THE TESTAMENT OF AL-HARIQA
CHAPTER SEVEN
Small signs of failing health had begun to appear in Hajj Tawfiq toward the end of October. At first he tried to hide them, but Adnan—who, since the night at the storeroom, had become increasingly sensitive to every detail in his master’s behavior—noticed them quickly: a hand that trembled slightly as it held the pen, a sudden pause in the middle of a conversation to draw a deep breath, a faint pallor that would come over his face in the hours after noon.
The days had begun to shorten, and Hajj Tawfiq wore a thick wool coat even at midday. He moved more slowly between the shelves and sat for longer stretches behind his desk, as though every movement now cost him an effort it had never required before. His appetite had diminished, and during quiet spells he would sometimes fall asleep for a few minutes, sitting behind his desk.
“Hajj, are you all right? You seem more tired than usual these days.”
He always answered, “Nothing worth worrying about, Adnan. Just the ordinary fatigue of a man past sixty.” But Adnan was not convinced, especially when he began noticing that Hajj Tawfiq sometimes pressed a hand against his chest in a swift movement he tried to conceal.
One day, as the two of them were lifting a heavy bolt of cloth together, Hajj Tawfiq suddenly stopped halfway through the motion. His face went pale, and his hand clamped hard against his chest.
“Hajj!” Adnan rushed to him. “What is it? Sit down—quickly!”
Hajj Tawfiq sank into the nearest chair, breathing with difficulty for several long minutes. “Bring me a glass of water, Adnan.”
When the color slowly returned to his face, Adnan said, “Hajj, you need to see a doctor. This isn’t normal.”
Hajj Tawfiq nodded, and the admission only deepened Adnan’s worry. “I know, Adnan. In fact, I did see a doctor two weeks ago without telling you. He said my heart needs surgery. Nothing major, but it will require me to stay in the hospital for at least a few days.”
“When will the operation be, Hajj?”
“In three days, at Al-Shami Hospital. Now I’ll tell you what you need to do while I’m gone: run the shop yourself, and if anyone asks, tell them I’ve gone to Homs to visit relatives. The fewer people who know I’m in the hospital, the better—especially these days.”
On the night before he was due to enter the hospital, Hajj Tawfiq asked Adnan to stay after closing. They sat in the back room, the single lamp casting long shadows across the walls.
“Adnan, I don’t want to frighten you, but I’m a practical man, and I have to prepare for every possibility.” He took a small key from his pocket, entirely different from the copper key Adnan wore around his neck. This one was smaller, silver-colored, with a number engraved on it: 47.
“This is the key to a safe-deposit box at one of the old, trusted banks in Damascus, Adnan. There is only one document inside it. I wrote it myself years ago and updated it for the last time just two weeks ago.”
He held the key out to Adnan. “Do not open that box, and do not ask anyone about it, except in one circumstance: if, one day, you feel that the world no longer protects you, or that I am no longer able to protect you or this trust. Only then should you go to that bank, use the key, and you will find in the document everything you need to know: full names, precise details, and clear instructions about what to do with every trust placed under my care.”
“And what if I never feel that way, Hajj?”
He gave a tired, genuine smile. “Then, Adnan, this key will remain in your pocket forever, unused—and that is the best possible outcome for me personally. But a wise man prepares for the worst while hoping for the best.”
He produced another small sheet of paper. “This is the bank’s name and address, the box number, and a formal power of attorney signed by me. I had it notarized two weeks ago. It authorizes you, under your full name, Adnan Mahmoud al-Rafi’i, to access the box if I am unconscious—or no longer alive, God forbid.”
They sat in silence for a while.
“Hajj,” Adnan said at last, “I want you to know something before you leave tomorrow. You were never just my employer. You became something closer to a father than I had ever known. You taught me almost everything I know about life, about what it means to be an honest man in a time when it is easy not to be one.”
The old man was visibly moved. He wiped the trembling edge of his eyes with one hand. “No one has spoken to me like that in many years. Not since my wife died, and since I lost my only son in that accident. His name was Mahmoud. He was a little like you—in his curiosity, in his stubbornness, even that stubbornness I used to find endearing. I have often imagined that, in some small way, you were a little compensation fate had sent me.”
“And you, Adnan, gave me something I thought I had lost forever on the day an old friend betrayed me: the belief that there is still someone worthy of complete trust. Whatever happens after tonight, know that choosing you was not a mistake—and never will be.”
The following morning, Adnan accompanied Hajj Tawfiq to the hospital. He stood at the door of the operating room. “Go now, Adnan, and open the shop. Life does not stop for anyone, and I’ll be fine.” Those were his last words before his bed was wheeled toward the operating room.
That evening, Umm Suleiman, the neighbor Hajj Tawfiq had mentioned, called to tell Adnan that the operation had been successful.
The next three days passed in relative calm. Adnan ran the shop by himself with an efficiency that surprised even him. On the fourth day, Umm Suleiman called again, but her voice was different this time. “Adnan, my son, Hajj Tawfiq wants to see you. As soon as you can. He says it is very important.”
Adnan hurried to the hospital. He found Hajj Tawfiq weaker than before, but his eyes were completely alert, carrying a clear anxiety.
“Adnan, thank God you came so quickly.” He gripped his hand tightly. “A man came to see me today, someone I didn’t know. He claimed to be a distant relative of Kamal al-Hourani and asked me some very strange questions. A man in his forties, speaking with a polished Damascene accent, not a Beiruti one as you would expect from someone claiming kinship with Kamal. He asked about an ‘old deposit’ belonging to the al-Hourani family, and he mentioned the name of my shop in precise detail.”
“Do you think Kamal himself told him?”
“I don’t know, Adnan. Perhaps Kamal, in his desperation, spoke to someone he should never have trusted. Or perhaps there is an entirely different party involved. Both possibilities frighten me equally.” He looked at him for a long, grave moment. “Adnan, I want you to be extremely careful. If you feel, even for a single moment, that there is real danger threatening you, go immediately to that box.”
“I will, Hajj. I promise.”
Hajj Tawfiq gave his hand one last, firm squeeze. “I’m proud of you, Adnan—more than you can imagine.”
The next morning, Adnan found a small note beneath the shop door: “Adnan, come to the hospital immediately when you read this. Something happened last night.”
He ran as fast as he could. The room was completely empty, the bed made with an almost unnatural neatness. He asked a nurse, “Where is Hajj Tawfiq al-Nabulsi?”
“Sir, according to our records, the patient left the hospital on his own at four in the morning, after signing a voluntary discharge form.”
He questioned the nurse who had been on duty at that hour. “Yes, I remember him well. Two men came to visit him at around three in the morning—an extremely unusual hour. But one of them produced identification authorizing him to visit relatives at any time, as he was a doctor on duty. They stayed with him for about half an hour, then left. Afterward, the patient himself asked for the discharge papers and insisted on leaving, despite our attempts to persuade him to stay.”
“Do you remember what they looked like?”
“One of them was wearing a white doctor’s coat, middle-aged. I didn’t see the other’s face clearly. He stood some distance away in the shadows near the door the whole time.”
Adnan needed no more details to understand, with a certainty bordering on absolute, that Hajj Tawfiq had not left the hospital of his own free will, whatever the official papers suggested. He had left under some kind of pressure—or threat—from two men whose identities Adnan did not know.
He left the hospital like a madman, running through the streets of Damascus as the city slowly awakened to a new morning. His first destination was Hajj Tawfiq’s house near the market. He pounded on the door again and again, but no one answered. The house was dark and silent, with no sign of anyone inside.
He went to Umm Suleiman’s house. An elderly woman opened the door, her eyes swollen. “I don’t know anything, my son. By God, I don’t. The hospital called me at dawn to say he had left, and when I tried calling his house, no one answered.”
He returned to the shop with heavy steps, weighed down by a fear unlike any he had known before. He sat behind Hajj Tawfiq’s old wooden desk, for the first time feeling that he might never see its true owner again, and placed his hand on the small silver key, now hanging beside the copper key around his neck.
He looked at the number engraved on it: 47. He remembered Hajj Tawfiq’s last words, etched in his mind with unmistakable clarity: “Don’t open it until you feel that the world no longer protects you.”
Adnan remained for a long time in that empty shop, alone for the first time in many months, surrounded by silent fabrics, high shelves, and the memories of an entire summer during which his whole life had changed. His heart tightened with dread and fear as he wondered whether this was exactly the moment Hajj Tawfiq had warned him about—or whether, despite everything, the worst was still on its way. He decided to wait another day or two, hoping Hajj Tawfiq would suddenly appear, alive and well, with some simple explanation for all this frightening mystery.
Adnan did not know, as he closed the shop door behind him that cold autumn evening, completely alone for the first time since this journey had begun only a few months earlier, that this would be the last night he would see Hajj Tawfiq al-Nabulsi’s shop with his own eyes for many years to come. Nor did he know that the question that would haunt him from that moment onward—what had truly happened to his teacher, his rescuer, and the person closest to him in that strange city—would remain suspended without a clear answer for forty-five full years, until that distant moment in Frankfurt, when a letter from a Damascene law office would reach him bearing a name he had never forgotten: Hajj Tawfiq al-Nabulsi.