Cinnamon (9 page)

The prickling sensations intensified. Aliyah brought her palms close to her mouth and breathed some warmth into them. Looking behind her once more, she saw nothing of her own world – that world which, until so recently, had been everything she owned. Once more, she picked up her bag and started to run, stumbling in her high-heel shoes. Why she had been so insistent on that particular pair, she did not know. From the clothes she was wearing, Aliyah momentarily imagined she looked like Hanan al-Hashimi, dressed up for one of her soirées from which she wouldn't return until dawn.

She took off the shoes and carried them, running and crying at the top of her voice, just like when she was a little girl. Aliyah dried her tears as she ran. Stumbling, she came to a halt, then charged on once more, without a thought for where she was going. Why was she so terrified? What was she afraid of? She didn't know; she was afraid and that was that. Days which she thought were gone for good came back to her: memories of the times when she would carry a knife close to her thigh, of how her heart would pound as she kept watch over the doorway to the family's little room, where her sister lay.

The sound of tears filled the wide open space as she crossed the terrain on a narrow track, with nothing for company but her fingers, her bag and her fear. And with fear came the memories of al-Raml.

Aliyah jumped at the sound of a car. She was all alone on an empty road, the morning sun having not yet risen. She stopped, looked down and pulled out a sharp knife from her little bag. She held the knife tightly, ready to brandish it in the face of any being, whether they came out of the ground or swooped down from above. But the car didn't stop, or even slow down and she carried recklessly on her way, her heart pounding as the car shot past. In the next moment, silence had returned and the dust settled.

Aliyah sighed. Returning the knife to her bag, she looked back towards the villa. In a daze, she stared out at the expanse before her. She had crossed the terrain so quickly that Hanan's villa seemed like a mirage now. For a brief moment, Aliyah imagined she had never lived there, attempting to gather courage again. Over the years, she had trained herself to be brave, but now she felt shaken. Every part of her body bubbled and fizzed; her chest rose and fell heavily; her stare was as sharp as her knife, which had not left her side since the day her mother had hidden it in her school dress. It was her mother who had taught her how to use the blade to ward off the boys, or the men, who harassed her from time to time in the alleyways of the red-light district.

Aliyah was not the only girl to be taught how to wield a knife; there were many but unlike the others, she had once brandished hers openly and seen the enchanting way it glistened in the sunlight. Yet her actions that day were not random, nor were they out of bravado.

 

It had happened on one of the days when the door was left ajar and her siblings had gone out. Aliyah Senior had been left alone in the house to watch the sunlight stream through the gap in the door, to listen to the passing footsteps, the wailing children and their screeching mothers. She didn't notice the shadow suddenly cast over the doorway; it had appeared in the blink of an eye. There was little time to ask the neighbour's son what he was up to, for he shut the door and immediately descended upon the girl. Aliyah felt as though her bones would be crushed under his weight as he gagged her mouth. She flapped beneath him like a fish out of water, but he didn't seem to care. Her face suddenly creased, her hair became tangled about her neck and her limbs began to shake. Aliyah was no longer the beautiful young girl she had once been. Ever since the room had swallowed her up, the neighbour's son had been watching it day and night, waiting for his chance. He had easy access to her now. He lifted her robe up to her navel. What happened after that, the boy wasn't quite sure. Before entering her, he began to shake so violently that everything around him shook too. Aliyah Senior was almost unconscious. She struggled to breathe with his hand covering both her nose and mouth. Had he not started to shake and then fled, without looking into her blue face, she would have suffocated under his weight. On subsequent occasions, the boy would again wait for the family to leave their room. Now he would come with a sharp knife in one hand and gag Aliyah's mouth with the other. He would remove her pants violently and then mount her. The boy had been back dozens of times before Little Aliyah caught him. She had opened the rusty iron door to hear her sister sobbing quietly. She noticed a pair of black buttocks accelerating steadily above where her sister lay and the knife glimmering between Aboud's teeth. Little Aliyah threw down her books and took out her own blade, which was held by a leather belt at the side of her pants. She screamed wildly, as if not knowing how to speak. Then, tearing her school dress, she jumped onto half-naked Aboud, gashing his buttocks until the blood poured and he leapt about the room like an ape. Aliyah clung to Aboud like a small wild animal, lunging with her knife at every part of his body within reach. The boy staggered a little as he attempted to put on his trousers and Aliyah jumped on his back, bit him and brought him to the ground. Had some of the neighbourhood men not managed eventually to extract her, Aliyah would have killed him; her teeth had sunk into his shoulder, staining her little mouth with blood. For a moment, Aliyah's body fused with the boy's. She had reduced him to such shreds that the men imagined they were seeing a wild beast before them.

People in the neighbourhood made fun of Aboud for a long time after. They remembered Little Aliyah too – how she had clung to the boy, whose body dripped with blood where the sharp blade had struck, how she had screamed and swore, then stood with her legs apart, like the neighbourhood bullies, challenging any one of those sons of bitches to even attempt to come close to her crippled sister.

That evening, Aliyah Senior killed herself. She passed away the very same night that everyone discovered what Aboud had been doing to her in her paralysed state. Little Aliyah never went back to her school books, unable to forget what had happened that day. Aliyah couldn't understand why the men didn't pray for her sister as they usually did when burying their dead. Nor did she know why the women shed so many tears as they described the girl's beauty. Her sister's eyes held her captive, open as wide as they would go. She told no one about the yellow container she had given her sister – the one her mother used to spray the floor and the corners of the room, to keep away the rats. Why there was foam pouring from her sister's mouth, she didn't understand. She didn't know where her sister's voice had vanished to either. How would her sister survive underground with the Devil? She wondered for a moment. He had started to come to her in her dreams, sometimes as Aboud, sometimes as her father, occasionally in some other form.

When she woke up from her nightmares, she would pick up her knife and go searching in the dark, grimy alleyways for Aboud, who had disappeared shortly after the incident, not daring to return until Little Aliyah had vanished. He heard the neighbours say that her father had left her to an aristocratic Damascene family and taken her wages for the years ahead.

Aliyah was ten years old at the time. She had left school and joined the group of children who hung around the rubbish skips in certain parts of Damascus. It made no difference to them whether the neighbourhood was rich or poor; their only concern was to collect the empty glass containers, clean them and gather them in plastic bags. Aliyah preferred her new job to staying at home, or having to get up early and walk for miles along the muddy tracks to school.

Hanan al-Hashimi had turned Aliyah's life on its head. She had cleansed her of her old self and purged her fears; she had removed every layer of anger and rubbed away the images of al-Raml with her fingers. But now they returned in full, not a single detail missing. All at once, the images settled in her mind, urging her at one moment to flee, but more often to halt.

With small, pained footsteps, Hanan staggered between the window and the corners of the room. She worried about her maid, who would surely be in danger if she went beyond the zone of the villas.

‘If only she'd just come back!' Hanan took a deep breath as she tried to think of a way to make Aliyah return without sacrificing her own pride... She would make the gardener go out to look for her. Then she remembered Anwar, whom she had left to bathe in indifference. Hanan laughed snidely. That old crocodile wouldn't be able to help her; he was still lying stiff on his mattress and hadn't made the slightest sound.

She so wanted him to die! That parasite. He'd been sucking away at her life all that time, since their very first night together. She had never loved him. That man who had once been a brother to her, then a cousin, then husband. Now, in this final form of his, he was her old crocodile.

The crocodile would put his hand over her mouth, telling her to be quiet as he mounted her. He would stay there in silence a few minutes then get up, wash and curl back into his shell. Hanan was growing up, reaching the prime of her youth, whilst Anwar was becoming an old man. He would spend hours settling his peculiar business deals – drinking vodka and fiddling with his gilt prayer beads. Hanan quickly became attuned to his social circles and accompanied him when he was invited to parties or for dinner at other businessmen's houses. There, the men would always sit in a separate room to the women. Sometimes Hanan spent her mornings with the wives of Anwar's colleagues and acquaintances. She never thought about whether she was happy or not. The way the wives behaved often irritated her, but she was obliged by her husband to flatter them and invite them over for dinner. Anwar's friends were all share-holders in a number of companies based in Syria, Lebanon or Jordan and most were government ministers or prominent businessmen.

Hanan started taking part in charity benefits and attending gatherings with the other upper-class women, mostly at the house of Amina, an older lady who lived in al-Malki. The rest of the time she spent visiting her friends in their homes and hosting members of the family on their short visits back to the homeland. All the while, Hanan observed her husband's growing prosperity. At times, she felt a little intimidated by his acquaintances; they were the people you only ever saw on television, or perhaps only their name was familiar. She was bored. Bored of them and bored by her whole existence, but it was no longer within her power to sacrifice everything she'd gained: the stability, the high society gatherings where she roamed like a spoilt princess, her manic impulses to shop. She could have anything she wanted. Anything that was, except for a child. Hanan had travelled to the four corners of the earth in search of an embryo to nurture in her womb, but always returned disappointed. Yet when she got to know Nazek at those dinner parties, her life was turned on its head. She began to understand what it was to wait for dawn, to jump out of bed with the pleasurable prospect of leaving the confines of her house. Her husband had told her repeatedly to please Nazek and to get to know her well. It wasn't long before the lady in question approached Hanan, taking a clear interest in her and inviting her over for a visit.

That first evening at Nazek's took place before Hanan had discovered her little treasure, exposed by Aliyah's fingers. That evening, Nazek made each of her guests their own drink. When asked for her drink of choice, Hanan al-Hashimi stuttered; she had never tasted alcohol before. ‘Vodka and lemon,' she said, feeling a little dazed as she spoke, hearing the sound of her own voice resonate in the air. ‘Vodka and lemon.' Why didn't she tell Nazek that she didn't drink? Hanan took the glass. It would be her little secret, she decided. No need for Anwar to know.

Nazek had a rasping voice and wore a thin, white cotton jacket and a pair of dark jeans. On her feet were a pair of elegant slippers, yet her body was bare of any jewellery. Nazek seemed younger than her age as she wandered the room, hopping about like a hungry rabbit and showering Hanan with attention. Every now and then, she would leave Hanan's side and return with strange yet delicious samples of food, holding out one tray as she waited for Hanan to taste, then inclining a little before Hanan as she presented her with another. Hanan was embarrassed by the hostess's overwhelming attentiveness. The other women too showered her with praise, complimenting her beauty and the style of her hair, which was cut short. Hanan didn't feel irritated as she usually did at the gatherings she attended under duress from her husband. Normally, she would be obliged to lower her voice while the men stared at her hungrily and made her feel uncomfortable. Without knowing why, she always felt as if she were suffocating. Sweet shudders took over her body whenever she met a man's eye. Engrossed in his gaze, she would feel the piercing shine slice her heart in two and send a tremor through every limb of her body. She would be dying to run away, to escape her shameful shivers.

In female company, Hanan was more at ease. Men had a tendency to shake her feminine sensibilities, but there, amongst women, it was like walking in a soft, silken dream. Hanan showered her host with compliments, feeling that she could trust her, that Nazek could read her broken heart.