THE TESTAMENT OF AL-HARIQA
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1
Two days after the break-in in Berlin, Lina finally decided that traveling to Damascus herself was no longer a luxury that could be postponed, but a necessity that could not wait. She had come to feel that communicating from a distance—through calls and messages that might well be monitored at precisely this moment—had become a breach through which danger could seep in, especially after it became clear to her that the network pursuing them possessed technological and field capabilities whose reach was difficult to gauge.
Adnan met her at Damascus International Airport. His eyes held a mixture of anxiety and genuine relief at seeing her safe after everything she had endured. Lina looked exhausted, the strain of the long journey and days of unrelenting tension etched across her face, yet her eyes still held that stubborn brightness he had recognized in her from the very first call they had shared.
She said, pulling a thick, carefully organized binder from her carry-on: “I brought everything with me, Mr. al-Rafi’i. Printed this time—on paper only, with no digital copy that can be hacked. I think we’ve reached a point where we need to go through everything together, face to face, away from any means of communication that might be intercepted.”
2
That evening, they sat in a relatively quiet café near Adnan’s hotel, at a table tucked into a corner away from the windows, careful to reduce the chance of anyone outside seeing them. Together they went over every thread that had accumulated: the trust of 1958, the trust of 1976, Kamal’s disappearance in 1978—so nearly simultaneous with Hajj Tawfiq’s own disappearance—the shocking confession of Fatima, and Lina’s latest theory that Hajj Tawfiq had spent decades acting as a guardian of the secrets of several families.
Lina spread her papers across the table with meticulous care. Beside them lay a timeline she had drawn by hand, stretching from 1948 to the present, crossed by strands of different colors, each one representing a person or a major event in the sprawling story.
Turning the pages of her notes, Lina said, “There is one thing I still cannot understand, Mr. al-Rafi’i. Why did Kamal and Hajj Tawfiq disappear so close together, in 1977 and 1978? Was it merely a coincidence, or is there a direct thread connecting their disappearances?”
Adnan thought for a long time before answering. “Perhaps they discovered, around the same time, something dangerous connected to whoever was threatening their trusts. Perhaps each was forced to disappear in his own way, fleeing the same danger.”
Lina added cautiously, “Or perhaps one of them was somehow involved in the other’s disappearance.”
Adnan went completely still. The possibility landed on him with a weight he had not expected. “You mean Hajj Tawfiq might have been responsible for Kamal’s disappearance? Or the other way around?”
“At this stage, Mr. al-Rafi’i, I am not prepared to rule out any possibility, no matter how painful it may seem. Complicated human stories like this are rarely pure black or white. Even good men, under enough pressure from fear and despair, can sometimes do things they would never have imagined themselves capable of under ordinary circumstances.”
3
The next morning, Adnan suggested that they visit the site of the old Al-Hariqa market together—not for sentimental reasons alone, but because, while reviewing Lina’s notes, he had suddenly remembered a small detail that had almost vanished from his memory: Hasan, his old companion from his youth in the market, was, according to the last thing Umm Suleiman had told him many years ago, still running a small shop there, inherited from his father, who in turn had inherited it from an earlier generation of the same family.
The following morning they went together to Al-Hariqa market. Adnan led Lina through the narrow lanes he had once known by heart, explaining with an enthusiasm threaded through with sorrow what each corner had once held: here had been Abu Salim’s spice shop; here was the corner where he and Hasan used to rest, sharing a simple loaf of bread; and here was the doorway where he had stood frightened on his very first day.
At last they found Hasan’s shop. It was smaller and plainer than Adnan had imagined, but it still carried almost the same sign, freshly painted: “Hasan & Sons — Buttons & Sewing Accessories.” They stepped inside and found a man in his sixties. His tired, familiar face bore features Adnan could not have mistaken for a moment despite all the intervening decades: the same warm eyes, the same smile that had come quickly to Hasan’s face even during the hardest years of poverty and exhaustion they had shared in their youth.
4
“Hasan?”
The man raised his eyes and studied the strange visitor’s face uncertainly. Then his eyes widened in utter astonishment. “It can’t be… Adnan? Adnan al-Rafi’i?”
The two men embraced with a warmth so genuine that it stunned Lina, standing nearby and witnessing the rare reunion of two friends who had parted forty-five full years earlier. Hasan wept openly, unconcerned with the passing customers’ glances, gripping Adnan by the shoulders as though making sure he was not a ghost or an apparition conjured by all those years of absence.
Hasan said, wiping his tears with his shirt sleeve and looking at Adnan with affectionate reproach, “I thought—we all thought—you had disappeared completely, just like Hajj Tawfiq, after you suddenly left the country in the late seventies without saying goodbye to anyone. Abu Salim, may God rest his soul, and I looked for you for years. We asked everyone we knew, but never heard a word. It was as if the earth had swallowed you. Where were you all these years? And why did you never contact us?”
Adnan said, “It’s a long story, my friend. I’ll tell you all of it if time allows. But right now I need your help with something urgent.” He gave him a cautious summary of the story, focusing on what he believed Hasan might know about the final days before Hajj Tawfiq disappeared.
Hasan thought for a long while, trying to summon memories buried for decades. “I remember my father telling me once, many years after Hajj Tawfiq disappeared, that he’d heard a rumor in the market about a strange man who used to visit the shop at night during the final weeks before the disappearance. Some of the older men in the market used to speak in hushed voices about a ‘second ledger’ that was never found after he vanished.”
5
Adnan asked, increasingly astonished, “A second ledger? Do you know where it might be?”
Hasan shook his head uncertainly. “I don’t know for sure. But my father mentioned that Hajj Tawfiq had another old friend, not very well known in the market—a jeweler named Abu Nabil. He died many years ago too, but his sons still run his shop at the other end of the market. Perhaps they know something.”
Before they could discuss the matter further, Lina, with the trained journalistic instinct for catching details, noticed two men standing at the entrance to the distant alley, watching Hasan’s shop in a distinctly unnatural way. They pretended to inspect merchandise in a neighboring store without actually looking at it.
She whispered with extreme caution, “Mr. al-Rafi’i, I don’t think we’re alone here.”
6
Adnan glanced discreetly in the direction Lina had indicated. He saw the two men and immediately recognized one of them, a cold shiver running through him: the same man he had seen watching from a distance during his meeting with Elias at Ziad Salloum’s office—the man who had appeared again, in different clothes, near his hotel the following day.
“Hasan, we need to get out of here safely. Is there a back door?”
Hasan understood the danger at once from Adnan’s tone and nodded quickly, pointing toward a small door at the back that led into a narrow storeroom. “This way. Through the storeroom. It leads to a side alley that’s less crowded.”
But as they began moving toward the rear door, they heard hurried footsteps approaching from the front entrance. A quick glance from Adnan revealed that the two men had noticed their movement and were now heading toward the shop much faster.
7
Adnan and Lina rushed through the narrow, dark storeroom, weaving past piles of boxes filled with buttons and thread until they reached the back door and emerged into a winding alley, dim beneath the arched roofs that blocked the sunlight in this ancient section of the market. The air was thick with the smell of spices and old dust, and another scent—the unmistakable scent of real fear—began to enter Adnan’s senses for the first time since this journey had begun.
“This way!” Adnan shouted, suddenly remembering with a kind of bodily memory he had never imagined could survive all these decades the details of lanes he had walked thousands of times in his youth. He ran, Lina immediately behind him, through a succession of narrow turns as the footsteps of their pursuers grew louder behind them—heavy, fast steps striking the old stone paving with an ominous rhythm.
They turned right, then left, through a passage barely wide enough for one person. Adnan struck his shoulder against the edge of a wooden shelf jutting from one of the shops, felt a sharp pain, but did not stop. They emerged into a wider arcade crowded with shoppers, giving them a few precious moments to disappear into the crowd before continuing toward the far end of the market. Adnan heard an angry shout from a vendor he had accidentally collided with, followed by a hurried apology he did not stop to finish.
Lina asked, breathless as she struggled to match Adnan’s pace despite the exhaustion still visible from the long flight only hours earlier, “Where exactly are we going?”
“I don’t know exactly. Just away!”
They kept running through a maze of interlocking lanes. Some seemed vaguely familiar to Adnan; others had changed beyond recognition. New shops had replaced old ones he once knew, until he began to wonder whether he had completely lost his bearings amid this labyrinth of old memories and modern changes.
8
At last they reached a narrow dead end, an old stone wall blocking the passage Adnan had believed would provide a shortcut to the other side of the market. Instead, it was completely sealed—a mistake he had made in the fever of his flight, as the old market’s geography finally betrayed him after all these decades away. He looked around in growing panic: high stone walls on every side, with no visible door or window through which they could escape.
Lina whispered in terror, “Mr. al-Rafi’i!” She could hear the pursuers’ footsteps approaching rapidly down the alley they had just entered, the sounds becoming clearer with every passing second, hurried breathing mingling with a fear neither of them could hide any longer.
Adnan looked around in mounting despair. There was no other visible way out. His heart hammered violently, and for a moment he considered confronting the pursuers directly, despite knowing he had no real chance against two men who were plainly trained, when suddenly a small wooden door opened in the wall. He had taken it for nothing more than part of the masonry, so carefully had it been camouflaged in the color of the surrounding stone. An old hand beckoned them urgently.
“In here. Quickly. No time for questions!”
9
They rushed through the small door without hesitation and found themselves in an old, cramped storeroom redolent of spices and roasted coffee. An extremely old man stood before them, perhaps in his nineties. His eyes were sharp despite the deep lines of his face. He closed the door behind them quickly and carefully, then placed a finger to his lips, demanding absolute silence. His thin body stood with remarkable steadiness for a man of his age, and despite the slight tremor in his hands, they moved with precision and speed as he secured a hidden bolt on the disguised door.
Through the thin wall they heard the pursuers’ footsteps pass close by. They paused for a moment at the wooden door, so carefully disguised that it appeared to be part of the stone wall, then exchanged a few hushed words in a language Adnan could not make out clearly before moving on, having found nothing in the passage that seemed to lead anywhere. Adnan felt Lina trembling beside him and gently took her hand, trying to give her some reassurance even though he himself was not entirely certain they were safe yet.
The old man waited several more long minutes, listening intently to every sound outside to make absolutely certain the danger had passed. Only then did he finally speak, his voice rough, his eyes filled with unmistakable curiosity as he examined Adnan’s face with extraordinary care, as though comparing it with a photograph preserved in his memory for decades.
“I know you. I know your face from somewhere, though after all these years I cannot say exactly where.” He paused, narrowing his eyes as he studied Adnan more closely. He took a step forward, examining his features with the precision of a man trying to open a rusted door in his own memory. “Are you… could you be the young man who used to work for Hajj Tawfiq al-Nabulsi, all those years ago?”
10
Adnan felt increasingly stunned. “How do you know me? Who are you?”
The old man smiled faintly—the first smile he had shown since rescuing them only minutes earlier. “My name is Faris. I am the son of Abu Nabil the jeweler, Hajj Tawfiq’s old friend. I was a young man when you worked in his shop, but I remember you well. You used to pass our store from time to time, and my father spoke of you with admiration. He called you ‘the honest young man Tawfiq finally found after years of searching.’”
Adnan sat down, stunned by the unexpected convergence of events. “Your father was Abu Nabil? Hasan, my old friend in the market, just mentioned his name before we had to run!”
“Hasan, the son of Hasan the elder? He’s still alive? What a small world.” Faris gave a brief, sad laugh before becoming serious again. “But let me guess why you’re being followed today. I think it has something to do with what Hajj Tawfiq left behind, doesn’t it? Something the entire market has whispered about for decades, without anyone daring to search for it openly.”
11
Adnan stepped closer to the old man, his urgency growing. “You know about the second ledger?”
Faris nodded slowly. His eyes carried the weight of a secret he too had borne for decades. “Sit, please. This is a story that needs time if I am to tell it properly.” He pointed to two simple wooden chairs in a corner of the storeroom and sat himself on an old overturned crate, with the ease of a man who had made this place part of his daily life for decades.
“My father was the only man I know for certain Hajj Tawfiq trusted completely, apart from the deep friendship between them—a friendship that lasted more than thirty years, from the time they were young men beginning their working lives in this very market. They met almost every Friday after the noon prayer, drank tea together in this storeroom, and talked about everything and nothing, as true friends do.” Faris smiled a distant, melancholy smile. “I was a small child then, playing among the sacks of spices while they talked. I understood very little of what they said, but I remember the atmosphere of deep trust that filled this place whenever they met.”
“And what happened during the final weeks before Hajj Tawfiq disappeared?”
Faris sighed deeply. “During that period, my father noticed a clear change in his old friend: growing anxiety, doubled caution, repeated nighttime visits that had never been part of his routine before. On one of those visits—the last, only a few days before his disappearance—Hajj Tawfiq left a small box with my father and asked him to keep it in absolute secrecy, and to hand it to one person and one person only. He described that person to him with extraordinary precision, a description my father never forgot for the rest of his life: ‘A slender, dark-skinned young man who works for me. His name is Adnan. One day he will come asking for it. When he does, he will know it is his because he will be carrying a small copper key that I myself placed around his neck.’”
Adnan’s hand moved instinctively to his neck. The old copper key was still hanging there, beside the newer silver key; neither had left him in all the intervening decades, despite every turn his life had taken. He drew them out from beneath his shirt so Faris could see them clearly.
Faris stared at the copper key, his eyes shining with tears shed over a lifetime spent guarding a trust whose full meaning he had never understood. “So this is it. The very key my father described, preserved in his memory until the day he died.” He rose slowly and crossed to a dark corner of the storeroom, where he moved aside a pile of old empty coffee sacks, revealing a wooden floorboard. He lifted it carefully, exposing a small cavity carved into the earth beneath.
He took out a small wooden box, even smaller than the first box Adnan had seen forty-five years earlier, but bearing the same unmistakable character: the same sturdy old wood, and a small copper lock that matched the key hanging around Adnan’s neck exactly.
“I have kept this box all these years, since my father’s death, waiting without ever truly believing that the day would come—the moment when the young man he described would appear and finally claim what Hajj Tawfiq al-Nabulsi left for him, after forty-five full years of silence and waiting.” Faris held the box out to Adnan with hands trembling slightly from emotion.
Adnan received the box in hands that were trembling too. He felt a symbolic weight far greater than the actual weight of the little wooden object. He looked at Lina, who was watching the scene with silent tears running down her face, deeply moved by the moment despite having no direct part in it.
Lina asked softly, respecting the gravity of the moment, “Do you want to open it now?”
Adnan looked at the box for a long moment, then at Faris, then at the disguised door that still separated them from a real danger that might even now be searching for them somewhere near the market. “Not here, and not now. I’m afraid we’re still in danger, and I feel this box deserves a moment of greater safety and calm than these circumstances can give us.”
Faris nodded wisely. “A sensible decision. I know another safe way out of the market, without going through the main lanes—across the rooftops of several connected buildings. My father used it sometimes to avoid unwanted eyes. It will take you to a quiet side street where you can safely find a taxi.”
12
Before they left, Adnan took Faris’s hand in deep gratitude, knowing words were not enough. “I don’t know how to thank you, Faris. You and your father, may God have mercy on him, kept a trust you were never obliged to keep for decades, asking nothing in return except an old promise made to a friend.”
Faris smiled a quiet, profound smile. “That is what I learned from my father, Adnan: when a promise is made with genuine sincerity, it remains binding even if entire generations pass. And perhaps, in some way, I too have been waiting for this moment, for reasons of my own—to prove to myself that my father’s faith in his promise was not in vain.”
Adnan and Lina left the storeroom by the alternative route Faris had shown them, carrying the little box whose symbolic weight was far greater than its physical one. They slipped across a series of old connected rooftops overlooking a panoramic view of the entire Al-Hariqa market, where the domes and minarets of old Damascus gleamed beneath the afternoon sun—a view Adnan had not seen from this particular angle for a full forty-five years.
He stopped for a moment on the old rooftop, looking out over the city and thinking about the distance he had traveled—not merely the geographical distance between Frankfurt and Damascus, but the distance in time and in the self: from a frightened, impoverished boy standing before a shop door for the first time, to a sixty-three-year-old man now holding the last secret his old teacher had left him, after a perilous journey he had never imagined he would undertake at such an advanced age.
Lina looked at him, noticing the deep faraway look in his eyes. “Mr. al-Rafi’i, are you all right?”
Adnan nodded slowly, a tired but genuine smile settling on his face. “I’m all right, Lina. In fact, I’m better than I’ve been in days. For the first time since I began this journey, I feel that we’re finally drawing close to a real ending, whatever that ending may be.”
They did not yet know, as they continued their cautious journey away from Al-Hariqa market, that the small box Adnan now carried in his hands would, when finally opened in a safe place, contain a document that would change the entire course of this story once again—and finally reveal, after all that long waiting, the true testament Hajj Tawfiq al-Nabulsi had left behind, utterly different from what any of the parties contending over his mysterious legacy had expected.