No One Prayed Over Their Graves by Khaled Khalifa

Author:Khaled Khalifa [Khalifa, Khaled]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

7

Hunger

Hanna’s writings, No. 4—1915

Despite the war, Mariana was preparing a ceremony to celebrate the sixth anniversary of the monastery’s founding. I didn’t argue with the history she outlined, and I didn’t care much about these special occasions that she was so bent on celebrating. She thought there was still a chance of my survival. I felt as though a new body had settled in place of my old one, and my sin-laden soul had crumbled. I scattered it, as I always wanted to, over the pomegranate trees—their wonderful wild blossoms have opened. Beauty allured me before; now I take hold of it and savor it at every moment. At dawn I leave my room and walk in the fields surrounding the monastery, and I see Zakariya hard at work, feeding the horses. I reach the top of the small hill clothed in cactus, and I see the citadel in the distance. I can feel its hungry emptiness. Strange that I don’t miss it in the slightest; it has become a neutral place for me, as if it belonged to some isolated neighbors who don’t care to bid us good morning. But still, it appears to me a marvel of engineering that Azar deserves to be proud of. It has been years since anyone has noted any movement or noise coming out of the place. Shams Al-Sabah has turned it into a place for Um Waheed’s elderly companions to pass their old age, far from penury and the insults of people who would throw stones at them on the streets or spit on them in the markets. Those women have become a heap of eternal sinners, their repentance accepted by no one.

I imagined them to be broken-down, their bodies grown flabby, wearing loose dresses and no makeup. They bury each other without respect to religion. When the Jewish Widad joins them, it will give the place a new memory to reminisce about. I recall that Arif adored her soft fingertips and her white skin. He knocked on the door of the citadel one morning and told me, “I am going to marry Widad, I’ve bought her an apartment in the building that our friend from Antioch owns.” He went on: “You have to witness our marriage contract.” He sounded like a little boy. I said to him, “If you are still so determined to get married, and Khatoun Um Yousef allows you”—Arif’s wife was ill with no hope of recovery—“I’ll throw you a wedding like Aleppo hasn’t seen for half a century.” As usual, Arif turned the page on that story within a few days, and dust soon covered the furniture in that new apartment.

I thought about Um Waheed. They hadn’t let her move her girls to another brothel when she finally lost her battle against the city’s pimps. They took over the running of the place and ruled it with tyrannical force.

No one has accepted that these women have repented. How many of the people I welcomed in the past

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