Khaled Khalifa - In Praise of Hatred

Tuhama had become a corpse whose presence among us dazed us. Um Mamdouh tried to rush towards the gallows to hug the corpse which reminded us that the same fate was awaiting us. It was awful to see someone whom I had shared coffee with only the day before now hanging from a noose whose image would haunt us for ever. I said to Sulafa that Tuhama had been sacrificed as an example to terrify us, and she didn’t reply. She didn’t respond to the group’s prayers for Tuhama’s soul. Hajja Souad led us — we needed an imam so our prayers would be dignified, so we would appear as respectable mourners for the girl whose blankets and clothes we would now divide between us. A drug addict had left them to her after passing through our world one day.

* * *

Our child had long begun to walk properly. He trotted alongside Rasha who took great care of him. He lisped some prison vocabulary, and was so used to the place he could have lived out the rest of his life there without any feeling of regret. I thought that he had the advantage over us as I watched him, trying to trace any resemblance between him and Hossam or Mudar, so I could adore him like Rasha. She would chase him through the dormitories so he would not get lost, convincing herself that it was possible to lose him even in this place where yesterdays meant nothing more to us than unbearable misery. The peach tree lost its gleam; it seemed wretched and sickly. Fights among ourselves increasingly added spice to our mornings. We wanted to forget ourselves, as the best way of enduring was to forget one’s memories. ‘Leave your past at the door,’ I thought in an attempt to steel myself for the loss of Sulafa, who had been ordered to prepare for her imminent release. Everything here happened without adequate notice: death, birth, freedom, fights, tears, and the dancing which so enraptured us that we drowned in it. We began to specialize in exhibiting our charms to the rhythm of saucepans and Thana’s voice. She recreated Aleppo and the secret songs of its women, which Orientalists had tried to dig up over the centuries, and which seemed so intractable and obscure. The celebration was held for no particular reason, and remained unhampered by the protests of some prisoners from our group who were immersed again in memorizing the Quran and repeating it for the fifth time. They circulated the only book among themselves; it had been given to them by the prison governor that day, delighted at the birth of his first grandchild.

Not long after, one morning, we were ordered into the courtyard where a security man then read out a list of people who would be transferred immediately to a Mukhabarat unit to process their release. Turmoil gripped us. I thought for a moment of the order to take a look at Tuhama’s dangling body. It wasn’t like ours; despite everything, ours were still breathing and could still feel pain. The list of nine girls included three from our organization whose entire guilt consisted of being the sisters of wanted men who had been able to flee abroad. The girls who were being released started crying; my tongue went rigid and I couldn’t join in with the chorus of trills which sprang up spontaneously. The guards rushed the girls out; we couldn’t say goodbye as one should to companions who had shared such suffering and nights of torture. I embraced Sulafa without looking into her eyes, which were fixed on me like she was racked with pain. The departing girls waved; depression hovered over those left behind, something we had grown used to after any release. I tried to immerse myself in sleep; after I woke up, I was alone, and I needed sympathy.

Safaa’s sudden visit saved me from depression. A gust of perfume wafting from her took me straight back to our shared past, as she distributed money liberally to the guards so they would look the other way. Maryam sat nearby absorbed in her long misbaha , and I thought that she now looked like my grandmother. She wanted to remind me that I wasn’t a little child any more. Twenty-five years was long enough for me to feel my membership of the world of women, with all its joy and grief. There was no possibility of Safaa drowning in pre-destined tears; I contemplated the smoothness of her face, as serene as a queen’s from a painting of the Nahda era. Her elegance was worthy of a princess. I sat beside her, stinking of the prison; I was like an orphan servant girl she had taken off the street, not her former companion of night revels when we had enjoyed the coolness of the fountain and lying on the damp ground in the scorching heat of summer.

Safaa slipped a small piece of paper under my shirt as she showed me photos of her son Amir, standing on a chair and frowning in concentration as he aimed a toy gun at an imaginary target. Safaa stirred up an atmosphere of mirth, aiming to be my clown for a few minutes. I noticed her swift glances at my face which took note of my pallor and confusion. She convinced the guards, who had never seen such a glorious creature in all their lives, that she had indeed come from the world of A Thousand and One Nights and proved it by her largesse — for the cup of coffee they offered her, she paid an amount equal to the governor’s monthly salary. We spoke at length, and the private visit that I hadn’t even dreamed of stretched out for more than two hours. I could smell her perfume the entire time. The heat of her hands scorched me, and they didn’t leave mine for a moment. I reminisced about how she spoiled me when I was a child, and she said a prayer for my mother and intimated that Abdullah remembered me and prayed to God to end my captivity, as she winked and pointed to the letter she had concealed in my clothes. It was difficult for me to describe adequately the last six years in two hours. Before the end of the visit, I asked her if I could see my brother and Radwan, whom Safaa had told me was overjoyed at her presence. In a low voice, she described Maryam’s fury at their warm relationship; her suspicion increased in proportion to her loneliness. She stayed in the old house for an entire week, causing laughter and sincere tears when she said goodbye. Safaa inhaled me as if she would never see me again. She didn’t tell me that she was anxious, and that her insistence that I had only a short time left in detention was a lie to help me sleep.

I tried to speed up the time which still remained until I could return home and join in Radwan’s singing. Safaa left me money which I gave to Hajja Souad, who blessed me and lent me the Quran for an additional hour every day. That evening I made sure I was alone in the bathroom, so that I was unobserved when I opened the delicate, carefully folded letter. I began to read what Abdullah had written especially for me: ‘My dear, patient daughter, may God grant her long life. Know how proud I am when I speak about you to the councils of mujahideen. Know, my daughter, that I and the mujahideen believers in Afghanistan will avenge your pain, and the pain of all the Muslims. God bless you.’ There was no signature.

I read the message again eagerly, ignoring the increasingly violent banging on the door. I hid it in my clothes and left without realizing how pale my face was, as Hajja Souad told me when she tried to draw me into the prayer circle memorizing the Quran. I needed to be on my own to review Abdullah’s words. I didn’t understand why he had taken the risk of sending a letter to a prisoner which contained information about his activities in Afghanistan. Terrified, I claimed I had stomach cramps so I could go back to the bathroom, and the girls who were waiting let me go first. I closed the door and tore the letter up, threw it into the hole, and flushed it away. I wasn’t happy until the last scrap of paper had disappeared along with the filthy water. I felt strange that night. I reproached myself harshly for being so negligent with the words of a man as discreet as Abdullah. He hadn’t forgotten my loyalty, and was encouraging me to withstand the depression and the enormous injustice weighing down so heavily on me.