In Praise of Hatred

by Khaled Khalifa

  The Scent of Spices

  ‘I HAVE TO get used to life without spices,’ I told myself; in my determination to stay alive, I had to come to terms with losing the pleasures I had been addicted to. For the first time, I thought hard about those moments of sweetness whose loss seemed an unbearable anguish. I remembered Maryam scolding me whenever I leaned over the saucepan and inhaled the scent of the spices like a drug addict. I would lift my head in rapture from the smell, which hit the back of my throat with a burst of flavour, and tickled my nose. The family had all grown accustomed to my quirky behaviour. I wanted to cling to something strange. I was so enamoured of spices that I would sprinkle them even on slices of raw carrot and devour these with relish.

  Now, I had to reconsider my life and learn to exist in a narrow cell whose floor was cracked and cold. It was like a kennel fit only for an unloved dog caught by scavengers who kept it captive among the revolting detritus of the rubbish tip. A deliberately neglected animal, its skin grew blotchy, torn apart by fungal infections, but still it didn’t whine. I was that dog whose jailers were on tenterhooks for her to howl, so that they might better relish her pain and the wounds which wouldn’t heal. The scars from their whips, electrodes and cigarettes would remain as tattoos, which even henna patterns couldn’t hide. In later years, whenever I uncovered them and stood in front of the mirror I realized that hatred was worthy of praise, as it lives within us exactly as love does. It grows moment by moment in order to settle finally in our souls, and we don’t want to escape it even when it causes us pain.

  For more than a hundred days, I was kept in solitary confinement. As I fought against the grave dangers facing me, I thought about the sea which I had once been content just to look at, rather than dive into. The few times I had seen it, I had been astonished by its awesome presence. I needed its sublime power in order to avoid the image of my dead mother and the memory of my father’s cruel gaze, as if he were accusing me of her murder. I was haunted by the sight of her cold face, staring into oblivion. I wondered why the dead loved oblivion to such a degree that they grew to depend upon it so immediately. I imagined my mother floating naked through open space, silently searching for Hossam. A living corpse thrown amongst us for a short time, she couldn’t bear our incessant chatter and left us without apology so we would learn the meaning of her silence, and her passion for the space which she missed so much. There, the dead wandered uncurbed in an oblivion which was their own, in a time which was their own; they toyed with their memories and mocked their sanctity, letting them fall away from their skin like the repulsive sweat, which they had also rid themselves of. I imagined her throne in Heaven, overcome with the desire to decorate it with birds singing sweetly, and my mother smiling in apology for her deafness.

  A picture of my dead mother; the sea whose depths I longed for. I lost track of time and began to calculate it according to the patrols and the sound of the guards’ quick footsteps in the dark passages, lit only by a lamp which flickered plaintively in the damp. Its light seemed so weak, a lament for a strange world I could never have imagined until I tasted its pain and knew how barbaric people could be; the animal was still inside them.

  I came close to death in the first days of my imprisonment. I saw its many hues, clearly defined, peaceful and quiet, leading each living being into God’s kingdom and along the path stretching like a single line between Hell and Heaven; I was sure the latter would be my eternal home since I was a mujahida as described in the group’s literature. Those pamphlets were full of long stories about my great faith and my heroic deeds, which I had no recollection of. My eyes didn’t gleam with pride when an interrogator put one in front of me; they had published my photo next to those of some other girls, most of whom I knew, and some young men. I felt a stirring of sympathy for one of them, and I looked at his mocking smile for as long as I was allowed. It occurred to me for a moment that I loved life more than the title of ‘exemplary martyr’. I no longer cared about anything other than getting out alive from the torturer’s acid pit. My confidence was faked, as was my wish for the courage befitting one of God’s beloveds, as we were described by the organization, in a writing style I grew to hate. This hyperbole distanced me from those things whose truth I was now to ponder, as if time and solitude were diminishing me even though I had spent most of the past years alone among my aunts.

  In my cramped cell, my aunts were transformed into swans swimming on a calm river; Radwan was leading their chorus and gathering the spray from their wings, a lover content with his blind gaze towards the rustling of their feathers. At that moment the image fragmented, returning me to my jumble of memories. I thought of my pillow which had lured me towards the thousands of dreams I had then drawn in an attempt to master my fear of the nights spent in my grandfather’s vast house; I thought of all that silence and space which had been bequeathed to us, as we moved through the house, feverishly seeking out the rustle of our ancestors’ souls. Maryam was sure they lived alongside us, but when we in turn became just photographs she forgot about them and cried for us instead. She took charge of Zahra and Bakr’s children and my brother Humam so she wouldn’t be left alone with the cobwebs and Radwan’s sighs, which she feared would bring back dreams of absent children. In my cell I couldn’t escape from her kind and affectionate, even compassionate, face. I remembered how Maryam had brought out some henna from Mecca so she could send her beloved sister to the grave with her hair braided and coloured, just as my grandmother had done for her daughter when she was a young bride, so she could hand her over to be grasped by the strong hand of my father, and led away through the labyrinths of life that had determined her end.

  My mother hadn’t been able to find a better solution than death. For me, choosing death seemed the same as choosing life when the Mukhabarat men jeered at me as I staggered up the steps to their building. To Aleppans, this was a place of terror and inevitable death; even in the best-case scenario, it meant certain ruin. The commander was himself a symbol of the devastation that had settled over the country. He loved hearing about the torture of the detainees. He interfered in all matters relating to Aleppo, which had been glorious once, before he accepted it as a reward in return for betraying his fellow conspirators during an attempted coup, and sending them one by one to the basement gallows in a dank military barracks from which he alone would return. He took control of all the smuggling routes for members of his family, who abandoned goat-herding and were transformed overnight into businessmen. The sight of them in their loud suits provoked covert laughter, and pity for their utter lack of taste.

  Silence was best when face to face with our enemies. My handcuffs hurt and the powerful odour of decay bored into me, overwhelming in the cell into which I was thrown by powerful, rough hands. Terrible dizziness caused me to drop to the ground. I saw the death that I had avoided contemplating when it stretched out beside me like a man whose breath I could inhale. He teased me, and I leaned away from him; he flirted with me, so I cursed him with an inner voice he nevertheless heard perfectly – but still he wouldn’t leave me. ‘I have to ask for mercy,’ I thought, and I surrendered to the protracted time I knew would pass before I could return to the possessions which I had neglected. It was strange that thoughts of them returned to me now. I was rebuked by the soft bedcover; by the tablecloth prepared specially for the medical student and Radwan’s singing companion I used to be; by my warm bed and by the small carpet hanging like an eternal icon. I pushed away these details so I wouldn’t drown in my tears in this cellar full of prison cells. Feeble voices leaked out of them, begging for air or a single drop of water.

  No one spoke to me for three days; a hand of which I saw no more than the coarse fingers would occasionally toss me a bowl of mouldy, unspiced food. In that place I had nothing but my memories, but I soon avoided reviewing them: I realized that suppressing memories was the only solution to their test of my ability not to lose my mind. It was like my request that they speak to me, even that they curse me, rather t
han leave me to the void of my unacknowledged whimpers. How cruel do people have to be before you wish to hear the voices of your executioners, just to be sure that you are not alone? I remembered Marwa looking at us with contempt, raising her chains as proof of her love for Nadhir. At that moment, I swore to kiss her feet so she would forgive me. This vow stayed with me for a long time. I imagined the scene a thousand times; I traced it until it became something tangible, impossible to disengage from.

  On the fourth day (or so I estimated) a man took me by the arm, blindfolded, to an interrogation room. After a few words I was taken to another room nearby, and I went there with the submission of a lamb to the slaughter. I lay on the ground and the whips rained down on my body. I swam in a murky kingdom where rough voices were raised, cursing a murdered woman who was my mother, and extolling the praises of their leader. The darkness intensified; Rabia Adawiya fluttered like a white bird and I clung to her. Bats surrounded me with their scythe-shaped wings. Spices floated over me but I couldn’t catch hold of them or sniff their scent. Deafness became a divine blessing. Whenever I took Rabia Adawiya’s hand, the fingernails leapt up and tore my body to shreds, which were thrown to the wolves. These wolves didn’t resemble the ones whose pointy muzzles and mean eyes I had adored. In the beginning, they only want to control your body, then they want your eyes, and finally even your breath, in that murky kingdom of darkness you have entered, where everything takes on new meaning. I lost consciousness. I couldn’t feel the feet kicking me in my side in order to set my weeping wounds on fire again. I squeezed out the pus once and tried to taste it; I had to learn to love it like I loved my pain, in order to stay alive, to hold on to the ability to regain at some point the cohesion I had surrendered for a while to the charm of dissolution.

  * * *

  Sulafa closed her eyes. ‘Stroke my hair; make me your toy,’ she said. Her voice rang out as if it were coming from a time before she was as good as dead, from the outside, whose existence we tried to ignore so we could erect our kingdoms on a mountain of salt and clay. I was as surprised by her request as if she had just told me what was in my endless daydreams. I knelt down and she surrendered to my fingers which soothed the dryness of her scalp. Um Mamdouh usually woke up at night. She looked for a long time at the other sleeping women who had become used to crowding their bodies into a few centimetres; to suppressing their never-ending moans, and their desire to escape to spacious beds which would allow their skin to breathe freely and quiver in the presence of a man. Um Mamdouh looked at us, smiled, and joined me in twining Sulafa’s braids to finish off the game.

  In this new shared cell I had been moved to, there were several of my former associates; but I was often silent and didn’t join in with the girls who were involved in endless debates on the fatwas of prayers relevant to these circumstances, as they tried to convince girls from other political parties of the necessity of returning to God. Each side would come out with passionate speeches, but it all ended in mutual recriminations. At night they were quieter; only their whimpers rose up, along with the smell of festering wounds. I put my head on Um Mamdouh’s knee and also enjoyed being someone’s doll; Sulafa and I were both in need of a mother. We repeated the game several times, and I didn’t care about Hajja Souad’s rebukes, or her description of us as ‘abnormal’.

  After the first year, the executioners no longer tortured us to the brink of death during interrogations as a matter of routine. We had confessed to everything they wanted us to; we didn’t care any more. I decided to recreate my past all over again, as if I were only now slipping from my mother’s womb and crawling over the cold ground. I decided to believe this lie so I would live with a recklessness I did not believe I possessed, with a frivolity I hadn’t known before. I regretted my excessive gravity and convinced myself that I was in this hell so I would love my aunts more. I refused the little help available from our organization conveyed to us, despite the obstacles, through visitors to the criminals who spent a few days in our midst. Prostitutes in particular created an atmosphere of intimacy with their lewd talk and relaxed tone when describing their clients. They were aware that they were only passing through and seemed sorry for us, and then they would cheerfully leave us for other parts of the prison while letting out rumbling trills, and kissing me warmly.

  A lack of understanding between Hajja Souad and me led at first to a cooling in our relationship, and then to a state of total and mutual disregard. This gave me the freedom to sit with Sulafa and Um Mamdouh, whom Sulafa and I began to call mother. If someone had told me two years earlier that Sulafa would become a lifelong friend, I would have thought them deluded. Now our conversation was unceasing; we each reshaped our past so that the memories were no longer the preserve of an individual, but could belong to both of us together. Thus we shared my room and sang Radwan’s poetry, and we lit a lamp on the night of the Prophet’s mawlid. We swam naked in the sea at Latakia, and then stretched out rapturously on the white sand, drinking juice beneath the single palm on the beach at Samra. We wandered through forests and got lost on sinuous country roads. We welcomed the dawn as it touched the cacti on Mount Ben Younis, then we stood in front of my grandfather’s shops like customers looking for the carpet upon which Scheherazade had sat in order to redeem women of their gender with a thousand and one stories. What did it matter that we were stuck in a narrow cell which was no more than a hair’s breadth wider than our two bodies? I thought for a moment that everything that had happened was a game which would soon be over, and the losers would go home with a sigh, bewailing their bad luck.

  I told Sulafa that it was her turn to lead the game, and that she should wake me when she was ready to tell me its new direction. She kicked me and leaned backwards, then covered her head with a heavy rug that smelled of the farts of the conscripts and prisoners who had preceded us and about whom we knew nothing. I knew that the night was halfway over: the hour of Mudar’s arrival had come. Every night at this time, Sulafa fled to her solitude. She created a little tent from some ancient sheets, and she would leave a little gap, just as she used to leave the door of her room open for Mudar so he could slink in through the dark into her arms. She recalled her earlier life with all the conviction of a woman who couldn’t believe that the fig trees in her family home overlooking the distant sea had become but a dream and a memory. I watched Sulafa; with her I relived Mudar’s arrival, his boisterous movements and vigour, his heavy tread. Like a lookout, I monitored the others, biting my nails and softly crooning sections of the Um Kulthoum song ‘Days Have Gone By’, which I now knew by heart because it had been repeated around me so many times. What did it mean when a man divided himself between two women, a lady and a servant? Between a wife and an unseen mistress? Whenever Sulafa unrolled her tent I composed an image of Mudar. I brought him into my room in that welcoming house which had never witnessed an unmarried man sleeping with any of its women.

  I laughed when I remembered Abdullah sleeping alone in a cold room, surrounded by the hospitable splendour appropriate to the reputation of our ancestors, who had left a virgin to uphold their glories. She ordered a carded-wool bed weighing fifteen ratals to be brought down and took out the best bedding, along with cushions (which reminded me of nothing more than peacocks displaying to a blind crowd) and a special satin quilt from Istanbul bought for the guests whom the family had awaited so long, and who never came. Abdullah got into bed, surrounded by this opulence, while Safaa sighed next to Marwa; she didn’t dare go to him out of fear of Maryam, who kept awake, circling around the courtyard all night like she was guarding our vaginas and very breath. Abdullah’s dignity prevented him from returning Safaa’s salacious winks. Whenever he visited Aleppo, he was forced to rent a separate house if he wanted to drown in her feminine warmth until morning. Later, he lodged at grand hotels in order not to arouse suspicion – he pretended to be like any businessman from the Gulf, laden with projects, while in fact selling Paradise to anyone who supported jihad in Afghanistan against the Soviet i
nfidels. His enthusiasm, his tender expressions, his long history of failures and successes – all of this had made me miss him that day in the prison. I imagined him as a father to me, or as a husband who remained sleepless till morning so that the night wouldn’t steal his breath from me. Now, as I guarded Sulafa’s tent, I contemplated the futility of sharing one’s memories of a man with a friend, while hiding our secrets from our surrogate mother; as we received her affectionate scolds, we would exchange glances like naughty children.

  We wasted so many days. We surrendered to indolence and time stretched out, uncounted and desolate, over our bodies. One day Sulafa told me, ‘It’s raining now.’ She laughed, and concluded, ‘It must be raining now; Mudar has passed in front of my window where there’s no light on, and he’s crying.’ I loved this image of a man, a lover, crying in the rain as he waited for a light to come on in his sweetheart’s room. Sulafa and I seemed like old friends who had met by chance on a slow train journey which wasn’t anywhere near long enough for them to exchange all their news, so they rushed to the nearest coffee house so they could finish what they had started. Sulafa neatly described Mudar’s eyelashes, fluttering nervously over black eyes like swallows, and she pressed my hand when I turned my face away. I apologized tenderly and thought for a long time about the shape of those eyes which so resembled swallows. In a passionate whisper she recalled his tall frame, and how his lips tasted of strawberry and awakened in her a desire to drown in burning kisses she had thought would never end.

  They had met by chance, and he entered her life when she was relatively secure. But she defended him at the trial convened by her organization to call her to account. She wouldn’t surrender to her comrades’ pleas and her girlfriends’ contempt; they were furious she had broken the vow she had sworn to the underground Marxist party. She asked them to acknowledge him and they refused, and they asked her to recruit him to their party and she was silent. Desire for him was burning her up, and every night she left her door unlocked, indifferent to the stares of the curious neighbours. He would quietly cross Bab Tuma and detour past the Al Bakry hammam, to that ancient house whose rooms were shared by four students and two nurses (who took it in turns to use their only bed). The four students kept a lookout for her, and thereby ensured Mudar’s safe passage to her room. They helped her convince the landlady that the night visitor didn’t exist, despite the recurring sounds of Sulafa’s pleasure, which she didn’t try to hide. The students reacted to it shyly at first, and then eavesdropped eagerly.