country’s political defeat extracted its own price.
In 1970 the buildup of militarism in Jordan exploded like a pressure cooker, and twenty thousand Palestinian fedayeen were ousted from the country during Black September, another euphemism for an attempted coup and civil war, while their families stayed behind. There was suspicion of spies everywhere and a surge of arms next door in Syria, a few choice samples of which made their way to the emporium. The next conflict came along three years later and was named after the religious holidays of Ramadan—Tishrin—or Yom Kippur, depending on one’s affiliation. When the Gulf States invested in the front line countries against Israel, which didn’t include Jordan, the only benefit Abu Za’atar saw were oversize Syrian cotton underwear and ill-fitting T-shirts.
He returns to his cleaning duties, dusting energetically among the clothes racks, and finds himself in front of an Yves Saint Laurent midi-rain mac near a pyramid of Charles Jourdan shoes in their original boxes. If war made the emporium the best it could be, then the one that contributed the most was Lebanon’s.
“Some quarrel,” the proprietor says to himself, grinning. He isn’t sure when he came up with his observation about nationality and conflict, but it must have been sometime during the country’s fifteen-year-long civil war. It was true then and remains so today: you can take the mettle of a people not by why they fight but what they must sell to continue fighting. Daesh may be oil-rich and fanatically violent, but the detritus of its caliphate cannot rival that of a world-class capital like Beirut, whose castoffs alone effectively fueled the lesser economies of other Arab nations for decades to come.
Rearranging the plastic covering on a nearby clothes rack, Abu Za’atar suddenly feels a surge of affection for his best mate, Hani. They have known each other since the Palestinian refugee camps. Hani was an adolescent when he followed the fighters out of Jordan, and then a decade later he showed up in Abu Za’atar’s store covered head to toe in bling. As the goods and services procurer for an al-Fatah general, he had access to a Mercedes, a chauffeur, and a Romanian mistress.
More crucially, Hani offloaded black-market merchandise hot from Hamra Street in exchange for hard currency. As a deal sweetener, he often threw in a consignment of faux Louis XIV furniture. The profits generated from the enlarged stock enabled Abu Za’atar to make impressive changes to the store. He moved his family from behind the curtain in the store and installed them in splendid isolation on the edge of the growing town. But the real bonus was a massive electric generator, another backhander from his best pal. It encouraged Abu Za’atar to rebrand and power up the newly christened Marvellous Emporium, the flashing neon of which can been seen from space.
After the Lebanese civil war ended, Abu Za’atar felt lethargic and depressed. He thought the emporium had seen better days. Then out of the blue Saddam Hussein did him an enormous favor by invading Kuwait. The international coalition of countries that banded together to punish the Iraqi dictator thankfully did not include his own.
“A smart king is first and foremost entrepreneurial,” Abu Za’atar proclaims to nobody, and waves the microfiber cloth in tremendous appreciation. During the more than decade-long UN sanctions against Iraq, oil tankers filled with Iraqi black gold made their way across Jordan’s eastern border, hung a left, and traveled straight down the King’s Highway past Abu Za’atar’s small town to the Gulf of Aqaba and the sanction-busting world beyond. Everyone within a twenty-mile radius of the illicit trade grew fat.
Peace is rarely as lucrative as war, but it would be foolhardy to overlook the underpublicized shipments from Israel after the 1994 Camp David Accords. Whenever there is any excitement in the region and someone needs a hard-to-source item, he has become the go-to guy. In 2003, after Saddam was discovered in a hole, Abu Za’atar found himself in a quandary. He didn’t like feeling remorseful—after all, the man and his son Uday were brutal murderers. But to his mind and, more important, his balance sheet, the invading US Army was just as bad, and to add salt to the wound, they were too damn self-sufficient. “Prefab this, prefab that!” he tut-tuts to himself. During their long involvement in Iraq, the Americans flew in, assembled, killed, murdered, raped, and then dismantled, packed up, and flew off again, answerable to no one except their contractors. Only clutter and chemical dumps remained. The renewed American engagement in Iraq against Daesh promises the Marvellous Emporium some paltry but at least easy pickings.
He can’t complain. Sometimes a lucky dip presents itself, like last month, when a clean-shaven stranger, sporting a neat military-precision haircut, stalked the town. It was obvious he wasn’t just looking around. From across the paved part of the main street, Abu Za’atar watched him spend an inordinate amount of time with Hussein at the butcher’s. Then the fellow in question entered the Marvellous Emporium without a by-your leave, ignored everything on its lovingly arranged shelves, and plunked himself down in the only available comfy chair. The nerve! Abu Za’atar thought. He was not used to such forward behavior.
However, the stranger had an air of propriety that Abu Za’atar immediately responded to. In an instant he was no longer a purveyor of rare goods but an Armenian tailor. First meetings are often like that—to take the measure of a man. The mysterious stranger soon made his requirements known. He was in the market for information and he heard that Abu Za’atar was well placed to help. Surely he must have been aware that jihadists were using the town as a rat-run?
The proprietor didn’t confirm, deny, or contradict. If the Jordanians were the paymasters, the bounty would be insignificant. To convince him, the mysterious stranger strongly intimated that “once the Americans are involved, the sky’s the limit”—and Abu Za’atar always appreciated finer distinctions between like-minded business partners to be.
Emboldened, Abu Za’atar inquired, “And the Israelis?”
“Their skies watch over us.” The stranger placed his hands side by side and rubbed his forefingers together. “We’ve heard of a cache of weapons,” he went on to say. “We don’t know if they’re for sale or…”
Abu Za’atar, smarmily polite, corrects him: “From my understanding, sir, it is an antique collection, I hear, of little value. And I am told it rarely sees the light of day.”
His visitor only grunted.
Deferentially the Featherer accepted the man’s business card and locked it in his booty nest for safekeeping. Despite the open-endedness of the exchange, Abu Za’atar took heart that his modest patriotic efforts were being recognized, and his resolve grew to the strength of ten M1 Abram tanks the Americans used to level Iraq. Whenever any occasion appeared, whether orchestrated by a mukhabarat agent, undercover policeman, informant, or con man, he promised himself to squeeze every drop of goodness from it.
Throughout everything, only Hani, dear Hani, understood the grandiose nature of Abu Za’atar’s plans. His friend had an eye for the imminently advantageous, despite falling from the great heights of civil war profiteering and spending it all on Eastern European prostitutes. It was during a late-night phone conversation when Abu Za’atar started riffing on a heartfelt but unrealized ambition of his: to popularize an internationally known foodstuff for a prickly domestic market.
“Like opening the first Chinese restaurant in Bethlehem?” Hani asked, exploring the concept.
“Cold.” Abu Za’atar sometimes played this game with him.
Hani tried again: “Like baking gluten-free pita bread in Beirut?”
The Featherer wasn’t quite convinced; in his mind there weren’t enough Arab celiacs to constitute a consumer revolution. “Aim higher.”
“Ah!” exclaimed his friend. “Like bringing McDonald’s to Afghanistan.”
That’s what Abu Za’atar appreciated, Hani’s ability to think outside the box. He alone presented Abu Za’atar with the opportunity of a lifetime, this time arriving with a health certificate. It too was a refugee of sorts, escaping hardship and crossing borders illegally: from the Zabbaleen in Greater Cairo to the Sinai and through the tunnels of Gaza, under the noses of Hamas, and then over the wall—a nursing home hoist, Hani said, was used—past illegal West Bank Jewish settlements, and finally