Cinnamon (7 page)

Aliyah with her bag: the black speck which Hanan al-Hashimi spotted from the gap in the curtains covering the tightly shut window. She started to walk again, slowly and laboriously, or so Hanan imagined as she retreated from the window, gasping for air between sobs. The girl's hesitance wasn't a sign that she was waiting for Hanan to call her to come back; it only showed her reluctance to head in the only direction there was. For Aliyah there was only one destination: al-Raml.

The little one realised she had awoken from the dream and there was no way to get it back. Hanan too had lost a lot to forces beyond her control and now she was alone in her wide bed, biting her nails in regret over that moment when she had expelled her maid.

Who was Aliyah? Hanan wondered. Her servant? Really?
Who is she?
Aliyah was the mistress of the house and Hanan knew it, but at what point their roles had reversed, she couldn't recall. When had Aliyah proceeded forward with her princess-like majesty to claim the throne? And when was it that Hanan seized it back from her, turning her back into nothing but a skinny, char-skinned girl?

 

In the beginning, Hanan had attempted to act particularly tough in front of the petrified maid as she helped her to arrange her belongings and showed her how to act properly. Back then she would spend most of her days out of the house, not thinking to return except to sleep. How had Aliyah made her prisoner to this room? After her mother's death, Hanan had lived without family. Her uncles had moved to the ends of the earth, scattering over North and Latin America and taking the entirety of the family's riches with them. Out of all of the family members, two brothers had remained. They owned a few shops in al-Bazouriyeh, a stall selling cotton garments in Souq al-Hamidiyeh and several houses in ‘Ain al-Kirsh in al-Salihiyyeh district. Their collection of businesses grew gradually, until the brothers became two of the biggest businessmen in Damascus. The elder of the two had one son and a wife who had already passed away, while the other had just one daughter whom he raised as though she were the family's only son. Because of the love he had felt for his wife, the elder brother never remarried; a decision that the cold-hearted members of his family could not come to understand, having never much approved of their scion's affection for his wife.

When she was still small, Hanan would hear her uncle tell everyone that his brother's wife was the boss of him, day and night, in the bed and out of it. At the time, Hanan felt nothing against her uncle, since her tough old mother, who never took her in her arms, had a unique ability to attract disapproval from everyone around her, and particularly from Hanan, who wished she'd been born a boy. Hanan's mother went to great lengths to ignore her maternal instincts, believing it would make an exceptional person of her daughter, and allow her to be proud of the way she had raised her. Hanan would be her compensation for not having a son to carry on the family name. Not wishing to spoil her family's idea of her, Hanan was a calm and obedient child. Her ability to remain pacified accompanied her throughout life and, for a long time, she succeeded in giving her small family the impression that she was at peace. When she started to accompany her cousin to his parties, she would appear constantly startled by what she saw, wary of everything. She tried to avoid attracting the others' attention, imagining that each of them was ready and waiting to criticise or disparage her. She continued repeating her mother's words in her head. When her family praised her, looking at her with great affection and boasting secretly amongst themselves of how well-mannered and serene she was, she felt ready to scream so hard that her heart would explode, right in her mother's face. But she never quite dared.

Everything in Hanan's world was unbearably regimented, programmed to move on a straight course without a chance for detour. In her lowest moments, Hanan didn't dare to scream how she felt before her family; such behaviour was shameful and she would only be forced to apologise later on. Her punishment would be a lengthy ban from sitting with the family. She would be locked in her bedroom with the curtains drawn, whilst the others were banned from spending any significant amount of time talking to her. They would punish her with silence and loneliness and she would feel she was on the cusp of going mad. Hanan would have preferred to be punished like the neighbours' daughters were – with beatings – but for the al-Hashimi family, such behaviour was uncivilised. Even her cousin would suspend communication with her, following suit with the others.

After her marriage, the only way Hanan knew how to keep within the limits laid down for her was to become more subservient to others and steer further away from any internal reflection. She never complained of the degradation she suffered while living with her cousin – how at night, she felt as though she were about to suffocate under his weight, until he stood up from her and went to the bathroom. He would come back mumbling lines of the Qur'an, praying to God to bring him a son to be an heir for his family once he was gone. Perhaps if Hanan had paid a little attention to the impulsive, lust-driven movements which sometimes took control of her husband, then she would have found some happiness. But she felt not the slightest bit interested. The thought of him betraying her with another woman gave her none of a wife's anxiety.

And he had no need for her worry anyway; he would ask the Lord for forgiveness for his fantasies. Yet God-fearing though he was, Anwar al-Hashimi was not deterred from entering into business deals so great they would transform Hanan's world completely and leave him feeling disgruntled at having to register his possessions and his money under both of their names. He would watch Hanan with a combination of pleasure and contempt, as though she were still the little girl he had once known, as though she had never grown up.

 

Opening her eyes, Hanan began to caress her middle, just above her barren womb, which had never produced a family heir. Only a few hours earlier, Aliyah's fingers had roamed that same area, her lips too. As she lay on the bed, Hanan brought back to mind her memories of Aliyah, attempting to understand who the girl was exactly and who she was herself. As the scent of cinnamon wafted over her once more, she was submerged in a new wave of sadness. She shut her eyes and wound her arms around her chest. Peering out of the window, Hanan spotted Aliyah – a black dot getting smaller and smaller. In that moment, Anwar's image appeared before her, just as he was on her first night. Hanan's heart skipped a beat and her skin crawled at the sight of Aliyah's fingers wrapped around Anwar's dangling penis. Sharp contractions shot through her abdomen and she ran to the bathroom, where she vomited until her stomach was empty. Lying on the bathroom floor, Hanan sensed the coolness of the porcelain tiles and felt a little calmer.

Moment by moment, Hanan examined each of her feelings as they arose, catching herself in the act. Her longing for Aliyah consumed her completely; she still couldn't quite believe the girl was truly gone. On the floor, Hanan studied her fingers. They were so ugly, she thought, so wrinkled and ugly now. Recalling the touch of Aliyah's fingers against her cheek, her stomach started to contract once more.

 

Aliyah had played with her here on this same cold floor. Hanan could hear the girl's voice floating over the foamy bath-water whilst her eyes followed what she said curiously:

‘You know, I've never felt anything sweeter than the pleasure your fingers give me. There's nothing that burns like your desire does... That's what leads its fingers to the hiding places of your pain – the pain running through your blood, beneath your skin. When you reach a climax that makes you feel as though you're suffocating suddenly Allah will provide you an opening from yourself. No, it will never come like this! You must mould it from your own clay, you alone.

‘I turn into a crescent moon; I become a secret. Everything must be kept in secrecy; it's our only life-line here.

‘Don't provoke others with the way you look at them. Smile and speak sweetly. You have to be happy with life, and happiness is to become a sealed glass snow globe, full of falling snowflakes – however others shake you, they can't work out what's inside. That is power: to be both origin and ending within yourself. Nobody will dare to even come close to you then. Step-by-step, you begin to bathe with your own soul; your fingers are your captain and your mind is the source of your senses; the place where your tremors are born.'

Hanan looked away from her fingers, caressing her body as she whispered to herself almost silently:

‘No man can give you pleasure like supple fingers can; their touch comes from your heart and not from a man's body. Warm protrusions, opening up inside you, expanding, granting all that originated from you and all that is within you. By that you are mistress of your own self. In a shudder, your womanliness returns to you and you remain erect. Fingers are like
alifs
that resonate forever. They arise from the void and soar through the air and, as their trembling touch fondles the abyss, they generate an eternal bliss, which begins and ends in the same moment. There are all sorts of delicious fingers. Yours are slender and rough, but beautiful. Do you know mine? Sometimes they seize up – they freeze in the middle of things and then won't follow through, not knowing how to move. They finish when my love of them is just beginning. Have you ever made love with your fingers? Fingers don't end in humiliating flaccidity. Any time you ask them to, they'll come to you. Mine love to roam your body. They don't like my lips, or my eyes. I hate my fingers! They have the power to harm me whenever they get away. My fingers are made of sand. Don't look at how white they are. They're full of air, so with their very first touch they melt away. So soft. Your fingers are firm – nothing like a limp piece of crocodile flesh. When you grow up you'll experience it for yourself. How can you stay so defenceless to the storm of pleasure? You haven't yet tested this for yourself, you haven't felt yourself overflow and the flame die out before you sense that deep inside boiling up. Do you know what crocodiles are like? They have thick, dangling penises and their smell is like death. Have you seen the face of my old crocodile? You've seen him? But you haven't smelt him. That smell, it's not old age. He's always smelt like that. Then and now. Do you know what it's like to lie beneath an old crocodile – a foaming, drooling, panting crocodile? I had to do it all the time... I would be lying beneath his flesh, in this terrifying place where there's nothing but shadow – between the crocodile's skin and the sound of his breathing. That was before I discovered my own fingers, growing in the crocodile's pool, before they led me to climax and I stripped away my lizard's skin – I was a lizard, used to a man who never cried. Crocodiles don't cry; their eyes are forever glazed. Do you know, he never cried. Not once. He has that smell of the dead about him – the smell of beings who feed upon your lifeblood and then, at dawn, withdraw in defeat to their beds. His bed covers were made of velvet. Can you believe it? Coffins are lined with velvet. Red velvet. Smooth fabric doesn't suit the brittleness of death. Why can't they line coffins with cotton instead? I adore your fingers – look how upright they appear! You don't know your fingers, and they don't know you either – but I know them. I adore them and I adore the way your skin feels. I certainly don't love my crocodile's scales. Do crocodiles have scales, or are they little needles concealed between the folds of the skin? Will you play with me a little? Look, the water's warm. It's... colourless. White, or the colour of the bath tub, white and hot? You're so beautiful. Your fingers are so long and... When you were little did you ever try to take refuge from your loneliness in your fingers? Nobody ever understood me. I would look to my fingers for shelter, in a house full of gloomy spirits and wide windows, inhabited by everything but life. You've never learnt to speak your body's language – I'll teach you. You're still a child; you haven't yet discovered your secret power source. If you had, you would have grown up faster. Are you going to stay a child for much longer? When will you grow up? Little mute. Are you mute? Do you not know how to speak? That's the worst thing about you, and the most beautiful thing too. You will be a part of me. No, you can't be – you're a being of flesh and your eyes are so sly. Never mind, I'll make you a part of... well, maybe even... Perhaps you can sit in front of me on the comodino, like a mannequin. You don't look much like a mannequin. What do you look like? I'm not sure. You're so delicate and soft and obedient, like a cat. No, you're not soft – not yet. But you will be.'

Aliyah was afraid of Hanan. She felt alarmed as Hanan calmly investigated her body. Hanan's fingers played over the little body, moving them over her eyes like a pianist. She twisted the girl's hands and looked lustfully at her fingers. The little girl didn't understand much of what her mistress was saying; she was completely overwhelmed upon finding herself in this magic realm. Aliyah never concentrated much during those long sessions in the bathroom, as she spread oil and foamy soap over her mistress's body, in accordance with her instructions. The most beguiling thing was the ornate copper tea pot, which boiled continuously, on top of a peculiar basin. Later, she discovered that the pot was heated electrically, keeping the tea warm quietly and consistently. Hanan would steady the pot on a marble ledge next to the bath tub, then fill it with cinnamon sticks. She would let the steam fill the air around her, breathing in and out in controlled breaths. When the water in the kettle had evaporated completely, she would refill it. Every time she started a new pot, she would place a transparent, gold-rimmed glass next to it; a glass unlike anything Aliyah had ever seen before. It was very rare, Hanan told her; it had been her great grandfather's and she had drunk her tea from it since she was ten years old. Hanan recalled the little girl's joy in sipping tea with her from the special glass. She struck her hand painfully against the porcelain floor, screaming: