The Hakawati (31 page)

My mother and I turned toward Mrs. Farouk, who was leaning over the sofa. I didn’t understand what she meant, but my mother’s eyes suddenly lit up, her left hand landed on her heart, and she burst out with a laugh so loud the entire room went still. Her laugh, a noisy, sharp aspiration, wasn’t at all ladylike, but she didn’t stop. I nudged her. “What? Tell me,” I said.

“Come sit next to me, my dear friend,” my mother said, “and allow me to discover your entire life story. I know we’ve met, but we haven’t been properly introduced.”

Mrs. Farouk sat on the arm of my mother’s chair, and they began a whispery discussion of décor. “Do tell me about the coffee table,” Mrs. Farouk said. “Where do you think she got it? A reject from a low-end department store in Lahore?”

“Ah, precious. No, no. She had it handmade. She’d seen it in a magazine.”

“Car magazine, no doubt.”

The laugh, the noisy, sharp aspiration.

Lina came and sat next to me. She held her presents, a Monopoly game and a Clue. She asked me what was so funny. I had no idea. My mom winked across the room at Santa, whose whole body vibrated with glee and giggles.

“Do you think the coved ceiling is good or bad for the tree?” Mrs. Farouk asked. “You’d think the curves would refer back to the new angles of the tree, but they don’t somehow. One has to applaud risk takers, though. Brava.”

And my mother exploded again. Lina shrugged. I felt better that I was no longer the only one not getting the jokes. I looked longingly at her board games and then diverted my gaze to the dining room, where I had left my presents—two play guns and a set of exotic matchbox cars with a loopy plastic road. Lina placed her trove on my lap.

“By the way, I hear you’re a friend of Mrs. Daoud,” Mrs. Farouk said.

“She was my best friend,” my mother said. “I miss her terribly.”

“She must be wonderful. The apartment is in such great shape. I didn’t have to change anything. I find it incredible that, out of all the apartments in Beirut, we’d get hers.” She straightened her back, smoothed her hair with the palm of her hand. Her eyes flicked sideways and back. “An Italian woman, so to speak. She lived in Bologna. I’m from Rome. Amazing.”

My mother sighed, and gloom revisited her face. “I can’t forgive her,” she said. “I can’t forgive Israel for taking her from me.”

I woke up to an Israeli gift. They had landed at Beirut Airport, blew up all fourteen planes, and left. “The Israelis called it Operation Gift,” Fatima said. We were sitting under our bush in the gated garden across the street from our building. Fatima and I had a few hiding places, not all hidden, where we separated ourselves from the world. Under the bush, behind the red Rambler that hadn’t moved in years, under the fountain in our building’s lobby, all protected us from Israeli bombings or the infernal company of my cousins.

“My dad said they didn’t just bomb airplanes,” she added. “They broke into offices and wrote all kinds of curse words on the blackboards. They wrote that Arabs are donkeys. They did that. And then someone went to the bathroom on a desk. That’s disgusting.”

“Yuck,” I said. “Number one or number two?”

“Number two.”

Elie came out of the building, glaring ahead, seeing nothing in his path. He cursed the sky as he walked by, his shock of black hair looking like a woodpecker’s crest. Fatima shot him hateful glares. I tried not to blink. “He’s mean,” Fatima said.

The motorcycle roared past us. Mariella held on to a smiling Elie, her hands cozy around his waist. She looked delighted. He had a large gun in a holster around his thigh.

“You mean to defeat me with a mud stain?” King Kade asked sarcastically. “I can calm the raging flood and enrage the dormant sea. I drive clouds away and call them back. I make mountains and forests quake. And you mean to vanquish me with this?” He looked down at the dirty blotch on his tunic. His eyes twinkled as he pointed toward the dark
spot and chuckled. He arched his eyebrows and covered his mirthful mouth. He pointed his finger at her, then back at the stain, and broke into a fit of hysterical laughter. The laughing magician was no longer all white, no longer uncontaminated. He laughed and laughed, and his laughter changed gradually, almost imperceptibly, from breezy to throaty and phlegmy, until finally even he noticed the metamorphosis. The stain on his robe spread. His long beard grew shorter in length.

Aghast, King Kade said, “But it is not yet darkness. Night has not fallen.”

The robe grew ragged, shrank. The cloth turned threadbare and tattered before it disappeared, leaving the magician naked. His body released its hairs, and his skin darkened and shriveled. His penis and scrotum withdrew inward, and a vagina began to form. The stomach shrank, and the hips expanded. Sparse black hair sprouted out of the creature’s bald head. Every other tooth in the monster’s snarling mouth dropped to the floor, charring a small circle around it, and the teeth that remained turned as black as soot. The creature’s breath turned vile. Her breasts drooped below her sternum, and her dark nipples elongated and dripped poisonous green bile upon her leathery skin. And the eight imps appeared beside Fatima.

“Envy,” cried Ishmael. “Thy end hath come.”

“Too late,” the monster spat. She backed into the corner, tried to cower behind the throne of clouds. She hissed at the imps. “Vengeance is mine, for your brother has departed our world.”

“And you shall join him,” Ishmael said. He jumped onto the monster and bit into her flesh. Isaac joined him, and his bite produced cries and wails and the sound of breaking bone. Ezra’s sharp teeth descended upon her thigh. Jacob and Job ate her fingers, Noah her knees. Elijah swallowed her breasts. And Adam—Adam received the blood of her neck. They tore flesh, gnawed gristle, and sucked marrow. They crunched bone and chewed sinewy muscle. Their lips and cheeks turned slick and waxy red. The imps feasted until she was no more.

Sneaking out of the apartment with my oud, I ran the twenty-three paces to Uncle Jihad’s door, and knocked. I scurried inside when he opened the door and quickly shut it behind me. I always managed to make Uncle Jihad laugh, even if I hadn’t intended to.

“And which evil organization are you hiding from? The American government? Dr. No? Nixon? The Mossad? The PLO? Just tell me who’s after you and I’ll annihilate the lot of them.”

“I’m not hiding.” I went into his living room to make sure no other family member was there. “I’m being discreet.”

“Ah, discretion,” he said. “The privilege of youth.”

I sat on a chair and said, “Sit, sit,” pointing to the sofa in front of me. “You have to be my audience.”

“My God,” he gushed. He sat down, dog-eared the paperback novel he was holding, and put it aside. “I’m so flattered. I’m overwhelmed. I’m not used to being chosen by genius.”

“Stop it. You have to behave yourself. I’ve learned a new maqâm, and Istez Camil said I should play it in front of an audience for practice. He thinks I play too much by myself and don’t involve others. You’re my practice. Act like an audience, all right?”

He began clapping and cheering. I beamed. “The special one is here. Hurrah. Take a bow.” I bowed from the chair, and he continued clapping. He hooted and whistled until I picked up my oud. He quieted down when I plucked the strings to make sure it was tuned. I limbered up my fingers. “That was amazing,” he said. “More, more.”

“More of what? That was just a scale.” I began to play the maqâm, which I thought was the most beautiful melody in the world. Istez Camil had said that it was hundreds of years old and all music derived from it. I didn’t care, because I didn’t want to play any other music. I wished I were Iraqi and lived in Baghdad, in a house with an enclosed courtyard with a fountain and a pool of water, and I could have guests over all day and all night to hear me play this wonderful maqâm.

Uncle Jihad came over and kissed my brow. “That was beautiful,” he said. He bent his knees to be level with me. “I can’t believe how good you’ve gotten.”

“Istez Camil says I have a hundred more years to go before I can play well.”

“He’s right. But I can say, and I’m sure he’ll agree with me, that you play wonderfully, and with passion. You just need the hundred years of ripening.” I hugged him. He stroked the back of my head. “You should play for your father,” he added. “It might look like he wouldn’t want you to, but he does. Our grandmother, your great-grandmother, played the oud. I bet you didn’t know that. But she stopped playing
after she married your great-grandfather. It was the great love story. Let me tell you the story.”

“No, no,” I said. “Tell me a story about the oud.”

“The story of the greatest musician that ever lived,” Uncle Jihad said.

“Did he play the oud?” I asked.

“He played the lyre, which was the ancestor of the oud.”

“Was he Lebanese?” I asked.

“No,” Uncle Jihad replied. “He was Italian. His name was Orpheus. He lived a long, long time ago. Before he came into being, the best musician was his father, the god Apollo. He played better than any mortal since he was a god, and that’s saying a lot. But one day Apollo and the eldest muse, Calliope, had a son called Orpheus. His father gave him his first lyre and taught him to play it. And the son overtook his father, the pupil became better than the teacher, for he was the son of the god of music and the muse of poetry. With each note, he could seduce gods, humans, and beasts. Even trees and plants were still when he played. His music was powerful enough to silence the Sirens. Orpheus was human, but he played like a god, and in doing so, he lost track of his humanity, becoming godlike. All that mattered was the perfect tone, the ultimate note. And then, as all gods must do, he fell—fell in love and became human again.

“Orpheus met Eurydice and married her, but Hymenaeus, the god of marriage, wasn’t able to bless the wedding, and the wedding torches didn’t burst into flames but fizzled instead, and the smoke brought tears to the eyes. Not too long after her marriage, Eurydice was wandering in the meadows and was spotted by the shepherd Aristaeus. Bewitched by her beauty, he whistled his appreciation, whistled low, long, and slow.”

“That’s not right,” I said.

“No,” he replied, “no, it wasn’t. Eurydice got scared and fled. While running away, she was bitten in the ankle by a white scorpion. Eurydice died. And Orpheus was devastated. He sang his song of grief for all to hear. Up in the skies, the gods wept. They wept so much their clothes turned all soppy and shrank. That’s why the gods are depicted seminaked in the great paintings. They cried so much it rained for forty days and forty nights. For as long as Orpheus sang, his eyelids, and the world’s, were forbidden sleep. On the fortieth night, he realized
that he couldn’t retrieve his wife by singing to the heavens. He was looking in the wrong direction. He must descend to the underworld and reclaim her.

“His song was his protection against the denizens of the netherworld. The lyre enchanted Cerberus, the giant three-headed dog who guarded the underworld. As Orpheus descended, the ghosts heard his song and shed their dry tears, for they remembered what it was like to breathe. Sisyphus sat on his stone and listened. The three Furies stopped their tortures, joined their victims in the enchantment. Tantalus forgot his eternal thirst for an instant.

“And the song squeezed Proserpine’s heart. ‘Take her,’ said the goddess of the underworld. She called on the god Mercury to bring forth limping Eurydice. ‘Follow Orpheus with his wife,’ Proserpine commanded Mercury. ‘Set her free in his world. But listen, Orpheus, and hear this. Your wife will live again on one condition. You will lead her out of my realm, but you may not look back. If you fail this task, I’ll retrieve her forever.’ Orpheus set out, walked out of the underworld. He heard the god’s winged footsteps behind him, sometimes faint, sometimes not. He trusted and walked forth through passages dark and steep, through dank tunnels and tortuous paths. He believed his love would follow him. Light changed. He could see the gate before him. He looked back and saw his wife dragged back down to the underworld. ‘A last farewell,’ he heard her say, but the sound reached him after she had vanished. And he lost her.”