Khaled Khalifa - In Praise of Hatred

Suddenly, I felt very short of breath. I was afraid of my grandmother’s gaze, her body swathed in a wrapper and her hair spread out between Maryam’s hands for an application of henna. She looked like a wicked witch escaped from a story with her white hair caked in black all the way to its ends; when she removed her false teeth, it was as if she were shattering her body into pieces. Her flabby skin was repugnant … I fled from them and sat down in order to observe other compartments. Naked women were talking, others were scrubbing each other’s back. At a distance women were singing and swaying, one of them dancing with a hysteria I couldn’t understand, then. Her tongue protruded from between her lips; she winked at me and smiled. I loved the swaying of women’s bodies and the intrusion of their nakedness. The fragrance of the stone rooms enfolded me. I entered vaults although I didn’t know where they might lead. I surrendered to the labyrinth, as if the hammam were a citadel and the women who moved freely within its interior were warriors, forgotten prisoners of war with tokens of servitude dangling from their ears and their masters’ tattoos on their breasts. The labyrinth still shines in my memory whenever I go into the hammam.

In an exaggeration of femininity, I would walk quietly and remove my clothes slowly. With my aunts I wore a wrapper and never left the compartment, behaving like a respectable woman. Marwa and Safaa exchanged basins of hot water, trying to grasp the steam in order to cram it into their pores. Sometimes I would join them in their ribald jokes, but at the same time I noticed Maryam’s angry eyes roaming with silent indignation at them, and with satisfaction at my silence. She didn’t notice my smiles, which were reciprocated by Marwa, murmuring incomprehensibly to Safaa as she scrubbed her back until it was red. She would liberally spread foam from the hammam’s soap on it until it shone beneath the yellow light, ignoring the herb infusions which Maryam had given her in keeping with my grandmother’s traditions. Maryam had inherited everything from her, from her severity to her usual seat in the grandest of the compartments in the Red Door hammam.

We would leave the hammam at eight in the evening. Radwan would be standing by the door and when he heard our footsteps he would move off silently towards home, after taking the bundle from Maryam. Safaa would tease him briefly, igniting Maryam’s suppressed anger. The water made Safaa and Marwa into different women; they would chatter all the way home while Radwan followed the well-known road in silence. I would be engrossed in the black basalt-paved streets and the windows which looked like extinguished lamps from beneath my veil. I couldn’t see a thing; black shrouded all. I could only guess at the change of expression in men’s faces when they came near us and were assailed by the scent of Safaa and Marwa’s perfumed bodies. These bodies were fragrant in the narrow alleys; it was the only indulgence to which Maryam didn’t seem to object. I couldn’t have guessed how delighted she was when she saw men wheeling round to scrutinize the scene: women led by the blind, and for each of his footsteps moving according to an invisible, long-agreed order.

Sunk in silence, Maryam entered her room: Marwa and Safaa took off their black clothes and chatted. I would go into my room, using the mirror to search for eyes looking at me. I would try to overcome my shyness and imitate Marwa when she strutted in front of the mirror in light, silken clothing, as Safaa sat brushing her hair, but it was as if I could see Hajja Radia and Maryam’s faces drawn on to its surface. I would wait for ten o’clock, when I would return to Safaa and Marwa’s room in the thick cotton clothes which hid my body. Shy at first, I would sit next to Safaa as Marwa sat in front of the mirror finishing off her make-up: expensive red lipstick which Radwan had bought from one of the classier shops in Azizieh, kohl and a touch of light cream. They seemed to be waiting for a man, or a shade, or an illusion; at the time, I didn’t understand what they were waiting for. After a long while, the image ripened in my mind and I carried it with me always: two women adorning themselves to sip tea and listen to Um Kulthoum and Abdel Halim Hafez on the radio. I didn’t wonder at any great length about their secrets; I thought it was a joke they liked sharing. But their gravity and their exaggerated insistence on the details; their strict observance of the silence which dominated when Um Kulthoum began to sing; their posture, like spectators in an invisible theatre; the sips of tea and the crystal fruit bowl; the dishes of roasted spices and the cigarette smoke; brief murmurs and long, silent sighs … it all suggested that the wait wouldn’t be a long one, and that the arrival of those who were still absent was assured. I tried to find a name worthy of the scene, but it was enough to watch Marwa’s lips as she murmured along with Um Kulthoum, smiled, and reached out a hand for Safaa who was ensconced in a nearby sofa as tears slid silently down her face.

Waiting for something which never came was better than having nothing at all to wait for. I recalled the image and coloured it in: after the songs, the two of them would rearrange the sitting room, desperately, for an arrival — I didn’t know what kind, or even if it was all nonsense. Then they would go back into their room and stretch out on Marwa’s bed, looking from the window at the calm sheet of water in the pool and the gleam of the yellow stone paving, which was almost an enchanting shade of blue when the light lost its intensity. From the window it seemed an apparition, hiding shadows and muffling footsteps. Once, I asked Safaa sharply, ‘Are you expecting someone?’ They laughed, and as they exchanged a quick glance, she said, ‘We’re expecting expectation.’

I lay down on the bed next to them, and I tried to relax and reply concisely to Marwa’s teasing banter. I shared the boredom which rose from the fragrance of their perfumed clothes. They would sink into their beds, and I hadn’t even approached the depths of that moment which still echoes in front of me.

* * *

I was reminded that we were women who had been abandoned the more I tried to hold back the images of one particular journey of my grandfather’s. He would ride in an oak carriage pulled by two light-skinned mules, hybrids he had bought at a khan in Nazdaly in Turkey. He would arrive in Nazdaly in the evening, at a carefully calculated time he only rarely deviated from — such as on that winter evening in 1945. My grandfather would narrate the story every time he saw a rainbow, although this wouldn’t help him remember the details in full. I became suspicious of the story in the form in which it reached me — and Maryam couldn’t conceal its second part, concerning as it did Khalil (my grandfather’s driver) and Wasal Khanim, the wife of the owner of Khan Cordoba.

That evening, the owner, Esmat Ajqabash, was roused from his sleep in his private quarters, which were separate from the guest rooms at the khan and the stables. My grandfather’s voice was weak, and Esmat didn’t recognize it at first. This call for help was different from that of men who had lost their way, or hunters who had unexpectedly come across Khan Cordoba in its secluded part of the country. From the main road, it took more than half an hour to reach it on foot. Esmat rose from his bed and his wife, Wasal, pleaded with him not to open the door — it was late, it wasn’t safe. Esmat carried a lantern and tried to recognize the man who was coughing heavily and whose fist beat violently against the wooden door. Esmat knew my grandfather’s voice after he called out his name, and quickly opened up. My grandfather was standing there, marks of exhaustion on his face that looked more like illness. Khalil stood next to him; his face was cruel, and his sharp gaze penetrated Wasal’s body as she stood half-naked behind her husband, pressing down on her breasts revealed by the opening in her flimsy nightgown. My grandfather collapsed on to Esmat’s chest, who embraced him and brought him inside. Khalil remained standing at the door, shivering in the biting cold. Confusion overcame Wasal and she tried to find something with which to shield her nakedness. Everyone went into the bedroom and my grandfather sat on the edge of the tall iron bed. Esmat asked with his eyes what had happened; my grandfather couldn’t pronounce a single word, and Khalil was engrossed with Wasal. She began to feel a pleasure she had never known before, and lingered over warming the soup and pouring it into the bowls made from Constantine crystal.