Khaled Khalifa - In Praise of Hatred

They left the souk as man and wife, and dreams of life, love and the accumulation of memories opened up in front of them. The evening air was cool and refreshing as they found a restaurant and ate some grilled meat. They hurried back to their room and shared a bed, away from the dangers they had avoided successfully on their journey across the mountains, villages and plains thanks to Khalil’s sharp wits, honed on his travels to Samarkand and Iran with my grandfather. There, the roads were swarming with armed men and the cities were embroiled in chaos, forcing traders to travel in large caravans protected by hired gunmen and guides who knew the safe routes.

On their first night, Wasal had no regrets about forsaking the odour of other men clinging to the lentil sacks in the dark cellar, itself permeated with the smells of fried aubergines and decaying rats. She washed in the rose water which she had brought with her, and put on a wedding dress which Khalil tore off her before carrying her like a butterfly to the bed; she was insensible to the strength of his arms and the blaze of his kisses as if it were the first time she had been to bed with a man. Her voice rose without shame, and in Turkish she prattled words of surrender to a hidden fate. Afterwards, she became quiet and buried her head in his chest, savouring the scent which penetrated her heart and captivated her. She taught him to speak Turkish and clip his nails, and insisted that he wore cactus-blossom perfume which would waft from his clothes when he walked confidently through Mosul’s souk.

Khalil began to deal in cigarettes with the other traders, guiding them to the best makes, and he exchanged for coloured silks the carpets he designed and produced himself on his own loom, and which looked like icons. These astonished the people of Mosul, the passing traders and the foreign antiques collectors who all trusted Khalil’s imagination and his skill, as well as his sympathy for amateurs’ lack of knowledge in the wild and varied field of carpets.

He craved the security and protection he felt in Wasal, who gave birth to a daughter called Zahra. Zahra resembled her mother completely with the exception of her black eyes; they brought to mind a mixture of racial origins that might have been nearer to those of Nubians than Wasal and Khalil’s own particular combination.

Back in Aleppo, my grandfather touched a carpet, on which was this line of Mutanabbi’s:

Homes! There are homes for you in our hearts

You are now deserted, yet you are inhabiting them.

He knew that Khalil had made it and included the verse on purpose: the speaker is calling out to the empty home of his beloved; although the home is now abandoned, it provides the memories that still live on in his heart. My grandfather had heard that Khalil missed Aleppo, after a trader from Mosul had discussed his skilful workmanship and the beauty of his wife, who would interfere in the colouring of the carpets. The colours seemed strange at first, although foreign clients were enticed by Abyssinian roosters, the arms of women whose swelling chests were like those of Sumerian goddesses, and winking eyes which always resembled those of a woman Khalil had once known. He was immersed in the warmth of the delights renewed every night, which seemed to the couple never-ending.

What is it worth to live through a spell of happiness, even if it will never return? The depression which had clung to Khalil throughout his life lifted completely. He became cheerful at gatherings, especially at the house of a certain Mister John, whom he used to visit every day. He would drink coffee with him, and show him paintings from the Nahda era, and even accompanied him several times to excavation sites in Babel where an archaeological mission was encamped.

What Khalil didn’t know was that Wasal was beginning to feel bored. She missed other men, and she no longer came to him wearing perfume and insisting that he washed his hands. Her days finally became dull; he was a man certain of his success, and she a woman no longer seduced by the resplendent colours of carpets. She quietly withdrew and fell silent. She didn’t care when the kitchen shelves collapsed, shattering the Kashmiri-porcelain bowls and scattering shards everywhere, and it was days before she gathered up the pieces and coldly tossed them in the dustbin. She regretted the ten years she had spent in this city invaded by mosquitoes and silence, where the smell of roasting meat seeped from every alleyway like an inescapable fate. Wasal listened, stunned, to John enlarging on vulgar descriptions of his nights out in London. She was enamoured of the sordidness in the mid-fifties bars which John felt considerable nostalgia for whenever he remembered the smell of those long nights. He saw her astonishment, listened to her never-ending questions and answered them in a low, steady voice. He complimented her taste in serving coffee; and he compared her to the princesses whose amorous exploits were sung of in the romances that had once been so popular in castles all over Europe.

‘This arrogant Englishman is making me dream,’ she said to herself as she gazed at the dawn through her bedroom window. Insomnia tyrannized her and she lost weight. She would wait for the evenings when John came round, accompanied by members of the dig, antiquities collectors both amateur and professional, spies, and horse traders passing through on their way to Bedouin camps. They would swarm all over Khalil’s house, demanding to have tea according to their own traditions and jabbering away in English, displaying their amazement at the interweaving of colours and lines in the carpets spread out before them. John moved amongst them like an expert guide and interpreter, and he laid a trap for Wasal, who immediately felt that the circular motion of her breasts had seduced him from under their veil. She enjoyed his ravenous greed at seeing them when they stood out through her abaya for a moment, the nipples showing clearly underneath the long cotton garment. It was a game that both John and Wasal loved at the beginning, before it became a burden and the cause of sleepless nights.

Khalil wasn’t quite aware of what was going on — he was in thrall to the security of the little money he had saved and hidden inside the small ebony case at the bottom of the clothes box, and he thought fondly of his young daughter, who had begun to lisp in both Arabic and Turkish, and of his wife, Wasal. (Unnoticed by him, she now performed her duties coldly and without enthusiasm.) These blessings were all sufficient reasons to set him thinking about making a pilgrimage to Mecca, and returning from there to Aleppo to live in that city in complete bliss. His eyes shone when he told Wasal, convinced that this happy ending would delight her also. Wasal listened to him and was distracted for a long time: she didn’t know why she became jittery when Khalil enlarged on his wish that she become pregnant once more in order to have a boy, to replace the one whose body had broken out in buboes short of his second year. Before they had agreed on a name for him, he had died and they had buried him in a small grave close to their house. The two of them dreamed of different worlds, linked by a house whose future seemed only half-assured, and from which wafted the smell of beans and the sound of sad Iraqi songs. Wasal was devoted to these songs, which spoke about falling in love with young men and waxed eloquent about infatuation, but John was articulate in explaining the odes as stilted and affected. As their sessions lengthened, John realized how much he longed to be in London after being absent for so long.

Wasal’s story affected me greatly; I knew, afterwards, that she had caused my grandfather sleepless nights. When she lived at the khan in Nazdaly, she used to make him bring henna, perfumes and expensive fabrics from Aleppo, seemingly just presents from a generous friend that would not cast suspicion on him; the gifts were in exchange for special services she offered him as a regular client of an inn on a little-used road.