The Unexpected Love Objects of Dunya Noor

by Rana Haddad

  Suha lifted the cover too over her head and kissed the back of Dunya’s neck. She kissed her on her left shoulder blade, behind her heart, and she circled her arms around her.

  “I will love you, even if you don’t love me. I don’t care. You can love him and I’ll love you. If you want to lie to me, lie. I’ll still love you. Perhaps your heart is too small for a love as big as this.”

  Dunya was so quiet now, so still, and she didn’t reply.

  She must stay quiet, very quiet, she must stay still.

  It was dark in the room, very dark, and Dunya could hardly breathe.

  Then Suha kissed her and, no, she could not resist her.

  Suha kissed her and Dunya kissed Suha, on the lips, on the hair, on her neck, on her cheeks. She kissed her.

  Suha’s hair was black like the night, her cushion was white, white, white, but all that Dunya could see when she dared to sneak a look at her was light. Her body was bathed in light, her limbs, her eyelids, her lips, her hair, she loved everything about Suha, every single part of her.

  The only light that came into Suha’s bedroom that night sneaked in through the cotton curtain that covered her bedroom window. It only allowed in the diffuse light of street lamps, the reflected light of midnight trucks and cars and motorcycles, and the mysterious light of the moon.

  The two of them held on to one another that entire night, as tightly as they could, and it was as if they were flying together inside a small plane without a pilot that was heading very fast toward the stars, but which both of them knew would eventually crash without mercy into the rocky earth.

  In their flight they saw things that they had never seen anywhere else: how passion can be terrible and terrifying and how pleasure can be terrible, too, when it is mixed with fear and pain, and the certain knowledge that you can’t have what you want to have and that at the very moment you have it, you will also lose it.

  “So do you still not love me?” Suha asked Dunya the next morning. “Do you still love him more?”

  “Yes,” Dunya said. “I love him more.”

  She looked away from Suha.

  “I don’t believe you,” Suha said.

  Dunya took her camera out of its bag, and she didn’t say anything to Suha. She looked at her through her lens. She saw Suha’s face again that morning with the light of dawn surrounding her own brilliant light. She just wanted to lie down at Suha’s feet and admit her love to her.

  Suha spread her bare arms out, she sat on her bed and behind her two large palm leaves looked like wings.

  What if she had met her first? Would she then be the One and only One?

  She clicked her shutter.

  Two decades or so ago in the old city of Aleppo, a boy astronomer whose parents hid the truth from him behind a veil of sadness and a girl with a beautiful voice, which she was forced to hide behind a wall of silence, were growing up only a few kilometers apart, each with a hole in their heart, not knowing in what shape or form the truth would come.

  Never did it occur to either of them that the truth would come in the shape of a girl whose name was Dunya. And whose fate it was both to bring them together—and to divide them.

  21

  The Dangers of Love

  Dunya’s return to Latakia was, both her parents agreed, a disgrace. “How could you come and go like this? Do you hate us? We’re not a hotel, you know,” Patricia said. As far as Joseph was concerned, Dunya had achieved the height of irresponsibility and the apex of ingratitude. His fury boiled within and instead of lashing out, he decided that he was going to have to resort to his last weapon: a frozen silence. But the official word-strike only began the next day, six days exactly after Dunya and Hilal’s fateful landing in Syria.

  Joseph had always had an obsession with the meaning of words. Words and the withholding of words could be used as weapons, he believed. Words and their possible meanings could change history and explain the universe. Words were meaning. There was no meaning without words.

  Despite his fascinating insights, Joseph was normally far too busy to explore language fully and had decided early on to confine his researches mainly to patriotic pursuits. His primary objective was to prove that every important word in the world had an Arabic root: Coffee came from ‘qahwa,’ didn’t it? Sugar from ‘sukkar,’ rice from ‘ruz,” alcohol from ‘al-kuhoul,’ and so on. And let us not forget that the Arabs called Portugal ‘Burtuqal’ (the Arabic word for oranges) because it was full of orange trees.

  Joseph sat in his boxer shorts on the sixth floor with a dictionary between his legs, trying to find more evidence of why Arabs were so superior, and didn’t notice the girls strolling in the street below. There were girls in rather short skirts strutting their stuff on the main catwalk this side of the Mediterranean: Baghdad Street. Other girls showed off their mascara and eyeliner through carefully chosen headscarves. They sometimes showed some ankle underneath long, suggestive skirts. Men of all shapes and sizes walked around together, hand in hand sometimes, sometimes looking at the girls, sometimes passing them little notes. Sometimes they just tantalized them by ignoring them, smoking and talking about guess what? Politics. Politics was every man’s mistress, while every woman’s fantasy lover was, of course, who else but Hafez al-Assad?

  Joseph hardly noticed any of these boys and none of these girls, as all he was concerned with was finding the roots of more words and blocking off dark thoughts about his daughter’s future and the way she seemed to have no respect for him. Patricia was going that way too. He’d tried his best, but he was losing his grip on the women in his life.

  Among the girls whom Joseph didn’t notice walking up and down Baghdad Street were Dunya and Maria, who were conducting their latest top-secret conversation. They whispered to one another because, particularly during these en masse evening walks, a girl needed to be wary of dedicated eavesdroppers who walked too near and tried to overhear tête-à-tête conversations in order to increase their stocks of freshly harvested gossip.

  “One of the top brigadier generals in the northern territories of Syria,” Maria whispered, “is extremely keen on Mr. Saddiq’s youngest sister. Saddiq told me that he could, if you wanted him to, arrange for Hilal to have a day or two’s holiday to come and see you. After that he’ll work on trying to get him out altogether, but it will happen step by step, and it will depend on who’s pulling the strings on the other side, and if they have more clout than my darling Saddiq.”

  Dunya stood in the middle of Baghdad Street and put her arms around Maria. “Are you sure of this?” she said.

  “Of course, darling,” Maria said. “I have no doubt that Saddiq’s sister is more than capable of tipping the balance of power in our favor, I promise you, Dunya!”

  “Is there anyone in this country who doesn’t have their eyes on someone and who’s not plotting a marriage? I thought this was a dictatorship, not an enormous dating bureau!” Dunya said as they walked back home.

  “There’s not much difference between love and a dictatorship, is there?” Maria said. “It’s practically the same thing.”

  “Maybe,” Dunya said, “what we’ve read about in books of poems and heard about in songs was not true after all? Maybe we were wrong,” Dunya said to Maria. “I am not sure any more whether I believe in love, you know, the sort of love we always used to talk about and dream of. Believing in it can bring you ruin, it’s like falling into the arms of

  a tiger.”

  “Are you telling me Hilal is like a tiger? Well, I can’t wait to meet him. He sounds like a very intriguing young man.” Maria raised her eyelashes until the mascara touched the base of her eyebrows, leaving a line of little black dots.

  It was the first time in her life that love had turned into a tiger in Dunya’s eyes. Falling in love with Suha was like falling into the arms of a tiger. In its grip, what could she do? If she ran, it would chase her; if she fought it, it would catch her. She silently cried out to Hilal in her mind, How can I love her like that when I love
you? She is not you!

  That evening Joseph went to the lounge and sat in the chair he always chose to sit in when he was at the end of his tether. He turned the TV on to crowd out the terrible thoughts that were whirling through his head.

  “Don’t you want to eat something, Joseph?” Patricia asked him.

  Joseph said nothing and focused his eyes on the TV screen where an eighteen-year-old female soldier was decapitating a snake.

  “This is what we’re going to do to our enemies,” she announced in a sexy but rather scary voice, just before the TV screen relapsed into an orgy of flags and horse hooves accompanied by camp, hero-worship music.

  A few days later the doorbell rang at Dr. Noor’s residence. When Amina the housekeeper opened the door, she found a young woman wearing a tight, bosom-hugging, red dress and behind her stood two tall men dressed in what seemed to her rather dapper suits. They stood so tall that she had to raise her head to see their faces.

  “Is this the residence of Miss Dunya Noor?” the young woman asked. “We need to speak to her urgently.”

  “Dunya’s not in.” Joseph arrived in a cloud of aftershave and uttered his first sentence for days.

  “When will she be back?” Suha asked him.

  “Who knows?” Dr. Noor looked at Suha’s red dress with puzzlement. Who was this girl? To him she looked like some 1970s movie actress who had escaped from the silver screen, while the two men who stood beside her looked like vagabond gangsters who reeked of cheap cologne. He hadn’t seen girls like this in Latakia, nor men like that. They certainly didn’t look like they belonged to the right sort

  of families.

  “How do you know my daughter?” Dr. Noor looked at Aziz and Badri and examined their ill-fitting suits and their trousers and jackets that were far too short, and then, without really meaning to, he burst into a big belly laugh.

  The cousins looked at Dr. Noor’s well-bred appearance, at the marble floors inside his apartment, the crystal chandelier above his head, and his servant Amina standing obediently a few meters behind him, and they felt small.

  “What are you laughing at, Dr. Noor?” asked Suha.

  “Nothing. If you tell me who you are, I’ll tell Dunya you came by.”

  “I am here, Dad.” Dunya came up behind him with a glass of water in her hand. “Suha?” she gasped. She looked at Suha and Suha looked at her, in a way that Joseph noticed.

  “What’s the matter with you two?” Joseph shook his daughter’s shoulders as if to wake her up from a reverie. “Look at you and look at her! How do you two know each other? Who is this girl? Tell me, Dunya. On what street corner did you find her?”

  “She’s Suha from Aleppo. Come in, Suha,” Dunya said. “Come in, Aziz, come in, Badri.”

  Joseph had had it up to here. What was it with his daughter and her riffraff friends? He took a second look at Suha as she walked in through his door and for a moment he understood what Dunya must have seen in her. She was beautiful. She was not the sort of ordinary pretty girl that one might find anywhere; she had something much more marvellous than that. Even when Joseph, in his angry mood, looked at her, he could almost hear a song, although he could have sworn that the hallway was silent and that there was no song. How unusual for such a common girl to be so uncommonly striking, Joseph thought to himself. And when Suha and Dunya sat across from each other on opposite armchairs, Joseph could not help but observe and secretly admire the quality Suha possessed which reminded him of his own daughter; it was clear that she was the sort of girl who did not follow any rules except those of the heart—a very dangerous sort of girl.

  Dunya looked at Suha with both desire and fear. She wished she could be as reckless as her. Look at her, look at her. Why had she not met her first, and then Hilal?

  Every time Suha looked at her, Dunya knew that she could see the truth in her eyes, of how much she loved her. Dunya focused her eyes on Joseph who was sipping from a cup of tea and begrudgingly biting into a biscuit. Patricia arrived and shook everyone’s hand and looked a little startled. Who are these people? she asked herself. She looked at Dunya with a slightly raised eyebrow.

  “And so, Miss Suha, what do you do? Are you a wife, a mother, or a member of the working classes like me?” Joseph poured himself some water.

  “I’m a baker,” Suha answered blithely.

  Joseph gulped.

  “You don’t look like one,” he said.

  “Well, you don’t look like a doctor,” Suha replied.

  “Don’t I?” Joseph gave her a sharp look. “Dunya, I didn’t realize you were now mixing in the sophisticated circles of bakers? I thought Hilal came from tailoring stock.”

  “He does,” Dunya said.

  “We are his cousins,” Suha said.

  “Fine lineage,” Joseph smiled.

  “Well, you look like you could be a baker yourself, Sir,” Suha said after pretending to study Joseph’s face closely.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure. You just look like some bakers I know. They’re delightful people.” She put one of her hands on her hips.

  “Really?” Joseph wasn’t sure whether to take this as an insult or a compliment—a baker?

  “Do you not like Hilal because he’s poor?” Suha asked him.

  “Is he poor?” Joseph said. “I had no idea.” He drank more water. “As I said to Dunya before, I would help him if he’d been my son-in-law. But he’s not. I’m a very busy man.”

  “You would have helped him if he’d been a banker from good Greek Orthodox stock, wouldn’t you?” Dunya said.

  “Don’t forget that bakers make bread. Bankers make money in order to buy their bread.” Suha took a loud slurp from her glass of water.

  Joseph bit his tongue. Who was this Suha character anyway? And did her parents not teach her that it was rude to upstage a man in his own home?

  “Is she really a baker?” Patricia whispered in Dunya’s ear.

  “Yes.”

  “And why is she here?”

  “She’s trying to help me find Hilal.”

  “A baker will help you?” Patricia grinned. “You’ve been away from this country for too long, darling.”

  Suha waited a little longer before she said anything.

  “It’s difficult to know whether to hide the truth, or tell it as it is,” she said. “What do you think, Dunya? Shall I tell the truth, or shall I hide it?”

  “What truth?” Dunya said.

  “The truth about what happened to Hilal and why he’s in the army and who put him there and who can get him out?”

  “Of course you should tell it,” Dunya said.

  “You want to know even if what I have to say might be painful to hear, or might cause you a psychological and moral shock? Do you think you can handle the truth?” Suha looked at Joseph.

  “Yes,” Dunya said.

  “How about you, Dr. Noor, can you handle the truth?”

  “What has it got to do with me?” Joseph said impatiently.

  “It has everything to do with you, Dr. Noor,” Suha said. “Do you want me to tell your wife and daughter the truth, or shall I hide it from them? It’s your choice.”

  “What are you talking about, Miss Suha? What are you trying to imply? Do I detect a tone of blackmail in your voice?”

  “If you help us release Hilal from the ‘army’ and if you bring him home to his mother today, safe and sound, I’ll keep my mouth firmly shut,” Suha said. “If that is blackmail, so be it.”

  Patricia looked at Joseph with anxious eyes and held his hands.

  “No one talks to me like this!” Dr. Noor stood up. “Who do you think you are? Speak the truth, tell lies, I don’t care. No one in their right mind would believe a frivolous girl like you in a silly red dress. What a joke. Who exactly are you to come here to my house and tell me what’s what?”

  “Very well then,” Suha said. “It was your father who . . . who did it,” Suha said to Dunya.

  “My father wh
o did what?”

  “He paid a corrupt army officer to ‘recruit’ Hilal into the world-famous Elite Brigade induction program, for a total of four years with no holidays.”

  “Nonsense!” Joseph said at the top of his voice. “Don’t believe a word she says. Complete and utter nonsense.”

  “Well, according to the coffee boy and the cleaning lady at the Aleppo barracks,” Aziz said in a deep but calm voice, “a man called Dr. Joseph Noor paid the lieutenant to keep Hilal under lock and key, and his best friend Salman Ghazi brokered the deal. Is your name not Joseph Noor and is your best friend’s name not Salman Ghazi?”

  “How dare you speak to me like this? I am Dr. Noor! Who are you? You’re nothing but a shoeshine boy, a street sweeper, a sewer rat!”

  “The lieutenant at the Aleppo barracks,” added Aziz, “runs the barracks as a sort of alternative hotel service. This is how he moonlights to generate a lucrative secondary stream of income, to top up his meager army salary. You all know the economic situation, don’t you? A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” he winked. “Not everyone can be a successful doctor like you, Dr. Noor.”

  “What an entrepreneur, eh?” Suha said, looking at Dr. Noor.

  Joseph looked at Patricia, who had pulled her shaking hand away from his ice-cold hands.

  “We need to speak to you in private, Miss Dunya. Do you have a moment?” Badri asked.

  “You’re not welcome here,” Joseph said. “I’ve had it up to here with Hilal and his ragtag army of down-and-outs!” He shooed Suha and her cousins away with his hands. “Get out!”

  “Dad? Is it true what Suha said?”

  “What reason do I have to lie?” Suha asked.

  “I told you, she’s lying.” Joseph looked at Suha angrily. “Who is this girl anyway? Why do you believe her over your own father?”

  Suha took a piece of paper out of the large envelope she was holding and gave it to Dunya and Patricia, who both read it with their mouths agape: