Khaled Khalifa - In Praise of Hatred

The house became immersed in darkness and quiet; however, this was soon pierced by the sound of shooting very close by. It was at first intermittent, but then turned into a torrent of machine-gun fire, grenade explosions and calls of ‘Allahu Akbar’: the battle was so close it could have been in the next room. At first I was horrified, but I pulled myself together and went out into the courtyard, unafraid. Radwan was worried, blundering about. I stood still so he wouldn’t realize I was also there; I wanted to watch him, not help him. He shouted my name a few times and I didn’t reply, but followed him back to my room where, afraid, he patted my bed. I stood in the door and reassured him, ‘I’m here.’ He relaxed a little and, like an actor in a play, announced what everyone already knew, ‘They are fighting.’ My silence was a hint, picked up on by Radwan, that I didn’t want to talk. He sat on the kitchen step as if he were hiding in a safe place. The screams of ‘Allahu Akbar’ were pleasing, and I involuntarily muttered a long prayer I remembered from the time when I used to sit next to Hajja Radia in her prayer circle and tremble with deep emotion. At that time, all I wanted was to be close to God, and for Rabia Adawiya to appear in my dreams, a woman made of light slipping into our hearts to grant us reassurance. I muttered another prayer and the fighting intensified.

I was trying to draw as ambulance sirens grew ever closer. I calculated that the fighters were stationed at the corner of our street, and imagined that I would see one of them climbing down to me from the roof. For the first time, the dawn call to prayer was not raised. We were prevented from opening our doors. The firing finally stopped at dawn, and then the soldiers came into our house. They overturned everything furiously and kicked at the doors. Radwan tried to find out what they were looking for, but they cruelly flung him to the ground. I saw him trembling with fear as he replied to their questions and told them that the house’s owners were away. For the first time ever, I heard him describe himself as a family servant. He also reminded them that this house was under the jurisdiction of Lieutenant Colonel Nadhir Mansoury. The soldiers exchanged glances, trying to work out what their colleagues might be thinking, and then they left, angry and tense, inflamed, fingers on triggers. I made do with just hating them, without voicing my objections to their accusations as they savagely hurled all our things out into the courtyard. They searched all the houses in the alley, spat in men’s faces and made them stand awkwardly for hours at a time — no one dared to move or object. The soldiers’ faces expressed a powerful fear they thought they were keeping concealed. It was clear from the search that the reason for targeting these particular men was merely their proximity to that morning’s battlefield. Most of the city’s residents declared that they had had nothing to do with it, and the death squad withdrew from the area after the afternoon prayer. We breathed out.

I went out of the house and left Radwan trembling with fear. There were smears of blood on the wall of the house next to the water tap. Few people had dared to stop and examine the destruction and traces of the battle. No one noticed the tears which soaked my veil when I saw the local newspaper a soldier from the death squad was distributing free of charge. It had published photographs of twelve swollen faces and of a blackened corpse, beneath a broad headline which described them as murderous criminals, along with a picture of soldiers raising a victory sign. They were dancing around the corpses and the captured weapons, which had been carefully lined up so they could be photographed with their owners. I regretted that I hadn’t noticed this particular house before, and that I hadn’t helped the young man in the third picture from the right; the marks on his neck looked as if he had been slaughtered hastily with a blunt knife. I used to see him in the alley, and he would quickly lift his gaze towards me as if he wanted to see all the details of my figure, to see my eyes beneath my face covering. I didn’t appreciate his audacity. It was only later that I found out that he was afraid and had wanted my help in securing protection. His soft, smooth face and elegant clothing had made me think he was a womanizer.

I didn’t sleep that night; I was worried, and tossed and turned on my bed. I had prepared a rich dinner of boiled eggs, meat, pickled cucumbers and lots of white cheese. Radwan wanted only a small portion. I tried to draw out the time he would spend sitting with me at the dinner table in order to banish my desolation. Tedium slunk in, however, and formed a heavy barrier between us. We almost rushed to our separate rooms, where I was content to gaze at the dead flies on the light shade. That game didn’t last long, nor did summoning up old pictures from secondary school. It was impossible to escape from the faces of the victims in the newspaper; that young man’s face lay siege to me. I gave myself up to a long daydream and constructed it like a feature film. I dared to desire him and tried to drive out the image of him as a murder victim. I brought him to my bed but couldn’t complete the scene, as if he wanted only to be dead, abstaining from all the pleasures he had anticipated in life. His image leapt up from my bed, and he was dead, and everything was ruined. It nauseated me to imagine myself lying with a man who had died that morning — no one knew whether his corpse had been buried or was still in one of the hospital mortuaries.

The death of these fighters reproached my conscience as if I was the one who had fought them, because in my mind I had abandoned them, despite my faith that they were clearing the way for the Islamic state we dreamed of. We could almost touch it, just as I touched the cool wall now and pleaded with it to shift just a little so I wouldn’t be choked like a mosquito in a hole. I was horrified by the idea that my body needed sex. I blamed Maryam for leaving me alone, despite my keenness for solitude.

I had thought it would be an opportunity for me to gather my thoughts, especially about why the organization had so completely cut me adrift for two whole months. I guessed that this was because of Bakr’s orders from London, or fear on the part of the leadership; Bakr disagreed with them over fixing a date for a ceasefire and returning to negotiations with Sheikh Mahmoud Haritany. With his modest clothing and prominent prayer beads he gave all the signs of being a pious man, but he was ultimately a puppet of the authorities who dispatched him to the meetings. He called for a laying-down of arms, and described our organization as perverse, a departure from the teachings of Islam, as it killed the innocent. No one found any way of silencing him other than killing him, leaving his spilled blood to meander between both sides. This cleared the path for Sheikh Jamil Al Nirabi, known for fatwas that exonerated the authorities; he declared their deeds acts of self-defence, which gained him our bitter enmity. His much-vaunted popularity was in fact limited to his disciples, who benefited from his influence.

However, over the years, officers from the Mukhabarat had made numerous additions to Sheikh Jamil’s file, particularly after the infiltrators in his retinue increased: documents and photographs relating to his profligate children who had entered into smuggling partnerships with important officers and traders; a full inventory of the gifts offered to the sheikh by the authorities; a tally of the cost of his great services; a list of the titles conferred on him which described him as a magnificent man, a true believer, which almost elevated him to the level of sanctity. His students spread rumours of his miracles until they were considered facts. Whenever he was asked about them, he would shake his head and his tears would flow — they were divine messages which proscribed his footsteps and sanctified the foam sputtering from his mouth as he stood up and spoke in all the mosques which claimed him. He considered himself the next wali . He hid the details of his relationships with Mukhabarat officers, who made him understand, in their own special way, that his file had reached six hundred pages and could be published at any moment; he had no alternative but to bow ever lower and kiss the ground beneath their feet.