Khaled Khalifa - In Praise of Hatred

My mother came the next morning, early as usual. We were woken by the clamour and uproar of the copper saucepans she and Maryam had fetched to prepare the freekeh ; my mother excelled at sweetening it with saffron to give it a special, indescribable flavour. She seemed decrepit to me when she complained of my father’s indifference and extolled my brother Hossam’s superlative grades and devoutness, singing the praises of his light moustache and slender frame. She was devoted to her first-born son, and loved him to a degree approaching madness. She believed that he would pluck our family from out of its wretchedness and, like all mothers, she wanted him to be a doctor and a philosopher. I became like a younger sister or companion to her; after four years away from her I had grown distant. I was no longer a part of her daily vocabulary. She received my news with unconcern, afraid only that I would be afflicted with the same curse of spinsterhood as my aunts, but when she returned home she would remember that my father had sold fish at the entrance to the souk at Bab Jenein. This was enough to ensure that the door to our house would be knocked on only by a poor bridegroom, or by one of the cousins whose faces remained unclear to me even after the few times I had met them. She only stayed a few hours, and when she left I saw Maryam slip some money into her handbag which earlier she had refused to take.

We were surprised at the group of thirty guests Bakr had invited, and I couldn’t understand the secret of my brother Hossam’s presence next to Bakr, nor his clear authority when he kissed the assembled men. I knew some of them, and Maryam pointed out who some of the others were as we sat in the kitchen. We watched them eating greedily, and Maryam was overjoyed that Sheikh Daghstani was there; for her, his acceptance of our invitation was a public exoneration of Omar. She praised his forbearance and piety; she enumerated some instances of his generosity and described him with exaggerated emphasis as a man of God. How had all these diverse people come together? I asked myself. They included important traders, manufacturers, a retired politician (who played a dubious role in independent governments), sheikhs (some of whom were involved in politics), men who were known to belong to the Muslim Brotherhood, an army officer I didn’t know, a Saudi man and a Yemeni man of about forty-five. Maryam said he was a carpet trader who was friendly with Bakr. The Yemeni sat in the middle of the gathering. From his seat he could see the window of Safaa’s room.

My brother and Selim’s children served the guests silently and Radwan tried to convince them that dinner was the ideal time for listening to his ode in praise of the Prophet. Hossam dismissed him resolutely, upsetting Radwan, who complained to me. I was astonished at my brother’s coldness and indifference when I asked him to allow Radwan to recite; he didn’t hear me when I insisted on what this gathering meant to Radwan. I was surprised at the hidden joy on Maryam’s face when she explained at length that the family was gaining new men. We crept from the kitchen behind the curtain we had prepared so we could return to our rooms without the strangers seeing us. I went into Safaa’s room and flung myself on her bed, exhausted, and was astonished to see her wearing an embroidered Arabic abaya and a head covering. I fell asleep and when I woke up two hours later, the siege was still going on. My aunts had gathered with Zahra in Maryam’s room and although their voices were raised in excitement, they fell quiet when I entered.

Bakr stayed on with the remaining guests; we knew there were five of them when he asked us to prepare ginger tea for six. The Saudi and the Yemeni were no longer there, and neither was Sheikh Daghstani, all of whom Safaa had seen leave. I was overjoyed that Zahra had stayed and was delighted she would be sharing my room. I felt how lonely I was, how afraid of something unknown. My dreams had transformed into nightmares in which I discerned bad omens. In my notebook I drew huge snakes devouring children, bats cooing like doves in the sky over the city, and wolves devouring a woman. ‘How hard it is to listen freely to your inner voice,’ I said to myself. I informed Zahra of my desire to swim in the sea naked. I looked at her face; she was in utter disbelief that such a desire could have taken hold of me. I laughed and reassured her that my dreams sometimes broke loose.

Three days later, Bakr was still hosting the same five men we didn’t know. They sat in a room in the attic for hours, spreading out papers, and he left with them after whispering a little with Zahra, who nodded her head and returned to us to complete a conversation which had become tedious. We listened, distracted, as Maryam quoted what the local women had said about the food we had spent the previous Friday preparing for their men.

Bakr was worried and confused. He suffered from insomnia, which was evident from his drooping eyelids. On the Wednesday, as usual, we prepared the light dinner and fresh berry juice he always asked for and hid in our rooms so the guests could leave at a certain time. After the evening prayer Bakr entered, and with him was the Yemeni man. In our presence, he asked Safaa to consider marrying this man, called Abdullah. He told her frankly that he was asking her to be a second wife and left her the freedom to come to a decision and become acquainted with him according to the principles of sharia. Safaa agreed without hesitation after Bakr praised his morals, with the only stipulation that the marriage should happen within days.

Zahra was the sponsor of this marriage, which Safaa had determined upon without love. Maryam tried to defer it for a while. Safaa surprised everyone with her serious, sad tone when she shouted, ‘I want to become a woman. I don’t want to die a virgin.’ She concluded quietly, ‘I want a child.’ Maryam had no time to praise the morals, piety or wealth of her sister’s prospective Yemeni husband at any women’s gatherings. My uncles blessed the marriage as they usually did, as if our remaining without menfolk had made them expect a future scandal. Omar dismissed Maryam’s irritation and presented Safaa with a gold belt and a ring set with precious diamonds. Laughing, he informed us that he had bought it for one of his girlfriends in Beirut. Omar’s libertine words seemed alien to the dictionary of decency that Maryam was intent on reviving, reminding us of its vocabulary all the more frequently as she advanced in years.

In hastily prepared sumptuous white clothing, and with a small trousseau filling no more than two bags, Safaa left our house as a bride to the sound of Hajja Radia’s tambourines. A few women had been invited to the mawlid which lasted no more than two hours, and their extemporizing swiftly angered Maryam, who wept as Safaa stepped outside the house to be welcomed by Abdullah. He was accompanied by four men: two Yemenis, an Aleppan trader famous for his friendships with men of religion, and Sheikh Daghstani. We closed the door and an awful silence settled as if we were at a funeral. Maryam’s tears bewildered us and made me, Marwa and Zahra cry as well, while my mother told her beads next to Hajja Radia as she gathered up her tambourines. She waited for Maryam to calm down so she could talk to her cruelly about her portion of the inheritance, and ask her to stop adhering to such stringent requirements for her own marriage, which simply wouldn’t ever take place, despite our lineage and the reputations of my grandfather and uncles. I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t seen Radwan for three days, after Maryam prevented him from leading as usual our procession to the hammam. I knocked at his door and heard the sound of sobbing. I opened the door and saw him eating dried figs and weeping for his ‘devoted friend, Safaa’ as he described her on our first visit to her new home. He gave her a bottle of perfume, with what seemed like a secret understanding. He laughed like a child when she promised to name her second son Radwan and bring him over so the original Radwan could help him memorize the Quran and teach him how to make perfumes.