Khaled Khalifa - In Praise of Hatred

In the following days, Omar began to take his revenge on a history of decency, obedience and fragrant reputations. After his silence and isolation (which failed to last even a month) he returned to his profligate ways, causing ever-increasing mayhem. He sought out trouble, and provoked scandals in cold blood and with the utmost confidence: he harassed married women and adolescent girls, and openly accompanied prostitutes to restaurants; he would live in their attics for days at a time without any discretion, swapping joints and obscene photographs with them. He took them to the markets and listened to what was said about him without caring. He repeated to my aunts, ‘Nothing will save me but love.’ These few words of his awoke our desire for seclusion and silence. The silent house was gloomy and abandoned; Radwan roamed around it freely, relishing the temporary absence of Maryam’s demands, Safaa’s sarcasm or my pleas.

* * *

‘Nothing will save any of us but love,’ Safaa said to Marwa, who had begun to design a carpet whose borders were to be decorated with images of goddesses. I was terrified when I discovered that they were pagan deities I had seen once in an illustrated book about the Ancient Greeks. Maryam sank even deeper into her isolation and moved only between her bed and the cane chair by the window. At one point she took her photograph album out of her closet drawer, drew the curtains and locked the door as if getting ready to commit a sin. She stayed lost in a few photographs, then got up suddenly. She sat on the ground and recited the Sura Al Qasar. Her voice rose as if she were singing nashid for a celebration, or trying to drive out the demons which would descend from the chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

On the fourth day of our festival of silence and seclusion, we all went to one of Hajja Radia’s sessions. My aunts joined in the singing of the women beseeching the Beloved Prophet. At that moment, I said to myself, ‘It is so difficult for a woman to reveal her secrets.’ I envied Omar for a moment, and then threw off my suspicion and depression. Later, on my bed, I conjured up an image of Ghada and then her scent. I pushed deeper into the daydream, and after reassuring myself of my solitude and the shadows in the room, I penetrated deeper and surrendered to my desire which plunged headlong like a train through green plains. I reached out my fingers for the buttons of her blue dress I knew so well, unfastened them and gazed at the pink bra which held her smouldering nipples and delicious breasts.

Then I got up, locked the door and drew the curtains and got completely naked in order to sink into the softness of her stomach. I panted like a dog and kissed her navel with the voracity of a woman abandoned to her own debauchery.

In the morning, I deeply regretted this. I was terrified of going to school, afraid of the familiar sounds. I hated Ghada when I saw her in the line-up, laughing with other girls and dawdling on the stairs. When I came close to her I felt as nauseous as if a corpse’s stench were wafting from her, but I missed her in the last lesson and almost left my classroom to find her. I needed to see her. I was distracted and couldn’t hear the maths teacher despite my love of equations and geometry. I looked for Ghada at the end of the day and lingered in the exit. The car of the fifty-year-old man passed in front of the school and Ghada calmly waved at me from it, in complete command of herself. I smiled at her as my agonies increased; I wished she would die along with that man.

I said to myself that I must drown in onion fumes, piles of molokhiyya and bulgur wheat soaked in stone pots. This was the day before that offer that was to confuse Safaa and create a past impossible to erase, like a dishonour which no blood could wash away. Zahra came to the house with her two children, and she unpacked her clothes in my room. I needed someone to share the space with, to help me calm down a little. I decided to tell Zahra about Ghada and the cruelty of her abandonment, about my hatred and resentment which increased whenever I saw that middle-aged man picking her up outside school. I became completely engrossed in preparing the food for the important guests Bakr was shortly to bring to the house. I felt Maryam’s contented gaze watching me as I seasoned fish and stuffed it with pepper, tasted it, and added some sticks of parsley. Marwa encouraged my daring in breaking with long-established cooking traditions, while Safaa whispered with Zahra briefly and appeared grave and bewildered. She took on the role of mother to both Zahra’s and Omar’s children — Maryam had invited them over so they could see their grandfather’s house, which everyone felt was falling away.

Maryam’s efforts to re-align our present according to the rhythm of the past would be of no use; it would only increase our delusions of belonging. We didn’t know how we would one day throw off its weight from our shoulders and free ourselves from the tyranny of the framed pictures of our ancestors hanging on Maryam’s wall, from the brass bedsteads and silver table service our grandparents had used, along with the ornate ancient mirrors, the walnut chests, the locked boxes and the hundreds of other fragments scattered all over a house whose sanctity increased every morning. The ropes wound around our necks and turned us all into slaves. We cleaned it all, polished it, reassured it; we didn’t dare smash so much as a vase, even accidentally.

Maryam saw, as if for the first time, that I had grown to look like any woman who wore loose clothing and whose breasts drooped. I was no longer a little schoolgirl. I was allowed to approach Zahra, and to correct tacitly Maryam’s errors in cooking the mince or using it as stuffing for the kibbeh . In all my life I had never seen such a huge parade of food as on that day. Maryam wanted Bakr’s guests to relay their impressions to their womenfolk, so they would talk once more about our affairs and our skills as women; our absence from their gossip disturbed her as much as if we had somehow been tarnished.

Zahra was divided between us that night; at first, in the early evening, the conversation revolved gravely between Marwa, Safaa and Zahra, whom I saw from afar talking confidently and sipping from a cup of tea. Marwa was silent, watching Safaa as she asked a question, flinging up her hand in desperation. I was absorbed in bathing; my body needed to relax and waste some time. I felt that they had chosen to exchange secrets they wanted to keep from me, leaving me with Bakr’s young son. We bathed together and I was delighted with him, and with his tears when the soap burned his eyes. I sang to him; I hadn’t realized before that I hadn’t learned anything other than Hajja Radia’s nashid , which he didn’t like. I immediately discarded the question of how boys grow up to become men. I remembered the pain of the previous night and laughed at my misgivings. I wondered how I could reduce their power and make them into a silly, transient idea which wouldn’t corrupt the innocence of the first male I had washed with, as I pelted him with hot water and laughter.

At the end of the night, I told Zahra coldly about the perfidy of friends; about Ghada and my fear that she would get entangled in irresponsible adventures that would turn her into a woman of ill repute. I abandoned myself to describing my pain and Zahra was silent. She didn’t agree with my stern opinions, but she didn’t raise any objections to them. That was what I loved about her; she listened so intently to whoever needed it that the other half of the truth, which had always been concealed, came to light. I felt my predicament when she looked at me as if she were saying, ‘How miserable you are,’ and relief because I had let her into my stagnant world, like a lake forsaken by breezes, ducks and fishing hooks.