Khaled Khalifa - In Praise of Hatred

The time he spent with us was to be short, and he repeatedly looked at his watch. He began speaking when the girls fell silent after having tried to create an atmosphere of joy; they reported the opinions of the people on the street which emphasized their stand alongside us, and the thousands of prayers for our victory. I was astonished at this optimism so confidently displayed; the girls avoided mentioning that the people blamed us at least partly for the destruction that had settled on the city. I decided to express what was inside me by drawing a true picture of what I had seen. I asked for permission to speak, and waited until after the prince had finished. He opened with the verse we repeated every day: Make ready against them all you can … He spoke authoritatively and calmly. He told us that negotiations with the authorities would not resume, that victory was near, and that the painful strikes directed at us hadn’t deterred the organization. He prayed for our martyrs, praised our members who had been imprisoned and had resisted brutal torture, and asked us to pray for them. He entered a labyrinth of language which clarified nothing other than the establishment of some sort of an educational institute, which I doubted would be of much benefit to us, and he avoided answering our questions; we no longer knew who would answer them or calm our worries. He threatened the government with surprise attacks of vengeance, and with putting on trial every symbol of the regime after the ‘great victory’, as he called it.

My desire to talk paled when the prince indicated I could now stand up to speak. I got to my feet and looked around at the six girls, and Hajja Souad encouraged me with a slight smile. I asked directly if my enforced leave from the organization during the previous two months was as a result of Bakr’s wishes, or, rather, of his being abroad. My uncle’s absence had opened the door for his detractors to start rumours that he had opposed the recent murder of a renowned doctor. (This doctor had been accused of surrendering up one of our wounded who had taken refuge in his clinic when there was nowhere else for him to hide; he was being pursued by a patrol of the death squad for shooting at them.) I spoke at length to explain how people were tyrannized by fear, exhausted by waiting for the victory we had promised them. I said that people had begun to hate us, and the city was no longer safe for us. Furthermore, I enquired about the leadership withholding essential information about a suspected Mukhabarat infiltrator, whose activities allowed successful strikes by government forces on a number of houses in April: an omission which stank of betrayal.

The prince’s eyes were fixed on me, revolving angrily in their sockets as if looking for the reason for me to utter such an accusation, unsuited as it was for a small prayer meeting of girls who should think only of implementing accepted teachings, of their faith in the magic of their leaders, and of their absolute trust in them. The prince interrupted me harshly to say that it wasn’t any business of mine to disclose the group’s secrets. He praised Bakr, described him as a great mujahid, and hinted that his departure had been at the behest of the leadership, which had charged him with tasks abroad. He rather curtly answered my last questions, about my brother Hossam. Then he rose, signalling to us to remain seated. Hajja Souad led him to the door where he once again donned his disguise, which made him look like a porter from one of the souks, with a neat moustache, long black trousers, gold-embroidered shirt, and the misbaha of large yellow beads whose clacking could be heard clearly from a distance. He spoke a few words to Hajja Souad and left without turning round as our gazes clung to him. Sighs of pleasure wafted from the girls as they prayed for his safety, and that his enemies might look away from him and from all the companions of the mujahideen.

Hajja Souad ordered us not to leave before an hour had gone by, and suggested that we first make tabbouleh and chips before she allocated our new tasks to us. The laughter of the girls in the kitchen and Hajja Souad’s voice oppressed me and reminded me that I hadn’t acted like an emira at all. I felt that they knew the rebellion I had committed the previous night. I was dizzy, and the only person nearby was Um Ramez, the woman in her sixties who had brought me to the meeting. I saw her engrossed in telling her long beads with closed eyes; she moved with the gestures of a woman assailed by lethargy, trying to blot out her surroundings. I watched her and tried to catch her eye but she continued to mutter her incomprehensible prayers. The sound of girls’ voices didn’t suggest a covert meeting, but rather the preparations of a group of friends gathering to go to a wedding.

I was alarmed at Layla’s snobbery when she was named emira in my place. When I told Hajja Souad that withdrawing the title from me in this way without any justification was very frustrating, she took me by the hand and we went into an opulent bedroom. She sat me down on the bed and recounted the organization’s history. She also accused me of recklessness, reminding me that I had come to her house without a proper appointment, as if I was out for a stroll. She patted my shoulder, told me that titles had no importance, and reassured me that I would soon get some pamphlets to distribute around the university during exam time. I understood that I should now leave, as she was intransigent in the face of my protests about Prince Shukry’s refusal to reassure me about Hossam. All he had said was that Hossam had been transferred to the desert prison, and that the leadership was satisfied and proud of his resilience. Hossam wouldn’t divulge the important information he had gleaned from accompanying Bakr in recent months, as he moved from one safe house to another in order to stay alive and run operations. Prince Shukry had enthusiastically asked me to be proud of what we as a family offered to the organization.

I was the last to leave, determined as I was to see the eyes of Um Ramez — I knew that she had asked permission to kill a death squad soldier in revenge for her son whose fingers had been cut off in prison, and whose back had been broken, leaving him paralysed down one side. I couldn’t wait any longer; I was already late in leaving that flat, and it was an infringement for which I might be held to account by the organization. I wandered the streets of that neighbourhood while evening gradually fell, and it coloured the sky in a way I had never seen before: over the open ground to the west there was a translucent twilight coloured red and pink with clouds whose persistence revealed an early summer. I said to myself that being able to see such a sight might be a rare opportunity for me. I lifted my veil, and for some minutes I looked at the sky. I thought of Hossam, and how he used to lead me by the hand to our roof and point to the full moon, showing off his skill at calculating the hijri calendar which he had been occupied in chronicling since he was a young child. I missed him, and that distant childhood. I reflected that absence gave birth to illusions. An image of my mother appeared to me, with her kind face and her peaceful nature. I wished that my room had this wonderful view of open horizons, with olive and pistachio trees in the distance; the wind carried to me the unmistakable scents they released at the full moon.

There was hardly anyone around. The area was deserted apart from some animal droppings and some late, exhausted builders trying to reach the bus stop. A layer of white dust covered their clothes, bestowing on them the fairytale colours I had seen in my dreams of crowds of people draped in white. I walked behind an old man and felt protective of him, abandoning my wish to walk in these wilds until I reached the horizon, in expectation of the rising moon. Then I was terrified by the scene of a Mukhabarat patrol scanning the faces of the people waiting for the bus. It was very late for me to be so far from home.