by Rana Haddad
She could see that Suha was a heartbreaker. Only a very brave man would dare to love her. To love her would require enormous amounts of courage and perhaps a sprinkle, or a good dose, of madness. What a risk loving her would be, what a knife’s edge.
“What I don’t understand,” Suha said, “is how could I have invented an imaginary young man who looks so like your Hilal, a man I never met?” Suha took a brush from a dresser nearby and began to brush her hair.
“I wonder too,” Dunya said, hoping that this was not some sort of uncanny coincidence whereby Suha created the man of her own dreams. “Tell me, then,” she asked her, “do you have a sweetheart or a fiancée?”
“Sometimes I do,” Suha said. “But at the moment I don’t. I’ve looked and looked for true love, but I haven’t found it yet. Is Hilal your One True Love or just a passing infatuation?”
“He is my One True Love,” Dunya said.
“I’ve never been in love like that with anyone. My heart has always been a difficult instrument, impossible to master. You must teach me what you know about love.”
“Me teach you?” Dunya blushed. “I don’t think I’ll have anything to teach you.”
“I know it requires courage, and I don’t have enough of that,” Suha said. “That’s my problem. I’m too cowardly, true love requires enormous courage, they say.”
“I suppose it does,” Dunya said. “Or enormous recklessness.” She smiled at Suha. “So how did you learn how to disguise yourself so well as a young man, when you’re a beautiful woman?” Dunya watched Suha as she continued to brush her hair.
“My mustache was made in Paris,” Suha said as if by way of explanation, “by a mustache professional. And my fez was smuggled in from Turkey in 1922, the year when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk banned the fez in the newly born Republic. Did you know that since the fez was banned in Turkey, Turkish men were forced to hide their Oriental natures under European berets and bowler hats? I’m not the only one who must hide my true self. What is true is often illegal in this country, and also elsewhere in the world. One could easily get killed for it,” Suha said. Her feminine voice reverberated through the room and touched everything in it.
“But why hide that you’re a girl?” Dunya asked Suha, “It’s not illegal to be a girl in this city, is it? Tell me who you are and why you live like this?”
“I’ll tell you who I am, perhaps another day.”
“No, tell me now.”
“Now?” Suha took a bottle of perfume from a drawer and sprayed a little on her wrist. “I need to get rid of that boy smell,” she said, “the smell of old men and cigarettes and hookahs and mustaches and teahouses before I can tell anyone anything. So you tell me, how did Hilal capture your heart?”
Dunya tried to think of how she might explain her love for Hilal to Suha, but she found that she could not concentrate on the subject and that she had no idea what to say about it or what she actually thought of it. All her feelings, all her thoughts, all her ideas, all memories, all images and theories of love had evaporated from her mind and she could not make head nor tail of any of them. All she was conscious of was sitting there in that room with this girl she had never met before and whose name was Suha. Was Suha not the name of a distant star that could not be seen with human eyes? She remembered that Hilal had once mentioned it to her.
Suha crossed one of her legs over the other, and then she yawned. “As it’s so hot here, let me make you my special lemonade instead of a glass of tea.” She picked up a couple of tall blue glasses from a cupboard and from a fridge pulled out a bottle of cold water.
Dunya watched Suha squeeze one lemon and then another and pour their contents between the two glasses. She pulled a spoon out of a small wooden drawer and found a bag of sugar. A silence filled the large room and the small space that separated them. Dunya listened to the sound of Suha’s spoon touching the tall glasses. It was very hot, almost too hot as this room had probably not been aired for a long time, and there weren’t any fans. Dunya looked at Suha’s bare feet and the nail varnish on her toes and realized that she far preferred her as a girl. She wanted to be her friend, to talk to her, she wanted to know everything about her from the beginning to the end. They would need to have many conversations, conversations that might take years. She was sure of it. One afternoon could never be enough.
Suha breathed, slowly, so slowly, so leisurely, as if she were inhaling an invisible cigarette whose smoke filled her soul and made her dream, and when she breathed out, that same smoke surrounded Dunya and brought her against her will into Suha’s strange and mysterious orbit. Oh, she liked her. She liked her. Everything about her.
Dunya sat down on the floor next to Suha and the two of them innocently stared at each other for a moment or two, or three or more. One, two, three, four—one, two, three, four. They stared at one another like this for a moment, or two, and then three, and then four. But neither of them knew what to say, or how to describe that moment, or understand it.
Suha rested her back on a cushion and began to tell Dunya why she had decided to disguise herself as a young man.
“I’m sure you must’ve discovered in your travels that it’s men who rule the world? And that only a man has the right to speak, whereas a young woman is mostly expected to be silent.” She picked up a sunflower seed from a bowl next to her and cracked it between her teeth. “Why is it that only they can speak, only they can think, only they can sing, only they can look, that we must be their objects? I’ve never understood or accepted the injustice of this, but I’ve always known it to be true,” she said. “Dressed as a young man no one expects anything from me and I can do as I please. Everyone listens to me rather than being distracted by my bosom, my legs, my ass.”
“What if someone discovers you’re a girl? Aren’t you afraid of being discovered?”
“Of course I’m afraid,” Suha said. “Nothing worth doing is not terrifying. . . . But if it’s worth doing then it must be done, otherwise life isn’t worth living. When my father passed away last year my mother brought down all his old suits and put them in this basement here.” Suha pointed to the ancient wooden wardrobe. “I don’t know how it came about but I opened the wardrobe one day and began to look at his old clothes and I remembered when he used to take me out on visits and buy me chocolates and ice creams. He was a slim man and shorter than usual and I realized I could easily fit into his suits. I took my dress off and put on a suit of his. Then I tried on a pair of his good quality leather shoes and his favorite fez. I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize myself. I moved my feet roughly, my shoulders proudly, and my chin in a manly fashion. You know what I mean? If you observe them closely you’ll notice they do everything a little differently from us, there’s a lot more ego and self-importance in their movements. They often possess what one might call ‘panache,’ especially the men here in our neighborhood. I went shopping for a few items in a theater shop I’d seen next to the national theater. Soon enough I’d collected mustaches, eyebrows, neck hair, ear hair, an Adam’s apple, a couple of artificial warts and about three makes of men’s cologne, as well as ten different types of makeup, which I learned how to mix to create the right skin tone. I found that after putting on a hat I was able to slip out of the house looking like a young gentleman. I called myself Nijm. I thought of Nijm as the brother I always wished I had. Dressed like him, I found that Aleppo turned into something much tastier than I’d been used to. Aleppo had tasted like a plain biscuit to me before. But now it tasted like nothing less than an open box of delicious Turkish delight. It was instantly transformed from a strict and tyrannical chaperone, who watched over me with hawk-like eyes, to a rowdy and entertaining companion. It was no longer a city where I had to walk with eyes averted from everything around me, a city where I couldn’t strike up conversations with passersby or sit in cafés drinking tea and listening to gossip or to professional storytellers. What a transformation a suit and a fez can make to the life of a young woman. When I discovered how much fun I could
have just by pretending to be someone else and by treating the streets and local shops and cafés like a theater, I couldn’t give up that delicious freedom. I decided from then on to recycle my father’s old suits and hats into costumes for my own private play.”
“But what about your voice?” Dunya asked her with incredulity. “How could you fake that?”
“At first I pretended I was mute or pathologically taciturn, then I learned to speak like a man. That took a while of practicing in front of the mirror with the help of an old tape recorder. I smoked endless cigarettes to add texture to my voice.”
“I find this hard to believe,” Dunya said.
“The taste of freedom made me fearless. When I walked around Aleppo dressed as a young man—casually smoking a cigarette—most people looked at me and asked, ‘A new visitor? Will he be doing business with one of us? Is he into pistachios or jewelery?’ When I’d passed by them as a girl their reactions were always very different, most of their comments about me had always been either of the lustful or else of the finger-pointing variety. As a girl, one has to be perfect at all times. A girl isn’t allowed to be too attractive or too ugly. It’s considered outrageous for a girl to be too stupid or too intelligent. Anything exceptional about a woman seems to be considered a sort of affront to men or to other women. And as for singing, forget it! A female singer is often regarded as the vocal equivalent of a prostitute or a stripper. A woman’s voice is considered by the religiously enlightened to be as erotic as her naked body, and so they consider it her duty to hide it from them in order to protect them from its seductive power.
“As a man, nothing seemed to matter, all graces became multiplied and all disgraces an honor—a man with a beautiful voice is an asset to society and to his nation, and so I had no other choice. Finally I could breathe and laugh and walk with a long confident stride and look at the world squarely in the eye. As Nijm, I began to frequent Café Taba and to listen to its hakawatis and that’s when I found my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“My heart’s desire has always been to be a singer or a performer of some kind but I’ve always been forbidden from pursuing it, though it’s the only real desire I was born with and I don’t know how to get rid of it. The only audience I could ever dream of having were three people: my mother and my two cousins, who are always adoring and always clap. Even though I know I might never become a real singer and perform in public, I still want to grow and improve my voice and my talent. I don’t want them to wither and die. How could I ever believe I’m good if I don’t test my talent against a real audience composed of uncaring and cold-hearted strangers? So I took my oud and went to see Hassoun the manager of Café Taba. I had to bribe him of course to begin with—with a box of halva and two bottles of expensive arak—otherwise Mr. Hassoun would not have listened to me or given me an audition. My first show was an instant success and after that the customers always asked for me. And so now Mr. Hassoun has to bribe me to keep me at his café and to make sure I don’t stray to a competing establishment. He buys me packets of cigarettes or anything I ask of him. Cups of tea mainly.”
As she spoke, Suha’s voice reverberated through Dunya’s mind and soul and imagination, and filled every part of her, like a beautiful song, impossible to resist. Dunya looked at Suha and instead of feeling fear or dread or panic or rivalry, or worrying whether Hilal might fall in love with her, she felt wonder, perfect wonder.
“What a beautiful story,” she said. “Hard to believe. But I believe you.”
“This is only a small part of it,” Suha said. “There’s so much more which I’d like to tell you one day. But I wonder why I’m telling you all this when I’ve never told it to anyone else before, and never thought I ever would, and I don’t
even know you.
“Do you always blush so much? Why are you blushing?”
“I’m not blushing. I don’t blush.”
“You are blushing.” With the tip of her finger, Suha touched the tip of Dunya’s burning cheek. “Or perhaps I need to open the window. It is too hot down here, isn’t it?”
Yes it was hot, far too hot. The heat filled Dunya. She felt it in her throat, then in her heart, it spread through her lungs, circled inside her stomach, moved through her hair, touched her hands, and traveled all the way down to her feet. It burned her body.
Suha took a plastic bag from a box and from it she picked out a yellow dress and rested it on a chair beside her. “I’ll put Mr. and Mrs Shihab’s dress on, if you don’t mind, and then we can ask Suad about it. What do you say?”
She slowly unbuttoned her father’s white shirt and his black trousers. She was wearing nothing but her underwear now. Who would have imagined that underneath that young man’s suit would be the body of possibly the most beautiful young woman in Aleppo? Her limbs were long and luscious, her arms, her breasts. Dunya felt ashamed of herself. Why was she looking at her like that? Was she admiring her or was she envying her, or fearing her, or wanting to be like her? She had no idea. Suha folded the shirt and hung it inside a cupboard and then did the same with the trousers. Dunya now only dared to look at Suha’s body in parts, not all at once. Every part of her body—her shoulders, her legs, her stomach, her hips, her feet, her hands, her hair—was like a song, like a wave, like the wind, beautiful beyond measure.
The yellow dress fitted Suha perfectly and seemed to hold her like a lover’s hand. It followed the contours of her body and seemed to bring out the qualities of her very soul.
Or that was how the yellow dress appeared in Dunya’s eyes. She noticed how much more light the dress brought out of Suha, who was already so brilliant and so bright. The closer Suha came toward Dunya the more brightly she glittered. And as Dunya continued to look at her, she saw how Suha’s bright light appeared to fill the enormous high-
ceilinged room from top to bottom. She looked like a star that had come down to the city of Aleppo on that hot summer evening for a short visit.
Suha turned her back to Dunya, “Will you help me zip it up?” she said. With the edges of her fingers Dunya zipped up Suha’s dress, trying not to touch her.
How could she be so sure that what she saw in Suha that afternoon was not simply a trick of the light?
Suha was looking at Dunya as Dunya looked at her. No woman had ever looked at her like that. Why was Suha looking at her like this, like that, in that way? Perhaps she looked at everything like this: at a box of matches, at a spoon, at a bird perched above her window, at the moon. Suha seemed to be looking at Dunya as if she thought she could have her heart if she wanted to. And what an unsettling look it was! One moment passed followed by the next one and the next one. Dunya could not believe what her eyes could see, nor what her heart was feeling.
“If you were a boy, I swear I’d kiss you,” Suha said. “You’re far too pretty as a girl ever to be a boy, but I hope one day I’ll meet a boy like you.”
What a thing to say. Dunya couldn’t believe that Suha had said that, and she was too startled to reply.
“I like your soft green eyes. I’ll look for a young man with eyes like that. If you find one, tell him to come and find me,” Suha said.
Dunya tried to hold herself upright, to pretend that everything was alright. She tried to smile lightly as if she did not have a care in the world, she tried not to cry, even though she could feel her tears coming. Now she knew that Suha would only bring her sorrow.
“I hope you stay long enough in Aleppo for us to become friends,” Suha said.
“I hope so too.”
“Let’s go and find Hilal.”
And this was how in one summer’s afternoon black turned to white, dark turned to light, a boy turned into a girl, and the love which Dunya had once given to Hilal was no longer his.
Hilal now seemed pale like the moon in Dunya’s eyes, while Suha was bright and blinding like the sun when it comes too near.
No one had ever told her such a thing could happen, no one had said.
Beautiful girl, you�
��re the one I love, Dunya thought to herself as she looked at Suha.
17
What the Coffee Cup Said
Mrs. Suad Shihab came back home that morning carrying a heavy plastic bag full of the best-quality Egyptian linen cloth she could find. Today my son will come, she kept repeating to herself. She was about to make Hilal a suit that could hold him as if in her hands and protect him from everything bad in this world—a white suit that might shield him from the dark. She’d bought this length of superior-quality white linen at the wholesalers in the north of Aleppo and she’d selected six white, matte buttons. She’d bought thread the color of shadows and a special new pencil to draw the lines of her designs with. As soon as she closed the door behind her, Suad went to her cutting table and laid out the length of white cloth in the proper position. With her new pencil she drew dark lines: his shoulders, his neck, his chest. She took her black scissors from a drawer underneath—and began cutting.
Said. Said. Said.
Suad stared at a photograph of her late husband that was hanging on the wall next to her and silently called his name. She remembered the evening six months ago when she’d found him sitting on his favorite armchair; how she had seen the back of his head still and unmoving and how his black hair was peppered with streaks of gray, and how when she called out his name he didn’t reply. He was still holding a needle in one hand and the yellow dress that he’d been putting the final touches to in the other.
Suad began stitching the arms and then the chest pieces and then the sides of Hilal’s new suit.
“Threads are used by us tailors to connect pieces of cloth and to make an outfit—but invisible threads are used by God to knit people together. These invisible threads must never be cut in vain. How will we sew the broken pieces of our past back together? How will we bring all the separate parts into one whole? Tell me, Said, my darling, tell me,” Suad asked her husband’s photo. “Today, our son will come, and I’ll finally tell him the truth.”
