In Praise of Hatred Read Online Free PDF Page B

streets were secret, so were the stones and people, houses, rooms, hearts … even laughter was secret in a city that celebrated secrecy and where everything was enacted far from others’ eyes. Recently, I had started feeling that everyone was conspiring against everyone else. It was conspiracy that I saw in Marwa’s eyes as she prepared a bed in Safaa’s room, both of them absorbed in asides they were trying to hide from me. I tried to come closer to them to listen in on their whispered conversation as they were weaving.
    I could feel from Marwa’s eyes that she was flooding me with love. She would wake me up for school and make my bed while I washed my face, and then she would prepare breakfast for me and coffee for herself. Her light, tender conversation swamped me with a deluge of hidden affection; I felt that I needed it more than at any time in the past. Questions blazed inside me. In school, with Dalal and the other girls muffled in black clothing, I plunged into descriptions of Hell and the torment of the grave; these images terrified me, and the girls excelled in their sober narrations. I felt that the black Angel of Death was waiting for me on the other side of the street. He would open the ground to me and I would wander with him among the risen corpses. I would wait my turn to walk on that path, no features on my face, a flat being without scars. If I fell before reaching the gates of milk and honey and the sweet rivers where the believers were gathered, I would perish in the midst of the sins from which I no longer knew how to distance myself.
    In school, I became hostile to Fatima and her lithe body. She jumped about in the courtyard during breaks and sports classes, revealing her chest without caring. She enjoyed loosening her pink, lacy bra; it formed a total contrast to the one which grasped my own breasts. I didn’t dare touch them, so I wouldn’t awaken the desire that Dalal warned us against.
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    Hajja Radia wept when she reached Rabia. I told her, ‘Help me.’ The black veil covered my hair and face so I resembled a fish swimming in black tar. She reached for it and plucked it away, and she said, ‘Walk with me.’ For the first time, I saw the face of Rabia glowing with the brilliance radiating above the trees along the road. Tambourines welcomed us, the horsemen dismounted and lights shone from their faces, overflowing with joy. I tried to touch them; I reached out a hand and stretched up but Rabia drew me back and said, ‘Stop that. The sun illuminates everything.’
    I asked, ‘What about these men?’ She laughed. I saw her lips part in a sweet smile and her teeth gleamed with a shade of white I had never seen before, like dazzling quartz or a multi-faceted crystal. She told me, ‘They are not men.’
    We crossed the fields of palms and pistachio trees, shaded by their branches, and a special perfume I had never smelled before permeated the air. Rabia walked beside me, or I walked beside her, and she beckoned to me and said, ‘Have you seen the face of God?’ I raised my head as if I were seeing the azure heavens for the first time. ‘Where is the face of God, Rabia?’ Alone in the fields of palms and pistachios, the earth closed up in front of my feet. I felt increasingly desolate and oppressed as I neared the end of the fields. I was struck with fear and an obscure feeling like the one that penetrated me whenever I sat close to Hajja Radia, who was indulgent with me and tried to respond to my anxious questioning. When I told her that I had seen Rabia, she asked me, ‘Do you go to her, or does she come to you?’ I couldn’t understand the point of her question. It wasn’t important if I went to her or if she came to me; it was only important that we had walked together through the fields and crossed the rivers. After this, whenever I saw girls washing in this water, I was no longer afraid that the river would damage their chastity. Hajja Radia added, ‘They are