The Discovery of America by the Turks Read Online Free PDF Page B

inscribed on the list of candidates, the only one up till now. They’d have another chat with him if Ibrahim couldn’t find a better prospect in Ilhéus.

7
    An inspiration came to Raduan Murad as he moved his pieces with scant attention and, interrupting a move, patted his partner on the shoulder and announced, “Great news, my friend Ibrahim. I’ve found the man we’re looking for. Ideal as both a partner and a son-in-law. It came to me just now. His name is Jamil Bichara. Do you know him?”
    Ibrahim knew who he was. He knew him by sight and had heard of him. A fellow countryman with a huge build and a powerful voice. Glorinha Goldass, that adorable plague of a woman, never let his name leave her delicious lips: It was Jamil here, Jamil there; she’d tell funny stories and mourn the fellow’s prolonged absence. He’d disappeared lately from the streets of Itabuna, where he was missed.
    “He stopped working for Anuar Maron,” Raduan explained, “and he opened a business in one of those depots lost out in the woods. Where, I don’t know. He told me the name, but I’ve forgotten it. Glorinha’s the one who should know. When he shows up here he never goes to a hotel; he sets himself up in her room just like he was a plantation owner with a two-ton crop and the hooker was part of his account.”
    Raduan couldn’t add much more concerning the whereabouts and the plans of the Sultan (he’d given Jamil that nickname because his fellow countryman was so crazy about women). The last time he’d seen him was quite awhile ago, precisely in that same bar and in the company of Glorinha Goldass. He was complaining about his heavy workload andthe awful quality of the whores in that end of the earth where he’d got himself stuck. If all those problems were still there, then Jamil would certainly be open to Ibrahim’s proposition. Raduan didn’t know of anyone else so well-disposed to work and eager to make money. As a partner, perfect. As a son-in-law, all they had to know was whether Jamil would accept the challenge.
    “Because, just between us, my friend Ibrahim, our dear Adma…I can’t deny her virtues—I’m a sinner; I don’t understand those things. But her looks…”
    “I know, old man. She took after me. It was her misfortune.”
    Talk was of no use because the indicated party wasn’t around to discuss the commercial status, balance, and promissory notes, or concepts of beauty and physical and moral values. He’d disappeared with no indication of when he might return to Itabuna. Still, Raduan advised Ibrahim to be patient. But that proposal was turned down immediately. No, old friend, he couldn’t wait another day for that crisis to be resolved, before his son-in-law Alfeu and the cherub made a complete shambles of the store, before his daughter Adma—daughter? governess, a marabout!—took complete control, reducing him to the status of a slave, a eunuch.
    With tears in his eyes and in a tremulous, stammering voice, Ibrahim opened the last floodgates of shame, abandoning any trace of self-respect. He laid out the horrors of his tragedy:
    “My dear friend Raduan. I’m going to confess everything to you, the disgrace that’s overtaken me. My daughter Adma’s virtues are to blame….”
    “I never trusted them…. Virtue is so sad and bossy.” Avid to learn the details of this story, Raduan encouraged the confidences. “Don’t be ashamed, Ibrahim; open up your heart. We’re like family.”
    Ready to chain him to the counter all morning and afternoon, to condemn him to abstinence at night besides, Adma was turning her father’s life into a hell, every day moretyrannical and violent. “An implacable fury, my friend.” Scandal upon scandal, to the delight of the neighborhood. On his mornings for fishing she would accuse him of indolence and of abandoning the business to go off and lounge by the river; of irresponsibility in the afternoon during his siestas in the hammock strung up in the yard