by Rana Haddad
“Well,” Joseph said to Dunya, “If you knew the truth about men, Hilal’s disappearance would make perfect sense to you. You girls are so naive, and so idealistic. The truth is, young men don’t fall in love with one girl and one girl only, to them girls like you are like daisies in a field, they pick one and then another, and they soon tire of that one too. I was once like that,” Joseph looked at Patricia, “before I met your mother.”
“You really think that Hilal has run away?” Patricia said. “He seemed like such a decent young man, and I saw the love in his eyes—for Dunya, I saw it Joseph!”
“You didn’t see anything, you imagined it,” Joseph said in the voice of a world-weary expert in the cruel realities of men’s fickle hearts. “Imagination is a dangerous faculty that Dunya’s highly blessed with,” Joseph addressed Patricia.
“Hilal loves me,” Dunya said. “I know it for a fact. He would never run away from me like that and in such a cowardly way! Never, Dad. Something must’ve happened to him, or else it must be a misunderstanding. Did you ask him to leave for my sake? Or did you send those men from the Mukhabarat to take him home? Was it you, Dad?”
“Mukhabarat? What kind of man do you think I am, Dunya?” Joseph said with outrage. “What a way to speak to your father? The Mukhabarat have much more important things to do than give a wimp like Hilal a free ride home. No, this car sounds more like a luxury taxi staffed by two men, one to drive and one to carry the luggage. He probably wanted to make himself look like a big shot, they all like showing off when they come back home from abroad,” Joseph said. “What delusions of grandeur. It’s truly laughable.”
“Hilal isn’t a like that, he doesn’t care about such things,” Dunya said. “Something must’ve happened to him, something fishy, and I’m going to find out what it is.”
Joseph sat on the sofa and rested both his arms on his paunch. “Amina! Amina, bring us lunch!” he said in a sonorous voice.
“I’m going to Aleppo, Dad, and I’m going to find Hilal and find out what happened to him. And if it turns out that it was you who told him to go, for my sake or something, if it’s because of you that he left, then . . .”
“Then what?” Joseph asked lazily.
“Well, then I’ll never come back to this country again. What kind of country is this? And what kind of father are you?” Dunya’s tears began to fall. “No one’s allowed to do anything, not even fall in love. Even love is a crime here.”
“I promise you that Hilal did not leave Latakia because of me, and that there is nothing the matter with this country. At least we have customs and traditions. At least there is respect. Do you even understand the meaning of this word, Dunya? You’re not going to Aleppo!”
“I’m going to Aleppo to find him,” Dunya said. “Just try to stop me.”
Joseph looked at his daughter with furrowed brows: who did she inherit this stubborn streak from? She was insufferable!
BOOK THREE
The Truth about Hilal
Truth is like a bird, difficult to capture,
Listen to her song and try to ask her:
“Who are you? Who are you?”
Ask her once, ask her twice,
Ask until you hear her voice!
14
The City of Boys
Like every city in Syria, Aleppo seemed to be heavily populated by men and boys. Almost everywhere Dunya looked she saw boys, boys, boys. Boys who, regardless of whether they were four, five, six, ten, eleven, twelve, or fourteen, behaved as if they were big men with big wide shoulders, hungry mouths to feed and households to run—as though they had better be tough to cope. And it was clear from the proud expressions on their faces that they were all fully aware of the importance of their future destinies as men.
The men of Aleppo often called one another ‘batal,’ hero, but many of them and particularly the shopkeepers and craftsmen thought of themselves as kings: the King of Melons, the King of Biscuits, the King of Cakes, the King of Cardamom, the King of Perfumes, the King of Falafel, the King of Zucchini, the King of Soap—and finally Dunya found the King of the World, who owned a shop that sold more than one thing, including TVs, aerials, radios, and washing machines.
In the old town of Aleppo different historical eras were mixed up haphazardly. Boys on donkeys and others on motorbikes passed Dunya by leisurely; soldiers proudly paraded their Kalashnikovs on their shoulders while chewing gum and eyeing up the women, as if this was their full-time job—even more important than saving the country. Women wearing jeans and fashionable skirts walked next to bearded men in turbans and robes and women whose heads, faces, and bodies were covered entirely in black polyester cloth. These veiled women walked everywhere, carrying shopping bags, their black shoes hiding their feet, their silence hiding their thoughts; looking like secrets that had come to life. Many of the young women of Aleppo walked as if trying to hide, as if by walking quietly and quickly from A to B no one would see them. Like this, no one could inspect them, quantify them, assess their worth; no one could say that they were trying to get attention or flaunting their wares.
Dunya asked some shopkeepers if they happened to know where the His & Hers Sewing Atelier was, or whether they’d heard of Hilal the Astronomer or his parents Tailor Said and Seamstress Suad, but they vehemently shook their heads.
“Could it not be that you have been misled?” the first one told her. “Perhaps they live in Damascus. We don’t have young men who work as astronomers in this city. What a fanciful idea!”
“To tell you the truth, no girl should go in pursuit of a young man, even if he happens to be an astronomer, never, never!” another shopkeeper advised her. “Go back home, Mademoiselle, before your parents start worrying about you.” He pointed an admonishing finger at her, and then continued to tout for more customers.
Finally Dunya sat down in a pastry shop and ordered a glass of tea, which a boy served to her on a small silver tray. She watched him from the corner of her eye as he went back to his little workstation in the back of the café where he was shoveling handfuls of almonds into little plastic bags. An old man who looked like his grandfather, perched on a wooden stool beside him and began to collect the bags in a cardboard box, while whistling a playful tune.
Dunya took her camera out and captured the boy and his grandfather—two men separated by a distance of only fifteen centimeters and seventy years of laughter and tears.
Soon after that, a boy dressed in a man’s suit came and joined Dunya at her table. He had carefully combed hair, with a straight side-parting, and was holding a thick book of mathematics in one of his hands. “Hey lady, how about taking a picture of me?” he said, trying to make his soft boyish voice sound deeper than it was, “My name is Marwan.” He shook his little shoulders proudly. Dunya imagined that this was what Hilal was like fifteen years ago. As she looked at the boy through her viewfinder, she imagined him pulling a cigarette out of his pocket and beginning to discuss his latest current affairs concerns. Perhaps he would discuss the Palestinian Question with her, or the distinctions between Socialism, Capitalism, and Communism. She wouldn’t have been surprised, as this is what young boys were like in Syria. There were boys who were shopkeepers, boys who baked bread, and boys who were pastry chefs. She saw a boy who was a plumber, another who was a street-gang leader. One boy was a budding comedian, another one carried himself with the air of a street preacher. Some boys seemed like bosses and others like underlings.
As one boss-type of boy saw Dunya passing down an alley, he called out to his gang of friends who were blocking her passage, “Saliiiiim! Saliiiim! Jamal, Hakim, Fadi, Karim, c’mon, move out of the lady’s way!” They all instantly obeyed.
“What are you doing in our city, Miss?” a boy asked her. “Where do you come from?”
“I’m looking for a young man by the name of Hilal Shihab, the son of Said and Suad the tailor and seamstress? Have you heard of him?” Dunya asked.
“Is he your sweetheart?” the boy replied.
“And you say that his name is Hilal?”
“Yes,” Dunya said.
“If he’s like the moon, he’ll turn up soon!” the boy sang out in a loud melodic voice, then ran off.
As it happened a crescent moon was due to appear that evening.
Dunya examined the endless number of birds that flew over her head from every direction, and noted how their songs (and even the flapping of their wings) could always be heard above the metallic sounds of hammers and cars and trucks and engines and machinery of every kind all over Aleppo. This wasn’t a city only full of boys, it was also teeming with birds.
Aleppo’s old town might be small in the eyes of many, but its alleys (if properly measured with a heavy duty measuring tape) were no shorter than twelve kilometers of imperfect circles and mind-boggling labyrinths. It was slowly dawning on Dunya that her attempt to find Hilal by asking a random sample of boys and shopkeepers whether they knew where he lived was a little unrealistic. Finding Hilal in the old town of Aleppo was beginning to seem like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
But Dunya was sure that she would find him—if not that night, then definitely the next morning if she turned up at the Aleppo University Physics Department, where one of the professors was bound to know him. Was he not their star student?
The sun was getting stronger and stronger and the city of Aleppo was getting hotter and hotter with the breath of passing donkeys acting as another rather unexpected source of heat. Numerous electric and manual fans cooled the old town’s alleyways and shops, as most people couldn’t afford air-
conditioning, but there was some merciful protection between people and the sky in the form of paper bags, recycled trash bags, plastic sheets, and wooden planks, which were used as makeshift ceilings above the alleys.
Everything in this city filled Dunya’s heart with a feeling she had long forgotten, a feeling of love toward everything around her. Yes, it was true that Syria was still living in the past, but perhaps it was this very forgetfulness of the present, this unhurried lack of self-consciousness, this strange un-modern innocence that was what she had missed so much. And every time she thought of Hilal, she wished that he was holding her hand and walking beside her, here in this beautiful old city where he was born.
Dunya took her camera out again and tried to take more photographs of every aspect of Aleppo and every one of its many faces. By contemplating each one of them and examining them separately, she was sure she might uncover the truth about Aleppo and what she imagined was its soul. For each city had a soul, each street a story and each face a secret mystery and a long and convoluted history.
She held her camera with both of her hands and began first by taking a photograph of Aleppo’s light and the outline of its shadows. Inside these rays of black and white, Dunya thought she could see the shape of Hilal’s face—as a little boy, and as a man, how he had been and how he was now and how he might one day become. She imagined his beautiful eyes appearing and disappearing into the stream of sunlight that filled the streets in startling bursts, like waves dashing themselves on a distant shore.
15
The Professor of Love
Because of the malevolent influence of Hafez al-Assad and his mustachioed band of Baathist young men, Syria had become a pariah state of great renown. And so, even a city with Aleppo’s extraordinary charm, beauty, and history was tainted by the shame of being the second largest in a thriving police state. Only Western secret agents, Russian and East German engineers and military experts, and the most intrepid of tourists dared set foot there. Well-to-do and fashion-conscious Syrians, on the other hand, were not in the least impressed by the old city of Aleppo, mainly because it was not like Paris, nor like London, and certainly nothing like Beirut.
But Dunya felt differently. She loved every speck of dust in Aleppo, and every jasmine flower that grew on every Aleppan jasmine tree. She felt love for its people, for its air, and for its sky, and for every stone and every door and every house and every window, and for all the faces which looked at and away from her; each one of whom could’ve or might’ve been Hilal or his mother, or his neighbor, teacher, or friend.
A moody but rather marvelous-looking horse was flipping his hairy tail left and right, as he pulled a cart laden with fresh plums through a narrow alley. Dunya focused her camera on his large and proud face and included his necklace of red and green beads in her shot. The horse yawned and then spat on the floor as if he’d had enough. Enough, enough, enough! After spitting for the fifth time, he stopped trotting and began to stare at the window of a dessert shop next to him with wide-open eyes, ignoring his rider’s angry whip. He inspected the shop window carefully, as if he were trying to decide whether he should buy a kilo of halva, five hundred grams of baklava, or a large and expensive French chocolate cake. But how on earth would he ever afford such things? He was nothing but a horse and he could never aspire to tasting or eating anything except for low-grade straw. The horse’s face looked extremely sad now and his eyes drooped with a tragic sorrow.
Two trucks loaded with pistachio nuts (locally known
as ‘Aleppo nuts’) became trapped behind him and started hooting their horns loud and furiously. Children appeared out of nowhere and started climbing all over the two trucks as well as the cart full of plums, then running off with bulging pockets and crunching teeth. Soon the red skins of fresh pistachios and the pips of plums began flying out from various windows onto the pavement, as mothers and grandmothers also began munching from behind the curtains. Then a freshly shaven young man came out of the sweet shop and held up a piece of candy floss in front of the horse’s mouth, hoping to tempt him forward, but the horse stubbornly refused.
Then the most unexpected thing happened. As Dunya tried to take one last close-up photograph of the horse, another young man’s face appeared in her lens. It was Hilal. By the time she had collected herself enough to believe the evidence of her eyes, the same young man had disappeared round a corner.
“Hilal! Hilal! Hilal!” Dunya called out his name, but her voice disappeared into the deafening din of the city. “Hilal!” She called out again and again and again, but he did not hear her and so she began to run behind him. Hilal took two rights, followed by three lefts and another right. He walked left, right, right, and then left. Finally he stopped in the middle of a group of men gathered outside an old-fashioned café.
Grand Café Taba
(Strictly Reserved for Men)
Now that she stood behind him, Dunya noticed that Hilal was wearing a fez. And when she moved around in order to look at his face—she saw his mustache. Despite this rather drastic change of appearance, Dunya recognized Hilal, but he seemed not to have recognized her.
What was the matter with him?
He was dressed in an old man’s stripy suit and a pair of leather shoes she’d never seen him wear before. And he was shorter and slighter than most of the men around him. On closer inspection, Dunya noticed that he was no taller than her. How could this be Hilal? Yes, this young man certainly possessed Hilal’s exact same eyes, his same black curly hair, and his general air . . . but he wasn’t Hilal.
Dunya tried to stop herself from staring at this most confusing of young men, but it was too late, because he seemed to have finally noticed that she was looking at him, and was visibly delighted. She saw how he puffed up his chest with pride and ran his fingers through his hair with a vanity she had rarely seen in a man. She tried not to laugh. It was not Hilal. When she saw his cheeky face and how he winked at her and indicated to her with one of his fingers to come on over (presuming that she would do as she was told), she poked out her tongue at him. What an arrogant young man. Who does he think he is? Dunya thought to herself. He needs to be taught a lesson.
The young man burst out laughing. He was both startled and highly amused. Dunya was sure that no girl in Aleppo had ever poked her tongue out at him, let alone after pursuing him from street to street a
s she had done earlier. Everyone knew that it was the exclusive right and duty of a young man to look at and to pursue a girl, if it so pleased him, or to tease and taunt her if the mood took him; the other way round was a travesty.
The young man took his fez off and bowed down to Dunya, his curls almost touching the floor.
The men who stood outside Café Taba were now surrounding Hilal’s lookalike and making a big fuss of him. Perhaps he was a well-known local figure or a public celebrity. An older man who looked like a dignitary kissed him
on both cheeks and shook his hand, and the other men formed a corridor for him and whistled and smiled at him as he walked into the café to the sound of their loud and excited greetings.
And as for what happened next: if you happen to be the rational and scientific sort you might say, “Oh no, it cannot be. It cannot be! It could not have happened like this!”
But it can and it did.
Dunya decided that it could not be a simple coincidence that this young man looked so like Hilal. She’d been walking in Aleppo for hours and hours, and none of the men she’d seen in the city had looked anything like him. She must
find out who he was. Was he related to Hilal? Perhaps he knew Hilal.
But by now the arrogant young man had stepped inside Café Taba and when Dunya tried to follow in his footsteps, the porter at the door blocked her entrance with his arms: “This is a men’s-only café! Didn’t you read the sign?” He shook his index finger authoritatively.
Dunya looked behind the porter’s wall-like shoulders into Café Taba, which was bursting at the seams, almost exploding with men of all shapes and sizes, all clamoring to get a seat. Some were even sitting on one another’s laps.
“What’s happening? And who is this young man who just walked in?” Dunya asked him.
“He’s Nijm the Hakawati, the youngest and best hakawati in the entire city of Aleppo. He’s a singer and a philosopher too!” the porter announced pompously. (Of course the old towns of Aleppo and Damascus had always been famous for their troop of tireless hakawatis, the traditional storytellers who plied their trade in men’s cafés).
