In Praise of Hatred (12 page)

Secrecy, silence and zeal were on the rise in our state, in which the knowledge of the Prophet would soon stir. ‘We will punish the blasphemies of the unbelievers,’ Hajja Souad repeated with full conviction, as if she could see that very day. We, the sisters, the believers, would sit in Paradise next to the Prophet and the mothers of the believers.

I didn’t grasp from where came the conviction that the path to Paradise was open before me. All I now wanted was to become a martyr borne up by white birds, pure, sins forgiven, to that paradise which Hajja Souad drew for us patiently and confidently. My sufferings were calmed. I found that my belief was encouraged through my relationship with Bakr who, I now saw, had been created to realize the dream of eradicating dissolution and debauchery, and to re-glorify the Islamic Caliphate.

I couldn’t find a better interlocutor than Safaa’s new husband, Abdullah, especially as Bakr was always busy; he never spent two nights in a row in his own house. Maryam didn’t object to my sitting with Abdullah for hours at a time, and we would discuss and exchange information about Islamic clans and stories of martyrs who had died in prison cells and on battlefields. Safaa was astonished by the speed at which I became involved, and my stubbornness in the face of her attempts to dissuade me from this path. She praised my femininity and my promising academic future, trying to save me from the path of destructive politics and, more particularly, from all the details of her husband’s past I could gather. I extolled the strength of conviction that had made Abdullah relinquish the path of error, and how his heart used faith to illuminate a segment of his tortuous journey which had continued for more than twenty years. He had spent them in anxiety, in a search for answers to the questions his heart had been repeating since being opened for the first time at the English School in Cairo, a building surrounded by giant cypress trees in the district of Abdeen. He had been one of its most distinguished students, and his teachers had great confidence in his subtle analyses of William Blake; the awe and accent with which he recited the verses reminded his teachers of Welsh farmers, overcome with emotion at an Eisteddfod. Abdullah would reread long sections of ‘The Tyger’ for me, which he had never forgotten, despite the years separating him from that student who had dreamed of his home in Yemen. He stood up suddenly, raised his hands and, with considerable feeling, began to recite the poem in English.

To me, he seemed like a first-rate actor, and more joyful than usual. Safaa was fixed on his gleaming eyes as if she were noticing their dark colour for the first time. I smiled shyly and laughed when I heard Radwan insist on reciting the ode that Hossam hadn’t allowed him to recite the day of Bakr’s banquet. I thought that he had forgotten about it, but he got carried away and recited it without waiting for permission. Politely, but with increasing boredom, Abdullah listened as Radwan attempted to imitate his style of recitation. We clapped for a long time, and Maryam slapped her palms together, saying, ‘You’ve all gone mad.’ Then she left us to express our need for strangers to talk to, even if only politely and shyly.

*   *   *

Abdullah’s father decided to send his son away from Aden on the basis of advice from an Indian sailor who entered his old shop in the souk one day. He was looking for a copper Umayyad-style lamp which he described in minute detail – a wandering Englishman he had met in Alexandria had convinced him that he would never find it anywhere but Yemen. The Indian sailor seemed bewildered as he explained this in English to a man who understood only a few words of the language. The father called over his son, Abdullah, and asked him to translate this strange foreigner’s request. The two quickly understood each other, and the Indian expressed his delight at this student who was no more than four years old and who could describe a lamp and speak about imaginary worlds that the sailor admired. Abdullah listened attentively to the Indian’s tales of adventure, and the long conversation between the boy and sailor pleased the father, who wondered about the secret behind their effusiveness, and their enjoyment of a conversation neither wanted to finish. He was proud of the eloquence of his young son, who made the sailor laugh and keep returning to the shop to teach magic tricks to Abdullah. He was a fast learner and after a week, he could produce a rose from his shirt sleeve. Before the sailor’s ship left Aden, he had bought a multitude of lamps, copper goblets and silver-plated narghiles to sell at other ports, or to give to the directors of shipping companies in Athens. The sailor advised the father that his son must complete his studies at the English School in Cairo, if he wanted him to have a different future from the rest of his generation – which wandered the streets, waiting to avenge tribal blood feuds or to carry out the whims of Imam Yahya’s men.

It was a dream that was closer to a fantasy than reality, but eventually Abdullah took his first steps into a school that made him afraid, then lonely, then a leader to his classmates, comprised of the sons of kings, petty princelings and families known for their vast wealth. ‘The stuff of legends,’ Abdullah would often say to us as he described for us his first months. The oddness of his never-ending stories always astonished us.

In Cairo, he felt a strange taste he still yearned for. He was forced to work in a printing shop during the holidays to reduce the burden of the exorbitant fees on his father, who wasn’t a prince. His father was determined that his son should stand in graduation robes next to the sons of kings, and enumerated their names for everyone who asked him about Abdullah and his studies. He clung to this image even if it meant he might be forced to sell his shop, spend all his savings and sell what remained of his large camel herd. Whenever he saw a picture of his son with royalty, he remembered the Indian sailor and blessed him. He would, yet again, narrate the story of how the sailor had come into the shop, of his long conversation with Abdullah, and then of their friendship, which shaped and transformed the young Abdullah into a guide who led his friend through the alleys of Aden, where he had become immersed in dreams of travel and destinations which the sailor talked about simply and thrillingly. All the sons of Abdullah’s tribe came to know the story, right to its very end, and they would often repeat it – an echo of a legend that rectified much in their own fates, which were mostly left to chance.

At the age of eighteen, in the cellar of the printing shop, Abdullah met Selim Dessouki – a genius, according to Abdullah’s affectionate description. He was a man who always lingered over choosing his words, always smiled, and who guided Abdullah to Marxism and led him by the hand through some of Cairo’s poorest districts. They visited artists and journalists who dreamed of a world ruled by justice, and hung pictures of Lenin and Marx on the wall. Abdullah smuggled the leftist books into his school and spent the night turning their pages, heedless of the danger created simply by having them in his possession. ‘I became a fanatical Marxist,’ he said bitterly as he recalled his frankly expressed atheism, when he believed that the hungry would overrun the world and institute a reign of justice.

His father’s dreams collapsed when he received a telegram informing him that Abdullah had been arrested on the charge of being a Communist; he was expelled from Cairo after enduring the torture that left scars on his back and in his soul. He fled to Damascus and from there to Moscow with a forged Syrian passport given to him by his comrades. When he came out of Moscow airport, he breathed in deeply. He remembered the Indian sailor, and his father who had searched for him in Cairo, full of regret for the savings spent on a now fugitive son. Abdullah had left the company of princes and their retinues loaded down with gifts, and had gone instead to the mob which smelled of excrement. The school administration ignored its previously star student and now considered him non-existent, effacing his records as if ridding themselves of an oppressive nightmare.

His father’s feet led him to Selim Dessouki, who tried to reassure him by saying that his son’s future would liberate Yemen from the Imam’s rule. His father was horrified; the coming days would destroy everything he had spent years building. He sold his shop in Aden and returned to his tribal lands, which were bound by strong alliances to the Imam’s men after years of bitter dispute.

Abdullah spent ten years in Moscow fighting on all battlefronts and, with his few Yemeni comrades, laying the foundations of their impossible dream which they felt drew ever closer. They created a picture of their happy Yemen where children wore resplendent clothes and cheered the non-existent ‘proletarian class’. His nights of sleeplessness were over when he came off the steamer in Yemen with his comrades. He examined the faces of the people who were welcoming them but couldn’t find his father or any of his brothers or sisters. He returned to the tribal grounds to search for them, and found his father stretched out in a mud room surrounded by Abdullah’s seven siblings who had grown up and become shepherds and warriors cheering for the glory of the clan. He felt remorseful whenever his father looked at him. The clan told him about the days his father spent in the Imam’s prison because of him, Abdullah, after news of his preparations to oppose the Imam and end his rule had reached Yemen. ‘One of the cruellest things he bore, other than you, was the torture of being related to you.’ Time passed heavily between father and son. Abdullah tried to share breakfast with him, and reassure him that he would be compensated for all his frustrations and the dreams that had turned into a mirage.

The politician soon became absorbed in his own dreams, dealing with delegates from Damascus, Cairo and Moscow who brought alliances which didn’t last long. Dividing the country became the only solution to stop the massacres and preserve the dreams of two sides that never met: the pan-Arabists and the Communists couldn’t even sit together on one rug to sip green tea, chew
gat
and take a nap in the afternoon.

Maryam’s face changed colour when she heard Abdullah’s admission that he had been an infidel who didn’t believe in God. Despite his power as a storyteller, he narrated a strange tale we couldn’t possibly believe: his suffering, his pain, his dreams, his discoveries which opened unnamed doors. He leapt in without hesitation, always risking sudden death. Death was so close to him, he could feel it seeping from his skin.

This path of torment and doubt brought Abdullah to a state of absolute certainty a few years before he reached forty. He entered his fortieth year cleansed of agonizing questions, never to return to insomnia or addiction to the Russian vodka brought in special boxes from Moscow which bore the signatures of senior Communist Party members. They described him as a brother in arms when he decided, along with his comrades, to divide up Yemen and ‘sit on the throne’ of Aden. His comrades’ dreams of revolution, justice and progress didn’t prevent them from strolling along Aden’s beaches like devoted citizens, accompanied by their wives and girlfriends who had removed their tribal markings, which they considered folklore from a bygone era. They dreamed of the flurry of Moscow snow, where they could wallow without fear of their cousins’ pistols.

Abdullah married Zeina, dumbstruck at her ability to memorize the story
of Abu Zeid El Helaly and then repeat it by heart at Sheikh Zaal El Tamimi’s council; the sheikh had adopted her after her father was killed in the camel market as part of an old blood feud. Abdullah approached her and asked, ‘What’s your name?’ She answered softly, with an orphan’s timidity, ‘Zeina.’ She was sixteen and still held company with men, so she had acquired their coarseness and habits. He encouraged her to raise her voice while the sheikh, whose house she lived in, pretended not to notice. He had married Zeina’s mother, who was famous for her strength, her aversion to specifically Bedouin habits, and her perpetual longing for the oases of the Najd, her childhood playground.

Zeina had inherited her mother’s strength, long black hair and indigo eyes. She was consumed with bewilderment and worried by the uncertainty of her future with this man – news of his follies filled the tribe’s houses until they grew into a complicated story narrated by many people, with concurrent beginnings and contradictory endings.

He asked her to marry him in a few words, without negotiating a dowry or giving her much time to think his proposal over. Her mother agreed and informed Sheikh Zaal El Tamimi of her preparations. She had wanted a marriage such as this for her daughter, who had begun to think seriously of avenging the murder of her father, even though the tribe had agreed to abandon this course of action in exchange for ten she-camels which subsequently died in mysterious circumstances. Everyone knew that Zeina had slipped poison into their fodder, refusing to accept them as the price, which she considered far too low, for her father’s death. Zeina became used to riding horses and going hunting, a reincarnation of Al Zeir Salim in his moments of worry when he thought of his revenge on Jassas. The air of Aden weighed heavily on her chest, as did the air of the small house constantly filled with company and books. Abdullah told her about the lives of other men, who weren’t Al Zeir Salim or tribesmen. He showed her pictures, and movingly rendered the story of Lenin’s return to Russia to lead the Bolshevik Revolution and found an empire of workers and peasants capable of defeating imperialism.

Zeina longed for the stories of Abu Zeid El Helaly and Al Zeir Salim and their sad odes in Sheikh Zaal El Tamimi’s council, instead of the biography of Lenin which bored this typical teenager. She couldn’t find any common ground between them, and refused to go to Abdullah’s comrades’ parties. She suffered from chronic headaches and her dream of avenging her father’s blood receded, and then faded away altogether. She spent her time with their baby which had arrived in the meantime, and took no notice of the comrades’ conflicts, the news of which had spread to every house in Aden.

*   *   *

Aden was quiet, and walked alongside these men into an uncertain future. Arguments escalated; Abdullah felt threatened by the pointed discussions of who might be unfortunate enough to succumb to a stray bullet, or which route would be suitable for the grand funeral of a statesman. Close friends advised him to move abroad, and Zeina and her child rapidly moved to Beirut. Abdullah followed them, sighing with regret, after three years of trying to convince his comrades to put their differences aside and re-build the Communist Party. He reminded them of their dreams, of their years of fighting, of the taste of exile and prison. In Beirut he was depressed, and seemed to have no future; when an old comrade, now ambassador to Lebanon, refused to see him, he realized that everything had come to an end. Abdullah started wandering around the country, writing articles in Lebanese periodicals about his experience of the Party and accusing Abdel Mohsen of taking power in a coup in which he executed old comrades. He heard that his siblings had been arrested and that their interrogations had lasted for hours, in locked rooms filled with foul smells.