The Refugee Ocean by Pauls Toutonghi EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Pauls Toutonghi
- Language: English
- Genre: Friendship Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
LE GRAND THÉÂTRE DES MILLE ET
UNE NUITS
Beirut, Lebanon
May 10, 1948
Marguerite Toutoungi sat in the fih row at Le Grand Théâtre des
Mille et Une Nuits, immediately in front of the orchestra. She was
twenty-three years old. Her father sat beside her, wearing the bright
red tarbúš, the black-tasseled formal hat that was going out of
fashion. He also wore his finest suit: charcoal-colored worsted wool
with narrow white pinstripes. A tailor had made it ten years before,
in Damascus, in the souk at Al-Hamidiyah. A decade later, the
elbows had thinned and the collar was a little ragged—its fabric
worn into small crenellations, like the top of a medieval castle wall.
Her father was ashamed of the suit’s condition but wouldn’t admit it
to anyone. He was too proud for that, without question.
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Marguerite’s father, Édouard Toutoungi, was also going bankrupt.
It was happening at this exact moment. The decline of the domestic
credit market had been ongoing for decades—but it had accelerated
aer the Second World War. At first it was just La Banque de Syrie et
du Liban asserting its power and size, but still working in parallel
with the old system. But then the institutions had really taken over.
European banks, yes, but also domestic banks, and Egyptian ones.
And the little lending houses had to charge higher and higher
interest rates to make up for their lack of volume. These rates had
meant bigger payments for anyone who’d borrowed heavily to run
their businesses. Like Édouard. Every night, at midnight, his interest
compounded, and his loans became more and more impossible to
pay off.
Of course, this wasn’t what the seats in the center of the opera
house floor were supposed to demonstrate. They were supposed to
demonstrate the opposite, especially from a distance. A fine suit. A
beautiful daughter. An excellent view of the concert: Oum Kalthoum,
the Star of the East, the most famous singer in the Arabic-speaking
world. Row C, Seats 15 and 16. Édouard Toutoungi was supposed to
seem—to his peers, to the businessmen involved in the export and
sale of tobacco—like a man at the apex of his fortunes. The truth—
that the bank was planning to foreclose on his trading warehouse—
should be almost impossible to guess.
Ten minutes to curtain. The concert hall filled with the sound of
murmuring voices. Arabic, of course, but also French and English
and Italian. Marguerite closed her eyes and tried to listen.
Sometimes she was able to snag a sentence or two.
“There he is,” her father said. He was loud and close, his mouth
almost touching her ear, his breath hot and flavored like cigarettes
and anise. Marguerite didn’t need to look. She knew exactly who her
father meant. She didn’t even have to open her eyes. Her fiancé. The
man she was supposed to marry in three months’ time. Naguib Ghali.
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