The Testament of Al-Hariqa
CHAPTER THREE
Two weeks had passed since that strange night at the back door, yet nothing on the surface seemed to have changed in the daily rhythm of life inside Hajj Tawfiq al-Nabulsi’s shop. Everything had returned, at least outwardly, to normal: customers came and went, fabrics were measured, cut, and wrapped, and Hajj Tawfiq sat behind his wooden desk, recording the day’s takings in his little ledger as he always had. But Adnan knew, with an unshakable certainty, that something had shifted beneath the surface—and that the small wooden box was still somewhere, carefully hidden, waiting for its owner, who had not yet returned.
Hajj Tawfiq never mentioned the matter again, nor did he ask Adnan about what he had seen or heard, as though the two of them had silently agreed to let that night sink into a shared silence—a silence in which each knew that the other knew, yet neither wished to be the first to disturb the fragile balance between them.
Adnan had begun a new habit. Every Friday night, he would sit in his rented room beneath the weak glow of a kerosene lamp and write a short letter to his mother in the village: how work was going, the stern but kind Hajj Tawfiq, his new friends in the market, and the longing he still carried for all their familiar faces. He knew his mother could not read, but their neighbor in the village, a retired schoolteacher, would read each new letter aloud to her, then write a brief reply dictated by his mother in simple words filled with prayers and tenderness.
During those same weeks, Adnan noticed that the number of customers arriving from outside Damascus—especially from Beirut and its surrounding areas—had risen sharply throughout the market, not only at Hajj Tawfiq’s shop. They came in small groups, sometimes whole families, buying large quantities of cloth and basic necessities with the hurried efficiency of people preparing for a long stay they had never originally planned. Their faces carried that particular anxiety that marks those who have fled something terrifying they do not wish to describe in detail. More than once, Adnan overheard broken conversations about roadblocks, entire Beirut neighborhoods that had become front lines between warring factions, and families forced to abandon their homes and businesses almost overnight.
That very night, after the incident with the gold and the great test he had faced, Adnan wrote a longer-than-usual letter to his mother. Without mentioning the gold, he told her that Hajj Tawfiq had begun to trust him more and more, and that for the first time since leaving the village he felt he was building a real future for himself—not merely doing temporary work to get by. He ended the letter with a sentence written in a slightly unsteady hand: “Pray for me, Mother, that I always remain as you raised me—honest, whatever the temptations may be. That is the most precious thing I have learned from you and Father together.”
On a hot August morning, a customer Adnan had never seen before entered the shop: a man in his fifties, dressed far more elegantly than most of the market’s regular customers. Despite the fierce heat, he wore a full suit, a gleaming gold watch on his wrist, and a large ring set with a red stone. He introduced himself to Hajj Tawfiq as Abu Nidal, a merchant who owned several ready-to-wear clothing shops in the upscale Shaalan district, and said he wanted to buy a very large quantity of the finest fabrics in the shop, all at once and in cash.
Abu Nidal was entirely unlike most of the customers in Al-Hariqa Market. His voice was loud and assured, and he spoke like a man who knew the value of every coin he possessed and had no fear of showing it. His eyes moved rapidly from shelf to shelf, as though he were assessing everything according to a cold commercial logic in which there was no room for sentiment.
“I want everything you have in fine Italian silk, and a large quantity of English wool as well, for the coming winter season.” He said it as he settled into the chair reserved for important customers, without waiting to be invited, with the confidence of a man accustomed to taking what he wanted without much asking.
Hajj Tawfiq calmly checked his stock and asked Adnan for the inventory ledger for the imported fabrics. He began turning its pages slowly while Abu Nidal tapped his fingers impatiently against the arm of the chair.
“Exactly how much Italian silk do you have?” he finally asked, in the tone of someone trying to hurry things along.
“Enough for your needs, God willing. But let me confirm the quantities first. I do not like promising what I cannot deliver,” Hajj Tawfiq replied in his usual calm, entirely unmoved by his guest’s impatience.
The negotiation lasted nearly half an hour, moving between prices and delivery terms, while Adnan stood nearby, watching with admiration as Hajj Tawfiq dealt with this unusual customer, unshaken by Abu Nidal’s repeated attempts to lower the price or demand delivery without adequate guarantees. At one point, when Abu Nidal pressed hard for a lower price and threatened to take his business elsewhere, Hajj Tawfiq simply smiled. “By all means. If you find someone who will sell you goods of this quality for less, I will not blame you for going to him. But I have known this market for forty years, and I do not think you will find what you are looking for elsewhere with such ease.” Abu Nidal immediately withdrew his threat and accepted the price without further argument.
The two men finally agreed on a substantial deal—the largest transaction Adnan had witnessed since he began working at the shop—worth more than Hajj Tawfiq would normally earn in an entire month.
Abu Nidal pulled a small leather pouch from the inside pocket of his jacket. It was visibly heavy. He began counting banknotes rapidly onto the table while loudly discussing another property deal he intended to close that week, as though handling large sums of money were for him nothing more than a routine matter unworthy of his full attention.
After the man completed the payment and left the shop with quick, confident strides, leaving behind the scent of expensive French perfume, Adnan began arranging the bolts of cloth in preparation for wrapping them for delivery the following day. As he moved one of the large rolls from the table, he noticed something small and gleaming on the floor near the chair where Abu Nidal had been sitting.
He bent down and picked it up: another leather pouch, much smaller, yet strangely heavy for its size. He opened it carefully and found a number of gold pieces inside, old-fashioned and gleaming—twenty pieces, perhaps a few more—along with several foreign banknotes in a currency he could not readily identify.
He glanced around quickly. No one had noticed the pouch fall—not Hajj Tawfiq, who was busy sorting his papers after the large transaction, nor any other customer, since the shop happened to be almost empty at that particular moment. Adnan immediately realized that, converted into Syrian pounds, the amount was probably worth more than a full year of his wages, perhaps two.
He hurried out of the shop, searching the crowded alley with his eyes for Abu Nidal, but the man had already vanished into the dense morning crowds of the market. Adnan hesitated for a moment, then turned back, the pouch clenched in his fist and his heart beating with unusual speed.
At that very moment Hassan, his friend from the neighboring shop, intercepted him. Hassan had seen from a distance what Adnan had picked up from the ground.
“What is that, Adnan?” Hassan asked, his curiosity unmistakable.
Adnan showed him the pouch cautiously, without fully opening it in front of him. “It fell from the man who was buying the fabrics a little while ago—Abu Nidal. I think it is gold.”
Hassan’s eyes widened. “Gold? How much?”
“I do not know exactly. Perhaps twenty pieces, or a little more.”
Hassan gave a low whistle. “Adnan, that man is very rich. He owns several shops in Shaalan, and he will hardly notice the loss. Even if he looks for it, he will probably assume he misplaced it somewhere else, or that someone stole it in the crush of the market. He would never suspect Hajj Tawfiq’s shop; everyone in the market knows him for his honesty.”
Adnan understood at once what Hassan was hinting at, and felt a mixture of unease and curiosity toward the idea that had suddenly presented itself to him despite himself.
“You mean I should keep it?”
Hassan lowered his voice even further. “Why not? No one knows you found it except me, and I will not say a word. With that kind of money, you could send half to your family in the village—it would keep them going for years—and keep the other half for yourself. You work terribly hard, Adnan. You deserve a little good luck for once, at least.”
“But Hassan, this is another man’s money, no matter how rich he is. How can I simply take it?”
“What is wrong with that? Rich people do not feel the loss of money the way we do. You know that perfectly well.” Hassan gestured toward the pouch in Adnan’s clenched hand, his eyes shining with a strange excitement. “Think carefully before you decide, my friend. An opportunity like this does not come twice in a lifetime to people like us.”
Adnan remained silent for a long time, looking at the small pouch in his hand. He thought of his mother, of her tired face forever occupied with calculations about grain and the coming winter, and of his younger brothers and sisters, who might need new clothes, medicine, or a better education. He thought about how long it would take him to save this same amount from his modest wages.
But he also thought, with greater force than he had expected, of Hajj Tawfiq’s words: “Whoever betrays himself in secret will never be honest in public, no matter how honest he may appear.” And he thought of the look he had seen in Hajj Tawfiq’s eyes when he returned the excess money weeks earlier—the look in which, for the first time in his short life, he had felt that an older man was looking at him not as a poor boy working for his daily bread, but as a man, in the fullest sense of the word.
He also realized that, however tempting the money might be, it was not his. He had not earned it with his sweat or his effort. Taking it would remain, deep in his conscience, a theft that no justification could wash away, however reasonable that justification might seem in a moment of temptation.
“No, Hassan,” he said at last, quietly but with absolute firmness. “I will not do it. This money is not mine, and it must return to its owner.”
Hassan looked at him with astonishment mixed with an unexpected respect. “You are crazy, Adnan. Do you know that? Anyone else in this market would have kept it without giving it a second thought.”
Adnan gave a faint smile. “Perhaps. But I do not want to carry this secret with me for the rest of my life, Hassan. Some things are not worth their price, no matter how tempting that price may seem at first.”
Hassan slowly shook his head. “I do not completely understand you, but I think I respect you more now than I did five minutes ago.” Then he added with a broad grin, “Just promise me one thing: if you ever become rich through this honorable path of yours, do not forget your old friend from the button shop.”
For the first time since the whole incident had begun, Adnan laughed. “I promise you, Hassan. I will not forget.”
Adnan returned inside the shop and went straight to Hajj Tawfiq.
“Hajj, I found this on the floor after Abu Nidal left. I think it must have fallen from him by accident.” He placed the pouch on the table and opened it in front of him.
Hajj Tawfiq stared silently at the gold pieces for a long moment, then raised his eyes to Adnan with a searching look deeper than any he had given him before.
“Do you know how much this is worth, Adnan?”
“I do not know exactly, Hajj, but it is a lot—far more than I earn in a full year, I think.”
“More than two years, actually.” Hajj Tawfiq placed his hand on the pouch without yet taking it. “And no one saw you pick it up, did they?”
Adnan hesitated. “Hassan saw me, from the neighboring button shop. But no one else.”
“And what did Hassan tell you?”
Adnan answered with complete honesty: “He told me I could keep it, Hajj, and that no one would know.”
Hajj Tawfiq remained silent for a long time before asking, in a slightly lower voice, “Why did you not?”
Adnan thought for a moment, then said, “Because if I had, Hajj, I would have stolen something I had done nothing to earn. Perhaps no one would ever know, but I would know—every day, for the rest of my life. And I do not think any amount of money, however large, is worth carrying that feeling with me forever.”
A long silence settled between the two men, entirely different from the tense silence that had followed the mysterious night of the box: a warm silence, filled with something close to quiet pride.
At last Hajj Tawfiq took the pouch and placed it in his locked desk drawer. “I will make sure it is returned to Abu Nidal personally tomorrow. I will tell him that one of my workers found it and returned it, without mentioning your name—unless he wishes to know.”
“You do not owe me thanks, Hajj.”
“I know.” Hajj Tawfiq gave that rare, faint smile of his.
The next day Abu Nidal returned to the shop to collect his shipment. The moment he entered, he went to Hajj Tawfiq with a serious expression, entirely different from his usual confidence.
“Hajj Tawfiq, I believe I lost something important here yesterday—a small pouch containing some gold and foreign currency.”
Hajj Tawfiq took the pouch from his drawer. “I believe this is what you lost. One of my workers found it on the floor immediately after you left.”
Abu Nidal opened the pouch quickly and checked its contents, his eyes unable to conceal his profound relief. “Thank God, everything is here.” He looked at Hajj Tawfiq with obvious gratitude. “Who found it? I want to thank him personally and reward him.”
Hajj Tawfiq called Adnan over. He had been arranging some fabrics in the far corner. “This is Adnan—the young man who found your pouch and did not hesitate for a moment to return it.”
Abu Nidal looked at Adnan with clear admiration, then pulled several large banknotes from his pocket. “Take this, my boy. A small reward for your honesty.”
Adnan hesitated for a moment and looked at Hajj Tawfiq as though asking permission with his eyes. Hajj Tawfiq gave a slight nod. Adnan extended his hand and accepted the money gratefully, feeling the enormous difference between this moment and the one he had lived through the night before: being rewarded for one’s honesty was something entirely different from secretly taking what did not belong to you.
After Abu Nidal left, Hajj Tawfiq looked at Adnan with that same warm expression. “You saw how you felt when he gave you that reward, did you not?”
“Yes, Hajj. I felt something completely different—something genuinely good.”
“That is exactly what I wanted you to learn. Honest, lawful money, however little, gives you a feeling that no amount of forbidden money can give you, however great it may be. Remember that feeling well. You will need to remember it many times in the years ahead.”
Before long, the story of Adnan and the gold had spread throughout Al-Hariqa Market. The other merchants began looking at him differently—some with genuine admiration, others with a hint of concealed mockery that was not entirely free of hidden envy.
“I heard you turned down gold worth two years of work, Adnan!” said Abu Salim, the spice seller, as he offered him a handful of cardamom. “May God grant you good health, my boy. There are few like you in these times.”
Even Umm Riyad, the owner of the thread shop, called to him as he passed her doorway. “Come here, my son.” She placed a small bag of sweets in his hand. “It is only a simple gift. I just want you to know that I am proud of you, as though you were my own son.”
Adnan felt embarrassed, yet deeply grateful, at all this sudden attention. He had never meant to do anything extraordinary; he had simply felt that he had done what any human being in his position ought to do. Yet, with a wisdom beyond his years, he understood that this new reputation—the reputation of “the honest young man trusted by Hajj Tawfiq”—would, in time, become the most valuable capital he possessed for the professional life ahead of him.
Adnan sat in the chair opposite Hajj Tawfiq’s desk, for the first time since he had begun working there.
“You have been working for me for nearly two months, Adnan, and on more than one occasion you have proved to me that you possess something exceedingly rare in these times: a heart that does not betray, even when no one is watching.” He paused. “I am an old man, and I am alone. I have no family to inherit this shop or the knowledge I have gathered over forty years. For some time now, I have been thinking about whom I should teach everything I know—not only about fabrics, but about how to run an entire business.”
Adnan felt his heart beating faster, but he did not dare interrupt.
“I want to teach you everything, Adnan. Not only how to sell cloth, but how to manage my accounts, how to deal with major suppliers, and how to negotiate the prices of large shipments. In time, I want you to become closer to a partner in this shop than merely an employee.”
Hajj Tawfiq raised a gentle hand, signaling him to wait because he was not finished.
“But this, Adnan, comes with a responsibility far greater than you imagine. In time, I will need you to know things about my life, about my past, and perhaps about people who may one day come asking about matters that do not concern them, or searching for things someone left with me long ago.” He looked at him with a long, penetrating gaze. “If that day comes, Adnan, I will need you to be as silent as stone, and to remember always that some secrets, however painful they may be to keep, protect innocent people far more than they harm the person who keeps them.”
Adnan did not know exactly what Hajj Tawfiq was hinting at, but he understood, through an instinct deeper than any clear logic, that this conversation was somehow connected to that strange night at the back door.
“I understand, Hajj,” he finally said, his voice calm and more confident than he actually felt inside. “And you can trust me, in this and in anything else.”
Hajj Tawfiq gave him one final, lingering look. “I know that, Adnan. That is precisely why I chose you.”
Hajj Tawfiq sat down again behind his desk and stared into the empty space before him for a moment. “Do you know why I trust honesty more than anything else in this world, Adnan?”
Adnan shook his head, waiting.
“When I was about your age, I had a business partner, a childhood friend who had been beside me all my life. We built our first shop together, stone by stone, trust by trust, until it became one of the largest cloth shops in all of Damascus. I trusted him as I trusted myself—sometimes even more.” He paused, his gaze drifting far away. “Then a great opportunity came. I traveled to Aleppo to inspect some merchandise and left him in charge of everything at the shop, with a blind trust I never questioned for a single moment.”
“And what happened, Hajj?” Adnan asked quietly.
“When I returned two weeks later, I found the shop closed. All the merchandise and money were gone, and so was my friend, without a trace. I have never seen him since that day.” He looked at Adnan with eyes carrying the shadow of an old pain that had never completely healed. “I lost everything I had built in that moment, Adnan—not only the money, but something far more precious: my ability to trust another human being easily.”
He fell silent for a while, then added more softly, “That is precisely why, when I saw you return that extra money weeks ago, and then saw you today refuse the temptation of that gold, I felt something I had not felt for many, many years: hope that there might still be a human being worthy of complete trust.”
Hajj Tawfiq rose and walked toward one of the lower drawers of his old wooden cabinet—the one Adnan had never once seen him open. From it he took a small, old-fashioned brass key hanging from a worn leather cord.
“This is the key to the back door, Adnan. From today onward, you are the only person besides me who has a copy.” He held it out with a steady hand, though Adnan noticed an almost imperceptible tremor in his fingers.
Adnan took the key with a hesitant hand, feeling its symbolic weight far more strongly than its actual, slight weight in his palm.
“Keep it safe, and never lose it. And if someone ever asks you about it—about anything concerning this door, or what may lie behind it—always remember that your silence, at that moment, may be the most valuable gift you can give me, or other people whose names you may never know.”
That night, Adnan returned to his rented room with the small brass key hanging around his neck beneath his shirt, pressed against his skin, as though it were a new part of his body that had not existed only a few hours earlier. He sat on the edge of his bed, thinking about everything that had happened that day: the test he had passed without ever planning for it, the immense trust granted to him by a man who, two months earlier, had known him only by name, and the painful story of the lifelong friend who had betrayed that man without warning.
Adnan realized, with a maturity beyond his years, that what he had been given that day was not merely a small brass key. It was something like a piece of the heart of a man whom betrayal had once shattered, yet who had nevertheless decided to trust again—with great caution, but with complete sincerity—a poor young man from a distant village whom he had known for only two months.
At last, as he lay on his simple bed trying to sleep, Adnan felt that his life had changed fundamentally that very day. He was no longer merely a boy working in a cloth shop. Without fully asking for it, he had become the keeper of a secret whose true dimensions he did not yet know, and the bearer of a key that might one day open a door after which he would never be able to return to the simple life he had known before.
What Adnan did not know, as he finally drifted into broken sleep filled with vague dreams of locked chests and dark back doors, was that the little brass key would not be the last test he would face that summer. New visitors were already preparing, in another nearby city, to travel to Damascus, carrying questions about the very same box of which Adnan had now become one of its silent guardians—without ever quite choosing to become one.