In Praise of Hatred

by Khaled Khalifa

  * * *

  Zahra came to stay in our house. She unpacked her large bag and hung her clothes in Safaa’s wardrobe. We didn’t believe her visit would last that long, but a month would become a year, and a year became years, and no one knew any longer when it would end. Bakr was totally absent. He became like a bat in the night which we couldn’t get hold of; we could only hear the rush of his wings beating around us. Safaa and Abdullah left Aleppo like they were being hunted after Abdullah made a few swift calls to various countries, using my uncles’ telephones.

  * * *

  We took up again our visits to the hammam in a reversion to our unchanging image; Blind Radwan led us there without enthusiasm. We were afraid to admit that the hot water and the smell of the cavernous baths couldn’t save us from our depression. We resumed our chatter about details no more important than peeling garlic heads, or whether to store the hot pepper paste in glass jars or plastic containers. Zahra’s perpetual preoccupation confused me, along with the way she avoided sitting around the pool on afternoons when the sky was clear and the winter sun brilliant.

  Like a fugitive from everything, I went to school in the mornings as if it were my only sanctuary. I would look for Ghada as if she were my mirror, so I could see my image scattered in her sad eyes. She was losing her liveliness and had begun to wither. She didn’t answer my questions, told me she would suffocate, and asked me to walk with her in the streets. I walked close, grasping her arm as we crossed Qouwatly Street and reached Jamiliyya. I was interested in one of the buildings; I knew that it was the secret house where she met her lover, and my desire to see him murdered returned to me. She opened the door and we went inside, where she broke down sobbing. She told me that he had abandoned her and she hadn’t seen him for three weeks. He had told her that she was no longer suitable and had walked out on her, leaving behind only the smell of his shirt and her memories of him on the soft leather sofas covered with the heads of pharaohs and bulls.

  As we wandered through the small house, Ghada wept. There were photographs of him everywhere. I imagined how many times he had taken her in his arms like a butterfly and lain her down on the wide bed to penetrate her, so feminine and delicate, like a beast. Jealousy filled my heart, and I was struck by a desire to weep, to smash everything, to burn the house down and reduce it to ashes. I dredged up all the hatred that had become part of my sense of the world, and changed myself into an interrogator – I sat Ghada down like she was the accused. He had left her some money, apparently, enough to help an abandoned woman forget, paid the rent of the house for three months, and offered her one of his colleagues should she miss him. She described him as vulgar and depraved but an unforgettable lover. She had offered to wait for him every day, like a maidservant waiting for her master, even if he came in only to look at her, and then leave. When I saw her wandering around the living room reliving his embraces, I realized that she was calmed by it. It was difficult for her to take in a word I said. I slipped away like a fugitive without saying goodbye. I wept in the street; I covered my face and soaked the black veil. As if seeing Aleppo for the first time, I wandered through it, lost. No one noticed me when I returned; they had got used to my absences over recent days as I spent most of my time with Alya.

  I felt like I needed to see Alya, even though our next group meeting wasn’t due yet. As I walked towards her house, a strange power welled up inside me. I wanted to be just like her. Her companions were surprised when I arrived, but Alya allowed me to stay for the trial of her friend Anoud. They had been tipped off that she kept an album of pornographic pictures within her milaya at all times; also, a young man she knew waited for her behind the Faculty of Literature after lectures every Tuesday and Thursday evenings. The trial was convened with all majesty, and Anoud swore on the Quran that she would tell the truth. She added that the young man had taken her hands and kissed them, and then she pointed to the place where the album was kept inside her black clothes – I rushed towards her without permission and searched her roughly. The album was produced and I asked God’s forgiveness for the obscenity of the pictures, which showed the private parts of smiling men. Alya took hold of me and drew me away. She promised me there would be a horrible punishment which would quench our thirst and restore our reputations as decent mujahid girls. I couldn’t wait; we left Alya’s house and I felt my body was filthy, in need of a wash.

  I related this to Zahra, and was frustrated by her indifference to my eagerness. I was surprised by her lethargy and her ardour for her mother’s letters, which she still carried with her. She spent whole nights reading them, full of longing, wishing they would never end. I used to adore our house, but now I began to hate it. It was ruled by indolence, by silence, by a wait for men who never returned and about whom we never heard anything. The few hours Bakr had spent with us on his last visit were like a warning, or a dream we all craved. We knew that he had fled from us to the unknown; we had to accept it resolutely. During those hours, Bakr withdrew with Zahra and Maryam herded us into her room so we wouldn’t hear their moans. We kept away, like silly children who didn’t know what would take place between a husband and wife who knew this was their last meeting. Bakr later kissed my head and asked me to abandon Ghada and stay away from her. I informed him about the trial, and conveyed its details in their entirety, including the judgement to shave Anoud’s head and banish her from our circle. Anoud had cried and sworn that she would never again swap nude pictures with her fallen friends. She was put under observation; Alya watched her at university, her sister Samia watched her at home, and God watched her everywhere else. In the same way, He watched us all and I sensed He was very close to me; I could feel His breath, and it calmed me.

  Zahra reminded me of Hajja Radia and how I hadn’t visited her for a long time. I said to myself that I didn’t love her any more, but I remembered how kind she had been when she used to sit me beside her so I could dream of Rabia Adawiya, crossing the barzakh like a white lark flying in a black sky. I thought of how stupid I had been when I believed that we needed hatred to enter Paradise. I saw her from afar: a calm woman with a heart full of fear, as opposed to Hajja Souad who illuminated a path of hatred before me, given meaning by cruelty. Her steady eyes dazzled me as they looked coldly into every person she spoke to.

  * * *

  I didn’t know why Ghada had begun to avoid me once more. She suddenly withdrew from me and wandered through the school courtyard with Nada, and at leaving time she would climb into the death squad officer’s car with her. My studies suffered. I wanted to escape from Ghada’s remorseful glances whenever she approached me. I knew she wanted to cry and talk about how her lover persevered in humiliating her, how she hoped to be saved from the desires which made her crazy during those long winter nights. She would get up to smash everything within arm’s reach – vases, ornaments, frames containing photos of the family – and afterwards, she would gather up the scattered glass silently. Her father, a well-regarded employee at the Ministry of Finance, wept in front of her lover, who laughed at him and asked him to leave, threatening to ruin his reputation and prosecute his daughter for debauchery.

  I had my revenge on her when I saw her pale face; she could speak only a few fragmented, disconnected words. Finally she returned to me, but emptiness filled her existence. She was grateful to me because I greeted her during the morning roll call as we went into class. The other girls at school shunned her after news spread that her father had gone to that man; the officer’s men circulated stories about the police’s secret files on her, which confirmed that she visited cattle traders and slept with them in exchange for money. Alya definitively and firmly told me to stay away from her. I had no compassion for Ghada when I saw her expelled from school; she was vacant-eyed, and had lost all her sparkle. I was indifferent when she kissed me, or when I caught the scent of her perfume when she came close to me. I thought that ridding ourselves of those we loved had a similar function to our transformation into barren beings; it would give us stre
ngth, which we expected would turn into resplendent hatred.

  I saw my future clearly in front of me. My feeling of strength made my presence at the rites marking births in friends’ families, or at any other little celebration, into a gift I would give to them. I would intervene harshly when Maryam accepted such invitations, and I would limit the type of presents we took with us. Most of the gifts were copies of the Quran edged in gold leaf. When our acquaintances accepted the gift, I would ask them to kiss it and hold it to their foreheads and hearts in a show of humility. Back at home, I walked in the courtyard like an officer who has mislaid his troops. I ordered Radwan peremptorily not to leave his room at night, and he obeyed me silently and muttered something incomprehensible. I guessed that he was sighing after my old self when I was his companion who would join him to sing nashid in praise of the Prophet. I wished he had sight, so he could see my new image and know that everything I had left behind me was pale, unnecessary for a woman who wanted to become the emira of her group, who wanted to throw her weight behind things, and weave her own myth so that others would narrate it like a tale worthy of consecration.

  I didn’t like Zahra’s silence, nor her wry glances at my ponderous footsteps that suited the dignity that possessed me after I received the decision that I should take on the role of an emira, princess and leader among these other students. Hajja Souad’s voice trembled when she read out the decision and blessed it, enumerating my qualities and the force of my allegiance to my group; I swore to give my life to further our battle and to obliterate blasphemy from the face of the earth. The girls blessed me coolly, amid covert accusations that Bakr was the reason for my appointment as emira.

  Before I became a princess I avoided going to meetings of the group for two months. I was immersed in my studies, determined to realize my aunts’ dream. My mother was depressed, and didn’t believe that Hossam was all right despite the letter from him I took to her. He asked her to pray for him and described my father as a great man, me as everyone’s greatest hope, and my little brother Humam as a pure-spirited bird. I loved his neat, regular handwriting. ‘I miss him,’ I said to Maryam, who nodded and continued reading the Sura Yusuf as if carrying on what she had started forty years earlier without interruption and in the same tone. She enunciated the ending of each word with the solemnity appropriate for the holy text.

  I saw Hossam twice more. Bakr had agreed to a meeting after being assured of my perseverance and hearing about my cruelty, my zeal, and my requests to kill infidels. The first time, before he left us, Bakr asked me to go down to the cellar with him, gave me a wrapped-up bundle of papers, and told me to take it to Hajja Souad. Then he informed me of the predetermined time and location for my meeting with Hossam – in front of the Cinema Opera at three o’clock – and asked me to buy two tickets and pretend that we were a boy and girl fleeing school to spend a few furtive hours exchanging loving glances and brushing our hands against each other. I overdid the camouflage and wore vivid red lipstick like a doll who knew nothing of feminine secrets. My heart was beating hard as I stood and waited by the door. At that time, I knew that my brother hadn’t yet been discovered by the Mukhabarat; overwhelming caution was required to keep him hidden. I looked at my watch; I lost hope. I was about to tear up the tickets and walk away when a young man approached me and looked into my eyes, almost penetrating them through the veil. He smiled at me. I knew him from his voice when he apologized for being late, like any young man wanting to get rid of the sweetheart chasing after him, hell-bent on marrying him. He took hold of my arm and we went into the half-empty cinema, where we sat at a distance from the few audience members idly watching Spartacus liberating Roman slaves and leading them to burn down their masters’ palaces.

  I wanted to kiss Hossam and embrace him, although it was enough to hold his hands in mine and feel their heat. I thought how he had grown suddenly over the last few months; his face had gained a hardness which would remain clinging to it. He didn’t tell me anything, but listened attentively as I told him about our mother, father, brother and aunts. I wondered why I was so distant from them that I couldn’t tell him more details than he already knew, just as I couldn’t answer his questions about whether or not our younger brother Humam still believed that the fish my father sold were plucked from trees like lemons; he used to open his small hands and wait for them to pour down like rain. We laughed guardedly, and I told him about my meetings and elaborated on the girls in the cell, not forgetting my own heroism and the suggestion of hatred I planted in their minds when I stood up and spoke to them about our enemies, the other sects. I knew Hossam’s face when it was flooded with contentment; his eyes shone so that he seemed like a sentimental boy, almost crying with grief for the bird that callous hunters had slaughtered in front of him; I could see he was pleased. He left me without answering any of my questions, and restricted himself to informing me that he was travelling a lot, without leaving me any room for further inquiry. He gave me money for my mother and left, turning into Bustan Kul Ab Street without bidding me goodbye.

  A hideous loneliness afflicted me. I stopped wanting to speak. I immersed myself in silence which didn’t stop me from thinking about Zahra who sometimes ignored me. She didn’t care when I told her I was embarking on an important career. Her entire curiosity amounted to the five words she spoke coldly: ‘God is gracious to you.’ Then she sat by Marwa so they could finish spreading out the aubergine to dry. I asked Marwa about Zahra’s about-turn and she replied curtly and with a tone of veiled rebuke that it was me who had changed, and that they were making allowances for me as my exam dates were approaching. I fiercely defended my changes, adding how sorry I was that they hadn’t joined me in appreciating how wonderful it felt to kill the sons of the other sects and glorify the mujahideen, and then I rushed to my room. I took out the last letter Abdullah had sent to me alone, in which he described me as a little mujahida. I finished reading the lines in which he informed me that he was going to Afghanistan to support our brothers who were resisting the humiliation imposed by the Soviet Communists, a confidence given as if in confirmation of my position. Marwa, as usual, didn’t care and went on discussing the mahshy and how too many spices ruined its flavour. ‘I need some quiet,’ I told myself. I arranged my room so I could study for the exams, and cut myself off from everything. Maryam stayed awake beside me for many nights, and took out a pure-silk bedsheet decorated with red and yellow flowers; she said it was the remains of Safaa’s trousseau. I put it on my table, and the sheet imparted intense colours to it, which I didn’t like. I added new notes in the margins of Hossam’s textbooks, debating with him as if we were drinking coffee together, while cursing our uncles and laughing.

  Twice, Omar came over to help me in Religion and Arabic. Sometimes he felt affection for the principles of tajwid recitation and demonstrated his skill for me; we were like two cockerels in a fighting arena, ruffling our feathers. Maryam was proud of our learning. Sometimes I would exaggerate in reciting information from a book to turn Zahra’s head, who was as silent as a stone, ignoring our enthusiasm.

  Radwan intervened to settle our dispute over the correct grammatical suffixes of the word Fahawmal in Imru Al Qays’ mu’allaqa. We repeated its lines and added different grammatical inflections like scholars in the ancient souk of Akaz. Omar’s company made the days pass pleasantly and easily, unpretentiously, but after he went abroad I returned to my hatred, confirming to them all that I had grown up and was not ashamed of disagreeing with my tolerant aunts, and of being close to Bakr, who I hoped would be the long-awaited Mahdi. I was proud he was my uncle.

  On the day before the exams, I saw Ghada walking by herself. She had braided her hair carelessly, and she was trembling. I put her appearance down to worry about the exams and lack of sleep, so it came as a shock when she took a Makarov pistol from her handbag and said indifferently that her lover, the important officer in the Mukhabarat, had brought her back to him as an informer. She would wait outside his assistant’s doo
r to give him some reports, in which she vented all her lust and desire, but she never saw him. At the end of one report, stamped ‘Top Secret’, she reminded him of the tenderness of their trysts. He tore it up and pronounced her to be mad; she said, ‘I can’t live without him.’ She went off without waving goodbye to me, and that same night she committed suicide with a bullet to the head, leaving a short note for her family in which she informed them that she loved them; she felt redundant; she didn’t want to become an informer; and she concluded by saying she was no longer a virgin and was polluted, and that in a dark room she had aborted a foetus which should have had the right to live.

  I buried Ghada swiftly, like a plague I needed to escape. I sat in her room, and looked at the pink walls and the pictures of Mickey Mouse, which she had been mad about when she was a child who didn’t want to grow up or stop laughing. Friends of hers I knew wept and embraced her mother. Only I was stiff. I looked at the mourning ceremony for the dishonoured girl, rebuking myself but sure that she would go to Hell, and there would be no merciful intercession from the Prophet … On the third day, I went to her grave. I sat on the edge and wept for hours. I spoke to her and wept, recalling her smile and the smell of her neck. I sat in my room and didn’t go out; I locked the door and lay on my bed alone. My mother came every day, expecting Bakr. She read out what Hossam had written in the letter I had given her, and avoided mentioning the money he had sent her through me. She hid it in her closet after crying and kissing it, searching for the smell of his fingers. I chastised her for her weakness. I seemed like her mother, and she seemed like my daughter, asking for guidance so I wouldn’t leave her alone. All of us women were waiting for news of Hossam and Bakr, who were no longer seen in any place we knew of.