In Praise of Hatred (11 page)

I said to myself that I must drown in onion fumes, piles of
molokhiyya
and bulgur wheat soaked in stone pots. This was the day before that offer that was to confuse Safaa and create a past impossible to erase, like a dishonour which no blood could wash away. Zahra came to the house with her two children, and she unpacked her clothes in my room. I needed someone to share the space with, to help me calm down a little. I decided to tell Zahra about Ghada and the cruelty of her abandonment, about my hatred and resentment which increased whenever I saw that middle-aged man picking her up outside school. I became completely engrossed in preparing the food for the important guests Bakr was shortly to bring to the house. I felt Maryam’s contented gaze watching me as I seasoned fish and stuffed it with pepper, tasted it, and added some sticks of parsley. Marwa encouraged my daring in breaking with long-established cooking traditions, while Safaa whispered with Zahra briefly and appeared grave and bewildered. She took on the role of mother to both Zahra’s and Omar’s children – Maryam had invited them over so they could see their grandfather’s house, which everyone felt was falling away.

Maryam’s efforts to re-align our present according to the rhythm of the past would be of no use; it would only increase our delusions of belonging. We didn’t know how we would one day throw off its weight from our shoulders and free ourselves from the tyranny of the framed pictures of our ancestors hanging on Maryam’s wall, from the brass bedsteads and silver table service our grandparents had used, along with the ornate ancient mirrors, the walnut chests, the locked boxes and the hundreds of other fragments scattered all over a house whose sanctity increased every morning. The ropes wound around our necks and turned us all into slaves. We cleaned it all, polished it, reassured it; we didn’t dare smash so much as a vase, even accidentally.

Maryam saw, as if for the first time, that I had grown to look like any woman who wore loose clothing and whose breasts drooped. I was no longer a little schoolgirl. I was allowed to approach Zahra, and to correct tacitly Maryam’s errors in cooking the mince or using it as stuffing for the
kibbeh
. In all my life I had never seen such a huge parade of food as on that day. Maryam wanted Bakr’s guests to relay their impressions to their womenfolk, so they would talk once more about our affairs and our skills as women; our absence from their gossip disturbed her as much as if we had somehow been tarnished.

Zahra was divided between us that night; at first, in the early evening, the conversation revolved gravely between Marwa, Safaa and Zahra, whom I saw from afar talking confidently and sipping from a cup of tea. Marwa was silent, watching Safaa as she asked a question, flinging up her hand in desperation. I was absorbed in bathing; my body needed to relax and waste some time. I felt that they had chosen to exchange secrets they wanted to keep from me, leaving me with Bakr’s young son. We bathed together and I was delighted with him, and with his tears when the soap burned his eyes. I sang to him; I hadn’t realized before that I hadn’t learned anything other than Hajja Radia’s
nashid
, which he didn’t like. I immediately discarded the question of how boys grow up to become men. I remembered the pain of the previous night and laughed at my misgivings. I wondered how I could reduce their power and make them into a silly, transient idea which wouldn’t corrupt the innocence of the first male I had washed with, as I pelted him with hot water and laughter.

At the end of the night, I told Zahra coldly about the perfidy of friends; about Ghada and my fear that she would get entangled in irresponsible adventures that would turn her into a woman of ill repute. I abandoned myself to describing my pain and Zahra was silent. She didn’t agree with my stern opinions, but she didn’t raise any objections to them. That was what I loved about her; she listened so intently to whoever needed it that the other half of the truth, which had always been concealed, came to light. I felt my predicament when she looked at me as if she were saying, ‘How miserable you are,’ and relief because I had let her into my stagnant world, like a lake forsaken by breezes, ducks and fishing hooks.

My mother came the next morning, early as usual. We were woken by the clamour and uproar of the copper saucepans she and Maryam had fetched to prepare the
freekeh
; my mother excelled at sweetening it with saffron to give it a special, indescribable flavour. She seemed decrepit to me when she complained of my father’s indifference and extolled my brother Hossam’s superlative grades and devoutness, singing the praises of his light moustache and slender frame. She was devoted to her first-born son, and loved him to a degree approaching madness. She believed that he would pluck our family from out of its wretchedness and, like all mothers, she wanted him to be a doctor and a philosopher. I became like a younger sister or companion to her; after four years away from her I had grown distant. I was no longer a part of her daily vocabulary. She received my news with unconcern, afraid only that I would be afflicted with the same curse of spinsterhood as my aunts, but when she returned home she would remember that my father had sold fish at the entrance to the souk
at Bab Jenein. This was enough to ensure that the door to our house would be knocked on only by a poor bridegroom, or by one of the cousins whose faces remained unclear to me even after the few times I had met them. She only stayed a few hours, and when she left I saw Maryam slip some money into her handbag which earlier she had refused to take.

We were surprised at the group of thirty guests Bakr had invited, and I couldn’t understand the secret of my brother Hossam’s presence next to Bakr, nor his clear authority when he kissed the assembled men. I knew some of them, and Maryam pointed out who some of the others were as we sat in the kitchen. We watched them eating greedily, and Maryam was overjoyed that Sheikh Daghstani was there; for her, his acceptance of our invitation was a public exoneration of Omar. She praised his forbearance and piety; she enumerated some instances of his generosity and described him with exaggerated emphasis as a man of God. How had all these diverse people come together? I asked myself. They included important traders, manufacturers, a retired politician (who played a dubious role in independent governments), sheikhs (some of whom were involved in politics), men who were known to belong to the Muslim Brotherhood, an army officer I didn’t know, a Saudi man and a Yemeni man of about forty-five. Maryam said he was a carpet trader who was friendly with Bakr. The Yemeni sat in the middle of the gathering. From his seat he could see the window of Safaa’s room.

My brother and Selim’s children served the guests silently and Radwan tried to convince them that dinner was the ideal time for listening to his ode in praise of the Prophet. Hossam dismissed him resolutely, upsetting Radwan, who complained to me. I was astonished at my brother’s coldness and indifference when I asked him to allow Radwan to recite; he didn’t hear me when I insisted on what this gathering meant to Radwan. I was surprised at the hidden joy on Maryam’s face when she explained at length that the family was gaining new men. We crept from the kitchen behind the curtain we had prepared so we could return to our rooms without the strangers seeing us. I went into Safaa’s room and flung myself on her bed, exhausted, and was astonished to see her wearing an embroidered Arabic abaya and a head covering. I fell asleep and when I woke up two hours later, the siege was still going on. My aunts had gathered with Zahra in Maryam’s room and although their voices were raised in excitement, they fell quiet when I entered.

Bakr stayed on with the remaining guests; we knew there were five of them when he asked us to prepare ginger tea for six. The Saudi and the Yemeni were no longer there, and neither was Sheikh Daghstani, all of whom Safaa had seen leave. I was overjoyed that Zahra had stayed and was delighted she would be sharing my room. I felt how lonely I was, how afraid of something unknown. My dreams had transformed into nightmares in which I discerned bad omens. In my notebook I drew huge snakes devouring children, bats cooing like doves in the sky over the city, and wolves devouring a woman. ‘How hard it is to listen freely to your inner voice,’ I said to myself. I informed Zahra of my desire to swim in the sea naked. I looked at her face; she was in utter disbelief that such a desire could have taken hold of me. I laughed and reassured her that my dreams sometimes broke loose.

Three days later, Bakr was still hosting the same five men we didn’t know. They sat in a room in the attic for hours, spreading out papers, and he left with them after whispering a little with Zahra, who nodded her head and returned to us to complete a conversation which had become tedious. We listened, distracted, as Maryam quoted what the local women had said about the food we had spent the previous Friday preparing for their men.

Bakr was worried and confused. He suffered from insomnia, which was evident from his drooping eyelids. On the Wednesday, as usual, we prepared the light dinner and fresh berry juice he always asked for and hid in our rooms so the guests could leave at a certain time. After the evening prayer Bakr entered, and with him was the Yemeni man. In our presence, he asked Safaa to consider marrying this man, called Abdullah. He told her frankly that he was asking her to be a second wife and left her the freedom to come to a decision and become acquainted with him according to the principles of sharia. Safaa agreed without hesitation after Bakr praised his morals, with the only stipulation that the marriage should happen within days.

Zahra was the sponsor of this marriage, which Safaa had determined upon without love. Maryam tried to defer it for a while. Safaa surprised everyone with her serious, sad tone when she shouted, ‘I want to become a woman. I don’t want to die a virgin.’ She concluded quietly, ‘I want a child.’ Maryam had no time to praise the morals, piety or wealth of her sister’s prospective Yemeni husband at any women’s gatherings. My uncles blessed the marriage as they usually did, as if our remaining without menfolk had made them expect a future scandal. Omar dismissed Maryam’s irritation and presented Safaa with a gold belt and a ring set with precious diamonds. Laughing, he informed us that he had bought it for one of his girlfriends in Beirut. Omar’s libertine words seemed alien to the dictionary of decency that Maryam was intent on reviving, reminding us of its vocabulary all the more frequently as she advanced in years.

In hastily prepared sumptuous white clothing, and with a small trousseau filling no more than two bags, Safaa left our house as a bride to the sound of Hajja Radia’s tambourines. A few women had been invited to the
mawlid
which lasted no more than two hours, and their extemporizing swiftly angered Maryam, who wept as Safaa stepped outside the house to be welcomed by Abdullah. He was accompanied by four men: two Yemenis, an Aleppan trader famous for his friendships with men of religion, and Sheikh Daghstani. We closed the door and an awful silence settled as if we were at a funeral. Maryam’s tears bewildered us and made me, Marwa and Zahra cry as well, while my mother told her beads next to Hajja Radia as she gathered up her tambourines. She waited for Maryam to calm down so she could talk to her cruelly about her portion of the inheritance, and ask her to stop adhering to such stringent requirements for her own marriage, which simply wouldn’t ever take place, despite our lineage and the reputations of my grandfather and uncles. I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t seen Radwan for three days, after Maryam prevented him from leading as usual our procession to the hammam. I knocked at his door and heard the sound of sobbing. I opened the door and saw him eating dried figs and weeping for his ‘devoted friend, Safaa’ as he described her on our first visit to her new home. He gave her a bottle of perfume, with what seemed like a secret understanding. He laughed like a child when she promised to name her second son Radwan and bring him over so the original Radwan could help him memorize the Quran and teach him how to make perfumes.

Safaa reassured Maryam that she felt optimistic about her marriage to the Yemeni, and whispered companionably with Zahra, as if expressing her gratitude to her. Safaa’s new house in Jamiliyya was composed of two rooms and a living room. Maryam almost suffocated in the narrowness of the reception room, which she said resembled a tomb. For the first time, I saw Safaa’s spirit expressed in a place of her very own; she shook off her lethargy and fiercely defended her new life. The house was arranged in a manner that revealed her hatred for my grandfather’s house filled with its old furniture. There were a couple of sofas in the living room in the American style, elsewhere was a soft bed beside a gleaming black chest of drawers topped by a candlestick with three branches. There were not many pots and pans in the kitchen, as if the owners of the house were spending a short holiday there and would be leaving it soon. Safaa didn’t listen to Maryam’s suggestion to move some things from my grandfather’s house, which she offered up as if it were Safaa’s greatest right to have them. Safaa stroked her hand and informed her that her carpet would be enough, relinquishing her portion of the inheritance; it was as if she didn’t trust that this small house or the unknown places where she would join her husband were really a long-term arrangement. Marwa kept Safaa’s wardrobe filled with dresses, some of which became gifts, along with her bedding, her pillows and all her small effects. Marwa seemed unconvinced that Safaa had broken free from their fate and would not be returning to the house a lonely woman.

Our monotonous evenings began to herald a long isolation from which I didn’t know how to escape. Marwa embroidered handkerchiefs. I didn’t know who she would give them to; she piled them in her wardrobe and postponed her death a day at a time. She offered to teach me how to embroider and I told her seriously, and to her astonishment, ‘I don’t want to wait for death.’

*   *   *

I went to a daily meeting at Hajja Souad’s – I had recently begun to frequent her house despite the feeling of estrangement that attended me as I sat with the other girls. I had met most of them the day Hana took me there, in accordance with Bakr’s orders and his insistence that I would only understand his purpose when Hajja Souad began to divide us into smaller groups and meet us at fixed times. We spoke gravely about the group and its ideology of establishing an Islamic state, and enthusiastically conveyed news from school, and our aims to include other girls in our gatherings, which had started to expand.