Papa Sartre: A Modern Arabic Novel (Modern Arabic Literature) (3 page)

I went to see Butrus Samhiri late one morning accompanied by Jawad. His office was located in Ras al-Qaryeh on the top floor
of a building at the entrance to the quarter, on al-Rashid Street. Jawad looked funny, with a camera hanging around his neck and a straw summer hat tilted to one side on his head. I could not help laughing at the sight, but he responded to my laughter with a smile that seemed to say that he was feeling important for the first time in his life, or that he was proud to be undertaking an important task. I smiled back at him. I walked beside him, without looking at him, and asked, “What were you doing before working with me, Jawad?”

“I worked with my uncle Hanna,” he replied, keeping pace, his back slightly bent.

“What exactly did you do with your uncle Hanna?” I inquired as we crossed the bridge heading toward al-Mustansir Street. Jawad said, “He trusted me to do everything.” We busied ourselves looking at the jewelry shops. We saw Sabian jewelers in long gray beards holding torches with strong flames to gold rings with precious stones. There were also shops selling watches, perfumes, western clothes, and quality shoes. We took a slight turn down a narrow street toward a building with a faded red tile roof from which water dripped onto the bars of the upper windows. A huge pomegranate tree grew in the middle of the sidewalk. Its branches had damaged the telephone lines. This alley was given the name al-Adliya Street in the forties because of the large number of attorneys who had their offices in the surrounding buildings. A very tall policeman with a wide leather belt stood rigidly on the corner. His trousers were tight and pegged to the cuffs. He wore a revolver on his left side, and he held a thick billy club made of striped walnut. He stared straight ahead. When Jawad spied him from a distance he stopped short, his thick neck sinking between his shoulders, his arms and legs shaking. He opened his mouth so wide that I could see all his crooked back teeth. His eyes turned red and he breathed with difficulty. I was so surprised by his alarm that I couldn’t help but
confront him, asking in a low voice, “Jawad, Jawad, what happened to you? Are you afraid of the policeman?”

“Yes, yes,” he said, hiding behind me like someone ready to bolt. I held him firmly by the hand and asked, “Why, Jawad? Have you done something wrong?”

“No, but I deserted the army.” His mustache was shaking, and he tried to lower his hat over his face as we passed the policeman, who didn’t pay any attention to us but continued to look straight ahead. We entered the vast hall of the building, where a servant was holding a bucket and mopping the marble stairs. We asked where the attorney Butrus Samhiri’s office was, and he pointed one flight up. When we reached the second floor we saw the lawyer’s nameplate before us. The office door was wide open.

The strong odor of whiskey wafted lazily through the open door. An old gramophone sat atop a square box on a dark wooden commode with elaborate old Indian designs. Old black records were piled on top of each other in an attractive way, reaching the tip of the long-necked copper horn that extended from the record player.

We were met by a plump woman of moderate beauty, perhaps in her forties. She was calm in a sort of fatalistic manner. Her face was desiccated, her body was soft in a scandalous way, and her heavy breasts swung when she moved from one spot to another. She obviously excited Jawad, who was watching her fixedly and smiled at her with his wrinkled dark face and yellowed equine teeth.

“We came to see Mr. Butrus, the attorney,” I said, bowing my head appropriately. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked. Her eyes moved from Jawad to me. “We do not have an appointment,” I said, “but tell him that Hanna Yusif sent us.” She smiled and welcomed us warmly. Her features changed, and it was clear that she knew Hanna Yusif very well—or at
least the mere mention of the scoundrel’s name erased any expression of fear.

She sat us down in the comfortable armchairs in the waiting room, went into the office, and, returning with her beautiful smile, escorted us to Mr. Butrus’s office. She closed the door behind us, but Jawad could not take his eyes off the movement of her large hips. We sat facing a wall covered from top to bottom with yellow and red tiles. The other walls in the office were covered with thick mahogany panels. There was also a large, half-round balcony with colored marble at the edges. Butrus was sitting behind his desk and, due to his small size, only his head was visible. He jumped up from behind the desk to greet us, a thin, tiny man wearing a worn-out suit.

“Ahlan, Ahlan wa marhaba.” He had a speech defect, mispronouncing his
r
s and mixing up some words. We sat in front of him, and he looked at us with sad eyes set in a stony face. He had a pencil behind his ear like a carpenter. I said, “I came for the documents,” but he interrupted me and did not let me finish. “Yes, Hanna told me. All the documents are ready.” He turned toward the library, which was filled with files, pushed some papers aside, and placed the documents on his tidy desk. They were simple: old official documents, bank checks, and photographs that had belonged to the philosopher and his family and friends. They included two photographs of him with his friend Nadia Khaddouri, one taken in Mackenzie’s bookstore, and the other at the Orient Express café.

“Did you ever meet the philosopher?” I asked. He was staring at the half-open door of a small room from which the strong whiskey smell emanated. “Yes, I used to be his father’s agent, may his soul rest in peace. He belonged to an aristocratic family, and although the revolution brought them down, it didn’t change their standards. But Abd al-Rahman revolted against his family, even before the revolution.”

“Did you know him well?” I asked. Butrus Samhiri stared at me with a piercing look.

“Yes I did, I did. I met him more than once, but those were casual encounters. We never discussed serious topics when we met, and as a result we did not really connect.” He was silent for a moment, then continued as if he had just remembered, “I was a minor employee, a clerk, as they say. Existentialism was meaningless to me. I was more inclined toward the left, and I found Edmond al-Qushli, the Trotskyite of our time, more to my liking than the philosopher of al-Sadriya. I was not able to understand Sartre’s complicated philosophy, and I didn’t like him.”

“Did you find his philosophy complicated?” I asked.

“I don’t think that anyone in my generation understood the things he used to read. Those who said they did are liars. You can ask Salman and Abbas, if you wish. He used to meet with them in the Café Brazil.”

“But could you understand Trotsky?” I asked. Jawad was trying to take a picture, but I dissuaded him.

“Trotskyism is not a philosophy the way existentialism is. It has a practical side.” He felt uncomfortable now, and it was clear that he didn’t want to go on. He stood up and handed me the documents. “Examine these papers and if you need anything else contact me.”

I stood up. So did Jawad, who, burdened by the camera hanging around his neck, almost tripped and fell onto the sofa. “Where can I find Abbas and Salman?” I asked.

“You’ll find them in al-Camp market. Ask around; everybody there knows them. Just ask for Abbas Philosophy; they’ll direct you to them.” He turned to Jawad and asked, “Hey, Jawad, do you still catch birds on people’s roofs?” Jawad blushed and laughed maliciously. I asked Butrus how he knew Jawad.

“I know him because Hanna asked me to represent him in a few cases.” He laughed loudly, shaking his head like a devil. We
left and immediately headed for the Adhamiya quarter to meet two of the philosopher’s old friends who had become merchants in Camp Raghiba Khatun market.

Jawad hurried along behind me, his eyes deep in their sockets. The weather was refreshingly humid. The cool air hit my face, and the sun was warm, especially when we walked on the bright side of the street. We were walking on al-Rashid Street, where the many groceries displayed boxes of toffee, sweets, and all kinds of confections. Boutiques, tailor shops, watch shops, and jewelry stores lined the street, and people crowded into the restaurants for cheap sandwiches.

I was thinking about the philosopher’s companions from the sixties who had turned to selling fruit at al-Camp market after becoming involved in philosophy. I had to see them, to get something from them that I could use—or at least obtain their photographs to include in the book. We walked toward the square and caught a taxi after Jawad bought a pack of cigarettes and lit one up. We arrived as the clock of al-Imam al-A‘dham was on its third ring. The place was crowded with buyers and salesmen. In the fruit market we inquired about the two men and were told that they were in the restaurant at the end of the main street.

The market was humid and stuffy, the ground was muddy, and water seeped from the badly paved street. The restaurant was located at one end of the market, a small place with a low ceiling, painted a cheap white and with a dirty glass facade. All kinds of people pressed together inside—fruit and spice merchants wearing their white dishdashas with belts tied around plump bellies, young men wearing western clothes, policemen in khaki uniforms and boots, their thick walnut billy clubs on the table, and women in black abayas. A large grill at the entrance of the restaurant filled the air with the smell of coal and grilled meat. The servers were rushing about, wearing white aprons
and caps bearing the restaurant’s name. We were greeted by the sounds of orders being shouted across the restaurant—kebab, salad without vinegar, bread—the metallic sound of spoons and plates dropped onto the sticky tables, and the clamor of the dishwashers echoing on the wet brick floor.

We inquired about Abbas Philosophy and Salman. They didn’t look like philosophers at all, more like fruit merchants. They were middle-aged men with huge bellies that hit the edge of the table whenever they moved. Their table was filled with all kinds of grilled meat, bread, pickles, grilled onions, and vegetables. They welcomed me and Jawad very warmly and were extremely surprised to learn that someone, finally, had remembered them. One of them said, “You’ve finally remembered the great men of the country. We were afraid to die for fear that our memory and that of the greatest Arab philosopher, the philosopher of al-Sadriya, would be lost forever.”

They talked and ate while I looked over their fat faces and the new outfits they wore, with narrow ties and starched collars, a style that was popular in the sixties. They talked with their mouths full, round, bald heads covered with sweat, and glasses continuously slipping off their noses. When their mouths were too full they would push the food in with their fingers. They took turns talking about the philosopher, while I took notes and Jawad ate—he dug in as soon as they invited us to join them. I reproached him and kicked him in the foot, but he ignored me and kept on eating. He shared their food, making sandwiches of kebab and grilled onions. A piece of celery fell out of his mouth onto the table.

They talked like all those I’d talked to already. I searched for words that would put me on the right path, but to no avail. They embellished the philosopher’s image with made-up stories as if decorating a Christmas tree with random shiny and colorful baubles. They meant well, yet what they gave me were
falsifications, perhaps prompted by a desire to hide their embarrassment at having been so long ignored and estranged. They provided me with their information and histrionic comments, played roles, and incongruously arrogated importance to themselves, sometimes obviously, but usually more subtly.

Their comments about the sixties sounded more like crying over a lost Eden that had cast out the philosopher. Nonetheless, I had no choice but to write down everything, both the noble and heroic motivations that I mutely condemn and the ignoble and sordid emotions that I respect. Such feelings prove that the philosopher was a human being, not a legendary hero, that he was weak, mean, and lazy like the rest of us, not a god.

Sitting face to face with these two I felt I was dealing with people who organize their lives into a tight system, believing it to be full and complete, the only life worth living. I’m tempted to say that they can’t conceive of the existence of the lives of others who preceded them or others that followed. They’re unable to view things except through their own glasses, lenses of their own making. The men ate nonstop, leaving me little time for questions. No sooner would one stop than the other would start up. I felt squeezed between them. They imparted both valuable and insignificant information, critical and ordinary remarks, and they kept insisting that I consider everything they were saying very important. I thus found myself writing down mostly what they wanted me to record and not much of what I wanted.

What I was really looking for was the thread that would lead me to the root of the matter. I was seeking highly germane testimonies from people whom I expected to be gifted or endowed with more refined vision than the average person and who could provide me with valuable information that would eliminate the possibility of distortion.

These two men were not distinct from ordinary people in their view of the philosopher. Their representation of the philosopher
was the same I encountered everywhere: among his friends he was seen as an amalgam of virtues, and his enemies saw him as an amalgam of vices. Theirs was first and foremost a moral evaluation. They’d say, “He is the Sartre of the Arab World, and Sartre sent him to save the nation and put an end to the life of banditry brought about by the fifties. His life was complete and pure, a model of greatness and beauty because he did not begin it, as others did, with serious weaknesses.”

I left the low-ceilinged restaurant with Jawad, who felt happy and satiated, having eaten his fill. A dog loitered outside, drinking water, and two wet cats waited for leftover kebab. Jawad took a photograph as they were eating and was pleased with himself. He smoked a cigarette and blew the smoke from his nose and mouth into the cold air.

The clouds were getting thicker, and the winter evening sun was sinking behind the minaret. The blue of the sky and the white clouds were tinted with a trace of red. We walked until we reached the royal cemetery with its wet, dark green trees. A patch of red sun covered their tops. It gradually got colder, and walking was becoming difficult. Our fingers were freezing, our faces were turning red, and our limbs trembled from cold. We each took a taxi, Jawad to Hanna Yusif’s house, and I to my apartment.