The Tires (A Story)

Winter was at its fiercest in Damascus. Its streets were heavy with the smell of grilled meat, the charcoal smoke of its stoves stung the noses of passersby, and a thick layer of mud covered the asphalt and stone paving of its streets in the new quarters and the old. On one of its rainy nights Abu Sayyah came home, his shoulders bowed under cares, contrary to his custom.

Abu Sayyah was nothing more than the driver of a worn-out car, which he stationed in Marjeh Square, at the meeting place of the old quarters and the new, where the modern city rubs against the city of bygone ages. The day before, he had bought from a son of the Syrian desert a pair of tires for his car — the Bedouin had perhaps brought the tires in from Transjordan by smuggling. The price Abu Sayyah paid was very high, but he was compelled to strike the bargain so that he could keep his car running to support his wife and two children. He paid two thousand five hundred Syrian liras for the two tires, and he felt a lump in his throat each time a bundle of banknotes passed from his hand into the Sheikh's. He would swallow hard and bite his lips as though... For who could ever have dreamed that prices would climb to this fantastic figure? Twenty-five hundred liras for a pair of tires! But such is war...

Abu Sayyah shut the door of his tumbledown garage and went into his humble house on the edge of the Midan quarter, the mud spattering his trousers up to the knee. He was going about under the weight of his cares: how was he to find the price of another pair of tires to replace the two old ones still unchanged, which had been patched locally and were no longer serviceable or safe to use?

Abu Sayyah entered his house dragging his feet and stumbling in his gait, his face grown gloomier, his nose more crooked, his eyes narrower. And his face, whipped by the cold winds, was yellower than usual.

His young wife, with her loose black hair, her white skin, and her drowsy eyes, received him beaming and smiling. He answered her smile and hurried inside, throwing his exhausted body onto a sort of couch set up near the wood stove, and began rubbing his hands, trying to warm them.

The room was small and meanly furnished, its floor partly covered by an Oriental carpet full of patches and burns. In the middle squatted the black wood stove like a wounded hyena. Its pipes rose to just below the ceiling, then turned off at a sharp angle, piercing the wall and puffing their smoke into the neighboring garden. Facing the couch were ranged a few chairs made of local willow wood. The walls had once upon a day been painted blue, but smoke and children's fingers had changed their color to a grayish black. From the ceiling hung a cord ending in a dim electric bulb whose light spread over the room, lending it an air rather like that of a dimly lit cave. On one wall hung a charcoal portrait of Abu Sayyah in the flower of his youth, though the artist who drew it had so exaggerated the length of his mustaches that they looked like two scorpion tails.

The wife sat down on the couch beside her husband and set about knitting a sweater of gray wool for her son, who had gone to bed with his sister. She began: "Perhaps you had a lucky day?" Abu Sayyah answered in a dry voice, trying to smile: "Not bad. I took an officer on a rather long trip, and he gave me fifteen liras for it without my haggling; I also took some boys and girls out to Dummar and got another fifteen liras for that; and I made five liras from a few short fares in the city. That comes to thirty-five liras in all, of which I spent about ten liras on gasoline and oil — and here is the rest." He said this, pointing to his black leather wallet.

His wife murmured: "A generous blessing."

But Abu Sayyah hesitated and stammered, adding: "But—"

"But what?"

His wife answered anxiously, laying her white fingers on his tired shoulders.

"I am forced to buy two more tires, because the front ones are in a wretched state.

"And yet I don't have money enough even to buy two inner tubes."

She glanced at him, giving him a devilish wink, and said: "Why fret over a trifle like money? Why don't you buy them from the soldiers? They sell everything they can lay their hands on at the cheapest prices to the first passerby."

"Have you tried buying anything from them?" He said this with a scowl, displeased that she should speak to him in this way.

She said fearfully: "I? No, by God — I hardly ever leave the house." And she went on with evident nervousness: "The soldiers are not in the habit of hawking their wares in the streets."

"Never believe what the gossips of Damascus say..."

"And how would you know? Otherwise, where did our neighbor Salim buy that fine new blanket his wife spreads over her bed?"

He answered, shrugging his shoulders indifferently: "That I don't know."

"Try anyway. If luck serves you, you may get what you want at a comparatively low price, and you lose nothing by trying. Ask the first soldier you come across — God is compassionate, and He may help you to buy them for five hundred liras instead of the two thousand five hundred you paid the smugglers."

Abu Sayyah muttered miserably: "Even the five hundred liras you speak of —

I don't have them."

"I can hardly believe you are as clean out of money as you claim."

He answered her with simple sarcasm: "If it weren't for you and the children, I would be a rich man by now."

His wife was stunned by this answer and said: "They are your children too. And if you think I am the reason you have no money, I am ready to go back to my father's house this very instant!"

She said this in anger, stamping her small feet on the carpet and trying to draw away from him.

Abu Sayyah loved his wife with all the feeling in him, and the threat she had just uttered made him reckon with the storm about to blow through his quiet house. He felt what his words had done to his faithful wife's heart, and he hastened to correct his mistake, saying apologetically:

"I didn't mean what I said. But surely you know how a young man feels on the threshold of bankruptcy."

Some hot tears rolled from the wife's eyes. She wrapped her soft hands around her husband's neck, kissed the top of his cheek fervently, and said, drawing away from him and slipping gracefully out of the room: "Wait for me a moment."

She came back moments later carrying in her hands some many-colored Syrian banknotes, looked at him through her drowsy lashes, and sat down close beside him, saying: "I have saved as much as eight hundred Syrian liras out of the household money. Take it, buy the two tires you need, and don't let me hear from you again what you said a few moments ago."

And she gave him the sum, looking at him, and then at herself, with pride.

Abu Sayyah embraced his wife and said:
"Shall I go now, then?"
"Yes, go."

Abu Sayyah said "Ya Allah!" and rushed out of the room, shutting the door behind him; within moments the sound of the car had faded away into the distance.

Abu Sayyah took the money his wife had given him and drove his car into the heart of the city, his black eyes glittering strangely as they scanned the sidewalks along the streets he passed, searching among the crowds for young men in military dress, thinking he might ask one of the wearers about tires.

But he found among them none who could supply his need, for the soldiers walked in bands. A number of civilians hailed him, but he paid none of them any attention. A long while passed without his lighting on a military man to whom he might broach his desire. The soldiers were coming out of the theaters, cafés, and restaurants, getting into their cars, and driving off.

Abu Sayyah cruised about in his car between the Orient Hotel and the Parliament, and back again to the public square. The clock of the Hejaz Station was striking its twelve strokes while the weather grew ever colder and the rain poured down hard, as if to express the wrath of the gods. He stopped his car near the Victoria Bridge, lit his cigarette, and drifted into deep reflection. His reflection was cut short by a rapping on the window glass that startled Abu Sayyah; he raised his head to see on the sidewalk two tall soldiers, standing and looking at him with a threatening look, a lighted cigarette in each man's mouth. Then one of them addressed him, asking him to drive them to the Qadam station.

The soldier's appearance and voice showed that he was not drunk, and this led Abu Sayyah to recover his calm; he smiled and nodded his head.

The soldier said to him politely: "And how much do you want for that?"

"Five Syrian liras," answered Abu Sayyah, spreading his five fingers in the soldier's face and saying in his heart, "Right in the devil's eyes."

"That's a lot. We can give you no more than two liras."

"All right," answered Abu Sayyah, opening the door of his car and asking them to get in.

As his car was running along the corniche toward the Qadam station, one of the two soldiers said: "Your car is an old plaything, man." Signs of sorrow appeared on Abu Sayyah's face, and he said regretfully: "I know it, but nowadays one of us needs a great deal of care just to keep his car in a state fit to run at all."

"True enough — getting hold of a loaf of bread these days has become harder than getting into hell." Abu Sayyah knew this was his best chance to speak of his tires. He cleared his throat, slowed his car, turned his head, and, gathering his courage, addressed them in a clear, plain voice: "Yes, sir, you are right; and the greatest difficulty facing us in these black days is finding tires — they have become very scarce indeed."

Suddenly the soldier burst out laughing and said:

"How I wish I could show you how many of them we have!"

"I don't believe it," answered Abu Sayyah.

And the soldier whispered in Abu Sayyah's ear, saying: "You fool — do you want to buy some?" "But I can't just now."

"We can bring them whenever you wish," said the soldier, bending his neck down toward Abu Sayyah's ear.

And Abu Sayyah asked him: "And how much for the pair?"

"Five hundred Syrian liras."

Joy flooded over Abu Sayyah, but he would not settle the bargain before trying to satisfy his appetite for haggling. "Five hundred liras is a large sum. Couldn't you bring the figure down?"

The soldier answered him: "You seem a good fellow, so I am ready to let you have them for four hundred liras. What do you say?"

Abu Sayyah sighed with relief and said: "I agree. But when can I get them?"

"Any time you like."

"Tonight?"

"Ah — no, that's impossible. Make it tomorrow evening, around eleven o'clock."

"And where?"

"That's up to you."

Abu Sayyah drove on to a small café on the outskirts of the city and said, pointing to the tumbledown mud building: "Here — I shall be waiting for you inside this café."

The two soldiers said with one voice: "Very good."

Abu Sayyah drove them on to the Qadam district, and there they tried to pay him the fare, but he politely refused, and went back to his wife to carry her the glad tidings.

The following night, shortly before eleven, Abu Sayyah stopped his car outside the café and went in, his clothes streaming with rainwater, and sat down after ordering a cup of coffee. The café was empty of customers at that late hour of the night; there was no one there but its aged owner with his tarboush and his drooping mustaches. Abu Sayyah spoke to him, asking him to withdraw into the back of the café when the two visitors came.

Not long after, Abu Sayyah saw the door open, and two soldiers came in, rolling before them two new tires, wet with water and smeared with mud. The soldiers left the tires between the tables, then shut the door

and came up to Abu Sayyah, who rose to receive them.

"Here is what you asked for, fellow — now give us the money. We have to get back to camp." Abu Sayyah answered: "I'll drive you there."

"Thanks — we have our own car."

He paid them the sum, which one of them stuffed into his pockets without troubling to count it, and they left the café at a trot, one on the heels of the other.

Abu Sayyah smiled a happy smile and began gazing proudly at the two tires, feeling them over with his fingers in admiration. After paying his bill he rushed out with his treasure to where his car stood — and in the light leaking from the café door, Abu Sayyah discovered that his car's two rear wheels were resting on the ground without tires!!...

(From the English)