Cinnamon (6 page)

Despite the sectarianism which, over recent decades, had given each clan its own character – from al-Riz district, to ‘Ash al-Wurud, to Jaramana Camp – each group resembled the rest and they were all interconnected. Their slums reached out into the heart of the city, like Dwel'a, which stretched into Jaramana and on to Bab Touma.

Al-Raml was home to an odd assortment of poor folk, who had carried their humiliating poverty with them when they fled to south Damascus. The people built small rooms for themselves from sheets of tin and badly made cement bricks. Impoverished Palestinians and dark-skinned Ghouranis – people of the Jordan Valley – lived alongside the destitute people who had arrived one day from the coastal mountains, dividing into large groups. The new arrivals lived in miserable settlements, established chaotically by mobsters, cheats and traffickers. Senior military officers took hold of the fringes of the city and sent their own ‘communities' to live there, the new settlements forming the officers' spheres of influence. They created ‘ghettos' too, laid out like a monochrome mosaic, the colour of poverty and despair. Those who migrated from the neighbouring countryside and from more distant rural areas, dreaming of a decent life, became mercenaries, bodyguards, secret police and smugglers. The rest – among them the people of al-Raml – turned their daughters into servants, just as they had done over a hundred years previously when the girls were pawned to Aleppan tradesmen. Meanwhile, the girls' fathers became day labourers, scattered about Damascus's public squares, where they would accept any offer of work that came their way. Very quickly, the district attracted a group of poor university students, who lived by the dozens in adjoining rooms. Tenth-rate prostitutes settled in the area too, making deals with the taxi drivers to bring in the night-time punters. The place was an oddity, even to itself. There wasn't the slightest sense of closeness drawing the neighbours together, or linking the adjoining houses, even though the residents could hear their neighbours' lustful cries at night. In the mornings, the women would joke about the noises they heard, imitating the animal cries as they crowded in the doorways, before most left for work.

Al-Raml district was like a public square that was alien to its own times. Everything there seemed comical, like a cartoon or a black-and-white western. The place was arid, isolated and languishing in dust: the glass windows covered with cardboard; the rusty iron doors; the walls made of tin and iron sheeting; the little shops like bandits' grottos; the houses on top of houses. This latter sort was rare, perhaps because of the innovative way in which they were constructed. The owners would fix four iron posts into the ground, cover the walls with pieces of durable sheet iron and then hold them together with a little cement. Were it not for the rattling winter gales, this would have provided protection against the wind and made the walls solid. The roof was fixed with the same sort of resistant iron sheeting, held in place with a few kilograms of cement. There wouldn't necessarily be a window to the room; the gaps in the walls, which appeared in every building despite the precautions taken, provided ventilation. On a winter's day those very same holes became streams of rainwater.

The other innovative way to create a home with adjoining rooms was to construct a partitioning wall which acted as two, since it was attached to two rooms. Then, both rooms would be covered with tin sheeting and the inner sides of the stone walls masked with pieces of coloured fabric, stuck down with cement until they became a part of the wall. After that, all the residents had to do was spread a mat on the floor and gather a few covers, and the place would become a real paradise.

It was striking how the men's eyes in al-Raml drowned in fatigue, despite the women's beautiful faces, made up with bright red lipstick as they strolled by, flirting restlessly. This strange neighbourhood – cloaked in dust and boredom – was capable of turning even the red shades of the women's lips a sombre, ashen tone, since deep down the men realised that the girls' flirting glances were put on for the first pleasure-seeker they came across.

The alleyways which ran between these buildings acted as a sort of boundary, no more than half a metre wide, which kept the women inside as their bellies swelled year upon year. During the final months of their pregnancy, the women were prevented from leaving the house, since their inflated stomachs couldn't possibly fit through the tight alleyways all at once. The fact that there was a mosque in the neighbourhood made al-Raml all the more peculiar. Its magnificence was an oddity amongst the startling gloom of the houses. The mosque was built from iron and cement and decorated with marble. It was constructed by a charity worker, to provide a space for the neighbourhood men to gather in the evenings and sort out their differences and to receive handouts from the charities. The mosque's Imam came from al-Midan and was not a local, but over the previous few years he had become a guardian to the whole community. Even though he was over fifty and already had two wives, the Imam married a third time – a girl from al-Raml who could have been no older than fifteen. He had spotted her one day as he made his way back from the mosque and she was leaving the house with her head uncovered, he felt a shiver run straight through his body as he leered at her curvaceous backside.

The people of al-Raml could still recollect how everything had changed after the man from the religious charity had built them a mosque, and how the women started to behave differently. When the man began bringing groups of his followers there, with their long beards and loose trousers, most of the women began to cover their heads. The man would bless them during his Friday sermons and beseech the other women to join them in rejecting sin.

Aliyah's father visited the mosque daily. He found solace in the courtyard and his visits gave him the opportunity to catch up on the neighbourhood gossip, but the other men would avoid him, fearing his volatile temper. Even though they freely allowed their wives to work for unmarried men, the women were warned against Aliyah's father nonetheless. The men envied him for his beautiful Ghourani wife, who was tall and wonderfully full-figured with dark eyes, slender lips and a bronze glow to her hair. Hearing her screams in the daytime when he hit her for some trivial reason, or in the evening when he took her by force, the men were of one opinion – that Aliyah's father was unworthy of his wife.

 

A cold sweat, born of fear, seeped through Aliyah's clothes, heightening her sensitivity to the morning chill as the gust of a passing lorry swept over her. Something about the lorry reminded her of her father. Perhaps it was the dust storm that had almost knocked her off her feet, just like her father's tempests, which left no opposition standing.

Aliyah stood fixed to the spot as she remembered the night when her mother had gone out into the alleyway, wailing and having torn her clothing in grief. The events of that night were crystal clear in her memory; she could still hear her elder sister's voice.

 

Her sister had been on her way back from work in one of the factories, where they made socks, not far from al-Raml. Many such places, around the suburbs of Damascus were described as factories in exaggeration; in actuality, they were workshops running on the energy of young women working for little pay, who were happy to complete the tasks their bosses gave them without insurance since, after all, it was better to work morning and night than to loiter on the streets of Damascus in search of a late-night punter.

Aliyah Senior was one of those young women. She was given an opportunity that many girls were not, after having almost mastered the craft. Life had been hard for her, accompanying her mother from one house to another, assisting with the cleaning, carrying heavy goods for the dainty mistresses, preparing teas and coffees and tidying the textiles workshop. Eventually, she became a skilled seamstress herself and took up her position behind a machine. Aliyah Senior worked earnestly in everything she did. It was important to please her boss, she felt, her mind focused solely on helping her mother to provide some stability for the family. Aliyah would daydream that her father might unexpectedly meet his death. It would be a relief if he went, she thought, not only because he took hold of the whole household income, but because without him her mother's annual pregnancies would cease and life's burdens would no longer grow. She rarely thought about buying herself a new dress, nor did she expect to receive any attention from the boys as she followed her daily route, crossing the threshold of the family's room and walking until she reached the workshop door.

Her calmness and nonchalance made Aliyah a dream girl to the boys who loitered in the alleyways, and yet it was the factory boss whom she let fondle her, although within certain limits. Aliyah would restrict his advances, particularly when he reached his hand between her thighs. He could pull down his trousers and she would allow him to kiss her breasts, but never to approach the danger zone – that deep part of her anatomy which, if trespassed, would bring shame on her family. Aliyah had the feeling that she was courting danger, that there was a dividing line between keeping him at bay and holding on to her job.

As she washed her face clean of the boss's slaver, Aliyah thought about arrangements for the coming month and slipped the money into her pocket. Prudently, she kept a small amount back, without the slightest suspicion of what was to happen on her return home. She was still wearing her work dress, her socks and headscarf when her father appeared out of nowhere. Aliyah jumped. They had been busy, she and her pregnant mother, counting the costs of a numerous family. Perhaps it was her mother's bad luck which had prompted him to enter at the very moment she had spread the notes out on the thin sponge mattress. No, her mother wasn't the bad omen: it was her.

On that ill-fated evening, he came in calmly and silently, watching his wife and daughter as they muttered away whilst counting the money. He was a tall man, with an inclining frame, which often leant him a romantic quality and had caused his wife to fall in love at first sight. The slight curve of his posture wasn't his only attractive quality; smooth black hair, a full moustache, a deep voice and piercing stare all contributed to the man's appeal. Little Aliyah had inherited that stare, with all of its harshness, its power and weakness. Her father was aware of his own authority over his wife; he knew that she was in love with him, that he would be obeyed as he wished to be, and that the mother had passed on this sense of obedience to her daughters. The father was content with his life of ease, he told himself, although he said the opposite to his family. But when he entered the room and saw the bank notes spread out on the sponge mattress, he felt as though things were slipping beyond his control. He would teach his women a lesson they would never forget, so he told himself. Humming, he pushed the door open and confronted his wife immediately, who felt terror spread through her limbs. Meanwhile, Aliyah Senior quickly gathered up the money and concealed it in her apron, knowing that he would seize everything she had at the end of the month and disappear for a few days, only to return empty-handed, telling them that policemen on patrol had seized all the contraband cigarettes he had bought, and that he hadn't managed to sell a single carton.

Aliyah Senior was scared. She bit down on her tongue. The syllables stumbled from her blue lips as she tried to keep hold of the money, her hands clasped like claws around weakened prey.

As Aliyah buried her face in her mother's lap, her mother was thinking of how to protect her own swollen middle. She had finally got used to being beaten, but this time the father's rage had come unexpectedly. He pounced on Aliyah and grabbed her by the hair, which became a rope in his hands that he wrapped around his fingers. He swung the girl's body against the walls, which shook as the money poured out of her apron and onto the ground. The mother screamed, her stomach quivering before her. He hit her and she fled from the room, her hair uncovered. In full view of the neighbours, Aliyah's mother began to rip her clothes, wailing and screaming for the men to save her daughter, who had fallen unconscious. Some of the men from the alley entered the room and grabbed hold of her husband, who pushed them away violently. Pursuing them to the doorway, he pulled down his trousers and thrusted his genitalia in front them.

‘If any of you sons of bitches come any closer, I'll make you eat... this!' he shouted.

The men stared, not believing what they were seeing. Then, in dumbfoundment they retreated, while the women gawped at him, perplexed, before hurrying after their husbands.

Had the families' expressions been less hateful and disapproving, he would probably have gone back into the room. Instead, he stood shaking with anger, before returning to gather the money and vanishing. With no knowledge that his wife had bled until she had lost the baby, he spent three days wandering the streets. The thought that his eldest daughter would pass the short remainder of her life bedridden didn't even enter his mind. From then on, her mother would wash her and wrap her with towels around her pelvis, just as she had done when she was little. She would wipe away the excrement and urine and pray to God that she would wake up in the morning and find that the Almighty had answered her call; that He had taken her daughter's soul and released her from her torment.

A year after the incident which left her sister crippled, Aliyah was born. She was given another name, which her mother forgot after Aliyah Senior's death when, as a good omen, she took to calling the younger girl by the name of her dead sister, overwhelming her with a level of care that not one of her five children – whom sickness would soon reduce to three – enjoyed.

 

Aliyah set out on her way again, far from Hanan al-Hashimi. She would take on her big sister's role as her mother's helper, she had decided. She cursed the mistress, spitting with every step. The weight of the bag – or the memories – was too heavy to bear. Aliyah sat down and dried herself of the cold sweat, wondering how long it would be until she found sleep like her sister had. When would her father's next fit of fury come? When would she meet her death?