My Road from Damascus by Jamal Saeed

Author:Jamal Saeed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2022-10-04T00:00:00+00:00

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When September 1981 came and I was able to rewrite the exams I had failed, the best part of going back to Damascus University was meeting up with many friends from high school and those whom I’d become acquainted with during my first exams. Most of the police who took me there and back got to know me and became quite tolerant. They allowed me to sit on the grass with other students after the exams, so I could socialize and discuss schoolwork. But as nice as the policemen became, and perhaps because of it, strolling around campus in their company allowed me to get a good understanding of the university’s layout. And this in turn encouraged me to come up with a plan — a plan to escape.

After passing my make-up exams, I began to prepare in earnest for the second-year exams in January, and then for the ones in the spring. Mr. Anthony, the small-time drug smuggler and admirer of all things Elizabethan, mentored me on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and he truly helped me understand the complexity of Hamlet’s character. I did, however, have to live through his interminable speeches about his beloved Elizabeth the First. For some reason, this bothered me. He argued that if she hadn’t supported Shakespeare, the bard wouldn’t be known today. I guess to me that would be like saying Hafez al-Assad was the one who determined what art was allowed in our country and took credit for it, because that’s what he did.

But there was something not quite consistent in Mr. Anthony’s argument. A few weeks later, when he was supposed to be helping me with my course on Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, his sagging jowls quivered as he spoke about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the great writer. He enthusiastically denied the theory that Elizabeth I had decided to get rid of him.

“Wait a minute,” I interrupted. “You argue that the queen could elevate Shakespeare . . . if that’s so, she could also demote Marlowe. She had good reason, given that time in history. He was an early atheist and didn’t support any church.”

“No,” Mr. Anthony insisted. “I think you are projecting. Marlowe’s death was the result of a bar brawl.” And then he again began praising his Elizabeth I at length. Ah well. I decided to let it go. The truth was, I found it more entertaining to wind up Mr. Anthony and then watch his antics as he went about praising his precious queen from the past.

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