States of Passion

by Nihad Sirees

  “When the crowd noticed her standing there on the train steps, innocent and afraid, their voices started to die down and then fell silent, until nothing could be heard but the sound of the marching band, still being conducted by the swinging hands of Sergeant Samuel, who now turned in the direction of Widad. The members of the band were no more disciplined than he was, though, and although still playing, they, too, craned their necks to look at that peasant woman who had popped out of the delegation’s train clutching her ancient suitcase, a scarf tied around her head to keep her hair concealed from the eyes of men in the city. Even the ministers and urban notables who had shown up to greet the delegation were flabbergasted to see such a beautiful peasant woman. The mufti was the only one who tried to look away, but even he didn’t manage to do so, concluding that perhaps she was a djinn or an angel come down from heaven in order to safeguard the delegation on their journey, which was why there could be no harm in gazing upon her. The High Commissioner found that silence strange, and he wheeled around backwards. It took some time for him to comprehend what was happening, to understand what that young lady was doing there. Because of his stare, and the looks from members of the delegation, Widad’s confusion grew even greater. It seemed necessary for her to explain herself, so she hesitantly said, in a muffled voice:

  “‘I couldn’t find anywhere else to get out…’

  “At first the High Commissioner didn’t understand what the young lady had said, and continued to stare back at her like an idiot, but then everyone else burst out laughing at such an unexpected sight. The people of Aleppo have a good sense of humour despite everything that’s said about them. De Martel became convinced the whole thing was just an accident, so he thought nothing more of the peasant woman whose beauty had stolen the hearts of all the welcomers. The delegation was invited to get moving, the chants started back up, and the marches rang out once more. The French police forged a path for the delegation through the crowds that had started to surge forward because every person wanted to catch a glimpse of the head of the National Bloc, Hashim al-Atassi, who was also heading up the delegation, or at Saadallah al-Jabiri, the Aleppan native son and elegant politician. There were others who didn’t know where to look because it was quite rare for so many Syrian nationalists and politicians to be gathered together alongside the officers of colonial rule.

  “They left the station, led by the High Commissioner, whose white suit fitted tightly around his corpulent body, and followed by the people and the musical troupe playing a stirring military composition. It wasn’t long before Widad was standing on the platform by herself, her suitcase by her side and her anxiety subsiding. She stood there next to the train even as the engine continued to spew out its soft white steam. But she was unsure about what was going to happen to her, seeing as how she had never dreamt there would be this kind of reception in the vast city called Aleppo, whose men her deceased mother had always warned her about. If she were to find out down in her grave in the Maydan Ekbas cemetery how the men had welcomed her at the station, would she change her mind about them? she wondered. Widad shrugged her shoulders, silently answering her own question, and then took out the envelope with the address where she was supposed to go. She picked up her suitcase and walked out of the station. She stood outside, as the Maydan Ekbas imam Shaykh Abd al-Sabbour had instructed her to do, waiting for the carriage that would take her to her destination. But what cabs would be running at this hour? The square and the streets had all been deserted by the people she could now see far off in the distance, forming a huge crowd that accompanied the carriages and the cars transporting the delegation and the official welcoming committee, their chanting becoming indistinguishable from the tune played by the military band.”

  The butler walked in carrying a pot of hot tea. The old man suddenly fell silent, as if ceding the space for him to do his job of pouring the tea. But it occurred to me that the old man might have become silent because he was trying to keep something from his servant. Or maybe he just wanted to rest for a moment. Whatever the case, the butler poured the tea without making a sound, gracefully serving each of us a cup. If the old man had kept talking I wouldn’t even have noticed the presence of a third person in the room. Instead I sensed that the old man’s silence indicated that I should pay close attention to what the butler was doing. I was reminded of the uneasy feeling I’d had from the first moment he had greeted me at the front door. I kindly thanked him all the same before starting to sip the hot tea I couldn’t seem to get enough of; the cold had seeped into my bones during my long trek in the wilderness after I’d inexplicably walked away from the Land Rover. As soon as he left and closed the door behind him, the old man’s calm and mellifluous voice continued…

  “Widad stood outside the station for a whole hour, until the carriage being pulled along by a single horse arrived to pick her up. She handed the driver the address and settled into the back seat, placing her trust in this driver, a man who inspired confidence, and watched the city roll past.

  “She privately wondered how this city had looked to her mother eighteen years before.

  “Her mother had told Widad about that fateful day when she ran away from the city. She had hopped onto a train bound for the north, which she had caught at that very station one day in the midst of the Great War in which everyone and every country had fought. The war had been nearing an end, thousands of Turks were massing at the station, every one of them searching for a place on trains bound for Turkish territory. Veteran politicians, decommissioned officers, former governors, high-ranking bureaucrats in the Ottoman administration, men whom the Sultan had stripped of their pasha titles, one-time administrators from provinces and sub-districts that had been lost during the devastating military hostilities. The station was also filled with affluent women and well-fed children as well as the mistresses of military personnel anxious about their future.

  “All those people, unconcerned with their appearances, which they had once paid such close attention to, filled the platforms at the station. Under their arms they were clutching bags and suitcases, in which they had packed everything they could save or plunder from the provinces they once ruled. The convoys were arriving nonstop, and when there was no more space to set foot on the station floor, they unloaded their cargo from the carriages and the pack animals, which they later voluntarily set free, because the spirit is more valuable than any material possession. They filled the square outside the station as well. When the train arrived, they all surged towards it as one, shouting as they tried to find a way towards the doors in order to stake out a spot inside. Every person tried to identify himself, but who cared about ranks or titles anymore? Anyone who was able to get on one of the cars would then start wailing when he realised he had left behind a friend or a wife or a child…

  “It was only with great difficulty that her mother managed to find herself a place in one of the livestock cars. She was five months pregnant at the time, though her pregnancy wasn’t yet obvious, so in order to secure a space for herself she had to exaggerate the size of her belly. People took pity on her and helped her to get on board. From where she sat on the train she witnessed the painful conclusion of Ottoman rule in Syria.

  “The train didn’t start moving until night-time. Those on the run were trying to convince the conductors to get the train moving as quickly as possible. Rumours were flying at the speed of light about the worst possible consequences for anyone who got left behind. Enemy forces were encroaching on Aleppo. At first they said they had got as close as Khan al-Sabeel, then in the evening, news broke confirming that the English had taken control of Shaykh Saeed, on the outskirts of Aleppo, which distressed everyone and made many women weep. But her mother wasn’t concerned. She was an Arab who wanted to flee to Turkey before the borders were closed so that she could find Captain Cevdet, the Turkish officer who had helped make a baby in her belly just before getting called up unexpectedly to join his division, somewhere along the southern front.

  “
Inside the train compartment, once everyone was able to relax, convinced that luck was on their side now that the train had started inching its way towards safer shores, the men discovered how beautiful her mother was. The train was moving very slowly because of its heavy load of humanity. All eyes started to burrow into her, tracking her every move, the eyes of men and women alike, hungry eyes, brimming with vengeance and jealousy. This denied her the freedom to think about her handsome officer, whom she loved so desperately, the one for whom she had given up everything. She had to keep her shame concealed the whole time. The compartment was so crowded that she had to continuously shove away all the men who wanted to rub up against her in the darkness, exhaling their warm breath in her face. In the morning the army rescued her from the hell of those men. When the train rolled into Maydan Ekbas Station to stock up on water and fuel, something pushed them past the point of no return, something so shocking and harsh and merciless that everyone raised their voices in disapproval, weeping and crying on each other’s shoulders before falling silent and being forced to go along with it: all civilians would have to disembark and continue their journey on foot so the army could transport its wounded and its supplies across the border as quickly as possible. As everyone else continued their journey into Turkish territory however they could, Widad’s mother decided to stay put in Maydan Ekbas.

  “The village station was the nerve centre, where the retreating forces would have to pass through on their way to the Turkish interior. That’s why she stayed there on the platform, waiting for the train carrying her beloved Captain Cevdet to arrive. Whenever another train rolled in from the south, she would jump to her feet, straining to see him, in case he stepped off. She spent days like this, but there was no sign of him. Finally the English soldiers started to arrive, chasing away and fighting the retreating Turks, which was when she realised that she had lost the Captain for good. So instead of going back to Aleppo, which was impossible anyway, she decided to rent a house in the village and stay there until she gave birth to her child.

  “In order to convince the people of the village to accept her living among them, her mother made up a story… a second life that was entirely imaginary. She would never tell them the truth, secretly burying it away for ever, and instead she led them to believe that she was Captain Cevdet’s wife, that her entire family had died in the war, and that she had been travelling to Turkey in order to search for her officer husband and his family but the arrival of the English and the ongoing hostilities between them and the Turks along the border had prevented her from doing so. Her mother was beautiful, graceful. The people of the village had never seen such a beautiful woman before, not even the wealthy Turkish women who would pass through town as they fled back to Istanbul. Her innocent face, her delightful way with words, and her tears that could make stones speak—what chance did those simple-minded villagers stand? What convinced them of her sincerity even more was the way she lived her life after giving birth to a beautiful little girl she named Widad. She quietly and humbly took on whatever work there was in order to feed and take care of her daughter. By the time Widad had matured into an attractive young woman who resembled her mother in her gracefulness and innocence and charms, the village seemed to have hardly noticed her. Some young men attempted to approach her mother in order to ask for Widad’s hand but she refused to marry her off; she wouldn’t let any of those boys get near the house except for that nutty kid, Bayonet Abduh, and that was only after she got to know him a little bit first. For reasons that weren’t clear, she constantly sowed the fear of men in her strikingly beautiful daughter, which led Widad to be nervous around them. When her mother was diagnosed with a horrible case of tuberculosis and learnt that she would die soon, she started talking to Widad about Aleppo and some of the people she knew there. She tried to express her affection for the city, wanted her daughter to go there after her death. She told Widad about a dear friend of hers named Khojah Bahira, and gave her a letter of introduction, but asked her to say nothing of that name for the moment, until she passed away, insisting that she avoid letting anyone in the village hear her mention Khojah Bahira’s name, and that she ask her nothing about her.

  “The carriage driver turned around and stole a quick glance at the young girl’s face, muttering mashallah under his breath. Widad stared out at the city streets with a mixture of sadness and awe. Every street, every intersection, every building reminded her of her mother. She imagined her walking down the street, arm in arm with the Turkish officer, or crossing the street alone in front of the carriage as she hunted for her man, lost in the Great War. But why had her mother refused to go to Aleppo? Why had she never brought her here, instead limiting herself to describing it and instilling in Widad’s heart a fondness for it? Nothing made any sense. Her mother was dead, leaving behind a thousand questions that confused Widad. Who was this Khojah Bahira? Why had their friendship remained such a mysterious secret? And why had she wanted Widad to go and see her after she died? As I just said, nothing made any sense in the mind of our beautiful young woman. It was as confusing as the layout of the ancient city.”

  The old man said…

  “Her mother Badia was beautiful and bold. She wasn’t shy like her daughter Widad. Maybe everything that happened to her led her to raise her daughter differently, in such a way that might prevent her from making the same mistakes. All mothers want a life for their daughters that will be different from the lives they lived, especially Badia, who had run away from home when the war broke out. Men started disappearing from the streets and from their houses. During wartime men were condemned either to go off to war or to disappear. This was their fate. Turkish gendarmes were on every street corner waiting to ambush them. They would seize them and then take them God knows where. This was what had happened to her recently married brother Muhammad Ali. But her father ran away. Every so often he would send them supplies and some cash, but he’d run away all the same. The house became a home for women only. Its law was women’s law. Her own mother was stern and irascible. Most of the women in the house were beautiful, which was why her mother imposed such strict rules upon them. This was also the reason Badia fled to Aleppo in the first place. She had often entertained her sisters and her brother’s wife by tying a scarf around her waist and dancing for them. She decided to take advantage of her talent and to try making a living out of it.

  “Life in their village wasn’t unbearable. The society of women took care of itself and things went on as normal. Badia’s arrival in Aleppo, though, happened to coincide with the first signs of famine. The streets were full of sick people. She once came across the body of an old man who had died of hunger lying in an alley. Badia was horrified. She had heard so much about the city before her arrival and had dreamt about it, but now she was frightened of what lay in store for her there. She knew this was not normal. As she arrived, fleeing her mother’s strict rules, people were dying of hunger. Had it not been for a man who passed by as she was leaning against a door and who mercifully gave her some change, she might have turned around and gone right back to the village, back to her mother’s regime. When he asked her if she was good at anything besides begging, she told him she knew how to do the washing and the cleaning, how to cook and how to dance. That’s right, she had the audacity to mention dancing. And she really did know how to shake her hips and her breasts. It’s a good thing she did, too, because sweeping and cleaning and cooking had no value in those days, especially since there was nothing to cook or eat anyway. Get up and come with me, the man told her. While she followed him, she munched on a cracker he had bought in order to tide her over until he could sort something better out.

  “But where was this samaritan, who materialised at just the right moment, taking her?” I asked the old man, desperate to find out Badia’s fate. The captivating story had had such an effect on me that my cup of tea had gone cold; I had forgotten all about it as soon as the kindly old man began again to tell his story. He said I had to be patient if I wanted to hea
r the story all the way to the end. I begged his pardon and picked up my cup of tea, which is when I discovered that it was cold, despite the warmth that was radiating from the heater. There’s something I want the reader to be aware of, which is that I was keen to hear the story of the mother so that we could get back to the story of the daughter. What was most enjoyable about the way the old man told the story was how he bounced back and forth from one to the other without a clear rhyme or reason, without necessarily finishing the first story before moving on to the second. I don’t know why, exactly, but it was satisfying… Now, let’s get back to the story of Badia, and I apologise to the reader for this intervention on my part but I find it necessary to appear in the text every now and then because my time there with the old man, my listening to his story… that is also a story in its own right.