4

      In exile one lives by genius alone.

      Vladimir Nabokov

      Behind the wheel of his crimson, 1960s Plymouth Fury, its interior flushed with bordello-red velvet upholstery, Stepan looked very small. But he was the wiliest man I met in the Middle East, where wiliness counts for everything. He could only have been Armenian.

      I met Stepan in Anjar. He had quick, dark eyes and his energy palpitated from a wiry frame. He was going to Damascus and on a sunny morning we drove back to the border. Today the Lebanese would not let me out of the country unless they were sure the Syrians would let me in. And I couldn’t confirm that without getting across the two miles of no man’s land. It posed no problem for Stepan. To him and his Red Beast, the route between Anjar and Damascus was routine. He took my passport and swung the Beast round in a wide arc up towards the frontier. He didn’t even slow down to go through it, but simply hung an arm out of the window and waved to the border guards. They waved back.

      In less than an hour the crimson roof topped the hill and was back.

      ‘It’s good?’

      He nodded. We accelerated up over the hill, through no man’s land and down to the Syrian border. There I left it all to him. We passed from one office to the next, waited while a South American diplomat checked two feather-boaed dancing-girls into the country; collected stamps and filled in forms; I fielded strange questions about my family and my contacts in Beirut, and assured them I’d never even thought of going to Israel (I’d hidden all my letters of introduction from the Jerusalem patriarch). At some stage Stepan paraded the palms of the border guards before me: ‘Ten US dollars here … five there … nothing for him … one hundred Syrian pounds.’

      And then with a nod we were through the frontier, with a Syrian major propped between us on the bench seat, being waved through customs and the remaining checkpoints, bouncing and rolling down a runway of a road into Syria, towards the desert, beneath a winter sun that picked out every crease and knuckle of the dry cliffs.

      Stepan slid a tape into his cassette machine. ‘Frank Sinatra – “Fly Me to the Moon”. My favourite one!’

      ‘Stepan, you did well,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

      He laughed and said, in Armenian, ‘This man here is secret policeman. I know them all and this one is bad. He told me they sent four telexes yesterday about you to intelligence in Damascus. You are lucky!’

      Not luck, I told him, but another triumph for the Armenian network. It had been the toughest border to date. After several weeks on the road it seemed a great achievement and bolstered my faith in the Armenians. The dozens of other hurdles between here and Armenia looked smaller and strangely, unexpectedly, I found I was delighted to be back in Syria. I really didn’t think I’d get in.

      Between us, the secret policeman leaned forward and pointed down a bank. The wreck of a car lay upside down thirty feet below. ‘Yesterday,’ he said, ‘I was in that car. Three times it turned over.’

      ‘Weren’t you hurt?’ asked Stepan.

      ‘My driver, he is in hospital. But I was all right. God makes sure the good men survive.’

      Stepan banked the Red Beast down through the outskirts of Damascus. The modern city was little more than a series of wide, straight boulevards and elaborate fountains, the sure mark of a grim dictatorship. We left the major on the steps of a ministry building and headed towards the Old City. Stepan pulled up at one of the gates.

      ‘Follow the Street Called Straight until you reach the Gate of the Sun.’

      I nodded.

      ‘There on the right you will see the Armenian church of Saint Sarkis.’

      ‘Right.’

      ‘Ring the bell many times. The doorman is often drunk.’

      But it was Sunday and the door was open. The liturgy had just finished and half a dozen Armenians sat drinking coffee with the priest.

      I handed him my letter from the Catholicos in Beirut. He received it with enthusiasm and he showed me a room at the top of the Armenian school. The place was only half built and building-dust lay like a patina on the mattress. For a long time the door wouldn’t open, then it wouldn’t shut.

      ‘I hope it’s all right,’ he said.

      ‘It’s fine. I’m very grateful.’

      I meant it. In Beirut I’d been warned about Damascus hotels: full of dangerous extremists. I wasn’t sure I believed it, but was pleased – at this time especially – not to have to find out.

      Off the Street Called Straight, in amongst a warren of cobbled alleys, I found a sun-lit courtyard which corresponded to my directions. Cloistered by horseshoe colonnades, the tiled floor was awash with soapy water. A woman bent over it, scrubbing vigorously.

      ‘Hagop?’ I called.

      She gestured to a staircase in the far corner and eyed me as I tip-toed across her morning’s work. She was not pleased and a hail of Koranic curses followed me up the stairs.

      Hagop was a friend of Yervant, the gull-shooting painter in Beirut. ‘See him,’ urged Yervant. ‘See if he is OK. He has had some problems …’

      Hagop had the Armenian penchant for dark rooms. All I could see to begin with were narrow strips of light slanting through the shutters. The window was open and I could smell the baker’s ovens below and hear the hum and clatter of the souk. Hagop sat on a divan and the smoke from his cigarette rose and curled in and out of the strips of light. He had a thick, modulated voice and his English was good.

      ‘How