The Hakawati (15 page)

A
ccording to my grandfather, I owed my existence, my special place in the world, to either of two things, the slaughter of a stud pigeon or the swallowing of matches. Depending on which story he was in the mood to tell, one of those two events forced him to escape Urfa, or, as he sometimes said, provided him with the opportunity of a lifetime.

There were always Armenian orphans living in the Twinings’ household, but none stayed more than a year or so. The Twinings, being good missionaries, found homes for the various children. My grandfather, though, was a different story. Since Poor Anahid became the Twinings’ maid and he was her charge, he lasted for eleven years. My grandfather claimed, and he was probably right, that the missionary doctor harbored some feeling toward him, his bastard offspring. My grandfather was an anomaly both in his length of stay at the house and in the timing of his escape to Lebanon. One can safely assume that all the orphans he grew up with, those who were not massacred during the Great War, escaped to Lebanon during the great Armenian orphan migration. My grandfather was ahead of his time. He survived the doctor’s wife, and he didn’t have to deal with the genocide and its consequences. He was blessed; hence, so was I.

In his early years, Ismail’s father carried him everywhere, even after he learned to walk. But one day, after my grandfather’s second birthday, the doctor’s wife told her husband, “Shame on you. You treat this orphan better than you treat your own blood. Do you not love your daughters? Do they not deserve your attention?” The doctor was embarrassed. “This is Barbara,” his wife added, “and this is Joan. Maybe you’ve forgotten who they are.”

Simon Twining put my grandfather down and took his daughters for a walk.

When my grandfather was four, the doctor tried to teach him to read and write, but his wife said, “Don’t be silly, my husband. English will be of little use to him. We’ll send him to school with the other Armenians. He’ll learn his language and be able to talk to his people.”

However, when my grandfather, after services on Sundays, joined the other children for Bible study with the doctor, she did not object.

“I come from a time when ink was still liquid and lush.” My grandfather broke silence as he stoked the fire. “None of this cheap Biro shit. My father’s wife thought teaching me to write was money ill spent and time wasted.” He performed the maté ritual—poured hot water from the kettle onto the metal straw, after which he ran a lemon peel across it. He replaced the now sanitized straw in the maté gourd and passed it to me. “You might think the doctor’s wife was mean, and she was, but you’d be missing the point of the story. I wasn’t allowed to learn to read, but Bible study is more valuable for a hakawati. Look at the great one, Umm Kalthoum. She was born into the poorest of families in a remote village of the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt. Umm Kalthoum should have been married off at twelve or thirteen. She would’ve remained unschooled and mothered a dozen kids: Muslim girls weren’t allowed to be educated in that part of the world. But here’s the gift, you see. At a very young age, girls are taught to read the Koran and nothing else. It gets hammered into them every day. For a singer, that’s the greatest of gifts. She learned tone and rhythm, learned perfect enunciation and breath, voice projection, inflection—you name it. She never mumbles. One can understand every word she utters. She mastered the witchcraft of voice. When the time was right, she opened her mouth, unleashed her soul, and helped all of us get closer to God. It was a gift, I tell you. The doctor’s wife may have been spiteful, but fate was on my side.”

Poor Anahid and Zovik cared for the boy, treated him as their own, but they were servants in a house that desired constant labor. My grandfather followed them around, and the maids made sure he didn’t interfere with their work.

It was at an early age that he learned to entertain himself. Sticks became his companions, and stones his toys. His inner world redecorated
the outer one. His imaginary friends proved more loyal than any real ones, if only because, unlike the latter, they existed. He ate, slept, played, learned some, and avoided the Muslim boys and their Turkish insults. By the age of five, he was expected to do minor chores around the house. When he was six, the chores were no longer minor. Two years later, the doctor’s wife decided the boy should learn a trade. “Who knows how long we’ll be here to take care of him?” she said. “Better that he figures out a way to earn enough to fill his bottomless stomach.” My grandfather was given to a pigeoneer to be trained.

That was how my grandfather got swept up in the great pigeon wars of Urfa.

Long before the one God, long before Abraham, long before the city was Muslim, before it was Ottoman or Turkish, pigeons used to carry the souls of Urfa’s dead up to the heavens. Pigeons have had a special place in Urfa’s heart ever since.

“It’s not true what the Chileans say, that pigeons are rats with wings,” my grandfather said. “What do they know in Chile? You know it was a pigeon that announced the presence of land to Noah on his ark, the European rock dove, the same pigeon you see in all the cities of the world. Chile? Pfflt, let them go sour with their undrinkable pisco.”

Most homes in Urfa had ornately covered holes for the pigeons, but some had pigeon houses on their outside walls that were a diminutive replica of the original house, a clone birthed out of its forehead. In some neighborhoods, the birds had tiny palaces, with mini–crescent moons atop miniature minarets; the architectural designs of the pigeon palaces far surpassed those of the surrounding human houses.

“I hate pigeons,” my grandfather added, “but it’s not because they’re rats.”

My grandfather’s mentor was an Armenian, Hagop Sarkisyan, who in turn worked for a Turk by the name of Mehmet Effendioglu. Though not a wealthy man, the latter was a pigeon fancier who owned over three hundred pigeons. Hagop trained the pigeons and had four boys to assist. Being the youngest, my grandfather had the worst job, cleaning the shit.

“Shit everywhere,” he said. “Shit in the coops, on the terrace, on the roof. Do you have any idea what it’s like to deal with so much shit? Of
course you don’t. You have a maid to pick up after you. I cleaned pigeon shit every minute of the day, and when I went home I had to wash it off me. My hair is as wild as it is today because I had to wash it so much when I was a boy.”

Hagop, the pigeoneer, was the main flocker. His first assistant was in charge of feeding the pigeons, giving them the best seeds and the strongest vitamins. The pigeons had to be good-looking and sturdy. During the off-season, this assistant steered one or two of the pigeon flocks, though not the primary one, and never, ever, while the war raged. Mehmet, the master, sat on the roof and watched.

“It was only during the battles that I didn’t have to clean,” my grandfather said. “I was allowed to watch the birds fly. I have to admit, they were beautiful up in the skies, circling and circling around an imaginary drain, then shooting out, diving like an Israeli jet. In those moments, I forgave the pigeons their shit.”

Ah, the wars, the wars. The pigeon wars of Urfa had been going on for over a thousand years. The war started every November and ended every April, which coincided, not by coincidence, with the worst weather for pigeons to roam, an aerial endurance test. In the afternoon, at four-thirty sharp, the warmongers of Urfa ascended to their roofs, where the cages were, and unleashed their flocks into the heavens. The fluttering cacophony of thousands upon thousands of wings and the jingling sounds of pigeon jewelry were heard in every corner of the city. Upon each roof, a pigeoneer steered his birds; his unblinking gaze never left his soaring flock. A long cane with a black ribbon at its end was his instrument. With each wave, he directed his birds’ flight. And when he swung a large arc, his flock dived into the middle of another, disturbing the symmetry, confusing his adversary’s pigeons.

“Hagop was good, but not outstanding. There was another pigeoneer, an Armenian by the name of Eshkhan, who was the prince of them all. He could direct his pigeons by simply whistling. Tweet, and his flock would circle; tweet, and it would come home. Eshkhan won the war more often than not, and it wasn’t because he had the best pigeons. He could have sold his cocks for a fortune and bought better pigeons to train, but he never did. You see, everyone thinks it’s about the money, but it isn’t. It’s about bragging rights. It’s about manhood.”

The war was won by him who had lost the fewest pigeons to either capture or death. He who ensured his pigeons didn’t get lost or
exhausted was a pigeoneer worth his salt, and not many were. Every day as the war raged, pigeons soared until fatigue seeped into their wings; oxygen rebelled and escaped their blood. Out of the sky, birds dropped, falling like bombs released by fighter squadrons, littering the earth with deformed corpses. Dazed, bewildered, and confused, some birds followed unfamiliar flocks and landed on alien rooftops, to be captured and paraded that evening at the local café, the spoils of war, the dishonor of their pigeoneers, the dilution of manliness.

“There are wars in the Lebanese cities,” my grandfather said, “but they’re not anything like those up north. It’s done for fun here. It might get nasty in Beirut, but it’s not a real war. If one of your cocks ends up with someone else’s flock, you can get it back. The gentlemen’s rule in Beirut is first time free. You see, in a warless zone, most of the cocks are mated, and a pigeon always wants to return home to its mate, so it’s hard to keep a captured cock. You’d have to slay it. In a war zone, each team has about two hundred cocks and five hens. The flying teams consisted only of males, primarily Dewlaps. It’s about the war, not pigeon fancying. The pigeoneers in Beirut have teams of all kinds of pigeons: Dewlaps, Tumblers, Apricots, Jews, Fava Flowers, you name it. The fanciers who were attached to their pigeons would never dare fly them during the war.”

The pigeon keepers gathered at the Çardak Café, as they had for hundreds of years. They kept score of the previous afternoon’s battles by counting the captured pigeons. Cages adorned all the walls of the café, and fanciers could admire or buy the caught birds. The original owner of a pigeon had first dibs, but only if the new owner wanted to sell.

“But you couldn’t buy the peşenk,” my grandfather said. “The peşenk was the leader of the team of pigeons. You can’t win the war without a great one. All the other cocks follow him in flight. If a peşenk lands on another’s roof and is captured, the original owner retires from the war. Checkmate. He has to get rid of his team and start a new one. The peşenk can never be bought. He’s the chief of the clan, the mightiest of all.”

My grandfather took a sip of maté, craned his neck, and spoke to the ceiling. “They say that talent skips a generation, which means that my father or my mother would have been a great pigeoneer, because, unlike my youngest, your uncle Jihad, I certainly wasn’t. I have no idea where he got his talent from, and, thank God, he had the intelligence
to stop when he did. He wouldn’t listen to me, of course. Nobody does. But one day he finally understood that being a pigeoneer is a lowly vocation. Now, listen here. Just because I said I wasn’t a good pigeoneer doesn’t mean I didn’t have other talents. Fate’s schedule is not always naked and clear.

“One evening, I was bemoaning my luck. I was hungry and tired. I had been cleaning shit for about six weeks and seeing no way out of it. The damned doctor’s wife said I whined a lot. She said there weren’t that many options for a wayward boy like me. But she was mistaken, you see, only I didn’t know it then. Remember, I was eight. So here I was, sweeping the main coop after a battle, and the stupid Mehmet calls. He hands me a fluffy, shiny black pigeon in a cage to take to the Çardak Café and give it to the owner.

“I went to the Çardak Café. Impressive, let me tell you, big and wide and busy. But then it was all pigeons. Pigeons, pigeons everywhere. Cages on the walls, on the counter, on the tables, under the tables. I began to get nervous. I thought maybe, if I lingered, the owner would ask me to clean the shit. I delivered the pigeon and ran out as fast as I could. I turned the corner, and there it was. I don’t know what made me stop. I was running hard, and maybe I needed to catch my breath. Maybe God sent me a sign. Maybe it was written.

“What befuddled my young eyes was another café, the Masal, old but not historic, well lit but decrepit, smoky and dank. There were no doors, and the metal shutters were rolled up. There were tables outside, but the silent patrons had their backs turned to the street. Why be with people if you’re going to be quiet? Why sit outside if you’re not going to look at the world? And then I saw what enthralled everyone’s attention. Inside, on a chair upon a small dais, sat the hakawati.

“He sat on his throne like a sovereign before his subjects. He wore a fez and Western clothing. A waxed black mustache two hands wide dominated his face. I couldn’t see his mouth move. He held a book in his lap but hardly looked at it. I moved closer and heard his silky voice. Magic.

“He was a Turk, and, mind you, my Turkish wasn’t very good at the time, but I heard him. I listened with my ears, my body, and my soul. He regaled us with the story of Antar, the great black warrior poet. He was in the middle of the tale, but my soles spread roots into the tiles of the pavement. I was enchanted.

“How can I describe the first time I encountered my destiny? A
god’s fire burned in my breast, my heart aglow. In comparison, my life before that moment had moved at a sad and sluggish pace. Ah, Osama, I wish I could make you feel what it is like when you finally align yourself with God’s desires for you. I had received the call.”