In Praise of Hatred (16 page)

Before I became a princess I avoided going to meetings of the group for two months. I was immersed in my studies, determined to realize my aunts’ dream. My mother was depressed, and didn’t believe that Hossam was all right despite the letter from him I took to her. He asked her to pray for him and described my father as a great man, me as everyone’s greatest hope, and my little brother Humam as a pure-spirited bird. I loved his neat, regular handwriting. ‘I miss him,’ I said to Maryam, who nodded and continued reading the Sura Yusuf as if carrying on what she had started forty years earlier without interruption and in the same tone. She enunciated the ending of each word with the solemnity appropriate for the holy text.

I saw Hossam twice more. Bakr had agreed to a meeting after being assured of my perseverance and hearing about my cruelty, my zeal, and my requests to kill infidels. The first time, before he left us, Bakr asked me to go down to the cellar with him, gave me a wrapped-up bundle of papers, and told me to take it to Hajja Souad. Then he informed me of the predetermined time and location for my meeting with Hossam – in front of the Cinema Opera at three o’clock – and asked me to buy two tickets and pretend that we were a boy and girl fleeing school to spend a few furtive hours exchanging loving glances and brushing our hands against each other. I overdid the camouflage and wore vivid red lipstick like a doll who knew nothing of feminine secrets. My heart was beating hard as I stood and waited by the door. At that time, I knew that my brother hadn’t yet been discovered by the Mukhabarat; overwhelming caution was required to keep him hidden. I looked at my watch; I lost hope. I was about to tear up the tickets and walk away when a young man approached me and looked into my eyes, almost penetrating them through the veil. He smiled at me. I knew him from his voice when he apologized for being late, like any young man wanting to get rid of the sweetheart chasing after him, hell-bent on marrying him. He took hold of my arm and we went into the half-empty cinema, where we sat at a distance from the few audience members idly watching Spartacus liberating Roman slaves and leading them to burn down their masters’ palaces.

I wanted to kiss Hossam and embrace him, although it was enough to hold his hands in mine and feel their heat. I thought how he had grown suddenly over the last few months; his face had gained a hardness which would remain clinging to it. He didn’t tell me anything, but listened attentively as I told him about our mother, father, brother and aunts. I wondered why I was so distant from them that I couldn’t tell him more details than he already knew, just as I couldn’t answer his questions about whether or not our younger brother Humam still believed that the fish my father sold were plucked from trees like lemons; he used to open his small hands and wait for them to pour down like rain. We laughed guardedly, and I told him about my meetings and elaborated on the girls in the cell, not forgetting my own heroism and the suggestion of hatred I planted in their minds when I stood up and spoke to them about our enemies, the other sects. I knew Hossam’s face when it was flooded with contentment; his eyes shone so that he seemed like a sentimental boy, almost crying with grief for the bird that callous hunters had slaughtered in front of him; I could see he was pleased. He left me without answering any of my questions, and restricted himself to informing me that he was travelling a lot, without leaving me any room for further inquiry. He gave me money for my mother and left, turning into Bustan Kul Ab Street without bidding me goodbye.

A hideous loneliness afflicted me. I stopped wanting to speak. I immersed myself in silence which didn’t stop me from thinking about Zahra who sometimes ignored me. She didn’t care when I told her I was embarking on an important career. Her entire curiosity amounted to the five words she spoke coldly: ‘God is gracious to you.’ Then she sat by Marwa so they could finish spreading out the aubergine to dry. I asked Marwa about Zahra’s about-turn
and she replied curtly and with a tone of veiled rebuke that it was me who had changed, and that they were making allowances for me as my exam dates were approaching. I fiercely defended my changes, adding how sorry I was that they hadn’t joined me in appreciating how wonderful it felt to kill the sons of the other sects and glorify the mujahideen, and then I rushed to my room. I took out the last letter Abdullah had sent to me alone, in which he described me as a little mujahida. I finished reading the lines in which he informed me that he was going to Afghanistan to support our brothers who were resisting the humiliation imposed by the Soviet Communists, a confidence given as if in confirmation of my position. Marwa, as usual, didn’t care and went on discussing the
mahshy
and how too many spices ruined its flavour. ‘I need some quiet,’ I told myself. I arranged my room so I could study for the exams, and cut myself off from everything. Maryam stayed awake beside me for many nights, and took out a pure-silk bedsheet decorated with red and yellow flowers; she said it was the remains of Safaa’s trousseau. I put it on my table, and the sheet imparted intense colours to it, which I didn’t like. I added new notes in the margins of Hossam’s textbooks, debating with him as if we were drinking coffee together, while cursing our uncles and laughing.

Twice, Omar came over to help me in Religion and Arabic. Sometimes he felt affection for the principles of
tajwid
recitation and demonstrated his skill for me; we were like two cockerels in a fighting arena, ruffling our feathers. Maryam was proud of our learning. Sometimes I would exaggerate in reciting information from a book to turn Zahra’s head, who was as silent as a stone, ignoring our enthusiasm.

Radwan intervened to settle our dispute over the correct grammatical suffixes of the word
Fahawmal
in Imru Al Qays’
mu’allaqa
.
We repeated its lines and added different grammatical inflections like scholars in the ancient souk
of Akaz. Omar’s company made the days pass pleasantly and easily, unpretentiously, but after he went abroad I returned to my hatred, confirming to them all that I had grown up and was not ashamed of disagreeing with my tolerant aunts, and of being close to Bakr, who I hoped would be the long-awaited Mahdi. I was proud he was my uncle.

On the day before the exams, I saw Ghada walking by herself. She had braided her hair carelessly, and she was trembling. I put her appearance down to worry about the exams and lack of sleep, so it came as a shock when she took a Makarov pistol from her handbag and said indifferently that her lover, the important officer in the Mukhabarat,
had brought her back to him as an informer. She would wait outside his assistant’s door to give him some reports, in which she vented all her lust and desire, but she never saw him. At the end of one report, stamped ‘Top Secret’, she reminded him of the tenderness of their trysts. He tore it up and pronounced her to be mad; she said, ‘I can’t live without him.’ She went off without waving goodbye to me, and that same night she committed suicide with a bullet to the head, leaving a short note for her family in which she informed them that she loved them; she felt redundant; she didn’t want to become an informer; and she concluded by saying she was no longer a virgin and was polluted, and that in a dark room she had aborted a foetus which should have had the right to live.

I buried Ghada swiftly, like a plague I needed to escape. I sat in her room, and looked at the pink walls and the pictures of Mickey Mouse, which she had been mad about when she was a child who didn’t want to grow up or stop laughing. Friends of hers I knew wept and embraced her mother. Only I was stiff. I looked at the mourning ceremony for the dishonoured girl, rebuking myself but sure that she would go to Hell, and there would be no merciful intercession from the Prophet … On the third day, I went to her grave. I sat on the edge and wept for hours. I spoke to her and wept, recalling her smile and the smell of her neck. I sat in my room and didn’t go out; I locked the door and lay on my bed alone. My mother came every day, expecting Bakr. She read out what Hossam had written in the letter I had given her, and avoided mentioning the money he had sent her through me. She hid it in her closet after crying and kissing it, searching for the smell of his fingers. I chastised her for her weakness. I seemed like her mother, and she seemed like my daughter, asking for guidance so I wouldn’t leave her alone. All of us women were waiting for news of Hossam and Bakr, who were no longer seen in any place we knew of.

*   *   *

One morning, the army officer who had been a guest at Bakr’s banquet some months earlier performed his prayers carefully at the mosque and recited a sura from the Quran. That night, he asked his servant for a strong cup of coffee, drank it quietly, and left the room of the duty officer to select seventeen young men from the military college – students who were due to graduate shortly. Coolly, he lined them up against the wall and executed them using a machine gun, like someone in a film. Ghosts left their dens to fly over the city; no one knew where they would finally alight. He left the corpses to fall in their own blood, their ribs and heads spattered all over the wall. He threw away his uniform jacket, kept the copper eagle on the pocket of his khaki trousers, and then left with the associates he had selected to guard the doors of the military college during the shooting. They all reached a house on the outskirts of Aleppo, where men welcomed them with cries of ‘Allahu Akbar!’ and showered blessings on them for having brought about funerals in the other sect’s houses. No one knew why those students had died after having descended from the mountains with limitless ambition and vitality; no one but me, who celebrated hatred.

*   *   *

Maryam almost lost the ability to speak when she saw officers and Mukhabarat climbing down from our roof into the courtyard and drawing their weapons, bursting into rooms and cellars in their search for Hossam and Bakr. They crammed us into Radwan’s room, who tried to push them as he cursed them, reminding them of my grandfather’s rank and that only women lived in this house. One of them knocked him over, and I saw him put his boot on Radwan’s neck, cursing my grandfather and his offspring and describing us as whores. More than sixty armed men were hysterically ransacking the rooms, overturning beds, opening wardrobes, smashing padlocks, scattering pictures and papers. They unrolled expensive carpets that smelled of mothballs; they didn’t have time to contemplate their designs with wonder.

I almost exploded with laughter as we were barricaded into Radwan’s room. The soldiers had turned out his boxes and poured all his perfumes on to the floor so that we almost choked. It would have been ironic for us to suffocate on perfume. Radwan cursed God and instantly implored His forgiveness, trying to convince the soldier that he was committing a mortal sin and charging him with immorality. Maryam shook him and asked him to be quiet, afraid that he would lead them to the secret cupboard where she had hidden Hossam’s gun the day he killed the pilot; later, I had begun to hide my papers and pamphlets in there, paying no attention to Zahra’s warnings.

The officer in charge called us into Maryam’s room one after another. I thought, as I looked into his eyes, that hatred would make me calm and composed, heedless of the spittle flying from his mouth as he swore to cut off my hand and gouge out my eye if I didn’t lead him to Bakr and Hossam. Zahra leaned on my chest, forgetting the coolness of our relationship in recent months. I sensed her fear, and thought, ‘They don’t know the secrets of our houses, or of the city’s entrances.’ I was the most composed of them all, as if my hatred were being put to the test. Maryam prayed for mercy on the souls of the victims; she didn’t believe that Bakr was responsible for organizing any of the increasingly frequent assassinations, and clung to the hope that it was a nightmare which would soon be driven away and we would return to the security we had lost.

The military also occupied Bakr’s half-abandoned house. Four soldiers lived there permanently, playing cards in an attempt to drive out their fear as they waited for him to enter their trap. My mother told me that they had grabbed my father by his moustache and soiled his face with their heavy boots, and that he had still not recovered his speech. His skill with fish had deserted him, and he hadn’t slept for three days. I saw him sitting on the ground in filthy clothes, and my brother Humam, afraid, was squeezed into a corner. I talked to my father, but he didn’t hear me. He was deaf, lost; he was looking for meaning in what had happened. They had taken him to their local headquarters three times; there they cursed him, and insulted his manhood; he slept on the bare ground of a damp cell and the aluminium bowl in the middle of the floor gave off a stench of excrement and urine – but he was less upset by this than by the spitting of the guard who, all night, never stopped kicking him and cursing his women. He bore the blows from the four-lashed whips, and the pulling out of his fingernails with pliers. He remembered the men he had tortured in the same way in the days of Abdel Hamid Sarraj, as if he were being liberated from his painful memories and had expiated the sins that had weighed heavily on him for years. I sat beside him like a cat wanting to lick the wounds which he hid even from my mother.

Everyone lost their equilibrium, now that it was so abundantly clear what terrible danger Bakr and Hossam were in. My aunts and my mother were immersed in prayer and recitation of the Quran. They needed Omar, who came to our house. We understood each other by looks alone. Everything entered a dark tunnel and I waited impatiently, afraid that my mother would die of heart failure. My father’s silence tortured me and I pitied him; for a moment, I almost sympathized with the murder victims. I wished that Bakr had remained a carpet trader who boasted to other families about his properties, praising his family like any man who took passing enjoyment from the absurdities of daily life.

Zahra recovered her strength all at once. She helped everyone keep faith that Hossam and Bakr and their group had been chosen by God to bring back Islam, His word and His brilliance; to bring back the story of Bilal Al Habashy, who was tortured by the Quraysh in the desert heat and never yielded to their hell. We acted out a play: Radwan considered himself Bilal Al Habashy and Maryam the Mother of Believers, Khadija Bint Khuwaylid. I loved the role of Fatima Al Zahra and reviewed her
sira
. I rushed into Hajja Souad’s council and asked to rearrange the prayer circles and redistribute tasks. I reproached a girl who questioned the validity of killing the sons of other sects and parties; she considered them innocent and quoted the Quran, which banned us from killing a soul whose murder God declared unlawful. The girls were astonished at the force of my expressions when I described the murdered as heretics; my voice trembled when I described our brothers as mujahideen and heroes, as if I were making a passionate speech at a ceremony. I volunteered to carry weapons and kill unbelievers, recalling the words Hossam had written in the margins of his chemistry books, and wishing him the martyrdom he wanted with everything he possessed and with all the vigour of youth. I took the largest section of the pamphlets which had to be distributed all over the city, and in which our group announced that we were at the beginning of our battle with the atheist party. People conversed with the pride appropriate for men who were committed to and believed in God. I concealed the pamphlets under my clothes and one of the sisters walked in front of me, watching the winding street as I stuffed pamphlets under the doors of strange houses. I made their inhabitants tremble, and then think that the fear they lived in was nothing but an illusion which could be removed. I wished that I could knock on doors to tell them that I was bearing the good news of the green banners sweeping the country.