forbidden by the client, items were also given a brief spell hanging in the window. Not long enough to attract the evil eye, but enough to advertise the design.
Though often ostensibly “Western-style,” the clothes they produced were not precisely like Western clothes. The jackets were more square than those Midhat recalled from Paris, and though the fabrics were often imported—there was a recent flood of cotton from England, for example—they were habitually cut with local cloth, which meant nothing looked purely foreign. Nor did the Samaritans rely on European sewing patterns; their designs were based on local demand, with some influence from rare silent movies of Americans or Egyptians and even from the British women who peered into the khan. Little did those ladies know, the eyes travelling up and down their exposed forms were looking less at their bodies than at the fabric that wrapped them. And then the styles mutated from order to order, and each time an item was sewn it was adjusted to the preferences of that particular customer, and those changes were often applied to the next order. To Midhat, these stylistic compromises looked like errors. The tunic shape that was appearing at Parisian parties when he left, somehow preceding him to Cairo, was being tested now in Nablus in black silk and cotton, and at first he wondered if these tunics were for particularly large ladies, until he realised their sizes were being increased so they could be worn loosely after the local style, just in case, perhaps, some aspect of a woman’s body should be indecently contoured.
In December the rains failed, and business at the khan slowed. Customers came into the Kamal store less to purchase fabric or visit the tailor than to repay their debts, or to beg for an extension until the harvest. On one particularly cold afternoon, a man with a dramatic stoop and a tarbush threadbare in several places stepped over the threshold and laid a bundle on the counter.
“What’s this?” said Hisham.
“The order of fabric from last month.”
That voice was familiar. The man’s fingers lingered on his bundle, the tendons pronounced. Midhat crouched to see his face.
“Amo Ayman?”
“Midhat!”
It was a face from Midhat’s childhood, the father of his little friend, the red-haired Hala Saba. Time had disfigured him, and long cracks ran across his temples.
“How are you, Amo?”
“I heard you had returned,” said Ayman wearily. “Congratulations.”
“The order?” said Hisham.
In a sharp movement Ayman released the bundle. Hisham started to unroll the fabric.
“Hisham, don’t do that,” said Midhat.
Hisham glanced up. Showing his palm Midhat said, in a voice not quite his own: “It’s fine. I will deal with this.”
Hisham contemplated him, and with an ambiguous bow at Ayman walked past them into the back room.
Midhat turned up one edge of the sacking. “You take this with you. There’s no more debt. Khalas, it’s finished.”
Ayman’s eyes ran down the buttons on Midhat’s chest. “Oh no. Oh, Midhat, oh. God bless you, amo.”
Midhat did not see Hisham for the rest of the day. The sky paled as he smoked by the door. Butrus came through on his way out, wrapped in an overcoat; Hisham had already left, he said. Midhat watched the shutters close over the other stalls one by one, the merchants waving to one another. Like his own, their families were said to depend on a hinge between the masses and the elite. But really, it seemed to Midhat, it was people like the Sabas who suffered. The Sabas had once been wealthy, that was known; and though the cause of their privation was unclear they were now the kind of Christians whose veiled women were the only marker left that they belonged in town. He wondered where Hala was now. He wondered if she was married.
“It’s freezing,” said Jamil, appearing from around the corner. “Will you hurry up please?”
“Give me a moment.”
Jamil slid inside as Midhat continued to smoke, watching the ash creep up his cigarette and melt off. He heard his cousin say:
“What is this?”
“What is what.”
“Mashallah. You are an artist.”
“Oh no.” The butt end flew from his fingers. “Don’t, please.” In two strides to the counter he reached for the accounting book, and as he tried to screen the page with his arm he raised his voice to invent what he thought was a better pretext for his indignation: “What the hell are you doing looking at our accounts?”
“You left it open.”
The book was turned to the back. The left-hand page showed some waistcoats and a