The World Through the Eyes of Angels

Part Seven: Ghasoub and Ghadban

137 P A R T S E V E N Ghasoub and Ghadban Things were moving at a normal pace in our school until the day when the English teacher, Mr. Abdul Alim, exploded the third atom bomb (after Hiroshima and Nagasaki) while teaching Cervantes’s Don Quixote. Addressing a group of students, one of them being Ghasoub, he posed the question in English, “What was the animal Sancho Panza rode on?” Ghasoub closed his eyes, his face turned shades of red and green, and he didn’t utter a sound. At that point Mr. Abdul Alim placed the chalk on the blackboard tray and made a comment that was totally unrelated to Don Quixote and his “emasculated” chivalry, skinny horse, or long lance. It was unrelated to the great genius of Cervantes , or Spain— which, according to our deceased teacher Mr. Shathil Taqa, had been stolen from us. It had no relation to the “colonial English language” that Mr. Abdul Alim was trying to drill into our heads instead of teaching us French—the language of temptation, sexuality, romance, and aesthetics—or Russian, the language of the nation of workers and progressive struggle. However, it was not too distant from the main subject, which linked Sancho Panza’s comically obese donkey to all the oppressed animals of the world. Mr. Abdul Alim said, “Nature never sends coincidental messages. There is always a reason for each incident.” He let us ponder that for a moment and then 138 The World Through the Eyes of Angels went on: “Whenever I am sitting in my room reading and listening to songs by Fairouz, Asmahan, or Abdul Wahab coming from the radio in our house or the neighbor’s, I open the window and see either a robin singing in a tree, a cooing dove, or a child laughing. However, when the song I hear is by Farid Al-Atrash, on opening the window I only see a braying donkey. He began to imitate Farid Al-Atrash: “Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha.” The imitation was perfect; he could have been Farid Al-Atrash. Then suddenly he began to bray like a donkey. All the students laughed. That was typical of Mr. Abdul Alim’s wonderful and distinctive style, which he used to overcome the monotony of the lessons and the weight of the subject at hand. With this explanation, Mr. Abdul Alim stirred up a whirlwind that would not die down. Had Ghasoub not been with us, there would not have been any repercussions, and I would have long forgotten the incident. We were in the fourth year of secondary school. Ghasoub was more than six feet tall, stylish, well built, and well muscled, with a fitting name (derived from the root meaning “force” or “usurpation”) because he was strong and appeared to be at least five years older than the rest of us. We never saw him smile and he would never sit with us, but always sat apart in the far right corner of the classroom. He seemed not to see us as he passed us by. He had, though, befriended another student named Ghadban , who was from the same class but in a different section. Ghadban was also tall, but he was thin and had smiling features, contrary to his name, which meant “angry.” Were they related? No one knew. How did they become friends? No one knew. All we knew was that they isolated themselves from the rest of the students, and during recess would walk together along a distant Ghasoub and Ghadban 139 wall. Having read the famous heroic story of Antara Bin Shadad Al-Absi, I knew that Ghasoub and Ghadban were the names of the sons he had by his beloved, beautiful wife Abla. Ghasoub and Ghadban’s facial features were different; they could not have been brothers. Ghasoub had a pale complexion, elongated face, and full lips, while Ghadban had a bronze complexion , narrow eyes, and a broad mouth with thin lips. None of us dared to approach Ghasoub or talk to him. His detachment made us all fear him. Ghadban, however, was friendly and talkative, but we never asked him about his relationship with Ghasoub. Were they relatives or casual friends? We didn’t want Ghasoub to know we were interested in knowing more about him, as we didn’t want to anger him. I don’t know who came up with the...