope of “Syrian” and the geography of Haddad’s stories, see Smith, “Transitional Portraits,” 34, 36, 50 n. 1. Smith notes that the term here includes people from modern Lebanon as well as modern Syria. [4] Alixa Naff, Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), 8, 12, 82, 115; cited and discussed in Smith, “Transitional Portraits,” 36 and 52 nn. 21, 24–25. Preface Ever since I entered America and became immersed in its Syrian world, I have seen forms and conditions in our social life, and many images of our Syrian American existence. I would often ask myself: When will one of our writers finally take up his pen and record these scenes, so that people may study their secrets? The scenes I mean are visible signs of secrets and outward manifestations of what lies hidden in the soul. I saw them, read them, heard them, and felt them, and I found in them a broad field for any writer who wished to portray Syrian life in the form of the short story. The thought continued to haunt me until, prompted by an idea that came to mind, I wrote my first story, “Nature’s Servant,” to fill some spare space in the pages of al-Sāʾiḥ.[5] Before I knew it, I found myself driven into the very field I had wanted other writers to enter. No sooner had the story appeared than friends surrounded me and asked how it had occurred to me to compose a tale that was the exact image of a scene from our life in the lands of the mahjar. Then I felt a gentle hand take mine. It was the hand of Kahlil Gibran, dean of the Pen League, and I heard him say: “I want to read a story of this kind by you in every issue of your newspaper. You have no excuse for failing to do the work. Before you lies a broad field into which you have entered. Go deep into its recesses, dive to its floor, and bring us what you find there.”[6] Some time later he came to persuade me to gather these stories into a separate book, and I could see no avoiding it. What I had heard from this dear friend and from other friends jealous for the honor of our language and literature—friends eager to strip away its garments and robes grown old with time and clothe it in dress suited to this age—had opened ears and eyes within me. Natural inclination led me to do what I had wished someone else would do. I therefore gave imagination free rein in the study of our Syrian life in the mahjar. It watched for one scene after another, which I would then cast in the mold of a short tale, until I had assembled this book. God willing, it may be the prelude to another. I say the prelude to another because I have found myself captivated by this study. I have realized that I am traveling with a little stream while seeking the waters of the ocean. If in these short tales I have not reached my goal, and have not drawn the scenes that ought to be drawn from the depths of the Syrian soul, then the stream on which I travel will cast me into deeper water, where I may examine Syrian life from its many sides, from the beginning of emigration down to what we have become. We need a mirror in which to see ourselves, to behold our own appearance with our own eyes and correct its defects. A person resorts to a mirror to arrange his hair and its part and to tie the knot of his necktie; by the mirror of the soul he corrects whatever in his inward appearance needs correction. Upon my life, that moral mirror is nothing other than a story that gives form to one of our customs or traditions, in which the inward eye can see the virtues and vices of our social life. And so, in pursuit of this desired object—the mirror of the soul—I undertook to write these short tales. I called them Tales of the Mahjar because they concern the mahjar. Perhaps I may do some good through them; if not, the intention is enough for me, and peace be upon them. ʿAbd al-Masīḥ Ḥaddād New York, 1 April 1921[7] NOTES [5] Al-Sāʾiḥ (“The Traveler”) was the Arabic newspaper Haddad founded in New York in 1912. It published major North American mahjar writers and later served as an important organ of the Pen League. [6] Al-Rābiṭa al-Qalamiyya, usually called the Pen League or Pen Bond in English, was a New York Arabic literary society associated with Kahlil Gibran, Mikhail Naimy, Nasib Arida, Haddad, and others. The group was reconstituted in 1920. Haddad styles Gibran its ʿamīd, here translated “dean.” [7] The Arabic gives 1 Nīsān 1921. Nīsān is the Levantine name for April. 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. 2. In the House of the Dead When Ṭānyūs al-Murr died, the departed man’s house remained a destination for mourners night and day for an entire week. There was reason to fear that the family’s affliction from the multitude of consolers would exceed the affliction of losing the deceased himself. But in such circumstances Syrian custom takes its course and tradition runs in its channel, though hearts be torn, livers crumble, and the vessel of patience shatter. The bereaved hear condolences from the mouths of their visitors as though they were lessons the speakers had learned among the prayers recited every day. I, the writer of this tale, feel with all my emotions for those who have suffered loss—not because of what they have lost, but because of their fortitude in listening to the philosophy of consolation. One blessing of the Lord is that convention makes a condolence call very brief. The mourner keeps his hat in his hand and, in winter, leaves his overcoat on. The reason for this brevity is not a desire to lighten the family’s burden, but the number of people arriving. The room becomes too small to hold them, and one troop must leave to make space for the next. The bereaved, meanwhile, sit without moving: ears without tongues, eyes lowered to their laps, lips murmuring two words to every arrival and departure. “May your head be spared,” they answer the conventional condolence spoken on entering and leaving: “May God compensate us by sparing your heads.”[16] I had known the late Ṭānyūs al-Murr only slightly and had never visited him at home while he lived. But my friend Buṭrus Karawānī practically dragged me along to pay our respects to the family. Condolence, he said, was owed by every acquaintance, whether relative, friend, or no more than someone they knew. And so we went. My friend was far more accomplished in speech than I. I entered the house of mourning like an unborn child entering the world of tradition. I was about to give the greeting I used on every occasion when Buṭrus raised his palm and clapped it over my mouth, forcing me to swallow “Good day to you.” Then he whispered in my ear that I should say, “May God compensate us by preserving you.” I said it and sat down as I have described the family sitting—except that I did no murmuring, since the matter did not concern me, and stared at the specters on every side. My lap was filled by my folded overcoat with my hat on top of it, and my face reddened with embarrassment because I alone had removed my coat. After five minutes of silence, Buṭrus opened his mouth. “Before Alexander the Great died, he knew that his end was near and that his mother would grieve for him deeply. He summoned her before his death and said, ‘Mother, my last request is that after I die you give a banquet and invite all the people. When they sit at the table, say to them: Let anyone who has never tasted grief for a loved one reach out his hand and eat.’ “And so it happened. After his death she gave a banquet and invited everyone. When they sat at the table, she repeated what her son Alexander had instructed her to say. No one stretched out a hand to the food. Then she understood that the cup of death passes among all people, and so she found consolation in her great loss.”[17] When I heard this sermon, its speaker grew great in my eyes. I said to myself: What a waste, all I learned in school! By God, Buṭrus has surpassed me in the art of condolence and delivered the finest homily imaginable in just the right place. Forgetting that I was inside a temple of silence, I said to my companion, “By God, you have done well with this consolation. It is revealed wisdom.” The people present were not numerous, since our visit came after a week and the traffic of mourners had begun to diminish. They heard the beautiful sermon as though they had heard nothing at all. I marveled at them and thought: Perhaps they are people of Ṭamṭam and did not understand what was said before them.[18] Buṭrus had scarcely finished his pearly words when a troop of three men arrived. Since the room was large and there were few visitors, we remained in our places—or rather, Buṭrus remained seated, and I had no choice but to stay, since he was the mainspring of our visit. When the newcomers had sat down, one of them opened his mouth to speak. As he prepared to do so, I felt sorry for myself. O God, how ignorant I am! I understand nothing of customs and conventions, and I have never trained myself in the words required on every occasion. The speaker began: “Such is the way of the world. Death is decreed for everyone, and none can escape it. Alexander the Great conquered the whole world when he was thirty years old . . .” As he told us about Alexander, I thought: Here comes a second sermon. I resolved that after this visit I would go to the public library and read the life of that great man, whose entire history consisted of lessons necessary to humankind, especially in times of calamity. I turned my full attention to the speaker so that I would miss none of this second lesson. How great was my disappointment when I heard the very same homily Buṭrus had told! I was thoroughly displeased. My companion made ready to rise, for he saw another troop—this one of two men—approaching the door. I pressed his knee and whispered that I wanted to remain so that we could all leave together. Buṭrus was forced to humor me. The newcomers entered, recited the two customary formulas of condolence, and sat down. A moment later, the elder opened his mouth. “The deceased’s death has weighed heavily upon us, but God’s command cannot be turned back. Thus it was decreed and thus it came to pass. Glory be to Him who alone endures! It is told that Alexander the Two-Horned felt his end drawing near . . .”[19] I cleared my throat and stole a glance at Buṭrus. A smile was being traced across his face. At once I turned away toward the speaker to hear his tale of Alexander the Two-Horned. After two sentences, a broad smile began to trace itself across my own face. Afraid it might end in laughter while we sat in this temple of grief and reverence, I rose, and my companion rose with me. “With your permission, and without interrupting the gentleman’s story—good day to you all.” I left and Buṭrus followed. Outside the house, my friend seized me and brought me to a halt, poison dripping from his face. “What good are you and your learning if you do not understand that in a house of mourning one does not say ‘Good day to you’? When we entered, I made it clear that you must not utter those words, and you swallowed them. Why did you forget when we left?” “Spare me your reproaches, Buṭrus, and tell me where you read the story you told in the house.” He said he had heard his grandfather tell it at the funeral of the village shaykh. “And where did your grandfather read it?” “He must have heard it from his grandfather.” “Then next time, get the history right. Say: ‘My grandfather reported to me from his grandfather, from his grandfather,’ until you reach someone who lived in the time of Alexander the Great.” Buṭrus laughed and forgave me. As he shook my hand before taking a road different from mine, he said, “Laugh to yourself. We did not complete an hour in the dead man’s house. Otherwise we would have heard the story of Alexander the Great at least twenty times.” I answered—and perhaps I spoke the truth—“Had I been in the family’s place, I would have told the people: ‘The deceased has found rest from this world and from your sermons.’” I bade Buṭrus farewell and went on my way. I encountered a group in which I recognized one man. When he saw me, he came over, greeted me, and said he was going to pay his respects to the Murr family. “I have just come from offering condolences. God help them,” I said. “God help them,” he repeated, then added, “and give them strength.” I told him how I had entered the house without uttering any words of condolence to comfort the poor people, because I did not understand the conventions. He laughed at me. “Is it a matter of philosophy? Tell a story with a moral and console them with that.” “And what will you tell?” He began the story of Alexander the Two-Horned. I cut him off, saying that I knew it, and waved him on to catch his companions so that they could console the family, and so that God might help them, strengthen them, and have mercy on them. NOTES [16] The exchange is conventional and deliberately difficult to naturalize: the visitor says ʿawwaḍanā Allāh bi-salāmat ruʾūsikum (“May God compensate us by the safety of your heads”), and the family replies wa-rāsak sālim (“and may your head be safe”). The “head” stands for the person whose life is spared. [17] An apocryphal consolation tale widely told with Alexander or another famous ruler. Its logic resembles the Buddhist story of Kisā Gotamī and the mustard seed: grief is universal, so no household is untouched by death. [18] Haddad calls them ṭamṭamāniyyūn, a comic nonce-word suggesting speakers of incomprehensible mumbling or a people from an imaginary “Ṭamṭam.” [19] Dhu al-Qarnayn (“the Two-Horned”) is a ruler in Qurʾan 18:83–98, traditionally identified by many commentators with Alexander the Great. The shift of name does not produce a new story, which is the narrator’s joke. 3. The Pessimist I had never known him to be malicious or inclined to lead people astray. On the contrary, I had known my friend Ilyās al-Biqāʿī as a refined and affectionate young man of delicate feeling, diligent in his work and fiercely protective of his customers’ interests. But lately his morals and character had been transformed. If a lost traveler asked him the road north, he pointed south, indifferent to the consequences and unconcerned by the offense he committed in misleading others. One day I sat beside him and asked why his character had altered until people had blackened his record. He shook his head and bit hard upon his lower lip. His only answer was this: “I have sworn never to guide a lost man so long as error exists among humankind. If I see a blind man who hopes for light, I attack his hope until he can see neither in fact nor in imagination.” “Ilyās, Ilyās, what has happened to you? Tell me. You are not the Ilyās al-Biqāʿī I knew. You are another man. What has come over you?” “Do you think the long years of my labor changed me? No, by Him who created profits and losses! What changed me from the Ilyās al-Biqāʿī you knew into the one you now see was my meddling effort to illuminate the paths of the lost. A man wandering through life is in safer circumstances than a man whose blind eye you open: he sees the whole universe beneath his gaze and turns his eye into a vast mouth that wants to swallow everything it sees.” He sighed, then told me his story and how matters had reached this pass. “You know that for fifteen years I worked in the United States carrying cases of goods and selling them to our merchants in the interior. From the beginning of my trade to its end, I made it my rule to be faithful to my customers and sincere in advising them, so as to secure their good fortune, to which my own success was tied. “I had one customer in a small inland town to whom I sold whatever goods I wished. I gave him the purest counsel in buying and selling, as though he were my partner. On one of my journeys, I entered his store and found it crowded with crates piled here and there and merchandise scattered about without order or system. He was serving his customers with a long cigar in his mouth. I said to myself: By God, it is strange that a customer like this should prosper when he is so disorderly! “I waited for him to finish with a woman bargaining over a shirt, so that we might sit down and I could sell him a list of merchandise. As I waited, his cigar stirred my thoughts. I told myself: I must ask whether this man’s store is covered by an insurance company, for its condition exposes it to fire. “When I sat down and began asking what goods he needed, I said, ‘Are you insured?’ “‘Yes, insured with that one.’ He pointed toward one side of the store. “I did not understand his gesture. I thought he was pointing to a calendar hanging on the wall that bore the name of the company insuring him, so I asked no further questions. I resumed business, pen in hand, writing down the articles he ordered. “Halfway through, the thought of insurance returned. I repeated my question. “‘You told me your store is insured, but I did not understand which insurance company covers it.’ “He pointed again. ‘I told you, with that one. That one—there! Do you not see him?’ “I followed the straight line of his finger and found nothing but a picture. Too embarrassed to ask for more explanation, I continued my work. When I had finished writing the order, which amounted to about five thousand dollars, I folded the list and put away my samples. Then I stood hesitant and perplexed, like a man who has forgotten something, although I had forgotten nothing. I remained there in a daze while my customer waited for me to shake his hand, bid him farewell, and leave. “At last I said, ‘Before I go, allow me to copy down the name of the company that insured your store. I need it for my books. I must know the companies that cover every customer’s premises.’ “He laughed. ‘How strange you are! I told you—with that one. With that one. Do you not see him?’ “‘I see nothing but a picture.’ “‘Yes, a picture. But it is the icon of Saint Anthony, patron of our village church.’[20] “Here began a comic tale, and my anxiety eased a little. First I laughed heartily at my customer’s simplicity. Then, with a faintly contemptuous tone, I asked, ‘Does Saint Anthony perhaps own an insurance company? What premium does he charge per thousand?’ “‘People kept advising me to buy insurance, and I kept putting it off until I had no excuse left. Every agent who approached me wanted a hundred and fifty dollars. So I thought: Instead, I shall send Saint Anthony a hundred dollars every year. He will protect my store better than any human being, for his miracles are famous and he is the protector of our village. I shall save fifty dollars and benefit my country and its saint.’ “‘But if your store burns, how will Saint Anthony compensate you? He takes a hundred dollars every year and will not give you a cent if, God forbid, the shop catches fire. The companies take a hundred and fifty, but they pay you every cent you lose in a fire.’ “For two full hours I sat enlightening that customer’s vision. I made him understand that the issue was not protection. Saint Anthony was a great worker of miracles, but he did not compensate those who suffered losses. Companies offered no protection from fire, but they guaranteed the loss. I did not leave until I had explained the whole matter and persuaded him to summon an insurance agent and obtain coverage.[21] “That year my poor customer’s store burned. A week later I received news that the company had compensated him for a loss of twenty thousand dollars. Inside his letter he enclosed a bank draft settling his entire account with me. I wrote that he should take a lesson from what had happened and remember insurance before establishing his second store. Had God’s mercies not brought me to him that day to illuminate his vision and transfer his insurance from Saint Anthony to a company, then he and the labor of his many years would now be in that saint’s keeping. “Exactly one year later, his store burned again. The government summoned me to his town as one of his largest creditors; he owed me twelve thousand dollars. I remained there two days and returned to New York exactly as I had gone, while my customer went to prison accused of setting fire to his store deliberately. The police had found a special candle used to ignite it. By the time the fire engines arrived, the flames had devoured everything green and dry.[22] “Under questioning he confessed that he had set the fire to collect thousands of dollars from the insurance companies. He told the court that I was the cause, and so it summoned me to testify. I told the judge the story from beginning to end. Its end was that I came back from that town having lost the profits and labor of fifteen years to that customer. Such was the price of opening a blind man’s eyes, guiding a lost man, and leading a simpleton onto the path of knowledge.” My friend Ilyās al-Biqāʿī concluded the story, which affected me deeply: “And you blame me for changing from the Ilyās you knew into the Ilyās you now see and hear about—the man who misleads people and plunges them deeper into error! “If only he had remained insured with Saint Anthony. Better still, if only I had never opened his eyes and guided him to the true insurance that taught him to commit crimes.” NOTES [20] Mār is a Syriac-derived honorific for a saint. The story does not identify which Saint Anthony the village church honored; Anthony the Great is especially prominent in Eastern Christian tradition. [21] The Arabic repeatedly uses al-sūkirtāh, an immigrant loanword for insurance, probably related to Ottoman Turkish sigorta and ultimately Italian sicurtà. Because the plot depends on the concept rather than the foreign sound, the translation uses “insurance.” [22] “Devoured the green and the dry” is an Arabic idiom for indiscriminate or total destruction. 4. Simʿān the Votary That is what they call him today: “Simʿān the Votary.” Before he emigrated to America, his name was simply Simʿān. No one knew his family name, but his abominations made him so famous that his given name rendered a surname unnecessary. Throughout that Syrian district, “Simʿān” was enough to mean a man of enormous strength who lived in mountain caves, lay in wait for travelers, killed them, and robbed them of their possessions. After years of this bitter life, he wanted to repent but failed. The people of his village did not believe his repentance, and the government paid it no heed. Its men pursued him from village to village until his livelihood was cut off and he nearly starved, with no hope of escaping such an existence. And so Simʿān emigrated. How he obtained the necessary expense money needs no explanation. A man accustomed to a practice who wishes to abandon it but cannot will inevitably return to it. When a thief repents and then needs money, he becomes a thief again. Thus it was with Simʿān. Necessity called him to emigrate to America to escape his wretched circumstances and the government’s severe pressure. Despite thoughts of repentance, he was forced back onto unlawful paths to satisfy his need. Simʿān came to America. From Syrians he met in Marseille and aboard ship—men who had already been to America and were now emigrating a second time—he had studied the life Syrians led there. He learned that a man like him could make no move unless he accepted life as a hired laborer content with bare subsistence. Before setting foot on dry land, therefore, he had resolved to launch a grand project by which he would collect a great deal of money from his countrymen scattered across the length and breadth of America. He had been in New York only a few days when he found addresses for people he knew in the interior. He went to them and stayed in their homes. Contrary to all they expected, he appeared a model of chastity, gentleness, and meekness. Once reputation begins to move, it outruns the wind. The report spread that Simʿān had come to America to atone for the sins he had committed in Syria; that he had repented before God and vowed the rest of his life to His service; and that he had therefore come to collect votive offerings from his countrymen for a national church to be built in his village. Wretched Simʿān, come to America to collect offerings! And why not? A doubter had only to spend five minutes with him to see that he truly had changed from a devil of hell into an earthly angel. Here was a humble man who began his meal by making the sign of the cross and ended it with prayer; who sat among company without speaking unless questioned; who did not intrude into private affairs and said only what pleased everyone; who repeatedly invoked God’s signs and obedience to Him in every circumstance; who, whenever someone’s name was mentioned, implored Almighty God to grant that person success; and who, when someone bestowed an offering upon him, poured out fervent prayers in return. This behavior and the rest of its kind more astonished those who knew him, or knew of him, than would the sight of the morning star arriving in a chariot of fire beside Christ. In the lands of emigration he was therefore named “Simʿān the Votary”: he had vowed himself to Almighty God, repented of his error, and put his faith in the world to come.[23] Under this name his fame flew abroad. He began traveling through America from town to town and state to state, mingling with people and showing them perfect meekness. He invited them to consecrate a little money to God’s service in exchange for his consecration of his entire life. His reputation reached the old country. There the report spread among the whole population that Simʿān had vowed his life to the Lord’s service. At first they found it hard to believe, but news arriving in succession from every quarter confirmed the story until everyone trusted it. To them the name Simʿān came to signify repentance and remorse instead of vice in all its branches. Simʿān persevered in his work, encouraged by people’s enthusiasm for his project and their concerted efforts to assist him. In some places they even formed committees on his behalf and appointed delegations to accompany him from house to house as he collected whatever generous hands would give. People showered money on him: some as offerings, some as personal gifts for his expenses. Simʿān put it all into a single pocket, telling the donors he had not come to America to collect for himself but for God; he therefore mixed it together so that all might enter God’s treasury. His power over people’s minds came from the fact that they had known him as a thief and highwayman and now saw him pious and vowed to God. Strangers who knew little about him asked many questions. Some requested a letter of authorization from a bishop, priest, or society. He could find no answer, but called on those around him for help. They told the people his glorious history and how he had changed from a devil into an angel, from a wolf into a lamb. That was enough to ward off questions and did the work of a thousand permits, papers, or commissions. In the final year, however, Simʿān sensed people turning away from his project. He grew afraid to enter large gatherings because some would ask how much he had collected. He answered only that he had not yet counted it and that God’s blessings would diminish the total if he did. Others asked whether he had sent any of the money home. To avoid answering, he would turn the conversation from America to China and flee any deeper discussion of a subject he hated to open for fear of investigation. At last Simʿān resolved to depart and return home. He made his way to New York supplied with prayers from women and men. All hoped for their reward in the next world, envied his standing in the realm of piety and righteousness, and hoped that, in return for what they had donated, God would benefit them through Simʿān’s prayers. He had acquired the money in America by the sweat of the collection bag.[24] Simʿān the Votary returned to his country in 1903. His first act was to enter his native village as a celebrated man renowned for virtue. The next day every inhabitant visited him. They all became his relations and friends, and he became close to all and beloved by everyone. No one any longer feared his wickedness or avoided him. Before a month had passed, Simʿān began to build. Rumor announced that he had started the church. Whenever someone questioned him, he nodded without opening his mouth. Their amazement was great when the building rose above its foundations and revealed itself as a house, not a church. Rumor began again: with the money collected in America, Simʿān was building a house for himself instead of a house for the Lord. The news reached America. People marveled, regretted what they had done for him and the honor and celebration they had bestowed, and reproached one another for having fallen prey to his trick and failing to investigate him from the beginning. Simʿān the Votary is still alive and provided for. Although the war years carried off nine-tenths of the people in his village, he and his family survived, and his fortune multiplied many times over.[25] A fellow villager who returned from America after the Armistice visited him and asked about the donated funds.[26] Simʿān said he had used them to build a house for the Lord and had taken up residence in it because the Lord does not dwell in houses. Since he himself had vowed his person to the Lord in atonement for his sins, he was obliged to inhabit the house he had built from donations to God’s house. The visitor asked, “What did you think of the Syrian emigrants in America?” “They have sound hearts and do not turn away anyone who asks—with the exception of a few who acquired a lack of religion in America. They mock public projects and care nothing for their homeland.” “And you blame them?” “Yes, I blame them because they obstruct people who have hopes for their homeland. Had it not been for those godless philosophers, I would have collected enough to erect a church in this village. But the amount I gathered would not have built one corner of a church.” “That is why, it appears, you built yourself a house with the money, so it would not go to waste. Is that right?” “Yes. For that very reason.” “You are right. How good the emigrants’ hearts are, and how innocent their intentions! Still, I pray that the number among them who have vowed their lives to the Lord, as you have, may increase. Perhaps then the emigrants will learn and take warning.” NOTES [23] The title printed by Hindawi is Simʿān al-Nādir, “Simʿān the Rare/Extraordinary.” The story repeatedly derives his epithet from nadhr, a religious vow, and calls him nādhir, one who has made such a vow. “The Votary” preserves the governing pun rather than the title’s literal adjective. [24] A comic deformation of “by the sweat of his brow”: the Arabic says ʿaraq al-qirba, literally “the sweat of the waterskin/bag.” The labor is performed not by Simʿān’s brow but by the receptacle into which donations are gathered. [25] “The war years” are the First World War. Ottoman Syria suffered wartime requisitioning, blockade, epidemic, and the catastrophic famine of 1915–18. Haddad’s “nine-tenths” is the narrator’s local figure, not a general demographic estimate. [26] That is, after the armistice ending Ottoman participation in the First World War in 1918. 5. Clotheslines New York is a mighty city. It contains three times the population of Syria from al-ʿArīsh to the Taurus Mountains and from the sea to the desert.[27] A man accustomed to open space cannot enjoy life in the cage of twentieth-century civilization. Many elderly men brought to New York regretted their coming. They sat in a corner of the apartment, lamented their fate, and cursed the hour in which they had reached a country that, despite all its grandeur, did not equal their hopes and imaginings. To an old-fashioned son of Syria, riding a donkey to the pond, walking to the vineyard through dust and mud, and sleeping on the meadow at noon while the sun’s rays set inanimate matter ablaze are lovelier than standing on Broadway, where streetcars, automobiles, and carriages crowd together and passersby turn this way and that in search of a gap through which they can reach their destination safely. A hut of branches standing in the vineyard is lovelier for sleep than a bed in a house into which the sun does not enter for one minute of the year. Sitting at the window of a Syrian house, where the gaze stretches for miles over hills and valleys, is lovelier than the fifty-eight stories of the Woolworth Building.[28] The qumbāz, in which a man may sit as he pleases—cross-legged or squatting, now reclining, now stretched at full length, without anything pulling at his calves, thighs, or knees—is lovelier and gentler than bondage in the chains of trousers.[29] Uncle Abū Ghānim kept writing to his sons in New York and pressing them to bring him over. Although they were prospering in business, they saw no reason to do so. They hoped to return home and rejoin him once they had collected enough money to spare them the hardships of life. But he persisted until they agreed to send for him, saying they would spend a few years together and then all go home if he did not like life in America. On his way to New York, Uncle Abū Ghānim contemplated America’s grandeur as his imagination drew it from all he had heard. He hoped only to arrive safely; if he died a week later, it would not matter, for he would have achieved his wish and visited paradise. From the moment he arrived, however, he began to feel that his imagination had deceived him. He could find no trace in New York of the country he had pictured. Within days he felt a powerful aversion to America’s grandeur and an immense longing for his village, empty of every mark of civilization. Uncle Abū Ghānim did not work in New York; his sons had no need of their elderly father’s labor. From the day he arrived, their only concern was his happiness, comfort, and distraction from homesickness. Whenever one of them had a free moment, he took his father to one of New York’s spectacles, parks, or great museums to entertain him and raise his spirits. Surely, the son thought, his father must admire the grandeur and immensity he saw. These sights would occupy his mind and thoughts until he no longer remembered the village and the homeland. Yet in all the immense wonders of invention, manufacture, and history upon which his eyes fell, Uncle Abū Ghānim saw nothing astonishing. When he walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and saw the great steamships passing beneath it, the endless trains, the streetcars coupled together, and the racing carriages, he told the son accompanying him that the little bridge over the irrigation ditch on the road to the vineyard was lovelier than all of this. A single scoop of that stream’s water was better than everything in America, and washing one’s feet in its cold current delighted the soul more than all this magnificence and grandeur. When another son brought him back from Bronx Park on the elevated railway, the son asked what he thought of the train. His stomach rising and falling, head spinning, and soul ready to expire, the old man answered that the donkey he used to ride from his village to the next was more beautiful in his eyes than all America’s trains and carriages. When his sons insisted that he put on a collar and knot a tie so that they could attend church, the poor old man nearly wept with rage. He spared neither America nor its churches his curses, nor his fate and delusion his maledictions and blasphemies. “What kind of life do you lead in this hellish country? Back there is the land of rest: no tie around the neck, no knot on the throat, no chains at the waist, no shackles on the legs. Ah, my country! If time would only let me return and live one week beneath its sky, then let me die—my eye would be satisfied, and I could die content.” Uncle Abū Ghānim’s complaints continued for about a year. His hatred of everything in America increased by the day, while his sons spent whatever they could to entertain him and lift the cares crowding his head. They tried in vain to erase what had been printed on the pages of his brain: everything grand in America was unremarkable, while Syria’s simplicity and freedom from monuments of greatness made it the Garden of Delight. Uncle Abū Ghānim became proverbial as the man who found nothing in America to admire. Whenever he sat with people at an evening gathering or a visit, he spent the time debating that everything in our country was lovelier and its counterpart here neither wonderful nor great. A muleteer’s mule was better than a twentieth-century train; the bridge over the irrigation ditch was lovelier than Brooklyn Bridge; the vineyard road sweeter than Fifth Avenue; the goat pasture more charming than Central Park; sleep beneath the oak more restful than sleep in the White House. So ran the arguments of a man past sixty, whose country—however much he might once have complained of it—had become everything in his life, indeed life itself. For this reason, his conversations became entertainment. Listeners laughed at his comparisons between Syria’s simple condition and America’s landmarks and inventions. Never once did he concede that anything in America was marvelous, with a single exception. It happened at a crowded evening gathering. At the end, after he had finished diminishing the value of every great American object and invention, one of those present asked, “Uncle Abū Ghānim, for God’s sake tell us: in all America, have you seen nothing that amazes you?” Uncle Abū Ghānim closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them, nodded slowly twice, cleared his throat, adjusted his seat, and opened his mouth. “In everything I have seen in this country, only one thing has baffled me: the clotheslines. I have seen washing hung on lines from one house to another across a great distance. How did the laundress manage to hang the things there? I could not solve it. I said to myself, walking a rope is no easy matter. Besides, the line is too weak to carry a woman holding clothes to hang. Suppose she can grip the line with one hand and move to the middle—how can she hang the washing and fasten it to the rope with only the other hand? That is what baffled me. That is what amazed me!”[30] There is no need to describe what happened among the listeners after Uncle Abū Ghānim spoke. The host began begging them to lower their voices, lest the police come upstairs and reprimand them for the noise. When the company had eaten its fill of laughter, Uncle Abū Ghānim resumed: “By God, I am returning home this year. I shall make the boys use all our money to buy clothesline in America. We can sell it at immense profit in every Syrian city.” Someone answered, “But you must also buy the hands that hang the washing on those lines.” NOTES [27] The geographical formula imagines Syria broadly: al-ʿArīsh lies in northern Sinai; the Taurus range forms the northern boundary of the historical Syrian region; the Mediterranean and the Syrian Desert mark west and east. [28] The Woolworth Building at 233 Broadway opened in 1913. It was commonly described as fifty-five stories, but some contemporary methods counted fifty-eight; Haddad gives fifty-eight. [29] A qumbāz is a long, loose Levantine robe, usually worn over trousers. Haddad contrasts its freedom of movement with the fitted Western suit. [30] Tenement clotheslines were commonly run between buildings on pulleys, allowing laundry to be clipped on from a window and then drawn outward. Abū Ghānim imagines that the laundress must walk the line. 6. Nothing to It America is the greatest school in which a person may master the sciences of life and acquire practical experience that enables him to enter the global struggle—an education no school, college, or university can give. Yet a tremendous social epidemic often appears in this great school. Its symptoms are swelling in the veins of the neck and a narrowing of the brow. Physicians have investigated the epidemic without discovering its origin or penetrating its mysteries. It has remained hidden from them, and they can prescribe no treatment to erase it from existence. One Syrian emigrant contracted this grievous disease a year after arriving in an inland American city. It came by contagion. One day he visited a friend’s house and found him reading an Arabic newspaper. The visitor could manage only simple reading, but he sat beside his friend and joined him. Both men were delighted by a debate between the newspaper’s proprietor and a colleague—or rather, by the exchange of insults and abuse. They began glorifying the article’s author for the strength of his polemical powers and his excellence in using wounding words. They yearned to know what the opposing writer would say in reply to what they had read in al-Sanāʾ. They therefore agreed that Nakhla al-Ṭabṭābī would subscribe to the second newspaper, Manār al-Umma. In this way they could enjoy both sides of the debate, savor the replies and responses—what So-and-so said about Such-and-such, and what the latter said in return—and then pronounce which man had excelled.[31] Five days later Manār al-Umma arrived at Nakhla al-Ṭabṭābī’s lodging, while al-Sanāʾ continued to reach his friend, Dīb Abū Ghānim. Every day the two met and read both newspapers with close attention and exquisite pleasure. Sometimes they disagreed and sometimes they concurred over which of the two debaters—or rather, abusers—had the stronger argument. The friends continued in this fashion until their desire to read Arabic newspapers turned into partisan allegiance, each man supporting the paper to which he subscribed. Their meetings were no longer held for the usual pleasure of reading but to dispute which newspaper struck the chord of truth and which journalist possessed the more powerful language and better-supported case. The poisonous microbe grew stronger in the brains of both readers until it nested there and built magnificent palaces. Its first action was to pluck the strings of their zeal. Whenever either man read his newspaper, he joined the proprietor with his looks and outstripped him with his curses. Each wished that he might enter the journalists’ arena and knock the other newspaperman flat. From there the microbe led them gradually to quarrels and then to enmity. At last the two friends became enemies. When one saw the other, he turned his face away or spat on the ground while muttering words so faint that the ears of his own lips could hardly hear them. Their hostility reached the point at which each wanted to contrive the other’s downfall. A few days later al-Sanāʾ arrived. Dīb Abū Ghānim nearly lost his mind with joy when he saw his name at the foot of a two-column article. He read it repeatedly, then carried the paper to his neighbors, delight filling his face and making his heart leap and dance. He thrust it upon them so that they might read his article against the proprietor of Manār al-Umma. When he entered one Syrian’s home and handed over the issue, the man answered that he could not read. But he asked Dīb to read the article aloud. For nearly an hour, Dīb spelled out the words. He would begin a sentence, reach the middle, then start it again until he succeeded in crossing it with some fragment of meaning. Sometimes he swallowed a word or two; sometimes he vomited one or two words from his mouth to cover his condition. At other moments he shook his head and cursed the newspaper’s agent for changing some of the language. The truth was that Mr. Dīb Abū Ghānim had written the proprietor of al-Sanāʾ to say that he stood with him and wished he knew how to write, so that he might give the enemy journalist a sound roasting. The proprietor of al-Sanāʾ thereupon composed an article that would make the old women of Wāʾil dance and signed Dīb Abū Ghānim’s name to it.[32] Thus arose our friend Dīb’s joy. News reached Nakhla al-Ṭabṭābī of what yesterday’s friend and today’s enemy, Dīb Abū Ghānim, had written in al-Sanāʾ. Rage blazed within him. First the fire of envy consumed his liver; then the microbe played with his brain. He abandoned his work and went from Syrian to Syrian asking what they had read under Dīb’s signature. He tried to find a copy of al-Sanāʾ but failed, since Dīb was its only subscriber. Nakhla’s eyes refused sleep all night. He rose repeatedly from bed, seeking an outlet for the fire in his heart and a way to take revenge on his neighbor. At last God made the matter easy for him. “How strange!” he thought. “I know Dīb can scarcely spell out words when he reads. How did he write a newspaper article?” Then he told himself that if Dīb could compose articles, Nakhla al-Ṭabṭābī—that is, he himself—could write a whole volume. If there were errors, the newspaper’s proprietor would correct them. Whoever keeps to the road reaches his destination. Nakhla took a pen in his right hand and wrote an enormous letter in lines that resembled the rivers on a map. He stuffed it full of insults and curses against the proprietor of al-Sanāʾ and its correspondent, Dīb Abū Ghānim. When he finished, he breathed freely and rejoiced beyond measure. Then he put it in an envelope and sent it by post to Manār al-Umma. It traveled on auspicious wings and reached the newspaper office, where the staff greeted it with cheers and celebration. Needless to say, for five days Nakhla kept asking himself whether Manār al-Umma would publish his letter. Then the issue arrived. The instant he read his signature beneath an entire page, he became delirious with joy. His steps carried him over the ground like a partridge on foot, in and out of one house after another, until he had driven the contents of his letter into the head of every Syrian in town. Nakhla and Dīb’s quarrel spread through the Syrian community of that city. The people split into two camps: this man wrapped himself in the banner of al-Sanāʾ’s proprietor, that man in the banner of Manār al-Umma’s. Syrian gatherings in homes and shops came to resemble the stock exchange: shouting was sovereign, fists pounding tables commanded the cavalry, and curses and insults were massed armies. At last the non-Syrian neighbors complained to the police. Matters continued until hostility took root between the parties, with one useful result: both newspapers circulated throughout the town. Every Syrian, whether he could read or not, asked to subscribe to the paper of his faction, sometimes for one copy and sometimes for more. The months passed, Dīb’s writings wrestling Nakhla’s across the newspaper pages, until the causes of the dispute disappeared. The sensible men of New York—or those who feared for their hides beneath the newspaper proprietors’ whips—met in a salon and decided to reconcile the journalists. By a political stratagem, they managed to bring the two opposites together. They made peace between them and pressed a handsome check into each man’s hand. Both newspapers reported the incident in their columns. Each explained that its hostility toward its colleague had resulted from a misunderstanding and that impersonal debate remained indispensable. It therefore bore no rancor toward its neighbor or its proprietor. Since every cause of disagreement had vanished, each paper shook the other’s hand in brotherhood to raise this beloved community toward the hoped-for summits of progress and advancement. Reader, do not ask how much disgust this news produced in Dīb, Nakhla, and every Syrian in the town where they lived. The people were astonished by a reconciliation that came at the wrong time and spoiled the pleasure they had taken in reading Arabic newspapers. After a few days, they all remained hostile to one another, only now without gatherings or debates. One by one, however, they returned the newspapers to their proprietors, excusing themselves on the ground that they could not subscribe at present. The two journalists met in a salon. “How is business?” one asked the other. “During the debate, it could not have been better!” “Yes, mine was the same. But now returned copies increase every day.” “It appears the people enjoy newspapers only when there is a fight.” “If debate promotes circulation, why should we not debate?” “That is my view. Let us begin tomorrow. I shall start with an article straight from the bottom of the cauldron.”[33] At an evening gathering, I found myself among a group that included a man reading an Arabic newspaper with intense eagerness, wholly indifferent to the company’s conversation. I approached and handed him an issue I had kept in my pocket because it contained the most eloquent article I had ever read on its subject, entitled “Our Syrian Life.” “You seem to enjoy reading,” I said. “Take this issue and read that article.” He accepted it. After laboring over the title and first line, he folded the paper and returned it. “Nothing to it.”[34] He resumed the newspaper he had been reading. I looked to see what subject had captured his ardor in the middle of that crowded gathering. Beneath the title “That Despicable Journalist,” I saw lines of print. I returned to my place repeating his phrase—“Nothing to it”—and never again thrust myself into other people’s affairs. NOTES [31] The titles appear to be satirical inventions. Al-Sanāʾ means “Splendor” or “Radiance”; Manār al-Umma means “The Nation’s Beacon.” [32] Wāʾil is the eponymous ancestor of major Arab tribal groupings. The mock-heroic phrase means an article so stirring that even the tribe’s old women would dance. [33] Syrian colloquial min kaʿb al-dist, literally “from the bottom of the cauldron,” intensifies what follows: the bottom is the hottest and blackest part. Here it promises a maximally fierce article. [34] Colloquial mā fīhā shī can mean “there is nothing in it,” “it contains nothing worthwhile,” or “it is nothing.” The title and final repetition exploit all three senses. 7. Money Talks In his first two years in America, Mūsā al-Badal was blessed with a considerable fortune. Syrian emigration was still writing the first page of its history. People estimated his wealth at fifty thousand dollars, and some placed him above even that station. The truth was that he himself did not know exactly how much he had. Wealth had come upon him in an instant, giving him no time for counting and calculation. His Excellency had never hoped for such riches; they came unbidden, thanks to circumstances and accidents—and how many of those this country contains! Having reached this degree of wealth, he opened a proper commercial establishment. He employed a bookkeeper and an assistant, appointed agents in several European and Asian countries, and accumulated great stocks of merchandise. He opened a bank account and began buying and selling. Though merchants customarily closed their shops at six, His Excellency ate supper at the store and then resumed work until after ten. He labored with perfect diligence all day and part of the night. When the new year came, he inventoried the store and made up his accounts. He discovered that he had not made thousands of dollars; on the contrary, he was several hundred short of covering his personal expenses. He did not reflect that the first year was one of establishment, on which no great hope of large profits should be placed. Accustomed to making fifty thousand dollars in two years, he despised the proper store and regretted his former condition. Then he could take a case of Istanbul goods and sell it unopened for a thousand-dollar cash profit, with no bookkeeping and no expenses for premises or workers. He therefore made a change: he dismissed the bookkeeper and assistant with his blessing and remained in the store as bookkeeper and everything else. Had he been able to dispose of the merchandise and return to his former condition, he would not have hesitated. But how could he? He was entangled with a bank and customers who owed him money on enormous accounts, while agents had claims against him and orders in hand. The poor man was forced to remain a proper merchant for another year, followed by a third, fourth, and fifth. Each year he ate his fingers in regret at having entered commerce, though broad fields of profit lay outside it and beyond the route of formal shops. He longed to escape that ill-fated predicament but could find no passage out with his original capital. Whenever escape appeared possible, he narrowed the circle of his business. Like the snail who says, “My house is high upon my back,” he moved every year to a smaller store, economizing in the belief that by conquering expenses he would increase profits. He did not understand that he was thereby repelling profit and sentencing it to keep its distance. Mūsā al-Badal carried his burden for about twenty years, throughout which his wealth was still estimated at fifty thousand dollars. Whenever he grasped his condition, he told himself: “Strange! In those days, with fifty dollars of capital, I made fifty thousand in two years. Then, with fifty thousand dollars, I failed to make fifty dollars in twenty years!” This riddle of riddles Mūsā could neither solve nor explain. He thought only of expenses. Every year he tightened the noose around himself further, until at last he closed the store and became a moneylender. In moneylending, Mūsā found that the door to immense wealth had opened before him. He discovered that he now possessed an honored station among his people, especially the merchants. These were the same men whom he once pestered and humbly begged to favor him over others, to oblige him by purchasing his goods—and who showed him no mercy. Once he became a banquier, however, they were like butter and sugar with him.[35] Wherever they met him, they shook his hand with extraordinary eagerness, asked after his health and his family, followed their questions with good wishes, promised visits to his home, and performed every other kind of courtesy. Mūsā received this treatment with all his heart and lungs. He drew breaths that lasted for minutes while cursing the trade in which he had suffered for years without profit and had been despised and rejected. He contemplated the position he attained after liquidating his business and becoming a moneylender, extending loans to this man and that. Now people kissed his hands so that he might trust them; before, he had kissed their hands front and back so that they might prefer him to the devil and help him move his merchandise. But no condition lasts forever. The year 1907 brought its financial storm to New York commerce. The Syrian market shook, and a succession of bankruptcies followed, most of them among the Syrian “banker’s” customers.[36] Mūsā emerged from the whirlwind reconciled to the loss of three-quarters of his fortune and all the friends whom his late wealth and prestigious occupation had made for him. The prestige quickly dissolved. Friends became adversaries, and the eager affection once displayed at meetings turned into hatred, loathing, and rancor that could never be erased. Not many months ago, a group—mostly former friends of Mūsā al-Badal who are now proprietors of commercial establishments—wanted to convene a meeting of the community’s leading men to discuss an important matter. They wrote down the names of numerous merchants, men of letters, young men, and satchel peddlers. When I mentioned Mūsā al-Badal, a single answer came from every mouth: “Him? What use is he?” “What do you mean, what use is he? Is he not a man? Was he not a great merchant and moneylender whose shop people crowded, among whom the happiest of the happy was the one who won favor in his eyes?” Again a single answer came from all of them: “Yes, he was—long ago. Today he is worth nothing. He lost his money, and no one cares about him.” I had often heard people repeat the American proverb “Money talks,” but I never gave it the place our people did until that meeting.[37] Then I became certain that, among them, a person is measured neither by his two small things—his heart and tongue—nor by his two great things—his soul and mind—but by one thing alone: his money. NOTES [35] Haddad places the French banquier beside the Arabic ṣarrāf. The role is closer to a private moneylender or informal banker than to a salaried bank employee. “Like butter and sugar” is a colloquial image of intimate sweetness and harmony. [36] The Panic of 1907 was a severe U.S. banking and financial crisis centered in New York in October and November 1907. Haddad represents its consequences inside the Syrian commercial network. [37] The phrase appears in English in the Arabic text, transliterated and immediately glossed by Haddad’s title. The closing sentence also rewrites classical Arabic maxims about a person’s worth residing in the heart and tongue. 8. Buried Alive From the beginning of Syrian emigration to America, its road became a current that swept away Syrians by the dozen, the hundred, and the thousand. In the early years, it had been limited to people seeking a livelihood, people whose country closed in upon them and who sought room for themselves in the New World. But the current began to seize great numbers of other people from Syria and pour them into that world. Ḥabīb al-Zaytūnī had scarcely completed his advanced studies at the college in Beirut when he became drunk on the wine of emigration.[38] Through the eye of his learning he saw that his country was poor, offering neither object for hope nor room for ambition, while wealthy America opened a broader field in which he could ascend to the summit of his aspirations. His father wept and his mother wailed whenever he spoke of going to the New World, but he would not abandon the idea. How many ways his father tried to distract him from it! At one moment he tempted him with marriage; at another he promised to transfer all his property and income into his son’s name. But Ḥabīb would not deviate by a hair from his resolve, and his mother’s entreaties went to the winds. Thus Ḥabīb set out for America carrying his diploma and a sum of money. When he entered New York, acquaintances marveled. He dressed better than they and even wore an American Beauty rose on his breast.[39] He looked like a man who had spent many years in America, able to move from one street to another by virtue of the English he spoke as fluently as Arabic. Within days he had made his acquaintances ashamed of themselves. Despite being veterans of America, they could answer none of his questions. When he asked, “Where is the Hippodrome?” faces displayed only bewilderment; they thought the word must mean some fantastic beast in the “zoological garden,” as they called it.[40] When he asked whether anyone knew the location of the public museum, one man said he knew no museum but Castle Garden, where people of every race assembled.[41] For all these reasons, Ḥabīb al-Zaytūnī did not remain long among his Syrian brethren. They, for their part, had grown tired of his philosophizing and feared for his future in this country. His feet had scarcely touched American soil when he began asking about entertainments and spectacles instead of looking for work or a trade that would provide his daily bread and allow him to save a few dollars for the days ahead. Ḥabīb left the Syrians and began studying American life. His pocket was still warm with the liras his father had given him. Before the first half-year ended, however, our friend had been “cleaned out.” He returned to his Syrian brethren to ask how he ought to work. They generously advised him, explaining that America needed strong arms, not learning or airs of greatness. Though he did not agree, approaching need forced him to accept their view. His first step toward work was to accompany a young man from his village who was a peddler. The man carried satchels, went from door to door selling his goods, and by ordinary standards his business was doing well. To Ḥabīb’s misfortune, the peddler did not “make a cent” that day, contrary to custom.[42] He took a bad omen from his companion and decided that the day’s failure resulted from Ḥabīb’s presence, especially his fine clothes and ornamental rose. For his part, Ḥabīb hated and despised the trade. He told himself that even if all the world’s wealth hung upon this occupation, he would not accept it. After thanking his friend, he said he could not join him. The friend urged him to remain and protested that one unsuccessful day meant nothing; the future would certainly open its doors to them. Ḥabīb still refused. The peddler insisted only because he saw Ḥabīb drawing back. In truth, his departure lifted a heavy weight from the man’s chest. For courtesy’s sake he pressed him first, then said, “If that is what you want, have it your way.” Ḥabīb was forced to leave New York for an inland city where a friend of his father lived. The man had learned of his arrival and wrote inviting him to work in his store. He wrote a second and third time. At first Ḥabīb was too proud to answer, but when need made itself felt, he apologized for the delay and said he would come at the end of the week. I met the young man in that city while representing a kimono factory.[43] The local merchant was one of my customers. When I saw Ḥabīb in the store, I took a liking to him and invited him to dine with me at the hotel. We spent the whole evening together. He emptied his quiver of complaints about the times and their people, especially the merchant for whom he performed every task. In the store he was bookkeeper, manager, buyer, seller, sweeper, water-pipe stuffer, and carrier of vegetables to the house, among other duties. I was saddened when he said that at month’s end, after receiving his wages, he would leave for Canada. Perhaps it held more success than the United States. He told me that his family at home had no need for him to suffer in America. Yet he had emigrated despite his parents’ insistence and tears; his pride would not let him return without the success he had promised himself. Success would come, but only with time. Later I learned that our friend’s funds had given out. He made for Canada, where his affliction increased. The country was bitterly cold, and he was slight of build. He saw nothing to satisfy his ambitions, not even a first morsel of them. A Syrian Canadian I met in New York told me that he knew Ḥabīb in a pitiable condition. The last he had heard, someone moved by compassion had given him a few dollars to return to the inland city where the merchant lived. I said to myself: Glory be to God! Time presses upon the human soul, breaks its will, and establishes its own. Five years passed without further news of him. Then distance cast me where it would and threw me into the merchant’s town. I entered the store and saw Ḥabīb. Illness had written a long book across his face, though he was well turned out and beautifully dressed. I greeted him. Before I could invite him to dinner, he insisted that I accompany him to a local restaurant. At the appointed time we met. I asked after his condition and work and begged him to tell me the story of his life. He opened his mouth, sighed deeply, and began with these words: “I am buried alive.” “Strange! You complain, though you look better off than before. Are you in pain?” “No. I complain of neither pain, hardship, nor anything of that kind. I complain of having lost something precious that was mine when you first knew me.” “Forgive my speaking without ceremony, but when I knew you, I saw you possessed nothing precious. Need ruled over you.” “I was needy, but my soul was alive. Today I am rich, and as you see, I obtained my wealth upon the tomb of my soul. I am buried alive.” “You repeat this phrase—‘buried alive.’ What do you mean?” “Know that I came to America with my academic diploma, but it gave me no help against time. After I spent all my father’s money, I was forced to work for others, against the will of a soul that refused. Before that, I tried to work as my countrymen do, whether peddling or earning wages, but found no capacity for it within myself. “My reason told me to return to my father’s house, but my pride resisted out of shame before my parents. I had left them despite their insistence that I remain in their care. After completing my education, I had given them nothing to realize their hopes. I had imagined that America was the proper field for men like me, and my hopes failed. “I struggled with my soul, but it conquered me. I took refuge in its pride while concealing a terrible revenge against it. I returned to this city and my old store. To escape domination and poverty, I humored the proprietor and married his daughter. “I killed my soul. “Today, as you see, I am master of a large store and a house with magnificent furnishings. I have a good wife, but never in my life have I looked upon her with love. Today I long to return to my former condition, when my soul was still among the living.” Poor Ḥabīb al-Zaytūnī. He truly is buried alive. NOTES [38] “The college in Beirut” may evoke the Syrian Protestant College, founded in 1866 and renamed the American University of Beirut in 1920, but Haddad does not specify the institution. [39] ‘American Beauty’ was a famous red rose cultivar and a fashionable boutonnière in the United States around 1900. [40] The New York Hippodrome, opened in 1905 on Sixth Avenue, was a vast theater celebrated for spectacular productions. The recent arrival’s knowledge of the attraction contrasts with the long-settled immigrants’ restricted urban world. [41] Castle Garden at the Battery served as New York’s immigrant processing station from 1855 to 1890 and reopened as the New York Aquarium in 1896. The speaker comically treats its gathering of ‘all races’ as a museum exhibit. [42] The Arabic uses a code-switched verb, yisannis, apparently built from English ‘cent(s)’: he failed to take in even a cent. [43] Kimonos and kimono-style garments were widely manufactured and marketed in the United States in the early twentieth century. Haddad Arabicizes the word as kīmūnā. 9. Our Tares, Not Their Wheat A young man has scarcely set foot on American soil and begun work in its broad field, success has scarcely smiled upon him, when he joins the current of forgetfulness and grows conceited about his present condition. The young Syrian enters the American arena fearful and alarmed by the country’s grandeur and ceaseless motion. Little by little he advances, until, once fully mixed among its many peoples, he imagines himself far removed from his former state. An Arabic proverb says, “Once a man learns A and B, his nose reaches the sky.”[44] It applies perfectly to many young Syrians. They learn the A of American civilization and imagine themselves its pillars, unrivaled in what they have acquired. If their claim went no further than this fancy, it would do little harm. But sometimes it leads them to deny their origins, because they imagine those origins disgraceful in foreign eyes. Such was the condition of the young Rafīq al-Mudawwar after he entered the struggle of American commerce and became capable of earning a living. In his country he had worn an ʿabāya and heavy slippers, putting on a fez when he longed for the city.[45] In America he had his clothes made by the finest tailors. Every year his trunk held four suits, each of a different color and cut. Every day he wore a collar and tie, with socks matching the colors of his necktie and shirt. At home, his companions had been unable to read or write, and in his whole life there he had never dared be alone with a girl. In America, his colleagues were among the handsomest and best-mannered young men, and several beautiful girls loved him and envied one another his company. But this way of life did not permit Rafīq’s finances to advance. Friends, girlfriends, excursions, entertainments, and what they called “sporting” devoured every dollar left from his wages after personal expenses.[46] His father wrote frequently, asking God to prosper him so that his needy family might prosper too. He tried to distill compassion from his son’s heart for his father’s numerous household. He reminded him that the neighbor to whom they had mortgaged the house for the fifty liras of Rafīq’s passage money tightened the noose around his father whenever they met. The father feared the neighbor would force him in court to transfer the house if he did not repay principal and interest. With time, none of this had the slightest effect on Rafīq’s conscience. His answers contained only promises to wait for the better opportunity that was bound to appear. At last his father’s patience was exhausted. He sold the house and came to America with the family. He knew that his son had become Americanized, forgotten his origins, cast off his family, and ceased to care whether his kin lived or died. When Rafīq learned of his father’s intention, letter followed letter trying to stop him. Conditions in America were bad, he claimed, and their coming would bring misery upon themselves and him. But the father could no longer endure his condition. Despite his son’s warnings, he sold the house, paid the debt to his neighbor, and set out for America trusting in God, hoping to recover what he had lost through the fault of his eldest son. When Rafīq saw his father’s stubbornness, his heart panicked. He became inconsolable, as though struck by a thunderbolt he had never anticipated. He was forced to conceal his condition and bear the affliction. For a time he had to withdraw from his companions and avoid the paths of his social life, grudgingly saving the money his family would need upon arrival to establish a home, buy clothes, and meet other expenses. It scarcely needs saying that Rafīq’s patience ended in the first week after they arrived. His chest erupted upon them. He made them hear brutal words and lamented his fate in being their son when they looked like peasants. He was not ashamed to tell them that he felt embarrassed before foreigners when they learned these people were his family. His behavior grew worse when he failed to convince his father to wear a starched collar and tie and his mother to put on a hat and furs. His father declared that he had not come to America to dress like an American, but to work, recover his loss, and support his younger children. His mother said she was nearing old age and her youth had passed. She did not wish to imitate fashionable ladies in her appearance. She had duties toward her new home, children, and husband, and duty required thrift. If Rafīq happened to see a family member in the street, he tried either to turn back or cross to the other side lest an acquaintance pass and discover that he belonged to “those people.” He spoke to none of them except beneath the roof of their home. The father understood that no hope could be placed in Rafīq. He rolled up the sleeve of earnest labor and entered the field of work diligently. So did the mother and younger children. All worked to rise after their fall, caring for nothing in the country where they had settled but work. Once Rafīq despaired of correcting his family’s outward appearance and could tolerate them no more, he bade them farewell and departed for a city in the interior. Seven years passed with Rafīq far from his family. They had nearly forgotten him, because work left them no time for thought and because he had recoiled from them, treated them badly, and felt ashamed of the very people to whom he owed both favor and debt. In those seven years, Rafīq’s father made a fortune and bought a house for the younger children. He hoped to purchase a second at the beginning of the eighth year and open a wholesale store supplying his countrymen who peddled satchels. The younger children attended public school, and he concentrated all his care and effort on making them men of the future, free from everything that marked their elder brother. Rafīq, meanwhile, lived for himself, far from a father whose appearance was unworthy of a distinguished son like His Excellency; a mother whose clothes were cheaper than a Gypsy woman’s; and siblings who sold newspapers at crossroads like beggars’ children. He thanked God that he lived far away. Otherwise, his beloved Molly would certainly put thousands of miles between them if she discovered the kind of family from which he came. Rafīq loved Molly, and love advanced to infatuation. They had met by chance and exchanged words. Seeing her another time in the street, he lifted his hat and she greeted him. When they next met, he shook her hand and obtained her address. Then he invited her to lunch. He began writing love letters until she became his sweetheart, to whom he gave presents and whom once a week he took to moving pictures or the theater. All this time Rafīq pressed her to marry him. She refused, saying she would consent only to what pleased her father. If he learned she loved a foreigner, he would surely kill her. Once Rafīq asked permission to visit her home and request her hand. She stopped him and frightened him with the warning that her father might become angry with both of them and the consequences would be grave. When he invited her to run away, she rebuked him and nearly grew angry. He appeased her, withdrew the words, and apologized. Then Molly declared that although she loved him, her father was everything to her and his satisfaction her goal. Whatever happened, she would consider his feelings first and last. A girl who ran away with a young man was not of good stock; honorable people did no such thing. Rafīq concluded that his beloved belonged to the upper classes and therefore would act only with her family’s consent. He remembered his own family and compared their condition with that of her people as he imagined it. The matter appeared immense and terrifying. He became certain that if Molly learned about his family, she would leave him and regret her love. His passion increased until he could no longer bear it. He wrestled with the thought of going secretly to her father. Perhaps he could persuade him to approve the marriage and finish the affair. At last he said, “Let us throw this lump of clay against the wall and see if it sticks.”[47] One night his feet carried him to his beloved’s home for the first time. His heart throbbed as he went, imagining he approached the palace of a prince or king. How great was his surprise after a long walk and nearly an hour asking passersby and police officers for the street where Molly’s people lived! When he reached the number, the house before him gave the lie to his fancies. He reread the number several times, thinking himself mistaken. Once certain, he entered, already beginning to feel disgust. He knocked. A terrifying old woman leaning on a cane came out. He asked for Mr. Fritz, Molly’s father. She said he had not returned from work and would not be home until after midnight, but she invited Rafīq in to learn who he was and what he wanted. He entered a room containing only a crate by the door; a four-legged wooden table in the middle covered with dirty plates; a cooking stove in one corner; and, further inside, a bed whose mattress was covered in filth. “Who are you, mister?” “I am Rafīq Mudawwar. I came to see Mr. Fritz on a matter.” “You cannot see Mr. Fritz this evening. If you wish to tell me what you need, you may. I am Mrs. Fritz.” “You are Mrs. Fritz, Molly’s mother?” “Yes. Are you the young man who wants our daughter?” “That is not what I came to discuss. I merely wished to become acquainted with you.” Rafīq had scarcely finished when Molly entered. When their eyes met, her heart danced and nearly leaped from its place. She subdued it by gathering the strength that bewilderment lends a person in such an hour. Her face turned yellow, her lips white, and her eyes flamed red. He rose. His condition was no better, but he wished to end his mission in the most becoming way. He said he had been obliged to visit her family because he was leaving for New York that very night. News had reached him that his father had disinherited and renounced him; he had therefore come to say farewell until his return. Rafīq left that house with one hand over his nose and the other lifting both trouser cuffs to keep them from the abundant filth. He hopped until he reached the broad street, then walked on to where he could breathe freely. In truth, he did go to New York that night. That was the only true thing he had told the woman who, until that hour, had been his sweetheart. He remembered the story of the Prodigal Son told by Christ in the Gospel and resolved to return to his father and mother’s embrace.[48] When Rafīq returned, his family celebrated. His mother asked what he thought of marriage and whether he preferred an American or Syrian woman. “Mother,” he said, “our proverb says: ‘The tares of your own country before the stranger’s wheat.’ If I marry, your opinion of the bride must come before mine. And before she sits beside me, I must first make sure that she knows how to fill your water pipe.”[49] NOTES [44] Arabic: man taʿallama al-alif wa-l-bāʾ balagha anfuhu al-samāʾ. The rhyme of bāʾ/samāʾ disappears in English; the raised nose signifies conceit. [45] The ʿabāya is a loose cloak; the madrās is a heavy traditional shoe or slipper; the fez (ṭarbūsh) was urban Ottoman dress. Rafīq’s wardrobe charts the social meaning he assigns to Americanization. [46] The Arabic transliterates an English-derived immigrant expression, sbūrtins, probably “sporting” in the sense of fashionable leisure and entertainment. [47] A Levantine idiom for acting decisively and accepting the result—roughly, “let us give it a try, come what may.” [48] Luke 15:11–32. The Arabic calls him al-ibn al-shāṭir, a regional Christian usage for the Prodigal Son; shāṭir in other contexts can mean clever or capable. [49] Zawān is darnel, the “tares” of the King James Bible (compare Matthew 13:24–30). The proverb prefers even one’s homeland’s weeds to a stranger’s wheat. Haddad’s ending deliberately turns Rafīq’s reconciliation into a reactionary demand that a wife serve his mother. 10. The Long-Bearded Man America is a vast ocean. Little of it is known; what remains unknown of its world is far greater than what appears in plain sight. So it is with this country: life in it contains more secrets than thought can number or encompass. A person often marvels at the lives of certain people and asks himself: By God, how do this man and that man and the other live when they have done no work in their lives? America is the country of matter, and material things come only through work—real work in a broad arena where creatures race at a run. If one grows tired, he falls on the road. The people trample him as they pass, and he vanishes as though he never were. Yet despite America’s being the land of earnest toil, it contains people who live like everyone else although their hands have performed no work, their brows have never sweated, and their feet have not taken a single step in that practical arena. That such people live among creatures crowded together in the race and struggle for existence is a marvel indeed. I joined others in wondering how Mikhāʾīl Filfil lived. Here was a young man in the finest clothes who ate in the loveliest hotels and restaurants and spent money as though backed by the Ottoman Bank—or as though he were a son of Rockefeller, Morgan, or Astor.[50] Where did his living come from? No one knew. How could he live in extravagance and waste when all his days he was a “sniffer of air and plucker of roses”? No one knew. Meanwhile many people worked night and day, laboring while awake and raving in dreams of success, yet wrested from life only bare subsistence. Mikhāʾīl Filfil was a wonder, and many resembled him. No one knew how these people could live idly in a place where a bite of food came only through effort, dipped in the blood of the heart and sweat of the brow. When Mikhāʾīl entered America, he possessed no fortune that would let him live luxuriously without work. He was like other immigrants who arrived with provisions for a single day. But he had a natural resource: the power to invent and create stratagems. As soon as he settled in America, he understood that a young man like himself, without capital, could not open a business yielding great profits. If he wished to rise into the merchants’ ranks by wage labor, peddling, or similar work, years of weary thrift and perseverance lay ahead. He therefore avoided the occupations practiced by his Syrian brethren. Every summer he attached himself to one fair or another and rented a tent. At its entrance stood a large sign: EASTERN ASTROLOGER HE TELLS YOUR PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE Inside sat His Excellency, a turban on his head and a Bedouin cloak wrapped around his squatting body as he smoked a water pipe. Beside him stood a young American who knew not one word of Arabic and translated the astrologer “Ali Baba’s” words into English. Ali Baba, or Mikhāʾīl Filfil, knew as much English as the American youth knew Arabic. Yet both were master translators of whatever pleased, delighted, and astonished the customer—and benefited their pockets with dollars that came effortlessly and unasked. Once, while I walked along Broadway, a hand fell upon my shoulder. It stopped me and turned me around. I found myself before a man with an enormous beard, wrapped in sheepskin and wearing a tall silk hat. Our eyes met. He smiled at my look, but I was bewildered by the sight and worked my mind for about two minutes to identify him. At last memory brought me his name. “Mike! When did you grow a beard?” “By God, you recognized me. But you do not know my new name. Guess!” “Your new name? You have a new name?” “Have you not heard the name Ali Baba across the length and breadth of the country? I am he.” “You are the famous astrologer?” “I am.” “Good God! You have revealed what I spent years trying to discover: how you live and what you do.” My friend took me by streetcar to Coney Island. He brought me into his observatory, introduced me to his interpreter, sat me down, and said, “Sit here and see how your friend lives, what station he holds among the highest people, and how flocks of dollars come to him in submission.”[51] I sat overcome by amazement, watching his every movement. Then the interpreter called from behind the curtain: “Ali Baba! Ali Baba!” Mike compressed his lips, signaling me to remain silent and still. He put the turban on his head, wrapped himself in the cloak, squatted, took up the pipe stem, and began to make the water-pipe smoke. The pipe’s sound seemed to signal that the interpreter might admit the customer. Preparations were complete to receive her before the majestic expositor of human secrets, master of the reins governing nature’s mysteries. A lady entered in the interpreter’s guidance. He told her to kneel before the supreme astrologer, and she did so, the interpreter beside her. When Ali Baba was ready, he stopped smoking for a moment. I watched eagerly, studying every motion of face, hands, and feet, waiting for his lips to reveal the secrets of the lady’s past. She yearned to know the future and what might befall her, certain of its truth once she heard the secrets of her past. The interpreter prepared to catch the mysteries from the mouth of their revealer. Ali Baba opened his mouth and said in Arabic: “Tell this whore that the powder on her cheeks has nearly melted beneath the sweat pouring from her brow.” The words had scarcely left his mouth, and the interpreter was preparing to convey them in English—or no, God forgive me, his words could not be conveyed; the man was preparing to weave from his own skill phrases stuffed with trickery and confusion—when the lady sprang up on her toes, nearly shrieking, and poured curses upon the astrologer. I felt a storm about to descend upon the tent and everyone in it. How astonished I was to see our astrologer perfectly composed, as though he had said nothing! He tried to place the blame upon the lady: the fault was hers. I heard him address her in their shared Arabic: “Do you not see that I knew you were Syrian? That is why I made you hear words you do not like, in answer to your contempt for those of us who make our living from Americans.” The Syrian woman left the tent while my astrologer friend and his interpreter laughed. He told me this was the first such encounter he had had with a Syrian woman and that fate had brought me to witness the tragedy with my own eyes. The interpreter went back outside the curtain to cast his nets across the market. With his horn he would catch passersby stirred by illusion and snare those whom faith in superstition delivered into the hunters’ hands. I had scarcely calmed myself enough to resume talking with my friend, the prophet Ali Baba, when I heard the interpreter’s voice trembling with reverence in the words that announced prey in the net: “Ali Baba! Ali Baba!” Ali Baba gave the water pipe a long gurgle. The intermediary entered with a middle-aged woman whose eyes were blue and face insipid. The interpreter made her kneel at the prophet’s feet. Ali Baba stopped smoking for a moment as the interpreter repeated: “Ali Baba! Ali Baba!” It seemed these were the only Arabic words the intermediary knew. He pronounced them in a strange accent—“Ally Baba! Ally Baba!”—and used them for every question he wished to put to the prophet. The latter mumbled an Arabic answer, from which the interpreter composed whatever English suited the occasion. This time I heard Ali Baba, profiting from the earlier incident, say only, “O Lord, make it easy and not difficult! O Provider, O Knower of every condition!” I listened with all my ears to the answer the intermediary would give the woman’s question about her past. Having received the prophet’s reply, he told her she was married to a young man she loved. He had scarcely finished when the woman sprang upright in anger. “Lies! Lies!” Ali Baba immediately stood, knowing his interpreter had said something that displeased the customer. He emptied bowls of wrath over the man, threatening now to beat and kick him, now to spit upon him. The interpreter knelt trembling as though doused in cold water. When their scene ended, the lady understood that the error came not from the infallible prophet but from his intermediary. Having patiently endured his master’s punishment, the man began pleading with the lady for mercy. He had made a mistake, he said, while carrying the words from the prophet’s mouth. She was not married at all, and his master had dismissed him for the crime. The woman’s heart softened. She knelt again beside the interpreter before Ali Baba and begged him to pardon the poor man. Tears nearly poured from her eyes. Throughout, our friend Ali Baba foamed and frothed and stared savagely at his interpreter as though he meant to devour him. Seeing herself as the cause of all that had happened, the woman reached into her pocket, took three banknotes of ten dollars each from her purse, and offered them to the astrologer, imploring him to accept the money and pardon the poor man. The interpreter turned to her, kissed the hems of her clothing in gratitude, and escorted her to the door beneath ever-growing loads of praise and thanks. He returned inside. The instant his eyes met Ali Baba’s, both burst into laughter. I stood to go, but my friend Ali Baba rose, took hold of me, and said, “Wait, my friend!” “I am afraid a third incident will exhaust my patience. But I thank chance: it has shown me the source of your income, which I did not know and which made me marvel at your life.” “Have you ever seen a business like ours? Profit upon profit without capital!” “No. I have never seen a business like yours, whose entire capital is a long beard.” NOTES [50] The Imperial Ottoman Bank was a major international bank with headquarters in Constantinople; John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, and the Astors epitomized American wealth. Mikhāʾīl has no actual connection to any of them. [51] Coney Island was New York’s great popular amusement district, crowded with parks, sideshows, performers, and staged exoticism. Ali Baba’s costume and name sell an American fantasy of an undifferentiated ‘Orient.’ 11. A Son of the Age That is what the people around him call him. He is a young man who works neither to pursue an ambition in life nor to support his family back home, but to earn a little money to spend on clothing, adornment, and strutting through the streets like a bride in her chamber. Fuʾād Barzaq—or, if you wish, call him by the name he gave himself among Americans, Frank Bryan—was strange in his ways. Stranger and more astonishing still was his appearance among people. He devoted all his time to his clothes, and the Syrians therefore called him “up-to-date,” the man of the latest hour—not in his work or usefulness, but in his dress.[52] People considered him a miracle of smart appearance. In this, as a rule, they were wrong, for attention to one’s dress does not require the expenditure of precious time or the exhaustion of one’s money. Fuʾād Barzaq, however, was a young man whose entire concern in life was buying and wearing: carefully preserving the folds of his jacket and creases of his trousers, and spending nearly an hour before the mirror tying his necktie so that it would be perfectly exact, as though poured into a mold. A man who, like Fuʾād, directs all his concern toward himself and his outward appearance cares little for work. In fact, had he not needed money to maintain his elegance, his hands would never have performed a task. Thus he always had many clothes and little cash. He loved to appear in the latest style but could not always do so, since his circumstances did not permit everything he hoped. He haunted clothing stores. If he saw a beautiful necktie, he paid the price without caring how high it was because he loved the thing. Three dollars was not too much for its pistachio color, which matched his socks. On the way home he would pass a shirt shop and his soul would tell him he needed a shirt. He entered and turned over many shirts, then slapped his pocket and found only seventy-five cents. He kept out the streetcar fare and bought a shirt with the remaining seventy cents. When the band of his hat began to grow greasy, he saved dollar after dollar to buy another for ten. In the meantime he noticed that he needed shoes. Reaching into his pocket and finding only two dollars, he was forced to buy two-dollar shoes. This was the Syrians’ “up-to-date” man: the man of the hour, the man of the present minute. How many young men among them kill their time and annihilate their lives attending to such things, neither prospering nor benefiting anyone! Before his countrymen, Fuʾād affected indifference and claimed he preferred to merge with Americans. He said this but did not do it, for Americans paid little attention to a man like him. Syrians, on the other hand, believed he was somebody and were deceived by his clothes. They also regretted his condition: he spent every dollar upon his appearance and saved nothing against the black days that might force him to need others. At a dance, His Excellency met a non-Syrian girl and became her intimate friend. Association with her lifted him into the highest heavens. He often came to Syrian restaurants hand in hand with her, parading her before his companions. He spent three years with the girl. Their relationship forced him to work harder and more diligently to earn more than before, since he had to present gifts and fulfill love’s obligations by going to theaters, cafés, amusements, and elegant restaurants. At last he became attached to her and hoped she would accept him as a husband. She kept his hope alive. He began working hard, economizing where he could, and saving a little in the government bank. Within months he had about eight hundred dollars on deposit.[53] When he asked his beloved to become his formal fiancée, she requested an expensive ring. The words had scarcely left her lips when his heart flew with joy. He took her at once to a jeweler and bought a ring for eight hundred dollars—the entire sum in the bank. Fuʾād’s beloved rejoiced beyond measure. When they reached her house and he prepared to say good night, she stopped him. In his presence, she coyly asked her mother for permission to kiss him. Her mother consented. She kissed him once, and he went on his way, walking merrily upon the earth while his mind played with the angels above. He dreamed several times that night and saw his beloved kissing him and clasping him to her breast. Each time he awoke smiling, then returned to sleep so as not to waste a moment of his sweet dream-voyages with the woman who had enchanted his understanding and stolen his mind. Morning found him filled with joy and bliss. The hours of the day were longer than years at his workplace. He labored like a man possessed—or rather, he performed his work by force while his mind swam through the heavens, whispering and speaking to his beloved. When a colleague’s call awakened him, he resumed the task, but only with difficulty and effort. At the end of the day, he ate supper and then visited the barber, who adorned him as required. When the clock struck eight, he stood at the door of the house where his beloved lived with her mother. He rang the bell, rang again, and rang again. Contrary to custom, no one answered, though he had arranged to spend the evening at her home. He could devise no excuse for her failure to wait unless some great cause had intervened, yet his mind could discover no cause great enough to prevent her from remaining home to receive him as agreed. The night before he had left her flying with joy over his diamond ring, and after three years of love she had kissed him for the first time, with her mother’s permission. For more than half an hour he wavered before the door over whether to turn back. But how could he sleep that night without satisfying his desire to see his beloved? He attacked the bell again in long peals. After a long time, a neighbor emerged from the floor beside the girl’s former apartment and asked whom he wanted and why he kept ringing. Fuʾād said he wished to visit his beloved’s family. The neighbor replied that they had moved that morning. He himself had helped the girl’s mother finish several tasks because the moving wagon arrived before the household was ready. The driver had wanted to leave, saying he could not wait and lose time, but the woman clutched his arm and begged him with excessive flattery to be patient. Though the neighbor was a stranger who had never spoken with her or even seen her face before that day, she asked him to lend a hand, and he did. Fuʾād was utterly stunned. He asked whether the man knew where the family had moved. No. Did he know the driver or the moving company? Did he know anyone who knew anything about them? The answer to every question was no. The neighbor shut the door, and Fuʾād went home. All night he questioned police officers and everyone he saw along the way, but found no one who could guide him to his beloved’s new home. For weeks he tried to learn the address without success. At last he abandoned hope and decided that the ring was the root of the trouble. After this incident, Fuʾād wanted nothing to do with non-Syrian girls. Whenever he sat in company, he poured lava from his mouth upon the treachery of women of “foreign stock,” supporting his claims with practical proof that they befriended a man for his money and knew nothing of love. When he argued with an educated listener, the man answered that America was a mixture of many nations and that Syrians rarely met people from the better classes. If a Syrian associated with a girl, it was generally someone he had attached himself to at a dance or encountered by chance. Fuʾād accepted the argument and added that precisely this had happened to him: after three years, a single kiss had cost him his last installment—eight hundred dollars. NOTES [52] Haddad prints an Arabic phonetic rendering of the English “up to date” and immediately glosses it. Fuʾād’s chosen American name, Frank Bryan, is another self-conscious refashioning. [53] The Arabic says “government bank,” probably referring to the United States Postal Savings System, established in 1911 and widely used by immigrants wary of private banks. 12. Khunfushār in America The steamships that cross the Atlantic are pipes pouring creatures from the crowded Old World into a New World open for generations, where humanity may breathe with full lungs in a broad space that embraces millions of arrivals. Back and forth these pipes go between the shores of America and Europe, carrying on their decks thousands of workers and seekers after employment in the arena of labor that is America. The immigrant arrives and falls silent in astonishment before the country’s grandeur. His tongue is tied because mind and heart are occupied contemplating what civilized human thought has achieved in art, industry, and science. He looks, for example, at a skyscraper and counts its stories one by one. When he reaches fifty, after the veins of his neck have nearly stiffened, he shakes his head in wonder and continues on his way, turning back every other step to fill his eyes with the marvels of construction. An acquaintance takes him from New York to Brooklyn on the subway. Halfway there, the man tells him that the train is traveling under the depths of the sea. His heart leaps in terror and amazement. His thoughts split into branches that cannot rejoin, and he stands humbled before the human greatness whose heart circumstances have allowed him to enter. A friend stops with him at an intersection. As far as he can see, lines of automobiles move north, south, east, and west like legions without beginning or end. Thousands cross in every direction with order and attention. He imagines himself in one of God’s gardens. Throughout, the recent immigrant remains amazed. Mind and heart speak of the wonders of invention; his tongue stays frozen and cannot move. What can a weak immigrant’s mouth say before the grandeur and immensity of the New World that he sees with his own eyes? But the tongue is not tied for long. Yesterday’s silent immigrant suffers a reaction and becomes a man of many words. The age of astonishment has passed. Now he looks upon the aims of greatness as though he saw before him the oven at the entrance to his village house. When he looks upon the fifty-eight stories of the Woolworth Building, it is as though he beheld his vineyard hut—four wooden posts and walls of straw. When he rides the subway beneath the water, he no longer marvels; he might be sitting on his donkey, his legs joining the animal’s four in dragging along the face of the earth. A friend told me that his brother passed a week unable to answer a word. At first the family feared he had been struck dumb. But the week had scarcely ended when the mute became an orator of the first rank. In anyone’s presence he seized a conversation from A to Z and mixed ʿAbbās with Dabbās.[54] If anyone tried to stop him, he cared nothing for the man or his warning. He had become an authority on every art, science, and occupation—this after walking on the roof of the “subway” and wondering how it had been made from pieces of glass. Every difficult matter was now the easiest of things, and for each he possessed an explanation whose garment he alone had woven, without partner. Once, for example, a gathering was discussing Brooklyn Bridge while the City of New York was occupied with extending Manhattan Bridge. The brother seized the subject. His sibling nudged him in vain to shorten his remarks and allow someone else to speak. He continued his explanations until the gathering ended. There was no reason to marvel at the construction of great bridges, he explained; the matter was perfectly simple. Their foundations were built on cork. Sheets of it were laid on the water, the structure built on top, and the whole gradually sank until it reached the bottom. My informant did not know where his brother found such an explanation. Though unable even to read or write, the man dared plunge into the weightiest matters, making light of Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge, and all the rest. I knew Saʿd Qamar in a city in one of these states. He was an old bachelor of long standing who had emigrated to America by way of Egypt, so his tongue inclined toward the speech of the pharaohs. For twenty years in America he spoke the language of Muḥammad ʿAbduh, Aḥmad Shawqī, and Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm.[55] Saʿd Qamar did not know A from B, but his tongue was in constant motion and nothing could stop it except death. I do not know whether death succeeded. He died and was placed in his grave, and the darkness of eternity concealed him from me; I therefore cannot state the matter with certainty. Whenever the late Saʿd saw a circle of people—whatever kind and whoever its members—he sat nearby. First he lent an ear to their conversation until he could draw one end of it toward himself. Then he took hold and began, never finishing until the gathering ended and the dear friends dispersed. He became known for intruding into every subject. In conversation he was physician, philosopher, merchant—everything. Yet he did not comprehend what he was in the world of existence. He died without knowing whence he came, where he went, or why he had existed upon the dusty earth. The late Saʿd loved America because, as I once heard him say, it “opens the blind man’s heart.” In our country, the effendi, bey, bishop, priest, and teacher gave no man like him a turn to speak. Here in America, however, every person was free to say whatever he wished. The people of that city knew the late Saʿd’s nature. They became fond of his conversation and found amusement and pleasure in the comic forms of his explanations, proofs, and authorities. They would egg him on and inflame him until he grew angry; then their entertainment began. Chance once brought me into a circle of this kind. When someone saw Saʿd approaching in the distance, he called, “Here comes Saʿd! Open a subject for him to seize, and let him entertain us for a while.” Everyone was smoking cigarettes. One man said, “The discoverer of tobacco was an American. America is the mother of tobacco.” (At that moment Saʿd entered, greeted us, and sat down. He had heard the speaker’s final words: “America is the mother of tobacco.”) After taking his seat he asked, “What are you discussing? Tobacco? Smoke is like steam: it rises from water when you put it over a fire.” The man who had made the remark answered, “No, no. We are not discussing the origin of smoke, so spare us the evil of your philosophy. We disagree over whether the tobacco we smoke in cigarettes—or, in other words, cigarettes or tobacco itself—was discovered by an American. What is your opinion?” “Tobacco! Tobacco is Arab. A king of the Arabs discovered it thousands of generations ago.” (Our late friend had seen Arabs and Turks in cigarette advertisements. The idea lodged in his head that Bedouins smoked a great deal and that the water pipe was purely Arab. He therefore engraved upon his brain that tobacco was Arab in every respect.) There is no need to repeat the famous story of khunfushār and the man who claimed to know everything; it is known far and near.[56] I mention it only because its story resembles that of our late friend—may God moisten the earth above him. The late Saʿd customarily supported his explanations with proofs and histories revealed to him on the spot. He therefore bent himself to the tale: “That king had an only daughter whom he worshiped. He would not have sold one hair of her head for all the kingdoms in the world. One day he entered her room and found her dizzy, with smoke coming from her mouth. He called out her name, and her name was . . . God curse the devil, it was on the tip of my tongue. Her name . . . her name . . . Listen, let me remember. Her name . . . her name . . .” I do not know why he stumbled over this name when he could fabricate whole volumes. But so that the event might provide us with an element of farce, God inspired him to stumble until he discovered it. We waited impatiently to obtain the name so that he might advance his story and show us where it would lead. Nearly half an hour passed. He rubbed his brow and cursed the devil for making him forget. The name had been on the tip of his tongue. He had neither swallowed nor spat it, yet it was no longer there. How had it flown away? No one knew. At last, all eagerness to hear the event, I had an impulse to throw him a name. Perhaps he would take it and release us from his guessing and our waiting. “Her name, Uncle, was Dukhkhāna.”[57] His face flashed with light. He struck the floor with his foot and shouted, “Dukhkhāna! Her name was Dukhkhāna!” His story ended there amid the people’s laughter. I, however, feared he had come to believe that Dukhkhāna truly was the name of the king’s daughter whose history he had begun to tell. After the circle dispersed, I sat beside him and whispered: “Did you see how I rescued you from your guessing and supplied an invented name for the king’s daughter?” “An invented name? Are you trying to laugh at me? Am I a child? Did I not know her name when it was on the tip of my tongue?” “But I swear by God, the word ‘Dukhkhāna’ came from me at random. I threw it to see if it would stick to the wall of your brain. It stuck and released us from waiting.” He turned his back on me and made the water pipe gurgle, laughing openly at my attempt to persuade him that Dukhkhāna was a stray shot with no relation to truth. Again he said, “He wants to laugh at me! If I were married, my youngest child would be older than he is.” News reached me that Saʿd Qamar died a year ago. I suspect that even in his tomb he continues to believe that the Arab king’s daughter was named Dukhkhāna and that she discovered tobacco—hence its name—thousands of years before America was discovered. I am deeply, deeply saddened that in his lifetime I could not persuade him that the word engraved upon the tablet of his imagination was a fabrication. I fear that, amid the repose of the grave, he continues to disturb its awful peace by repeating that invented word. NOTES [54] “Mixing ʿAbbās with Dabbās” is a rhyming idiom for confusing unrelated people or matters—roughly, mixing everything together indiscriminately. [55] Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905), Aḥmad Shawqī (1868–1932), and Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm (1872–1932) were leading Egyptian intellectual and literary figures. The joke is that illiterate Saʿd’s acquired Egyptian colloquial speech is grandiosely identified with their language. [56] Khunfushār is the classic Arabic emblem of pseudo-learning: in a well-known anecdote, a pretended scholar invents the word and then supports it with fabricated poetry and authorities. It has no stable lexical referent; the title announces learned nonsense transplanted to America. [57] Dukhkhāna is fabricated from dukhān, “smoke” or “tobacco,” with a feminine ending, making it sound like a woman’s name and allowing Saʿd to derive tobacco from the princess. 13. We Have Learning; Fools Have Money Poor George Baḥrī lacks one thing, and it makes him sad all the days of his life. So he always tells me, sighing whenever we meet. He possesses sound opinions, he says, but is ignorant of Arabic grammar. George Baḥrī is one of the great Syrian merchants, numbered among the people of wealth and commercial standing. He was among the earliest emigrants and humbled himself in menial occupations until diligence carried him to the top of the commercial ladder. Once he had acquired wealth and position, he looked around and saw himself standing alone, with nothing lacking. In wealth he was one of its lords; in prestige, one of its notables; in leadership, one of its pillars. Only one thing was missing: Arabic grammar, so that he could make speeches before assemblies and compose articles for newspapers. This man is an image of the old-time Syrians who love to appear adorned with qualities they do not possess and to desire things far removed from them. When he was poor, he wished to become rich. Once rich, he wished to become eminent. He joined societies and donated here and there. People gathered around his financial position until a segment of the community considered him great. Then he wished to become an orator who stood at lecterns and captured listeners’ hearts. He believed that grammar alone separated him from public speaking and authorship. He had come to America as a boy from a farm where there was no school to teach him. Poor George Baḥrī. How sad that he did not command Arabic grammar, so that he might clothe his beautiful opinions in magnificent linguistic robes for the public benefit. The man had strange habits I experienced personally. He loved courtesy, accommodation, and accompanying people he met on the street. He escorted them to their destinations, said farewell, and returned. Several incidents made me a little averse to him, though I scarcely knew him; he imposed his company on me against my will. Many times, walking through the streets, I raised my head and saw him approaching from the far end of the block. The instant our eyes met, his hand rose. When we came face-to-face, he slammed it against mine and administered a tremendous shake. I began lowering my gaze to the ground whenever I saw him in the distance, as though I had not noticed him. He was larger than a buffalo. I crossed to the other side of the street, but this did no good. Once our eyes met at a distance, and I saw his hand rise when he recognized me. I resorted to a stratagem: my feet moved across the street, and I continued without looking toward him. How astonished I was to see an enormous man pushing sideways through the crowds, one hand raised to strike mine! Strike it he did. The report of the blow reached the vault of heaven. Only God and I know how that shake and blow hurt. I did not wish to stop, lest a crowd gather to watch the scenes in the play of which we were the heroes. I pulled him along by the hand and we continued. He placed his left hand on my shoulder while keeping his right in mine. We walked—he talking, I cursing fate. Whenever I tried to separate, he begged me to remain until we had crossed another particular street. All the while he delivered speeches into my ear: at one moment commerce, at another journalism; then he began with science and ended in politics, along with all the other arts mixed together in his brain. As usual, when his long discourse ended, he asked for my opinion. “Do you not think I have ideas?” I humored him. “Yes, ideas—and what ideas!” His face lit up at my fine answer, but then he said, “My dear fellow, I regret my ignorance of the Arabic language. If I were educated, I would deliver useful speeches.” “Language is of little consequence if you possess thought.” “But how can I weave my ideas?” I told him he could read newspapers, magazines, and books and acquire Arabic expressions from them. If he used those phrases when speaking, he would lack nothing whatsoever. Grammar was neither necessary nor essential to a man who possessed opinions like his. He informed me that he read a great deal—every book, newspaper, and magazine upon which his eye fell. He had become a storehouse of Arabic phrases. While we were in this condition, we met a young man George knew. He gave him a handshake like the one he had given me, introduced us, and said that the young man had married three days earlier. Then, with me listening, he addressed the groom: “I congratulate you on the marriage and the bride, and I wish you and her joys and sorrows.”[58] I heard George and nearly released a hurricane of laughter, but held it in to hear the groom’s reply. The groom answered in English, thanking Mr. George for his sentiments, and we parted from him. Then I smiled and looked at George. His face brimmed with a smile. “Do you not see that I can construct eloquent speech?” “Yes. The rhyme in your words particularly charmed me.” He told me that earlier that day his eye had fallen upon “joys and sorrows” in a newspaper. He liked the expression and stored it in his mind for use. He was delighted by the circumstance that let him meet a bridegroom and say it. Since he understood “joys” and not “sorrows,” he thought they were synonyms. I spent the rest of the day as though possessed, laughing to myself like a madman whenever I remembered what had happened. I remain so to this day. Mr. George knew many proverbs with which he supported his conversations. He often attributed momentous events to himself, making himself the hero of things that had happened in the wombs of ancient history. He heard a story and took pleasure in it. When its turn came and it suited the occasion, he recounted it with himself as protagonist. He believed in the Syrian’s boundless intelligence and always regretted that Syrians were uneducated; with learning, they would surpass every nation in intelligence. His proof was that he had succeeded in a foreign country whose language he did not know. He came to America with his own arm alone, trod upon many difficulties, conquered opposition, and obtained an ample fortune. His great regret was that he entered the American arena without education. Had he been learned, his fortune would be many times its present size. He often looked upon educated Syrians and saw that most were destitute. He shook his head sadly over the opportunities they had squandered, although they possessed the foundation upon which to build magnificent advancement in commerce. “An educated Syrian comes to America and turns up his nose at every occupation. He refuses to sell from a pack or with a satchel. If he takes a job in a store, the seat scarcely grows warm beneath him before he leaves, mocking the proprietors.” An incident with a clerk in his store led him to take against the man. One day he advised the clerk that if he wished to climb to the summit of success, he must humble himself. George offered himself as example. Had he not carried a pack on his back like a donkey for years and walked miles every day, he would never have attained his commercial position or employed so many educated people, including the clerk receiving the advice. He added that if he had been educated like the clerk before coming to America, he would undoubtedly stand among the wealthy men of Wall Street. The clerk was a college graduate working for Mr. George in hope of seeing a door open upon his future, though after ten years he saw no such door. He answered: “But I swear to you, Mr. George, that if Your Excellency had come to America educated like me, you would be exactly as I am: working for someone else—someone who came without learning or knowledge, did not object to carrying loads on his back, and climbed the ladder of success rung by rung until he reached the summit. Had such men been educated, they would have contented themselves with their learning and disdained the elementary work that a man like Your Excellency does not disdain. You should thank God that you are not educated; otherwise you would not be rich today.” The conversation ended with Mr. George dismissing his clerk. The man’s final words had been: “Such is God’s law among His creatures: we have learning, and fools have money.” NOTES [58] Arabic afrāḥ wa-atrāḥ is a familiar rhyming pair meaning “joys and sorrows.” George understands afrāḥ and assumes the rhyming atrāḥ is a synonym rather than its opposite. 14. Everyone’s Acquaintance ʿAzīz Sayyār possesses an advantage over the rest of humankind: he knows everyone he sees. When he sees you, he greets and salutes you, asks after every member of the family, and tells a story about meeting your late grandfather in Damascus, for example, and about how your late father was one of his dearest friends. This ʿAzīz Sayyār is a marvelous creature, especially in the detailed histories he gives of this man’s life and that man’s. At first encounter, many submit to his conversation because they believe his claims about having known the late So-and-so, his ancient friendship with this one and that one, and his continued relations with one person after another. He has a habit by which he is known and which is known by him. When he meets a person, he first greets him, asks after the family, and relates an incident involving one of the departed. Then he links his arm through the man’s and the two walk down the road together until God shows mercy and another person passes. ʿAzīz says farewell to the first and seizes the second, telling the former, “The rest is to come. God willing, on our next walk I shall finish the story.” Then he begins the same performance with the second. Thus he continues, saying farewell to this man and meeting that one until the day ends. Many who studied ʿAzīz’s character learned how much truth his talk contained. They began wagering over whether he knew a particular person, then went to him to find out. The bettors usually lost. The man had an intense passion for knowing families and names. A tiny hint about the person in question was enough for him to say, “He is So-and-so from such-and-such a town and family. I met the cousin of his aunt’s daughter-in-law in the year . . .” and so forth. One day ʿAzīz was in a Syrian store during a snowstorm that had stopped business. Several proprietors and customers gathered inside to keep warm, with ʿAzīz Sayyār among them. The work they had been doing came to an end, but no one wanted to go outside. As they waited, a boy carrying newspapers pushed open the door, threw a copy inside, and shut it as he turned away. One of the partners picked up the issue and began turning its pages. “Give us the newspaper’s news to amuse us,” ʿAzīz called. “We have nothing to do but wait for the storm to settle before going out.” The merchant handed him the copy. “Read us Khalīl Luqmān’s article on page four.” The instant the name was uttered, everyone stirred and cried, “Yes, by God! Let us hear what this great writer says. His words are magic: they enter hearts and fold up the mansions of the soul.” At the writer’s name, ʿAzīz smiled, then shook his head dismissively at the gathering’s enthusiasm. “May Khalīl’s heart burn over what I write! By God, I wonder how the young man manages to write. I spent all yesterday and part of last night with him. How did he find time to compose this article for today’s issue? I do not know!” Someone asked, “You know Khalīl Luqmān? Is he in this city?” “Do I know Khalīl Luqmān! Is he in the city! How could I not know him when he is one of my dearest friends? He came from Buffalo yesterday for the express purpose of meeting me. Khalīl Luqmān and ʿAzīz Sayyār are two in one.” One of those present said, “For God’s sake, describe Khalīl Luqmān. I have always wished and longed to see a likeness of him. Meeting him is one of my life’s desires. By God, he is on my tongue and in my heart wherever I turn.” ʿAzīz Sayyār began to describe Khalīl Luqmān. “He is a young man no more than twenty-five years old. Readers imagine from his writing that he is over fifty, but his true age is twenty-five. He is of medium height, fair complexion, and handsome face, with a high brow and black eyes. He is so shy he blushes at his own shadow and so filled with feeling that whoever looks upon him sees in his face the tenderness and humanity one reads between his lines. His manners are gentle; his words are drunk like wine. There is no finer or lovelier young man in the world.” He offered these attributes while the listeners crooned over the name of Khalīl Luqmān, whose place in their hearts was exalted. Throughout this performance, one of the store’s partners stood at his counter with his head resting upon his palm, eyes fixed on ʿAzīz as he enveloped the company in descriptions of Khalīl Luqmān. The merchant wore a meaningful smile recognizable to anyone skilled at reading faces. When the performance ended and ʿAzīz left the store with most of the gathering, the merchant turned to a partner. “Will you bet that ʿAzīz has never met Khalīl Luqmān or seen his face?” “No, partner, do not make a mistake. ʿAzīz knows every creature. The proof is that he described the man. Where else would the description come from?” “Do not argue. My heart tells me that ʿAzīz Sayyār does not know Khalīl Luqmān and has never met him in his life. Will you wager?” “How can you learn the truth?” “We shall go to the proprietor of the newspaper for which Khalīl writes and ask him. Perhaps we shall discover it.” The partners immediately went to the newspaper office. The proprietor received them well and took them into the editorial room. Once the three sat down, the merchant began: “We have come without appointment, sir, because we heard by chance that Khalīl Luqmān was in New York. We wanted to visit the office, meet him, and express our gratitude for his writing in the pages of your flourishing newspaper, thereby encouraging him to continue supporting your beloved publication.” “I thank you with all my heart,” the journalist replied. “Unfortunately, Khalīl Luqmān returned to Buffalo this morning. He came to New York for only one night and stayed no longer because he feared meeting people. I shall write and tell him that you honored the office by coming to greet him. But how did you learn he had been in New York? I thought no one knew of his arrival but me.” The partner who had bet on ʿAzīz smiled inwardly. We have won, he thought, since Khalīl was in New York just as ʿAzīz said. The other partner sensed some of this but refused to concede. He told the journalist that ʿAzīz Sayyār had announced Khalīl’s arrival. When the name reached the newspaperman’s ears, he laughed loudly. “Now I know why you have come! It appears ʿAzīz is still affected by yesterday’s incident and has sent you to apologize to Khalīl for his unfortunate behavior. But I can tell you that Khalīl took no offense. On the contrary, the scene ʿAzīz performed before him was a tremendous joke at which he is still laughing.” The merchant answered, “We did not come for that reason. Between ourselves, we came to learn the origin of this friendship joining ʿAzīz Sayyār and Khalīl Luqmān.” The journalist began relating the history of that friendship, speaking one word and then laughing for five minutes. The history was as follows: “Khalīl Luqmān descended upon me like an angel upon a mortal, without appointment. The moment he arrived, he greeted me and said he had come for a single purpose: to meet a professor at New York University. After completing his business, he visited the office to become acquainted with it. He insisted that I tell no one he had come and introduce him to no one at all. “He intended to say farewell and take the night train to Buffalo. After I pressed him hard, he agreed to be my guest for that one night, on the condition that we spend the evening alone, with no third person. I closed the office and took him to the ferry landing.[59] “While we sat there, ʿAzīz Sayyār seated himself opposite me. He asked after every member of my family in the old country and whether I heard from them by every post—all the many questions you know. Then he asked permission to see an issue of my newspaper that I held. “His eye first fell upon a short article by Khalīl Luqmān. He said, ‘Do you know that I read your newspaper only because Khalīl writes for it? You must hold on to him so that his work is not transferred to another paper.’ Then he asked whether I knew him personally. “I said no, to see what lay behind the question. “‘It is better that you never meet him,’ ʿAzīz said. ‘If you saw him, he would fall in your estimation. His appearance—God protect us! His hair falls to his shoulders like a dervish’s. His nose is an elephant’s trunk. He has enormous ears, each equal to three ordinary ears, and tiny eyes like a mole’s. In short, he is frightening to behold. Poor Khalīl Luqmān and his ugly face! But he has a fine pen and sublime intellectual gifts. It is better that people never meet him.’ “At that point the ferry arrived. We stood and hurried with the passengers to board. ʿAzīz remained fixed to my left side, while Khalīl Luqmān walked on my right, saying not a word but smiling. All the way across, ʿAzīz described Khalīl as he knew him. He told me about incidents they had shared in Buffalo and New York and about his long friendship with Khalīl and his family. “We reached the other side of the river and went ashore with the passengers in Brooklyn. There I stopped to say farewell to ʿAzīz so that he might take his road while my companion and I took ours. Providence willed that he not depart before completing the scene. “After shaking my hand, he said, ‘Why did you not introduce me to your companion? At first I thought he was a stranger to you.’ “I performed the introduction. ‘My friend, the fault is mine for neglecting the duty. But ʿAzīz, you gave me no opening to introduce you to the friend we share: Khalīl Luqmān.’ “In that instant, ʿAzīz Sayyār ceased to be ʿAzīz Sayyār. His color changed as though he had been exchanged for another creature. But Khalīl approached, took his hand, and said that from the beginning he had understood from ʿAzīz’s remarks that he was mistaken. Certainly—he must have been describing another person whom he believed to be Khalīl Luqmān. “ʿAzīz said nothing. He pulled away his hand and went on his way.” The journalist stopped for several seconds, then continued: “Khalīl and I stayed up last night while I tried to console and calm him after his great distress over ʿAzīz’s condition at the moment they met. But he could not sleep. Again and again he let me hear a gentle reproach for the cruel way I had treated the man. Had he known the matter would end as it did, he said, he would never have endured ʿAzīz’s conversation. He would have interrupted and identified himself, for fear of the rash act that occurred.” The partners left the newspaper office. To this day—ten years after the incident—they still dispute the wager. The first says he won because ʿAzīz neither knew nor had met Khalīl when he made the claim. The second says he is the winner because, as events proved, ʿAzīz did meet Khalīl—and that is enough. NOTES [59] Before the completion of fixed East River crossings for all routes and the later expansion of subway service, ferries remained an ordinary connection between Manhattan and Brooklyn. Haddad uses al-ṭawwāf, literally a floating vessel or ferry. 15. The Shortest Way For three weeks people chattered over the affair of Khalīl ʿAssāf: he had abducted Murād al-Basīṭ’s daughter. During the first week, the girl’s family kept telegraph and telephone wires busy searching for their daughter, but learned nothing of her or her abductor. After that week, Murād’s relatives began blaming him for refusing to let his daughter Mary marry Khalīl in the ordinary way. Had he consented, they said, she would not have submitted to her lover’s will and fled her father’s house, making the family name a morsel in people’s mouths. Murād received his relatives’ reproaches with remarkable patience. In vain he tried to persuade them that he had never rejected Khalīl and had been inclined toward accepting him as a son-in-law. Not once had he shown unwillingness. The most he said, at the very end, was that Khalīl should economize, work with perfect diligence, and have patience for at least a year or two until he had saved enough for wedding expenses. Had Murād known the end would take this form, he would have accepted him and not exposed his daughter to abduction. But what could be done? After three weeks, Khalīl returned to New York with his bride, who had been wed to him in a Pennsylvania village. On reaching the city, they agreed to take a room in a New York hotel. The bride feared appearing before the father whose will she had broken and dreaded the consequences. The groom, too, feared rushing into his father-in-law’s presence and imagined the family still blazing with fury at both husband and wife. That day the newlyweds disputed over who would deliver the news. Love and playfulness ran through the disagreement. The bride absolutely refused to go to her father’s house; she did not know whether he would accept her and pardon an act that had turned his life upside down and kept him home for three weeks while crowds came and went as though he had lost his daughter instead of bestowing marriage upon her. The groom said that her father was not his father, so he cared nothing whether the man approved. If his bride insisted on reconciliation, the matter belonged to her. At last they agreed to draw lots for the role of messenger. The first lot fell upon the bride. She refused to submit and proposed a second drawing. The husband reluctantly agreed—and the second lot fell upon him. At first he hesitated and tried to escape the difficult mission. But a look from Mary brought a stratagem near. He sprang up, took the telephone, asked for his father-in-law, and said: “This is Khalīl. I have returned to New York and learned that you are angry with me. I understand that I was wrong. I told Mary to return to your house, but she paid no attention. At last I did what duty required. I am leaving your daughter at the Grand Hotel. Come and take her. I am traveling to my brother in Texas on the three o’clock train this afternoon.” He said this and hung up. Then he looked at Mary with such solemnity that her heart broke. She lowered her head upon his breast and asked, her chest filled with a sob: “Will you truly leave me, Khalīl? My foot with yours—I shall not leave you until death.” A tear was ready to descend from her eye, but Khalīl stopped it with a long laugh followed by a strong kiss upon both eyes. Suddenly alert, he said, “The hour is near. Your father and the whole family must arrive soon. What shall we do?” After a little hesitation, they agreed to complete the play upon which Khalīl had raised the curtain. When she heard her family’s footsteps near the door, she would cling tightly to his clothing. And so it happened. The father entered, followed by his wife and elder daughter. They all saw Mary gripping Khalīl and threatening him: “You cannot take one step from this room until my family comes and sees you.” Murād heard what his daughter said to her abductor but uttered nothing. He hurried to the scene, pulled her away from Khalīl, pushed her aside, and said, “You—keep away from him.” Then he took Khalīl by the hand and addressed him in a sharp voice broken by the sobs planted along the road from lungs to throat. “What do you intend now—your life, or my honor? You played this scene upon us, and now you mean to finish it at my expense? What did we ever hope for from you, Khalīl?” Murād’s wife approached Khalīl with a flashing sword of anger between her eyes. Her husband moved her back and signaled her to lower her voice, lest the hotel residents arrive with the police and the final error prove worse than the first. Khalīl stood with his eyes upon the floor. “Do not be angry or foolish. I did not intend to provoke you. I thought you wanted your daughter, so I told you where to find her. But since you want me with her, that is everything I wished and hoped.” The party did not leave the room until anger had changed to joy, each side believing itself victorious over the other. They all went to Murād al-Basīṭ’s house, where relatives and acquaintances gathered. The next day rumor cried throughout the city that Murād had accepted his daughter and son-in-law and that the couple had rented the upper floor of his building so Mary might remain close to her parents. Khalīl ʿAssāf had been passionately in love with Mary al-Basīṭ, and her father knew it. Only Khalīl’s lack of money made him hold back. Marriage, as everyone knows, entails heavy expense. Murād postponed their hope for a year or two, during which the young man might save enough. Neither Khalīl nor Mary liked the delay, though both knew the costs perfectly well, foremost among them the price of a diamond ring. After discussing the matter repeatedly, Mary herself suggested that they run away. They would escape the expenses and obtain their desire without meaningless burdens. Thus they eloped without anyone’s knowledge and without knowing for certain whether, at the final hour, the father would have objected at all. Khalīl and his wife lived happily, and people forgot the manner of their wedding. Two years later their firstborn arrived. They named him William. In his beauty, he appeared a gift from God’s angels. Khalīl prospered after marriage. He bought a beautiful home and placed upon his wife’s ring finger a two-thousand-dollar ring. Her closets held luxurious clothing that many brides envied. One night, Khalīl’s father-in-law visited Mary’s home. William crawled on the floor at his grandfather’s feet, supporting himself against the old man’s legs with one hand and using the other to strike his foot, laughing with both tiny cheeks. The grandfather pulled back his foot, pretending fear of the child’s blows, then thrust it forward and withdrew it again. He played with his angelic grandson until his heart overflowed with love. He swept the child from the floor, held him to his breast, kissed and smelled him, while William laughed and filled the house with joy and every heart with delight. The grandfather’s eye fell upon the ring on Mary’s hand. She was winking at her child to encourage his play, her heart dancing at every movement. “Is that the ring your mother told me about? Bring it close and let me see.” Mary removed the ring and offered it to her father. He contemplated it for a minute, inclining the child away with one arm while examining the ring in his other hand. Then he sighed and, for the first time, addressed his daughter seriously. “My daughter, how lovely it would have been had you waited until now to marry Khalīl! We would have given you a wedding the like of which never was and never will be. The people would have seen this ring on your finger while you were a bride.” “Father, every nail on William’s fingers and toes is worth all the diamonds in the world. Had I waited until today, when Khalīl could buy this ring, this angel would not exist.” The grandfather looked at the child again. William had put his hand into his mouth and was chewing it. His smile had vanished when his grandfather turned from him to the ring. At once the old man pulled him to his breast and nearly devoured one cheek with a kiss. When the kiss ended, the child returned to his deep laugh and waved his hands to resume the game. Mary joined child and grandfather. To take part in their performance, she gave the ring to William, thinking its diamond might captivate him. He took it, looked, flung it violently to the floor, and resumed playing with his grandfather. Mother and father watched what the child had done. When their eyes met, Murād said to his daughter: “He is right.” 16. The Two Legalists Jabra Ghubrayl and Dāwūd Wāṣif were each known as “the Legalist.” Both were illiterate even in Arabic. The title they earned resulted from numerous incidents of wrangling and disputation—or rather, it described a character the people knew in both men. They bestowed the title, and by it each became known.[60] The first, Jabra Ghubrayl, was a factory worker. The other, Dāwūd Wāṣif, was a property agent who rented homes to his countrymen. The first lived in one of the houses let by the second. There lay the whole affliction, for this arrangement made the two champions—champions of the law—meet morning and evening like mountains. Anyone seeking entertainment at the theater needed only watch for a meeting of these two Legalists. The scenes they performed would spare him the need for a thousand comic acts on the stage. Each was accustomed to contradicting the other even on visible and tangible facts. If Jabra said snow was white, Dāwūd answered that it was black. Each possessed proofs, arguments, heavenly revelations, and spiritual inspirations for which God had sent down no authority. Neighbors and others habitually crowded around the two for amusement. Most kindled the fire between them, then stood back to watch the sparks of debate rise, laughing and entertaining themselves. When either Jabra’s or Dāwūd’s voice was heard in the market, spectators gathered from every direction. To them that voice was a bell summoning those waiting for the church doors to open so they might enter for prayer. The moment a raised tone came from either man, people formed a ring and the two began their performances. Their disagreements mattered little to them, for the sun of a second day never rose upon one. Both were therefore known among the public as overbearing but kindhearted. They shouted, disagreed, and sometimes fought, yet once their fury cooled they forgot everything that had happened as though the thing decreed had never been. One day Jabra was climbing the stairs to his apartment while Dāwūd descended. First they exchanged the customary greeting, like wrestlers or boxers in an arena: the match and the blows that might snatch away one man’s soul would follow, but salutation had to come first. After greeting him, Dāwūd said, “Neighbor, today while walking in front of the building, a pane of glass fell from above. I told myself, ‘God protect us from this day! Our neighbor Jabra will make the earth rise and fall, drag down the sky, and destroy the heavens upon our heads before he pays for the broken windowpane in his apartment.’ But praise be to God, neighbor, it did not come from one of your windows but from another tenant’s. The matter passed, and God drew His veil over us.” While Dāwūd spoke, Jabra kept preparing to interrupt. He forced down his inner impulses so that he might learn the whole report. When Dāwūd finished, he answered: “Why should I pay for a pane of glass when I did not break it?” “Because you occupy the apartment and are responsible for everything in it except the roof.” “You are wrong. Repairs fall upon the landlord, especially when the tenant was outside.” “Do not start with us, Jabra. I thanked God a thousand times for delivering me from your mischief today. The matter needs no shouting or wrangling. Ask anyone you wish and he will answer that when a window breaks, the tenant repairs it.” “By God, if the house collapsed and became scattered dust whose particles the wind snatched away, I would not pay one para. It would not be just.[61] The law always stands with the tenant against the landlord and agent. Ask someone else if you are ignorant of that fact.” “Do not say ‘ignorant’ or any such thing. I know the matter better than you. I made the man whose window broke pay for it at once. Why wrangle, neighbor? Stop this and do not let people gather around our shouting. If they hear such talk from you, they will eat their fill of laughter.” There is no need to reproduce their whole exchange; this was only its introduction. An intelligent reader can picture what results followed, especially between two men called “Legalists” because each was so overbearing and neither gave the other a path by which to withdraw and go away. As usual, the quarrel occupied nearly an hour. Each supported his opinion with proofs and rained taunts and then curses upon the other, mocking his slight knowledge and scandalous ignorance of simple matters known to anyone. People gathered from outside the building, inside it, on the sides, and above. They watched the champions of the law litigate a matter from which neither could see a way out. At last it took a serious turn. The wrangling ended, and the spectators’ amusement with it. Both men had gone too far after making the other hear the coarsest things. They pushed and nearly came to blows. Spectators intervened. The matter grew until one group carried off Jabra and another seized Dāwūd. The first was taken into one apartment, the second into another. Both had fists clenched, blood ready to burst from their cheeks, and mouths emitting lava and thunderbolts at the other. Part of the crowd gathered around Jabra, another part around Dāwūd, calming each until the time came for reconciliation. After much coming and going, they decided that both should take a step toward the other. Jabra was moved from the apartment into which he had been taken to a neighboring one; Dāwūd was moved from his refuge to the apartment in which Jabra now sat. There troubles and emotions began anew. Each refused to rise and go toward the other for reconciliation, claiming that he himself was right and his companion wrong. The place of the man in the right must be respected: he should not rise to seek peace before the other came to him. The eldest man present raised a shout that quieted the room. Once silence was complete, he stood between the antagonists. “Both men are at fault—” He had scarcely begun when both rose to argue with him. They were forced back into their places. He continued: “We are all brothers, and no one among us is at fault—” He had scarcely reached this phrase when both sprang up again. Each extended an arm toward the other and said, “No, he is at fault.” Again they were dragged forcibly to their seats. When calm returned, the elder smiled and continued: “Brothers, I am the oldest among you. I ask one thing of these two: let each accept the other once he has received his right. A pane broke, and a new pane has a price. Let neither tenant nor agent bear the cost. Allow me to pay from my pocket, so that we may disperse the difficulty, finish the matter, and let the waters return to their channels.” He put a hand into his pocket, drew out all the money it contained, and opened his palm before Dāwūd, telling him to take the price of the broken glass. Dāwūd declined apologetically. The price had been received long ago; there was no need for the elder to suffer a loss. Jabra, too, pulled the speaker toward him and explained that the broken pane did not belong to his apartment but another one. At this the people roared. Everyone fell into something like a trance of laughter. Its contagion spread to the Legalists. Each smiled first, then joined the crowd in laughing. The mediator laughed less than the others, for he was stunned and perplexed by what he had heard and seen. “Then you quarreled over nothing.” “Yes, Uncle, over nothing,” Dāwūd said. “Had Jabra taken in my words, we would never have reached all this.” Jabra answered, “Had you understood what I meant, we would never have come to where we are.” The people laughed anew. The elder joined them. After returning the money to his pocket, he took each Legalist by an arm and pulled them easily to their feet. Then he joined their hands, and they obeyed. Laughing aloud, he told them, “Men who quarrel over nothing can also make peace over nothing.” NOTES [60] Mutasharriʿ can mean one versed in religious or positive law, but here it is an ironic community nickname for an inveterate amateur disputant. Neither man can read the law in any language. [61] The para was a small Ottoman coin and survived colloquially as a name for a negligible sum: “not one penny.” 17. The Bey’s Misery Syrians have adopted a strange and marvelous practice regarding titles. If a man of rank makes a mistake in someone’s name and addresses him, for example, as effendi or bey, the recipient becomes an effendi or bey. Thereafter he demands that people respect his station and recognize his title.[62] Numerous Syrians possess civil titles. I do not know where they obtained them—and who does? Nor do I know whether any man who boasts of such a title has ever asked himself, “Why was I given the title bey when Ghanṭūs Falaqyūs, who tends the furnace in Abū Ḥarfūsh’s house, did not receive it?” Love of titles has so mastered certain people that the thing has become a mighty part of their lives. Poor Naṣr al-Bayṭār—or Naṣr Bey al-Bayṭār—was happy in his condition when he was obscure and unknown. He carried his satchel and sold goods to Americans in Florida during winter and Maine during summer. He hoped to become a merchant once his funds reached ten thousand dollars and strove earnestly and boldly toward the goal. But time does not make smooth the roads traveled by the children of misfortune. It has ingenious ways of bringing calamity upon its offspring. If misery reaches one person by poverty, illness, or death, Naṣr al-Bayṭār’s misery came by way of becoming a bey. Here is the report. In 1902 a committee was formed in Lebanon to organize a national exhibition and stimulate domestic commerce. Newspapers at home and in the mahjar carried news of the movement.[63] When Naṣr read of it, he was greatly pleased. Patriotic zeal stirred him because the exhibition would be held in his native village. He immediately sent a hundred dollars in the committee’s name to assist the movement. Two months later a reply arrived, signed in the name of the mutasarrif. The envelope was addressed: FOR THE ATTENTION OF THE CHIVALROUS AND PATRIOTIC NAṢR BEY AL-BAYṬĀR At first Naṣr did not believe the reply was his. He read the letter and heard the governor pour out praise, measuring lavish phrases in honor of his generosity and patriotism. Then he read it again, eyes ready to burst from plunging so deeply into the writer’s language. After that he read the envelope backward and forward without blinking. He read it more than ten times in succession, until the word “Bey” grew so large before him that the envelope could scarcely contain it. Bey! Naṣr Bey al-Bayṭār! Bey! Bey! For nearly an hour the poor man read now the governor’s letter, now the envelope, caught between belief and disbelief. Could he really be Naṣr Bey al-Bayṭār? If not he, then who? It was he himself. At last poor Naṣr’s reason returned and he became certain that he himself was Naṣr Bey al-Bayṭār. The title had come to him from His Excellency the governor as a reward for service to the nation. Then the thought returned and he asked himself: “Could it be a mistake by the mutasarrif? Does a mutasarrif make mistakes?” No, no. There was no mistake in the matter. The governor had bestowed the title. The affair required neither proof nor circumstantial evidence. What ink writes upon paper admits no hesitation in interpretation. It was clear. The handwriting was the governor’s own: Naṣr Bey al-Bayṭār. No explanation was needed. Enough. Before the day ended, most of his acquaintances knew he had become a bey. His home became the destination of well-wishers. Then news reached the newspapers. They published it with congratulations, adding that the title had found its owner through perfect merit and desert. Naṣr Bey’s funds had not passed five thousand dollars when the governor’s beyhood descended upon him. As we observed, he had been waiting for them to reach ten thousand before becoming a merchant. But being a bey and carrying a peddler’s satchel did not agree. Despite his scant capital, the poor man was forced to open a business among the merchants. He wrote to tell his family in the village the joyful news. They held a great festival to celebrate their son Naṣr’s beyhood. The villagers shared their happiness. In the festivities, they fired gunpowder worth fifty liras.[64] Naṣr Bey’s business continued for nearly a year, and its losses almost swallowed his capital. Most customers discovered his weakness. If one wanted him to extend more credit, he addressed him as “Bey.” If another wished to lower the price, he flattered him with “Your Excellency.” What could the bey—or His Excellency—do but submit to the wishes of his honored customers? The result was loss. At year’s end he liquidated the business and resolved to return to his satchel rather than go bankrupt and become a morsel in people’s mouths—a disgrace for a titled man like him. Naṣr Bey employed a clerk to keep his books. The intelligent young man despised his master’s beyhood, and they often quarreled over it. He would not call Naṣr “Bey” except under threat of dismissal. In his final days as clerk, however, he used the title frequently as a joke, calling it out with a laugh. This angered Naṣr, but he looked the other way because he knew the man’s days were numbered. The store would close at month’s end, and then Naṣr would part from him and be free. In the final days of Naṣr Bey’s commerce, I met the clerk. He informed me that the establishment of al-Bayṭār Bey had closed. I shook my head sadly over the loss and said the poor man’s trade had had no grammatical place in the sentence.[65] The clerk smiled. “The fault was not his, but the mutasarrif’s in Lebanon.” “What did the mutasarrif have to do with it?” “He mistakenly called him Bey. So Naṣr entered commerce to elevate his station and ended by losing everything. That is all.” I laughed, and the clerk laughed with me. His lips moved as though they wished to utter something, but he would not release the sound. I could see this perfectly well and asked him to say what was in his mind. At first he hesitated. Then he laughed loudly. “Come closer and I shall show you.” He reached into his pocket and produced pieces of an envelope sent from home and stamped by the government office at Baabda.[66] I leaned forward eagerly to see what it contained. He placed each piece near its original position and said, “Read.” I read: MR. NAṢR AL-BAYṬĀR OF THE VILLAGE OF ʿAMṬĪR, RESIDENT IN THE UNITED STATES “Is this Naṣr Bey al-Bayṭār?” I asked. “The very man. This envelope is in the hand of the same mutasarrif who wrote the poor fellow a year ago and placed ‘Bey’ beside his name.” “Who tore it up?” “Naṣr Bey—or Mr. Naṣr himself—when this letter arrived from His Excellency the governor asking some trivial thing. He tore it apart and cursed the mutasarrif. I gathered the pieces to learn why he was angry with his country’s ruler. Now that I know, I join him in cursing the governor—not for sending this letter, but for the earlier reply that cost the poor man all the money he had gathered through the sweat of his brow and the labor of a year, perhaps years, as well as people’s laughter and contempt.” NOTES [62] Effendi and bey were Ottoman honorifics. Bey ranked above effendi and could signal official, military, or notable status. A salutation on an envelope did not by itself constitute a legal grant of rank. [63] Lebanon was then the autonomous Ottoman Mutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon. Its chief administrator was the mutasarrif, here translated “governor” where the function matters. [64] Celebratory gunfire was—and remains in parts of the region—a customary but dangerous way to mark weddings, titles, and public festivities. [65] Arabic lā maḥalla lahā min al-iʿrāb is a grammatical phrase meaning that an element has no syntactic role or inflectional position in a sentence. Figuratively, the business had no place or standing. [66] Baabda was the administrative seat of the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate and later became the site of Lebanon’s presidential palace. 18. A Son Out of His Time When Abū Riyyā said farewell to his master in the city, he declared that he would never forget the favor of the household in which he had been raised from childhood to middle age. He would not leave its service had he not a mawwāl in his head that he wanted to sing—and that refrain was a journey to America.[67] His master exhausted every effort to persuade the servant to stay, even offering higher wages. At last he shook Abū Riyyā’s hand sadly. “Abū Riyyā, you raised me and were like a brother and companion in my youth. Then you raised my children; your arms carried them more often than mine. In the many years you have served our household, from the days of my late father until today, we have seen from you what makes us consider you one of the family. Your departure will pain us. “But you insist upon leaving our service, so may you prosper. Know that whenever you return, our house is open and your position will be restored. Reassure us with news. Do not forget your master and the children you raised, who are attached to you as though you were their father.” Abū Riyyā crossed the sea bound for America, the great field of livelihood for anyone against whom the doors of success in Syria had closed. He went, more affected by his farewell to master and children than by parting from his own family. For a time he considered abandoning the plan, but the refrain was overpowering. He let fate run with loose reins, left family and country, and trusted in God, who does not disappoint those who fear Him. Abū Riyyā spent years in America working on a farm far from New York. He did not leave until he resolved to return home. I never learned the exact nature of his work, but knew that he was a diligent and extremely careful laborer. I had heard of him because my friend Salīm al-Raqqāsh mentioned him in conversation. He said that in America, somewhere near New York, was an old servant named Abū Riyyā who had spent many years with their family and must have succeeded. My friend did not know where the servant lived and made no effort to obtain his address, though he often said the man had raised him and had been an excellent and faithful servant in his father’s house. My friend Salīm al-Raqqāsh was a young man of a good family—indeed, one of the families described as belonging to the great. He studied at the best schools in Syria and mastered four living languages. He came to America because his father lost his position and the family’s financial condition declined. An educated young man raised amid honor and liberality, he considered it degrading to remain among companions who had been accustomed to seeing him spend freely and pass his days amid amusements in cafés, performing no work because sons of the great did not work. He too wished to sing the Syrian refrain sung by his former tutor and father’s servant Abū Riyyā. He came to America seeking a livelihood. But this young man found no door to a livelihood in America. He entered the foreign world equipped with his morals and learning. He worked when necessity forced him and left the job as soon as he could feed himself and sleep. His condition led him toward the disease of refined people who work little: gambling. By day he slept folded over a café table. By night he worked, staying awake to turn cards. If he lost, he incurred a debt. If he won, the profit supported him for two or three days. Years passed while he kept to this condition, advancing from bad to worse. He was nevertheless loved by all his companions for his gentleness, noble character, and pleasant society. He also helped colleagues when they fell into difficulty. His English was excellent, so he interpreted for them in court and accompanied them when they purchased furnishings and other necessities. I met him by chance through a mutual friend. I was drawn to the knowledge and inward refinement I sensed despite his poor outward condition, devotion to gambling, and slight or nonexistent work. I enjoyed meeting him to discuss many things. He knew a great deal and could enter with a companion into scientific, political, economic, and other subjects. I could not understand how a young man of his condition and knowledge refused to work and left the field of success to people of less ability and refinement, preferring pain over securing comfort through attainment and reaching the goals of an educated young soul. But because I did not know him well, I lacked the power to ask. I ignored his condition, which was not my concern, and accompanied him in knowledge and character, which connected with my own. One day Salīm and I were drinking coffee in a café, joined in a session of joking—or “cracking up,” as people say.[68] While we laughed, the proprietor came up the stairs followed by an elderly man in simple clothes closer to rags, without collar or tie. On his feet were heavy shoes like traditional slippers; on his head, a broad-brimmed hat covered in scratches. Reaching the room, the proprietor pointed out Salīm. “That is the Salīm you spent two days asking every Syrian to find.” The man’s face flashed and opened into a broad smile. He hurried toward Salīm and shook his hand, his tongue nearly tied by joy. Then he bent toward Salīm’s hand as if to kiss it. Salīm did not know who the man was or what he wanted. Thinking him mistaken, he allowed his hand out of courtesy. When he sensed from the slowly descending bow that the man was on a mission to kiss it, he pulled it quickly away, seated the visitor, and asked: “Who are you, Uncle?” “Me! Me! Do you not know me, my master? I am Abū Riyyā, the man who raised you, your father’s servant. Have you forgotten Abū Riyyā, my master Salīm?” After this introduction, Salīm again shook the man’s hand, this time repeatedly. They began to talk, questioning and answering, each emptying his bag of news before the other. A tear gathered in the old man’s eye and almost fell. He wiped it with the edge of his sleeve. When Salīm introduced me, I shook the visitor’s hand and said I knew something about him because Salīm had often mentioned him. Salīm returned to the conversation. “Abū Riyyā, had I known where you were, I would have visited you during these years. How are you now?” “Fate sent me to America, my master. I worked here and, praise be to God, obtained more success than I deserve. Now I am going to Syria to see the children and family. Only enough oil remains in the lamp of my life for a few days, and I shall spend them among my people.” “Tell me, how many dollars are you taking home from America?” “Ah, we praise Him in every condition. He gave us more than we deserve. By His bounty and generosity, there are fifteen thousand dollars in my satchel.” Salīm answered, “You have fifteen thousand dollars and come to kiss my hand! You should have extended your hand from the doorway as you entered, so that I might come and kiss it.” Abū Riyyā returned home. Salīm saw him to the ship, and I went along to discover something more of the two men’s condition. We helped the old man find a place among the third-class passengers.[69] After leaving the ship, we walked four blocks without either speaking. Salīm tore the curtain of silence. “Do you not see that we were not created for this age?” “How so?” “We live in an age that has divided the earth into two worlds: an old and a new. The New World is not for people like us but for those who extract a dinar from the heart of stone and hoard it in the heart of stone. The Old World has become the place for men like these, who return to their countries with dollars, build houses, buy land, and occupy an exalted place in people’s eyes because of the money in their pockets. “We were not created for this age.” NOTES [67] A mawwāl is an improvised or strophic vernacular song. Here the “song in his head” is an insistent ambition or refrain: emigration to America. [68] The narrator quotes taqrīq, a colloquial noun for joking until the company breaks into laughter. [69] Steamship class sharply marked status. The prosperous returning laborer still travels third class, while his penniless former master preserves the manners of rank. 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. 20. The Statue of Liberty No sooner had Nakhla al-Maʿṣūb’s parents taken joy in him—that is, married him to a decent girl, as people say—than the necessity of going to America to build a future entered his head. Despite his parents’ tears and their entreaties that he remain, he bade farewell to family and friends and set out with his bride for America, the Kaaba of wage earners.[73] His bride was a girl ten years his junior; he was twenty-eight. At the beginning of their marriage he was a prince in his house. He had planted fear in his wife’s heart, and she regarded him as a master more than a husband. She labored to win his approval in everything he required. He loved her dearly, but, as a man, he continued to preserve his station as master of the house and head of the woman. First place and command belonged to him; her duty was merely to please him and follow his orders. At first he thought for a long time of going to America alone and then sending for his wife. But he could not bear to part from her, for he felt her love and his need to keep her near. Thus he took her with him and traveled to Beirut, then Marseilles, New York, and the interior, finally settling in a large village in Ohio. During his first year, Nakhla al-Maʿṣūb suffered terrors in earning a living. Only after great effort did he find work that would meet the family’s expenses, and debts to relatives and friends accumulated. At last he worked, though his labor scarcely covered what was required. His condition remained so for three years: sometimes he sold goods and at others he labored for wages in factories. He and his wife continued to eat and drink, but debts to other people tightened around his neck. Although the creditors were among those dearest to him, they had not lent their money so that it might remain his forever. Whenever they met him, they alluded to it. He understood their purpose and put them off with promises until his devices ran out. A successful relative who owned a large store in town came to him. The shop sold popular merchandise needed by satchel peddlers. “It appears your affairs will never improve,” the man said. “Even with great effort you can scarcely keep the household standing. Why do you not make a move that will pay your debts, clear your obligations to your creditors, and save a few dollars for yourself?” Nakhla answered with a sigh from his scorched heart: “And what move could make me earn more than I do now?” “The move is for you to stay at the factory and Mrs. Idmā to go out selling. I shall fill a large satchel for her and train her in the work. She will help you improve your situation. I assure you, one year will not pass before you shake off your debts and have a sum in the savings bank.” Nakhla resisted with all his strength. Tears nearly fell from his eyes at the necessity of his wife’s working. His relative persuaded him, however, by explaining that the matter was perfectly simple. It might be difficult for those newly arrived in America, especially if they belonged to respectable families back home, but here in America women were more successful at work than men, and a woman competed with a man in labor. Nakhla accepted the proposal. Not six months passed before Mrs. Idmā had become a thoroughly successful saleswoman—after, of course, the misery of learning, training in the arts of salesmanship, and snatching the English language from the tongues of its speakers. After six years Nakhla’s family moved from Ohio to New York City because it had grown: God had given him three children. His wife continued to seek out the doors of livelihood, while he cared for the children during their mother’s absence. He left his work, and the entire life of the man and his family came to hang upon the lady’s satchel. After this stage Nakhla was no longer a prince in his house but a servant to his wife and children. She became head of the family. She had risen by degrees from one condition to another until hers was the command and the prohibition, while her husband’s answer was, “At your service—your slave stands before you.” He did not dare object. He could not utter a word of criticism or suggestion, only approval and gratitude. Nakhla continued to swallow his cares and digest them until the stomach of his endurance ceased to function. One evening Mrs. Idmā returned from work and did not find him at home. She saw the children crying and gasping. After putting their affairs in order as best she could, she went out to look for her husband with the fire of rage blazing in her heart. She found him sitting on a bench in Battery Park, absent from this world in his thoughts.[74] He was comparing his condition back home, where he had been a prince, with his condition in the mahjar, where he had become a servant. Idmā poured abuse and reproaches upon him, led him home, and warned that if he did such a thing a second time she would throw him out of the house and hire someone to care for her children while she was away for less than she spent on his food and tobacco. The vessel of his patience now empty, he answered, “Throw me out of the house! Am I not the man of the house, the children’s father, and your husband?” “You are the man of the house, the children’s father, and my husband in your country,” she said. “In America, I am everything. So long as the Statue of Liberty raises her hand—and she is the statue of a woman—I have the right to raise my hand in my house, to command and forbid. If that pleases you, very well. Otherwise, choose whatever you like for yourself.” At that moment Nakhla remembered the Statue of Liberty and understood the meaning of her raised hand with its light gripped inside it. In Battery Park, where he had taken refuge to occupy his mind, he had first pondered what the statue’s raised hand meant. Then his thought had wandered into his former life and what America had brought down upon his head. Now he answered his wife in a low voice: “If that statue raises one hand, then I wash both my hands of every affair.[75] But when we return to our country, God willing, I shall become a man again, and possess the rights of men.” NOTES [73] Calling America the ‘Kaaba of wage earners’ makes it the destination toward which labor migrants turn, by analogy with the sacred center of Muslim pilgrimage. [74] Battery Park occupies the southern tip of Manhattan and faces New York Harbor. The Statue of Liberty is visible offshore; the park was also adjacent to Castle Garden, an earlier immigrant landing station. [75] Arabic uses the idiom arfaʿ yadayya min, ‘I raise both my hands from’ something: I renounce responsibility for it or wash my hands of it. Nakhla’s two raised hands parody the statue’s single torch-bearing arm. 21. From the Bear into the Pit I had heard that Umm Ṭannūs wished to return to the homeland, yet nearly a year passed and she did not budge from her place. I asked one of her relatives, “Why has Umm Ṭannūs not traveled, after assuring me she was going to see her husband and children when more than ten years have passed?” The man told me the matter had a long and wide story, and that if he tried to tell it, he would split with laughter before reaching the end. “You have only increased my desire to know the truth,” I said. “Tell me.” He said: You know that Umm Ṭannūs gathered a great deal of money through enormous diligence and marvelous thrift. She put her coins to work in a Syrian commercial establishment whose owner came from the same village as she. Each year he added ten percent interest to the money he held for her. Thus, whenever she saved fifty or a hundred dollars, she sent it to that establishment so that her money might turn itself over at interest. Her money kept turning until it turned over the edge: the establishment went bankrupt, and the egg disappeared with the shell.[76] Umm Ṭannūs was left with nothing but sound health, determination, and a desire for revenge upon the merchant who had devoured her money. After that incident Umm Ṭannūs trusted no one. Even if she was told that so-and-so possessed millions and that there was no harm in depositing her money with him to earn interest, she answered that one’s bosom was the best bank: “When trusts are lost, make your bodice your storehouse.”[77] For years Umm Ṭannūs labored with great diligence to replace her former losses. She walked from one town to another with a pack on her back and a bundle in her hand, bearing the heavy heat of the sun with perfect patience. Whenever she saved a few paper dollars in denominations of ten or more, she hoarded them inside her bodice. It never occurred to her to count how much money she had gathered, lest the blessing fly away. Her dollars, pressed against her flesh, accompanied her on every journey and remained with her in bed as she slept. Not for a single moment did Umm Ṭannūs part from her bundle of dollars. The time came when people learned that Umm Ṭannūs had resolved to return home. She sold her goods, her trunk, and her wooden bed and prepared herself for travel. She came to New York to buy a passage ticket and exchange her American currency for liras. Allow me to abbreviate whatever can be abbreviated. The affair has lengthy explanations, but I shall content myself with its essence. It seems that in all those years Umm Ṭannūs had never moved the dollars away from her body or brought them out for even a moment so that they might breathe a little air and preserve their health. As you know, dollars are material things and are liable to wear and rot. Moreover, in the company of the honorable Umm Ṭannūs, they swallowed an abundant quantity of the sweat her ladyship produced amid her labors and hardships—and how much sweat she produced! So it happened. When Umm Ṭannūs first wished to bring out in New York what she had hidden in her bodice, her heart quailed. She crossed herself three times, put her trust in God, and pulled out the bundle. At first she felt her body grow cold, as a person does after taking off a woolen shirt. Then she placed the bundle before her with a trembling hand. Here the man telling the story began to laugh. I could no longer make out the result. He could not master his laughter long enough to explain what had happened. Once his soul had taken its fill of laughing, he continued: But the poor woman could separate only two ten-dollar bills from the whole bundle. The rest was like a mass of paper cooked over a fire. In vain she tried to recover what she had lost this time, because whenever she complained of her plight, the listener laughed at length and told her to seek compensation from God. And so Umm Ṭannūs returned to the interior to gather a little money after all her toil had gone with the wind. I do not know how she is storing her dollars this time. Perhaps, when she wishes to move from one town to another, she takes the streetcar in order to preserve the dollars’ health.[78] NOTES [76] Arabic dhahabat al-bayḍa maʿa al-taqshīra, literally, ‘the egg went with the shell’: both capital and profit disappeared. [77] The ʿibb is the opening or fold of a garment at the breast. Women peddlers sometimes carried money against the body for security; Haddad turns the practice into grotesque physical comedy. [78] The title invokes the proverbial movement from danger to worse danger—roughly, ‘out of the frying pan and into the fire.’ Umm Ṭannūs moves from losing her deposit in a bankruptcy to destroying the replacement savings through distrust. Her taking the streetcar would spare the notes the heat and sweat of walking. 22. As We Have Become, So Shall You Fāris al-Dawwār has a commercial history full of incidents. He has gone bankrupt more than once, and his establishment has burned several times. Syrians hold none of this against him because neither his bankruptcies nor his fires harmed any Syrian. All the losses he caused fell upon the Americans and foreigners who dealt with him. Thus his adventures did not diminish his honor among his countrymen. On the contrary, some still regard him with esteem, looking upon him as a commercial cavalier who entered the tumult of trade and trampled difficulties beneath the hooves of his intelligence. Many still describe him as clever, a man who knows how to eat the shoulder—that is, to secure the choicest portion.[79] All this is because he harmed none of them and paid his countrymen immediately. If he consumed enormous debts owed to foreigners, whose concern was that? Among the incidents in Fāris al-Dawwār’s career was this: once, coming to his establishment early, contrary to his custom, he met there a countryman who lived in the surrounding neighborhood. The man immediately hurried toward him and said that at nine o’clock the previous evening he had passed the establishment and seen a fire blazing inside. He at once summoned the firemen. They extinguished the flames and killed the fire in its cradle, so that the goods were untouched and the establishment remained intact for its owner. He said this supposing he would receive a handsome reward for his deed—if not a gift, then at least a few words. But when Fāris al-Dawwār heard the news, sweat poured from him like water from a skin. He felt that he had lost no fewer than five pounds in weight. “Damn you!” he answered. “You have ruined my house!” He followed these words with a blow to his forehead and nearly fell like a man whose strength had failed. The informant realized that his act had not pleased Fāris and turned away dejected, like a fisherman who asks people to help him draw in a heavy net only to find, when it reaches shore, a stone in place of fish. In gatherings of his Syrian countrymen, Fāris always said that a Syrian’s own success murdered him because he hoped to prosper through dealings with other Syrians; dealings with Americans were more useful and yielded more abundant success. Fāris al-Dawwār spent his first years in the world of commerce hoping to profit from the large companies by insuring his establishments against fire. On the third occasion, however, the village’s reckoning did not agree with the palace’s.[80] He nearly lost all his money and his life. He spent thousands of dollars on litigation and, in the end, withdrew through intermediaries with his person as his only spoil, having nearly been thrown into prison. But for God’s grace, his evil deeds would have caught him. After those years he therefore turned toward making profits from bankruptcies and settlements. During this period, the establishment he created was registered in his little daughter’s name, and the house in the mother’s, as a precaution against whatever fate might befall him. And how much fate concealed for Fāris al-Dawwār in his commercial life! One tale from his bankruptcies concerns his final year in business. His establishment came to resemble a bank: it was empty of every kind of merchandise, and nothing remained but the ledgers. He, the bookkeeper, and the clerk spent the daylight hours recording, signing, going to banks, and gathering the signatures of neighbors, sons, and daughters—as well as many names whose owners had no basis in existence—so that the banks would discount his promissory notes.[81] That year an announcement by Fāris al-Dawwār appeared in the Arabic newspapers stating that his establishment was prepared to accept financial deposits on which it paid good interest. It seems he enlarged the newspaper owner’s morsel, for the man devoted an editorial article to him. It declared that confidence in Fāris al-Dawwār’s establishment was great and that countrymen came to it in groups and singly to deposit their money, followed by more writing for hire. The affair ended with his declaring bankruptcy one final time. The day after that issue of the newspaper appeared, he was arrested for forgery. He was released on bail with his wife’s help and spent thousands of dollars litigating the matter. Today he works as a broker, purchasing for inland merchants and taking a fixed sum from buyer and seller, each without the other’s knowledge. What deserves mention in Fāris al-Dawwār’s story is that he attributed his success during the years of fires to dealing with foreigners. After everything that happened during the years of bankruptcy and settlements, he became the firmest proof of his first principle: dealing with Syrians leads a man to his commercial death. He often sighs before people and says that if he had continued his dealings with foreigners, he would today possess millions. But misfortune inclined him toward dealing with countrymen, and all that happened came down upon his head and ruined his house. To this day he laments his bad luck in committing that error—turning toward his countrymen and doing business with them—until his commerce was destroyed. He is not even ashamed to shout at those who demand the deposits he initially promised to repay that they caused his ruin. If not for them he would have remained a great merchant, but through his desire to benefit them he lost what many years could never replace. This, briefly, is what happened to him. But I shall give the moral of the man’s life. One day I was visiting a house, and his honor was among those present. Someone showed us an item in that day’s issue of a newspaper: a long editorial on the success of the well-known commercial firm “Ḥimṣūnī and Company,” in which the editor directed readers’ attention to the firm’s advertisement on page three. Fāris al-Dawwār laughed, shook his head repeatedly, and said: “As we were, so are you; as we have become, so shall you.”[82] NOTES [79] The idiom yaʿrif kayfa yaʾkul al-katif, literally ‘he knows how to eat the shoulder,’ praises someone who knows how to obtain the best or most profitable part. [80] A Levantine proverb: ḥisāb al-qarāyā lā yuṭābiq ḥisāb al-sarāyā, ‘the village’s calculation does not match the government house’s.’ One’s private scheme fails when tested against official reality; here an attempted insurance fraud invites prosecution. [81] To ‘discount’ a promissory note is to sell it to a bank before maturity for less than its face value. The fictitious endorsers make the practice fraudulent. [82] The final line is a rhymed, antithetical warning in Arabic: ka-mā kunnā kadhā antum, ka-mā ṣirnā taṣīrūnā. Fāris recognizes another paid newspaper encomium as a prelude to the same collapse he engineered. 23. Faith in Humanity In 1890 a thirty-year-old man named Muṣṭafā al-Shāhīn arrived in the United States. He had great commercial ambitions but none of the means that would carry him to his goals. He was therefore compelled to trade, though on a simple scale. He wandered through villages and farms carrying his wooden box, selling farmers pins, combs, and small goods. For five years he worked and strove until he had saved nearly two thousand dollars in the money belt he had brought from home.[83] At first he wore it beneath his shirt out of fear for the money inside. Once he grew accustomed to the country and no longer feared thieves, he could not alter the habit. One day he tried taking off the belt, but he returned to it the next, for a chest cold had reached out its hand to greet him and he had declined the handshake. Necessity thus returned him to his former practice. A man like Muṣṭafā al-Shāhīn had no concern of mind or feeling but to grow great in the financial world and establish, on his own account, a large store visited by peddlers. Seated in his chair, commanding and forbidding, he would reap profits from them. He had gained some experience in importing merchandise and distinguishing the fat from the lean, and he saw the two thousand dollars he had saved as an excellent commercial capital. But where were the customers? He put this question to himself and set his thought to answering it. The establishment he aspired to create could not be in New York: he knew himself unequal to commerce in a great city among great merchants. Nor would he prosper if he opened it in any one of the villages through which he had wandered during his years abroad, for no single village had enough inhabitants to ensure the store’s success. Yet he could not carry the establishment upon his back as he had done with his peddler’s pack and try his fortune in this village and that. Ambition opens people’s inner eyes, whatever the quantity of their brains. After long thought, Muṣṭafā arrived at an original opinion. He immediately liquidated his business and sold everything in his pack. Of its trinkets he retained things useful back home—combs, perfume bottles, rings, false jewelry, and the like—as presents for his people in the village. A few days later he took ship and returned to his family with the money that remained, putting his trust in God. Muṣṭafā reached his village. Every inhabitant hurried to greet the rich returnee, from old women and old men down to children wearing amulets. Do not ask how great the people’s amazement was at the wealth he had brought home. His ten fingers covered with rings, the great pin in his tie, the yellow studs in his shirt cuffs, the gifts of “jewels” for his wife and sisters, and the woolens and small goods he gave relatives and neighbors—all these proclaimed to them in a mighty voice that Muṣṭafā al-Shāhīn had become a man without equal. The old men lamented their bad fortune because their youth had passed before they learned of America. Young men drew near to him to study the conditions in America, how to travel there, what the journey cost, and everything else. But Muṣṭafā had come to his village on a commercial mission. In the people’s infatuation with him he saw a road to his purpose. Not a week had passed after the village son’s arrival from America before the village, down to its very soil, longed to go to America with him. Thus, at the end of a month, Muṣṭafā returned to America at his own expense, leading an army of ten young men. With them he would conquer the commerce of America and reach the goal he had so long imagined and desired. On the long road, Muṣṭafā suffered some hardship from his commercial expedition. Despite all the trouble, however, he rejoiced within. Around him he saw the men on whom he would build his glorious future; in him they saw the heroic commander who would bring them into a world of glory and honor. His trouble did not end with bringing them. When he reached the village in which he had decided to build his establishment, he nearly tore himself apart training them to carry peddlers’ packs and teaching them certain necessary phrases of English—only as much of the language as he himself knew, a pronunciation he had snatched up and used, as he said, to untie his own knots. God made the task light for Muṣṭafā. The establishment he had imagined was created and divided into two parts: an inner section in which he slept, cooked, ate, and received guests, and an outer section with merchandise and boxes on shelves and wooden stands on the floor supporting trays of goods. The first year passed in founding the establishment and training the army for conquest. In the second, Muṣṭafā harvested a noteworthy amount of profit and sent part of it to his village to bring his wife to America. In the third, he began quarreling with his army. Its ten members had acquired some experience in the marketplace and broadened their understanding by moving from town to town; now they argued with him over prices. They inclined toward rebellion and conspired among themselves to boycott him. Only by clever devices could he persuade them otherwise. He became gentle with them, invited them to his table on Sundays, and won their hearts through courtesy and family alliances. The years passed. The establishment’s business increased and its profits multiplied, but its owner cursed his luck because events had not followed his calculations. Command and prohibition over the imported class of customers were no longer among his functions. I knew him during those years. I sometimes visited that village and would turn into his establishment to ask how he was and converse a little while waiting for the train. Commercial changes followed: I left the firm I had represented and attached myself to another in a different region of the country. I no longer heard anything of Muṣṭafā al-Shāhīn. But I pictured him in my mind and said, “Five years have passed since I saw him. Today he must be the town’s leading notable, for his business is moving, his customers are solid men, and his expenses for a year amount to the profit of a month.” In 1906, travel threw me by chance into that village. As soon as I arrived, I went to see the man I had come to know solely because he spoke the language I spoke, the language belonging to us both. How great was my astonishment when I saw my friend somewhere other than his former establishment. I found him at the door of a wretched house near his old store, surrounded by schoolchildren, boys and girls, to whom he was selling ice cream in cones for a cent each. When the school bell rang, the children left Muṣṭafā’s circle and ran back to school. I approached and greeted him. He was very happy to see me after a long absence during which many events had befallen the poor man. I watched him lift the pot from which he had been selling and invite me into the house, since business time had passed. I entered with him to learn something of what had been hidden from me. “How are your affairs, Muṣṭafā?” I asked. “It seems things have changed for you.” He answered with a deep sigh and did not wish to speak. Instead, he led me to a small room opposite the one in which we had been sitting and said, “Look. Consider.” On the walls I saw ten portraits of ten people, each with a name written beneath it. I drew close to read them. They were: “Father of the Thousand,” “Father of the Five Hundred,” “Father of the Six Hundred,” and so on. Beneath nine portraits I read numbers in place of names. Under the tenth was written “Father of Eve.”[84] “What do you mean by these numbers?” I asked, laughter nearly overcoming me. “I named each portrait by the amount its subject swindled from me before fleeing to a place I do not know.” “And who is this Father of Eve?” “He is the one who made off with the woman at the end, after conspiring with her to rob the establishment, which the government closed when it declared me bankrupt.” “Then you lost everything, Muṣṭafā?” “Yes, I lost everything. More than that, I lost something you cannot see.” I nearly wept for his condition. “What was it?” “My faith in the human constitution.” NOTES [83] The kamar was a broad cloth money belt worn beneath the clothes. Haddad makes its warmth and security literal when Muṣṭafā imagines that removing it invites a cold. [84] The Arabic teknonym Abū, ‘father of,’ normally identifies a man by a child. Muṣṭafā replaces the child’s name with each swindler’s debt. ‘Father of Eve’ is a dark joke for the man who carried away his wife, the archetypal woman. 24. American Civilization When Abū Rājī Filfil left Syria for America, he resolved never to return. He sold all his property and furniture and took his family—Umm Rājī and two sons—to “the people’s country.” For men like Abū Rājī, the people’s country means America. Syria is not a country fit for people in their eyes, because America possesses freedom and wealth, whereas their own land is a country of humiliation and torpor. And so it was. Abū Rājī bade farewell to his country for the people’s country, without regretting his abandonment of the homeland. He comforted himself with hopes and sought to reach America in order to merge into its civilized people. In his view, the people of Syria were, as we have said, nothing but humiliated and inert. Neither the homeland, nor its gods, nor its history or theirs possessed a single atom of his esteem or love. Yet scarcely had he reached New York and completed one month there when the verse reversed itself. In his eyes America became a black slave, its civilization ranked below African barbarism, and its inhabitants were the least tasteful and intelligent people on earth.[85] The reason was that in New York he saw nothing that pleased his fancy, conformed to his taste and customs, or agreed with what he had previously imagined America to be. Upon arrival he lived in a house the sun did not enter once in a year. By chance, the weather during his first month in New York was exceedingly bad, and not a day passed when the threads of rain ceased. His spirit contracted. His hatred of America increased swiftly from day to day. He bloodied his fingers with regret, but the hour for regret had passed. Nothing he saw in America pleased him. He did not even feel at ease near his relatives. Whenever he looked at one and saw him clean-shaven, he recoiled from conversation and disdained to gaze upon his face. If by chance one of them let slip an English word, Abū Rājī insulted him and spoke harshly, supposing the offender meant to mock him because he himself did not know a letter of English. Many things happened to Abū Rājī that led to his great hatred of America. At that point his own land became the people’s country, while America was nothing but the country of cattle. Among these incidents was the following. One day he had spread his mat upon the landing of his building’s fire escape. He sat cross-legged with the hookah hose in his mouth, drawing and blowing out its smoke, while his thoughts wandered through space and settled nowhere.[86] Suddenly a voice came from the window through which he had stepped onto the landing. His train of thought stopped at once. He looked toward the window and saw a policeman raising his club and threatening to strike him. Abū Rājī sprang up, lifted his hookah, and carried it inside. The policeman seized him and shook him several times, sending the hookah’s bowl flying to the floor. Abū Rājī did not understand a word he said. At first he assumed the officer had mistaken him for someone else, since he had done nothing monstrous, but his ignorance of the language left him no means to prove his innocence. Some Syrians entered and explained to the officer that Abū Rājī was a poor, simple man newly arrived from home who did not know the rules of life. The policeman’s heart softened; he departed and left Abū Rājī alone. Abū Rājī was utterly bewildered. Once the policeman had gone, he poured curses and blasphemies upon him, at a loss over what had happened and unaware of his offense. The Syrians who had followed the policeman told him that a coal from the hookah had fallen between the iron bars onto the officer’s head. Another day Abū Rājī went to Castle Garden, the seaside park near Washington Street.[87] He brought his lunch and walked across the grass until he reached a tree, beneath which he sat to eat. A guard came running toward him and drove him from the garden with shoves and kicks. The poor man’s food remained behind, so he had to return home to eat. It was a meal mixed with the poison of death, for the incident had made a mighty impression upon his soul. One Sunday several neighbors took him to the Bronx Zoo to look at the animals. He admired the spectacle and was astonished by the beauty of the buildings made as homes for filthy beasts, while he, a son of Adam, lived in a house inferior to the pig’s dwelling in that garden. But his good fortune did not remain complete. As he marveled at the sight of the elephant and its trunk, he threw the animal a piece of bread he had in his pocket. A keeper saw him and arrested him. The matter did not end until his companions paid the fine on his behalf. Do not ask what came out of Abū Rājī’s mouth afterward. On the Sunday following this incident, they took Abū Rājī to the museum, where precious objects and works of art were displayed.[88] It was as though they had taken him merely to see the grandeur of the building and the garden surrounding it, for the antiquities inside did not appeal to him. No wonder: he knew nothing about the arts. When one of his companions told him that a picture hanging on display might cost tens of thousands of dollars, Abū Rājī shook his head and swore mighty oaths that he would not buy it for five cents. He laughed at American minds, accused them of foolishness, and reproached them for stupidity and levity. His friends enjoyed his judgment of matters beyond the boundaries of his understanding and wished to tease him. They began debating the subject and exaggerating the pictures’ importance, while he measured out abuse for the limited understanding of Americans, who “burst themselves” over trivial things. While he mocked, listened, and answered all at once, his right hand entered his pocket and brought out his tobacco tin. Without his mind observing what his hands were doing, he rolled a cigarette and placed it in his mouth. His left hand entered his other pocket and brought out a match. He continued talking to his friends as they pressed him and he laughed at the Americans. None of them noticed what Abū Rājī was about to do because they were so delighted by his amusing conversation. His right hand took the match from its sister and reached toward the wall, which was covered in splendid artistic paint. To the painters’ skill it added a red line in the middle of the wall, two cubits long. Scarcely had Abū Rājī lit his cigarette with the match when his friends returned to their senses. They saw what he had done, pulled him outside at once with terrified hearts, and denied him the satisfaction of explaining what had happened for fear that their deed would be discovered. Instead they hurried to the train and returned home. These were some of the things that happened to Abū Rājī in America. They printed upon his brain the belief that, despite wearing hats and European suits and speaking English, America’s inhabitants possessed nothing of civilization or intelligence; and that despite the failures of security and the lack of activity in our country, it was more civilized and its people more intelligent than all the peoples of the earth. Accordingly, before Abū Rājī had completed three years, he took his family back to his village in Lebanon. There he purified his mind and cleared his thoughts of dreams of emigration and assimilation into the civilized peoples of the West. A year after Abū Rājī returned home, one of his countrymen came back from America. He had been among the friends who took Abū Rājī to the New York museum. After returning Abū Rājī’s greeting at his house, the visitor entered, treading upon the carpet without removing his shoes at the threshold. Throughout the visit Abū Rājī’s eyes remained aimed at his guest’s feet. He tried to conceal his secret as long as he could, but in the end the matter betrayed him. He said gently, “The custom of not removing one’s shoes is current in America, but it has not become current in our country, because shoes soil the carpet.” “Yes, you are right,” the guest answered. “But you can clean a carpet with a broom or something else, and cleaning it costs you no more than a minute and a little effort. Yet it seems to me that you have forgotten the line you printed on one wall of the art museum in New York, when you dragged that enormous mark across it with a match to light your cigarette. Do you not suppose that erasing the trace of that line cost the museum’s owners more than the price of your carpet?” Abū Rājī answered with a measure of contempt: “Yes, in America everything costs money. If shame and modesty did not prevent them, they would charge one another for air. Seeing the limits of their minds and returning home cost me my old house, the orchard, and the furniture. But praise be to God: we saw the things called American civilization—and what a civilization it is!” NOTES [85] This sentence reproduces the story’s historical language and its racial hierarchy; the translation does not endorse it. Haddad makes Abū Rājī swing from uncritical worship of America to an equally uncritical contempt for it. [86] Crowded Syrian immigrant households in lower Manhattan used fire escapes as semi-domestic outdoor space. City rules and fire-safety concerns restricted such uses; the immediate offense here, however, is a live coal falling on the policeman. [87] Castle Garden, at the Battery near the foot of Washington Street, was by this date the New York Aquarium and a public park. Haddad uses the older immigrant name for the site. [88] The description most likely refers to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park, though Haddad does not name it. The red line is made by striking the match against a painted interior wall. 25. Tales of Romance If Saʿīd ʿAllām is absent from you for no more than half an hour, he will report at least two incidents that befell him during that interval. You are free to believe what he says or not; to him, however, your belief or disbelief makes no difference. He will tell you, for example, that while he was walking on such-and-such a street toward such-and-such an establishment, his eye fell upon a girl than whom none was sweeter or more beautiful. Her eyes slaughtered, her cheeks burned, her figure cut, and her bosom struck down.[89] Scarcely had glance met glance when she shot him a wink from the corner of her right eye. With his left hand he lifted his hat and greeted her. Together they made an appointment for a certain day at eight in the evening, rain or shine. That, for instance, is the first of his incidents. The second is that, while returning from the establishment he had visited, he hurried along with no wish to look at any girl whatever, even if she were descending from heaven. Suddenly, as he walked, he collided with someone. When he looked up to apologize, he discovered a girl upon whose brow beauty had inscribed its first and final verse. Necessity forced him to apologize in gentle words. The affair ended with her hinting that she would not object if he accompanied her home. Necessity forced him to accompany her. When they reached the steps, he bade her farewell, gave her his name and address, took hers, and pledged with her to exchange letters and visits. He concludes: “Between Molly and Katie, I have lost all my time.”[90] Saʿīd ʿAllām has many inventions for composing these incidents. A companion might imagine the young man had been created especially to serve as the object of every girl’s hopes. Whenever he sits in company, he never stops telling the listeners about a girl nearly driven mad by love for him, then about another girl and everything that happened in her affair, until he astonishes and bewilders the mind. He possesses a strange power of invention. He shapes his tales and lavishes verbal spices and descriptive appetizers upon them. Even when a listener doubts the truth of his narration, he does not tire of hearing it. Rather, he marvels at whether everything heard from Saʿīd ʿAllām could really have happened. A person is astonished by his reports of the amorous nets into which he falls and those he himself sets for American girls. The listener says inwardly, “How marvelous that all this should happen to this young man! He possesses no advantage over anyone else in looks, character, learning, money, wit, or language. If everything he relates is true, then American women must certainly have no minds—or their minds must be nothing but tra-la-la.” A friend told me that Saʿīd ʿAllām always ground him down with accounts of appointments with American girls and of astonishing coincidences that entangled him with them unintentionally—indeed, against his will. “I was always thinking about the young man’s life,” he said. “I turned him over in my thoughts on the assumption that everything he reported was true. What, I wondered, made him desirable and beloved in girls’ hearts? Why did not even one of the thousands of incidents that happened to him happen to me, when I am handsomer, more neatly dressed, bolder, and sweeter in conversation? “At last I firmly resolved to discover the truth of his stories myself. I watched for a chance to walk with him for an entire day through the heart of the city, back and forth, and enter every gathering with many girls and every dance hall or similar place. I wished to see with my own eyes how the fair sex cast its nets from every hill and valley to capture the heart of this extraordinary young man. “Time brought me a day I had long desired. After great effort and insistent pleading, Saʿīd ʿAllām agreed to go with me to Central Park. He tried to slip away on the pretext that he had one appointment before noon, another after noon, and still another in the evening. God made the task easy and I persuaded him to go to the park with me. We would surely spend the day flirting with beauties who would compensate him for the appointments he had broken for my sake. “We entered the subway together. Scarcely had we sat down in a car whose seats were full when I saw with my own eyes something that pleased and astonished me. By good fortune, the entire row before us was occupied by ladies. At first sight I said, ‘By God, then Saʿīd has told the truth in all the strange incidents with New York girls that he has related to people!’ “I saw smiles upon the mouths of the ladies before us. Their eyes watched him; some even winked. He lowered his lids languidly and murmured to me, ‘Do you not see that I have grown tired of this life? Look before you now, and excuse me another time if I refuse to go with you or anyone else to parks and gatherings.’ “I was dumbfounded,” my friend continued. “My heart began to dance. I said within myself, ‘Glory to the Creator! He places in souls an attraction invisible in outward appearances.’ I looked at the seated passengers and marveled at the rush of their glances toward my companion Saʿīd ʿAllām. I nearly pitied him for the shots fired by winking eyes and the volleys from smiling mouths. “Then a middle-aged man stood before us. He hooked his hand through a strap for standing passengers, bent toward my friend on my side, and told him that one leg of his trousers had caught in his sock garter. He asked him to pull it down and put an end to the disturbance it was causing.”[91] My friend also said: “I looked at Saʿīd ʿAllām. His face was filled with blood, and shame wrapped him in a scarf. Our excursion was shortened to reaching the park. There we separated: he went one way and I another. “Whenever I met him afterward, I moved my hand in imitation, reminding him of the mishap that had occurred in my presence. I laughed loudly and he smiled faintly. Better still, if I surprised him among friends telling them about his marvelous affairs, he immediately changed the subject from one form to another.” NOTES [89] Arabic: ʿaynāhā tadhbaḥān wa-khaddāhā yuḥriqān, wa-qadduhā yaquddu wa-nahduhā yahuddu. The description accumulates violent rhymes: eyes slaughter, cheeks burn, the figure cuts, and the bosom demolishes. [90] The Arabic prints a rhymed immigrant catchphrase, bayna Mālī wa-Kātī ḍāʿat awqātī: ‘Between Molly and Katie, my time was lost.’ The names represent Saʿīd’s supposedly innumerable American romances. [91] Men’s elastic sock garters were worn below the knee. Saʿīd’s trouser cuff has caught in one, exposing his leg and causing the women’s laughter and glances that he mistakes for desire. 26. No Difference Between the Two She was Badr Mashriq’s fifth wife. He married her at the age of forty. He had divorced his first four wives one by one, and the affair ended in his marriage to the fifth, whom he chose for himself. She was an American of his own age, a widow with a daughter by her first husband. Two months into his fifth marriage, Badr Mashriq declared before his acquaintances that an American wife was better than a Syrian. He swore a decisive oath that he would never again marry a Syrian woman, because Americans were better for domestic life, more refined, and more orderly. When he swore this decisive oath, his face showed no sign that he intended a joke. He pronounced it as one certain of the matter’s truth who meant what he said. He had resolved not to marry a Syrian woman after this American, in whose taste and refinement he had found what he had never seen in the four Syrian women formerly married to his honor. This time Badr had no concern with the ordering of the household. At the end of the week he merely paid the fixed sum required for necessities: the grocer’s account, rent, the installment on the furniture, and the like. When he had been married to a Syrian woman, by contrast, he had carried the groceries home from Syrian shops. He never arrived before his patience had crossed every limit, with abuse, curses, and blasphemies flying from his mouth like artillery shells in the thick of battle. In the age of the American wife, he no longer carried a sack of bulgur, mutton, a can of tomatoes, or a basket of grapes. The American ordered everything by telephone, and the delivery boy brought her requests like the jinn of Solomon the Wise.[92] The difference between a Syrian wife and an American one was enormous, especially in the first period of his fifth marriage. If the Syrian wife wished to thread a needle, she asked her husband to thread it. She grew bewildered over what to cook for supper. Yesterday it was kibbeh; the day before, stuffed squash; before that, mujaddara. What about today? Before he left for work she asked his opinion: “What would you like me to cook for you?” What did he answer? “The poison of death.” Then he left the house scowling. The American did not ask him, consult him, or request anything except that he pay the bill. She sent him to work with a kiss and met him at the door when he returned with another. She sat beside him and read the newspapers with him, conversing on many affairs whose depths she entered by putting her mind to work and holding an opinion on every event and subject. When she spoke to him, she ended her sentences with “my dear,” “my darling,” or “my honey.” With perfect calm and order, supper appeared on the table at six every evening, together with everything required for eating. The Syrian wife, meanwhile, put off her husband by saying the meat was not yet cooked. The clock struck seven-thirty while, after laboring all day, the husband tossed upon the frying pans of waiting with an empty stomach. When the food was finally cooked and he sat with his wife to eat, she immediately rose to fetch the bread, cursing Satan for making her forget it. Scarcely had she settled into her chair when she rose a second time for the salt and pepper, and a third for the napkin. Once more she poured curses upon Satan, for haste came from him. Supper did not end without much labor and confusion. Badr observed all these differences and thanked God for delivering him from the dullness of Syrian women and directing an American woman toward him to ease his mind of every such matter. His duty was only to strive and provide the money for living; his wife had everything else, provided the money was there. Badr had a Syrian friend with an intelligent heart, fermented by lessons, the turns of time, and the revolutions of days. Once they met, and Badr told him all about his feelings and peace of mind. His friend listened to the entire discourse on the enormous difference between the Syrian wife and her American sister. At last, however, he said—and this was in 1902: “Your subject is of sublime benefit and contains many truths. I cannot debate it with you when you have tested the matter yourself and learned the difference between the Syrian and the American. But how long have you been with your American wife?” Badr answered that it had been about a year. His friend shook his head, took hold of the edge of his coat collar, thrust out his lips a little, and murmured, “But, my friend, you are still in the honeymoon.” In 1910 people picked up the newspapers to read what had happened at the trial in the suit Mrs. Badr Mashriq had brought against her husband. For nearly two years it moved from court to court; the lawyers for both sides negotiated one day and made court submissions the next. A final judgment was issued divorcing Mrs. Mashriq from Mr. Badr Mashriq, establishing a monthly allowance that the mister would pay the missus at the beginning of each month for her support, and awarding her the house with all its furniture. The suit was based on allegations that Mr. Mashriq neglected his wife and directed more of his attention toward her daughter, sitting with her and treating her tenderly while his wife remained absorbed in household affairs. He rebuked his wife and spoke harshly to her. His love had cooled from the day her daughter became a young woman. During the previous year, he had never kissed his wife of his own accord, but only after shouting and quarrels. He spent one or two nights at a time outside the house while she passed the nights awake, waiting for him to return. Late in 1910, Badr Mashriq was relieved of the monthly allowance to his divorced wife, which had exhausted him and weighed down his back. Mrs. Mashriq changed her name, shedding “Mashriq” as a tree sheds its leaves in autumn and replacing it with “Sylvan,” the family name of a new husband of her own flesh and blood. When Badr learned that the appointed allowance had reached its end, he breathed a sigh of relief. In 1913 Badr had become a middle-aged man approaching old age. The days had bent his back and deprived him of his energy, making him inclined toward idleness. But for necessity, he would not have given his business even the slightest attention. That year a middle-aged woman entered his establishment. After speaking with him briefly about business, she said, “Mr. Badr, you need a companion in life, one who will look after your household while you manage your affairs in this establishment.” “I felt that need years ago,” he answered. “The house went with the woman. Now I have only a few years left in this life, and I suppose this establishment will protect me from want and begging if I preserve it.” She replied that if he wished to preserve his business, his mind must be at ease about his daily life, and it would find no rest until he arranged a decent girl for himself, as her nephew had done. He had been a mighty young man who made the ground shake with his steps. Once he married, he became a gentle young man watched over by the eye of God. “I was like him and more,” said Badr, “and he will become like me—and even more miserable.” As he spoke, the friend who had told him he was still in the honeymoon entered the establishment. Badr greeted him after the long absence. When his friend asked about the madam in whom he had found what he had not found in his Syrian wives, Badr told him what had happened. He now believed there was no difference between the Syrian and the American woman, and in his life he would never again think of either one. His friend answered, “If marriage for you means divorcing one woman and marrying another, then whether there is a difference between them or not makes no difference to you.” NOTES [92] In Islamic and Arabic literary tradition, Solomon commanded the jinn, who accomplished extraordinary tasks at his order. The delivery boy summoned by telephone is compared to such a servant. 27. May God Bless Him—and Keep Him Away No one could understand the origin of the quarrel between Ibrāhīm al-Ṣāliḥ and his brother Farīd. It began during the younger brother’s first week in this country. Ibrāhīm had been preparing to rent a private apartment and buy handsome furniture so that he and Farīd could live as a small family. Instead he remained in his furnished room and drove his brother away. The poor boy, not yet seventeen, was forced to rent a wretched little room and work as a clerk in a commercial establishment in order to live independently. Young Farīd told me about the quarrel. He did not know why his brother hated him. He had committed no offense against Ibrāhīm and had never failed to show respect for his elder brother and benefactor. Yet for a perfectly simple reason Ibrāhīm had decided that they should separate and each live for himself. They were now prevented from meeting except when alone. At such times Ibrāhīm exercised authority over his brother: he gave him an order and flicked his jacket with his fingers as a sign that this was how he wished him to act. If Farīd refused, Ibrāhīm was not responsible for him. A quarrel between brothers of this kind is exceedingly strange. Neither had committed an offense against the other, and nothing ineradicable stood between them. Both, moreover, were successful at their work. Ibrāhīm was thirty-five and had labored in America for nearly twenty years. When Farīd completed primary school, Ibrāhīm sent for him in the hope that they might open a commercial establishment in which he would be proprietor and his brother manager. Yet affairs ended in estrangement during Farīd’s first week in America. Farīd was an intelligent young man with some learning and a passion for reading. He spoke little, but was sober and said only what was necessary and useful. His elder brother was his opposite: full of talk and pretension, intervening in every subject and inserting himself into every problem. He too had a passion for reading newspapers and books, but only on the surface. He memorized the names of great politicians, scholars, philosophers, and poets. When he spoke in a gathering, he cited these names in profusion. People regarded him as a learned man whose breast held treasures of knowledge and understanding. If the discussion concerned politics, he quickly mentioned Bismarck and Gladstone and said, “So-and-so said such and such.” Who among them had read what Bismarck or Gladstone wrote or said and could call him a liar? If the conversation turned to poetry, he immediately mentioned al-Mutanabbī and Abū al-ʿAlāʾ, together with several verses by each that he recited in mangled pronunciation. Then he plunged into the history of poetry by naming Homer and proceeded through a ladder of names to Hugo and Musset, and—, and—, until those present fell silent and surrendered the floor. Among them he always found admiration for the breadth of his acquaintance and abundance of his learning. He became their authority on every question and the proverbial master of every branch of knowledge.[93] This continued until Farīd reached New York and began attending gatherings with his brother. He saw Ibrāhīm riding the vessel of excess in most of his talk. At first he remained silent out of deference. Once he grew comfortable, however, he began objecting to his brother’s errors and correcting them. Ibrāhīm burned with rage and cursed the hour his brother had arrived to strip him of his station as a scholar among the people. Once the two brothers attended a crowded evening party. The phonograph delighted the ears of those present and cups passed among them. The last record they heard, which carried them away by its enchantment, was a performance of “O Night of the Lover.” Some replayed it again and again, helped sing it, and cited the beautiful meanings of its verses. They stopped at the line: The night companions slept, while it kept him wakeful.[94] Someone asked the group, “Who is this summār?” One man answered, “I suppose the summār is the fellow who hammers in nails.” Everyone laughed at him. A second said, “I think the summār is the tomcat—the sinnamār, rather.” A third said, “No, it is the starling that drives locusts away.” The company disagreed over the word’s meaning. Ibrāhīm al-Ṣāliḥ cleared his throat and withdrew from those present in thought so that he might bring them the word’s meaning and make his speech the final judgment. His younger brother Farīd, meanwhile, found the scene a theater. He never stopped laughing with all the reach of his jaw and all the force in his lungs. At last someone cried, “We have Ibrāhīm al-Ṣāliḥ among us and dare interpret the word! Let us hear him solve the problem.” Those present fell silent. The phonograph stopped. They became listening ears ready to hear, while all eyes aimed at a single point: Ibrāhīm al-Ṣāliḥ’s face. Ibrāhīm no longer had any escape. It would shame him not to solve such a small problem when he had never accustomed them to such a failure. First he opened his mouth with perfect slowness, his eyes staring and his face growing long. From the corner of his eye he glared at his brother Farīd. This made him stammer. Once God had shown mercy upon the company’s patience, the word “I suppose” emerged from his mouth five times, with an interval of two minutes between each. At last he overflowed with the solution, casting aside his manufactured hesitation. “The summār is the Samaritan, the Jewish censor. It appears the author of the verses was a Jew. Thus the line means that the enemy slept while the lover did not, for pain kept him awake.” It seems Farīd forgot that the speaker was his elder brother. He summoned every power of laughter he possessed while everyone else sat silent, solemnity visible upon their faces, awaiting the final pronouncement of their lord of knowledge. Ibrāhīm flew into a rage at his brother and cursed him. But for the respect owed to the company, he would have struck him. Farīd came to himself. He followed his long laughter with a sudden scowl, asked his brother’s pardon, acknowledged that he was wrong, and said that he had forgotten himself because the company’s interpretations of summār were so far from the truth. His brother said, “Farīd, you are like every boy who comes from Syria, stuffed with pretension. You do not respect other people’s knowledge. You think what you were fed at school is the whole of learning, although you lack a great deal of refinement. And now—what shame!—you have made us blush before people. Get up. Come with me.” Those present urged Ibrāhīm to abandon the idea of leaving and calm himself a little. His brother would learn later, improve his conduct, and discover how to sit among people. One of those who had interpreted the word was deeply displeased by Farīd’s statement that the company’s explanations made him laugh. Full of disgust, he addressed him: “Do you have a better interpretation? Yes, we did not study in schools like you, but I do not think our words oblige people to laugh—unless you laugh without cause, and laughter without cause shows a lack of manners.” Young Farīd’s bearing changed. In a gentle voice, bewilderment possessing him, he said, “Forgive me, brothers, for what came from me. My laughter was not intended to diminish the honor of those who interpreted the word summār. Their interpretations made me laugh because we are in a gathering of pleasure, where anyone is allowed to laugh.” Ibrāhīm remained standing, tugging his brother’s arm to leave before anything still more distressing occurred. An elderly man, however, admired Farīd’s reasoning. Smiling, he rose and gently approached Ibrāhīm, asking him to return to his place and efface the quarrel’s effect for fear of hurting the young newcomer from home. He himself had felt Farīd’s spirit break. Ibrāhīm was forced to sit. The elderly man turned to Farīd. “Farīd, do not be upset, my son. No harm is done. It is a small matter; do not be ashamed. Everyone present is a brother. Come, son, sit and tell us how you interpret summār, so we can laugh at you as you laughed at us.” The company laughed at Farīd in advance, except for Ibrāhīm, in whose heart poison boiled. He did not dare object. When Farīd saw that the company’s spirits had been relieved, he smiled and said, “The word summār is the plural of samīr. A samīr is one who stays awake at night. The poet means that the wakeful companions slept, but he did not: a tormenting pain deprived him of sleep.”[95] The elderly man gave a great laugh. “Yes, by God! Now we have taken our revenge on you.” The company laughed with him, except for Ibrāhīm, who rose at once and wished to leave with his brother because the evening had grown late. That night Farīd did not sleep at his brother’s. From that night onward no gathering brought the brothers together. When Ibrāhīm is asked about his brother’s conduct, he shakes his head, sighs, and says, “No one ever bought himself a calamity as I did. I had no cares, so I brought my brother to increase my happiness. Instead he deprived me of rest. But America is wide: may God bless him—and keep him far away.” NOTES [93] The catalog deliberately mixes German and British statesmen, classical Arabic poets, Homer, and the French writers Victor Hugo and Alfred de Musset. Ibrāhīm’s knowledge extends little beyond their names. [94] The song is the celebrated qaṣīda beginning Yā layla al-ṣabbi matā ghaduhu (‘O night of the lover, when is its morrow?’), generally attributed to the eleventh-century poet al-Ḥuṣrī al-Qayrawānī. The quoted line is raqada al-summāru wa-arraqahu. [95] Summār is the plural of samīr, a night companion or one who passes the night in conversation. The guests’ false definitions depend on sound associations with mismār, ‘nail’; sinnammār, treated here as a cat’s name; and sumarmur, ‘starling.’ Ibrāhīm’s ‘Samaritan’ is another false resemblance. 28. Nature’s Servant Ḥannā Marqus emigrated to America before the age of twenty. He learned broken English by selling first with a pack, then with a satchel, and finally by displaying his goods in hotels. At the beginning he was shy. He saw everything as larger than himself and every person as more learned. Once he could come and go in the city streets and travel from one town to another, however, his nose reached the highest summits of heaven. With the hundred dollars he had saved in the government bank, he became one of the greatest of the rich.[96] With his English expression—mixed with Arabic words that resisted his English, but that he threw in laughing so they seemed to issue from his mouth as deliberate jokes—he became one of the luminaries of the globe. He became one of the people most capable of entering the human arena, because he could place one foot in New York and the other in San Francisco. When he sat in a Syrian restaurant, his fork remained clean, for he replaced it with the fingers of both hands. He made each mouthful large and often packed it into his mouth with a finger, forcing it to enter despite the limits of the opening. In an American restaurant, however, he would eat even fish only with a fork. Many times he left a roast chicken on its plate after merely scratching it, because extracting the meat with a fork proved impossible. His eye remained fixed upon it, his stomach rising and falling with longing to swallow it, but he did not dare attack, because he knew perfectly well that he was in an American restaurant. He shaved every morning, cursing the country that forced him to do so and longing to return to his village, where he would not have to sweep the hair from his face more than once every two weeks. He tended his dress and appearance and bought himself a flower on Sundays. Whenever he sat on a bench or chair, he pulled up his trousers to preserve the crease at the knees. Yet he always preferred the qumbāz because wearing it involved no such burden, although he dared not say so before other people.[97] After spending his first two years in this country, he began entering the society of foreigners. Before five years had passed, he had become an American citizen, voting for candidates for office and taking some candidates’ side against others. Yet before he entered the world of dreams each night, his eyelids remained open and his thought flew in the heavens of longing. He wished to return to his village and sleep beneath a tree, with the sky as his blanket, the meadow his mattress, and a small woven-straw stool his pillow. Such was Ḥannā Marqus. He had two faces: an outwardly American face and another belonging by nature to the old country. So long as he remained in America, acquired habit prevailed over him, but he longed and yearned to free himself from its yoke and let his nature rule. Ah, if only Ḥannā Marqus could return to his village of Kafr Baṭṭa, cast off the European coat, and save several curses upon religion and damnations while he arranged his tie, pulling it back and forth. Very well: the time came when Ḥannā Marqus’s steps were directed toward the homeland. The road between the New World and Old had reopened after the war closed it for a long while. With the utmost effort he obtained a passport from the American government so that he might return to his old mother’s embrace and oversee with his experience and knowledge the vineyard and land he had inherited from his late father. He told his friends he did not intend to return to America. He possessed much money and abundant commercial experience; his country was newly opened, and before him the future held wide the door to great success. Ḥannā Marqus reached home. He wrote a friend that he no more thought of staying than he thought of returning: Syria did not suit his taste. He had supposed the country had changed, but in truth it had not. Tailors did not know how to cut and sew according to the latest styles. Houses had no bathrooms. If he wished to shave each day, he spent at least two hours waiting for water to heat in a pot. If he wished to promenade in the parks, he found no benches to support him and protect him from dampness. Finally, the field of trade in the homeland seemed narrow: people there spoke in piastres, while in America they spoke in dollars.[98] In America, Ḥannā Marqus had seen himself bound by the chains of American civilization. Once in Syria, when he found himself free of those bonds, he longed to return to America. “May God preserve America,” he said. “It is a country fit to live in—the people’s country, as they call it.” Ḥannā Marqus returned to New York, “raising all ten fingers” against ever again entertaining the thought of returning home. He told himself that it was better for a person to make America his homeland and stop at that limit. Scarcely had he spent a month in America when his yearning returned for the inward freedom he enjoyed in his country. This time, however, he forced himself to hate the desire, because the money he had gathered through the sweat of his brow over many years had nearly reached the bottom of his final pocket. He no longer knew what he loved. Was it America, with innovative tailors, parks furnished with benches and splendid prospects, bathrooms, and hot water for shaving every day—things that wear a person down and bind him with strong chains of customs upon which humankind has agreed? Or did he love his homeland, which lacked these bonds even though they were among the things necessary for human life? Before he resolved the struggle between the two opposing forces—hatred of America for its constraints and hatred of Syria for lacking such American constraints—he picked up an issue of al-Sāʾiḥ. In it he read Mīkhāʾīl Nuʿayma’s poem “The Cord of Wishing.” He reread it several times in order to saturate himself with its meanings, and mastered himself with the line: I wish that I did not wish.[99] He prevailed over himself after a fashion, saying, “My market goes with the market—and peace.”[100] NOTES [96] The ‘government bank’ probably means the United States Postal Savings System, created in 1911 and especially attractive to immigrants who distrusted private banks. [97] The qumbāz is a traditional Levantine long-sleeved robe or coat, looser than a Western suit and without trouser creases to preserve. [98] The Ottoman qirsh (piastre) was a small unit of account. Speaking in piastres rather than dollars becomes Ḥannā’s measure for the homeland’s smaller commercial scale. [99] Mīkhāʾīl Nuʿayma (Mikhail Naimy, 1889–1988) was a leading mahjar writer and a member of al-Rābiṭa al-Qalamiyya. The line is from his poem Ḥabl al-Tamannī, ‘The Cord of Wishing.’ [100] Arabic maʿa al-sūq sūqī wa-l-salām, literally, ‘my market goes with the market, and peace’: Ḥannā resigns himself to following prevailing circumstances instead of resolving his contradictory desires. 29. Hope and Pain Abū Ḥannā emigrated to America with Umm Ḥannā two years after God had granted them Ḥannā. He hoped to sweep several baskets of gold from America and bring them home, build a palace, buy his neighbor’s orchard, and live with Umm Ḥannā and his children on its abundant income, free from care and misery. Just before resolving to abandon the homeland, Abū Ḥannā contemplated the happiness he would obtain if he returned from America successful, having put hundreds—indeed, thousands—of dollars to sleep in safety. He stretched his gaze into the distance and told himself, “If everything beneath my sight becomes mine while I sit in my palace smoking my hookah, without labor or work, and my tenant farmers bring me more than my expenses every year—what a life of ease!” Abū Ḥannā set out for America after mortgaging his house. He brought the mother and child after great suffering in Beirut, Marseilles, and New York, where he met terrors at the island because of the lady’s illness.[101] Fortune served him a little: in New York he found an old friend from his village, who interceded for him with the immigration administration. After two weeks in the hospital, Umm Ḥannā emerged from quarantine into the world of movement and trade. For a week Abū Ḥannā remained his friend’s honored guest, learning something of the work and taking hold of commerce at its beginning. His host bought him a peddler’s pack and filled it with pins, needles, scissors, several pieces of toweling, and other things. He trained Abū Ḥannā to lift it onto his shoulder and lower it. With great effort he taught him how to knock at doors, remove his hat and offer a greeting, and ask people to buy from him and show him kindness. Throughout these lessons Abū Ḥannā swallowed his saliva and pressed upon his wound. He felt that his old hopes had been in one valley and reality in another. The streets from which he had hoped to sweep baskets of gold were either clean of everything or filled with mud and filth. He did not dare object aloud to what he saw, contrary to what he had hoped. Or, rather, he was ashamed to tell his host anything about the disappointment he had felt on arriving. His secret remained in his heart. He shouldered the pack and all that followed from it in order to support Umm Ḥannā and his child in the land of exile. There is no need for lengthy explanation: the first ten years Abū Ḥannā’s family spent in America were a mixture of enormous labor and little success. During them, however, the family grew. Abū Ḥannā had four children in addition to Ḥannā. None of the five experienced a home upbringing. Because he and their mother both worked at peddling, he was forced to lie to orphan asylums. Each time he placed a son in one so that the child might be educated and reared without charge, he declared that the boy was an orphan without a mother. Sometimes the mother went and swore before the asylum superintendent that her son was an orphan without a father.[102] Thus the parents removed from themselves the hardship of child-rearing and attended to their trade. They worked together and became capable of meeting their own needs with several dollars left over each week. Umm Ḥannā took the surplus and hoarded it in the money belt she had brought from Syria, saving it for the day God permitted them to return home. Do not ask about the thrift they practiced throughout this period, for the couple’s thoughts were confined to gathering money for a return to the homeland at the first opportunity. But the days did not preserve their serenity for Abū Ḥannā. One day all five children returned at once. The asylums had learned that their parents were alive, well, and comfortably situated. After long argument and great trouble, Abū Ḥannā was forced to take his children back into his house. He felt no paternal tenderness toward them. His knowledge of English had never advanced beyond what he learned from his New York host and fellow villager during his first week in America, while his children seemed American through father and grandfather and knew not one word of Arabic. Abū Ḥannā had to seek the help of a Syrian young man to stand between him and his children as interpreter, carrying his paternal will from him to them and carrying back their thunderbolts over the evil fortune that had thrown them into a filthy house like their father’s, when they had grown accustomed to cleanliness and propriety in American schools. Umm Ḥannā was nimbler than her husband in English, so the children inclined toward her and away from their father. They were even ashamed to be called his children, especially when children in the streets learned that they were Syrian. If their father did anything that displeased them, they insulted him with the word “Syrian.” He continued to restrain his anger until his patience was exhausted. The mother took the children’s side. Sometimes she wept from oppression, bent tenderly toward them, and treated them gently. Little by little they felt drawn toward this woman; later they felt that inclination toward her as their mother. From their father, however, they only recoiled and withdrew further, as though he were not their father at all. Conditions in Abū Ḥannā’s family deteriorated. It became two hostile parties: the father on one side, the mother and children on the other. At every clash the shouting rose. Abū Ḥannā liked nothing but Arabic food, while the children yearned for “steak, ham, roast, and the like.” The mother’s taste inclined with her husband’s, but she accommodated the children and berated the father, calling him a peasant who had remained one even in America, the land of civilization and culture. Abū Ḥannā asked inwardly what he might do to escape the hell of the house. Sometimes she advised him to abandon his habits and learn American customs from his educated and well-mannered children. Shaking his head, he answered her and himself with the proverb: “When he was grown and gray, they put him in primary school.”[103] The situation worsened until, because of the quarrels, the children and mother hated Abū Ḥannā so much that they did not sleep a single night with full eyelids. In truth, the poor mother was the most wretched. Caught between two great afflictions, she chose to stand beside the pieces of her liver and left her poor husband to suffer the bitterness of life’s many forms. He did not understand the children and the children did not understand him. In the end he was forced to abandon the house without bidding his family farewell, in order to escape his circumstances. In one of America’s great cities, Abū Ḥannā was seen wearing a white suit. He held up a large pole tipped with a bundle of long straw, and before him he pushed with his left hand a box on two wheels. The witness was the fellow villager who had taken him and his family in during their first week in New York. When he saw him, he said hesitantly, “That is Abū Ḥannā. By God, it is he. Are you not Abū Ḥannā?” “Yes, friend. How are you?” “What has happened to you? What are you doing here? Where are Umm Ḥannā and the children?” “You know, friend, that I brought Umm Ḥannā and Ḥannā to this country. During these years I had four children besides Ḥannā. When I arrived in America, I was ashamed to tell you that I had not found what I had promised myself. I had hoped to sweep several baskets of gold from its streets, but—” “What happened to you?” “We came to sweep gold. We lost the woman and the children, and we began sweeping dirt and filth.”[104] NOTES [101] The ‘island’ is Ellis Island, where immigrants underwent inspection and could be detained for illness. Haddad calls the hospital quarantine al-maṭhar, literally ‘the place of purification.’ [102] Orphan asylums and institutional schools in the United States also housed many children with living parents who could not support or supervise them. Haddad turns the family’s repeated false declarations into a severe satire of migrant thrift. [103] Arabic lammā kabur wa-shāb ḥaṭṭūhu bi-l-kuttāb, literally, ‘when he grew old and gray, they put him in the elementary school.’ The proverb mocks instruction attempted too late in life. [104] The Arabic title al-Amal wa-l-Alam, ‘Hope and Pain,’ is nearly a graphic and aural pair. The final image makes the opening fantasy literal: instead of sweeping gold from American streets, Abū Ḥannā sweeps their refuse as a municipal cleaner. 30. The School of Exile “The people of our country are poor creatures, backward in everything. If not for exile, they would be no different from the people of Africa. Exile has taught most of them and opened their inner eyes, so that they have come to know what the world is.” These sentences formed part of a long statement Ilyās Shadrāwī made before a crowd of countrymen in a Syrian café. The conversation concerned memories of the homeland that had occurred to several of them. One man wished to answer that, in the past, Syrians in Syria may have been as he described, but for twenty years—that is, since Ilyās Shadrāwī had emigrated—Syria had filled with schools. Its inhabitants now knew everything and, thanks to their native intelligence, had become more skillful than Europeans and Americans in every field. Ilyās Shadrāwī was not persuaded by this reply. He pulled the hookah hose from his mouth so sharply that those present imagined he had drawn out his teeth. “In our country,” he said, “they still believe that America’s streets are paved with glass and that a person can dig anywhere and find gold in abundance. We often hear that they believe the strangest things about America, although we have spent tens of years here without seeing any trace of them.” The man who had opened the door of objection closed it by rising and leaving the group. “All that passed away long ago,” he said. “Now the hour of prayer at Sunday Mass has come. A happy day to all of you.” The objector departed, leaving among the people a conversation about Syria and Syrians that could not be joined together. Whenever one man tried to gather it at a single point, another appeared and branched it in several directions until the cup was lost among them.[105] Exactly two hours later, near noon, their conversation had moved from comparing Syrians’ knowledge with that of emigrants to Egypt, Egyptians, the British government, the ʿUrābī incident, and many other affairs—for conversation, as people say, has branches.[106] I still remember that patriotic gathering, although it took place more than ten years ago in a city far from New York. My travels had cast me into that café one Sunday morning. I sat at a table sipping coffee and listened to the company’s conversation from a distance to kill the empty time. Since I knew none of them, I did not join the discussion but amused myself with what I heard. The branching roads their talk followed, however, led my eyes toward sleep. I nodded for a minute, awoke when my head struck the wall, and then their conversation carried me down another road. Many times I intended to depart but found insufficient strength to rise. Besides, I was a stranger in that city and had nowhere to go except the café and the hotel in which I lodged. My will therefore fell beneath the nightmare of drowsiness. I remained like someone in a disturbing dream, watching strange scenes and telling himself, “I may be dreaming,” while straining his wits to determine whether he dreams or wakes. While I was in this condition, a hand shook my shoulder. I awoke in alarm and found a friend I had met on an earlier journey. “Sleeping in the morning?” he said. “Wake up, my friend. Mix yourself among the brothers and be entertained; you will drive sleep away.” He came close, placed his mouth beside my ear, and said, “There is a man here of very strange habits. He claims to know everything, though he can neither read nor write. His talk and intervention in every subject are comedy to anyone who listens. Pay attention. I shall stir up his disposition and draw him into a strange subject. I promise you will split with laughter.” My friend, whose presence greatly cheered me, called to the server and ordered two cups of coffee. By then I was truly awake, and every trace of sleep had flown from my eyes. My friend entered the company’s conversation. “What are you discussing?” Ilyās Shadrāwī answered, “When you came in, the talk was about the British government in Egypt, and yours truly was telling them what I myself experienced in that country after the ʿUrābī incident. The English used tremendous severity there until they were able to make it the Garden of Eden.” One of the wonders was that this man had spoken in a Syrian dialect when he began, before I dozed, because the conversation was about Syria. Now that it had turned to Egypt, he spoke the language and dialect of Egyptians. I listened with the greatest attention to discover how—and in which language—his discourse would end, especially after my friend had told me that he was a prodigy of the age in thrusting himself into every affair and subject. His speech was exceedingly long, and I enjoyed its winding course. At one moment he touched upon Egyptian politics and ended with the ancient pharaohs. At another he turned toward the British occupation and appended the story of the Library of Alexandria in the age of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb.[107] All this came in the language and dialect of Egyptians, as though he had been born in Egypt and arrived from it that very day. I shall not burden the reader by recounting everything amusing I heard. I limit myself to the final tale he offered. “In Egypt,” he said, “everyone sentenced to hang pays one Egyptian pound for the price of the rope. No power beneath the sun can release him from the tax.” A tax for which God had sent down no authority! But Ilyās Shadrāwī was describing to the company his experiences in that country. Like everyone present, I had breathed Egypt’s air from a steamship when it stopped in Alexandrian waters on my way to this country. Thus I remained silent in amazement. One member of the group, however, could not digest the tale. Full of wonder, he asked the speaker, “But if the condemned man does not possess the price of the rope, what do they do with him?” Ilyās Shadrāwī answered at once in the language of the Egyptians: “They don’t hang ’im.”[108] Reader, do not ask how the gathering ended. Laughter nearly paralyzed every listener’s jaws, including mine and my friend’s. When I recovered and they recovered, I placed my hand upon my head like someone emerging from unconsciousness and asked my friend’s permission to return to the hotel. He accompanied me. On the way, I told him that the first thing I had heard Ilyās Shadrāwī say, at the gathering’s beginning, concerned Syrians’ scandalous ignorance in believing such things existed in America. He had been proving to his listeners that exile alone illuminated the inner eyes of some of them. I then observed how he ended with his final story, claiming it came from personal experience. I said this, bade my friend farewell, and began climbing the hotel stairs. He answered, “Let us thank God that his tale came from personal experience. If it had come by hearsay—as Syrians in Syria hear of America’s glories and exaggerate them—the condemned man in Egypt would hang the khedive in his place if he refused to pay for the rope.”[109] NOTES [105] Arabic ḍāʿat al-ṭāsa baynahum, ‘the cup was lost among them,’ describes a confused affair in which responsibility and direction disappear. [106] Aḥmad ʿUrābī led the Egyptian nationalist revolt of 1881–82. British forces defeated it and occupied Egypt in 1882; British political control continued under varying legal forms for decades. [107] A persistent but historically disputed tradition alleges that the Library of Alexandria was destroyed on the order of Caliph ʿUmar after the Muslim conquest. Haddad cites it as one more sign of Ilyās’s indiscriminate pseudo-history. [108] Arabic lā yishnaqūhūsh renders an Egyptian negative construction with the suffix -sh. The marked dialect is part of the joke: Ilyās adopts an Egyptian voice as proof of an experience he never had. [109] The ‘school of exile’ is ironic. Ilyās claims that emigration cures homeland ignorance, but the gathering reveals how confidently misinformation can be manufactured abroad. 31. In Second Class Many people do not know why ʿĪsā al-Bāshiq failed in this country. He emigrated from Syria at nineteen, a handsome young man with a strong will, an intelligent disposition, and a blazing mind, proficient in reading and writing three languages. While the first of his countrymen to reach America had traveled in steamship steerage, he came in second class and wore a hat from the moment he left his family in Beirut for the ship.[110] The truth is that in ʿĪsā al-Bāshiq, New York witnessed its first Syrian young man bearing the polish of outward civilization together with the substance of inward cultivation. Yet, alas, today he is fifty and remains in the same condition in which he arrived from home more than thirty years ago. People attribute his lack of success to many things. Those who know him understand that none is the true cause of his failure. Ask him today and he will answer that he did not fail. On the contrary, he succeeded brilliantly, but never ate the fruits of his success because greedy hands stole them. He says that he caused the success of this man, that man, and another. Today those men are great merchants. He, however, has renounced this world and the next. Nothing about people concerns him, as though he were a person without a soul and, in the way he conducts his affairs, had forgotten that he was one of humankind. In truth, on the day ʿĪsā arrived in New York he rolled up the sleeve of earnestness and began joining the strength of his will to his intelligence and diligence. He worked by day and part of the night to attain the success he hoped for in the land of success. Yet he failed while his enterprises flowered and bore fruit. Other hands gathered the fruit, and the poor man remained on his mat, neither longer nor shorter than before. A few days after his arrival, Duʿaybis ibn al-Asmar, a man from his country, came to him and proposed an affair that would lead them both to great wealth in the not-distant future. Duʿaybis had spent several years selling rosaries and holy pictures in and around New York. Through the trade’s profits and his own parsimony, he had gathered a considerable sum. He proposed that he and ʿĪsā open a commercial establishment in New York: Duʿaybis would supply the capital, ʿĪsā his experience, and at year’s end they would divide the profits. The good idea entered ʿĪsā’s mind immediately. They established the partnership and, within a few days, commenced business under the name D. Asmar and Company. ʿĪsā tried to stuff his own name into the firm’s, but his partner’s obstinacy made it impossible. He feared the whole idea would unravel, so he consented to forgo publicizing his name and contented himself with future profits. In vain he tried to persuade his partner that labor and experience were like capital, and that capital alone, unless joined with labor and experience, brought no profit. At last ʿĪsā said, “If what you want cannot be, then I want whatever will be.” D. Asmar and Company was founded upon a solid basis. Its manager and member, ʿĪsā al-Bāshiq, devoted all the intellectual gifts and inward diligence God had given him to making the company prosper and soon become one of the greatest commercial establishments. His partner, however, hoped to swallow New York in a single mouthful without spending one dollar upon the bite. This was the first subject of conflict between the partners. ʿĪsā thought the establishment should be founded during its first year upon the pillars of trust and advertising. He was not miserly when any matter required expenditure. His partner stood as an obstacle in the road, unconvinced by ʿĪsā’s proof. In his belief, commercial outlay was nothing but waste, and thrift was profit. As the American proverb said, every cent saved was a cent earned.[111] And so ʿĪsā spent most of the first year striving, working, and exerting his utmost to patch whatever his partner tore through stinginess and avarice. Many times he paid from his own pocket for matters concerning the establishment, lest he arouse his partner’s temper. When the first year ended, the sum ʿĪsā had spent equaled his share of the profits. Duʿaybis’s profits, meanwhile, were like the widow’s jar: full, virginal, and untouched by any hand.[112] His partner ʿĪsā was utterly astonished. When he asked how Duʿaybis had met his personal expenses, the man answered that he had “managed here and there.” At the beginning of the new year Duʿaybis came to ʿĪsā’s office and said he was considering dissolving the partnership, with one buying the other’s share. ʿĪsā could not understand why his partner wished to dissolve the firm despite its success in the first year and despite Duʿaybis’s profit, which he had added to his own capital. Poor ʿĪsā himself had worked, suffered, and spent everything in his power in the hope that the profit would multiply in the years ahead and give him saved capital. The comic part was that ʿĪsā exhausted himself trying to persuade his partner to preserve the firm. Dissolution after a single year would reduce confidence in it. Continuing would be more profitable for both, and their profits could be expected to multiply in the coming years, since what had passed could not be called a time of trade and profit but a time of founding and beginning. When ʿĪsā said that, if division was unavoidable, he would buy the establishment, Duʿaybis answered, “Very well. Give me the price of my share.” Where could ʿĪsā find the price of his partner’s share? Now he understood the kind of division Duʿaybis wanted. He gave a bilious laugh mixed with pain and despair. “If I sell you my share, what will you pay me for it?” “I shall pay whatever the ledger shows is yours, with a grain of musk besides.” “That is justice according to the law. Then give me what is mine in the ledger; that is sufficient. Keep the grain of musk. It comes from your grace and noble generosity, and I am grateful for your munificence.” ʿĪsā took the ledger, struck out his name, picked up his hat, and walked toward the door. Before leaving he turned a scowling face toward his partner. “Goodbye, Duʿaybis. What lay between us is finished. As for the grain of musk, I have no need of it. Leave it in your mustache.” The following day D. Asmar and Company opened its door as usual. In place of its manager and member, ʿĪsā al-Bāshiq, sat a young man keeping the books for eight dollars a week. Why should Duʿaybis share the profit on his money with another when he could hire a boy at a trifling wage to take the partner’s place? ʿĪsā made an agreement with another Syrian establishment to represent it with sample cards in the interior.[113] At first he showed a remarkable power to win customers for his new house, until its receipts became five times what they had been. At year’s end he returned to New York for the accounting, happy with his success and hoping for still greater progress in coming years. He considered that year a period of founding and built his hopes upon tomorrow. When the “salesman” sat down with the “boss” to settle accounts, he found him perfectly courteous and solicitous. The proprietor immediately closed ʿĪsā’s account at a balance of about three hundred dollars, saying that it grieved him deeply to let him go but that fear of the future compelled him. He thought it best to reduce expenses in order to ward off risks. In vain ʿĪsā tried to persuade his “boss” that his fear had no place and that the future smiled upon them with certain success. Once he exhausted himself, he took his hat and made for the door to search for work in another establishment. ʿĪsā entered many agreements like this with numerous Syrian houses. At the end of each year he increased the establishment’s profits and departed himself, content to have escaped safely. At last he tired of work and despaired of success. He sought refuge in drink and gambling. To this day he works one day and idles for a month, while people marvel at his condition and attribute his failure to causes from which he is as distant as earth from heaven. Once I happened upon him in a café. I turned toward him and began conversing about the affairs of this mortal abode. He opened his quiver of secrets to me. “People think me unsuccessful. By my life, in my first year I founded D. Asmar and Company. A boy whom Duʿaybis hired for eight dollars a week ate the fruit of my labor. Only a few months passed before he robbed the establishment and forged drafts against its owner worth more than half the capital, forcing the firm into bankruptcy. The boy spent the money upon girls. After serving two years in prison, he met me on the street and admitted that necessity had driven him to steal because his wage was insufficient. “The second establishment, for which I won many customers, was forced into bankruptcy after two years. A financial storm blew through the American markets, and most of its customers fled with their unpaid debts.” He listed before me many establishments whose commercial foundations, he said, he had set upon rock. Scarcely had he completed a foundation before he was forced to leave. What angered him most was that upon those sound foundations they raised only buildings of mud brick instead of stone. Poor ʿĪsā al-Bāshiq! People think him a drunkard, gambler, and idler. They say of him, “His figure is polished; his pocket holds not a bean.”[114] In truth he is a man who cooked and another ate, who planted and someone else harvested. He says that America does not belong to those who emigrate in second or first class, or to those who can read, write, and speak languages. It belongs to the others: merchants by coincidence and fate. NOTES [110] Steamship second class marked ʿĪsā as unusually educated and respectable among early Syrian migrants, most of whom traveled in steerage. The title makes class position a satirical explanation for why practical commercial opportunists repeatedly exploit him. [111] A version of the English maxim ‘A penny saved is a penny earned,’ associated with Benjamin Franklin’s thrift ethic, appears here in immigrant commercial Arabic. [112] The inexhaustible widow’s jar recalls 1 Kings 17:8–16, in which a widow’s meal and oil do not fail. Haddad’s mixed image emphasizes that Duʿaybis leaves his profit wholly untouched while ʿĪsā spends his own share on the firm. [113] Commercial travelers carried sample cards or boards (masāṭir) representing a wholesaler’s merchandise and took orders from retailers in inland towns. [114] Arabic al-qāma maṣqūla wa-l-jayba mā fīhā fūla, a rhyming judgment: ‘the figure is polished, but the pocket has not a bean.’ It contrasts ʿĪsā’s cultivated appearance with poverty. 32. By the Sweat of Your Brow Thomas Carpenter is illiterate. He can neither read nor write in any language in the world. Nevertheless, every morning on his way to work he buys one of the country’s newspapers, folds it several times, stuffs it into his pocket, and proceeds to his work. It remains with him until he goes to bed, when he throws it into a basket or out the window into the street. Thomas Carpenter is of neither English nor American origin. He is a Syrian, the son of Syrians, descended from Syrians. But that is what he called himself after a year in America. His original name was Ṭannūs Najjār.[115] Ṭannūs emigrated at twenty. Fate placed him in a village in Vermont, where he remains to this hour, peddling with a satchel. During his first years, he earned a living by laboring in an ironworks. In those early years, when his honor was still Ṭannūs ibn al-Najjār, he wished to know nothing of America except how to draw money from it. Whenever he saved a few dollars, he went to a Syrian more experienced in that country who helped him send the sum to his parents. He continued in this fashion, working and helping his family, until he grew weary of the factory. He saw certain satchel peddlers whose travels brought them to Vermont and envied their livelihood and lives. Before their wealth and fine appearance he saw himself as a wage laborer dirty in clothes and person. The convulsions of ambition to join their rank played inside his head. He wrestled with this care until he attained his desire. He left the factory and its hardships with nearly two hundred dollars as his spoil, enough to begin selling and take hold of the ascending paths of progress. Ṭannūs Najjār’s first ambition toward advancement involved two things: first, changing his name; second, purchasing a new suit from his feet to his neck. From that day, ambition pronounced Mr. Ṭannūs Najjār to be Mr. Thomas Carpenter, and so he remains today. Mr. Carpenter wrote his family that he had advanced in life. The factory held no ambition; commerce was more profitable and better for his future. He had begun ascending through its stages: he now sold with a satchel and, God willing, would soon own a store. In a note at the corner of the letter, his honor dictated to the person writing for him that henceforth the name by which he was known had become Thomas Carpenter. When this emigrant’s letter reached his family, how greatly they rejoiced at his success! But they exaggerated when telling people about him. His mother explained the change from an Arabic to an English name by saying that her son had become American in every meaning of the word. Before long, however, his success saddened them. The money he had been accustomed to send at every opportunity ceased to arrive. They assumed this was a natural consequence of establishing his business. His father’s letters carried some complaint about the condition he suffered from poverty. He filled them with prayers that God would grant his son such success that the earth in his hand turned into gold, then asked God to make tenderness stir in his heart so that he would not forget his parents, who after God had no one but him. At first, Mr. Carpenter’s new profession was hard. During the first days it yielded him no profit at all. Many forces struggled within him: should he return to the factory, where his earnings were secure, or continue training himself in the methods of peddling despite not “centing”—earning a single cent—during those first days?[116] But a traveler must eventually reach a station. A first sale brought him a profit of several dollars and encouraged him to persist. A second and third followed. He gained customers whom he knew and who knew him, learned which kinds of goods sold more briskly than others, learned to ask a high price in order to secure a small profit, and so forth. There is no need to say that Mr. Carpenter’s profits were greater than the wage he had received in the factory. Still, he felt that the factory money possessed a greater blessing, while the satchel profits flew away by some route he did not know. Selling required propriety, fine dress, gifts for women customers, and much else. Yet he remained in the profession because he had grown accustomed to it and loved it. He was no longer forced to hear the alarm clock’s warning at five in the morning. Instead he rose late each day; when the weather was bad, he stayed in his room idling. Sometimes he appraised his goods and counted his profits, and sometimes he telephoned customers and made appointments to show them his merchandise. In the early years—may God bless them—letters from Ṭannūs Najjār went to his family with every post. Later, Thomas Carpenter answered ten of his father’s letters all at once, apologizing that he could not write and found someone to compose a letter for him only after long intervals. The early letters contained frequent money orders in small sums; afterward, the remittances became very few and rare. During the years of catastrophe that befell Syria, Mr. Carpenter comforted himself with hopes.[117] He supposed that his father’s family had no escape from death by starvation. At first their condition pained him and tore his liver apart, but the days erased this feeling. The belief settled in his mind that his family had no hope of rescue. He therefore watched for the war’s end and the road’s reopening so that he might take the first ship to Lebanon, gather up his father’s property, and place the house, land, and vineyard entirely in his own name. But for the famine, these would have been divided into six portions, since he was one of his father’s six children. Mr. Carpenter remained upon this hope for four full years. In his mind, his father, mother, and younger siblings were all counted among the dead. When he mentioned one of them he said, “the late so-and-so,” as though he had received their formal death notice. He told himself that the living was better than the dead—meaning by “the living” himself and by “the dead” every member of his family. Many emigrants, numbered in the thousands, have taken ship for Syria. Mr. Carpenter, who had promised himself that at war’s end he would take the first vessel carrying passengers from New York to Syria by way of France, Italy, or England, nevertheless remains in Vermont today. The reason is that, a month after the armistice, he received a letter from those who were dead in his mind. His father, mother, and younger siblings had all been resurrected alive from the departed catastrophe. His father told him that they had sold everything, down to the furniture, in order to preserve their lives. Had the Allies been delayed a single week, they would all have fallen victim to hunger. Then he thanked God that his son was in America: he had therefore been able, after selling everything, to borrow one hundred liras from the neighbors in the hope that his son Ṭannūs in America would repay them when the road reopened. To this day he works diligently to help his family, as he did when he was Ṭannūs working in the factory. Yet if anyone mentions the catastrophe in Syria before him, he immediately denies it and curses the newspapers that carried reports of famine to the emigrants, for those stories were pure invention. Once he met a friend in another town and learned that twenty members of the friend’s family had died and that the village had lost ninety percent of its population. Mr. Carpenter tried to persuade him that every report he had received was a journalistic lie and fabrication, with the survival of his own family serving as proof. When he met another friend, their conversation turned to news of home. He said he was very pleased that his family remained alive and deeply displeased with his first friend, who was going to Lebanon to inherit from his family. It was as though the man had asked for it in heaven and found it on earth: his family had died for him to inherit, and no brothers remained to divide the estate. He ended the conversation by saying there was no good in inheritance. A man ought to enjoy what his own hands gathered, for the best thing a person eats is what has been kneaded with the sweat of his brow.[118] NOTES [115] Najjār means ‘carpenter.’ The English name is a literal translation of the Arabic surname, while Thomas approximates the common Levantine Christian name Ṭannūs. [116] Haddad uses the immigrant coinage yisannis, formed from English ‘cent’: the new peddler does not earn even a cent. [117] The story refers to the First World War famine in Mount Lebanon and neighboring districts, especially severe from 1915 to 1918. Blockade, wartime requisitioning, crop failure, and a locust invasion combined in mass hunger and death. [118] The title echoes Genesis 3:19, ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.’ Thomas turns the maxim of earned sustenance into a moral defense only after his anticipated inheritance fails to materialize. Bibliography Haddad, ʿAbd al-Masīḥ. Ḥikāyāt al-Mahjar. New York: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Tijāriyya al-Amrīkiyya, 1921. ———. Ḥikāyāt al-Mahjar. Cairo: Hindawi Foundation, 2021. Digital edition. https://www.hindawi.org/books/97517380/. Accessed July 18, 2026. Naff, Alixa. Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985. Smith, Benjamin. “Transitional Portraits: Syrian Immigrants of the North American Mahjar in ʿAbd al-Masih Haddad’s Prose.” Mashriq & Mahjar 7, no. 1 (2020): 27–53. https://doi.org/10.24847/77i2020.247.