Omar was recalling Bakr’s repeated rebukes and warnings not to interfere with the craftsmen repairing a particular Persian carpet to conceal its flaws from admiring customers; the death squads examined it more than twenty times while looking for Bakr. My grandfather used to call this carpet a rare pearl, and it spent fifty years being carried backwards and forwards between its own special place in the warehouse and the main wall in the shop, on which pictures of our ancestors were also hung. The carpet was there for no purpose other than display: my grandfather refused to sell it. He prominently exhibited a photograph of it where it was laid out in the bedroom of the Iranian Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. That carpet had ‘crept’ from the Imperial Palace clearly as a result of some conspiracy or subterfuge. My grandfather, and Bakr after him, waited for the Shah or his loving wife to send intermediaries to reclaim it, at a suitably high price. He dreamed of the arduous negotiations that would be miserable for the envoy of the emperor and empress, who would try to recall how their feet had been positioned on it when they were newly married and proud of their glory.
In one of their raids on the warehouse – in search of the weapons an informer had written were buried amongst the best of the rolled-up stock – the soldiers grabbed the carpets roughly and unrolled them on the floor. They trampled their boots all over them and threw down on to them the cigarettes Khalil had rushed to light, like a waiter in their service rather than a man who knew the true value of these gems. Khalil breathed a sigh of relief after they had left, because in the darkness of the cellar they hadn’t seen the designs of strutting peacocks, and swans swimming in small pools, surrounded by a delicate, symmetrical decoration of jasmine stems overlapping with strange flowers. My grandfather was convinced that they were wild lavender, and had once tried to persuade an American journalist to publish an article in his magazine. The man had stopped accidentally in front of the shop, as if he were lost, or a tourist who had let his feet carry him wherever they wanted. The journalist understood from my grandfather’s words that he was looking at a rare treasure, nodded, and left without caring. A rumour subsequently spread through the souk that an American magazine had attempted to run an article on the carpet, but my grandfather refused to agree to it unless they put a picture of it on the front cover.
Hundreds of images of Bakr passed in front of Omar as he sat in our courtyard daydreaming. He was avoiding Bakr, who was trying to talk to him from London and convince him to join him there. He hadn’t forgotten Bakr’s rebukes when Omar had signed a document of disassociation from his brother, along with offering up information which helped investigators draw up a more complete portrait of Bakr. This had made disguising him very difficult: for example, Bakr’s left hand flexed involuntarily when he was at rest, and he had a very slight limp when he walked quickly. Omar thought, ‘Why does he ask us all to be like him?’ and did not regret his actions.
As we ate breakfast together the following day, he asked Zahra to consider him a guest and to act as if she were the lady of the house; he swore that if Khalil left, then he would as well. He generously suggested moving him to the room into which my grandfather used to withdraw by himself during Ramadan. He would devote himself to worship as if he were an ascetic sitting in a distant cave with his Lord and forsaking the material world. Back then, Omar would wink and say sarcastically to Maryam that their father was ‘waiting for a revelation’.
Maryam understood Zahra’s moving words of gratitude. She was keen for Khalil to stay with us but ignored Omar’s offer to move Khalil to my grandfather’s room, aware that Omar hated it. It was also the room where Bakr used to withdraw with my grandfather when they wanted to review their accounts, or to discuss family affairs without being overheard. I saw that old, jealous gleam in Omar’s eyes after he had spent the night alone in the courtyard, his sleep disturbed by pictures of Bakr hunting him and gaining ground. He felt a particular affection for his past, as if understanding for the first time why people needed their memories so much.
That night, my dreams turned into disturbing nightmares. I saw corpses hanging from nails hammered into the sky and laughing as their teeth fell like hailstones on to the heads of naked passers-by, who disappeared inside coffin-like buildings. I woke up terrified and trembling, and I heard noises and mutterings in the courtyard. Radwan was whimpering and I saw Zahra prostrate in Maryam’s arms, who was muttering verses from the Quran. Uncle Khalil had died just after the dawn prayer. He had spent his final night raving deliriously, and Radwan knew that the end had come. He turned the pages of the Quran to the Sura Anfal and lost himself in whimpers that woke Zahra, Omar and Maryam, who pronounced the takbir and the bismillah.
Omar remained calm and insisted on holding Khalil’s mourning ceremony in our house, as if apologizing for the humble funeral which was only attended by a few of Khalil’s distant relatives. He had been buried soon after the afternoon prayer in a tomb which Zahra heard of in the overcrowded Cemetery of the Righteous, now jammed with the new graves of the dead whose mourners didn’t have the time to care for their tombstones.
The days of the mourning ceremony were laden with duty and expense. Omar didn’t discuss the details. He allowed Radwan the freedom to go out and roam the city for three days, as he wished to look for his friend’s soul and escape the smell which still filled his room. He returned in the evening, exhausted, and his clothes were filthy as if he had been sleeping on the pavement. He sat by the pool and told Maryam that she needed parsley and aubergine, which he would bring from the souk. I thought that he didn’t want to be alone; he wouldn’t enter his room until all our doors had closed, mine last. The terrifying dream returned to me in new colours; blue and black faces, and eyes which were sometimes red. The dead were walking along Telal Street, eating cake, smiling, and carrying shrouds streaked with bright colours. There were faces of people I knew, both living and dead, and faces of strangers I had seen once, but couldn’t remember where or when. I wept bitterly when I saw Amir, Safaa’s son; he took me by the hand and led me to his wide tomb, saying mockingly, ‘Look how we play when we’re dead.’
Depression settled on everyone’s faces after the hastily prepared mourning ceremony came to an end. Only the empty chairs remained, along with the yawns of the three servants in formal uniforms whom Omar had brought in from a specialist funeral service, recommended for its propriety.
On the fourth day, Zahra wrote a long letter to her mother to inform her of her father’s death. She described his final days movingly, and Wasal cried bitterly for her past and her memories. She considered herself responsible for the misery of his final days but, at the same time, felt that she had regained Zahra for ever. She replied with long letters in which she remembered Khalil charitably, and prayed for mercy on him with carefully chosen phrases from which she tried to hide the coolness of her feelings towards him. She quoted verses from the Quran and snippets of the sira of the Prophet’s Companions. She preached to Zahra, who needed someone to wipe her eyes which gleamed with sadness, and to give back to her body the vitality of a woman who had inherited all the talents of giving and receiving pleasure.
Zahra never disclosed her secrets so she seemed, to anyone who didn’t know her, like a cold woman who was proficient only in drying figs and looking after embroidered bed sheets. Bakr alone knew the taste of the flames which his beloved Zahra appeared to keep permanently lit. His memory of her remained unextinguished despite the long nights in London, and the days spent hiding in secret houses where he never stayed long. He missed her perfume and the way she lingered over removing her clothes to unveil her firm breasts. Then she would lie down beside him: quiet, deliberate, confident, desiring, passionate. She was like a sinner whose footsteps gradually slipped until, at the same moment as she was entirely immersed in sin, Paradise took shape in front of her in all its tranquillity. Souls hovered in the skies like white, pure birds whose wings had never known the hunter’s snares. Bakr had nothing more than memories now as he sat with Wasal, looking at her for hours a
nd waiting for her to blink her white eyelids that resembled the marble of Zahra’s face. His wife’s future appearance was already present in Wasal’s features and gestures.
Both Bakr and Wasal were apprehensive at first of the forced relationship between mother- and son-in-law; he still had a lot of unanswered questions about her past – thrilling, vague and morally unacceptable in his view. He was tense during his first visit to her, but surprised by the care she took of him, and even considered her overt generosity to be excessive. Bakr, according to Wasal, was a fundamental part of her picture of the family that would ensure she spent her final days enjoying a feeling of deep contentment. She listened to him and was astonished by his desire to talk, as he abandoned himself to describing his situation, his homesickness, his worries about the coldness of the English and how much he missed Zahra. Wasal concealed nothing, and repentance lent her the ferocity of conviction. She knew that the misgivings roaming through Bakr’s head had to be eliminated if she was to enter his house and wander freely with him through the streets and suburbs of London on Sundays, like an old woman spoiling a younger lover. She spoke dispassionately about her husbands, from Esmat Ajqabash to Khalil and John, disregarding the scores of lovers whom she had left longing for another taste of her kiss; she did this whenever she wanted to leave an ineradicable impression on a man, whether she hated or loved him. The worst men, for her, were those who aroused neither rage nor longing; she would turn her back on them with no regret for their vague, insipid image.
They announced a truce with Zahra’s blessing, who had begun to behave like an orphan. She was lonely, and weary of the probability that she would remain alone without a man for a long time. Forbidden to travel, she withdrew into her own house and paid the price of Bakr’s dreams, which had once been her dreams too. She freed herself from the oppression of her hatred for the other sect, blessed Marwa’s marriage and tried to convince Maryam to come and visit her, which was no longer so difficult.
The streets were still unsafe, and murder became the only outlet for the soldiers and the men of our organization, who were stumbling blindly through their latest operations. The leadership had failed to re-establish communications with the warriors equipped to blow themselves up in revenge for companions who had had their faith mocked openly. Mukhabarat officers treated those they arrested like redundant humanity. If one of their prisoners died under torture, because of the beatings or electric shocks, it meant nothing and it would never cause any disciplinary action; but it did invite some irritation over the dilemma posed by the corpse. Delivery of the body to its family seemed pointless to them, so it would instead be thrown hastily into any available hole and dirt piled up on top of it; the decay of a cadaver aroused boredom and disgust. It restored to death its true nature. Sudden absence and the earth’s gravity returned the bodies to their point of origin, which was a complete fusion with natural elements. The living became more engrossed in retaining their lives than venerating the dead, in a city which death surrounded with exaggerated respect.
* * *
Safaa had been staying with us on another extended visit. But occasional letters from their husbands were no longer enough to enable Safaa and Zahra to relax like two women who were simply taking a short holiday from the monotony of their domestic lives in their old family home. The most recent letter from Abdullah had been short, strange and enigmatic. He asked her to return to their house in Riyadh immediately, but without informing her where he was. Despite the Saudi postage stamp and his seal, she was worried by his addressing her in this manner. She consulted Omar, who wouldn’t discuss the matter; he usually avoided mentioning Abdullah altogether.
Nothing remained to Maryam other than the small details of the family’s past that she tried to restore with great enthusiasm every now and again, before finally losing her spark and returning once more to her choking isolation and a fate which she felt was close to a tragedy. It was reminiscent of the stories woven around an imprisoned hero and the torture he had to endure before the princess came, fell in love with him and sacrificed herself in order to save him and bring an end to his captivity; for a window to be opened again, so a breeze could blow in and sweep away the heavy shadows, and return lightness and sincere joy to wandering souls. Maryam went back to being the only one to wake up at the dawn call to prayer. She would perform her ritual ablutions and pray, and then return to make breakfast and wake us up. We would rise sluggishly and exchange morning greetings coldly, and we sat at the table like guests at a hotel.
Omar was supposed to take Safaa to Damascus Airport; the two of them hatched a plan to visit Marwa on the way, and took Maryam, Zahra and Zahra’s sons with them. Maryam read Sura Yusuf by heart and repeated prayers for travelling, so that God would keep them safe from the patrols which thronged the road to the airport and which were alerted by the family name to delay and search them, and repeat the same questions about their relationship to Bakr, which Omar resolutely denied. He then travelled along the country roads between the villages so he could avoid the obstructions on the main road to Hama, and it provided an opportunity for everyone to contemplate the mountains of Masyaf. They sniffed the clean air and chattered as if they were on holiday. The guide showed off his knowledge, which proved tedious before long, and they arrived late at Marwa’s house, and she sobbed and hugged them one after another. As she kept on embracing them, they all sensed her longing for the house which she had left without the customary trills from my aunts – who had once been famous for not even having to use their fingers to create such a long and musical sound.
Like a child, Marwa listened to Maryam’s comments as she looked over the small house consisting of two rooms and a living room. It was located in the area designated for death squad soldiers, shaken by the barks of wild dogs in the waste ground nearby. Maryam felt Marwa’s homesickness keenly, and decided to ignore the fact that her face wasn’t veiled. It caused a lump in Maryam’s throat which she could tell only Omar about; he just laughed and didn’t pass comment. He drank his coffee and waited for Nadhir, who arrived a little late for this last-minute dinner party. He welcomed his guests but the gathering seemed rather formal, unsuited to his revealing his low spirits or talking about how the siege of Aleppo had killed off in him any further ambitions. How to extricate himself from his position as an officer occupied most of Nadhir’s mind. He remembered his enthusiastic beginnings at the army college, followed by the parachute training at which he had excelled. Whenever he looked at the medals on show in the small cupboard, he felt a disillusionment that his companions couldn’t understand as they rushed to defend the regime; the holy task of protecting their threatened sect was a frequent topic in their private conversations.
Nadhir’s commander reproached him, and reminded him that marrying the sister of one of their chief opponents couldn’t be viewed as a minor indiscretion nor a passing whim, but as showing prejudice in the enemy’s favour. No one would listen to his description of her innocent face beside her butterflies that afternoon, when her gaze turned towards him and dragged him from the terror that blended with everything, and his worry at the role assigned to him. He hadn’t learned to jump from a plane with a parachute in order to besiege cities and murder civilians. Marwa saved him and gave him a feeling of absolution. Her deep desire wiped clean his soul, which was besmirched with hatred. She revived his old dream of living outside the holy sect.
After a while, Nadhir found the voices of the four women and Safaa’s laughter disconcerting; he suggested to Omar that they wander around Damascus during the few hours that remained until Safaa had to leave, and they lurked in the coffee houses of the city, leaving the women to their own affairs of indulging freely in nostalgia.
* * *
I didn’t realize I had been left alone with Radwan until the shadows fell and I remembered that I hadn’t eaten any dinner. I got up quickly and went into the kitchen to examine the various dishes Maryam had left us. I tried to summon up some enthusiasm but the feebleness of my body m
ade my movements heavy and unstable. I collapsed on to a chair by the fountain and weariness began to assail my heart until I could feel it like a pall over the whole house. I reflected that it was the first time I had ever been alone amongst all those empty rooms and cold beds. I convinced myself that I would never forgive Marwa, and that Maryam would return to her previous stance. Like a scared mouse, I sat without moving, contemplating the night which descended with a cold, light, refreshing sting. It made me go into my room and watch Marwa’s butterflies quietly, as if searching for the truth of my feelings towards her, or trying to describe the constriction which gripped my heart and turned me into a shuffling, heavy lump. I thought for the first time of the weight of things; of our bodies, of our souls which were so dense they lacked any sense of lightness.
I seemed to discover what I was looking for when I saw the butterfly with azure wings dotted with yellow crosses, fixed to the board with a lotus blossom at its head, pleading with me to save it from the gum that had solidified it and prevented it from flying away. I brought my face right up to the butterfly; I almost saw the ghost of a smile on a patient woman’s lips. I continued thinking about weight and density: our weight upon the earth when we tread on it with indifferent footsteps; the weight of trees in a forest surrounding us; the weight of the dead when they are liberated from their lightening souls and become precisely determined loads, no more and no less, fixed in the cavities of the earth which swallows them back up while their souls, like butterflies, roam freely. It occurred to me to take out the butterfly and pray so that its soul would return to it. I missed Marwa. But my next thought was, ‘I won’t forgive her,’ muddying my palette once again. I felt nauseous and choked; the hatred was like pus coagulating thick and yellow within us, without any possible release.
In Praise of Hatred Page 20