My Friend, Me, and Aziza
A True Never Ending Story
By Tarif Youssef-Agha
I participated with this story in “Texas Authors’ 2019 Short Story Contest” with other 30 authors. Even thought the story did not win, but it made it to the final stage and here is one of the reviews it got from the judges
“Thoroughly engaging, interesting story with satisfying development of characters, plot and theme, and a nice touch of hummer”
Time: Winter 1969
Location: Damascus, Syria
Everything looked ordinary that winter morning in our Elementary School, and no one could tell at that time that a story anything but ordinary was about to be narrated.
Less than ten minutes after the class started, one of the school janitors knocked at the classroom door, opened slowly, and told the teacher that he was needed in the director’s office. We understood later that one of the official inspectors, usually mean and therefore hated by both, teachers and students, made a surprise visit to our school and wanted to meet with the teaching board. The protocol at that time was that the teachers, in case they should leave temporarily for any reason, they should not leave the classrooms without supervision. Instead, they should assign one of the students, usually the head of the class, to come forward, stand behind the teacher’s table and watch the rest of the students to keep them quite. The teachers of my class replaced that protocol with another one; they used to ask me to sit on their chairs and start narrating a story until they returned. Each party of that arrangement was a winner; the students enjoyed listening to the story and I enjoyed telling the story. The teachers also enjoyed taking credit of keeping their class quite while they were away, which usually was not the case with other teachers where the class turned into a play ground as soon as they left.
It all started from the early classes of Literary Writing when the teachers asked the students to write a short essay or story about certain subject and not to exceed certain number of wards or lines. That class was my favorite up to the High School, so every time I had such homework to write a story or essay, I returned home, forgot about the limitation of words and lines, and started to write and write and write. I still remember when one of the teachers sent a written note to my parents saying “the essay homework your son presented today didn’t match his age, so would you please stop writing his essays and let him do it by himself?” I still remember the smile on my parents’ faces when they read that note; my dad responded by writing back to the teacher that no one helped me with the essay. I never had the same problem after my dad’s note to the teacher.
From early years, and before started school, our old Nanny used to give us, me along with my two siblings, bedtime stories about Kings, Princes, Genies, monsters, magic lamps, flying rugs, land and sea adventures and more. At later years, my parents started buying us a lot of translated western comic books such as Superman and Batman. Then they started buying us literary books, Arabic and translated foreign ones, which included stories, novels, legends, epics where the Arabian Nights was my favorite of them all. We also used to be taken to a lot of movie theaters, watching legendry heroes like Tarzan, Hercules, Samson and Roman Gladiators. That unique mix of stories and heroes led me sometimes to bring Superman to rescue Aladdin from the Genie or Batman to save Ali Baba from the Forty Thieves. I remember one time one student objected that mix, saying that Superman and Aladdin shouldn’t meet in one story as they lived in different times, different worlds and spoke different languages. My response was “If you are that smart, why do you sit on my chair and be the narrator? After all, this is a fantasy where the imagination is the limit” Everyone laughed and asked me to complete the story, including that student.
Back to that day when I was asked to give my class mates a story, I started as I always did “once upon a time in a far, far land,” The story that day was, as usual, a mix of those of the Arabian Nights, those of the comic books, but also of what I would add to them from my own imagination to make each one of them one of a kind. The hero was Al-Shater Hassan, or the Magnificent Hassan, who had a character similar to that of Aladdin. He also had a flying rug that he used in his journeys and adventures; I gave that magic rug the name ‘Aziza’ which meant ‘the dignified female’ in Arabic. At one point of the story, Al-Shater Hassan was in a journey to save a kidnapped Princess Badre Al-Bodour, meaning the one more beautiful than a full moon. But while he was resting, he was trapped by a giant ghoul, taken to his cave, and prepared to be eaten at dinner. Aziza managed to escape and followed them to the cave, but was attacked by the cave guard; a huge black serpent with seven heads. Soon, Aziza found herself in danger when she caught fire blown to her by the serpent. At that point, every student was frozen at his seat, able to hear his own heart beats, and holding his breath waiting to know how Aziza would fight back to save her master. The whole class was so quite a person could drop a needle and hear its sound hitting the floor. Instead of hearing what happened to Aziza next, the students heard the door opened and the teacher entered the classroom saying “back to your desk Tarif, and you kids, story time is over, let’s resume our class”
As soon as I graduated from college in the early Eighties, I came into a conclusion that Syria, ruled by a dictatorship lawless regime, was not a safe place to start a business and raise a family as you might lose everything you built overnight. I always looked at it as a country sitting on a top of active volcano that was taking a nap and could wake up and explode at any time. Unfortunately, thirty years later, in 2011, my vision was proven right. After coming to the United States, I started my life from scratch, and managed to accomplish the American dream.
In 1993, I found a job in a company that was doing business in the Middle East. The company assigned me to go to Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt to promote its products; ophthalmological diagnostic equipments and tools. While I was in Damascus, Syria, I had to go to submit an application for a house phone line, which usually used to take about 10 years to be installed, unless you were ready to pay a bribe for faster service. I really didn’t like to do that as the application was supposed to be submitted in a facility infested by bureaucracy and belonged to the Government which controlled that business. Before left Syria during the Eighties, I visited hundreds of such Government facilities for different reasons, and when I entered that phone place that Summer day, it didn’t surprised me a bit. Everything was as I knew about 12 years earlier; dirty floor, stinky odor, high temperature and humidity (no AC), hundreds of flies and mosquitoes buzzing around, and finally a long line of tens of oppressed applicants waiting to be served. I could go back home and come back in a different day, but I knew that it would be the same any day, all days.
There were five employees serving the applicants who were waiting in a single long line to hear the magic word: Next. It took me about an hour to move half way closer to those five employees where I could see their faces and they could see mine. I soon noticed that one of the employees was staring at me in a suspicious way. Things got worse when that employee, after he was done with an applicant, he left his desk and came straight towards me. He was in his mid thirties, his hair started to change colors, and his face started showing some wrinkles. The man stopped by me and took a closer look to my face, and while I was preparing myself for the worst, he put a big smile at his face and said “Oh my God, is that you Tarif?” By looking more carefully into the man’s face, I knew I met him somewhere but I couldn’t recall. He noticed how hesitant and unsure I was regarding his identity, so he quickly put an end that situation by mentioning his name and adding “shame on you forgetting your best Elementary School friend”
Soon after the man mentioned his name, I remembered him as one of my class mates about 25 years ago. He didn’t wait for me to react; instead, he took the lead by giving me the traditional Middle Eastern two parts welcome, some kisses at the cheek followed by a strong warm hug. Then he held my hand, walked with me towards his desk, pulled a chair, asked me to sit beside him and said “okay my friend, what did bring you here today? Applying for a phone line, right?”
I replied joking; “of course, what else you do here? You don’t sell Falafel sandwiches, do you?” My friend laughed and said “you are still Tarif I knew 25 years ago whose joke is instant and natural, you really haven’t changed a bit. Yes we don’t sell Falafel, but I would like to offer you a drink; Tea, coffee or soda” After he ordered the drink, he took my phone application and started looking at it to be sure it had all the required information. I really felt bad cutting the line and submitting my application before others who were ahead of me; I could see angry but oppressed faces among the people in the line. When I whispered about that in my friend’s ears, he said “you are right, we shouldn’t do that. Let’s go to my office where we can talk freely without angering others” He asked one of his friends take his position behind the desk and we walked into a side small office room and he closed the door and said “by the way, I’m the manager here so you don’t have to worry about anything” After we sat down, talked a little bit about what each one of us did after elementary school, he again looked into my papers and said “Okay, I have good news for you. Your application looks legitimate and covers all the requirements” I said “great, then I can pay the fee and go home, after the drink” And that was when my friend laughed and said “I gave you the good news, but you didn’t ask me about the bad news” I knew then that there was a kind of joke in his words, so I responded with a similar laugh and said “Okay, what is the bad news?” What my friend said after that made speechless and was absolutely not expected; not even in the wildest guesses.
He smilingly said “here is the deal and it is so simple; you tell me what happened to Aziza, you get your phone. You don’t tell me, you don’t get the phone. You can start anytime and my ears are all yours”. I hopelessly looked into his eyes trying to understand the joke or to remember what he was talking about. He soon noticed that I had no clue what he was referring to, so he said “don’t you remember that cold winter morning when our teacher had to leave the classroom and asked you to give us a story?” When he saw that I was still puzzled, he added “you that day started the story of Al Shater Hassan and his flying rug Aziza, which, trying to save its master, caught blaze while fighting a seven heads and fire blowing serpent”. Only at this point I understood what he meant, but I didn’t remember that certain story he mentioned, so I said “oh my God, do you really still remember those stories? Because I narrated a lot of similar tales, adding to them a lot of details from my imagination, I forgot all about that flying rug called Aziza. Why didn’t you came back to me then and ask about it?” He said “I wanted to, but my family moved into another neighborhood and I had to change school. I didn’t have the chance to see you after that. But as a kid, I couldn’t forget the story and Aziza catching fire, and I always wanted to know the conclusion. It sounds silly, doesn’t it?” My friend then added with a smile “I later forgot about the whole thing, but it came back to me today when I saw you here”
I knew my friend was kidding saying ‘no story, no phone’ but what amazed me how certain stories with certain way narrating them would never leave the memory of kids, no matter how many years passed. Since the people of Damascus were famous in their unique sense of hummer, by the time we finished our drink, I decided to give my friend a joke matching his. So I said “Okay, I now remember what happened to Aziza. Are ready for the last episode of that never ending story?” He looked at me in a suspicious way. Knowing that a joke was coming to match his, he laughed and said “go ahead, Your Majesty the Story Teller” I said “Aziza did then what anyone would do when a fire started; it called the Fire Station. The Fire fighters arrived in few minutes, putting the fire down, capturing the seven heads serpent and took it to the city zoo. They also saved Al Shater Hassan, arrested the Ghoul, took him to a correction facility where they taught him that eating people was not a nice habit and it might cause high cholesterol, so he ended becoming a vegetarian” My friend cracked laughing and said “you deserve two phones for that story wrapping up, not only one”
Two hours after I entered that building with my phone application, I was in my way back home with the approval. But also with one of a kind story about the magic power of narrative and the lasting deep memories it leaves in human souls, especially when it comes to kids. I narrated the story of the phone application incident to a lot of my friends. But today, twenty five years after that incident took place, and fifty years after I invented the story of Aziza and told it to my classroom friends in the elementary school, I decided to put it in writing and call it ‘My Friend, Me, and Aziza’.
***
Tarif Youssef-Agha
August 2019