Though, recently—look, do you have to stay here? Could we go to Sheikh Qassem?”
“Wait. Hisham?”
From the back of the stall, Hisham emerged with his arms extended, stretching between them a length of red fabric fringed with tassels.
“Yes, Midhat Bey?”
Midhat hesitated. “We are going to the café, Hisham.”
Hisham blinked, eyed Jamil, and released a formless noise from his lips.
“I will not be too long, I promise.”
“Inshallah. Inshallah.” Hisham bowed, the tassels shook.
Café Sheikh Qassem was the most popular café in Nablus and could be relied upon for company at all hours. Against the high, pale green walls a skyline of masculine heads was always visible, wafting clouds of nargila smoke into the air, frantic with the commerce of voices. As Midhat followed Jamil over the threshold, a babble of voices reached their ears beneath the theme of a single baritone, and in a moment they saw some thirty or forty men, young and old, clustered around a table at the back. In the light of the nearby windows a newspaper was being read aloud.
“Thousands upon thousands have been demonstrating in the centre of Damascus, crying out slogans for war against the French. Rumours are already circulating that the Emir Faisal has struck a deal with Clemenceau …”
A young man, leaning over the back of a chair and tapping his toe on the floor behind him, caught sight of them and stood straight.
“Midhat Kamal!” It was Tahsin Kamal, one of Midhat’s cousins. He pulled Midhat into an embrace. Behind him, another cousin, Wasfi, who had been at university in England; and Qais Karak and Adel Jawhari, famous best friends who had developed beards and broad chests since he saw them last; and there was young Burhan Hammad, youngest son of Haj Nimr, who couldn’t be older than fourteen or fifteen but was already the tallest of the group, with a long neck and narrow face. And on the far side, lining up to greet him were two brothers from the Murad family, second or third cousins of Hani’s: Basil and Munir.
Midhat’s name spread through the crowd, and more faces turned, more people stood up to see him.
“Habibi Midhat, Midhat Bey.”
In the light from the window, the baritone reader of the newspaper also rose to his feet. It took a moment for Midhat to recognise him, for he had also changed a great deal. It was Haj Abdallah Atwan, a lesser patriarch of the Atwan family, and owner of the Atwan soap factory.
There were several ways to map the social fabric of Nablus. Some described the city in terms of East and West, as two separate worlds that only ever met in the arcade of the textile market during popular festivals, when the young men of the opposing sides would stage play-fights, and draw off the tensions that had built up during the season. Some ascribed this rivalry to the ancient opposition of the Qaysi and Yemeni clans, dating from the early Islamic settlement of the land of Can’aan. That ancient opposition centred now on the specific rivalries between the Atwan, Omar, and Murad families, which had reached their apex during the civil war of the last century. Others would shrug and say it was a natural division of geography, the East stays with the East, and the West with the West; yet others would say the two sides possessed two different cultures, and that was the root of the division. For example, the people of the East ate their kunafe in a sandwich for breakfast, between two slices of bread, whereas the people of the West ate their kunafe as a dessert after lunch. Thus, the East-West rivalry was simply a natural polarity of appetite and custom.
In fact the city had not always been divided thus. But as wealth developed in Nablus at the turn of the century, and trade routes strengthened between Egypt, Damascus, and Beirut, the major families were bloated into different factions, and a variety of alliances were formed. These alignments were most often built on inherited stories of infighting, which, if they were recent, were claimed to be ancient, and used to buttress a current action. And if an Omar wished to do wrong by an Atwan and found no pretext at hand, he could always reach back to the campfire of his Yemeni ancestors and pull up some ancient tale.
And as the city developed its industries of soap and textiles, this became a common occurrence: the leisure time of the new capitalists expanded as their working hours