by Rana Haddad
Rana Haddad grew up in Lattakia in Syria, moved to the UK as a teenager, and read English Literature at Cambridge University. She has since worked as a journalist for the BBC, Channel 4, and other broadcasters, and has also published poetry. The Unexpected Love Objects of Dunya Noor is her first novel.
The Unexpected Love Objects of Dunya Noor
Rana Haddad
Copyright © 2018 by
Hoopoe
113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
420 Fifth Avenue, New York, 10018
www.hoopoefiction.com
Hoopoe is an imprint of the American University in Cairo Press
www.aucpress.com
Protected under the Berne Convention
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978 977 416 861 1
eISBN: 978 161 797 882 1
Version 1
The events of this book take place during the fin de siècle period of the last century, when a mustachioed military dictator, with an abnormally large head, named Hafez al-Assad (father of Bashar) ruled Syria.
Prologue
Dunya Noor had once heard that, when love occurred, the object of her love would begin to sparkle, because true love often appeared in the unexpected form of light. Was this really true? Only God knew—only God and possibly also her camera. All she would need to do was to take a photograph of that light if and when it shone in the face of her beloved, that was how she’d prove that he was the One.
For there could only ever be One.
There could only ever be One God, One Father, One Mother, only One.
There could only ever be One Sun in the sky, One Moon, only One.
And in a country like Syria, there could only ever be One Truth, only One, and there was only one man who knew it—and his name was Hafez al-Assad.
BOOK ONE
An English Rose
1
The Beauty Contest
It was the summer of 1996 in the Democratic Arab Republic of Syria and the sun was blazing above its most important, but little known, Mediterranean harbor city of Latakia. On the large and marble-tiled terrace of the old colonial Casino Hotel, five young women stood on an elevated platform, each next to her own specially designated bamboo chair. They flicked their hair, stood up, walked about, and allowed the audience to judge them.
Dr. Joseph Noor carefully inspected the girls and tried to make up his mind as to who should win. He glanced at the audience behind him: a collection of heavily made-up and overly perfumed society women and their pampered, pot-bellied husbands. He tried to avoid looking at his English wife Patricia, because he suspected that she was about to cry, as she sometimes did during such occasions. He could hear her heavy breathing next to him and feel her agitated movements. Out of the corner of his eye, Dr. Joseph Noor saw his wife crossing one of her legs over the other and then uncrossing it, over and over again, and instead of looking at him or at any of the contestants, she distracted herself either by inspecting her expensive designer shoes or by sipping loudly from a glass of bitter lemon which she put back on the table next to her with a sharp bang. It was as if Patricia was trying to force Joseph to take notice of her. But Joseph continued to ignore her and instead stared at the beautiful young contestants, assessing each one according to her merits.
Attending Latakia’s annual beauty contest was becoming more and more difficult for Patricia as the years went by, because (according to her self-critical green eyes and the large bedroom mirror custom-made for her in a famous glass factory in Damascus), her own once-striking beauty was now fading.
“I think Dunya would’ve won if she’d been here,” Patricia whispered in her husband’s ear. Her long artificial eyelashes swayed a little, like lost exclamation marks.
“I disagree,” Joseph said gruffly, while observing a contestant who wore a sophisticated blue hat, “I think Jamila Zamani is far prettier.”
Patricia looked at Jamila contemptuously and said, “Huh?” She saw Joseph’s rude comment as a snub to herself as well as to their daughter Dunya, who had always managed to get on her father’s nerves, even though she lived at a distance of at least four thousand kilometers in a northwesterly direction (England).
“You have the strangest taste in women, Joseph,” Patricia said.
“Perhaps that’s why I married you,” Joseph answered.
“She’s our only child. Why do you dislike her so much?” Patricia looked at Joseph.
“She’s not a child any more, Patricia. She’s a strange young woman who prefers her camera to a decent man. What kind of daughter is that? No family in Syria has ever had a daughter like ours.” Joseph huffed and puffed until his yellow short-sleeved shirt started to shake visibly, and he didn’t stop huffing until his straw hat fell on the floor and rolled away like an irresponsible thought.
“But Hilal is a decent man, isn’t he? And she loves him, more than her camera, I should think,” Patricia said.
“Hilal! Please don’t mention that name in front of me. How can I allow my daughter to marry a man whose name is Hilal? And besides, how can you call someone whose job it is to stare at the moon a man?” Joseph’s face puffed up like some strange pastry—he looked like a balloon that was about to explode.
“He’s an astronomer, Joseph. It’s his job to study the moon and contemplate the stars. Just because no one practices astronomy in Syria doesn’t make it a disreputable profession,” Patricia said. “Dunya says he’s about to discover a theory! He’s probably a genius—what more could you want from a son-in-law?”
“He is a Muslim, remember? Do you want our daughter married to a Muslim?”
“I don’t care if he’s a Muslim as long as she loves him. And besides, he’s handsome, so very, very handsome.”
“You’re English and that is why you’ll never understand,” Joseph said. He turned away from Patricia and concentrated his gaze at Jamila Zamani, his favorite contestant. Her hat had just been plucked by a grasping sea bird and she’d caught her dress in the back of her bamboo chair. Joseph gasped in embarrassment, but he wished that his own daughter was a little bit more like Jamila: engaged to an architect from a good Greek Orthodox Christian family, and had recently graduated (with flying colors) in law.
“She’d be an idiot to marry a man like that Hilal, the son of a tailor.”
“What is wrong with tailors? I love tailors. Yves St. Laurent is a tailor, isn’t he?”
If he’d had a gun, Joseph would have liked to be able to use it right then, to pull the trigger and shoot that man who was plotting to steal his daughter.
But luckily Hilal was out of reach, munching a biscuit on an airplane that was bulleting its way toward Damascus airport as fast as it could.
As Mr. and Mrs. Noor were twirling their thumbs waiting for the beauty contest results, and after Joseph had cast his vote, his best friend Salman Ghazi came toward them, beaming. Mr. Ghazi was an exceptionally loudmouthed lawyer who normally described himself as an ‘avocado’—an Arabization of the French word ‘avocat,’ which means lawyer.
“Patricia tells me that Dunya’s coming home next week, is that true?” Mr. Ghazi asked Joseph. “Why didn’t you tell us? Maria will be over the moon when she hears of this.”
“She only told us of her visit this morning.”
“She flies out of the country in the dead of night without saying goodbye and then turns up all of a sudden, ten years later, without warning? I thought you preferred to visit her i
n England. What if . . . ?” Mr. Ghazi cut his own nervous whisper short.
“What if what?” Joseph asked.
“What if she gets herself into trouble again?” Mr. Ghazi said.
“She’s no longer the reckless little girl she used to be. She’s a grown-up woman now, with her head on her shoulders.” Joseph said this with some hesitation. “Patricia and I are getting tired of flying so often to see her and she’s missing Syria. It’s time she came back.”
“If it’s true she’s a reformed character as you say, perhaps you should find her a husband while she’s here, Joseph. Isn’t she Maria’s age? Don’t leave it too late. And remember, I can help you find the right husband for her. You don’t want her to marry a cold fish of an Englishman, do you?”
“It’s too early for her to be thinking about husbands, she needs to concentrate on her studies and her career first. I don’t want her to be a wife right now, Salman, she’s not ready for it. Our girls are not like their mothers, they need to be independent and then find a husband later.”
“I expect she’ll become a doctor won’t she?” Salman said.
“She wants to be a photographer.”
“A photographer? You must be joking. Don’t you want her to be a heart surgeon like you, or at least a dentist, or a, or a . . .”
“She’s made up her mind, Salman.”
“Well, how about a lawyer, a banker? Who wants his daughter to be a photographer? What’s she going to photograph? Who’s going to pay her to take photographs?”
“Well, photography seems to be a good career in England. Apparently it’s considered an art,” Joseph said with a clear lack of conviction.
“Don’t believe what she tells you. Only an Armenian would think photography is a career, that and hairdressing. Even my wife, who is good at nothing but complaining, can take good photographs. It’s not a skill. I’ll talk her out of it—if you can’t. When a girl is wilful it’s an art to lead her to the right path. They always say boys are difficult, but in my opinion girls are more so and their lack of obedience more dangerous. You need to learn from me, Joseph, look at my daughter Maria. She does what I say.”
A big copper bell rang and some ecstatic belly dance music blared out of the five loud speakers. “The winner of this year’s Miss Latakia Beauty Contest is Maria Ghazi. Hey, Maria, come onto the stage,” boomed a rather macho voice. And the beauty queen was duly crowned to the applause of the crowd and awarded twenty pairs of Yves St. Laurent shoes (a year’s supply) as well as a five-star holiday for two in Greece.
A whole balcony full of Latakians clapped bitterly because their daughters hadn’t won. They muttered to one another, “Anyway, who cares! What kind of cheap prize is this? And if Maria goes to Greece with one of her friends they’ll certainly get up to no good and no one will ever want to marry them when they come back. What a loose generation this is!”
Mr. Ghazi looked at his daughter Maria proudly. “Oh darling, I knew you’d win. Your granny will take you to Greece, and you’ll have a whale of a time there.” He burst into a bombastic belly laugh, which caused his mustache to jump up and down. Maria looked disturbed by what she’d heard but she kept her mouth shut. Mr. Ghazi had decided that she would go to Greece in the company of her half-blind granny Anaïs, who hadn’t had a trip abroad for the last forty years. And what Mr. Ghazi decided was always law. Who would dare cross him?
Granny Anaïs had been far too busy breaking news hither and thither to have had time to travel. She was the Central City Gossip, a prominent member of Latakia’s daily morning gossip clubs, which operated as an environmentally friendly alternative to newspapers. Instead of wasting precious paper, they only needed air to circulate. Their mainly female members worked as unpaid information hubs; they were Latakia’s very own news agencies. And being half blind she was able to see the strangest things; her tongue wagged constantly in anticipation of terrible scandals and disaster.
Maria suddenly wished that she hadn’t won the competition. There was no way she could go to Greece with her fiancé Shadi because that would be considered indecent by every decent person in the city, but going in the company of her grandmother Anaïs would bring her to her knees.
Joseph stood up and stared at the horizon with sad and worried eyes. The Mediterranean Sea spread in front of him for miles, blue and magnificent and indifferent to his petty family squabbles. He felt faint and he wondered whether it would happen to him one day, “Am I really going to die of a heart attack and will it be because of Dunya or Patricia, or a fatal combination of the two?”
2
Mr. and Mrs. Noor
Everyone knew that Joseph Noor was the most famous heart surgeon in the Syrian Arab Republic. He was famous for having rescued most of the high and mighty in the country from possible death by heart dysfunction or heart attack. To be attacked by one’s heart was quite a common occurrence in Syria, particularly for men. The problem with Joseph Noor was that his heart also had a will of its own, and had launched a few attacks on him at regular intervals since the age of six when he’d heard that, like his father Ibrahim, he might one day become bald. It was rare for a child of only six to fall down for such reasons. As a result, his mother Marrouma began to see him as an extremely sensitive and fragile boy and began to spoil him rotten. And all of his family made sure that Joseph Noor grew up to be one of the most spoiled men in the city, perhaps in the country, possibly in the whole wide world. Spoiling him to death seemed like the only way to save Joseph’s life.
Thus it came about that his heart was the center of his life and Joseph became obsessed not merely with the medical aspects of hearts in general, but his own in particular. He thought that if he learned all about the human heart he might be able to save his own from itself indefinitely.
Apart from its propensity to launch attacks at him, Joseph’s heart seemed to lack other interests. He had never fallen in love or been passionate about any woman or felt any particularly tender feelings toward anyone until he reached the ripe age of twenty-eight.
At his birthday party, which took place in a pub in London near Imperial College, where as an undergraduate he was slowly plotting to take over world heart surgery, Joseph glimpsed a girl sitting on a chair. The moment he saw her, Joseph stopped being able to see anything else at all in the room, and walked straight toward her. He stood in front of her, red as a rose and smiling like the village idiot.
The girl had never met a man with such curly black hair in her life before, nor such a big nose. She didn’t understand why he was smiling as he was and not saying a word. Suddenly a sentence made its way out of his mouth in a sort of whisper, “What is your name?”
She thought he was trying to flirt with her—which he was—but instead of responding with an encouraging smile, she gave him a hard slap on the face and briskly walked out. One reason for her cruelty was that all of Joseph’s doctor friends were looking on from behind them and laughing. She thought he’d made a bet with them and was about to make a fool of her.
As she walked out into the fresh air, she found Joseph following her. His hair was on end and he had a pleading look in his eyes. “I really need to know your name.”
“Pat-ricia,” she said.
“Patri-cia?” He looked at her for a moment as if he were looking at someone or something that it had never occurred to him he might come across. “I’ve never heard of such a beautiful name before,” he said in a gentle voice.
Joseph became perfectly quiet and didn’t know what else to say. She was, he thought, the most beautiful woman he had ever set his eyes upon. Her green eyes and her tall majestic figure, her blond hair and her elegant aristocratic cheekbones, everything about her was perfect, including her subtle air of cold haughtiness which made his heart beat ten times faster than it should. She had that sort of icy beauty that not many women in Syria had and which he found irresistible.
Patricia could tell from his accent that Joseph was a foreigner. She thought he might be French, Jewish, or S
panish—at any rate, someone who clearly belonged to a culture marked by curly hair and random emotional outbursts.
He had correctly calculated that Patricia might find his pretended ignorance endearing. “I’ve never heard of such a beautiful name before.” This was the only sentence he had ever invented for the delicate purpose of ensnaring a woman, and as if by miracle, it worked.
The two married within six months of meeting and Joseph promised Patricia that they would live in London and that he would become famous. But after only four years of living in a rented apartment in Marylebone, while Joseph effortlessly climbed the ladder of success in the heart surgery world, he woke up one morning and said to her, “I cannot bear this any longer.”
“You can’t bear what?”
“I cannot bear London. I feel it’s suffocating me.”
“Well, we could move to the country, darling. I could teach you golf. You’d love it.”
“No, Patricia. I need to live in Latakia.”
“Latakia? What do you mean, Latakia? What about me? How am I supposed to live there? You wait until I’m pregnant to tell me this? What about the baby? Do you want your children to grow up in Latakia?”
“Well, why not? I grew up there and look at me, as good as gold, as sound as a bell!”
Latakia was nothing special to the unaddicted eye. If you did not happen to be born there it might never have any sort of hold on you. It never succeeded in getting a hold on Patricia who found it boring, parochial, and cement-ridden.
“Joseph, why do you keep on calling it a she?” Patricia soon started to get irritated. “It’s just an ugly little town.”
Since they moved back he’d been frantically showing Latakia off to her.
“You act as if we’re in Venice,” Patricia often said resentfully.