Khaled Khalifa - In Praise of Hatred

In school, I became hostile to Fatima and her lithe body. She jumped about in the courtyard during breaks and sports classes, revealing her chest without caring. She enjoyed loosening her pink, lacy bra; it formed a total contrast to the one which grasped my own breasts. I didn’t dare touch them, so I wouldn’t awaken the desire that Dalal warned us against.

* * *

Hajja Radia wept when she reached Rabia. I told her, ‘Help me.’ The black veil covered my hair and face so I resembled a fish swimming in black tar. She reached for it and plucked it away, and she said, ‘Walk with me.’ For the first time, I saw the face of Rabia glowing with the brilliance radiating above the trees along the road. Tambourines welcomed us, the horsemen dismounted and lights shone from their faces, overflowing with joy. I tried to touch them; I reached out a hand and stretched up but Rabia drew me back and said, ‘Stop that. The sun illuminates everything.’

I asked, ‘What about these men?’ She laughed. I saw her lips part in a sweet smile and her teeth gleamed with a shade of white I had never seen before, like dazzling quartz or a multi-faceted crystal. She told me, ‘They are not men.’

We crossed the fields of palms and pistachio trees, shaded by their branches, and a special perfume I had never smelled before permeated the air. Rabia walked beside me, or I walked beside her, and she beckoned to me and said, ‘Have you seen the face of God?’ I raised my head as if I were seeing the azure heavens for the first time. ‘Where is the face of God, Rabia?’ Alone in the fields of palms and pistachios, the earth closed up in front of my feet. I felt increasingly desolate and oppressed as I neared the end of the fields. I was struck with fear and an obscure feeling like the one that penetrated me whenever I sat close to Hajja Radia, who was indulgent with me and tried to respond to my anxious questioning. When I told her that I had seen Rabia, she asked me, ‘Do you go to her, or does she come to you?’ I couldn’t understand the point of her question. It wasn’t important if I went to her or if she came to me; it was only important that we had walked together through the fields and crossed the rivers. After this, whenever I saw girls washing in this water, I was no longer afraid that the river would damage their chastity. Hajja Radia added, ‘They are rivers of Paradise, not rivers of this world.’ I left the fields of palm and pistachio trees, depressed. The sun which had shaded us had turned sullen, announcing its ire at the heavy veils we lowered over our faces.

* * *

I left school that day weighed down by heavy dreams which put me on my guard. I entered the narrow alleyway, and asked Maryam, ‘Are there any forbidden smells?’ Without slowing down she said, ‘Yes: the smell of men who aren’t related to you.’ I remained vigilant against this forbidden smell, against glances and the accidental meetings of eyes which sent tremors through my limbs, and for which I punished myself cruelly. Maryam gave animation to, and Safaa alleviated, the feelings of affliction that made me a slave to a delusion that I was polluted. I felt as if these glances had robbed me of my chastity and penetrated the depths of my femininity, despite the heavy protection afforded by the hijab, prayers and the bonds of the path I walked along towards the gates of Paradise. From there, I would walk up the steep steps to sit in the presence of God.

The forbidden smells persecuted me. I no longer approached Radwan so I wouldn’t smell the forbidden scent; I almost convinced Maryam to forbid Radwan from entering the living room without permission, and to order him to stand at a distance when he spoke to us. I would have succeeded were it not for Safaa’s violent intervention, which I had never seen before, as she said, ‘Do you want to turn this house into an asylum?’ Maryam recalled her great need for Radwan as a servant; she was still describing the scent of the Samarkandi’s son to him. She never despaired, and exaggerated and heaped praise on Radwan’s genius at composing perfumes, even though he had failed and no longer took Maryam’s descriptions seriously. Every month, he used to bring her a vial he had chosen at random, enlarging on its special properties, and ending with a prayer to the Prophet which Maryam would repeat after him and then thank him for.

* * *

Marwa spread out her clothes and arranged her few possessions in the wardrobe, listening very quietly to Uncle Selim’s information that her husband had persevered in threatening her if she didn’t return to their house unconditionally. Marwa laughed and said that she would never return, and that she would prepare herself for life without a man. She took out her bright clothes and arranged them next to Safaa’s, the two of them immersed in endless conversations, interrupted by suppressed sobs or brazen laughter which irritated Maryam, but she concealed her ire. She raised her eyes to me, as if willing me to be deaf so I wouldn’t hear them.

I longed to join Safaa and Marwa in their nightly talks on the wide bed as they reclined in their delicate, soft, colourful night clothes. I would enter their room and Safaa would make space for me close to them, but I sat on the edge of the bed, and didn’t know what to say. I contemplated Safaa’s brown chest which looked like mine. I saw her breasts which had retained their firmness even though she was thirty. I sensed them quiver within the silkiness of the fabric; breasts deprived of pleasure.

Marwa would relax quietly, sneering at women’s perfumes or their inane conversations about their absent children. One day, Nishany’s mother had accompanied her to the hammam along with women of the extended family, who didn’t know the importance of a fleshy hip creasing slightly over a generous thigh; or of a chest with a texture like pleats of sand in the desert, untouched by the wind; nor of two breasts equal in grandeur, like tagines of polished marble. They reached out their hands for her hair and Abdullah’s sister almost tore it out by the roots. Marwa screamed, ‘These are original goods!’ Playing with the snaking locks of her hair she said to us, ‘They lose it in Nishany’s house.’ Marwa concluded her lampoon of Abdullah’s mother, whose mouth had the fragrance of sorrel, by saying, ‘I don’t know how I could bear her.’ And she added, ‘I don’t know how I bore her for three years!’ It was my grandmother who had wanted this marriage, whatever the cost.

Marwa told me that the scent of men was delicious if they were really men, but I didn’t understand what she meant. She got up slowly and went into the kitchen to prepare tea, not forgetting the sprigs of mint and the cinnamon sticks. She didn’t much care that the noise might disturb Maryam, who was fast asleep in her spacious bed. Next to the bed was a small chest of drawers, and hidden in one of the drawers were three pictures of a young man of medium height and average build, brown-skinned, with clever eyes. Other pictures smelled of the fragrance whose secrets Radwan was unable to attain. Marwa still remembered that she had heard him assert, protesting against Maryam’s yell that he was a failed perfumier, that this woman wanted to sleep with a man’s scent. Marwa came into the room carrying the silver tray with three large cups on it, and poured the tea. By the weak light, I saw her figure swaying with delicious malice. She offered me my cup lazily, with a ‘There you go, my little one.’ Safaa winked and reached a hand under the bed. She took out a box of cigarettes, which I was seeing for the first time. My aunts smoked with relish. Marwa turned towards me and, on seeing my aversion, told me, ‘It’s horrible, but it’s not haram .’ I was embarrassed, and felt a huge rush of love for Marwa and Safaa, whose eyes roamed over the ceiling. I would have them round to my room after Maryam fell asleep, and I clung to Marwa as her sweet voice rose in songs of the Prophet’s flight to Mecca, and occasionally the even sweeter songs of Um Kulthoum who entered the fabric of our daily lives. Marwa dusted off our asceticism with music and we withdrew from Hajja Radia’s nashid . Maryam never interrupted her attendance at these Friday sessions, even after Safaa stopped going, having announced that she was bored with repeating nashid and episodes from the Prophet’s sira .