Shumaisi

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Shumaisi Page 7

by al-Hamad, Turki; Starkey, Paul;


  Hisham poured himself another cup of arak and drank it slowly as he smoked. He no longer felt any fear or embarrassment, or anything painful at all. Everything in his mind focused on the pleasure that lay in store. He downed the last of the arak, ground out his cigarette in the ashtray and hurried downstairs, aware of nothing until he stood at the door of her house. Then he looked around him, made certain that the alley was empty, and pushed wide the half-open door, shutting it quickly behind him. He was inside, and the woman was standing there waiting for him.

  She grabbed him by the hand and pulled him into the room in which he had first seen her. Without any preliminaries, she threw herself at him and kissed him passionately, as if she had known him for a long time. In a few moments they were stretched out together on the floor. Their embraces were more passionate than any he had experienced with Raqiyya, because this time it was him taking the lead. But as the effects of the arak began to wear off, he started to feel nervous again. He was terrified about the scandal there would be if her husband came back without any warning. He wanted to leave, but she persuaded him to stay, convincing him that it was impossible that her husband would show up now. She asked him to drink tea with her, and he accepted despite himself. She went to get the tea ready, wearing nothing but a short blue, see-through dress with no underclothes. Her whole body quivered as she walked. She brought the tea, put it in front of him and poured a cup which she handed him, laughing, showing her pure white teeth. ‘By the way, my name is Sarah. But my friends call me Suwayr.’

  ‘And I’m –’

  ‘I know. Hisham, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes … but how did you know?’ She laughed mischievously. Her dress had slipped, revealing her belly. He glimpsed her shaven triangle.

  ‘Aren’t we neighbours?’ she said. ‘I made discreet inquiries about you.’ She looked at him out of the corner of her eye as she calmly sipped her tea, smiling cryptically. She had her legs tucked under her bottom, so that the skin on her knees and thighs was taut, and glowed in the light filtering through the window.

  ‘I knew that you spied on us on the roof from your room,’ she said. ‘I knew that you were there. I knew that I would get you. I wanted you from the moment I saw you, though you didn’t know it. I started to look for you there, watching from the window, when you were coming back home …’

  Hisham felt feverishly hot, though the temperature was quite moderate. His cheeks were flushed, and beads of sweat had collected on his wide brow. Suwayr saw his embarrassment, and leaned forward to kiss his cheeks. Then she sat back down, saying with obvious tenderness, smiling clearly, ‘Ever since I first saw you, I felt something strange drawing me to you. I felt that I had known you for ages. I felt that we were bound together by something like fate that couldn’t be repelled or resisted. Call it what you like, but this is what I felt.’

  Silence descended, broken only by the sound of their tea-drinking, until she said, ‘Your face spoke of everything that I needed: innocence, love and compassion. This is what I have always looked for.’ Then, without any warning, she suddenly broke into silent tears. They streamed down her face. She was forced to raise her legs to hide her face between them. Her dress came off completely, but for the first time he saw her body without that overpowering lust. Instead his throat ached, and his whole body prickled. He stretched out his hand and put it on her bare knee, feeling many different sensations, none of which was lust. When she felt his hand on her knee, she covered it with her’s and looked up at him submissively. Then she drew his face to hers and planted a kiss deep on his lips. Her salty tears ran onto his lips as they embraced. They became one flesh again.

  18

  After this, his relationship with Suwayr strengthened. He visited her a lot. They would talk a great deal, and often they would make love. He started to skip the occasional morning lecture, especially Shahtuti’s and al-Ghadban’s, so as to see her. Sometimes, when he reflected that he had betrayed his entire upbringing, he felt sick with self-loathing. But he was unable to stop himself spinning round and round in a wheel he’d set rolling himself – and, indeed, he didn’t really want to stop.

  He stopped spying on her when one night, creeping up to the window, he saw her making love to her husband. The sight enraged him. But although he stopped spying on them, anger and lust still gripped him whenever he heard the dogs barking outside, because they conjured images of Suwayr moaning under her husband. He would feel a great loathing for her, and a fierce loathing for himself, before lust quickly took the place of anger.

  He discovered she was foolhardy. One day, around noon, he was flicking through magazines in his room, leaning against the wall, and listening to Umm Kulthumm singing, Ask the golden cups, when he was suddenly aware of Suwayr, her voluptuous body and distinctive smell of lemon perfume, her broad smile and her provocative eyes, standing right in front of him. Her cloak had fallen from her head and lay on her shoulders; her thick hair fell to just below her bottom, and she had wrapped its ends around her waist. When he saw her he leapt up instinctively and locked his door shut. Then he retraced his steps while Suwayr watched him, laughing irrepressibly as she covered her mouth with her sleeve. Her eyes were fixed on him, radiating childish glee.

  ‘You’re mad,’ he said. ‘You’re completely mad.’ He stared at her, transfixed, every particle of his body on edge. His hands shook, and he spoke in a whisper, looking nervously at the door. Suwayr laughed, taking off her gown to reveal a flowing, gaily-patterned dress, the front open halfway down her rebellious breasts. She threw herself on him and dragged him towards the bed. Then she sat him on it and planted a deep kiss on his mouth. Her eyes melted and she said, ‘Yes, I’m mad for you. Ever since I saw you, I’ve been mad.’

  She kissed him again, then glanced round the room. ‘This is lovely …’ She broke off, then said passionately, ‘It’s enough for you to be breathing in it for the room to be nice.’ At this Hisham felt a glorious burst of self-importance, despite his considerable fear that they would be discovered. He lit a cigarette and dragged greedily on it, blowing the smoke into Suwayr’s face, as if to challenge her, or exercise his inflated ego by humiliating her. He knew that she didn’t like smoking; she had told him so before. But she just closed her eyes and breathed in the smoke, saying, ‘Even the smoke you exhale is different from other smoke. It’s enough for it to be mixed with your breath for me to like it.’

  She kissed him again. He felt a surge of pleasure; he was almost bursting from pride. She came closer to him and their bodies met. He felt the warmth of her body mingled with a feminine smell and the smell of lemon. They spoke in a whisper, which stopped when Suwayr closed his mouth with hers. He asked her how she had managed to come to his room. Laughing with happiness and pride, she hugged him and whispered in his ear:

  ‘My love, my love! Don’t you know that Moudhi is my friend? We are neighbours. I visit her when I’m in the mood. It seems that visiting her will cross my mind quite often from now on!’ She laughed tenderly. But Hisham was confused.

  ‘Aren’t you afraid that Moudhi will suspect something?’ Suwayr laughed again.

  ‘My love, Moudhi is always busy, I even leave without her saying goodbye to me at the door. If I wanted to burgle the whole house, there’d be no one to stop me.’ She was silent for a bit, smiling and gazing at Hisham. Then she said, ‘Moudhi is convinced you are the purest being on earth.’ He felt a sharp pain in his stomach as she said that, and flushed deep purple. Suwayr noticed and stopped laughing. She hugged him, whispering in an excited voice, ‘And you are the purest being on earth … but Moudhi doesn’t believe you are capable of anything except reading and studying. She doesn’t know about the tender heart inside you, or your pure spirit. You are my beloved, and will remain my beloved forever.’ She pulled away from him, her eyes bathed in tears that refused to fall. He felt pain in his stomach again, but it was a different kind of pain. Gently he pulled her head onto his shoulder. Suwayr began to cry, sobbing, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I di
dn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I know them better than anyone, even though I have only got to know you recently. No. I have known you for a long time, and I knew that it was you I had been waiting for the first time we met.’

  She continued to weep. Hisham waited for her to calm down, then raised her head from his shoulder. Her eyes and cheeks were completely soaked in tears. She took her veil and started to wipe them away, smiling and apologising, ‘I’m being so cruel.’ Hisham felt that he really loved her. His throat hurt, and tears filled his eyes. They stayed for a moment without speaking, looking at each other, then she suddenly stood up and took her cloak, saying, ‘It’s time to go. Alyan will arrive soon, and I haven’t got supper ready yet.’ She hurried to the door. Before she left, she blew him a kiss, and smiled. Then he sat alone, the scent of lemon filling the room.

  After that, Suwayr came to him three times a week. Whenever she left, he felt loathsome and small. He was betraying the trust of the Prophet’s family and stabbing them in the back, just as long ago he had shattered the image his mother had of him. Had he turned into such a despicable creature so quickly and so utterly? He began to frequent the mosque, but he could not attain the same fervour that he had felt the time he went after his experience with Raqiyya. And he was winning the admiration and absolute trust of his uncle, which made him loathe himself even more. So the last time Suwayr visited him, he asked her not to come back. She protested at first, but he threatened to break off the relationship once and for all. Reluctantly, she accepted. In actual fact he was determined to break the relationship with her anyway, but he couldn’t. He carried on going to her in her house. Lust, love, fear, anxiety and loathing enveloped him every visit. Love for her, like the love he felt for Noura, began to grow within him. He desired her more than Raqiyya, and treasured her, but not like Moudhi. To him, she had almost come to represent all three of these women, but he kept hidden powerful feelings of hate and disgust for her. These feelings clung to him, and nothing he could do could rid him of them.

  19

  Then something happened that made him forget himself, forget Suwayr, forget his studies, forget everything else. Fighting broke out between the Jordanian army and the Palestinian resistance organisations in Amman. Everyone huddled around their radios to listen for the latest news and details of the battles. Everyone was obsessed by what was happening in ‘Wahdat’, ‘Marka’, ‘al-Mahatta’ and ‘Jabal Hussein’, which they took to calling ‘Revolutionary Jabal’, just as the fedayeen themselves did. Hisham would leave college and head straight for his friends’ house, where they would gather in the hall around a radio and a large pot of tea, drinking it by force of habit and listening in a silence occasionally punctuated by quick, angry comments:

  ‘Hussein has confirmed that he is a collaborator; there’s absolutely no room for doubt.’

  ‘Didn’t he say we are all fedayeen?’

  ‘What a traitor!’

  ‘How happy Israel must be!’

  ‘Nasser* won’t stand with his hands tied in the face of this bloodbath and this treachery!’

  ‘The hope is that Syria will intervene’

  ‘How could the Iraqi army not intervene in Jordan?’

  ‘It’s a conspiracy, a conspiracy!’

  Shrieks of joy would ring out whenever news came that a division of the Jordanian army had joined the resistance, or that a military commander had rebelled against the army and joined the ranks of the fedayeen. There was an overwhelming feeling that the resistance would persevere and that the fedayeen would triumph despite the conspiracies and treachery of Jordan’s King Hussein, of Israel, and of America, who lurked behind it all.

  The needle on the radio jumped from station to station: from ‘London’ to the ‘Voice of America’ to the ‘Voice of the Arabs’ and the ‘Voice of the Revolution’ – where it usually stayed. When the needle fell by chance on Radio Amman or the Israeli Broadcasting Authority they would fumble to change it, cursing and swearing. Muhanna wanted to keep the needle the whole time on ‘Voice of the Arabs’, but the others wanted ‘Voice of the Revolution’. He would give in, huffing and puffing and muttering incomprehensibly, then slip away to his room where the transistor radio was permanently tuned to his favourite station. He would shut the door, having already made himself a pot of tea.

  Their thirst for knowledge could not be quenched by the news from ‘London’, the ‘Voice of America’ or any other station. The young people believed that America and the imperialist powers were behind the conspiracy. They trusted only the ‘Voice of the Revolution’ and only felt happy when it gave them news of resistance victories.

  Their excitement reached fever pitch when a delegation from the Arab League managed to smuggle Abu Ammar (Yasser Arafat) out of Amman to Cairo, in preparation for the Arab summit conference called by Gamal Abdel-Nasser to address the situation. The story of his departure sounded more like a fantasy from the traditional stories of the ‘Days of the Arabs’.* The delegation managed to smuggle him out in traditional Arab dress, and the stock of the Kuwaiti Sheikh Sa‘d al-‘Abdallah al-Sabah rose considerably, after his role in this extraordinary operation became known. Muhanna was exasperated by this summit story; he would have preferred Nasser to intervene directly and finish King Hussein off. Despite this, he kept repeating, ‘Didn’t I tell you … only Nasser can solve it.’ As much as they were agreed on loathing King Hussein, they harboured a deep admiration for Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi, especially when he drew his revolver on King Hussein at the conference. It was enough for Nasser to have described al-Gaddafi as the ‘guardian of the nation’, and to say that al-Gaddafi reminded him of his youth, for Muhanna to admire him. In fact, this was reason enough for everyone to admire Mu’ammar al-Gaddafi, regardless of anything else.

  ________________

  * Gamal Abdel-Nasser (1918–70) led the Free Officers’ Movement that brought an end to the Egyptian monarchy on 23 July 1952, becoming President of Egypt (1954–70). Events alluded to in chapters 19 and 20 include the war over Suez (1956); the union of Egypt with Syria in the United Arab Republic (1958–62); the 1967 Six Day War with Israel; and the Palestinian-Jordanian clashes of ‘Black September’, 1970.

  * Stories of inter-tribal conflicts among the pre-Islamic Arabs.

  20

  Gamal Abdel-Nasser died … and they all suffered a kind of paralysis – a stupefaction. Was he really dead? No one believed that he could die. They knew that he was human and therefore mortal, yet … he wouldn’t actually die. But die he did, and with him died many dreams and hopes. He died carrying the cares of the nation; the nation that he loved had killed him. He died after bidding farewell to Sheikh Sabah al-Salim al-Sabah, the Emir of Kuwait, the last of his fellow Arabs to see him. He died after stopping the bloodshed in Jordan, but he killed himself to do it. The nation killed him. They had all killed him. Everyone grieved with the poet Nizar Qabbani:

  We killed you, last of the Prophets,

  We killed you.

  It is nothing new for us

  To murder the Companions and the Saints.

  How many Prophets have we killed?

  How many imams have we slaughtered as they said the

  evening prayer?

  All our history is suffering;

  All our days are Karbala.*

  Hisham’s cousin Ahmad brought him the news on a morning Hisham would never forget as long as he lived. He was getting ready to go to college, when suddenly, to Hisham’s surprise, Ahmad burst into his room. He poured himself a glass of tea, took a large gulp, then said calmly, ‘Have you heard the news? Your friend has died. Gamal has died, and may God never bring him back.’ Hisham was combing his hair. His hands started to tremble, the comb fell from his grip and he stared in horror at Ahmad.

  ‘What … what did you say?’

  ‘Gamal has died … or did you think he was immortal?’ Ahmad sniggered. Hisham felt an enormous hatred for his cousin, and at the same time a dagger plunged itself deep inside him. He wanted to cry, but
a lump in his throat prevented him. His eyes stung with tears, but he couldn’t weep. Ahmad walked out, oblivious to the pain he had caused, and Hisham did not go to college that day.

  Gamal Abdel-Nasser was a symbol; a universal father-figure. They hated him, they loathed him, they argued with him, they fought with him, but they could not live without him or bear the thought of losing him. You may hate your father intensely, deep down you may wish he would vanish so that you can be free, but as soon as he dies you are confronted by the void he has left. Pain tears you apart, and your conscience tortures you, because you once wished him dead. When your father dies, you feel that something of yourself has also died; that the wall you leaned upon has collapsed. Until its collapse you hadn’t even noticed you were leaning on it, now you long for it with all your heart. But can what is past return? Nasser meant all this to Hisham.

  He was in a state of confusion and considerable distress. Had Nasser really died, or was it just a rumour? He set off for his friends’ house in a daze. The door was open, so he walked straight in and found everyone sitting around the radio in the hall, grief-stricken. Muhanna and Muhammad were weeping, hunched over with their heads in their arms. So it was true. Hisham sat beside Muhaysin, feeling an almost unbearably painful swelling in his throat. He was overwhelmed by the need to cry, like the day long past when he heard of his aunt Hila’s death. Since then, he had rarely cried: once when he had said goodbye to his mother as he left for Beirut; and on another occasion when he heard that his aunt Sharifa had died. Now he rested his head on his knees and began to cry quietly.

 

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