Quarterly

Fall 2007 | ArteZine

A Pound of ‘Awwamat and Some Syrup

By and

Story by Suhail Shadoud

Translated by Marlin Dick

 

Four in the morning, in the East Village. A band’s playing in the loft of the restaurant. A girl’s playing with the band. I know her. It’s a Brazilian song, and my head could ignite a thousand fires. The fire of the playing fingers whose smell I pick up on my skin; the fire of the days in Salhiyeh, in Damascus. And the song of Wafed Haidar. The fire of the kindling wood that is my life, now turning to ashes in front of me. The flame of longing… nostalgic people call it ghurbeh (2).… And «Khalil Gibran… didn’t fall short, no; he might have even overdone it.» That’s what Hussein Abdel-Sater screamed in my face.

That’s how the stories come back… and that’s why the boy won’t come back. In fact, he never left home planning to come back. He stayed. He stayed and he stuck around, never leaving, never «disappearing into the sunset,» as they say. «He did not depart in order to return,» as it’s written, somewhere in the old books.

That’s how the stories come back to my head, a pumpkin full of nothing. But my head’s not empty, it’s not full of nothing. And that’s how the rose wilted on the girl’s chest. The violin in Loreya’s hands is a match, and the match is being struck across my chest, like soldiers rushing through a forest. Defeat is like regret; it’s a rip that you just can’t mend. Just like a sharp tequila that burns inside the chest. You know, happiness pills are a great idea, but what kind of idea is it?

Loreya and Amira, and Samar, and Sara and Sarah, and Rabab and Michelle and Rabia, and her father the contractor, and Muhammad Hamzeh, and the bay leaf soap, and the smell of burnt tires at the intersection of the Agriculture Office in Tartous. All of that’s in my head right now. It’s like fire that’ll never go out, like flowers that should never go out. What’s the point, anyway? There is no treatment in the world that could change even a hair on the chest of the beast. That’s how the stories come back… That’s how… And the fancy seams of lingerie are like dry, yellow reed, it scratches the flesh, the flesh of the mind. It hurts like taking a baby from his mother’s breast.

They pulled the nipple away from the little boy’s mouth and none of the sha’ibiyyat (3) and hariseh(4) did any good to wean him away. Livestock rushing in alleys with rocks flying around, down a steep slope, and the acorn tree’s branches are falling off all by themselves, and the cows are munching on apples from the mother tree.

My head is a rattling coffin going to the cemetery. There’s corn on the cob, and pigs squealing in my chest. Loreya, up in the loft, is now the only one playing. Haytham Zeina is sitting next to me, and saying, «There are three things I hate most in the world –roses, inner beauty, and solos.»

The music from Loreya’s violin is ants grazing on my skin, and her fingers have so much to say. Matchsticks… strike ‘em and light ‘em. Her fingers are all the sweets my dad didn’t buy for me when we were in Banias. It was the end of the school year, and we went to the Party’s Youth League, (5), for a ceremony to honor us. We were the smart kids, they said. It was afternoon. A hot afternoon, suffocatingly hot. There was a broken old man at the bus station, selling sha’ibiyyat on a cart with three wheels. If my dad had only bought me that piece… the big one, just shining there at the end of the tray. Man, what would have happened if he’d bought it! What would have happened if Amira had let me continue under her skirt, under the sycamore tree! Maybe I would’ve grown up to be someone else, a “constructive and effective” person, as the specialists say. So anyhow, we got in the jeep and I began to crunch on the walnuts in the sha’ibiyyat. As if my dad had bought it for me. The syrup was dripping into my lap and the sha’ibiyyat were still at the bus station.

«So what do you think?» I asked the woman who was “very specialized” in psychiatry. She scratched her head and didn’t say anything.

«You know, your sister’s pretty,» I said, «she really looks like you.»

«You wish,» she said. «I don’t have a sister. It’s my brother’s picture, from when he was young. And I’m married, by the way.»

I’ll never forget that, and I’ll never forget Bassam Suleiman, when he came to see me in my clinic in al-Qaboun, to fix his teeth, and bought me some hariseh.

«Here, take it, I’m paying you with this,» he said. The best pay I ever got in my life to fix a tooth in the rotten mouth of mankind, all mankind. Mulham was next to me. He nudged me and said, «What? What’s this? Why are you making such a big deal out of it?» and sucked loudly on his tooth and I said, «Man, what kind of question is that? She grew up in Texas, in a big house, having dinner with her father. Expensive chairs, a vase on the table and couches so fluffy you disappear in them. I grew up in the green mountain terraces of ‘ataba* folk songs, sitting on the wounded donkeys next to the river, picking up figs that were ready to fall, and you ask me what’s the difference?! What kind of question is that? You’re such an idiot.»

«What’s the difference?» he asks. But she’s pretty. When I was little, the donkey kicked me and they took me to Dreikish. The doctor gave me beige-colored pills, and my mouth still hurts from them today. I’m in New York and my mouth still hurts.

That’s how the stories come back. We told Ahmad al-Ahmad to plan: TO PLAN. «My life,» he said, «is like tillaj (6) –layer after layer, and there is no planning involved, and you can’t cut it into neat, even pieces.» I felt like a stupid mule again saying that to him. «Hang on a second,» Mulham said. «Listen to this, doc, once, when I was leaving the doctor’s office on Sheikh Daher Square, I see someone behind the window, drinking syrup. Don’t eat for two hours, the doctor had told me, and as soon as I get out, I see this son of a bitch drinking syrup. I see him, and my heart just melts. What? Not eat for two hours? Is that fair? I see that guy going nuts with a pound of ‘awwamat, and me? I might have diabetes.»

The music ended, and Loreya came down from the stage. She walked toward me. Kissed me on the cheek. Dipped her fingers in my glass of vodka, which I had thought was arak until she put her finger in my mouth, and said, «I know you’re not here. I know the vodka won’t save you. Don’t even try!!»

Mulham was looking at «a short girl with big breasts, like wild pomegrenates.» That’s what he said, and sucked loudly on his tooth, and didn’t forget, of course, to remind me of the blazing madness of Loreya’s body, which is never extinguished.

 

Reprinted from Suhail Shadoud, Burning in the Past Tense. Translated by Marlin Dick. Home Works Forum III/Lebanese Association for the Plastic Arts (Ashkal Alwan), 2005.

 

Footnotes:

*Awwamat are fried dough balls and soaked in sugar syrup. All of the sweets mentioned here are inexpensive and often sold on the street.

2. A sense of estrangement borne with uprooting and exile.

3. Sweet made of puff pastry filled with sugar and walnuts.

4. Cake made of semolina and almonds.

5. The Syrian Ba’th Party’s youth organization.

6. Sweet made of puff pastry layers sprinkled with nuts and syrup.

 

 

 

Bio:

Suhail Shadud was born in Syria. He has worked as a translator and editor at various institutions, including Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), and the Egyptian quarterly Rua’a Mughayira (Alternative Views). He has taught Arabic at Georgetown University, The Middle East Institute, The Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, and Columbia University. Shadoud is a graduate of the schools of dental medicine at the University of Damascus and New York University. He currently resides in New York City.

Marlin Dick is a freelance journalist based in Lebanon. He writes on Arabic politics, media and culture and has translated Arabic literature and films.

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