In Praise of Hatred

by Khaled Khalifa

  Years later, Abdullah would lean on the arm of Wasim Al Halawany (whose beard, to his own great satisfaction, had by now grown long and thick, rather increasing his charm) as they walked at Sheikh Nadim Al Salaty’s funeral, recalling that distant morning in Peshawar, and the emotion of Sheikh Nadim who had come to offer his assistance to the poverty-stricken Afghan orphans and widows, not to fight alongside them. His voice had rumbled through the Grand Mosque, asking for funds to buy food for the starving children and wool for the destitute women whose husbands had gone to the mountains, or had been sent by the Afghan secret police to detention camps in Kabul and Moscow: the funds were not intended to arm the warring factions.

  That morning, Abdullah did not listen very closely to the man who loved and respected him, and who had once laughed heartily at Abdullah’s tales of the eccentricities of the Russian women he had known. Zeina, Abdullah’s first wife, had even named their young son Nadim, whom the sheikh blessed as he sat on his knee. He took Nadim on a pilgrimage to the Kaaba, causing the sons of princes and princesses to cast jealous glances at Zeina; she didn’t hide her happiness that day, just as she didn’t hide her grief at the recent death of that majestic man. She recited a lament for him, a Nabataean ode, without declaring her identity – she dreaded being forced to sing laments at the almost daily princely funerals, now so frequent because the royal family had become so hugely extended that the palaces had become too small to contain all its members. She recited the ode in the salons of princesses who tried to convince her to write it down, or at least allow it to be recorded so their husbands could listen to it; the princes were desperately curious to hear the lines that ‘made even stones weep’, as the wives said when they attempted to remember some of them. Eventually a royal decree was issued to Zeina. She wrote the ode down in plain ruq’a script, added some decoration, signed it in small letters and then presented it to the king. He granted her the horse she had requested from the royal stable; she had fallen in love with him when she saw him in the annual race through the Najd Desert.

  When Safaa came to Aleppo, she described the stallion to Omar in great detail and awoke his longing for horses, only for this to lose itself in the forgetfulness which then clung to him for three months, after Safaa went to Afghanistan to join her husband, and the Arab fighters transformed themselves from saviours of the poor and messengers of love into just one more faction in the conflict. They carried weapons and dreamed of the Islamic caliphate that would shine again amidst the vast plains planted with poppies, whose petals gleamed beneath the spring sunshine in an omen of imminent destruction.

  During her only visit to me in prison, Safaa hadn’t told me she was travelling to Afghanistan. When I found out some time later, I started to recall the words of Abdullah’s letter. For long nights, I was besieged by Abdullah and his ever-cheerful face; he was secure in the certainty he had been granted, and which he had grasped with both hands, like a child who doesn’t want to give up a bar of chocolate and continues squeezing it until it melts and is wasted. When Abdullah took Safaa to Riyadh Airport for her flight to Syria, he told her to wait for a letter which would give her the details of where they would next live. He handed her that letter for me, kissed Amir as if for the last time, and gave her enough money to live like a princess anywhere in the world. Our family was worried at Safaa’s sudden arrival alone in Aleppo. She wasn’t expecting anyone to meet her at Damascus Airport, so hired a car and driver; she thought that she needed a stretch of road to think about her future and the future of her son; Zeina had refused to leave the small palace she had shared for so long with Safaa like a close friend.

  The affliction of love bound them both to a man in the grip of a dream. Abdullah wept bitterly when he returned from Sheikh Nadim Al Salaty’s funeral, remembering how the sheikh had once said to him, ‘You have to know where you are going before you leave your house; know your travelling companion, and be wary of him.’ He was referring to Abdullah’s long-standing association with Anderson, which had led to his dealing also with an American ambassador in the region. The latter would meet with Abdullah every so often for a few hours; he would extend greetings from the American president, and convey his pride in his allies’ achievements at driving out the Soviets and the Communists from Kabul. Then, in a decisive tone, the ambassador would relay the president’s orders relating to the Afghan groups who deserved to share in the victory. It didn’t occur to the Americans that the Arab volunteers had also begun to have a hold over parts of the country. The ambassador equivocated in his replies to questions about the future position of the ‘Arab-Afghans’ in a strict Islamic state, but displayed more enthusiasm as soon as the conversation swung away from this towards demands not to disband the warring factions.

  Abdullah tried to make good use of all his experience; he felt burdened by the countless faces of the people he had dealt with, and all the plotting which had almost killed him more than once. He recalled conversations with Bakr during their carefree wanderings to find furnishings for the palace Prince Shehab El Din was building to reclaim the warmth of his mother’s womb. He remembered their discussions about power and its allure. He thought of the last time he had seen Sheikh Nadim Al Salaty. The sheikh had bid him goodbye as if he were a troublesome friend, and Abdullah asked that Wasim Al Halawany accompany him and promised not to leave his side. A hasty consultation was held with Wasim, who seemed like a shy young girl receiving her fate from her elders’ commands, and the two of them left Sheikh Nadim’s hostel in Peshawar for the last time. The mule caravan was waiting for them on the outskirts of the city, led by a silent, turbaned Afghani who knew his task well. They crossed the border at night, and in the darkness Abdullah started to tell Wasim about his friendship with his father Samir, now a renowned surgeon, with whom he had shared a desk at the English School in Cairo for three years. Wasim was astonished at this tale of his family, from whose opulent wealth and aristocratic heritage he had fled, to this filthy place in which the wolves found nothing to eat but their own young.

  * * *

  When Ülfet Hanim, a pasha’s daughter, attended school, four Nubian guards waited for her in front of the door to accompany her home. Abdullah kept watch for his friend Samir, who would wait around so he could catch a glimpse of her. ‘He looked just like you,’ said Abdullah in fluent English, looking at the boy who kept his gaze averted out of respect for Abdullah’s reputation. His name had often resounded in prayers in recent days as a role model and mujahid who had exploited the unbelievers’ faults; his articles inciting jihad in Afghanistan were published by the Jama’a Islamiyya in Egypt and widely distributed. They were the reason why Wasim had given up drinking beer and chasing girls whose mothers had complained about his recklessness and foul language. He was aware that his new teacher was testing his English and replied in a few words to reassure Abdullah that he spoke it like a native. He asked Abdullah to finish his story, expecting to be told that his father was its chief protagonist. His father was busy earning money from all over the world so that Ülfet Hanim could spend it on the shoes she accumulated with an astonishingly thrilling madness, until everyone who knew her believed that humanity, in her view, equalled shoes. Abdullah spent long nights with his new secretary and jihad associate, speaking to him about his past as if he had at last found someone to whom he could entrust his story, who could preserve it after the death whose breath he could already feel.

  * * *

  The pictures I drew amidst the rot of the cells were soon erased. The spring sun, which I tried to forget just like all prisoners do, besieged us again and made us depressed and disposed to silence. At last, we agreed on something we could all share – the frustrations of celibacy. We ate in silence and got into bed quietly after making sure that lice hadn’t settled in the bedding. We felt reassured that our deprived bodies were still capable of dreaming, like the bodies of any normal women, with predatory lust.

  The seventh winter of my imprisonment had passed. Seven was our holy number, highly
regarded in our Quran. Over the course of time, much had changed in the building we pretended to ourselves wasn’t really a jail. But terror returned with the installation of a new prison governor, whose hobby was pinning medals to his chest and cursing us. He loved the guard dogs which wandered at night through our cells with their handlers. He spoiled them obscenely, laughing like an idiotic actor who has found an arena in which to show off his backstage compulsions. We were his urinal which he never left dry. He even slept in the prison and left it only at the instigation of his superiors, who would summon him to a meeting so they could divide up the bribes and the money extorted from us and our families. Everything had a price, as if we were an open market. The criminals, who were used to paying bribes, threw us morsels of the food their pimps, smuggling partners and fellow murderers regularly brought them from grand hotels in Damascus, along with the sumptuous clothing they would wear in order to seduce the warders and governor. He would drink tea with them in their cells while eavesdropping on us, women who had been isolated for years.

  We exchanged wry glances about, and occasionally laughed at, Um Nadal, the prostitute in her fifties who had been in and out of this place more than fifteen times. She used to wear a revealing top which smelled of cheap perfume, and taught us her rules about not getting addicted to anything that might run out. Um Nadal would ask permission to see the governor; she would strut over to his office, cursing the country which didn’t appreciate her talents, and threatening someone called Asmahan with ripping her in two. Um Nadal would return half drunk, and to the drug addicts it was obvious how much and what sort of hashish she had been smoking. She displayed infinite generosity towards us, which was unsurprising from a woman who seemed so alone, and she wept like a child when even a single finger of ours was scratched.

  ‘Spring is dull this year,’ I said to Suhayr as we walked around the small courtyard, utterly bored, even knowing how many ants were in each hole. She didn’t reply, as usual during the exercise hour. Suhayr was my only friend after Sulafa left. Sulafa had come back to visit me on one occasion – she had bribed the governor’s wife to be allowed to see me for just five minutes, pleading that after all she would be back in the prison. I saw her in the governor’s office, and he emphasized the secrecy of the visit and that it was against the rules. I laughed at the fear which had turned him into someone who spoke about rules. I first saw her face through the open door, and I was afraid they would rearrest her. She took me in her arms and we burst out crying before I left, pulled away roughly. We said only a few words to each other, which I had prepared thousands of times. I opened the small package from her which they allowed me to keep. I unrolled a simple blue dress, and its details revealed that she had sewn it for me herself. One of the girls in my group relayed an order from Hajja Souad not to wear it; I didn’t argue with her, as had become usual recently. In the bundle I also found a small bag I hadn’t noticed at first, and it smelled of spices. I knew they were from our kitchen. I recalled Sulafa’s few words; I now knew that she had visited my home, like I had insisted. She had stood behind Radwan singing stanzas like the chorus I had once been.

  That night, I wore the blue dress. I slipped it on carefully and kept all the buttons done up, so my breasts wouldn’t be on show to the guards. Hajja Souad didn’t object further. It was a sort of agreement between us which we tacitly respected; she sent me orders only through an intermediary and she didn’t interfere in my relationship with the criminals, who kept me so entertained with their fantastic stories which might very well have been made up, but in which I believed passionately. I laughed from my belly at their anecdotes. I still remember Sana, accused of smuggling hash across the border with Lebanon, who convinced us that she was indeed Lebanese and the only daughter of a well-known diamond seller whose surname resembled hers; he owned a string of jewellery shops, the most famous of which was on the Rue Hamra in Beirut.

  ‘We have to believe lies so we won’t die,’ I told myself as I watched the ceiling, which I had watched thousands of times. I couldn’t find my star which I imagined hanging from a damp spot in the ancient plaster, and I tried to convince myself that I was sleeping in the same place as had stood the bed where the Circassian, in silk garments, had given up the splendour of her white flesh and the firmness of her seductive breasts to the enamoured wali. I felt the touch of my clothes on my naked body. The dress’s fabric excited my skin. I almost went mad with lust; I imagined the faces of men I had seen, including Radwan, students from the medical college, and the warders. I wept from burning lust. How wretched I was; how wretched we all were. This spring was so slow in passing. ‘It’s difficult to kill a woman’s desire,’ I thought. I imagined Sulafa sleeping in my bed; she embraced me, and we shared Mudar. We forgave him for abandoning us. We returned to play with delicious illusions which had delighted us once, a long time ago, and which I couldn’t recall properly any more. It was as if, for the first time, I had become interested in ordering my memories of prison. Summoning them up, I was saved by remembering the faces of people it was impossible for me to reach from prison. The power of the place made us feel our weakness. Without our permission, we were colonized by hatred we couldn’t escape, and love we couldn’t live out.

  Our child grew taller. He called us by our names, and we taught him to read and write, and a few words of English which we were delighted to hear him repeat. He stood in front of us gesturing like a public speaker to a non-existent crowd in an unlit hall. I was less charmed than the other prisoners by his games. I sometimes joined Suhayr in sewing clothes for him out of scraps of cloth, using tidy stitches so he wouldn’t look like a beggar, or even his true self: a fatherless child, begging for sympathy from mothers who were getting tired of him bleating like a lost lamb. We all looked for something which could save us from feeling that time lay heavily on us, that our lives were stuck in an inescapable rut. We had to appear brave, as if we weren’t afraid of the torture or the narrow, crushing walls, so we wouldn’t be destroyed by our fellow inmates’ glances, which might accuse us of weakness. These cruel looks made us wish for death. They laid bare the weakness we desperately tried to conceal. In the time which we scattered like worthless sand, I thought many things over; I thought of the executioners, whose roaring laughter we could hear as they left in the evening, carrying home vegetables and bread for their children like any normal person. I thought of the victims from both sides who had fallen so that an idea could be realized.

  Dalal was a Marxist, driven away by her comrades for wearing a veil and praying humbly behind Hajja Souad as a means of atoning for her collapse during interrogation, when she had revealed the location of her Party’s files. She reminded me of a girl from my group who had tried to flee to Saudi Arabia. A quick trial was convened, without any proper defence, so that it seemed more like a bit of fun than anything else. Dalal’s trial was no different from our own trial of Suzanne, who later had thrown herself to the floor and grabbed the Mukhabarat unit leader by the feet to plead for release. She had written more than a thousand letters to the President asking him to pardon her and save her from her sentence. She wept and begged for forgiveness from our group which only increased its cruelty, and kept her from our table like she was a mangy bitch. We didn’t even let her use the communal toilet. How cruel it is, when a secure existence within a group is your only safeguard for breathing foul air inside cells whose inhabitants aren’t even allowed to lie down on the cold floor. I didn’t dare console the sweet-natured Suzanne, or approach her after all these years, or apologize for sitting in judgement next to Hajja Souad as we had coldly sentenced her to this further level of imprisonment within the prison, and prevented her from holding our child, as we had done with the informer Hoda. All this was more lies in which we believed absolutely.

  Prison taught you the rules of staying alive. No one who hasn’t been in jail can understand what it is like to be deprived of looking at the sun whenever you feel like it. Habits that had been trivial outside gained new meaning in pri
son. In that darkness, the euphemisms which we had sheltered behind withered away. We spat on our enemies. ‘“Life” is a difficult metaphor,’ I thought, ‘like “love”, “betrayal”; even a light-hearted game in a lettuce field.’ I laughed at the memory of lettuce which I hadn’t seen for seven years. I missed its freshness; I imagined it covered in spices, crisp and delicious in my mouth.

  In our house, lettuce used to be synonymous with Safaa, just as butterflies were with Marwa. Safaa would wash its succulent leaves and nibble at it with excessive relish, pretending to be a rabbit. I used to laugh when Maryam scolded her. Safaa would seek out such silliness as a means of resisting her fate, from which the only escape was into another life no less odd – from Aleppo to Saudi Arabia and finally to Afghanistan, that land which meant death or madness. The princess who had visited me in prison felt that all that was left of me was ice-cold, that I was a piece of sugar whose sweetness had faded. She had pressed my hand and gone off to an unknown destiny.