by Rana Haddad
They came in during her morning rehearsals and heard the gentle words she sang into this large space and which filled the hall with their powerful reverberations. As Dunya and Hilal entered the large hall full of echoes and broken fragments of plaster and hundreds of pieces of stone that carried memories of ages long gone, these were the words that Suha sang:
Hold me or I’ll fly.
Hold me in your eyes,
Hold me in your arms.
I am here because you can see me.
If you can’t see me I disappear.
As Suha’s beautiful voice rang through the hall, Hilal took a chair and used it as a ladder to help him reach his sister high upon the stage. He climbed up and ran toward her and tightly held her in his arms.
As Dunya looked at this sister and brother, she smiled to herself: they were two, the man and woman who lived in her heart, two who were now in each other’s arms, two broken parts reunited.
Dunya looked on as Suha cried in her brother’s arms and saw how she, in turn, dried his tears with the sleeve of her gold-trimmed dress.
The sister and brother’s black wavy hair merged into one, their cheeks glued to one another, their hands holding each other tightly. There was silence in the hall. Silence, silence, beautiful silence.
She heard the silence in the room and saw how the morning sun came like a river from the sky and bathed both Hilal and Suha in its floods of light.
For the first time since Suha had gone, Dunya took her camera out of its case and directed her gaze on Hilal and Suha who now were looking at her.
It was summer, and what Dunya saw through her lens was him and her both looking at her: looking, looking, looking.
They were sitting next to one another on a blue corduroy sofa on the edge of the old dilapidated stage. Hilal in his blue jeans and a white shirt and Suha wearing a white gold-trimmed dress.
“Dunya,” Suha called out.
“Come here, Dunya.” Hilal said loudly. “Come and sit with us, sit here between us. You don’t need your camera, come.”
A bright light shone all through the room, sweeping away at every dark shadow.
Dunya looked at Suha and Hilal one more time through her eyepiece. She had to take this one last photograph: of Suha and Hilal who, through her lens, were becoming brighter and brighter. The light appeared to connect them in its large circle.
The light that connected them and that drew her to them became brighter and brighter still.
Dunya tried to find the right moment when she would press the shutter.
“Come, Dunya, come,” she heard them say.
She pressed the shutter and then she ran, she ran toward Suha and Hilal.
Later, when that photograph was developed, no one who looked at it could see two people sitting on that blue sofa upon the wooden stage.
They all swore that it was just One.
Epilogue
This is a copy of a framed letter which the manager of Café Taba, Mr. Hassoun, received one June afternoon, inside a parcel containing an old suit, a mustache, a fez, and a few other items of professional disguise. They were sent to him Express Delivery (postmarked Istanbul) by one of his all-time favorite hakawatis who was now (as he’d once predicted) a singer of great renown.
To Mr. Hassoun and to the Loyal Customers of the Great and Glorious Café Taba (Exclusively Reserved for Men),
That suit was a costume, my mustache was not real, my eyebrows weren’t mine, nor my deep and booming voice. I leave them all behind. Never again will I hide my true self, nor fear the truth. I will throw away all disguises and dare to be real. And from now on my voice will be loud and clear for all the world to hear.
Yours faithfully
Suha Habibi (aka Nijm the Hakawati)
Glossary of Names
Most names in Arabic have a meaning.
Dunya: the world, fate, or destiny
Noor: light
Hilal: a crescent moon
Shihab: a comet
Nijm: a star
Suha: a star whose light is almost impossible to detect with human eyes, often used to test the sharpness of one’s eyesight. Also a word used to describe a state between waking and dreaming. In the Western constellations Mizar and Alcor or Horse and Rider, Suha is Rider or Alcor, and they are also part of the handle of the Big Dipper.
Suad: a happy woman
Said: a happy man
Basma: a smile
Bassam: the one who smiles
Farida: unique
Acknowledgments
I owe a deep debt of gratitude to two talented and special women: Olympia Zographos, who has been a rock for me and a dear friend and editor, from the first few sparks of ideas that led to this novel until its last paragraph; and Nemonie Craven Roderick, my literary agent (Jonathan Clowes Ltd) whose insight and vision and faith and perseverance were key in more ways than I can describe or ever pay back.
Without the following people’s support and inspiration and invaluable advice this book would not have made it to the finishing line: Rosie Welsh and Ann Evans (Jonathan Clowes Ltd), Ilonka Haddad, Kinda Haddad, Aboude Haddad, Tarek Hard, Issam Kourbaj, Ilona Karwinska, Hala Mouneimne, Ewan Fernie, Ulli Huber, Bego Garcia, Louise Carolin, Jessica Woollard, Katie Holland (Hoopoe Fiction), and Christine Garabedian.
And last but not least is my editor at Hoopoe Fiction, Nadine El-Hadi, who is the best editor I could have hoped for and whose sharp eyes and keen mind saw what I could never have seen on my own.
This book is dedicated to Syria and her children, both girls and boys, women and men, whose light will shine bright into the future and who will rise above all the suffering that is being heaped upon them. As the saying goes: “They tried to bury us, they did not know we were seeds.”
I also dedicate this book to my father Marwan without whom I would not have had the fortune to also be a child of Syria, and whose love for his beautiful country was deep and unbreakable.
Although the historical and geographical settings of this novel are drawn from my own life in Syria as a child and teenager, the plot and main characters of this book are entirely fictional.
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