In Praise of Hatred

by Khaled Khalifa

  ‘Maryam was five years old at the time,’ Radwan said to me and laughed, then continued to drain the mint tea which I had prepared for him as a bribe so he would finish the story I found so fabulous.

  I was afflicted by desolate ideas for a moment; I looked at him as if he were about to get up from his chair, lay down on his bed and die. I was afraid for him and tried to encourage him a few times with a question, or to cajole him into sharing further details, but he now turned a deaf ear. He was drinking his tea in silence, and then he got up and walked to his room without wishing me goodnight. He walked sluggishly and dragged his feet, contrary to my expectation that he would have grown lighter after throwing off the weight of the childhood memories with which he wrestled in order to stay alive. I remembered the reply which he kept repeating when I asked if he missed my grandfather; he told me gravely, ‘His smell is still here. I loved this house, and its smell.’

  * * *

  Dawn crept in and I was still there, focused on the empty chair in front of me. I thought that Radwan must be in love with one of my aunts, and I guessed it must be Safaa. He had described her birth and how he looked after her when she was a child. Maryam I regarded as unlikely; I felt that he pitied her, and considered her to be wretched and to have wasted her life on delusions. She was like a silkworm which has patiently woven its cocoon when, choked by the smell of its own body, it tries to carve out a little window for some fresh air and the whole structure caves in. She could only weep among the ruins of eternal prosperity.

  The rest of the night passed quietly, and I didn’t hear any shooting. I slept like the dead, devoid of the anxiety of the past days, and woke up to the clamour of the returning travellers, whose depression seemed to have been lifted by their holiday. Maryam had missed her things and, on finding them scattered about, set about rearranging them with great care: her few pictures; the clothes which aged her terribly; an antique tambourine left behind by Hajja Radia when she came to our house; her carpet. There were also two small boxes filled with obsolete accessories, as if they belonged to a woman who had fled decades earlier: copper kohl pipes engraved in Persian with the name of a princess famous for the beauty of her dark eyes; a piece of laurel soap particular to Aleppo which Maryam used very sparingly, believing it to be rare; and a circle of beads that had been briefly fashionable in the fifties among the more sophisticated class of women. Maryam still used these beads, as if she didn’t want to believe that the joy, warmth and chatter of those gatherings had disappeared.

  My aunt told me at great length about my father, mother and brother Humam in Beirut, and smothered me in reassurance. At first she sounded indulgent even towards Marwa, but in subsequent days all her anger came out: she spoke disparagingly of Marwa’s removal of her veil; and of my father’s alcoholism, and the fact that he cursed my mother and Bakr and our group, and praised the other sect. He still had many friends who belonged to it; back in the late fifties and the days of the United Arab Republic, they had accompanied him to Alexandria and taught him to fish. ‘Like he was angry and didn’t want to see us,’ Maryam said as she waved her hand, trying to drive away the image of her journey, and burdened with the disgrace of the picture she drew of her sisters and her brothers-in-law.

  * * *

  Tedium soon returned to our house. We seemed to be waiting for a miracle to save us from our monotony and fear, which only escalated again after the violent clashes that took place in Jalloum and reached all the way to Jamiliyya. We all hunched up in the cellar, silent amidst the smell of the lentil soup which Maryam had begun cooking, trying to affect indifference to the events taking place less than two hundred metres away from our house. Then she burst out crying, expressing her annoyance at the curfew, at all the killing, and at the searches that revealed her secrets to strangers.

  Her weeping frightened me. And all my anxiety came back, some time later, when Omar told me about another letter from Bakr asking me to withdraw from the organization, as I was under surveillance. Omar couldn’t bear taking on this role of ‘man of the house’, when it was a house inhabited by cranks who opposed him in everything and didn’t respond to life’s opportunities. He had reverted to his former scandalous behaviour, but Aleppo no longer cared about this in the midst of the ruins and the mothers wearing mourning for the sons lost to them in prisons and tombs. It is difficult to remain objective when your life is threatened, and I thought for a moment that I had no choice but to walk to the end of the road I had chosen. I had been avoiding college, as it had become a place where I was informed of my tasks for the coming days. They would leave me pamphlets in one of the bins, or a woman would stuff them under my coat when I sat on the bus. She didn’t even have time to press my hand in solidarity.

  Fear drew me to pleasure and irreverence. All I could think of was how hard it was to be under constant surveillance, when someone counts your breaths and your steps, trying to get inside your mind to review your memories and the pictures you love. I was terrified by the idea that they might be able to spy on my dreams. I went cold when I felt that I was really being watched, and by several men at that. I wandered in their chains, under siege from their gaze. I tried to look into their eyes in defiance, so I wouldn’t fall down in a faint in the middle of the street. I focused on the middle-aged milk vendor who had settled at the corner of our road two months earlier. I wasn’t duped by his candour or his quiet voice when I approached him to examine his cart, and ended up buying milk which we didn’t drink. I began to hate him and looked at him spitefully, hoping he would die. I wrote a report and dispatched it to the leadership of the group in which I cursed him and asked for him to be liquidated. I waited for his death (which seemed to be running behind schedule) and I began to think of him as a man who was running out of time to put his affairs in order for his family. I dumped some of the pamphlets in a narrow, empty alley, ashamed of carrying them. I tore up the rest, threw them in a dustbin and fled after I saw a young man who I felt was tailing me, but I regretted it when I saw him go into his house.

  Omar’s words about Bakr’s letter had robbed me of courage and left me as brittle as blotting paper. I swallowed hard whenever a passer-by looked at me; my dreams died in silence and the city started to resemble a large tomb. I thought of fleeing and living with my mother again, and that trying to reconnect with my father might save me from this maelstrom. I looked for Omar so I could tell him my decision and sat on the steps to his house for hours, in defiance of the neighbours’ looks which condemned his immorality. I went to my grandfather’s shops and asked the new craftsmen about Omar. I couldn’t find him, even though I left word for him at every place he might be. I felt lost without him. He was the only one who could save me. I needed someone who could end my turmoil and return tranquillity to me, so I could stand still and watch the flowers wither at the end of spring, and praise the laziness of a late-blooming rose.

  Omar’s shamelessness grew increasingly worse with his new friends. They were traders who had suddenly acquired influence in the souk after carefully ensuring a monopoly in smuggling goods from state warehouses; they dealt in household utensils, cigarettes, and so-called ‘intermediaries’ – aimed at mothers who were pining for their sons in prison and craved to hear any reassuring news. They sold their jewellery and bedroom suites in exchange for a snippet of paper which assured them that their sons were alive. Trade was brisk, and partnerships with death squad and Mukhabarat officers much in demand.

  * * *

  What little hope remained dwindled still further, and the city was left to instinct and hatred. But at the beginning of that summer of 1982, the sounds of tambourines were once more heard, along with voices raised in supplication to God. Everyone climbed on to their roofs to see the lunar eclipse, which granted the people a rare opportunity to shout and drive out the decay which now penetrated each moment. The city re-enacted the rituals which had fallen into disuse because of all the suffering which had stifled them, and because of Aleppo’s massive expansion to accommodate
hundreds of thousands of migrants from the countryside who came in search of work. Native Aleppans remembered the last time they had gone out of the city, to climb Mount Ansari to pray for the rains, which had been late that year. Since that distant occasion, no one had heard the sound of tambourines or voices pleading for rain and mercy; but now they begged fervently for the withdrawal of the death squad. Most of its soldiers had never witnessed such a display in praise of God and Heaven; nor the tears of the mothers whose deep emotion swelled until they tore at their clothes. The women’s wails rose above the sound of the tambourines and the chanting of the singers whose throats were regaining warmth from reciting religious poetry.

  Maryam had spent all day enthusiastically adorning herself, and now she went up on to the roof with her tambourine so she could sing, despite her tears which rained down at the cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’. The tambourines all around fell into one quick rhythm. The eclipse began; the colours of the moon changed and merged, and the city was covered by a ruddy glow almost orange; it was a magical scene that pulled me for a few moments out of my anxiety and made me believe in the awesome power of nature. These rituals continued until a little after midnight, and a truce was adhered to by both sides out of respect for the crowd, which was so burdened by its loss of the tolerance Aleppo had once been famed for, when its population had been distinguished by the intermingling of all its languages and customs.

  Maryam came down from the roof a different woman, still carrying her tambourine, which she kept on banging. Even in the darkness I could see that her face was agitated. She concluded her singing with a lament for my grandfather, the city, her body, our family; she summoned them all up with moving expressions, calling on them to see the devastation which had settled on our house. Zahra was trying to calm Maryam and stop her from going inside in this hysterical state, but she began to dance in the courtyard and, in a loud voice, to curse the era which had made her into a woman to be overlooked. She called on Bakr to come, describing him as her beloved; she called on Selim to wake up from his sleep; she called on Omar to join her in the courtyard, which had missed all of their footsteps. I didn’t approach her; I was powerless to help her as she fainted. We put her to bed. I couldn’t hold back my tears – I kept thinking about dying. I imagined that my body was extricated from its density, and that the blood in my veins was solidifying and losing its heat. I held Maryam’s trembling hand as she seemed to surrender to an uncertain fate. She slowly relaxed; weariness appeared on her face and her body twitched as she fell into a sound sleep.

  In the morning, Maryam couldn’t get up. Her voice was weak, her eyes sad. She needed all of us; she wanted to forget how she had been possessed the night before, and how she had disgraced herself. She was like a woman bitterly bidding goodbye to her girlhood and who now regretted having kept her body and soul pure. We sat around her for three days, telling her stories; she wasn’t cheered by Zahra’s and my praise of her voice and lithe body; she turned her face away from us and looked at the wall for hours at a time. She focused her gaze unflinchingly on a single point, as if trying to bore through the wall and see beyond it; it was an indication of her dismissal of us, despite the gratitude we heard in her quiet, affectionate voice.

  Some days later, Omar arrived early in the morning, exhausted after a long night out and smelling strongly of alcohol. He didn’t seem to care that there were lipstick marks on his shirt. He drank his coffee in a rush, listening to us distractedly, and missing half of what we said. Maryam didn’t care that he was there; we had expected his visit would lift her depression. He briefly encouraged me to go to Beirut if I could, but added that I was forbidden to travel abroad. He gave us a considerable sum of money, shared a joke with Radwan, and then left; everything was done at top speed, as if we were a plague he had to stay away from.

  * * *

  How cruel we are, when we act carelessly with others’ dearest possessions. We leave them to their fate, unheeding of what they mean to someone else. Marwa’s butterflies no longer provoked anyone’s interest, and I had thrown her boxes in a corner of my room (which had begun to look like a junk warehouse offering shelter to a vagrant each night). Marwa cried bitterly when she saw our neglect of them. She kneeled down to wipe the dust away with the hem of her clothes, calling each butterfly by its pet name, which she still remembered.

  I had believed that Marwa had been definitively expelled from our house; in time, we would forget her and turn her out of our memories, trying to ignore the pain she had caused by departing from our sect’s traditions, and in the company of an officer, who had once threatened to kill us and shatter our unity. I hadn’t taken Maryam, Omar, Safaa and Zahra’s visit to her in Damascus very seriously; I didn’t believe that she would ever return to her old home, or feel comfortable there with her husband.

  She came back without asking permission. One day, she just opened the door with her key, and Nadhir followed her in, carrying her bag. He was shy, but Maryam’s warm welcome of them both broke the ice. They stretched out on her bed at night as if they were returning from a short holiday. Marwa said she forgave me, but I couldn’t ignore her blue clothes which showed her knees, nor her uncovered and subtly made-up face; this all made her a stranger to me. I didn’t understand where she had hidden all that confidence before – her new freedom revealed her as a tolerant and intelligent woman. She pitied our life beneath the veil. Our souls were weighed down and we walked in fear, ponderously. Her graceful footsteps in the courtyard and her laughter reminded us of Safaa. She began to resemble her so much that I thought they might have exchanged dreams, as if they were playing merrily with their destinies.

  * * *

  When Nadhir received news of an assassination attempt on the President, he kissed Marwa on the cheek, and went off quickly, in a state of great tension. Anxiety tore at him as he made his way to Damascus; the old itch on his neck returned, which always heralded danger. It had saved him from a certain death during the October War, when his battalion’s position was bombed only a few minutes after he and his troops had withdrawn. He summoned up other memories which he feared had long faded, and which led him to look back on his early life. He thought about his father, Sheikh Abbas, who had taught him the tolerance that had cost him dearly. Sheikh Abbas had relinquished his position to other imams, who expounded on hatred, the necessity of maintaining solidarity within their own sect against all others, and the strict retention of political posts in order to guarantee that authority remained in their hands. There were lots of whispered rumours about secret debates where Sheikh Abbas argued in defence of tolerance as the only solution to protect the sect and keep it unsullied. He would quote the words and deeds of the great historical imams, displaying his wide knowledge of the Quran and the Hadith, as well as making use of his dignity and popularity; his family’s power prevented the other sheikhs from attacking him publicly, despite what they said quietly amongst themselves about his determined inattention to the cruel injustices propounded by the other sects.

  Fear didn’t push Sheikh Abbas into a bickering match with the others; that had been the aim of one of the sheikhs, in order to diminish his prestige. Instead, Sheikh Abbas sought seclusion in his home which overlooked pine forests and orange groves, and remained there to this day. He was aware that what was coming would be even greater, and he couldn’t prevent it if the people were tempted by the fatwas of Sheikh Mudar to kill others merely because of their membership of another sect.

  Nadhir tried to recall an image of his father, but it was blurred. The smile which never left him gave his son the strength to quash his worries. Nadhir said to himself, ‘The President wasn’t harmed at all. As for the President’s associate who threw himself on to the bomb and was blown up, his family will receive an appropriate sum and influence as a reward for his devotion.’ He arrived at the government building in the evening and realized from the faces of the guards who greeted him that something was seriously amiss. He climbed the steps calmly and sat in the room of the comma
nder’s secretary, turning over the pages of a calendar in a bored manner for over an hour, waiting for the summons whose origins he had tried to trace in his mind several times. The gestures of the guards, secretaries and officers in the building communicated a general nervousness.

  At exactly eight o’clock, Nadhir entered the room where four officers he knew well were already waiting. As he greeted them he noticed they were acting coolly towards him; they didn’t kiss him, as they usually would have done after a long absence. The secretary opened the door and gestured to them to go into an inner office. The commander of the death squad was waiting for them quietly, and the traces of exhaustion around his eyes showed that he hadn’t slept well for some time. It was well known that he was a pleasure-seeker, so his state wasn’t in itself indicative of anything exceptional, given his frivolous disposition and his utter disregard for the consequences of his actions. The commander motioned for them to sit and directed his curt words to the highest-ranking officer. He explained the details of the assassination attempt and, without a pause, added coldly, ‘We’re carrying out a strike on the desert prison tonight.’ Then he banged the table with his fist. ‘Don’t leave a single one of them alive to see the sun rise.’ He handed round the files, labelled Operation Sleeping Butterfly in an inappropriately ornate script, to each of the five officers. He bid them an authoritative goodbye, and left his office through a concealed door.

  Nadhir felt dizzy at this knee-jerk reaction; this meant the murder of vast numbers of political prisoners, attacking them when they were trapped like dogs in a cage. All as casually as if one were swatting flies. The scene he imagined made him nauseous; his stomach heaved and his knees buckled. He didn’t think he could walk. He inhaled the air of the Al Mazza quarter and tightened his grip around the folder with his orders, aware that time was racing away. In less than an hour, the aeroplanes would be on their way to the desert, carrying heavily armed soldiers that might have been simply on a hunting expedition to the plains for wild ducks or gazelles. Nadhir drove to the airport where the head of the operation had preceded him. The commander was a very distant relative of his, and Nadhir greeted him and asked to speak to him alone for a few moments. He informed him that he would not be able to carry out his orders, then he reached for his military insignia and removed them from his uniform. He spread his arms wide, as if accepting the court martial that would sentence him to death for his refusal. He announced his readiness to go to any Israeli position they named to destroy it in a suicide operation.