In Praise of Hatred (22 page)

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The spacious house grew cramped. I said to myself that Bakr had abandoned me, despite his urging me to go to Beirut and join my parents. My father no longer listened to the news of me which my mother would relate to him after he returned in the morning from hunting. He would ignore her as if she were a stranger, lie down in bed, and fall into a deep sleep devoid of hope. When he woke up, he dressed hastily and went out to sit in the bar which he almost never left, recalling his misspent youth when he used to laugh like a bull and compete with his companions in gulping down arrack after accompanying Abdel Hamid Sarraj on his nightly errands.

I was scared when I was in the streets and let my feet drag over the asphalt with the diffidence of the defeated. I never used to think that misfortune had this kind of taste. I no longer recognized places; I was like somebody lost who needed hatred in order to regain a little of her balance, to feel that her life was not just water, spilled on to a pavement and disappearing into steam. Marwa made me feel that I was a stranger, that I was surrendering to a fate I couldn’t grasp, blowing away like a feather which hadn’t found a wing to be part of. Her glances turned me into a plank of wood drowning in a tumultuous sea. I didn’t dare look at her chains. She didn’t encourage us to think of smashing them as she tortured us with her silence; she ate from Wasal’s hand and wiped the dust from her butterflies. She ignored Radwan’s pleas to sing along with him as before; he believed singing would save her and our house from the rot we had begun to feel in our mouths. Radwan prayed for the days of Safaa and my grandfather, who never used to leave the house without first reassuring himself of Radwan’s welfare. Now no one cared for him; Maryam no longer paid attention to his clothes and they became soiled, and he appeared more like a tramp than the servant who had once kept clean and perfumed in order to defend his masters all the more fiercely. I saw him sitting by the pool, and his blind eyes moved restlessly as he followed the twittering of the sparrows flying across the sky. He didn’t stand up, as he usually did every year, to announce the early arrival of spring – instead he restricted himself to listening to the silence which had settled before long over our gates, which no longer opened and caused a din with their eternal creak. We missed the noise – it had made us feel we weren’t living in a tomb.

Maryam asked for Wasal’s help in convincing Marwa to allow the removal of the chains which tormented her. Marwa had begun to compose a song, glorifying herself and depicting her tortures; as she wanted it to be heard, she had to relent and once more sing with Radwan, as part of an imaginary troupe, performing for an audience deaf to the tale of her epic battle. Radwan tried to regain a flavour of joy but his first notes seemed cold and sad; they left the impression that his voice was growing old, and what remained of it was insufficient for leading the women of the family. His voice was harsh and he made mistakes when reciting, but Marwa flattered him, praising him and encouraging him to continue with his composition of an epic love poem whose heroine has been chained up by her tribe; they keep her and her dreams under guard so she can’t slip through a gap in the tent and corrupt all the other daughters of the tribe.

One day Radwan left the house to look for his friends and found that most of them had shaved off their beards, like roosters whose feathers have been plucked. Most of them now wore suits and ties. The fear in their eyes and their slow movements betrayed that the mosques were no longer safe for their work, their
dhikr
and their improvised
mawalid
. A wrong turn that had resulted in three of them being killed by stray bullets had robbed them of their enjoyment of being blind. Radwan tried to convince them to return to their singing, and he listened patiently to their odes of lamentation for their friends, which opened with a verse in praise of the President and concluded in agonizing grief for the three believers, killed by infidels who had turned Islam into a religion of murder. ‘It’s all finished,’ Radwan said to himself as he left the Umayyad Mosque and passed through the main souk, stopping in front of my grandfather’s shops whose locks had lost their shine and rusted. He sat beside the shops, and perhaps he heard Khalil’s groans, Omar’s laughter, my grandfather’s footsteps. He tried to hold back his tears, but the sounds around him were a sign that everything had come to an end.

Radwan returned home along the road which swung around the Citadel, the same route he had taken with my grandfather on their last walk together. He went into his room, carried his boxes out into the courtyard, and began to take out and smash the perfume bottles. Their scent was released throughout the courtyard and mingled with Maryam’s wails; she grabbed hold of him and thought that it was the first time she had held a man with such strength. She realized that her desires really had died. Her determination did not have to last long. Radwan left the remaining vials alone. He returned to his room and would not come out even to bid Wasal goodbye. She kept one of the bottles from which emanated a strange smell, similar to that of rare wild roses. Khalil had covered her neck with garlands of them when Mosul first appeared to them on that day now so long ago. Neither of them had been able to forget the aroma of that dawn, of damask roses whose scent remained long after they had withered.

Maryam suddenly displayed a generosity Wasal greatly appreciated; she had been trying to find a small carpet to take back as a souvenir to London, and Maryam gave her Bakr’s carpet. Contentment radiated from Zahra’s face as, on that last day, she reached an agreement with her mother on many things they hadn’t discussed outright. ‘Those two have secrets now,’ I told Maryam. She would wake up alone, drink her coffee, pray and cook food for men who never came; Radwan would carry it away silently the following day to distribute among poor families. He knew the road to their houses very well and didn’t linger to hear their profuse thanks; he would just throw a piece of cooked meat at the door, knock on it, and continue indifferently on his way. He grumbled at this task, but only under his breath.

Maryam missed quarrelling with him. His silence filled her with a premonition of evil. She saw a fear of death in his shaking hands as they sought out his cup of tea when, at her order, he sat beside the pool. It was part of her attempts to reclaim the traditions and rituals she had boasted of in front of Wasal, when she saw her teaching her grandsons some English phrases. Maryam realized that the children had a cold haughtiness that would cling to them throughout their lives. They belonged more to Wasal than to her, but Maryam was no longer concerned by loss. She sought news of Hossam, which we all needed. Women were now meeting more often in the old city so they could exchange the latest on the arrests spreading among their sons and husbands. The men were sure that they would end their lives within their prison walls. They got used to the smells of the prison and became almost addicted to the bouts of sadistic torture to which they went without protest or discussion, as if they were going to play football.

My dreams were absent once again, so I lured them to me like a flock of doves. I tried to get to sleep early. I sat on my bed like a Buddhist, meditating on the carpet hanging on the wall. I slept like a corpse – as if my body were trying to expel its worries, but on waking I couldn’t move. I felt paralysed. Emptiness couldn’t save me from my hatred which only grew. My cries held no meaning any more. I watched Marwa – she had received another letter and hidden it from everyone, even Zahra.

Zahra had begun to go out every day to care for her father; a stroke had left Khalil bedridden. He asked for my grandfather whenever he was awake, and in moments of delirium he cursed God and dwelled on descriptions of Wasal, comparing her vulva to a coconut. When he was lucid, he would weep and spit in his Aleppan wife’s face, who had left him without food as a punishment for remembering Wasal. She quarrelled increasingly with Zahra, who sought Maryam’s permission to move him to our house to die there. She suggested installing him in Radwan’s room, who was solicitous of his friend. He liked listening to Khalil’s life story, especially the part when Wasal stole him away from my grandfather. The memory of Wasal remained like a lump in his throat. He couldn’t forget her, or talk about her. Radwan rekindled joy in Khalil, so he related his story more than ten times, every time using the same vocabulary and exactly the same sentences. Maryam didn’t care and was silent. She remembered that Khalil was not that old that he might be expecting to die.

Marwa’s determination and Zahra’s support ensured Maryam’s willingness to attempt a reconciliation with Marwa. She began to emerge from her silence, while still in chains, in accordance with Bakr’s instructions and our respect for his authority – as we rotted away. We didn’t know the secret of the almost daily visits of the death squad soldiers who would cast a cursory glance over our things, stay in Marwa’s room for a few moments, and then leave. After their visits she seemed glad, as if she had just said goodbye to some dear friends. She began to drink coffee with Maryam, and was happy to peel an onion or chop garlic when helping her make stuffed aubergines in honour of Khalil’s presence (he loved them so much that he once prepared sixteen different types for his wife, who didn’t share this love, especially when he didn’t apologize for the rancid smells filling the house).

Radwan cried when Khalil was carried in on a stretcher. He perfumed his friend’s body with a strong-smelling scent and shared his room gladly, eager to break his loneliness. Zahra’s solicitude reminded him of Safaa who, in her letters, still seemed to be fond of him to the point of infatuation. His replies were more detached and contained numerous complaints that we were neglecting him. He promised to compose a book for her whose lines of verse would be arranged as if they were pearls, and praised her husband, Abdullah, who was travelling increasingly often to Afghanistan and America on missions described by Safaa as
top secret
. She was proud of him, his appearances with Prince Shehab El Din at his councils, their confidential conversations, the approving glances – they described him as a mujahid who upheld Islam by expelling the unbelieving Soviets and smashing their tyranny of iron and fire over Muslims. Safaa wrote that the homes of other princes were thrown open to Abdullah and his presence became a cause of much boasting; he would drop hints about the generous contributions bestowed by their peers exploiting their feverish rivalry to buy Paradise; he was an exceptional ambassador who decided all kinds of matters.

Abdullah did not neglect his friendship with Bakr, who had come limping to him in London. Abdullah spent three nights with him during which they never left the hotel room, quietly reviewing everything that had happened. Abdullah tried to convince Bakr to come to Afghanistan with him, but Bakr was still incapable of forgetting the image of his brothers blown to pieces. They had vanished into the air as their blood rained down like coal dust over his beloved city. Bakr couldn’t look into Abdullah’s calm eyes as his friend tried to suck out Bakr’s rancour at his fellow leaders for deferring the announcement of the civil militia, which Bakr believed would have been sufficient to destroy the death squad’s authority and control, and thereby decide the conflict.

On the second night, Abdullah let Bakr rave about his belief that they could no longer organize the thousands of young male volunteers who believed with absolute certainty in the Islamic state, adding sorrowfully that they were now mere playthings in the hands of neighbouring heads of state, to be haggled over, bought and sold. Abdullah said nothing and Bakr was surprised at his politician’s cheerfulness. On the third day, Bakr came down with a fever and a doctor was hastily summoned; he ordered complete rest.

Abdullah was reassured as he sat in an aeroplane heading to Washington. He looked out of the window over the ocean and saw shadows descending; he leaned back and thought about the old dream that had seduced him when he and Bakr used to wander through countries looking for the carpet of the prince’s dreams. He had to convince the Americans of the necessity of establishing a unified Islamic army in order to liberate all the Arabic states currently under Communist rule, and expel the Soviets from Afghanistan.

He didn’t sleep, but closed his eyes and brought to mind an image of Safaa – who had become a powerful female presence in his life, after his first wife, Zeina, had become absorbed in her children, Nabataean-poetry competitions and hunting, now with her uncles, now with the princesses. She left her children with Safaa who looked after them and watched over them, so that they began to call her ‘Mama’. She found the word pleasant, then placed her hand on her swollen stomach and remembered her craving for dates. She took the children to the market and joked with them, without a care.

But the happiness in Safaa’s grasp was incomplete. She would sit for hours as she thought about our fate, which had entered an endless, shadowy tunnel. She missed Radwan and gossiping with Marwa, she told Abdullah over the phone when he reached Washington. He reassured her about Bakr and serenaded her with a graphic description of his desire for her.

Abdullah felt a strange energy even though he hadn’t slept even for a moment on the flight. Hot water and strong coffee restored his clarity of mind, and he sat down to wait for the meetings. Six hours later, there was a knock at the door of the modest hotel room in which he had been ordered to stay and a man in his fifties entered. He spoke Arabic fluently, and introduced himself as a representative of the Agency; he enquired briefly after Abdullah’s health, and asked him to relax until the evening. He left and Abdullah fell into a deep sleep. He thought all these precautions very strange. He realized that his past interested them, judging from the CIA officer’s questions about the extent of his former relationships with Russian officials and his comrades in Aden. That evening, he quietly left the hotel and gave an address to the taxi driver. In the back of the cab, he was struck with sudden boredom. He loosened his tie and felt the necessity of returning to Riyadh. He was confirmed in his suspicions when he sat down at the meeting table and saw in front of him Philip Anderson; he had the face of a professional killer, cold-eyed, revealing little emotion.