Khaled Khalifa - In Praise of Hatred

My aunt told me at great length about my father, mother and brother Humam in Beirut, and smothered me in reassurance. At first she sounded indulgent even towards Marwa, but in subsequent days all her anger came out: she spoke disparagingly of Marwa’s removal of her veil; and of my father’s alcoholism, and the fact that he cursed my mother and Bakr and our group, and praised the other sect. He still had many friends who belonged to it; back in the late fifties and the days of the United Arab Republic, they had accompanied him to Alexandria and taught him to fish. ‘Like he was angry and didn’t want to see us,’ Maryam said as she waved her hand, trying to drive away the image of her journey, and burdened with the disgrace of the picture she drew of her sisters and her brothers-in-law.

* * *

Tedium soon returned to our house. We seemed to be waiting for a miracle to save us from our monotony and fear, which only escalated again after the violent clashes that took place in Jalloum and reached all the way to Jamiliyya. We all hunched up in the cellar, silent amidst the smell of the lentil soup which Maryam had begun cooking, trying to affect indifference to the events taking place less than two hundred metres away from our house. Then she burst out crying, expressing her annoyance at the curfew, at all the killing, and at the searches that revealed her secrets to strangers.

Her weeping frightened me. And all my anxiety came back, some time later, when Omar told me about another letter from Bakr asking me to withdraw from the organization, as I was under surveillance. Omar couldn’t bear taking on this role of ‘man of the house’, when it was a house inhabited by cranks who opposed him in everything and didn’t respond to life’s opportunities. He had reverted to his former scandalous behaviour, but Aleppo no longer cared about this in the midst of the ruins and the mothers wearing mourning for the sons lost to them in prisons and tombs. It is difficult to remain objective when your life is threatened, and I thought for a moment that I had no choice but to walk to the end of the road I had chosen. I had been avoiding college, as it had become a place where I was informed of my tasks for the coming days. They would leave me pamphlets in one of the bins, or a woman would stuff them under my coat when I sat on the bus. She didn’t even have time to press my hand in solidarity.

Fear drew me to pleasure and irreverence. All I could think of was how hard it was to be under constant surveillance, when someone counts your breaths and your steps, trying to get inside your mind to review your memories and the pictures you love. I was terrified by the idea that they might be able to spy on my dreams. I went cold when I felt that I was really being watched, and by several men at that. I wandered in their chains, under siege from their gaze. I tried to look into their eyes in defiance, so I wouldn’t fall down in a faint in the middle of the street. I focused on the middle-aged milk vendor who had settled at the corner of our road two months earlier. I wasn’t duped by his candour or his quiet voice when I approached him to examine his cart, and ended up buying milk which we didn’t drink. I began to hate him and looked at him spitefully, hoping he would die. I wrote a report and dispatched it to the leadership of the group in which I cursed him and asked for him to be liquidated. I waited for his death (which seemed to be running behind schedule) and I began to think of him as a man who was running out of time to put his affairs in order for his family. I dumped some of the pamphlets in a narrow, empty alley, ashamed of carrying them. I tore up the rest, threw them in a dustbin and fled after I saw a young man who I felt was tailing me, but I regretted it when I saw him go into his house.

Omar’s words about Bakr’s letter had robbed me of courage and left me as brittle as blotting paper. I swallowed hard whenever a passer-by looked at me; my dreams died in silence and the city started to resemble a large tomb. I thought of fleeing and living with my mother again, and that trying to reconnect with my father might save me from this maelstrom. I looked for Omar so I could tell him my decision and sat on the steps to his house for hours, in defiance of the neighbours’ looks which condemned his immorality. I went to my grandfather’s shops and asked the new craftsmen about Omar. I couldn’t find him, even though I left word for him at every place he might be. I felt lost without him. He was the only one who could save me. I needed someone who could end my turmoil and return tranquillity to me, so I could stand still and watch the flowers wither at the end of spring, and praise the laziness of a late-blooming rose.

Omar’s shamelessness grew increasingly worse with his new friends. They were traders who had suddenly acquired influence in the souk after carefully ensuring a monopoly in smuggling goods from state warehouses; they dealt in household utensils, cigarettes, and so-called ‘intermediaries’ — aimed at mothers who were pining for their sons in prison and craved to hear any reassuring news. They sold their jewellery and bedroom suites in exchange for a snippet of paper which assured them that their sons were alive. Trade was brisk, and partnerships with death squad and Mukhabarat officers much in demand.

* * *

What little hope remained dwindled still further, and the city was left to instinct and hatred. But at the beginning of that summer of 1982, the sounds of tambourines were once more heard, along with voices raised in supplication to God. Everyone climbed on to their roofs to see the lunar eclipse, which granted the people a rare opportunity to shout and drive out the decay which now penetrated each moment. The city re-enacted the rituals which had fallen into disuse because of all the suffering which had stifled them, and because of Aleppo’s massive expansion to accommodate hundreds of thousands of migrants from the countryside who came in search of work. Native Aleppans remembered the last time they had gone out of the city, to climb Mount Ansari to pray for the rains, which had been late that year. Since that distant occasion, no one had heard the sound of tambourines or voices pleading for rain and mercy; but now they begged fervently for the withdrawal of the death squad. Most of its soldiers had never witnessed such a display in praise of God and Heaven; nor the tears of the mothers whose deep emotion swelled until they tore at their clothes. The women’s wails rose above the sound of the tambourines and the chanting of the singers whose throats were regaining warmth from reciting religious poetry.

Maryam had spent all day enthusiastically adorning herself, and now she went up on to the roof with her tambourine so she could sing, despite her tears which rained down at the cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’. The tambourines all around fell into one quick rhythm. The eclipse began; the colours of the moon changed and merged, and the city was covered by a ruddy glow almost orange; it was a magical scene that pulled me for a few moments out of my anxiety and made me believe in the awesome power of nature. These rituals continued until a little after midnight, and a truce was adhered to by both sides out of respect for the crowd, which was so burdened by its loss of the tolerance Aleppo had once been famed for, when its population had been distinguished by the intermingling of all its languages and customs.

Maryam came down from the roof a different woman, still carrying her tambourine, which she kept on banging. Even in the darkness I could see that her face was agitated. She concluded her singing with a lament for my grandfather, the city, her body, our family; she summoned them all up with moving expressions, calling on them to see the devastation which had settled on our house. Zahra was trying to calm Maryam and stop her from going inside in this hysterical state, but she began to dance in the courtyard and, in a loud voice, to curse the era which had made her into a woman to be overlooked. She called on Bakr to come, describing him as her beloved; she called on Selim to wake up from his sleep; she called on Omar to join her in the courtyard, which had missed all of their footsteps. I didn’t approach her; I was powerless to help her as she fainted. We put her to bed. I couldn’t hold back my tears — I kept thinking about dying. I imagined that my body was extricated from its density, and that the blood in my veins was solidifying and losing its heat. I held Maryam’s trembling hand as she seemed to surrender to an uncertain fate. She slowly relaxed; weariness appeared on her face and her body twitched as she fell into a sound sleep.