by Rana Haddad
The customs official became silent for a moment.
“I need to report this.” The words traveled from between his teeth, crawled outside the boundaries of his oily mustache, and landed in Dunya’s ear like a toothpick. He knitted his brows furiously, as if there was certain trouble in store for her, and walked off to a cubicle nearby.
“You shouldn’t have told him you’re a photographer. He doesn’t know what it means and he’ll spend hours making our life hell, particularly if he discovers that a girl like you makes a living by taking photos of things that mean nothing to him. Oh Dunya, Dunya, when will you learn?”
Hilal understood the psyche of these so-called ‘officials.’ He thought of them as lost souls who had nothing better to do or look forward to than what they were already doing. Instead of stamping people’s passports, they seemed to be on a bitter revenge mission to stamp on as many travelers’ egos as possible. They were particularly awful to Syrians who had been on foreign travels. They felt that the world was divided between people who traveled abroad and people who couldn’t and that it was their patriotic duty to teach the former a lesson. The ‘officials’ seemed (and were) far more interested in sipping their sugared teas and walking as slowly as possible, especially when the queues were long or if the airplane had arrived after midnight (like now), than in doing their jobs. Instead of walking briskly to get from one office to another to clear a passport, they walked lazily, wearing traditional leather slippers—known as sharoukhs—and looking superior and contemptuous of everyone who wasn’t one of them.
A middle-aged man, who looked slightly more senior than the first one, began to open Dunya’s suitcase. “She doesn’t look like a spy,” he said to his subordinate. “Spies look nothing like her. Let me deal with her.” He looked at Dunya with feigned tenderness. “Where did you come from?”
“London,” she answered.
The middle-aged man looked at her with anticipation now. “Did you get me a present?” he whispered. Then he flipped a cigarette out of a box and put it in his mouth.
“No. I don’t even know you, Sir,” Dunya said innocently. The official winced with disappointment.
“But what about that lovely watch you’re wearing. Didn’t you bring this for me?” he said in a slightly menacing tone, pulling out a pink plastic lighter.
“But it’s a girl’s watch!” Dunya said, starting to understand what he was trying to tell her.
“My daughter would love it.” Dunya unfastened her watch and looked at him as he gleefully closed her suitcase and let her go in peace, with her camera dangling safely from her shoulder.
Meanwhile Hilal was occupied elsewhere, talking to an official who had decided to stop him when he saw him holding his suspiciously large telescope. The official first thought the telescope was a machine gun or a rocket launcher, but once he believed that it was a machine with which one looked at the moon and other planets things got worse. He tried to convince Hilal that the telescope would make an ideal ‘present’ to him.
Finally Hilal said, “I’d have loved to give it to you, Sir, but unfortunately Mr. Hafez al-Assad would be disappointed as I’ve brought it especially for his son Bashar. He ordered it to be personally delivered from London by me!”
After hearing that, the official evaporated like dew at the touch of sunshine.
*
As Dunya and Hilal walked hand in hand toward the taxi rank at Damascus Airport, Hilal decided that he didn’t want to go to Aleppo just yet. “I’m not ready to see my mother, not tonight, not tomorrow, nor the day after. I need to collect my thoughts before I see her. I don’t want to cry in front of her; I don’t want to be angry with her. I want to be a good son,” he said to Dunya. “Why don’t we go to Latakia to see your mother and father first?”
“But she’s been waiting for you, Hilal, for six months!”
“No, no,” Hilal said. “She hasn’t been waiting for me for six months; she waited six months before she told me that my father was gone. What mother does that to her son?” Hilal’s tears ran down his face. “I couldn’t even say goodbye to him.”
Their yellow, old-fashioned taxi (which looked as if it was held together with nothing more than sticky tape and perhaps a few squirts of industrial glue) drove into the city of Latakia early the next morning. From its half-broken windows, Dunya and Hilal watched the sun rising over the bright blue Mediterranean sea, bringing with it a blanket of humidity that covered them. Dunya lay her head on Hilal’s chest as the taxi turned from street to street and she listened to his heartbeats.
He and she here in Latakia; his heart under her cheek.
The streets outside were still empty, but morning calls to prayer (mostly sung by tape recorders) were already booming through the air, echoed by other calls carried by deeper and weaker and sometimes comical voices, which repeated the same immortal words, again and again: I profess that God is the Greatest and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God!
And after that, they heard the ringing of church bells from the north and south and east and west of the city, which rang as if to say, “Good morning, good morning, to a new day.”
“What a city! An entire city kissed by the sea, caressed by the wind, and protected by all these proud mountains and nourished by all these rich and fertile fields,” Hilal exclaimed. “I’ve never seen this part of Syria.”
Dunya felt the uncanny feeling that most people feel after a long separation from someone deeply beloved, and she was far too happy to speak. Like everyone else who had the fortune or misfortune of being born in this precious stretch of land and near this particular swathe of sea, Dunya was and always would be umbilically and emotionally attached to it.
The sun rose up in the sky bringing with it a heavy heat that Dunya had almost completely forgotten existed; a dreamy, enveloping heat that held her inside like a mother gathering a long lost daughter in her warm embrace.
A fleet of yellow taxis (most of them looking as if they certainly would be retired or fail their road safety inspections in more sensible countries) moved through the streets, hungry for lira, almost breaking down under the weight of the plastic flowers that adorned them; cars hooted like sick owls and trucks heaved, burdened with their loads of flour, melons, and live meadow cows. Most of these vehicles were inevitably adorned with plastic, glass, and feather accesories, complete with self-congratulatory, flirtatious, or provocative proclamations: “I’m as pretty as they come”; “Your eyes are my ocean”; “To hell with those who envy me!”
Now that they were nearer to the center, their taxi crossed through the old Latakia vegetable market, where at this time of day, it was like a festival. The biggest recompense for not being able to speak freely in the Republic of Syria was the freedom to sing and shout, and this is what all the vegetable and street sellers in Latakia, and all across the country, did in the mornings. Dunya watched, with awe and wonder, men of all ages, shapes, and sizes praising and extolling their produce louder and louder, like a chorus in an outdoor choir. A man emptied two large bags of apples on a table. Another one drove in with a blue truck packed full of red grapes, another truck came in loaded with fresh green figs. Hundreds of different men in all modes of transport—vehicle, animal, or on foot—had settled down for a day of trading mushrooms, lentils, melons, green beans, potatoes, tomatoes, items of clothing, electrical goods, knickknacks, and flowers. Each one shouted out the name of what they were selling, loudly and as if they were singing. Dunya’s heart was filled with joy as she heard these familiar orchestras of men and boys singing competitively about their fruits and vegetables and rhythmically boasting about their products and wares:
Eggplant! Bananas, alfalfa sprouts!
Electric dice, radios, Chinese mice!
Talking birds, mints, and herbs, the best and shiniest price,
Spoil your wife, brighten her life, with perfumes and spice!
She lay her head on Hilal’s chest and folded her arms around him. How would she have guessed ten years ago tha
t she would be returning here with her One True Love, both delivered in a yellow taxi to her door? She smiled.
And as the taxi dropped them on the corner of Baghdad Street, a few steps away from the building where Mr. and Mrs. Noor lived, Dunya stood outside and took a deep breath.
Now that her feet were standing on Latakia’s dusty ground, that her eyes were filled with the color of its electric-blue sky, which seemed to be everywhere all at once, she could no longer deny it: she was home at last! Everywhere she and Hilal looked they could hear Arabic, Arabic, Arabic. Everywhere they turned they saw children playing in the streets, widows wearing black, and men playing backgammon on balconies and in cafés, slowly sipping their cups of coffee as if there was nothing to worry about except for deciphering the meaning of the sky that day, and tasting the flavors of the day. Arabic, Arabic, Arabic, its heart-expanding words and sounds and intonations, words they had not heard for so long and which pointed to and described feelings and states of being and seeing that they had forgotten existed. Dunya had also forgotten about the air, Latakia’s air. And as she breathed it in, tears fell upon her cheeks. Latakia with all its imperfections and flaws was not an ordinary city to her, it was more like a mother or a father or a beloved grandmother; it was her tree and she was its branch.
12
Joseph’s Heart
When Joseph Noor opened his front door that morning, he didn’t see what he was expecting to see. It was not the corner shop delivery boy or the plumber he’d rung for earlier. Instead he saw his daughter Dunya looking at him with her big green eyes—and next to her stood a tall young man with disheveled curly hair carrying what appeared to be her suitcase.
“But I thought you weren’t arriving until the day after tomorrow my darling girl! Why come on your own in a taxi, when I could’ve picked you up?” Joseph put his arms around Dunya and pressed her to him and made loud kissing noises. “These independent English habits you have picked up are so unsuitable for a girl. What are dads for, if daughters don’t need them?” He squeezed her cheek as if she were still a little girl. “You can leave her suitcase here young man.” Joseph pulled some notes out of his pocket and handed them to Hilal.
“Dad, this is Hilal,” Dunya said.
“Hilal?” Joseph stared at Hilal for a moment or two as if he were trying to remember that name and who the person it belonged to was. Suddenly a light bulb lit up in his head. “Hilal! No, no, no. Please don’t tell me it’s him. No! Absolutely not!”
Joseph pulled Dunya by her arm and appeared to be trying to shut the front door in Hilal’s face.
“Dad! I want you to talk to Hilal, I want you to meet him. He wants to meet you. You must talk to him, Dad.”
“You brought him all the way from London to talk to me, even though you knew how much I don’t want to talk to him, nor see his face, nor hear his name?” he said. “And you say that I must . . . I must? Who’s the dad here?”
“I thought that if . . .”
“If? If what?” Joseph said in a bitter, whistle-like voice. “Dunya, Dunya. You are so . . . so, so, so . . .” he kept repeating the word so as if his tongue was stuck—“so shameless!” Joseph finally said it. “Yes. Shameless! Shameless!”
Dunya took one of Hilal’s hands in hers.
“Dr. Noor, I was the one who insisted that Dunya bring me to see you, despite . . .” Hilal began.
“Despite?” Joseph looked at Hilal with disdain. “Despite, huh? Despite what?”
Dunya looked at Joseph and saw that his face was turning white now, then it seemed to be transforming itself into a strange shade of green, and then a sort of eerie blue hue began to envelop it. “Dad? Are you alright, Dad?” Dunya put her arms around Joseph again, “Don’t have a heart attack, Dad. I don’t want you to die!”
“Die?” Joseph looked at Hilal with cold anger. “If you don’t want me to die, don’t marry him, it’s very simple.”
Dunya held her father’s hands in hers, “Dad, Hilal and I love one another, but we’re not in a hurry to get married. Talk to him a little, please, Dad. There’s no harm in you talking to him, is there? Why can’t you invite him for a cup of coffee? I know Mum wants to meet him.”
“He loves you but has no plans to marry you? Now that sounds like a perfectly decent young man to me, with perfectly honest intentions. Oh, I feel so very comforted to hear that!” Joseph wished he could punch Hilal in the teeth and be done with him. What is it with these upstart young men? he wondered. But then it occurred to him that the neighbors next door might be eavesdropping and there was no way he wanted them to bear witness to this conversation.
*
“Patricia! Your daughter’s here,” Joseph called up the staircase, before ushering Dunya and Hilal into his chandeliered lounge.
Hilal had never been in a house like this before nor met a man like Joseph. No one with that degree of snobbery and sense of entitlement circulated in his parents’ lives, nor in the corridors and lecture halls of Aleppo University. Who did he think he was? King of Syria? Yes, Joseph certainly behaved like a king, or a feudal lord, his home certainly looked like a palace, but he was only human, and no one was better than anyone else. A few thousand pieces of stone cemented together to make a beautiful house, more money in the bank, a family bloodline to boast of, a foreign education, all these things were not enough to make one person worth more than another in Hilal’s eyes.
Soon a tall, glamorous English woman arrived in a cloud of perfume. She looked like a movie star with her perfectly made-up face and exquisitely tailored dress, her manicured nails, and perfect eyelashes. Patricia was exactly as Dunya had described her to him, in every detail, and she and Joseph looked like such an unlikely but inevitable couple—like black and white, like day and night.
“Dunya!” Patricia said. “Oh, darling child!” She ran toward her daughter and embraced her while looking over her shoulders at Hilal.
Unfortunately, even though Patricia tried not to, she couldn’t contain herself and she involuntarily fluttered her eyeslashes at Hilal. He was so handsome! Much more so in the flesh than in the photograph she had seen of him. Patricia’s instant and visible liking for Hilal made Joseph wish he could throw him out of the window then and there. But when he had another closer look at Hilal he realized how much taller than him he was, and how much stronger, and how much younger and how much . . . better looking. And the fact that Patricia saw it too was truly the last straw for Joseph.
Uh-oh. Patricia thought to herself when she saw her husband’s face.
Hilal wore light blue trousers and a simple white shirt. Dunya stood next to him and continued to hold one of his hands.
Simply by looking at him, and sensing his presence and personality, Patricia could see that Hilal was indisputably tailormade for Dunya. It wasn’t just physical, but also metaphysical. And their love was clear (for anyone with eyes) to see, but she knew that these indisputable signs of Love wouldn’t be enough for Joseph. Why did Dunya’s love have to come in the shape of a boy so totally unsuitable? I mean, what man worth his salt could bear to see their daughter married to a man of such lowly origins, and with such long hair?
Hilal’s pitch-black curly hair flew up into the air in a poetic and rather touching way, like Dunya’s (but with an added unexpected flourish). Yes, his hair was slightly too long for a man and a little untidy perhaps, but it suited him perfectly and gave him a cheeky and romantic character. He had overgrown stubble and was a little scruffy, but that was completely eclipsed and compensated for by his disarming smile and the gentle aura of innocence that surrounded him like scent.
“Good to meet you, Mrs. Noor, I’ve heard so much about you,” Hilal said to Patricia with his deep and beautiful voice.
“Good to meet you too, Hilal,” Patricia said and shook his hand.
Joseph could not contain his irritation any longer.
“Why?” he declared. “Why are we all standing here together like this, as if this is normal and acceptable? We don’t live i
n London, Mr. Shihab, do we? Nor in Honolulu. We live in Syria, and here in Syria a girl is not allowed to have a boyfriend. She can be officially engaged to a man, but only with her father’s permission, it’s not up to her to decide. Do you have my permission, Mr. Shihab, to consort and cohort with my daughter Dunya? Did I give it to you? No. And so you have no place here in our house, or holding my daughter’s hand in front of me. What she does behind my back is one thing, but right here in front of me, in my house! What a cheek you both have. What a lack of manners and consideration!” Joseph looked bright yellow now. Patricia anxiously inspected him and began to fear for what might happen next. Oh no. She froze in terror.
“Mr. Noor, if you give me a chance, I could explain my feelings for Dunya to you. They are true and genuine. I understand what you say and your concerns. But couldn’t you give me a chance to at least prove to you who I am and that my love for Dunya is real?”
“Why should I care if your love for my daughter is real or not? Who cares? It’s the least of my problems and it doesn’t worry me in the least. My problem and concern is that my daughter is not for the likes of you, Mr. Shihab. Why don’t you go and find yourself a girl of your own station? This is what I don’t understand,” Joseph said. “A plumber’s daughter, perhaps? A mechanic’s niece, a baker’s sister! I don’t care. Just not my daughter!”
Hilal looked at Joseph patiently, as if he was hoping for the storm to pass. He looked at Dunya and she looked at him as if that is what they’d expected and this is how they’d agreed to react.
“Joseph!” Patricia said. “Please excuse my husband, Hilal,” she said. “He doesn’t mean what he said. Let’s have some tea. Amina!” Patricia called her maid who suddenly appeared as if out of nowhere, “My dear, could you make us tea and bring some biscuits?”
“Tea and biscuits?” Joseph said. “This is certainly not an occasion for tea and biscuits!”
