The Hakawati (27 page)

“Mosquitoes?” asked Fatima.

“Hush,” answered Job. “You think me a beginner. Just watch.”

It seemed to Fatima that the mosquitoes traveled faster than any insects she had encountered before, a rushing, rolling, buzzing wave of beige. The white eagles headed directly into the cloud of pests. “I hope they are all females,” Fatima said.

“Please,” he replied. “They are lesbians.”

“Ouch,” exclaimed Ezra.

The mosquitoes did not slow the flight of the eagles instantaneously. It took the predatory birds a minute to reduce their speed, after which they began to fly in circles. Beaks snapped on air, and feathers ruffled. The eagles seemed agitated and confused.

“Not enough,” said Isaac. “The birds are too pristine. Let them suffer.”

Job pointed his hand, and fleas rocketed toward the eagles. Then he sent gnats, mites, and ticks. The lice he saved for last. Splotches of red bubbled on the eagles’ white. “A much better color,” said Isaac. The eagles were overwhelmed and vanquished. Feathers were released from bodies and floated toward the ground. Within a short time, no eagle remained aloft.

Fatima looked below at the carnage. “Sad,” she said.

“Why?” asked Elijah. “They were too pretty.”

“I hate white,” said Isaac. “It is drab and colorless.”

Elie watched the burgeoning yellow-and-blue flames of the bonfire he’d built in an empty lot far from our building, hoping to lure Israeli fighter planes to waste their bombs there. The pop of the burning
wood interrupted the eerie silence. The side of my sister’s face was lit by the fire, a flicker in her eye as she stared at Elie. I watched the passing cars, all their headlights painted blue, with only a tiny sliver of a cross to allow white light through. Elie yelled at the sky, a war cry. The hollow at the base of his throat expanded. The ridge of his collarbone vibrated. Lina opened her mouth, but didn’t scream. She was staring at Elie, as if in a rapture.

That night, the Egyptian army downed forty-four Israeli planes over the Sinai. Gamal Abd al-Nasser’s boys are fighting for their motherland, the radio intoned. I sat by the window, illuminated by the soft light of the morning sun. “That’s all lies,” Uncle Jihad said. He switched to BBC Radio: The Israelis are advancing easily. Jerusalem is theirs.

The concierge, Elie’s father, yelled at Madame Daoud on the third floor. “Talk to my husband when he comes in,” she yelled back. “I’m not going to stand here and listen to this.”

“Traitors,” he shouted. “You want the Israelis to destroy our homes.”

“Eat shit.” She slammed the door.

My father bent over the banister and bellowed, “What’s all the shouting about?”

“They haven’t painted their windows,” the concierge said, his voice quieter, meeker. “They want the Israelis to kill us.”

“Don’t be stupid,” my father chided. “You think they want to die? Probably no one told them to until you just started yelling. I don’t appreciate you pestering the tenants. Now, go back downstairs and I’ll talk to them about painting their windows.” He returned to our apartment, muttering, “Nobody knows his place anymore.”

The Daouds were strange in that they rarely opened a window in their apartment. At first, I assumed it was because they were Jewish, but my mother, who was a friend of Madame Daoud’s, told me otherwise. She said that many Jewish families opened their windows. She thought the Daouds kept theirs closed because they had lived for a time in Bologna and everyone knew that Italians were terrified of drafts.

•   •   •

“It’s those fucking Americans,” Elie said. He lit a Marlboro, flicked the match with middle finger and thumb. “We can crush the Israelis, but we can’t fight the Americans. All the planes are being flown by American pilots.” He took a long drag, banged the worn leather seat of the motorcycle. “Fuck all of them. All the damn American imperialists.”

“Are we losing?” I asked.

He turned, shoved me. I stepped backward, frantically trying to keep my balance. “We’ll never lose. We’ll win the war. God is on our side.” Elie turned back to the motorcycle. I ran out of the garage, up to the apartment, and hoped he wouldn’t notice I was gone.

Behind the first mountain peak stood a huge palace of majestic silver splendor. Three tall towers stabbed virginal white clouds. From above, the palace shone with unearthly brilliance, its silver reflecting the sun’s glory. A large, glittering pool was centered in the courtyard.

“Look at the beautiful women,” Elijah said when they landed in the courtyard. “They have such perfectly formed breasts.”

Seventy-two virgins, beauties with big round eyes and hair of various shades of blond, appeared perplexed at the sight of the colorful imps. As did twenty-eight strikingly white prepubescent boys. “Welcome, travelers,” said one of the girls.

“I think they were expecting only one warrior,” Fatima said. One large divan faced one hundred couches arranged in rows. The surrounding verdant garden soothed the senses. “This must be someone’s idea of paradise.”

“Come,” another houri said. The women and boys wore dresses of sheer silver silk that revealed more than if they were naked. “Join us. Let us ease the weariness of your journey. Allow us to rejuvenate you.” Ten of the seminude and smiling boys carried large jugs of wine. Each resident of the garden carried a cup filled with the burgundy liquid. “Come,” said a boy. “Relax. We can sing tales for you and entertain you.”

A houri stroked the top of Isaac’s head. “Are you truly pure?” he asked.

“We are as chaste as the sheltered eggs of ostriches.”

“How dull,” Isaac replied. “I am going to look around.”

The stunned houri burst into a magical melody, and her sisters
joined her. One of the virgins took Fatima’s hand, but she shook it off. “I never lie with a woman whose breasts are more pronounced than mine.”

The song began to falter. “But we are chaste,” said one.

“We are bashful,” said another.

“Neither man nor jinn have touched us,” said another.

“You can have intercourse with us,” said another.

“We have wine,” said another.

“We have song,” said another.

“A truly overflowing cup,” said another.

“Do you not possess desire?” asked another, and Ishmael said, “No.”

“Nothing here of interest,” said a returning Isaac. “The song is in a minor key.”

And the company took to their carpets and flew.

The following day, they sat in our living room looking out of place, three men all the way from Syria. My mother had to serve them coffee, since the maid was packing.

“Are you sure this is necessary?” my mother asked. “It’s not as if anything is happening here. Lebanon will not get involved in the war.”

“The Israelis are coming, madame,” the maid’s father said. His hairy wrist extended three finger widths past the frayed sleeve of his shirt. He would not look directly at my mother. He seemed very tired, with drooping eyelids and a slack jaw. “We can hear them. The girl should be at home.”

“Fine. Fine. I’ll go see that she’s packed.” Lina and I followed her out of the room. “Last time I’m hiring an Arab girl,” my mother said as she walked into the maid’s room.

The girl wore her best dress, chlorophyll-patterned, front-buttoned, hemmed an inch below her knees, showing white calves. A canary-yellow headscarf covered her hair, her worst feature. Standing there, gazing at her open suitcase, she looked much older than thirteen.

“Let me see how you’re doing,” my mother said. She unpacked the top layer, looked underneath. “Anything else going in this suitcase?”

The girl shook her head. My mother rearranged the clothes.

Lina gave me her “I’m about to tell you something you don’t know because you don’t know anything” look. “Mom’s checking to see if she’s stealing anything,” she said in French.

“Tais-toi!” my mother snapped. She reached into her pocket, took out a hundred-dollar bill. “Listen,” she said to the girl. “I want you to have this. You’ve been very good to us. I know it’s a lot of money, but I want you to promise me something. You will hide it. It is only for you. Under no circumstances are you to show it to your father or your brothers. Not even to your husband if they marry you off. This is for you. Only for you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, madame.” She hid the bill in her brassiere. “Thank you, madame.”

“Now get the hell out of here.”

The radio moaned about betrayals, a defeated voice. The air seemed thick. I stood in the concierge’s living room looking at a family of strangers. The concierge’s wife hovered around her guests, concerned. There were four of them: a husbandless woman, a tattered version of the concierge’s wife, and her three children. The woman’s lips were pursed, her eyes blurry. She seemed not to inhabit her ghostlike face. A lethargic fan stirred the air.

“They had so many planes,” said her eldest son, almost a man. “They kept coming and coming. They lit up the skies at night and bombed everything. We didn’t have a chance. Everyone ran away.”

Elie stared. “Did you fight, cousin?”

“Fight? We didn’t have a chance to breathe. They came across so fast we barely had time to run. They used napalm. It burns your skin down to the bone before it kills you. How can we fight that with rifles?”

“We’re lost,” another cousin said. Elie walked out in a huff. I followed quietly.

I tried not to be noticed. My mother refused to look at Uncle Jihad, stilled her gaze upon the ceiling. Both sat on the divan, their legs resting on the glass coffee table. My mother’s morning demitasse remained untouched, no longer steaming.

“She’s gone, Jihad,” she said softly. “She’s gone.” My mother had found out that Madame Daoud had left in the dark of night, gone to Italy to visit family, her husband said.

“No word, no note, nothing.” My mother closed her eyes and sighed.

“Why do you think she’s not coming back?” Uncle Jihad asked. “Her husband is still here.”

My mother slowly lowered her head, opened her eyes, and gave him a “let’s-be-serious” look. “He needs to take care of things before he joins her.”

“You’re being morose.” My uncle laid his hand upon her shoulder. “She’ll always be your friend.”

“Nothing remains,” my mother said, shaking her head. “All is lost.”

“I’ve lost my childhood innocence,” Lina sighed. She was sitting on the piano stool, the upright to her back, its top lid open as if it were letting out a sigh of its own. Forlorn, she showed me her profile like a dejected Egyptian film star. She kept smoothing her skirt without looking down, a practiced, automatic gesture.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“How can I witness the suffering of the Palestinian children and remain childhood-innocent?” She exhaled loudly. “I suffer with them. I’m no longer a child.”

“But you’re ten, stupid.”

“No longer. Because of what I’ve seen, I am now a woman.”

I shoved her off the stool and ran. She came after me.

“It’s over,” my mother said, “and our army didn’t fire a single bullet.”

“It’s not our government’s fault the war ended so quickly,” Uncle Jihad said. “They’re probably still in session, contemplating action.”

We watched the news on television in the family room, thousands of Palestinian refugees arriving in Lebanon, like the rolling, rolling, rolling cattle on
Rawhide
.