Khaled Khalifa - In Praise of Hatred

In Cairo, he felt a strange taste he still yearned for. He was forced to work in a printing shop during the holidays to reduce the burden of the exorbitant fees on his father, who wasn’t a prince. His father was determined that his son should stand in graduation robes next to the sons of kings, and enumerated their names for everyone who asked him about Abdullah and his studies. He clung to this image even if it meant he might be forced to sell his shop, spend all his savings and sell what remained of his large camel herd. Whenever he saw a picture of his son with royalty, he remembered the Indian sailor and blessed him. He would, yet again, narrate the story of how the sailor had come into the shop, of his long conversation with Abdullah, and then of their friendship, which shaped and transformed the young Abdullah into a guide who led his friend through the alleys of Aden, where he had become immersed in dreams of travel and destinations which the sailor talked about simply and thrillingly. All the sons of Abdullah’s tribe came to know the story, right to its very end, and they would often repeat it — an echo of a legend that rectified much in their own fates, which were mostly left to chance.

At the age of eighteen, in the cellar of the printing shop, Abdullah met Selim Dessouki — a genius, according to Abdullah’s affectionate description. He was a man who always lingered over choosing his words, always smiled, and who guided Abdullah to Marxism and led him by the hand through some of Cairo’s poorest districts. They visited artists and journalists who dreamed of a world ruled by justice, and hung pictures of Lenin and Marx on the wall. Abdullah smuggled the leftist books into his school and spent the night turning their pages, heedless of the danger created simply by having them in his possession. ‘I became a fanatical Marxist,’ he said bitterly as he recalled his frankly expressed atheism, when he believed that the hungry would overrun the world and institute a reign of justice.

His father’s dreams collapsed when he received a telegram informing him that Abdullah had been arrested on the charge of being a Communist; he was expelled from Cairo after enduring the torture that left scars on his back and in his soul. He fled to Damascus and from there to Moscow with a forged Syrian passport given to him by his comrades. When he came out of Moscow airport, he breathed in deeply. He remembered the Indian sailor, and his father who had searched for him in Cairo, full of regret for the savings spent on a now fugitive son. Abdullah had left the company of princes and their retinues loaded down with gifts, and had gone instead to the mob which smelled of excrement. The school administration ignored its previously star student and now considered him non-existent, effacing his records as if ridding themselves of an oppressive nightmare.

His father’s feet led him to Selim Dessouki, who tried to reassure him by saying that his son’s future would liberate Yemen from the Imam’s rule. His father was horrified; the coming days would destroy everything he had spent years building. He sold his shop in Aden and returned to his tribal lands, which were bound by strong alliances to the Imam’s men after years of bitter dispute.

Abdullah spent ten years in Moscow fighting on all battlefronts and, with his few Yemeni comrades, laying the foundations of their impossible dream which they felt drew ever closer. They created a picture of their happy Yemen where children wore resplendent clothes and cheered the non-existent ‘proletarian class’. His nights of sleeplessness were over when he came off the steamer in Yemen with his comrades. He examined the faces of the people who were welcoming them but couldn’t find his father or any of his brothers or sisters. He returned to the tribal grounds to search for them, and found his father stretched out in a mud room surrounded by Abdullah’s seven siblings who had grown up and become shepherds and warriors cheering for the glory of the clan. He felt remorseful whenever his father looked at him. The clan told him about the days his father spent in the Imam’s prison because of him, Abdullah, after news of his preparations to oppose the Imam and end his rule had reached Yemen. ‘One of the cruellest things he bore, other than you, was the torture of being related to you.’ Time passed heavily between father and son. Abdullah tried to share breakfast with him, and reassure him that he would be compensated for all his frustrations and the dreams that had turned into a mirage.

The politician soon became absorbed in his own dreams, dealing with delegates from Damascus, Cairo and Moscow who brought alliances which didn’t last long. Dividing the country became the only solution to stop the massacres and preserve the dreams of two sides that never met: the pan-Arabists and the Communists couldn’t even sit together on one rug to sip green tea, chew gat and take a nap in the afternoon.

Maryam’s face changed colour when she heard Abdullah’s admission that he had been an infidel who didn’t believe in God. Despite his power as a storyteller, he narrated a strange tale we couldn’t possibly believe: his suffering, his pain, his dreams, his discoveries which opened unnamed doors. He leapt in without hesitation, always risking sudden death. Death was so close to him, he could feel it seeping from his skin.

This path of torment and doubt brought Abdullah to a state of absolute certainty a few years before he reached forty. He entered his fortieth year cleansed of agonizing questions, never to return to insomnia or addiction to the Russian vodka brought in special boxes from Moscow which bore the signatures of senior Communist Party members. They described him as a brother in arms when he decided, along with his comrades, to divide up Yemen and ‘sit on the throne’ of Aden. His comrades’ dreams of revolution, justice and progress didn’t prevent them from strolling along Aden’s beaches like devoted citizens, accompanied by their wives and girlfriends who had removed their tribal markings, which they considered folklore from a bygone era. They dreamed of the flurry of Moscow snow, where they could wallow without fear of their cousins’ pistols.

Abdullah married Zeina, dumbstruck at her ability to memorize the story of Abu Zeid El Helaly and then repeat it by heart at Sheikh Zaal El Tamimi’s council; the sheikh had adopted her after her father was killed in the camel market as part of an old blood feud. Abdullah approached her and asked, ‘What’s your name?’ She answered softly, with an orphan’s timidity, ‘Zeina.’ She was sixteen and still held company with men, so she had acquired their coarseness and habits. He encouraged her to raise her voice while the sheikh, whose house she lived in, pretended not to notice. He had married Zeina’s mother, who was famous for her strength, her aversion to specifically Bedouin habits, and her perpetual longing for the oases of the Najd, her childhood playground.

Zeina had inherited her mother’s strength, long black hair and indigo eyes. She was consumed with bewilderment and worried by the uncertainty of her future with this man — news of his follies filled the tribe’s houses until they grew into a complicated story narrated by many people, with concurrent beginnings and contradictory endings.

He asked her to marry him in a few words, without negotiating a dowry or giving her much time to think his proposal over. Her mother agreed and informed Sheikh Zaal El Tamimi of her preparations. She had wanted a marriage such as this for her daughter, who had begun to think seriously of avenging the murder of her father, even though the tribe had agreed to abandon this course of action in exchange for ten she-camels which subsequently died in mysterious circumstances. Everyone knew that Zeina had slipped poison into their fodder, refusing to accept them as the price, which she considered far too low, for her father’s death. Zeina became used to riding horses and going hunting, a reincarnation of Al Zeir Salim in his moments of worry when he thought of his revenge on Jassas. The air of Aden weighed heavily on her chest, as did the air of the small house constantly filled with company and books. Abdullah told her about the lives of other men, who weren’t Al Zeir Salim or tribesmen. He showed her pictures, and movingly rendered the story of Lenin’s return to Russia to lead the Bolshevik Revolution and found an empire of workers and peasants capable of defeating imperialism.