by Rana Haddad
My heart and my soul
Are longing for you!
The sound of Suha’s voice filled the room.
“Your voice.” her mother said in alarm.
“What about my voice?” Suha asked her.
“It is . . . it is like no other voice I have ever heard,” Basma whispered with fear.
Oh night, oh night,
In the sky above,
My heart soars
Looking for you . . .
The night, the night . . .
Is hiding you from me!
The night, the night
Is hiding me from you!
“Why are you doing this to me, God? Is this my punishment, are you testing me?” Basma said.
Suha sang louder and louder and as she heard her own voice for the first time, she suddenly and unexpectedly discovered the purpose and meaning of her life. As she gradually allowed her song to soar she no longer felt lost. Everything was filled with luminosity and meaning. Her whole body and her heart and mind were filled with an extraordinary sensation she had never known until that day. She continued to sing, improvising new words and tunes and remembering songs she’d heard before, her heart sprang to life and its beats filled her whole being until tears began flowing from her eyes.
It was then that she realized that her voice could express so much of what had previously been hidden from her as a little girl. A little girl who was in the habit of hiding from the world and fearful of asking questions whose answers she never dreamed she would discover.
Song was her answer; it filled her world with the beginning of meaning, and a strange delightful feeling that was so much bigger than her, and larger than her world.
“Hush!” Basma said. “Stop, stop!” And she went and locked the door and closed the windows.
“I’m like you, I’m like you. I can sing like you.” Suha shouted with joy and jumped up and down and ran in circles around her mother and then put her arms around her.
“My darling, you’re not like me, you’re much better than me,” Basma said gently but in a very sad voice. “I don’t want you to sing. It’s the worst destiny to be born into. The love of music is a curse.”
“How did you make that oud sing? I want you to show me.” Suha stubbornly ignored her mother’s words.
“I can’t do that,” Basma said. “Your father will kill us both.”
“Why?” Suha said.
“When he married me, he made me promise to give music up, and the last thing he’d want is for me to teach it to you. Most men are not like your father and you’ll never find a husband if you sing. No respectable man wants to marry a songbird.”
Suha begged Basma every day for more than a year to teach her the oud and she threw a number of tantrums, until in the end Basma gave in. “But you must promise me not to sing in front of anyone, ever. And you must never nurture a dream of becoming a professional singer. Promise me, my love.”
“I promise,” Suha said.
“If only one could sing silently then we could do it all day and all night and no one would be able to stop us . . . then we would be happy, wouldn’t we, my dove?” Basma sometimes said wistfully, observing how happy they both were when they let themselves sing to their heart’s content.
“Why are Fairuz and Umm Kulthoum allowed to sing in public and we’re not?” Suha sometimes asked her mother.
“How should I know?” Basma always answered.
By keeping the secret of her beautiful voice hidden, and not being allowed to display it, Suha often felt as if she was about to explode. She wished she could scream it out from the rooftops, “I am a singer! I am a singer! Listen to my song!”
But she never did.
Neither did she dare to declare that her love of the oud was absolute.
Over the years Basma taught Suha how to hide her musical talent the way others hid their sins and misfortunes. But she also secretly taught her how to sing like Asmahan and play the oud like Farid al-Atrash.
But as Suha grew, her parents’ insecurities also grew. And the only way for them to deal with their fears was to work harder and harder to forget about Suha’s past, and they became utterly obsessed with her future. As she was so beautiful, they never had a doubt that she would be able to pick and choose in the husband department, but that was not enough for them. They also wanted her to have a career. They had heard that many women were now becoming professionals. That there were women who were architects, lawyers, engineers, doctors. Doctors! That last one took their fancy. In no time they started to pressure Suha to develop at least a pretense of wanting to become a doctor. However, in reality they knew and she knew that this was the last thing she wanted. But any indication of her indifference to a medical career would automatically push Basma over the edge. “I don’t want you to have anything to do with music, look what happened to me. I’m a shadow of my former self. Any profession rooted in emotion and fantasy can only suck a person dry and in the end, kill them. Be a doctor. Get respect.” That is what Basma said more than once to Suha, while nervously gritting her teeth of gold. Half of Basma’s teeth were twenty-one carat gold, because it was fashionable for middle-aged women in those days. (It also ensured financial security if divorced or widowed, or in old age, as the gold teeth could be sold and replaced with porcelain ones in times of need.)
So, Suha pretended she was planning to study medicine, perhaps one day. But, she spent as much time as possible learning how to play the oud from Basma, who knew everything there was to know about it. They did that in secret, as Bassam’s family would have been outraged to hear that Basma was teaching her daughter such whorish arts.
By the time Suha reached the ripe age of eighteen her stock as a ‘prize-bride’ was rapidly rising and word spread far and wide about the perfection of her lips, the impossible silkiness of her long, black hair and her amazingly seductive and hypnotic eyes. Bride-hunters, who hunted on behalf of their sons, brothers, and cousins, spoke of her skin and her limbs, her melodious voice and her body, which seemed to be full of fire and light and a heat—all impossible to describe and in no time people came to Suha’s father hoping that they could win her hand (as well as her heart). They brought rings and necklaces with them, jewelry and pastries; they listed their accomplishments and possessions and boasted of their virtues both real and imaginary. Her hopeful grooms were rumored to include a bulging doctor, a cacophonous lawyer, a not-unattractive merchant, and a dentist from Damascus. For a daughter of a baker this was quite an achievement. Dentist Karim was Suha’s most eligible suitor. His hair was dark brown, his shoulders square. His jaw was also square, but his eyes were not; they were almond-shaped and a dark mahogany color. He often wore a beige cotton suit with a white shirt and was always clean-shaven. He had thick, well-combed, fragrant hair, while his eyebrows were so neatly arched that Suha wondered whether he occasionally plucked them. His story with Suha is a long one and sadly does not fit in this book.
There was no way that Basma’s father would give her in marriage to anyone who could not provide her with a certain lifestyle, a life of luxury and social status. It was through his daughter, Suha, that Bassam the baker had decided his family would finally be able to rise meteorically into the social stratosphere. Yes, Suha was his daughter and he loved her, but like most good daughters she was also an asset, worth her weight in gold.
But one suitor after another, she refused. None of the men who proposed to her seemed anywhere near alluring to her. She hated the idea of being married off to some stranger who would then think he owned her.
She wanted to sing! She wanted to sing, sing, sing. And she wanted to love, really love, someone who truly loved her the way she wanted to be loved. She didn’t want jewelry or houses, nor did she want to hear of her prospective grooms’ portfolio of accomplishments and successes. No, she wanted so much more than that. How could she sell her love to the highest bidder? This was not what love was all about. She wanted something far more precious than that, something that the world had clearly gi
ven up on and considered worthless. Unlike many other girls in the neighborhood, Suha knew for sure that she was not the equivalent of a washing machine or of the latest Ferrari, and she insisted that it was her heart that must choose the one that she would love. Her heart must choose, and it would not be chosen. It must give and it would not be given.
Until she could find her way out of this impossible conundrum, Suha was busy being a rather lazy student at the Faculty of Philosophy at Aleppo University, as well as a famous heart-breaker and flirt, and she continued to promise her mother that one day she would be a doctor, though what kind of doctor this was, Basma never understood.
“A doctor of philosophy!” Suha explained.
Then one day a yellow dress arrived at Mr. and Mrs. Habibi’s doorstep, wrapped loosely in the day’s edition of the al-Thawra newspaper (published by the Baath Party and a source of all essential truth and bulletproof fact). Suha had been sipping tea with her mother on the balcony when she heard the bell ringing and then found that parcel waiting for her at the door. When she tried the dress on, Suha was surprised to discover that it fit her perfectly, every line and every curve. And not only that, but she also noticed when she looked at herself in the mirror (as did her mother) that the yellow dress, which seemed to hold her gently and softly, had the effect of a ray of sun when it shines into an area of shadow.
At first Basma was convinced that it was one of Suha’s many admirers who had sent that dress to her as a present, but after she inspected it carefully and read its label, she violently threw the dress on the floor as if it were about to burn her. “I’ll put it away in the loft, don’t ever wear it again,” she said to Suha as she tried to pick up the dress quickly from the floor. But Suha got there first. “Of course I’m going to wear it. Why shouldn’t I wear it? It’s the most beautiful dress I’ve ever had.”
Suha read its label.
Exclusively Made by Said & Suad Shihab, His & Hers Sewing Atelier, Aleppo
“I know that atelier,” she said. “Maybe we could ask them who ordered the dress from them, and then we’ll know who it was.”
“No! Don’t ever go and see them. Don’t ever ask them anything! Do you hear me?” Basma said gravely.
“But why not, Mother?” Suha said.
“No whys and no buts. Don’t ever go to see them, don’t ever speak to them, don’t ever have anything to do with them. And if you do . . .” Basma said in a tragic and doom-laden voice.
“If I do, what?”
“If you do then I’ll no longer be your mother,” she threatened.
Things were always either black or white with Basma, and her life had not helped her understand or accept the possibilities in between. Suha knew that she must not question her openly or imagine that she could ever discuss things or argue with her, she knew that it was so and only so with Basma, whose life had made it difficult for her to be any other way, but Suha loved her and she never wanted to lose her. She loved her fearful mother Basma.
It was now the middle of June, a lazy summer’s afternoon. Suha sat in a wicker chair opposite her bed and rested her legs over the bedsheets, one over the other. Her bedroom was on the fourth floor, as high as the top of a palm tree whose leaves touched her windowpane. In one of her hands she held an old book of love poems by the dreamy and cheeky and erotic Syrian poet Nizar al-Qabbani. It was so hot even the air blown from the electric fan whirring away on a table beside her was not enough. So, when were Dunya and Hilal finally going to come and find her? She’d been waiting for days and refused to go out while waiting for them. Waiting and waiting.
These two had come into her life so suddenly and unexpectedly, and everything seemed so different now. She needed hours and days and all night to think about it, to try to understand. What did it all mean? The truth had finally come to her in the unexpected shape of a girl who, when she first met her, imagined her to be a boy. This truth was so outlandish that it had turned her life upside down. Her thoughts, her feelings, her beliefs, her world had been broken—light had been shone into the darkness. But she still could not see.
Dunya had come into her life and with her the truth had also come. In addition to a new mother, a new brother, a new sense of who she was and who she might become, Dunya had innocently smiled at her, had uttered strange and unexpected words, and carried her camera in her hands like a torch with which she lit her world.
Suha had never met a girl like Dunya, nor imagined that she existed, and now that she had met her, everything seemed different. Many things that she thought were impossible now seemed possible, even inevitable. Dunya, her name rang in her ears, and she played back in her mind that moment Dunya came and spoke to her. She played it back to herself like an old movie, moment by moment from beginning to end, and imagined the sequel. What would happen next?
Suha fanned herself with a paper fan now and then and continued to read poem after poem to kill the minutes and hours and days while she waited, and to distract herself from thinking about Dunya. And Hilal. The two of them were bound to come and see her. Suha waited, and waited, every minute weighing on her like an hour, every hour like a historical age. She turned page after page of her book of poems, none of which she could read, because all she could see in front of her, and on each line of those pages, was Dunya’s face, followed soon after by what she imagined Hilal might look like. All she could hear inside her ears were words that Dunya had said, interrupted by the sounds of traffic and shouting from the streets below.
What type of man, Suha wondered, was Hilal? Was he like her? Was she anything like him? Even though they had such different lives, and he was a boy, there must be something in their core that was one and the same, because he was her twin and she had known him before they were born. Might he love her as his sister, might she love him as her brother? Would they be drawn to one another or would they be indifferent?
Suha remembered how as a little girl she had sometimes wished that she had had a brother or even a sister. She’d always carried an imaginary image of a sibling in her heart. Did she want a brother? An actual, real brother? This real one might be different from the one she’d carried inside her. This real one was the one she’d been thrown away in favor of. From the moment they were born he’d been the first, and she the last. He was the one who was chosen and lived in the light, while she was rejected and exiled to the dark. Everything since then and after had been his.
Everything she wanted.
*
Suha got up from her armchair and brought over her portable cassette player. She picked out from her bookcase a tape whose cover was a black-and-white photograph of a melancholy young man with a beautiful face, pitch-black straight hair, and a side parting. His name: Abdel-Halim Hafez.
She pressed the play button.
She sat. She sat, and there was sadness in her eyes,
Staring at my turned-up coffee cup.
She said: My boy, don’t be sad.
My boy, don’t be sad, for love is your destiny.
Love is your destiny.
I have gazed into the future, many times. I have looked into the stars.
But I’ve never read a coffee cup like yours before.
I’ve never known a sadness like yours before,
My boy, my boy!
It was upon first hearing that particular song that Suha had been reminded, through its lyrics and its rhymes and the heartbreaking voice of its legendary orphan-boy singer, that there was something in the world that she wanted with all her heart to reach and to touch and to hold, and that it was love in its purest, truest sense. But although Abdel-Halim sang about the tragic impossibility of such a pursuit, she had decided that she, unlike the hero of this song, would find it, and that she would not listen to anyone else’s nonsense about the impossibility of such a pursuit and would summon up the boldness to hold it in her hand like a beautiful bird whose soul was her destiny.
Unlike the doom-laden and eternally heartbroken hero of that song, Suha was determined that she would no
t live a life of living death, and that unlike him and many others like him she would choose to live, live, live.
*
The next day Dunya arrived at the Aleppo Central Bakery early in the morning.
First, she knocked at the hakawati’s door, but no one answered, and then she summoned up the courage to ask the two young men who were running the Aleppo Central Bakery whether they knew who Suha Habibi was and her whereabouts.
Suha was sitting at her desk pretending to study when she heard her cousin Badri calling her. Then she heard her other cousin Aziz knocking on the door. “A curly haired girl is here to see you,” he told her.
Suha ran with him down the stairs, forgetting to put on her slippers or any shoes.
After Suha’s father Baker Bassam died, Badri and Aziz, both of whom were as tall as trees (about two meters each to be exact), took over his bakery. They redecorated it, painting it white all over, and employed a team of ten young boys to deliver bread on antiquated bicycles to all the restaurants in Aleppo, and sometimes sweep the floors and make teas and coffees. Badri and Aziz also had a van and a wife each, as well as a tribe of children whose names they could hardly remember as they worked too hard to focus on such trivialities.
In a backroom full of bags of flour that had been laid one on top of the other, the length and breadth of three of the walls, Suha found Dunya standing between her two tall and burly cousins, both of whom were dressed in their usual jeans and vests, exposing their large hairy chests and wide, manly shoulders.
The first thing she noticed was how tiny Dunya appeared in comparison to them, and then how her curls, which had seemed so wildly playful and cheeky and romantic and full of rays of an invisible golden sun, seemed to be sorrowful today.
And then there were Dunya’s eyes, which she looked at, and which instead of looking at her with delight seemed to be hiding behind a sort of cloud. Dunya’s eyes were so different; it was as if summer had turned to winter inside them, as if the ray of love and sun and happiness that shone through them had been extinguished.
