I started meeting Sharif in the mornings at a tiny juice stand near the hotel. He had given up his work pedaling watches on his arm so that we could spend more time together. His selflessness doused me in shame. When I voiced concern about earning money, Sharif tossed the matter aside and said he could manage. Acceptance of insecurity is a way of life for some people in the East, an abstract foundation to life that somehow renders it in sharper light and a deeper significance. Sharif knew no other form of existence.
One morning, I noticed a postcard taped at the wall behind the juice counter. It curled up around the edges, but I could still make out remnants of an old stone footbridge framed by lush golden colored fields and a ridge of saw-toothed mountains. Sharif followed my gaze toward the postcard and smiled knowingly.
"That is Kurdish land just north of Aleppo."
"I wish we could see it." I continued staring at the image until it burrowed into my mind and refused to leave.
"Let us try." Sharif gulped down the fruit cocktail, his prominent Adam's apple to jogging up and down the throat in a frenzied race.
We hailed a minibus and got off at a busy intersection with more minibuses.
"Wait here." Sharif motioned for me to huddle next to a dusty wall with a group of village women with enormous cloth bundles mounted on their backs like primitive rucksacks. I imagined them as a forgotten tribe of sixteenth century female nomad warriors carousing through rugged hinterlands and urban jungles to spread the ideals of personal wayfaring as a way to reach inner peace. One of the women, perhaps the self-appointed leader, smiled at me and instructed the others to make some room in their tight little circle so I too could squat on my haunches and wait in weary resignation for the next leg of the journey. They were a tough looking lot with the strong silent features of mountains.
I watched Sharif haggle with a taxi driver. He kept waving his hands like a conductor without a baton and shaking his head with the same tempo. At one point, Sharif bunched up the fingers of his right hand and brought them close to his mouth as if he wanted some food. Maybe it was a new bargaining tactic to sweeten the deal. But the taxi driver was not buying. He just threw his head back and laughed like the devil. Sharif lowered his head and slouched back.
"What happened?" I asked.
"He is very greedy man. He wants a thousand pounds each to take us as far as Cyrrhus."
It amounted to twenty dollars apiece, reasonable back home, but near extortion in Syria.
"That's haram. Absolutely wrong. I'll go tell him to get his head screwed back on."
"No. Don't do that." Sharif grabbed me by the arm. "Leave it alone. We will find another way."
It was classic Sharif behavior. To accept unfairness instead of trying to fight it every step of the way as I did in waging battles. At first, it struck me as a defeatist attitude to give in so easily to the driver's heavy-handed airs, but what I called "giving in" required more self-control that he seemed to have mastered to an art form.
Eyes downcast, we shuffled past children playing football in side streets and tiny stalls selling fresh falafels bubbling golden, brown golf balls in a caldron of hot oil. All of sudden, the sound of screeching brakes and squealing tires jolted us awake. A van swung around in an elaborate arc and froze a few inches away from my feet.
In the next instant, Sharif burst out in wild laughter, his shoulders shaking like unsettled Jell-O.