I wrote in my diary: Izmir. Eight o’clock in the evening. Meeting with readers.
I didn’t want to write “Damascus,” in case someone saw it, was alarmed, and either tried to talk me out of the escapade, using valid, logical arguments, or else accused me of being a traitor.
At dinner at Dikla’s father’s house in Ma’alot, I had to really control myself. Her father was born in Damascus, grew up in Damascus, and was imprisoned for one year in Damascus for wanting to immigrate to Israel. Dikla says that he never talked about Damascus. When they were kids and asked him what it was like there, he said he didn’t remember anything. That all of it had been erased from his mind.
Then, two days before my trip, he suddenly remembered. In a Damascus open market, there were artichokes the size of watermelons, he said, and everyone at the table was struck dumb with astonishment. There were spice stalls there, he said, that made you sneeze when you just walked past them.
Is it large, that market in Damascus? I asked him. The others were too stunned to speak.
Twenty times larger than the Machane Yehuda market in Jerusalem. And I’m not exaggerating.
What are some other places worth visiting in Damascus? I asked.
Why, you’re planning to go there in the near future? he chuckled.
I have a trip to Izmir and thought I’d pop over afterward, I said (the truth is sometimes the best lie).
Everyone at the table laughed. But their attention didn’t waver. Even the young grandchildren leaned forward to hear more about their grandpa’s forgotten childhood. And he spoke—looking at me but speaking to everyone—about the Barada River that crosses the city, about the Great Mosque and the Jewish quarter, as lucid and detailed as a tour guide. Then, as suddenly as the window of his memories had opened, it closed. Khalas, he said in Arabic, enough. I talked so much that it made me tired. Who wants fruit salad for dessert?
At the end of the evening I went over to him and asked if he happened to remember the address of his childhood home.
The house behind the synagogue, he said. That’s the address.
No numbers?
Not in the Jewish quarter. But why are you so interested in Damascus all of a sudden?
I’m thinking of writing about something that happened there, I said (sometimes time transforms a lie into the truth).
Ah, he sighed. Writing. Deep down, he never understood why his daughter had chosen to marry someone who didn’t have a real profession, but he knew her and her semi-Syrian stubbornness, and he knew that objecting would not help. Just the opposite.
—
I left on Sunday. I knew I was doing something irresponsible, but eight years of suburban living can drive a person so crazy that all he wants is for something interesting to finally happen, for God’s sake.
The driver of the van that waited for me on the smuggler’s trail played a Zohar Argov cassette. His best hits. I knew that under no circumstances should I let it slip that I knew that Israeli singer, but still, melodies have hidden power, and in a moment of inattention, I hummed along with the song “Elinor.” The driver looked at me in surprise through the rearview mirror. A beautiful melody, I explained quickly in English, and he stared at me suspiciously but continued driving.
I moved from the first van into another vehicle, but not before I was blindfolded with a handkerchief. I tried to sharpen my other senses so I could pick up what was going on around me, and based on the voices, I decided that there were three other people in the vehicle with me.
There was no music in that vehicle, and only occasionally ululating songs drifted through the windows from the street. An eternity later, my co-passengers offered me water. I drank without seeing and a bit of the water spilled on my shirt. I heard more and more sounds of the city: horns, drilling, street vendors. Okay, I didn’t really hear the street vendors, but after my father-in-law’s stories about the Damascus market, I imagined I was hearing them.
When they removed the blindfold, I was on a small stage in a dark cellar that reminded me a bit of a club in Tel Aviv, the Left Bank. There were around twenty people in the audience. Bassel came over, shook my hand, and apologized for the blindfolding. I’m sure you understand the sensitive nature of your presence here, he said, and I nodded. He picked up the microphone and introduced me. From the little I understood, I could tell that his introduction was based on my Internet biography, which was filled with minor inaccuracies. I used to correct anyone who introduced me using that Internet biography. But as time passed, I began to believe that it really was my biography.
While he was speaking, I looked at the audience. One of the men in the last row looked like Ron Arad, the missing-in-action airman, in his last photo, with the thick beard and sunken eyes, taken more than thirty years ago.
The stage is yours, Bassel said.
I began to speak, and when I finished, I stayed for a long time answering questions. Unlike what I might have expected, the questions did not focus on the political aspects of the book. I think that more than anything, my Syrian readers wanted to know what was “real” in the book and what wasn’t. They weren’t the first to ask that, of course, readers in general are determined to get to the biographical core of the book, based on the erroneous assumption that it will help them understand it. But my Syrian readers were more than determined, they were obsessed. For hours, I answered as patiently as I could, and in the end, I concluded by saying that, usually, the more I “lie” in biographical terms, the closer I actually get to the deep truth that is beyond the facts.
Finally, they gave me a mild round of applause.
Bassel
