by Emily Danby
People in the neighbourhood made fun of Aboud for a long time after. They remembered Little Aliyah too – how she had clung to the boy, whose body dripped with blood where the sharp blade had struck, how she had screamed and swore, then stood with her legs apart, like the neighbourhood bullies, challenging any one of those sons of bitches to even attempt to come close to her crippled sister.
That evening, Aliyah Senior killed herself. She passed away the very same night that everyone discovered what Aboud had been doing to her in her paralysed state. Little Aliyah never went back to her school books, unable to forget what had happened that day. Aliyah couldn’t understand why the men didn’t pray for her sister as they usually did when burying their dead. Nor did she know why the women shed so many tears as they described the girl’s beauty. Her sister’s eyes held her captive, open as wide as they would go. She told no one about the yellow container she had given her sister – the one her mother used to spray the floor and the corners of the room, to keep away the rats. Why there was foam pouring from her sister’s mouth, she didn’t understand. She didn’t know where her sister’s voice had vanished to either. How would her sister survive underground with the Devil? She wondered for a moment. He had started to come to her in her dreams, sometimes as Aboud, sometimes as her father, occasionally in some other form.
When she woke up from her nightmares, she would pick up her knife and go searching in the dark, grimy alleyways for Aboud, who had disappeared shortly after the incident, not daring to return until Little Aliyah had vanished. He heard the neighbours say that her father had left her to an aristocratic Damascene family and taken her wages for the years ahead.
Aliyah was ten years old at the time. She had left school and joined the group of children who hung around the rubbish skips in certain parts of Damascus. It made no difference to them whether the neighbourhood was rich or poor; their only concern was to collect the empty glass containers, clean them and gather them in plastic bags. Aliyah preferred her new job to staying at home, or having to get up early and walk for miles along the muddy tracks to school.
Hanan al-Hashimi had turned Aliyah’s life on its head. She had cleansed her of her old self and purged her fears; she had removed every layer of anger and rubbed away the images of al-Raml with her fingers. But now they returned in full, not a single detail missing. All at once, the images settled in her mind, urging her at one moment to flee, but more often to halt.
With small, pained footsteps, Hanan staggered between the window and the corners of the room. She worried about her maid, who would surely be in danger if she went beyond the zone of the villas.
‘If only she’d just come back!’ Hanan took a deep breath as she tried to think of a way to make Aliyah return without sacrificing her own pride... She would make the gardener go out to look for her. Then she remembered Anwar, whom she had left to bathe in indifference. Hanan laughed snidely. That old crocodile wouldn’t be able to help her; he was still lying stiff on his mattress and hadn’t made the slightest sound.
She so wanted him to die! That parasite. He’d been sucking away at her life all that time, since their very first night together. She had never loved him. That man who had once been a brother to her, then a cousin, then husband. Now, in this final form of his, he was her old crocodile.
The crocodile would put his hand over her mouth, telling her to be quiet as he mounted her. He would stay there in silence a few minutes then get up, wash and curl back into his shell. Hanan was growing up, reaching the prime of her youth, whilst Anwar was becoming an old man. He would spend hours settling his peculiar business deals – drinking vodka and fiddling with his gilt prayer beads. Hanan quickly became attuned to his social circles and accompanied him when he was invited to parties or for dinner at other businessmen’s houses. There, the men would always sit in a separate room to the women. Sometimes Hanan spent her mornings with the wives of Anwar’s colleagues and acquaintances. She never thought about whether she was happy or not. The way the wives behaved often irritated her, but she was obliged by her husband to flatter them and invite them over for dinner. Anwar’s friends were all share-holders in a number of companies based in Syria, Lebanon or Jordan and most were government ministers or prominent businessmen.
Hanan started taking part in charity benefits and attending gatherings with the other upper-class women, mostly at the house of Amina, an older lady who lived in al-Malki. The rest of the time she spent visiting her friends in their homes and hosting members of the family on their short visits back to the homeland. All the while, Hanan observed her husband’s growing prosperity. At times, she felt a little intimidated by his acquaintances; they were the people you only ever saw on television, or perhaps only their name was familiar. She was bored. Bored of them and bored by her whole existence, but it was no longer within her power to sacrifice everything she’d gained: the stability, the high society gatherings where she roamed like a spoilt princess, her manic impulses to shop. She could have anything she wanted. Anything that was, except for a child. Hanan had travelled to the four corners of the earth in search of an embryo to nurture in her womb, but always returned disappointed. Yet when she got to know Nazek at those dinner parties, her life was turned on its head. She began to understand what it was to wait for dawn, to jump out of bed with the pleasurable prospect of leaving the confines of her house. Her husband had told her repeatedly to please Nazek and to get to know her well. It wasn’t long before the lady in question approached Hanan, taking a clear interest in her and inviting her over for a visit.
That first evening at Nazek’s took place before Hanan had discovered her little treasure, exposed by Aliyah’s fingers. That evening, Nazek made each of her guests their own drink. When asked for her drink of choice, Hanan al-Hashimi stuttered; she had never tasted alcohol before. ‘Vodka and lemon,’ she said, feeling a little dazed as she spoke, hearing the sound of her own voice resonate in the air. ‘Vodka and lemon.’ Why didn’t she tell Nazek that she didn’t drink? Hanan took the glass. It would be her little secret, she decided. No need for Anwar to know.
Nazek had a rasping voice and wore a thin, white cotton jacket and a pair of dark jeans. On her feet were a pair of elegant slippers, yet her body was bare of any jewellery. Nazek seemed younger than her age as she wandered the room, hopping about like a hungry rabbit and showering Hanan with attention. Every now and then, she would leave Hanan’s side and return with strange yet delicious samples of food, holding out one tray as she waited for Hanan to taste, then inclining a little before Hanan as she presented her with another. Hanan was embarrassed by the hostess’s overwhelming attentiveness. The other women too showered her with praise, complimenting her beauty and the style of her hair, which was cut short. Hanan didn’t feel irritated as she usually did at the gatherings she attended under duress from her husband. Normally, she would be obliged to lower her voice while the men stared at her hungrily and made her feel uncomfortable. Without knowing why, she always felt as if she were suffocating. Sweet shudders took over her body whenever she met a man’s eye. Engrossed in his gaze, she would feel the piercing shine slice her heart in two and send a tremor through every limb of her body. She would be dying to run away, to escape her shameful shivers.
In female company, Hanan was more at ease. Men had a tendency to shake her feminine sensibilities, but there, amongst women, it was like walking in a soft, silken dream. Hanan showered her host with compliments, feeling that she could trust her, that Nazek could read her broken heart.
The other women left Nazek to be with her guest undisturbed, colluding with her perhaps, as their glimmering eyes watched from a distance. The four women were all between the ages of forty and fifty, although they seemed younger. Hanan was taken aback by the way they drank, gulping down liquor as if it were water. She found it difficult to believe these were the same women who attended engagements with their husbands; they seemed completely different.
The wild glimmer in the women’s eyes exaggerated their beau
ty. Later, Hanan would come to understand from the lessons Nazek gave as she lay in her arms.
‘There’s something more beautiful, more sensitive about women, something that makes you shine. It’s different with men – you get all sorts. Some you want to shut in your room for days and screw to exhaustion, but then outside the bedroom they don’t mean a thing to you. Then there are the ones you dream about spending your whole life just talking and flirting with; here the pleasure is in staying just within the limits. There are the men who make you want to cry in their arms, and others you sit with and discuss the ways of the world, inside-out. But with women, love is different. When passion takes hold of you and you’re completely absorbed in your lover’s kiss, she is all of those men in one: a lover, a friend and an everlasting object of desire. Women are more sensitive to everything, believe me. Men are boorish, even if they appear otherwise. In your arms, a woman is like silk; she gives away her heart before giving her body. A man would never do that.’
Hanan had started to throw the past behind her, she realised. There was no hope of turning back now, no hope of going back to the start. The women turned into butterflies before her eyes: where did that joy in their movements come from? Light radiated around each of them like a halo as they gravitated towards each other, laughing sweetly, floating in a weightless space.
One of the women, Leena, was the wife of a military officer. Leena was strikingly beautiful, her complexion not white exactly, but more the fair, rosy tone characteristic of most women from the Syrian coast. Thanks to her rural origins, Leena was the least malicious of the women and took delight in teasing the Damascenes, that they were bastards. The Damascene women found little objection to her use of the word, as Leena told them the story of Tamerlane’s sacking of Damascus – how he had taken the women as prisoners and left them to his soldiers, who had raped them for days, spawning generations of illegitimate offspring. From that time onwards the children of Damascus became known as bastards. The women laughed at Leena’s anecdote, one retorting that the servant girls of each of their grandmothers had been simpletons from the coast with lice-infested hair, who spread their legs at night for their masters. Leena laughed in return, not in the least offended.
The second woman of the group was the wife of a factory owner whose company produced cleaning products. She wore an elegant headscarf in a fashionable style, but her dress sense was quite peculiar, the vibrant colours of her clothes giving her the look of a moving garden.
Maha, the third woman, was thin and silent and moved anxiously, preoccupied in smoking her cigarettes. Maha spoke with a strange accent, the result of having grown up in Aleppo and marrying in Damascus. At her soirées in Aleppo, where the other women in their intimate circle came together, her attentiveness matched Nazek’s. In time, Hanan got to know those women too, at the evenings she was invited to by Nazek. Most of the girls had married young and each one of them had a female lover. Very few people knew exactly what was going on, since their gatherings were monopolised by women, and the men felt quite secure when their wives were in female company, even if there was something unsettling about their friendship. So long as the relationship remained a secret, there was no problem, but as soon as rumours started, the husband would sever the relationship between his wife and her companion.
Many of the women at these ladies’ gatherings were of the rich Aleppan elite. Nazek went to great lengths to ensure that Hanan would not become overly acquainted with any of them, afraid that with their skills of seduction one might snatch Hanan to be her lover.
The fourth woman at the gathering was a mysterious figure, wearing only a svelte dress which began at the top of her bust and ended just above her knee. Nazek said little about the woman to Hanan, although she showed her great affection, calling her not by her own name but by an honorific moniker: Umm al-Nour, Mother of Light.
Hanan was afraid. As she sipped the vodka her insides burned from her throat right down to the tips of her toes. A few sips were enough for her to feel a fire inside. She was dazed and happy; for the first time she had discovered what joy felt like, listening to the women’s obscene jokes.
‘They’re happy,’ she said to Nazek, sipping her vodka.
‘More than happy,’ Nazek replied, attempting to read Hanan.
‘I’m jealous.’ Hanan put down her glass and lowered her head in defeat.
‘You’re not happy yourself? I can’t imagine a single woman who deserves happiness more than you do.’
‘I don’t know,’ Hanan responded, wanting some time to consider Nazek’s words. ‘What is happiness?’ she went on. ‘Contentment? Satisfaction?’
‘In simple terms, happiness is doing what we want to do. But actually it’s a lot more complicated than that; you know yourself that nobody gets the happiness they wish for.’
‘The happiness that who wishes for? Me? You? Them?’ Hanan asked, as Nazek enveloped her in her gaze. She examined every detail of Hanan, like a bird of prey about to swoop in for the kill. Yet as Nazek’s eyes devoured her, Hanan remained perfectly at ease, unfazed.
‘Do you trust that this is your happiness? It might only be temporary, but it’s still happiness... laughing and joking and making our loved ones happy.’ Nazek moved closer and trailed her warm fingers across Hanan’s forehead. As Hanan pulled away, Nazek withdrew her fingers and carried on talking, leaning into Hanan’s face.
‘Hanan my dove. As delicate as can be.’
Hanan was bringing back to mind those moments of her surrender to Nazek, happy at having found something to occupy her thoughts other than the maid she had sent away. Yet this contentment barely lasted a second moment before turning to deep sorrow. Hanan had remembered how little she had meant to Nazek. Of course, she wasn’t as insignificant as a servant, but at best Nazek had strung her along. It was Nazek who had preyed on her, Nazek who had acquainted her with her hesitancy, and later her delight; with Aliyah, however, she was the mistress morning, noon and night. Wasn’t it she, Hanan, who directed the girl’s fingers to the zones of pleasure? She’d been the one to give the first orders, hadn’t she? Even if Aliyah had started to act the mistress later on, she only did so because she knew what her mistress wanted.
Hanan recollected just how fragile she had felt, lost amongst those women, her look of confusion the same as the look she found later in Aliyah’s eyes as she undressed before the girl. From within her ribs, despair erupted like hot steam from a fountain.
Hanan could picture the outfit she had worn that evening with complete clarity: an elegant Chanel dress concealed beneath her brown jilbab and matched with a pair of heels. She had sat alone on a sofa set apart from the others, her right leg crossed over the left. Shaking away her lethargy, she got up and started to cross the room, moving coyly to the sound of the music. Hanan had caught the women’s attention – so perfect in her coffee-coloured shoes and dress, which matched the colour of her hijab and jilbab, bracelets, necklace, earrings and her handbag. The contrast of her milky-white skin against the earthen brown tone gave her the look of a miniature porcelain doll or the perfect children pictured in fashion magazines. Hanan laughed aloud and swallowed the last sip of her drink as Nazek approached, waving her glass.
‘Whiskey tastes much nicer.’
Hanan meandered seductively, trembling as the lady kissed her forehead. She laughed. ‘I prefer vodka.’
The lady laughed too and put her arms around Hanan. For a few moments, Hanan was paralysed. Then to her own surprise and that of her hostess alike, she drew her face close and whispered in her ear, ‘I want another glass.’
Nazek took hold of Hanan’s glass and squeezed her hand, sending a shiver running through Hanan’s body from the centre of her head down to the base of her spine. Hanan closed her eyes and when she opened them again, the lady was staggering happily towards her. She sat down beside Hanan on the edge of the sofa. There was a levity in the way the women’s shadows moved, and the way their arms curved and bent towards one another, which hadn’t b
een so apparent before. Hanan could make out from the movements each body’s longing to roll into a ball and scarper, to avoid collision. The bodies drew close, then moved apart, wanting to touch and be touched. They backed away, they played little tricks; each woman wanted to make her own torso the centre of movement, twisting and turning, bending parallel to the floor where their feet stamped.
Hanan was captivated by the way the women moved; with their eyes closed they were gone from the world, yet every limb of their bodies danced in perfect harmony. She wondered if her body would obey her if she danced, but didn’t dare to try. The women’s animation sent the blood dancing through her veins. She tried copying them, raising her arm until it fell and she was convinced that, were she to stop in response to the blood careering beneath her skin, she would certainly lose her balance. From the corner opposite to where she was sitting Nazek beckoned. Hanan struggled to stand up, as though something heavy were pinning her down. She saw nothing but the woman’s piercing eyes; everything else was a blur. Slowly pacing across the room, she forgot about the other women. Hanan’s coyness had driven the hostess wild. Coming close to Hanan, she grabbed her hand by the tips of her fingers and led her towards the bedroom.
The room had three sides, like a triangular hollow, and a generous free-standing mattress occupied the space. The bed was deep red in colour and scattered with miniature cushions, which spilled over onto the floor. Music floated down from the ceiling into the warm air. On a glass bedside table in the shape of a heart were several glasses and two gold-rimmed cups; one had a long neck, the other one shorter. To the side of the glasses was an assortment of women’s menthol cigarettes.
