Khaled Khalifa - In Praise of Hatred

Rumours circulated madly that certain groups had taken it upon themselves to cleanse official circles, were organizing and arming, and were intent on targeting the most venal and corrupt. They had no compunction about using violence and some even viewed it as essential; but others feared that their actions would create a spiral of unstoppable brutality, as the government forces were sure to retaliate in kind.

Apprehensive silence began to dominate the city, along with a fear of what ruin the future might bring. Omar couldn’t easily withdraw from this business; he was trapped by his knowledge of suppliers and the names of Palestinian, Syrian and Iraqi politicians embroiled in the trade, and their connections to the dried-up wells and concealed passages of houses that acted as hidden warehouses. He felt suffocated, and one night he entered Maryam’s room, took off his clothes and put on some blue silk pyjamas. He didn’t speak to us for three days; he read the Quran piously, his voice hoarse whenever he raised it to recite Sura Al Ahzab. We all felt his tiredness and his need for the old image of our family, as if he missed that awkward adolescent who had once thrown flour in the air, watching the motes land on the edges of the pool, the flowers and the branches of the trees. He had opened his arms and whirled like a dervish in a Sufi ring, wondering quite seriously why the sky didn’t rain flour.

Three days was enough for my aunts to celebrate Omar’s apparent reformation, and it was long enough for me to get closer to my uncle and draw his attention to my erudition and demonstrate my knowledge of fiqh . It was a festival of food the likes of which I had never witnessed before, and Maryam gave herself up to it wholeheartedly. She ordered us to clean the neglected, dusty walnut table, and took out a crimson silk cloth whose borders were decorated with pictures of Chinese musical instruments and blossoms. She unrolled it and rebuked Safaa, though quietly and tenderly, for her aversion to making stuffed kibbeh . She turned to me with her observations about how messy the stuffed vine leaves were, and praised Marwa, who had inherited all the Aleppan know-how in preparing food. Marwa would add her own touches, and caused disputes with other Aleppan women until they became convinced of her talent to innovate.

Radwan was one of the most enthusiastic participants in the feast, and found justification for sitting for hours by the stove, stretching his legs out on the sofa and delightedly chatting to Omar, whom he loved. He shared the same frivolous temperament and used to intercede with my grandfather to spare Omar his wrath. The array of dishes laid out in rows inspired an appetite that did not respect table manners, avenging the coldness of the table at which we women had sat in silence, eating with exaggerated etiquette. Omar insisted that Radwan should eat his meals with us, and Maryam didn’t object. His conversations and his jester’s clowning made us laugh, and we laughed without fear of uncovering our shame or being held to account for it.

In the evening, Maryam recounted stories from Omar’s childhood. Her enthusiasm astonished him, and her face appeared loving as she tried to imitate my grandmother’s desperation to reform her youngest son’s errant behaviour; for the first time, I knew that he had thought about renouncing Islam, inspiring such real panic and confusion that it almost drove my grandmother to hysteria. She pronounced him to be mad and in need of special care, cried for entire nights and took him to the sheikhs of Aleppo. Omar surrendered to their recitations and charms, which bored him in no time at all. He would open the charms and read the names of devils and symbols of entry into Paradise, and then throw them down without any semblance of reverence in front of my grandmother, who gathered them together and burned them so as not to insult the honour of the best of the Muslims.

The tales of his adolescent years affected me greatly, and I tried several times to write it down and redraw his past; he was as close to me as if he were my own son. After his departure I began to understand the secret of Safaa’s depression and Marwa’s sadness, which made them complain so much of the exhaustion of our isolation and at the requests to uphold our honour — ‘as if we walked naked through the city,’ Safaa would retort irritably. Marwa was resigned, seemingly expecting nothing other than death; she agreed with everything, lost the will to talk. Safaa would carry her pillow and come to share the bed with me, and there would follow a never-ending conversation about the families who visited us, whose receptions we attended and whose wedding invitations we accepted. In the end, her conversation always sang the praises of women’s strengths and mocked their weaknesses. She mocked Rima’s coldness and declared that Omar had to divorce her; whereas Zahra, Bakr’s wife, she described as a friend, reviewing the details of her long neck, the size of her breasts and their provocative bouncing. Safaa made me laugh. I felt her breath beside me when she dozed off, and as I looked at her face I believed she would be wretched as long as her pores were empty of the smell of men.

* * *

Omar left our house to wander in the mountains; he spent three weeks there alone, and his behaviour was more like that of an ascetic than a hellraiser. He slept in cheap hotels and savoured the smell of the pine trees in the Kurd-Dagh Forest. He avoided direct contact with the hotel owners, who were overwhelmed with his generosity. They thought he was on the run, or that he was cursed to silence and loneliness. He needed to reconsider everything: his relationships, funds, projects and dreams, his relationships with Rima and his friends, whom he had told he was going abroad. The pure mountain air of Salnafa and Kasab and his abstinence from alcohol brought freshness to his face and vitality to his feet. He rediscovered his connection to nature, climbing for hours in the mountains and avoiding the main roads, walking briskly through small country estates which led him to places that he thought, for the first time, were blessed. Oak branches twisted among the pine trees, and the scent of white cedar wafted from the forests after the fleeting night rains. His losses gained meaning. When the forested plains stretched out before him, it occurred to him to jump. He wished he were a paper aeroplane which could float over the country. His childhood came back to him in ever-accumulating images, the dust dislodged from them; he began to arrange them, mixing up their order and recalling their anxious taste, like a peach bitter despite its ripeness.

‘I was closer to God,’ he said to Maryam on his return, assailed by feelings of purity and lightness. Losing no time and allowing no one to venture an opinion, he informed Maryam of his decision to divorce Rima and grant her the right to live with his children in their sumptuous apartment — which was a hell to him because of the smell of pickles constantly emanating from the kitchen. His allergy to pickles made him irritable and unable to blow his nose. Quietly and as expected, their marriage came to an end, destroyed by her passion for cold meats and pickles — she would spend hours arranging the jars in the attic and on the tops of the kitchen cabinets. She had been made desperate by Omar’s strange requests, unworthy of the daughter of a sheikh whose honour and asceticism were known throughout the city. ‘He wants to turn me into a whore,’ she would wail, before getting up and going to the kitchen to put salt on the pickled beans.

Safaa sympathized with Omar and praised his divorce, cursing Rima’s idiocy and criticizing the smell of cheap talcum powder that came from her children. Maryam arranged the divorce, aided by Selim, who was forced to curse Omar more than once while at the same time blessing the memory of my grandmother, who had been the one to choose Rima over many other girls on account of her decency, her obedience and her family’s fragrant reputation.