In Praise of Hatred Page 5

  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.

  On their first night, Wasal had no regrets about forsaking the odour of other men clinging to the lentil sacks in the dark cellar, itself permeated with the smells of fried aubergines and decaying rats. She washed in the rose water which she had brought with her, and put on a wedding dress which Khalil tore off her before carrying her like a butterfly to the bed; she was insensible to the strength of his arms and the blaze of his kisses as if it were the first time she had been to bed with a man. Her voice rose without shame, and in Turkish she prattled words of surrender to a hidden fate. Afterwards, she became quiet and buried her head in his chest, savouring the scent which penetrated her heart and captivated her. She taught him to speak Turkish and clip his nails, and insisted that he wore cactus-blossom perfume which would waft from his clothes when he walked confidently through Mosul’s souk.

  Khalil began to deal in cigarettes with the other traders, guiding them to the best makes, and he exchanged for coloured silks the carpets he designed and produced himself on his own loom, and which looked like icons. These astonished the people of Mosul, the passing traders and the foreign antiques collectors who all trusted Khalil’s imagination and his skill, as well as his sympathy for amateurs’ lack of knowledge in the wild and varied field of carpets.

  He craved the security and protection he felt in Wasal, who gave birth to a daughter called Zahra. Zahra resembled her mother completely with the exception of her black eyes; they brought to mind a mixture of racial origins that might have been nearer to those of Nubians than Wasal and Khalil’s own particular combination.

  Back in Aleppo, my grandfather touched a carpet, on which was this line of Mutanabbi’s:

  Homes! There are homes for you in our hearts

  You are now deserted, yet you are inhabiting them.

  He knew that Khalil had made it and included the verse on purpose: the speaker is calling out to the empty home of his beloved; although the home is now abandoned, it provides the memories that still live on in his heart. My grandfather had heard that Khalil missed Aleppo, after a trader from Mosul had discussed his skilful workmanship and the beauty of his wife, who would interfere in the colouring of the carpets. The colours seemed strange at first, although foreign clients were enticed by Abyssinian roosters, the arms of women whose swelling chests were like those of Sumerian goddesses, and winking eyes which always resembled those of a woman Khalil had once known. He was immersed in the warmth of the delights renewed every night, which seemed to the couple never-ending.

  What is it worth to live through a spell of happiness, even if it will never return? The depression which had clung to Khalil throughout his life lifted completely. He became cheerful at gatherings, especially at the house of a certain Mister John, whom he used to visit every day. He would drink coffee with him, and show him paintings from the Nahda era, and even accompanied him several times to excavation sites in Babel where an archaeological mission was encamped.

  What Khalil didn’t know was that Wasal was beginning to feel bored. She missed other men, and she no longer came to him wearing perfume and insisting that he washed his hands. Her days finally became dull; he was a man certain of his success, and she a woman no longer seduced by the resplendent colours of carpets. She quietly withdrew and fell silent. She didn’t care when the kitchen shelves collapsed, shattering the Kashmiri-porcelain bowls and scattering shards everywhere, and it was days before she gathered up the pieces and coldly tossed them in the dustbin. She regretted the ten years she had spent in this city invaded by mosquitoes and silence, where the smell of roasting meat seeped from every alleyway like an inescapable fate. Wasal listened, stunned, to John enlarging on vulgar descriptions of his nights out in London. She was enamoured of the sordidness in the mid-fifties bars which John felt considerable nostalgia for whenever he remembered the smell of those long nights. He saw her astonishment, listened to her never-ending questions and answered them in a low, steady voice. He complimented her taste in serving coffee; and he compared her to the princesses whose amorous exploits were sung of in the romances that had once been so popular in castles all over Europe.

  ‘This arrogant Englishman is making me dream,’ she said to herself as she gazed at the dawn through her bedroom window. Insomnia tyrannized her and she lost weight. She would wait for the evenings when John came round, accompanied by members of the dig, antiquities collectors both amateur and professional, spies, and horse traders passing through on their way to Bedouin camps. They would swarm all over Khalil’s house, demanding to have tea according to their own traditions and jabbering away in English, displaying their amazement at the interweaving of colours and lines in the carpets spread out before them. John moved amongst them like an expert guide and interpreter, and he laid a trap for Wasal, who immediately felt that the circular motion of her breasts had seduced him from under their veil. She enjoyed his ravenous greed at seeing them when they stood out through her abaya for a moment, the nipples showing clearly underneath the long cotton garment. It was a game that both John and Wasal loved at the beginning, before it became a burden and the cause of sleepless nights.

  Khalil wasn’t quite aware of what was going on – he was in thrall to the security of the little money he had saved and hidden inside the small ebony case at the bottom of the clothes box, and he thought fondly of his young daughter, who had begun to lisp in both Arabic and Turkish, and of his wife, Wasal. (Unnoticed by him, she now performed her duties coldly and without enthusiasm.) These blessings were all sufficient reasons to set him thinking about making a pilgrimage to Mecca, and returning from there to Aleppo to live in that city in complete bliss. His eyes shone when he told Wasal, convinced that this happy ending would delight her also. Wasal listened to him and was distracted for a long time: she didn’t know why she became jittery when Khalil enlarged on his wish that she become pregnant once more in order to have a boy, to replace the one whose body had broken out in buboes short of his second year. Before they had agreed on a name for him, he had died and they had buried him in a small grave close to their house. The two of them dreamed of different worlds, linked by a house whose future seemed only half-assured, and from which wafted the smell of beans and the sound of sad Iraqi songs. Wasal was devoted to these songs, which spoke about falling in love with young men and waxed eloquent about infatuation, but John was articulate in explaining the odes as stilted and affected. As their sessions lengthened, John realized how much he longed to be in London after being absent for so long.

  Wasal’s story affected me greatly; I knew, afterwards, that she had caused my grandfather sleepless nights. When she lived at the khan in Nazdaly, she used to make him bring henna, perfumes and expensive fabrics from Aleppo, seemingly just presents from a generous friend that would not cast suspicion on him; the gifts were in exchange for special services she offered him as a regular client of an inn on a little-used road.

  * * *

  My grandmother was implacable in her hostility towards Wasal’s daughter, Zahra, whom my u
ncle Bakr had determined upon marrying. My grandfather was silent in the face of everyone’s supplications, in an effort to persuade his wife to renounce her oath that she would never allow her into the house, and that she would never see Bakr again as long as she lived. We all loved Zahra’s beautiful face, whose complexion changed and became luminous when evening fell. Through her asceticism and her faith, she won our hearts. She and Bakr formed a married couple whose outer quietness and timidity hid a storm of passionate adoration which they revelled in and drank of right to the dregs, wrapping their secrets within it. Many envied Bakr for his life, piety and clean house, and for the wife whose clothes did not smell of onion and fried cauliflower, and who remained patient in the face of catastrophe, which was a revelation to him. As my grandfather said, Bakr saw Zahra’s face and felt her kindness, and cast everything else aside; in this way, she resembled her mother, who had made Khalil into a man haunted by yearning. Khalil drowned in tears and nightmares, especially when the rain poured down. He spoke quickly and angrily, cursing the English, and whorish women, and debauched men. His disconnected sentences didn’t shed any light on the past; no one understood them other than my grandfather, and my uncle Bakr after he was alone with his bride. She walked like an orphan in the small procession Aunt Maryam insisted on holding so Hajja Radia wouldn’t be angry after Radia had spoken highly of Zahra and her piety.

  My grandmother kept her oath, and Zahra paid no heed to the goings-on in my grandfather’s house. I became used to Bakr’s visits and my grandmother’s refusals to receive him, despite all his entreaties and intervention from my mother. She said that my grandmother loved Zahra but couldn’t find the right time to relinquish her unjustified obstinacy, especially after the death of my grandfather and in view of Zahra’s lack of defence of her own mother – it was widely said that Wasal had made a living from prostitution after she abandoned the Englishman, John.