—
He had just turned twenty and Khalo Jabbar had entrusted him with a good position at the port. The Silk Office had not yet existed but trade with Europe had reached great heights, so Elias worked long hours in the large warehouse, overseeing the export of silk thread to Europe and doing the inventory of the imports. From France came modern looms, from Britain processed textiles, finest cotton but also silks. It was the luxurious shawls and gowns that first lured the girl Nayla into his family’s warehouse. Later, he found out that her family was in the trade business, too, and that she often accompanied her uncles to the port to have the first pick of new deliveries. The day she entered the front office in a group of aunties, Elias found himself face-to-face with the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. She was the moon, she was a jewel, sparkling bright. He knew the exact moment when she noticed him staring—startled, she turned away while pulling her gauzy veil across her lower face. After a second that lasted an eternity, she peeked back at him. Her large eyes were dark and liquid. Gazelle eyes. Pools of infinite mystery. She returned his gaze for a fraction longer than would have been incidental. A place inside his chest expanded violently, and he couldn’t breathe.
When she returned the following week, his heart pounded so hard, he thought he was ill. It was a sort of sickness that spread between them through glances alone, and the anticipation building in the now meaningless hours between her visits fanned the heat to an unsurvivable fever pitch. The amount of gold on her neck and head and her style of dress indicated that her family was wealthy but Greek Orthodox, not a choice his family would readily approve. Still, he couldn’t stop, it was too addicting to freely project the full force of a young man’s passion onto her beautiful face. He became reckless, and left gifts for her in the silk showroom: a blossom, a flower, then flowers with messages on tiny scraps of paper tied to the stems. The ecstasy when she left him a message in return! She had written a single word: Nayla. Nayla, Nayla, Nayla. For a week, her name was on his lips like a prayer.
It all went wrong when Khalo Jabbar went to Damascus for some business involving cashmere goats. He was still traveling when Elias learned that Nayla’s name was on a matchmaker’s list. His interest in the girl hadn’t escaped the more eagle-eyed of his colleagues at the port, and they wanted to either warn or tease him by letting him know the news over lunch. Any hesitation he had felt about proposing was instantly blown to bits; he was on his feet and walking before he even had a plan. The correct procedure would have been to wait for Jabbar and tell him that he wanted to marry Nayla. If in favor, Jabbar would have approached her guardian, and if in agreement, they would have asked Nayla to consider Elias. All this Elias knew. All he could think was that another man would snatch his princess from right under his nose—because Jabbar was looking at goats in Damascus. In hindsight, temporary insanity was his only explanation for what he did next: in midday heat, he walked up the hill to her family’s mansion in Ashrafieh, and asked to speak to the head of the house.
Nayla’s brother was puffing on an expensively imported Cuban cigar when Elias entered his study. The east wall behind the man’s back was covered with icons in gilded frames, and the eye couldn’t settle on a quiet surface anywhere; vases, silk settees, veined marble, and potted palm trees seemed to encroach. The contrast between the elegant décor and Elias’s regular weekday attire couldn’t have been starker. Still, he was heard out.
“It might offend my sister,” the brother said after Elias had presented his case. “It might offend her, the idea of a husband who is not one of ours.”
Elias had expected this, but at the end of the day intermarriage did happen and was hardly a crime. He had thought about such things since he was a boy who had had his life upended by a war, and his current conclusion was that more fractures would not heal the mountain and love was love; what mattered was respect, the will to cherish, to protect . . .
“She might ask for additional compensation,” Nayla’s brother added.
Ah. “How much would she expect from one of yours?” Elias asked.
“Two thousand in American dollars.”
His face felt hot. That was almost the entirety of his investments. He offered two thousand five hundred.
The brother blew out smoke. “It is four thousand for you, and a thousand of that in gold.”
Elias stared at the man. “Why?” he demanded.
“One thousand surcharge, and an additional thousand to compensate for the Zghartawi temper—hupp, there it goes.”
Elias had shot to his feet, his pulse drumming with righteous outrage at being mocked.
His opponent crushed the cigar into the ashtray. “I don’t want trouble,” he said. “Go back to your village.”
He went back to the warehouse instead, white-hot with anger. When Nayla visited an hour later, he managed to split her from the herd and pulled her into the supply room.
“Your brother refused me,” he said in a harsh whisper. “I’m here to take you away.”
She shrank from him, her gaze bouncing between his looming shoulders and the door he had locked.
“Nayla.”
Her bewitching eyes were huge. “We can’t.”
Those were her first words to him. He clasped her wrist, and she gasped.
“Do you want to?” he urged.
She turned her head slightly to the side. “We mustn’t.”
“It’s our only option.”
“We could never return home!”
“I shall build us a home—better than here.”
She was stiff and unmoving in his grip. “Please, think,” she pleaded, exasperation repressed in her voice. “Do you truly want a wife who disregards her family’s wishes so severely?”