The Damascus Cover Page 6

  As the passengers began to disembark Ari rose and stretched. The last ten days would have been hell if they had not served to inject meaning into a life devoid of purpose. He reveled in the night-long briefings, in memorizing the twists and turns of Damascus’s underground sewer system, in walking through the scale model of the city with Tsur. He knew every building in the Haret al Yahoud, the Jewish quarter, as well as the names and backgrounds of scores of its inhabitants. Getting into the haret without arousing suspicion posed a problem—but one the Mossad had anticipated and solved. The Colonel had activated Hans Hoffman for one more mission, but Ari was determined not to make it his last.

  As he came down the steep steps from the plane the hot wind kicked the sand up from the runway and sent it sailing toward the terminal. Ari reached the ground and hurried past the olive-uniformed corporal who held a Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifle at his side, right forefinger wrapped around the trigger. Parked along the edge of the field were five MiG-21s. Beyond them Ari caught the glint of Russian RPG-7 missile launchers. Damascus International Airport was used by both civil airlines and the Syrian Air Force.

  Ari cleared customs without delay, the Syrian Embassy in Bonn having stamped his worn passport with a three-month visa. When the ambassador was informed of Herr Hoffman’s intent to import large quantities of Damascene furniture and textiles, he had insisted on seeing Ari personally, and providing him with letters to smooth his entry. The ambassador assured him that he would have no trouble communicating in French. Assigned to the mandate over Syria at San Remo in 1920, France retained control over the area until May, 1945, when after a final armed clash and the threat of British intervention, the Gaullists withdrew and the Arabs proclaimed an independent state. But French influence remained strong, pervading the organization of Syria’s institutions as well as providing the country with an official second language.

  Making his way into the crowded arrival lounge, Ari allowed an Arab boy to pile his bags on a cart, watching as he placed the vital toiletry case on top of his other two suitcases.

  “Get me a taxi,” he said.

  The ragged youngster nodded and pushed the cart ahead of Ari, whistling merrily, apparently in his mind already spending the generous tip this wealthy businessman would surely give him. The boy rolled the cart outside, then as the door swung closed behind him and in front of Ari, he abruptly grabbed the small toiletry case and ran. Ari bolted out the door and chased him down the sidewalk, brushing past businessmen in styleless suits and tarbooshed sheiks. But the years had taken their toll on Ben-Sion. Despite the extra weight of the case the boy gained easily and Ari, frustrated and panting, was forced to stop. In disbelief he watched him disappear into a group of blue-coveralled workers. Breathing heavily, Ari turned back, hoping the boy would be satisfied with the shaving cream and the variety of soaps and scents and not search further and find the transmitter. Even if he did it would be unlikely he’d take it to the police and admit to having stolen the case from an arriving passenger.

  Sweat rolling from his forehead and armpits, Ari slowly made his way toward the baggage carrier, cursing under his breath, for by chance the boy had chosen his most important piece of luggage. Contact with Jerusalem was now cut off. He was on his own.

  Moving past rows of sandbags piled against the concrete terminal, Ari headed toward the taxi drivers calling for customers with a loud Shaam…yallah as-Shaam! Immediately four surrounded him, shouting in Arabic and French, arguing among themselves, each swearing he’d seen the tourist first. Ari pointed to a mustached man whose black and white checkered keffiyeh fell over his shoulders, and he grabbed the suitcases off the cart. Following the Arab to his taxi, Ari wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and stepped into the cab. Resting his arm on the ledge of the window, he quickly jerked it up. The metal was too hot; the heat burned through his shirt. As the taxi driver screeched away from the curb Ari closed his eyes. The smell of gasoline clung to his nostrils.

  Passing rows of yellowstone houses with red tiled roofs, they approached the city from the South, via Khalid ibn Walid Street. At the intersection of El Nasr Boulevard the traffic stalled. Villagers riding mules, boys leading donkeys, and elderly men on bicycles with nargilehs strapped to their backs wove in between the horn-blowing Fiats, Peugeots, Czech Skodas, and early-model Chevrolets. Drivers leaned out their windows and shouted curses up ahead. On the sidewalks peasant women in full-length festan, their foreheads circled in gold coins, countrymen in dark blue cheroual pantaloons, Yizidis in loose-fitting trousers with brocade sashes, and businessmen in dark suits all went about their business, oblivious to the pandemonium in the street. To the left, through the square in front of the Hejaz Railroad Station, Ari saw the two pencil minarets and the domed prayer room of the Suleiman Tekkiyeh, a convent for the Whirling Dervishes, built by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1554. As he leaned forward to take a better look the back of his shirt, wet, clung to the vinyl seat. Returning his head to the upholstery, he waited for the honking to die down and the taxi to start up again. It was cooler when the car moved.

  The New Ommayad Hotel was located at the corner of Brazil and Maysaloun streets on a little hill overlooking the Barada River. Ari paid the driver, who anxiously accepted his deutschemarks, and walked up the stone steps to the hotel. Inside he handed the clerk his passport and reservation voucher and in turn received a fiche de police, a questionnaire required of all foreigners. A red-coated and

  -capped bellboy brought his luggage to the fifth-floor suite.

  The rooms, a large bedroom and a smaller adjoining one, were white plaster with matching blue patterned rugs and draperies. The bellboy flipped the switch on the wall and the black blades of the overhead fan sliced slowly through the air. Ari gave him a handful of piasters he’d received downstairs in exchange for his hard currency and ushered the boy out the door. After unpacking he took a long, cold shower. Then he phoned the Government Trade Bureau and spoke to the director, Amin al-Husseini, who’d received a cable from the Syrian Embassy in Bonn and had been expecting his call. Al-Husseini said he was free and would be happy to welcome him in his office in half an hour if that was convenient. Ari thanked him and hung up. Gathering his papers together, he went downstairs and decided to walk the short distance along the river to the central government offices located off Marjeh Square. When he reached the street he was already sweaty.

  Standing inside the square that connected the decaying Surujiye Suq with the modern, bustling center of town, Ari stared up at the monument commemorating the completion of the Hejaz telegraph line to Mecca. The fifty-foot, soot-covered obelisk, erected in 1911, was surrounded by a large area of grass, burnished brown by the long summer. At its base, Ari watched a juice seller crushing a mound of carrots under a vise, working the lever back and forth until the liquid dribbled into the glass.

  The fronts of office buildings—five, six stories high, with neon signs protruding from their roofs—faced the square on all four sides. Their once creamy white façades were darkened by the exhaust and dirt of the city. It was from these windows, Ari remembered angrily, that inflamed Damascenes threw refuse at the dangling body of Eli Cohen, the Israeli spy hung publicly on May 18, 1965. More than ten thousand Syrians had crowded into Marjeh Square, pushing and shoving in order to secure the best possible view. Ari dipped his head in deference to the memory of his colleague, then moved toward the Trade Ministry, uneasy as he pictured himself suspended from the same gallows.

  “Salâm ‘alêkum,” greeted al-Husseini as Ari was led into his office. “It is my great pleasure to welcome you to Damascus,” he continued in French, the language they had spoken on the phone. “Please have a seat.” He pointed to a wooden chair across from his desk. Al-Husseini, though of average height, was slight of frame. His face was thin and would have been considered plain if not for his eyes; they were deeply recessed and shaded by thick brows. He wore a French tailored business suit without a tie.

  Ari settled into the chair offered him and looked
around the room. Al-Husseini’s office was sparsely furnished. Cheap, assembly-line-produced tapestries hugged the walls. A series of cracks spread across the ceiling.

  “Your accommodations are satisfactory? If not I could…”

  “That will be unnecessary. I have a very comfortable suite.”

  “Good.” Al-Husseini smiled. “Let me ring for some light refreshment.” He spoke into the phone in rapid Arabic. “I think you mentioned a letter when we spoke earlier,” he said, returning the receiver to its place.

  Ari reached into his breast pocket and produced the letter the ambassador had given him in Bonn.

  “You will be here for some time?” the Trade Bureau director asked, unfolding the letter and slipping on a pair of reading glasses.

  “At least several weeks, possibly longer.”

  Al-Husseini scanned the page rapidly. “This is very impressive. So you think there might be a large market for Syrian textiles and furniture in Europe?”

  “That depends on the price. Inflation is spiraling in the capitalist world, with it inevitably comes a jump in the cost of labor. If I buy quality goods here inexpensively, I can sell them all over the Continent at prices European manufacturers won’t be able to compete with. We should be able to operate at a substantial profit both for me and for your Syrian merchants.”

  “I can show you whatever is of interest,” he said, removing his glasses. “If you wish I will have a man with a car at your disposal in the morning.”

  There was a knock at the door and a young boy entered carrying a silver tray. He placed it on the desk in front of al-Husseini and left hurriedly. On the tray was a flowered pot and a pile of little porcelain cups without handles, stacked one inside the other. The Trade Bureau director filled one with coffee and passed it to Ari.

  “Some people prefer more sugar, but this is mazbout. It’s medium sweet, flavored with cardamom seeds. It pleases most tastes.”

  Ari held the hot cup with the tips of his fingers. As he sipped the coffee the ginger aroma of the cardamom drifted up from the surface of the liquid. “I like it,” he said.

  Al-Husseini smiled. “Good, we are off to a pleasant start. Now, tell me, what would you like to see first?”

  Ari set the coffee on the edge of the desk. “At the moment I’m most interested in hand-carved backgammon sets; recently the game has become an international craze.”

  Al-Husseini laughed. “In this part of the world we have been playing shesh-besh, what you call backgammon, for nearly three thousand years. Damascus’s olive wood sets are the most delicately crafted in existence. You shall see some tomorrow as well as brocade woven from the finest silks. My personal assistant, Mustafa Suidani, will accompany you both to the shops and to the factories in the outlying districts. He will be at your hotel whenever it is convenient for you.”

  “I’d like to start early. Could he pick me up at 8:00 A.M.?” Ari asked, wanting to leave the impression that he was a serious businessman.

  “If that is the hour you wish, he will be there. I think it best we leave any discussion of quantities and money until after you’ve had the opportunity to examine our merchandise for yourself. But as the average per capita income for all Syrians is less than ten dollars per week I think you’ll find our prices quite reasonable.” Al-Husseini glanced at his watch and grimaced. “I must apologize for the abruptness of this meeting,” he said, rising. “But there are pressing matters I must attend to now. However, if you have no other plans for this evening, I’d like to invite you to dine with me.”

  Ari stood. “Thank you, I would be delighted to do so.”

  “Excellent. Then I will meet you at the New Ommayad Hotel… say at seven o’clock.”

  “Your hospitality is most gracious. Seven o’clock will be fine.” He turned and moved toward the door.

  “If there is anything else I might do to make your stay more pleasant, please do not refrain from asking.”

  Ari stopped and looked back at him. “Possibly there is one thing.”

  “Yes.”

  “Arabs and people of my background have shared an important concern ever since the Zionists moved into the Middle East. It is known that there are Germans of the old order living in Damascus. It can grow quite lonely in a foreign land without the company of one’s countrymen. If you could arrange something, it would be quite enjoyable to spend an evening with those with whom one has something in common.”

  “I understand fully,” al-Husseini said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Ari thanked the Trade Bureau director and left.

  Outside, he decided to walk; in a crisis, familiarity with his immediate surroundings could prove crucial.

  Proceeding down Sa’ad Zaghloul Street, across from the Palace of Justice, he passed into Old Damascus without being aware of it. The houses were piled so thick against and on top of one another, they were indistinguishable from the walls surrounding the inner city. The narrow street, flanked by open shops overhung with clothes, twisted and curved, leading finally into the Suq Hamidieh, the broad, high, central marketplace. Overhead, the sun beat against the arched corrugated iron roof, slanting through stone and bullet holes, sending streams of light against the windows of the shops. Ari wove his way through the crowds of bearded Druze, deeply tanned Bedouin, village women wearing long embroidered dresses, and dark-eyed, miniskirted Damascene girls. Hamidieh Street, crisscrossed by alleys, was lined with fruit and vegetable sellers sitting on stools next to stands piled high with tomatoes, sticky raisins, cabbage, eggplant, and sabbara pears. One old man, his keffiyeh flowing down his back, stood rearranging a small hill of watermelons, in the midst of which a number of broken red samples were haphazardly exhibited.

  Ari studied the area carefully. Kibbutz Revivim’s scale model had provided him with an accurate layout of the city’s streets and alleys; but the positions of the people and stalls, the best avenues for quick maneuver, could be determined only in person.

  Farther on, flies buzzed around chunks of raw meat hanging from iron hooks inside a series of butcher shops. Ragged beggars sitting on the ground stretched out their hands pleading for baksheesh. Boys from unseen restaurants carried trays laden with soup and stuffed peppers to customers in the lanes. Children, barefoot and dirty, played in the water that trickled along the edge of the sidewalk. Peddlers’ cries reverberated off the high vaulted roof, punctuated by the rat-a-tat-tat of the three-wheeled motorized carts that moved goods from shop to shop through the masses of pedestrians. Along the façades of the buildings electric lights blazed, as only patches of sunlight managed to pierce through the frayed awning overhead.

  The stench of the food market was overwhelming. Ari hurried forward, breathing through his mouth. Two hundred yards into the suq he reached the nargileh shops, displaying a seemingly infinite size and variety of water pipes on carpets spread across the sidewalk. In the dark shoe-sellers’ bazaar walls of footwear descended from frames on all sides, the smell of leather hanging heavily in the air. In the darkness the wooden sandals, Moroccan slippers, and bobbled tartan boots all glittered with cut-glass ornamentation. Ottoman daggers, vases edged with birds of paradise, and cheap opaline ware from China lined the shelves of the antique shops. Peddlers thrust garments at Ari and tried to press wooden boxes inlaid with camel-bone and mother-of-pearl into his hands. But it was not until he reached the silk bazaar that he stopped.

  Inside Tony Stephen’s shop the bright eyed Christian-Arab merchant let rolls of colorful damask tumble over the counters. Ari fingered the lustrous fabric, breaking off a thread and putting a match to it. Instead of burning, like polyesters, rayons, and other synthetic fibers would, it curled. The shopkeeper smiled, pleased that his customer knew the test for pure silk.

  Just then the high-pitched, plaintive call of the muezzin, beckoning believers to the third of the day’s five appointed times of prayer, rose above the din outside. First came the long, drawn-out musical wail Allah akbar from the Great Ommayad Mosque, and the muffled ans
wer Ashhad an la ilah illa llah from the at-Tawba. Then in rapid succession voices chimed in from all over the city, rising in splinters of sad refrain, falling tremulously away.

  On the sidewalk some people spread out prayer rugs where they were, knelt to the ground, and faced Mecca—most unaware that in the first years of Islam, hoping to draw Jews to the new religion, Muhammad had prayed toward Jerusalem. Others, Ari among them, hurried over the short distance to where the marketplace opened into the courtyard of the Ommayad Mosque.

  Inside the 145-yard-long prayer hall a thousand bodies knelt in unison, foreheads touching the carpets. The imam of the mosque, dressed in white robes, stared up at the blue-domed roof and cried, “Allah akbar!” and the congregation repeated after him, “God is great!”

  Ari peered in through the ornately inlaid porticos, then looked up and followed the flight of chirping sparrows, who darted among the eaves and Roman capitals, around Byzantine cupolas and the mausoleum that reputedly holds the severed head of John the Baptist. Above the courtyard, with its variegated marble panels and double arcade of columns, glittered twenty thousand square feet of mosaic, the finest in Islam.

  Suddenly, listening to the singsong chant echoing off the walls of the long prayer hall, sweat broke out on Ari’s brow. Instantly he knew why. The fear was back. The terrible fear of discovery, the all-pervasive awareness that the slightest mistake, the most minute miscalculation, would bring the secret police crashing down on him. Pain would follow, excruciating pain, and then if he was lucky, a quick death. But spies, Ari knew from experience, rarely bumped into luck.

  After a few minutes the fear passed, leaving in its wake an emptiness that clung to him. Slowly he left the mosque and headed for the Bab al-Farraj Gate, where he could hail a shared sheirut taxi, distinguishable from private cabs by their special red and white number plates.