The first days of Marwa’s absence were very hard. Zahra wiped pus away from her father’s sores and helped Safaa with her preparations for the birth. I went to see Uncle Khalil and expressed my sympathy for his pain. My concern for him meant I regained Zahra, the friend I had lost long ago and whom I needed now. Radwan helped me feed Khalil, and I recited the Sura Al Baqara for him. I tried to recite it using tajwid and Radwan nodded approvingly, joining in where he had memorized it by heart. We became a duet, mourning a man we loved and refusing to listen to his ravings which interrupted our recitation, as if we were reciting to ourselves and not for his soul. We had decided to wait for it to ascend from his body and flutter away over the city – along with the countless number of souls that had crowded together over the preceding months, until Aleppo turned into a city of wails, curtailed funerals, silent elegies and deep sadness in mothers’ eyes as, a few metres away from them, murderers strutted about in their uniforms and boasted.
* * *
With my own eyes, I saw Samir Nirabi trying to escape from a night-time ambush by one of the Mukhabarat patrols. He shot at them from his hiding place and used up all his ammunition. There was nothing in front of him but the bakery at Bab Al Nasr, so he threw himself into its large red-hot oven; the few customers vomited in horror at the sight. Madness took possession of the soldiers and they emptied their magazines into his corpse, which was badly charred, amid cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘Bismillah’ from passers-by. The soldiers circled the area to take futile revenge on the blackened corpse. The baker couldn’t believe his eyes when Samir Nirabi rushed into the oven; he had a breakdown and was afflicted by nightmares. He didn’t leave his house for a year, after which he returned to his village to look after livestock, and escape the malice of the children who bashed on tin cans, swarming after him like the insects which rush to the watermelon fields and leave scars on the fruit’s smooth skin.
I saw Samir’s mother walk barefoot through the city, cursing both sects and wailing with bitter tears as, behind her, her sons and daughters raised their fists like they were mourning the air. The soldiers prevented her from touching Samir’s remains, so she spat in their faces. I didn’t dare approach her; I felt that words were worthless. I remembered Samir Nirabi’s lean face when he passed by me in the college corridors, avoiding either looking at me or hinting at our relationship. Hossam was only one year older than him, and had recruited him from one of the secondary schools. They went to the swimming pool together and Samir was transformed from a frivolous young man who followed young foreign girls home from school, serenading them openly and showing off his gold jewellery, to a harsh defender of the Islamic state and its martyrs. His mother would remain openly hostile to our family for the rest of her life. She swore that she would have revenge on us, and on the death squad who banned her from leaving her home. She would open her window every morning to curse everyone tirelessly until the day she died of a sudden heart attack.
* * *
We all took prodigious care of Safaa as her due date approached. She regretted having returned to give birth amongst us; she missed her Saudi home comforts, and was worried and afraid for her baby. We needed a joyful event in our house to taste fully of life. The midwife came several times and examined Safaa in her primitive way, and watched over her closely in the final days. She shared the task of bringing in anise and algae with Maryam; I prepared and perfumed the baby clothes for the new arrival, and was delighted by Safaa’s interest in them. Maryam stuck to Safaa like her shadow; she even slept on the floor next to her bed. Maryam needed to worry about someone to this impassioned extent in order to forget about everything that had happened.
No woman had given birth in our house for some time. The clan all gathered along with other women I didn’t know, and Zahra ordered me to fetch towels and hot water. When the child’s first cry was heard none of us trilled, as if we had forgotten how to do it, but there was joy on everyone’s faces. Radwan laughed as he investigated the baby, carried him around and approved the name Amir. We became very attached to Amir and he offered us an escape from the truths drowning the city – the chaos of revenge murders, hatred and cruelty.
Around this time, there was widespread resentment at the murder of a famous doctor whose clinic had been crammed with the poor, and who had been well known for his ardent Marxism and frank hostility to our movement. Then Sheikh Jamil was killed; a sycophant well known for his loyalty to the authorities, which was exploited by his children in order to inherit his sheikhdom and influence, and so pillage the country in partnership with corrupt officials. Most people were afraid of having even a minor political accusation raised against them as it might lead to a spell hiding underground; Sheikh Jamil spent his entire life without anyone even daring to question him. His family made sure he was fully exonerated, so that no similar fate would befall any of its members.
Thanks to the face of the young child whom I began to call ‘my prince’, I regained both my dreams and my optimism. I wondered how such a being would blossom, how his little face would grow, and his fingers, his eyes, his feet. Safaa stopped trying to get in touch with Abdullah; he was lost on the paths of Afghanistan along with the volunteers he had gathered from various Arab countries. Their asceticism left a considerable impression in the hearts of the Afghans who welcomed them and shared their slices of stale bread. They respected the volunteers’ neutrality towards the internal factions who argued over how to divide up the country. Abdullah didn’t sleep for nights at a time as he established regiments of volunteers to help Sheikh Nadim Al Salaty, whose respected presence prevented murder between the factions. Abdullah disguised himself in women’s clothing to reach a house in a remote suburb of Kabul so he could break bread with his new companions. In that outlying house, Abdullah announced to all the leaders present that the Arab mujahideen would stand on their neutrality; their role was to provide the support needed to expel their enemies, and they would not fire a single shot against any Afghan.
Afghanistan was forgotten until the Soviets entered it, and then the world was reminded of it once again. The Afghans, who wanted nothing from this world other than food for their children, became ensnared in difficulties. They became mercenaries for the warring factions that each wanted control over the marijuana fields they believed were full of money. Abdullah fell in love with the country when he saw its mountains, caves and plains. He considered its terrible silence appropriate for a reassessment of his sense of self and his ideas. After several trips to Washington when he used all his wiles to convince the Americans not to leave Afghanistan to its inevitable fate, Anderson followed him to Pakistan and they spoke like old friends about a new Islam, which wasn’t content with five prayers a day but pored over hundreds of texts calling for an Islamic state. On the first day they ate dinner in a local restaurant in Islamabad like tourists looking for traditional curios and Kashmiri silk. They haggled with a market trader and bought things they didn’t need. After being assured that Safaa had been delivered safely, Abdullah was as happy as a young child and insisted on celebrating with Anderson by going to the most luxurious restaurant and eating Saudi kabsa. They agreed to transport arms through a network of workers whom they didn’t name.
Abdullah would be alone for years. He vented his desires for Safaa in love poetry which had a broken metre but also a strange charm in its composition, and which was limited to words which rhymed with ‘Safaa’.
When we had to say goodbye to Safaa, we did everything for her and packed her bags with all the baby things; it became a necessity for us, so we could get used to her absence. After she had gone back to Saudi Arabia, the three of us, Zahra, Maryam and I, sat down together and we were silent. Maryam no longer felt a connection to anyone; Zahra was weary, moved automatically and didn’t reply to my questions about the secret of her soft feet and youthful face. There was nothing for me to do but return to my room and my dreams so I could draw them as I liked. I drew Abdullah wearing a turban, rifle in hand as he led the large a
rmy which would enter Kabul behind him and destroy the Russian forces being swallowed up by the quicksands in the swamps. Their remains turned into skulls which women collected to make necklaces of coloured beads that Afghans hung in their mud houses. For an entire week after Safaa’s departure, we ate our breakfast in silence and without enthusiasm. I was back at college; at the end of my walk there, I tried to recall the faces I had seen on the way. Everything had become decrepit: streets, faces, trees; now the obituaries no longer bothered to say ‘martyrs’ or even ‘killed by stray bullets’.
I spent a long time with Khalil and listened to his ravings as he described the taste of Wasal’s vagina as ‘spicy’ at one time and ‘like a pineapple’ at another. Afterwards he repented and wept to his friend Radwan, who smiled foolishly as he recalled memories of a young man about whom no one knew anything. One night, I heard Radwan speak to him about a mute girl the two of them had once met in the courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque. Radwan had convinced her of his ability to break the knot in her tongue, so she clung to him as he went on his errands; this eventually ended in a civil marriage performed by one of his blind friends, and which Radwan tore up after six months, during which time she had grown passionately devoted to him. She looked for him among the blind men of the city, who didn’t understand what she meant by the hand gestures she used to describe him. He told Khalil she was a poor woman who made straw baskets which no one bought; she exchanged them for herbs which would help her have a child, even if it was with Blind Radwan, who escaped from her only to become entangled with a family whose depression he couldn’t bear.
* * *
It is difficult to be constantly searching for the choices we want. Fate, to the same extent as it opened up secret caves in front of Abdullah, closed its doors in front of Maryam. Omar moved in with us after failing in his search for an elusive refuge – but she wasn’t saved even by his long stay. He would circle around the room, then leave wearing a limp suit, sad and devoid of any desire for frivolity or dissipation. He tried to open the family shops again, having lost much of his money in Beirut. He didn’t know how to get involved in any other trade.
At first Beirut had been entirely the right place for Omar’s new life, but the chokingly humid climate by the sea didn’t suit him. His homesickness never left him, and his friends lost their gay laughter. He eventually decided to return after the Mukhabarat confirmed that they would not harm him. He presented many expensive presents to the wives of officers who proved influential in pardoning the family name. He brought all his possessions, and tried to be involved with us, convincing Maryam that Marwa had committed no crime, and that members of the other sect were not our enemies but people it was possible to live alongside. His repeated visits to Marwa no longer roused anyone’s fury, and instead became a bridge with which he returned her to us. It is difficult to imagine yourself pardoning your enemy.
Omar never ceased to surprise us. He never doubted that life was short and did not deserve to be taken so seriously. The previous months had made him careworn, as if he was no longer in control. His beloved horse died and he couldn’t find anyone to bury it; he looked sorrowfully at its great skeleton, which was all that remained after the stray dogs had torn at it. He took its skull, cleaned it with alcohol, and dried it out in aniseed. Omar would boast of this new cup in front of guests who were used to his eccentricities. When he opened up the family shops there was a strong smell of mothballs, as he had stuffed large quantities of them in the more expensive carpets, to keep the mice away. They hadn’t found anything to gnaw on apart from one small carpet which Bakr had picked up from one of the markets of Izmir and considered a treasure. A rumour was circulated around the market that it had been presented to Sultan Abdel Hamid so he could pray during one of his visits to a famed shatranj player. Omar patched it up, but he was certain it would be too difficult to restore it properly. Bakr’s deviousness, which had once almost succeeded in getting an inexperienced antiques collector to pay six thousand dollars for it, was gone. Omar burned the carpet without a second thought. Smoke rose from the shop as he sat silently and observed his surroundings. He was overcome with nostalgia for the long-gone mornings spent here, as he drank tea and exchanged news of the latest murders in the narrow-laned quarters whose inhabitants were afforded no protection from their high walls.
Omar went to check on his farm which had been occupied by the death squad. They had ruined everything: they went down to the cellar where expensive wines were stored and drank them down without any regard for their taste; the bedding became filthy, and the smell of fat stank out the kitchen. Omar entered the house, accompanied by a senior officer, and threw them all out. He felt frustrated when he saw what they left behind and walked out again. He lived in seclusion, and didn’t respond to his friends’ entreaties to bring a bit of the joy to their lives which had faded after so many of them had fled abroad. He couldn’t find anywhere better to rest than our house. He sat and relaxed, a man returned to the family who needed him after a long absence. In the mornings he would have coffee and ask if we needed anything. I wouldn’t have believed that Omar could concern himself with parsley and cheese and would go to the Souk Al Hal to buy them while they were fresh. Maryam didn’t discuss how long he would be staying with us. She waited every day for him to gather his clothes and his things and leave us again to our lonely fate. We endured our relationships with all these males, whose lives began with dreams of the Republican Palace, and ended in homelessness, exile and prison.
* * *
Whenever Hossam came to me in dreams, I felt that all was not well with him. He would call for my help and ask me about the chemistry textbook; his face looked like that of a dead fish on a distant shore, stinking as its body disintegrated and vanished. I sat on my bed and drew a palm tree on a beach. My fingers and my coloured pens failed me. All colour faded to a monochrome where nothing held meaning or distinction; it was all featureless, without structure: a face without a past, present, or future. Our loss was manifested in our disconnected conversations, in the neglect of Marwa’s butterflies whose cases became covered with dust. ‘My only connection to her is her genes,’ I told myself. I cleaned the boxes and rearranged the butterflies, carried them to my room and watched them for days in a search for the meaning inherent in them. I paired up the colours, trying to create an order with a meaning specific to me. Radwan wouldn’t help me hunt for any more. He was engrossed in Khalil, whose last days were filled with delirium. Omar didn’t care about Khalil’s final moments and was just waiting for him to die – he hated this disruption to our routine which had turned the house into a staging post for the dead.
We were pleased with Omar and the severity with which he ordered Zahra not to coddle her father, and Maryam not to let things slide. Omar saw that Maryam was exhausted, her existence was tedious, and that she was certain that nothing would go back to how it should be. She was like a woman who has always taken great pride in her possessions, and who then returns from a trip to find that her apartment has been ransacked, that little thugs have crept in through the window and smashed the fragile ornaments she had been so careful of, so that they can hear her bemoan their ignorance that she should be surrounded by objects that reminded others of her status. Omar felt that Maryam’s disconnected sentences made her crumbling world into a mirror of events to come. ‘She doesn’t believe in anything any more,’ he thought as he watched her get up suddenly, leaving him to drink his coffee alone as she carried food to Khalil.
By now Khalil was only rarely conscious, and he seemed like a different man, as if he had been sleeping after a long night spent awake. He would look around him in astonishment as if it were the first time he was seeing Radwan’s room and the damp bed smelling of sweat. Zahra made a great effort to keep this stench from spreading through the house. She was worried by Omar. She saw disapproval in his eyes; his courteous visits to Khalil when he was conscious were no consolation; nor was the fact that he paid the doctor’s bills. Zahra considered the pa
yments as alms to the long-time companion of my grandfather, as charity from a man who wanted the city to talk about his affectionate heart. She asked Maryam for permission to move to a rented house and there look after Khalil like a dutiful daughter until his death. Then, she added, she would reassess her life as the wife of a wanted man, who had no hope of ever again sitting down to eat breakfast with her and their children. Radwan also threatened to leave with his friend.
In order to explain fully, Zahra handed Omar a letter reminding him of their long history of silent, mutual misunderstanding; she had always looked dimly on his lifestyle. She mentioned his quarrels with Bakr, which had eventually caused a near estrangement, and which were only resolved by the stern intervention of their mother. Bakr then was silent to an irritating degree. The way he jealously guarded his secrets, his harshness and his logical thinking made him my grandfather’s true heir, in direct contrast to Omar who filled places with noise, idly criticized our banal existence, and went out of his way to appear excessively frivolous. Our daily life had been ordered in a way that amply demonstrated our chastity, so that my uncles heard compliments about us when they exchanged civilities with their acquaintances; our men had only to kiss a sheikh’s hands to be granted blessings as he patted their hands like he would a pet cat. There was a hidden conflict between the brothers, in which Omar didn’t respect their age difference of ten years.
Now I saw Omar wandering alone in the courtyard, brushed by the breezes of spring, which this year we didn’t celebrate with barbecues as we usually had. Maryam used to insist on making it an occasion for a family gathering, tolerant of the younger children as they played with the flowers and roses. She would be set apart from her brothers’ wives and her sisters by virtue of being the lady of the house, striving to be a virgin grandmother. They would laugh and wink at each other with each of her ponderous movements and her increasingly grandiose speech. They all loved her in this role which she performed like an actress who had perfected it throughout her life; the audience would applaud every night with the same warmth, but then whisper in the corridors about her advancing age, and about the decline in the numbers of fans flocking backstage to have their picture taken with her.
In Praise of Hatred Page 19