In Praise of Hatred (6 page)

Sunk in silence, Maryam entered her room: Marwa and Safaa took off their black clothes and chatted. I would go into my room, using the mirror to search for eyes looking at me. I would try to overcome my shyness and imitate Marwa when she strutted in front of the mirror in light, silken clothing, as Safaa sat brushing her hair, but it was as if I could see Hajja Radia and Maryam’s faces drawn on to its surface. I would wait for ten o’clock, when I would return to Safaa and Marwa’s room in the thick cotton clothes which hid my body. Shy at first, I would sit next to Safaa as Marwa sat in front of the mirror finishing off her make-up: expensive red lipstick which Radwan had bought from one of the classier shops in Azizieh, kohl and a touch of light cream. They seemed to be waiting for a man, or a shade, or an illusion; at the time, I didn’t understand what they were waiting for. After a long while, the image ripened in my mind and I carried it with me always: two women adorning themselves to sip tea and listen to Um Kulthoum and Abdel Halim Hafez on the radio. I didn’t wonder at any great length about their secrets; I thought it was a joke they liked sharing. But their gravity and their exaggerated insistence on the details; their strict observance of the silence which dominated when Um Kulthoum began to sing; their posture, like spectators in an invisible theatre; the sips of tea and the crystal fruit bowl; the dishes of roasted spices and the cigarette smoke; brief murmurs and long, silent sighs … it all suggested that the wait wouldn’t be a long one, and that the arrival of those who were still absent was assured. I tried to find a name worthy of the scene, but it was enough to watch Marwa’s lips as she murmured along with Um Kulthoum, smiled, and reached out a hand for Safaa who was ensconced in a nearby sofa as tears slid silently down her face.

Waiting for something which never came was better than having nothing at all to wait for. I recalled the image and coloured it in: after the songs, the two of them would rearrange the sitting room, desperately, for an arrival – I didn’t know what kind, or even if it was all nonsense. Then they would go back into their room and stretch out on Marwa’s bed, looking from the window at the calm sheet of water in the pool and the gleam of the yellow stone paving, which was almost an enchanting shade of blue when the light lost its intensity. From the window it seemed an apparition, hiding shadows and muffling footsteps. Once, I asked Safaa sharply, ‘Are you expecting someone?’ They laughed, and as they exchanged a quick glance, she said, ‘We’re expecting expectation.’

I lay down on the bed next to them, and I tried to relax and reply concisely to Marwa’s teasing banter. I shared the boredom which rose from the fragrance of their perfumed clothes. They would sink into their beds, and I hadn’t even approached the depths of that moment which still echoes in front of me.

*   *   *

I was reminded that we were women who had been abandoned the more I tried to hold back the images of one particular journey of my grandfather’s. He would ride in an oak carriage pulled by two light-skinned mules, hybrids he had bought at a khan in Nazdaly in Turkey. He would arrive in Nazdaly in the evening, at a carefully calculated time he only rarely deviated from – such as on that winter evening in 1945. My grandfather would narrate the story every time he saw a rainbow, although this wouldn’t help him remember the details in full. I became suspicious of the story in the form in which it reached me – and Maryam couldn’t conceal its second part, concerning as it did Khalil (my grandfather’s driver) and Wasal Khanim, the wife of the owner of Khan Cordoba.

That evening, the owner, Esmat Ajqabash, was roused from his sleep in his private quarters, which were separate from the guest rooms at the khan and the stables. My grandfather’s voice was weak, and Esmat didn’t recognize it at first. This call for help was different from that of men who had lost their way, or hunters who had unexpectedly come across Khan Cordoba in its secluded part of the country. From the main road, it took more than half an hour to reach it on foot. Esmat rose from his bed and his wife, Wasal, pleaded with him not to open the door – it was late, it wasn’t safe. Esmat carried a lantern and tried to recognize the man who was coughing heavily and whose fist beat violently against the wooden door. Esmat knew my grandfather’s voice after he called out his name, and quickly opened up. My grandfather was standing there, marks of exhaustion on his face that looked more like illness. Khalil stood next to him; his face was cruel, and his sharp gaze penetrated Wasal’s body as she stood half-naked behind her husband, pressing down on her breasts revealed by the opening in her flimsy nightgown. My grandfather collapsed on to Esmat’s chest, who embraced him and brought him inside. Khalil remained standing at the door, shivering in the biting cold. Confusion overcame Wasal and she tried to find something with which to shield her nakedness. Everyone went into the bedroom and my grandfather sat on the edge of the tall iron bed. Esmat asked with his eyes what had happened; my grandfather couldn’t pronounce a single word, and Khalil was engrossed with Wasal. She began to feel a pleasure she had never known before, and lingered over warming the soup and pouring it into the bowls made from Constantine crystal.

My grandfather responded with some difficulty to Esmat’s urgent requests to pull himself together a little. He brought the bowl to his lips and slowly raised his eyes, glancing at the shadows on the face of Esmat, who was anxious for his dear friend, as he always liked to call him. For ten years, my grandfather had been accustomed to stopping at this khan, after he decided to alter the previous caravan route set by his father; this used to cross Iraq, halting at its cities and villages, until it arrived at Isfahan and went on from there to Samarkand.

Wasal brought a second bowl of soup and offered it to Khalil, who was slow to reach out for it as his eyes sought out her breasts now concealed beneath a long veil of wine-coloured velvet, shimmering and dotted with yellow flowers. He took the bowl, touching her fingers and sending a very clear message to a woman who received it just as clearly. She didn’t withdraw her fingers when he folded them inside his own, seeking their warmth, but she seemed numb. She didn’t remain standing in front of him for long, and didn’t stay silent either. She returned to her husband who was preoccupied with my grandfather; he seemed to be dying. Warm blankets and hot lemon juice calmed his delirium, and he desperately wanted the deep sleep he hadn’t enjoyed for two nights. Esmat got up, reassured of my grandfather’s health, and when he saw Khalil standing in the corner of the room he seemed to be seeing him for the first time. He enquired from Khalil what had happened, but soon realized from the movement of his lips that he did not speak Turkish. He put on his coat, went outside into the khan’s courtyard and unlocked the door to a small room with an ancient wooden bed in the middle, fit for a short stay. Wasal helped him make up the bed with clean sheets and pillows embroidered with peacocks and roosters. The men began lifting my grandfather under the arms but, in the twilight before dawn, he came to and walked beside Esmat without assistance as Wasal followed behind, arranging a blanket over his shoulders. They laid him on the bed and covered him well.

Marks of contentment were inscribed on the faces of Esmat and Wasal when their guest surrendered to deep sleep, judging from his snores. Esmat closed the door behind him and beckoned to Khalil to follow; my grandfather would not have liked to wake up and find one of his servants lying in the same room as him. Wasal made up a clean bed in the corner of the kitchen and motioned to the driver that he should sleep there. Before closing the door she looked at him and saw him still standing there, watching her with unmasked desire. He took note of her happiness and her coquetry as she withdrew to her husband’s bed.

Esmat only understood what had happened to the travellers when he saw the mud-stained carriage; its sides had been crushed and the axles had collapsed. In the morning, my grandfather told them how one of his mules had died when a torrential stream surprised them and almost claimed their lives and their goods; he was fulsome in his praise of Khalil’s strength which had saved their lives, and which inflamed Wasal still further.

The rain poured without stopping for ten consecutive days. During this time, Khalil repaired the carriage and my grandfather went with Esmat to a nearby church where they bought a new mule from a priest who was passionate about horse breeding. They were away for a few hours, which was enough to weave the story of Wasal and Khalil. (My grandfather tried to hide it from everyone although, really, he was pleased with the few moments of their mad courage and let slip many details that Khalil neither denied nor confirmed. He limited himself to a smile, and sometimes ignored the subject altogether.)

When Khalil saw that my grandfather and Esmat had left for a while he didn’t dawdle, or think overmuch. He entered the house and walked firmly towards Wasal’s bedroom. He opened the door without knocking and stood on the threshold. Wasal was still in bed. She looked at him, and saw the strength of the desire which she had tried to stir up over the preceding days with coquetry and gestures which were unrestrained to the point of almost compromising her. She spoke a word which he didn’t understand; it was enough for him to be silent and look at her closely, lingeringly, examining hair, eyes, white marble chest, firm breasts. When she removed the cover from her body and rose from her bed, Khalil lost his head and he boiled over like an engine furnace. She closed the curtain behind her and the shadows lengthened.

He came close to her, quietly, and his breath seared her. She heard his heartbeat quickening as if she were in a trance or facing a test that might destroy her. He enfolded her waist in his powerful arms, covered her mouth with his strong, roughened palm, and tore off her clothes until she seemed to be a victim enjoying her abduction.

He laid her down on the carpet, and thrust himself and all his craving inside her; one moment, and it was finished. He got off her and left. Wasal rose in a daze, afraid of someone bursting in. After half an hour, she came downstairs and saw him sitting there; the old serving woman was offering him and other travellers bowls of strong-smelling lentil and onion soup. Her breathing calmed when the serving woman told her that her husband and my grandfather had gone to the church. Wasal calculated the distance and the time necessary for their return, and desire rose in her again. She lured Khalil into the storage cellar away from the house and on top of the sacks of split lentils, she lay down quietly and began to unfold the secrets of womanhood. In the weak light she toyed with the hair on his chest and gazed at his naked body; she prattled in Turkish in a voice which resembled that of a squirrel in a sleeping forest. Those few hours on top of the lentils in the dark cellar and four more days were enough to make them climb on to my grandfather’s carriage, still full of carpets, and ride away on roads known only to them. They wrote their own ruin, and left stupefaction scrawled on the faces of all the guests, and my grandfather. Madness took hold of Esmat and he saw no alternative to seeking them out, accompanied by his loaded rifle.

Esmat returned to his khan on the evening of the third day, raving like a broken man. He wouldn’t listen to the advice of his elderly serving woman, who had confided to him more than once that Wasal bedded certain customers on the split lentils; she swore that she had once heard Wasal ask an eccentric Iranian man to hit her on the behind and stroke his long beard over her chest; and she told Esmat how she had seen Wasal writhing like a snake in the arms of a Turkish effeminate who sang at weddings.

Ten years later Khalil, defeated, walked into the souk, dragging his feet heavily as if lugging a lead weight behind him. Bewildered, my grandfather stood up and watched him. They exchanged a long glance of mutual understanding filled with sorrow, and Khalil returned to the roofed arcade. He ran his hands through the carpet fringes as if nothing had ever happened. The weight of the subdued opulence in the shop and the smell of the silks and mothballs bestowed on him this silence, these faded eyes.

I sat next to Khalil once as he tried repeatedly to describe the taste of that dawn which enfolded him and Wasal in mist on the edge of Mosul, where they arrived after the long journey had exhausted them both; they had crossed the mountain routes, and afterwards the plains opened up before them. Mosul’s houses appeared in the distance, wanly lit, and Khalil and Wasal were like people sensing the power of salvation. They got down from the carriage and stretched out on a carpet underneath a tree, and they slept until the afternoon like two murder victims hurrying to be buried together so they could rest their agitated limbs. Wasal didn’t burden him with words; she perfected the role of a mute woman to avoid replying to the many questions which poured over them in Mosul’s souk when Khalil displayed the first carpet under the eyes of traders eager for pictures of Iranian peacocks. Khalil was convincing as an expert, speaking about contracts and colours and wool types, naming traders in Syria and Iran, and he soon convinced everyone that he was a wandering trader and a skilful craftsman. They succeeded in selling the carpets for a good price and winning people’s trust. Wasal’s presence, which had been a burden at first, became much sought after; her smile banished doubt and silenced questions. Before they flung themselves on to their bed at the Nahrein Hotel and left their mules with the groom, they hurried to the mosque and sat with the sheikh, who saw no objection to writing out a marriage document. He gave Wasal his ring as her dowry after Khalil claimed that he was escaping from the brutality of the French, and that Wasal was a distant relative of his whose
entire
family – every single last one of them – had died of cholera. The five dinars Khalil paid was an adequate guarantee for the oath the sheikh pondered as he gazed at Wasal’s lips, drawn carefully like ripe, red berries.

They left the souk as man and wife, and dreams of life, love and the accumulation of memories opened up in front of them. The evening air was cool and refreshing as they found a restaurant and ate some grilled meat. They hurried back to their room and shared a bed, away from the dangers they had avoided successfully on their journey across the mountains, villages and plains thanks to Khalil’s sharp wits, honed on his travels to Samarkand and Iran with my grandfather. There, the roads were swarming with armed men and the cities were embroiled in chaos, forcing traders to travel in large caravans protected by hired gunmen and guides who knew the safe routes.