Free In Praise of Hatred by Khaled Khalifa Page A

Bakr sanctioned it, especially as he had started staying abroad for weeks at a time.
    Zahra was forbidden from entering my grandfather’s house. She was marked by the sins of her mother – these the envious tackled first, before accusing Zahra of having a sexual relationship with Hajja Radia, who had a well-known penchant for beautiful women and their perfumes. This penchant stopped at passionately smelling those women’s necks, praising their soft skin and pinching them, as they generally let out an ‘Aah…’ tinged with hidden lust.
    Zahra memorized the Quran, the principles of its recitation, and the tambourine beats in Hajja Radia’s house; the latter did not hide her pleasure at Zahra’s long face, with its complexion tending towards fair, and her slender body which grew before her eyes. She watched its transformation as Zahra fled from the chaos of banging crockery and children’s runny noses in Khalil’s house to the calm of Hajja Radia’s house, which was respected by all the families of Aleppo. The silence, the clean smell wafting from sofas and pillows, the incense, all enveloped Zahra and she fell into a trance, unaware of why the afternoon breezes affected her so. She stretched her legs out into a pool and relaxed under the pampering of Hajja Radia, who was looking for a daughter whose fingers tasted of ghariba .Khalil’s refusal did not last long in the face of Hajja Radia’s insistence on sharing Zahra’s upbringing between them. As a motherless child, Zahra found a new mother who, during two consecutive marriages over four years, had given birth to two sons. The elder was a drug addict; the second was mad and tried to swallow his nose and his toes, roaming through alleyways covered in their grime, his body lined with poison. Two husbands, two sons – but it was as if they had never existed in her life; as if they were lies, or a pot of ink spilled on to a dusty pavement. Hajja Radia took a job singing nashid at mawalid and weddings, and giving recitations of Rabia Adawiya, trying to forget her past all in one go. I asked her once what men tasted like, and without any hesitation she replied, ‘Just like shit.’
    *   *   *
    My grandmother died and Zahra entered my grandfather’s house for the first time, accompanied by Hajja Radia, who had insisted on preparing my grandmother for burial herself, and mourning her with dignity. The two of them had shared a lifetime of frying spices, eating apricot jam, gossiping, singing and going to the resplendent hammams, where they fell asleep together in a private compartment. She bantered with the body and teased it about the years of estrangement due to Bakr’s marriage to Zahra, which my grandmother had believed to be Zahra’s plan all along. We stood in the courtyard and waited for the body as Zahra wandered through the house, examining paintings and doorways. She smiled at me and hugged me, then quickly reached a state of harmony with my aunts. Hajja Radia came outside and asked us to clear the way so the men could carry my grandmother’s body to the grave. Her sharp gaze couldn’t prevent the sound of weeping from breaking out. Men buried the dead woman and the women wailed and waved at a distance from the coffin.
    I once asked Hajja Radia, ‘Why don’t women bury the dead?’ She seemed distracted, as if she were remembering that all the squalor of the world, and all its purity, could be found within us. I told her once, ‘I dream sometimes that I am burying a dead person.’ I carried on, ‘I didn’t recognize his face, but he looked like a lot of men I know.’ She hung my hijab over my face and ordered me to recite the Sura Al Baqara ten times. I was happy with my veil and closed my eyes, recited the Sura Al Anfal and Sura Yusuf from memory, and never told anyone my strange dreams ever again. I was no longer afraid of the scenes in my dreams of the pilgrims circling the Kaaba, nor the scenes of women carrying biers, praying and then