Khaled Khalifa - In Praise of Hatred

I wanted to kiss Hossam and embrace him, although it was enough to hold his hands in mine and feel their heat. I thought how he had grown suddenly over the last few months; his face had gained a hardness which would remain clinging to it. He didn’t tell me anything, but listened attentively as I told him about our mother, father, brother and aunts. I wondered why I was so distant from them that I couldn’t tell him more details than he already knew, just as I couldn’t answer his questions about whether or not our younger brother Humam still believed that the fish my father sold were plucked from trees like lemons; he used to open his small hands and wait for them to pour down like rain. We laughed guardedly, and I told him about my meetings and elaborated on the girls in the cell, not forgetting my own heroism and the suggestion of hatred I planted in their minds when I stood up and spoke to them about our enemies, the other sects. I knew Hossam’s face when it was flooded with contentment; his eyes shone so that he seemed like a sentimental boy, almost crying with grief for the bird that callous hunters had slaughtered in front of him; I could see he was pleased. He left me without answering any of my questions, and restricted himself to informing me that he was travelling a lot, without leaving me any room for further inquiry. He gave me money for my mother and left, turning into Bustan Kul Ab Street without bidding me goodbye.

A hideous loneliness afflicted me. I stopped wanting to speak. I immersed myself in silence which didn’t stop me from thinking about Zahra who sometimes ignored me. She didn’t care when I told her I was embarking on an important career. Her entire curiosity amounted to the five words she spoke coldly: ‘God is gracious to you.’ Then she sat by Marwa so they could finish spreading out the aubergine to dry. I asked Marwa about Zahra’s about-turn and she replied curtly and with a tone of veiled rebuke that it was me who had changed, and that they were making allowances for me as my exam dates were approaching. I fiercely defended my changes, adding how sorry I was that they hadn’t joined me in appreciating how wonderful it felt to kill the sons of the other sects and glorify the mujahideen, and then I rushed to my room. I took out the last letter Abdullah had sent to me alone, in which he described me as a little mujahida. I finished reading the lines in which he informed me that he was going to Afghanistan to support our brothers who were resisting the humiliation imposed by the Soviet Communists, a confidence given as if in confirmation of my position. Marwa, as usual, didn’t care and went on discussing the mahshy and how too many spices ruined its flavour. ‘I need some quiet,’ I told myself. I arranged my room so I could study for the exams, and cut myself off from everything. Maryam stayed awake beside me for many nights, and took out a pure-silk bedsheet decorated with red and yellow flowers; she said it was the remains of Safaa’s trousseau. I put it on my table, and the sheet imparted intense colours to it, which I didn’t like. I added new notes in the margins of Hossam’s textbooks, debating with him as if we were drinking coffee together, while cursing our uncles and laughing.

Twice, Omar came over to help me in Religion and Arabic. Sometimes he felt affection for the principles of tajwid recitation and demonstrated his skill for me; we were like two cockerels in a fighting arena, ruffling our feathers. Maryam was proud of our learning. Sometimes I would exaggerate in reciting information from a book to turn Zahra’s head, who was as silent as a stone, ignoring our enthusiasm.

Radwan intervened to settle our dispute over the correct grammatical suffixes of the word Fahawmal in Imru Al Qays’ mu’allaqa . We repeated its lines and added different grammatical inflections like scholars in the ancient souk of Akaz. Omar’s company made the days pass pleasantly and easily, unpretentiously, but after he went abroad I returned to my hatred, confirming to them all that I had grown up and was not ashamed of disagreeing with my tolerant aunts, and of being close to Bakr, who I hoped would be the long-awaited Mahdi. I was proud he was my uncle.

On the day before the exams, I saw Ghada walking by herself. She had braided her hair carelessly, and she was trembling. I put her appearance down to worry about the exams and lack of sleep, so it came as a shock when she took a Makarov pistol from her handbag and said indifferently that her lover, the important officer in the Mukhabarat, had brought her back to him as an informer. She would wait outside his assistant’s door to give him some reports, in which she vented all her lust and desire, but she never saw him. At the end of one report, stamped ‘Top Secret’, she reminded him of the tenderness of their trysts. He tore it up and pronounced her to be mad; she said, ‘I can’t live without him.’ She went off without waving goodbye to me, and that same night she committed suicide with a bullet to the head, leaving a short note for her family in which she informed them that she loved them; she felt redundant; she didn’t want to become an informer; and she concluded by saying she was no longer a virgin and was polluted, and that in a dark room she had aborted a foetus which should have had the right to live.

I buried Ghada swiftly, like a plague I needed to escape. I sat in her room, and looked at the pink walls and the pictures of Mickey Mouse, which she had been mad about when she was a child who didn’t want to grow up or stop laughing. Friends of hers I knew wept and embraced her mother. Only I was stiff. I looked at the mourning ceremony for the dishonoured girl, rebuking myself but sure that she would go to Hell, and there would be no merciful intercession from the Prophet … On the third day, I went to her grave. I sat on the edge and wept for hours. I spoke to her and wept, recalling her smile and the smell of her neck. I sat in my room and didn’t go out; I locked the door and lay on my bed alone. My mother came every day, expecting Bakr. She read out what Hossam had written in the letter I had given her, and avoided mentioning the money he had sent her through me. She hid it in her closet after crying and kissing it, searching for the smell of his fingers. I chastised her for her weakness. I seemed like her mother, and she seemed like my daughter, asking for guidance so I wouldn’t leave her alone. All of us women were waiting for news of Hossam and Bakr, who were no longer seen in any place we knew of.

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One morning, the army officer who had been a guest at Bakr’s banquet some months earlier performed his prayers carefully at the mosque and recited a sura from the Quran. That night, he asked his servant for a strong cup of coffee, drank it quietly, and left the room of the duty officer to select seventeen young men from the military college — students who were due to graduate shortly. Coolly, he lined them up against the wall and executed them using a machine gun, like someone in a film. Ghosts left their dens to fly over the city; no one knew where they would finally alight. He left the corpses to fall in their own blood, their ribs and heads spattered all over the wall. He threw away his uniform jacket, kept the copper eagle on the pocket of his khaki trousers, and then left with the associates he had selected to guard the doors of the military college during the shooting. They all reached a house on the outskirts of Aleppo, where men welcomed them with cries of ‘Allahu Akbar!’ and showered blessings on them for having brought about funerals in the other sect’s houses. No one knew why those students had died after having descended from the mountains with limitless ambition and vitality; no one but me, who celebrated hatred.

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