coffee frothed; Hassan turned off the flame.
“Now we just have to wait for a reply. There are clean cups over there.”
The hut had only one chair, the one by the machine, and the soldier insisted that Hassan take it while he leaned against the wall. Between long spells of silence Hassan asked the soldier trivial questions about his post, cautious of their divergent roles in this game of empire, of any question that might shine the torch on the barrier between them. An hour passed, and the possibility dawned on Hassan that the soldier had counted on Hassan’s not knowing Morse code, and had in that tapping pattern actually communicated his own message to his superiors, who might appear at any moment to arrest him. Perhaps there was still time to escape. He thought of the horse. On the other hand, if the soldier did turn out to be honest and had indeed sent the message to Haj Taher, Hassan would miss the reply. He eyed the route he would take past the soldier to the front door and sat erect, fingers flexed for the rope.
The machine started to emit a very loud clicking. Hassan jumped up in alarm and the soldier replaced him at the table, where a wheel was turning, unreeling a thin strip of paper under a gnashing gold foot into his receiving hand. When it stopped, the soldier tore off the strip, examined the marks upon it, and scrawled a note on a card.
“I have a cousin in Damascus near the citadel stop go to him stop his name is Abu al-Kheir al-Muwaqqa’ stop,” he said aloud.
He handed Hassan the transcript.
“Thank you,” said Haj Hassan. “Peace upon you.”
Hassan, lover of symmetry, fed the second horse a handful of seed before he reattached the first to the carriage. He resumed his pose of humble driver, and with a whip crack turned in the direction of Damascus.
At nightfall he reached Jupiter Gate on the southwest side of the old city. From his seat he hailed a street seller late in packing up his wares, and asked where he could find the house of Abu al-Kheir al-Muwaqqa’. The seller gave him a complex series of directions, and following them to the letter Hassan arrived at a doorway striped in pink and grey stone.
A silver-haired, thin-lipped man opened the door. He shook Haj Hassan’s hand and directed him to the stables to park the carriage.
“Welcome, please,” he said. “A friend of Haj Taher is a friend of mine.”
He led Hassan to a bedroom with a mashrabiya window where the maid was unrolling a mattress. Hassan slept deeply and woke at dawn to pray, then slept until the second call. In the hallway he found a note: the family had left early to visit a grieving relative but would return before nightfall. The maid served him eggs with sumac, and as he finished eating there was a knock at the door.
Twelve Turkish soldiers entered the house. Haj Hassan immediately introduced himself as Abu al-Kheir al-Muwaqqa’, praying silently that his beard was an adequate disguise. He had not welcomed any runaway Nabulsi, no, but he was happy to let them look through the house, and please to take a glass of lemonade. There was not enough space for all twelve to sit in the salon, so the senior personnel sat while the younger men stood around, drinking from tall glasses. Haj Hassan leaned on the windowsill and tried to adopt both the courteous manner of a host and the comfortable air of a proprietor, restraining his gaze from the many ornaments as if he had seen them thousands of times before. The men emptied their glasses. They thanked Abu al-Kheir for his time.
Haj Hassan remained a wanted man, and it became clear that he would need to remain in hiding for longer than a week. He discussed this with Abu al-Kheir and they decided he would marry the eldest daughter of the family, a plump girl named Rasha with wide-set eyes. Hassan gave one of his pocket watches as the dower—fortunately he had brought two—and promised his host in writing that he would repay any debts incurred during his time in hiding.
Months passed and Hassan’s face continued to appear weekly in the newspapers, annotated with the details of his treason and the reward for reporting his whereabouts to the authorities. Abu al-Kheir decided on an alias for him, and under the new name “Qassem Khatib” Haj Hassan grew his beard long and