In Praise of Hatred (4 page)

Sometimes, in the mornings, she went out alone to visit her sister Marwa. I would hear her violent disputes with Maryam who refused to allow her outside on her own, censuring her and charging her with immorality. Safaa would reply brusquely, cruelly, letting her veil drop over her face as she left. Maryam would dress hurriedly and rush after her, and Blind Radwan would join them as soon as Maryam called to him. He completed the scene, so familiar to the residents of Jalloum: my aunts in their long black clothes hiding the whiteness of their bodies all the way to the tips of their long fingers, and Radwan in front, silent. No one saw Safaa’s tears under her black veil as Maryam walked upright, without turning around or moving her gaze away from a fixed point on the horizon. Radwan would return to his room and I would be left alone in the dreary house.

I was overwhelmed with a curiosity to explore the place calmly and thoroughly; to examine my face and the details of my squalid body. I hated my leering breasts, so like antlers. I wished they wouldn’t stand out so much. I wondered: how does the body die? How do nipples, pores, desires die? How will I walk that luminous path leading to the expanse of water where Rabia Al Adawiya, just outside His kingdom, searches for the face of God? I reach out to her, I anticipate her fragrance, I ask her to take me with her along the path of light. She reaches out for me, I touch her fingertips. I am struck with a tremor that shakes me to my depths. The standing waters begin to move. I tell her to baptize me with holy water and leave me on God’s shore, alone. I look into her golden eyes beyond the limits of spoken language, and a deep silence extends between us. I hear the sound of distant tambourines gradually drawing nearer, the sound rising on all sides; soft, with precise rhythms. From far away, the faces of ghosts appear to me, human in structure; faces without features, with smooth contours. I didn’t understand the
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; Rabia’s hand became even warmer and softer. My fingers sweated and desire rose in me like sap through a tree. The caravan approached our stopping-place and Rabia’s face was still submerged in its silence. Black horses, featureless beings, tambourines; I raised my gaze to Rabia’s face, looking for an explanation for this gathering. She was absorbed in her murmuring. I didn’t understand the imperfect words. She took me by the hand and led me outside. I hadn’t realized that we had flown, nor that we had crossed the streets of Jalloum, and that the scents of thyme and spices scattered within the narrow confines of the alleyways had become embedded within us.

The land was vast, its meadows as lush as brocade, and the desert sand sparkled like silver confetti, as did the houses made of white stone which we entered. I heard people’s voices, but never saw a single one: I heard women’s laughter, children’s screams, the clamour of musical instruments. We went out into a narrow alley which became still narrower the further along it we walked, until we reached the point where we could no longer walk side by side. Rabia took my hand and I followed her, panting, trying to cling to the rustle of her white gown and her braided hair. She didn’t turn towards me, but continued walking behind the mass of horses,
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singers and tambourine players. At the end of the alley the space narrowed and prevented me from passing while Rabia slipped through easily, as if the walls had been drawn aside to admit her. She looked behind, smiled at me, and left as the barrier opened up on to infinite water. The tambourines drew off and the horses departed.

Only I remained. Everything around me, stones, water and sky, was silent. I was alone. My grandfather took my hand with a chuckle, my three aunts walked behind us at a measured pace in their usual clothing. At the first bend I saw Radwan leading our caravan to the gate of the huge house, leaving us in the vast outdoor space and taking himself off to his room without a word, as ever. There were plants surrounding me and water in front of me. I was sure that Rabia would never descend from the ceiling to take me by the hand again and lead me back to the water, which was unlike any water I had ever known. Whenever I tried to recreate the whole image, that water at the end bubbled in my memory, honey-coloured and shot through with green.

I felt very tired and went into my room shivering, crept into bed and slept deeply. I tried to recall the details of Rabia’s face and eyes. Features, voices, scents: all fled as if I were in a faint or turning delirious. I only woke up because of the clamour made by my aunts. I heard Marwa’s voice and got up wearily from my bed, quickly washed my face and went into the living room where she was wailing. I hugged her and buried my face in her hair, and I felt the last of her sobs as she drew back to examine my face; its wheatish complexion hadn’t regained its purity yet. I didn’t understand what had happened. My aunts were speaking all at once and then suddenly falling quiet. After a short while, Radwan entered and said, ‘Selim is coming.’ He left and my aunts were silent.

My aunt Marwa had a beauty spot on her cheek, an old family legacy which had been interrupted for two generations. When my grandmother saw it for the first time she said, ‘She will return the family to its true path. The women who come after her will enjoy their lives and they will have many children. Isolation will never enter their hearts.’ My grandfather, desperate, didn’t much care. He was convinced that his daughters would never break the bonds of spinsterhood and believed that fate, despite erring once, would doubtless return everything back to its natural course. For this reason he didn’t care about the charm hanging around the neck of his youngest daughter, nor the blue beads my grandmother used to make colourful necklaces in order to adorn Marwa when she accompanied her to family councils. These sessions roused a wish in Maryam to curse these perverted women, who gathered as if in a bazaar to inspect the value of the girls, the suppleness of their bodies, the size and firmness of their breasts. There were interviews and hidden deals between the women who enjoyed buying and selling and enlarging upon the qualities of their absent sons, and the mothers of those girls strutting around in long gowns, laden with fake jewels, their faces coated with creams, as strange blends of perfume wafted from their bodies and weighed down their breath. The expert old women would reach out for hair and teeth and breasts, exposing chests to palpate the tender-skinned bodies, only just blooming with coloured desires.

My uncles Selim and Bakr arrived and Marwa cried in front of them. She said she could no longer bear life with her husband, who came home only when he was drunk or high, and who would beat and kick her. When her family cursed her and accused her of destroying his life, she uncovered her white back in front of us. Maryam pointed to the blue and ruby-red bruises that resembled whiplashes. Selim concealed his fury while Bakr angrily looked back and forth from his brother to my aunt’s bare back; I was haunted by the blotchy colours of her skin, like scorched earth. Marwa calmed down after Selim assured her he would put an immediate end to this brutality of her husband, and she would not leave this house unless his behaviour changed. Bakr swore to smash his head in with the hammer hanging in our cellar; this last was spoken to his uncles, who had intervened more than once to curb his violent conduct.

My uncles left at the end of the night, their presence having rendered appropriate a long conversation about how everyone was. Among those present was Radwan, who informed his friend Bakr that he had created a new perfume that he was taking to the markets, and which he would release under the name ‘Attar of Secrets’. Bakr spoke about his increasingly frequent trips to various places all over the world, which were necessary for the expansion of his business.

Maryam was overjoyed at this reunion of the whole family. She forgot to grumble about Safaa’s behaviour, and pretended to forget Marwa’s problems after she went into Safaa’s room. Marwa took off her black outer clothing, and in her light clothes she appeared effortlessly beautiful when I saw her throat and her hair reaching out from underneath the thin head covering tied around her neck.

Selim asked me if I needed anything, and Bakr complimented me on my upstanding morals, which had become proverbial among all the members of the family. He kept proudly repeating, ‘Leave this one to me, she’s like a daughter to me.’ I was gladdened by Uncle Bakr’s attention; for me, he represented the pinnacle of vigour and brilliance on account of his tall figure, his powerful body, and his features that hinted at cruelty yet were lined with a fervent tenderness and deep sadness which no one discerned. His eyes rolled ceaselessly in their sockets as if a fire were burning deep within him. I didn’t understand the anxiety and reticence in his movements, which could quickly grow suspicious and agitated. He was absent for days at a time without informing anyone of his whereabouts. His wife complained to Maryam, who told her that my grandfather had often said that business had its secrets.

I would have liked to tell Maryam that the city was secret, the streets were secret, so were the stones and people, houses, rooms, hearts … even laughter was secret in a city that celebrated secrecy and where everything was enacted far from others’ eyes. Recently, I had started feeling that everyone was conspiring against everyone else. It was conspiracy that I saw in Marwa’s eyes as she prepared a bed in Safaa’s room, both of them absorbed in asides they were trying to hide from me. I tried to come closer to them to listen in on their whispered conversation as they were weaving.

I could feel from Marwa’s eyes that she was flooding me with love. She would wake me up for school and make my bed while I washed my face, and then she would prepare breakfast for me and coffee for herself. Her light, tender conversation swamped me with a deluge of hidden affection; I felt that I needed it more than at any time in the past. Questions blazed inside me. In school, with Dalal and the other girls muffled in black clothing, I plunged into descriptions of Hell and the torment of the grave; these images terrified me, and the girls excelled in their sober narrations. I felt that the black Angel of Death was waiting for me on the other side of the street. He would open the ground to me and I would wander with him among the risen corpses. I would wait my turn to walk on that path, no features on my face, a flat being without scars. If I fell before reaching the gates of milk and honey and the sweet rivers where the believers were gathered, I would perish in the midst of the sins from which I no longer knew how to distance myself.

In school, I became hostile to Fatima and her lithe body. She jumped about in the courtyard during breaks and sports classes, revealing her chest without caring. She enjoyed loosening her pink, lacy bra; it formed a total contrast to the one which grasped my own breasts. I didn’t dare touch them, so I wouldn’t awaken the desire that Dalal warned us against.

*   *   *

Hajja Radia wept when she reached Rabia. I told her, ‘Help me.’ The black veil covered my hair and face so I resembled a fish swimming in black tar. She reached for it and plucked it away, and she said, ‘Walk with me.’ For the first time, I saw the face of Rabia glowing with the brilliance radiating above the trees along the road. Tambourines welcomed us, the horsemen dismounted and lights shone from their faces, overflowing with joy. I tried to touch them; I reached out a hand and stretched up but Rabia drew me back and said, ‘Stop that. The sun illuminates everything.’

I asked, ‘What about these men?’ She laughed. I saw her lips part in a sweet smile and her teeth gleamed with a shade of white I had never seen before, like dazzling quartz or a multi-faceted crystal. She told me, ‘They are not men.’

We crossed the fields of palms and pistachio trees, shaded by their branches, and a special perfume I had never smelled before permeated the air. Rabia walked beside me, or I walked beside her, and she beckoned to me and said, ‘Have you seen the face of God?’ I raised my head as if I were seeing the azure heavens for the first time. ‘Where is the face of God, Rabia?’ Alone in the fields of palms and pistachios, the earth closed up in front of my feet. I felt increasingly desolate and oppressed as I neared the end of the fields. I was struck with fear and an obscure feeling like the one that penetrated me whenever I sat close to Hajja Radia, who was indulgent with me and tried to respond to my anxious questioning. When I told her that I had seen Rabia, she asked me, ‘Do you go to her, or does she come to you?’ I couldn’t understand the point of her question. It wasn’t important if I went to her or if she came to me; it was only important that we had walked together through the fields and crossed the rivers. After this, whenever I saw girls washing in this water, I was no longer afraid that the river would damage their chastity. Hajja Radia added, ‘They are rivers of Paradise, not rivers of this world.’ I left the fields of palm and pistachio trees, depressed. The sun which had shaded us had turned sullen, announcing its ire at the heavy veils we lowered over our faces.

*   *   *

I left school that day weighed down by heavy dreams which put me on my guard. I entered the narrow alleyway, and asked Maryam, ‘Are there any forbidden smells?’ Without slowing down she said, ‘Yes: the smell of men who aren’t related to you.’ I remained vigilant against this forbidden smell, against glances and the accidental meetings of eyes which sent tremors through my limbs, and for which I punished myself cruelly. Maryam gave animation to, and Safaa alleviated, the feelings of affliction that made me a slave to a delusion that I was polluted. I felt as if these glances had robbed me of my chastity and penetrated the depths of my femininity, despite the heavy protection afforded by the hijab, prayers and the bonds of the path I walked along towards the gates of Paradise. From there, I would walk up the steep steps to sit in the presence of God.

The forbidden smells persecuted me. I no longer approached Radwan so I wouldn’t smell the forbidden scent; I almost convinced Maryam to forbid Radwan from entering the living room without permission, and to order him to stand at a distance when he spoke to us. I would have succeeded were it not for Safaa’s violent intervention, which I had never seen before, as she said, ‘Do you want to turn this house into an asylum?’ Maryam recalled her great need for Radwan as a servant; she was still describing the scent of the Samarkandi’s son to him. She never despaired, and exaggerated and heaped praise on Radwan’s genius at composing perfumes, even though he had failed and no longer took Maryam’s descriptions seriously. Every month, he used to bring her a vial he had chosen at random, enlarging on its special properties, and ending with a prayer to the Prophet which Maryam would repeat after him and then thank him for.