Khaled Khalifa - In Praise of Hatred

Zeina longed for the stories of Abu Zeid El Helaly and Al Zeir Salim and their sad odes in Sheikh Zaal El Tamimi’s council, instead of the biography of Lenin which bored this typical teenager. She couldn’t find any common ground between them, and refused to go to Abdullah’s comrades’ parties. She suffered from chronic headaches and her dream of avenging her father’s blood receded, and then faded away altogether. She spent her time with their baby which had arrived in the meantime, and took no notice of the comrades’ conflicts, the news of which had spread to every house in Aden.

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Aden was quiet, and walked alongside these men into an uncertain future. Arguments escalated; Abdullah felt threatened by the pointed discussions of who might be unfortunate enough to succumb to a stray bullet, or which route would be suitable for the grand funeral of a statesman. Close friends advised him to move abroad, and Zeina and her child rapidly moved to Beirut. Abdullah followed them, sighing with regret, after three years of trying to convince his comrades to put their differences aside and re-build the Communist Party. He reminded them of their dreams, of their years of fighting, of the taste of exile and prison. In Beirut he was depressed, and seemed to have no future; when an old comrade, now ambassador to Lebanon, refused to see him, he realized that everything had come to an end. Abdullah started wandering around the country, writing articles in Lebanese periodicals about his experience of the Party and accusing Abdel Mohsen of taking power in a coup in which he executed old comrades. He heard that his siblings had been arrested and that their interrogations had lasted for hours, in locked rooms filled with foul smells.

His successive crises ended only when he wept in front of the Kaaba in Mecca after arriving there with Prince Shehab El Din, a childhood friend who still remembered his genius at solving geometry problems at the English School in Cairo. With the prince’s help, Abdullah was granted a pardon and royal permission to enter Mecca on the Haj and stay in the prince’s palace as a long-term guest, where he enjoyed generous hospitality. In the prince’s private quarters they would play chess and reminisce about their erstwhile companions, most of whom Abdullah met again when they passed through old friends’ houses. They went out hunting together for a few days and made plans to meet up soon in other cities.

‘I saw God in Mecca,’ said Abdullah with the faith of the ascetic; I envied him these visions that had changed his life. Zeina exulted when she saw him raving at night in prayer, beseeching for his soul to be saved, now hovering like a hawk who has been pursued by the hunters’ guns and who is, at last, exhausted, returning to his nest in the mountains. His friendship with Prince Shehab El Din opened doors to him. Zeina narrated the story of Al Zeir Salim once again, reciting his grief-stricken elegies for Kulaib bin Wael in the salon of the prince’s wife, who loved Zeina’s magic and the power of her words. The audience listened intently to her and to her wide-ranging learning, gleaned from mixing with men in various capital cities and from her uncles who were famous in the Najd for their Nabataean poetry and their cunning. Most important was her knowledge of the secrets of pleasure; she spoke fluently about horse-riding positions, glancing lewdly at the men. Zeina brought to mind the story of Scheherazade, whom I always liked to recall; I traced her image in my dreams many times, and I always drew her as a frightened woman, seeking help from words in order to be saved from tyranny. Words drew never-ending, chaotically intersecting lines that led to futility; I was frightened of becoming entangled in them, in case their shifting sands swept me away.

Abdullah met Bakr at one of Prince Shehab El Din’s councils. They became close after a long conversation in the palace garden, which began with the merits of Kashmiri carpets and ended in politics. Bakr didn’t hide his pleasure at Abdullah’s metamorphoses. He paused for a while at the point in the story where Abdullah described holding a position of authority and explained (with a great deal of verbosity and confidence) its arrangements, ambitions, secrets and connections. Then in a quiet voice Abdullah reviewed his childhood and studies at the English School as if he were throwing a heavy weight into the shadowy depths of the ocean; he joyfully recalled the Indian sailor who had led him to a fate he didn’t regret. He remembered the cruelty of those moments that had haunted him during the cold Moscow nights when he longed to run barefoot behind a herd of camels, heedless of the wild thorns.

They weren’t parted for three days. They accompanied one of the prince’s hunting expeditions into the desert, content to praise the precision of his aim and spend the rest of the time chatting. The friendship that grew between them delighted the prince. Abdullah didn’t hesitate to support Bakr in obtaining a contract to furnish the prince’s new palace with rich carpets, in order to realize the building the prince had dreamed of one night. When the dream was repeated another night, the prince considered it to be an order from the world of spirits to erect this palace to honour the memory of his mother, who was praying on a small carpet in the dream. The prince described the structure minutely and enthusiastically, and Bakr listened attentively to his account of coloured peacocks, birds of paradise and basil plants surrounding fountains, all reminiscent of the small palace of Abi Abdullah, last of the Andalusian kings. The prince, exhausted after abandoning himself to the remembrance of his dream, concluded his speech by saying briefly, ‘I want a palace which looks like my mother’s womb.’

Abdullah obtained the prince’s permission to accompany Bakr as he fulfilled the prince’s dream, which he had sworn zealously to do. They left the palace on uncharted roads, and became semi-vagrants in the alleys of Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and Central Asia. They used an old Jeep Bakr had chosen so as not to arouse the cupidity of the owners of what they sought — such as five-hundred-year-old carpets upon which famous globetrotters and sultans had once sat; or boxes made from rare wood and inlaid with silver, once given to women in their youth by famous men who adored them — women who, in their old age, were forced to sell them in public auctions for less money than the cost of a few glass bottles.

Bakr and Abdullah both enjoyed the subterfuge, and enjoyed discovering all these deserts, cities, villages and houses, all the while recalling in the depths of their souls the story of the Prophet, who blessed legitimately acquired profit and trade; fully and unreservedly, Bakr would praise the hidden talents of his friend Abdullah, whom he hadn’t thought possessed such ingenuity. Sixteen shipments were unloaded in the warehouses of the new palace; the six decorators and the two hundred and fifty craftsmen and labourers, who specialized in polishing antique lamps and renovating furniture, were at work for more than six consecutive months under Bakr’s supervision, who came down with a fever twice. The doctors advised him to avoid inhaling the fumes of molten gold when it was poured into the mould created by a young drug addict from Iran. He had convinced Bakr and Abdullah that it was a faithful rendition of the taps in the palace of Haroun El Rashid, over whose paving stones Abu Nuwas used to roll with his beautiful young boys. (As the price for his totally fraudulent design, he asked for no more than a small sum which would buy less than a week’s supply of heroin.) Both Abdullah and Bakr liked the strange design: a tap suspended over a butterfly which laughed and spread its wings when the water ran.

Prince Shehab El Din objected to nothing, and almost wept with joy at the strange palace when he entered it for the first time and wandered through its twenty rooms together with his brother and cousin princes. Abdullah was their guide and explained the story of each piece of furniture and the place where he had bought it, while his friend Bakr remained under his protection, anticipating the fruits of his adventures in realizing the prince’s dream. When the prince approached the outstretched carpet, he confirmed that it was the same one his mother had been praying on in the dream and whispered to Abdullah, ‘This is what I’ve been looking for.’ He commended Bakr’s genius and cursed the freeloaders who came flocking in, smiling biliously and offering a captivating Italian girl the prince had often watched in the porn films he had been addicted to, before being afflicted with longing for his mother’s womb.