After a few more steps, Zahir Bakhit said, “Who do you think this pink and orange house belongs to? You don’t know? All right, then, I’ll tell you: It’s Imam Rashid’s house.” He chortled and his eyes twinkled. Interrupting Zahir’s loud laughter, my master Mihyan said, “This humble abode belongs to Ubayd al-Dik. He’s the village’s longest-serving muezzin. A nice man. You’ll like him. The other muezzin is a man by the name of Jam‘an, who lives on the other side of the ravine. Look at the mosque’s tall minaret. Isn’t it beautiful?”
We had turned onto the road that ran between the modern houses and the old mud houses, which began at the mosque and ended at Zahir’s house. We pointed to the houses that belonged to Hamid Dahana, Walad Shamshum, and Sa‘id Dhab‘a. Zahir Bakhit took leave of us after arriving at his house.
“We’ll meet at the noon prayer,” he said. “Go get acquainted with your new quarters, Alam al-Din. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” we intoned.
When we got to my master Mihyan’s house, we showed Alam al-Din the meeting room, the patio, and the other rooms in the house. My master Mihyan left it to Alam al-Din to choose the room he wanted to stay in. He chose the one next to mine due to its proximity to the outside door. My master said, “I’m going now, Khadim. You take care of arranging Alam al-Din’s room. In the storage room you’ll find a new mattress. Bring it here.”
Then he left. I set the suitcase on the floor and went out to say goodbye to my master. When I came back to Alam al-Din’s room, I found that he had opened the window and was gazing dreamily into the beautiful sky.
In a tone of reverent awe, he said, “Glory be to God. The sky here is more beautiful than any other sky I’ve seen in all my wanderings.”
I said, “And is the sky in our village different from the sky in other places?”
He smiled. Then he turned and looked at me.
“Isn’t the ground different from one village to another?”
“Yes, it is. But the sky . . .”
“The sky varies, as does the ground beneath it. And your village’s sky is the most beautiful sky I’ve ever seen.”
I helped him arrange his clothes. Then I went and got him some dates and coffee. As he ate the dates and drank the coffee, he smiled often. I looked at him in bewildered surprise.
Realizing that I wanted to know the reason for his smiles, he said to me, “The names in your village are odd. May I ask you about something?”
“Go ahead,” I replied.
“Who gave Suhayl the name ‘Anthrax’—al-Jamra al-Khabitha?”
I chuckled. Then I said, “Khalid Bakhit. He used to say, ‘Suhayl is the bane of this village’s existence. The only thing he’s good at is creating disasters. He’s a master at planning out how to cause problems and keeping track of people’s faults.’ Suhayl and Sa‘id Dhab‘a used to try to run Khalid down any way they could, especially on Thursdays when people gathered at the market. Sa‘id Dhab‘a had happened to hear about anthrax on the news, so he and Suhayl approached Khalid to test his knowledge. Sa‘id Dhab‘a said, ‘Have you heard of anthrax, Khalid?’ ‘Yeah,’ replied Khalid. ‘I’ve heard it came to Earth a few days ago. The Saturnine poet says it was born on Saturn a thousand years ago.’ Then Suhayl asked impishly, ‘Could you describe it to us so that we can avoid it if we see it in the street?’ ‘I can even show it to you,’ Khalid told him. ‘But you won’t be able to avoid it.’ Khalid went and got a mirror from one of the vendors. Then he brought it up to Suhayl’s face. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘What you see in the mirror looks exactly like anthrax.’ The people at the market laughed. And from that time on, Suhayl was stuck with the name ‘Anthrax.’”
Alam al-Din laughed hard. As he took the cup of coffee from my hand, he said, “Fine. Now, another question is on my mind. Who gave Hamdan Tajrib—‘Hamdan the Experimenter’—his name?”
I laughed, then said, “That’s a long story. I’ve heard some of the details from my master Mihyan, and others I’ve seen for myself. I’m not sure exactly who gave him the name. But I do know that his motto is: Try it, and you’ll know. He used to say, ‘In order to know what things are like, and understand what goes on in other people’s minds, you’ve got to try everything. When my father died he left me no money. But before he died, he told me, “I advise you to try things out. Don’t be in a hurry to judge something before you’ve experienced it for yourself.” So I confess that I’ve tried everything.’ It’s said that Sa‘id really has tried out everything, both things that are permissible and things that are forbidden. He’s prayed the ritual prayers, he’s gone on the pilgrimage to Mecca, he’s fasted. He’s fought against colonizers, he’s smoked, he’s gotten drunk, he’s fornicated, and he’s committed sodomy—he’s done it and had it done to him. It’s said that he married four times, just to try it out. He divorced the first wife just for the sake of trying it out, and the second one got a divorce from him because he entered her from behind. When she cried out for help, he said to her, ‘I’m just trying it out.’ She said, ‘Then why don’t you try divorcing me?’ Once I saw him stop praying the ritual prayers for a whole week, during which time he used sanitary pads. On the seventh day he took a ritual bath and came to the mosque, saying, ‘I’m ritually pure again!’
Walad Sulaymi said to him, ‘I pray I won’t live to see the day when you take a ritual bath because you’ve had a baby!’ And nowadays he wants to try going to Saturn, and he’s pestering Khalid to let him see the Saturnine poet.”
“Has he murdered anybody just to try that out, too?”
“God knows. After all, he travels around quite a bit. So even though he hasn’t killed anybody from the village, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that he’s killed somebody from somewhere else just to try it out.”
Alam al-Din laughed again, and said, “Your stories are amazing. Well, then, who gave Sa‘id the name Dhab‘a—‘Hyena’?”
KHALID BAKHIT
Running Away from a Dead Man
“I don’t understand anything any more.”
I made this declaration to my grandfather’s face, with no hesitation. He put another bite in his mouth without looking up. When Zahir Bakhit wants to ignore someone, he averts his eyes. He chewed the bite unhurriedly. I was disconcerted. I imagined he would lift his eyes and give me a stern, harsh look that would convulse the universe.
I repeated the words: “I don’t understand anything any more.”
His voice came decisively. “Your biggest problem in life is that you’re in too much of a hurry. If God had given you the ability to wait, you’d be the leader of this village before long. The coming days will show you what you’re trying to find out. Why don’t you have some patience?”
“Would you be patient if you were in my place?”
“Yes, I would.”
“Well, why did Alam al-Din come now and not a year ago?”
“God knows.”
“How do you explain the fact that your meeting with Shaykh Faraj came after the people of the village realized what was happening, and before the gathering in Mihyan’s meetinghouse? Hadn’t that all been planned out beforehand?”
“That’s the way fate wanted it, so who am I to protest? You know I had been intending to go to Shaykh Faraj before the event. I told you that night! Don’t you remember?”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I told your mother, then. Ask her.”
I turned to look at my mother, who was sitting on the mat. She nodded. “He told me before he went to sleep that he was going to see Shaykh Faraj.”
My grandfather started licking his fingers. He got up to wash his hands. Going over to the sink ahead of him, I turned on the faucet for him and handed him the bar of soap the way I was used to doing.
“All right,” I said. “When will you tell me, Grandfather?”
He handed the bar of soap back to me. “The days will tell you,” he said. “Just be patient. I’m going to sleep now.”
Then he left me and went up to his room.
“What are you remembering?” I asked.
“How did you know I was remembering something?”
“Your face told me. You don’t get that happy look on your face unless a memory is taking you somewhere far away. You’re the only person I’ve ever known who has the ability to produce happiness simply by conjuring up a memory. What were you remembering?”
“I still remember . . . I remember how your father used to ply your grandfather with questions just the way you do now. And I remember how your grandfather used to end the discussion in the same way: by going upstairs to sleep. It’s been three years and five months since he died, hasn’t it?”
“Maybe. Let me do my calculations.”
The features of her face changed, and she shot me a harsh, reproachful look. “There’s no need for that,” she said. “If Bakhit Zahir were in your heart, you wouldn’t need to stop for a single second to do your calculations.”
Then she took the dishes to the kitchen and disappeared from view. I sat there staring morosely at the mat she had been sitting on. A camel, a dalla, and some coffee cups had been painted on the mat in red, blue, and white. I searched my mind for some reason to link a camel, a dalla, and some cups with the colors red, blue, and white, but couldn’t think of any. My mother didn’t come back from the kitchen, so I guessed she was crying in there, and that she was feverishly washing the dishes to hide her tears.
I went into the kitchen and found her in the very state I had expected to find her in. Lightheartedly, I said, “Umm Khalid . . . O Umm Khalid. The dishes are screaming, you’re being so hard on them! Is that how you get your revenge?”
She turned toward me, her eyes bloodshot. I reached out and wiped away the tears with my fingers. Then I laughed. “When will you grow up, Umm Khalid? Your sensibilities stopped growing in late childhood. You laugh and cry over the slightest thing.”
She passed the dish sponge over my nose. “Bakhit Zahir Bakhit isn’t ‘the slightest thing.’ To you he seems to have died. But he’s alive right here, in this heart, regardless of what that nose of yours would like to think!”
I wiped the suds off my nose. “Agreed,” I said. “He hasn’t died. Bakhit Zahir Bakhit is alive.”
“You’ll never defeat him, no matter how long you live.”
“Agreed. I’ll never defeat him no matter how long I live. Please don’t be angry.”
“Kiss my forehead, and I won’t be angry any more.”
“All right, Umm Khalid.”
I kissed her forehead and looked into her eyes. I was still convinced that she was a little girl in every way: in the way she loved, the way she hated, the way she got angry, the way she stopped being angry. Those who subsist on the memories of childhood live for a long time, and they never get old. There isn’t a single gray hair on my mother’s head. Someone seeing us together would think we were brother and sister. However, this little girl questions things sometimes, and sometimes she causes distress with questions that shatter what remains of this lover of the homeland. So I rush to get away from her so as to avoid getting into conversations that stir up questions.
I said, “I think I’ll go now. The Saturnine poet is waiting for me in my room.”
She passed the sponge over my nose again. “Stop running away. I understand you very well.”
I wiped the suds off my nose again. “Running away from what, Umm Khalid?”
“From everything. You run away from me. You run away from people, from the homeland, from Bakhit Zahir Bakhit.”
“Me, run away from my father? Run away from a dead man?”
“I’ve told you that Bakhit Zahir Bakhit isn’t dead. And you’re running away from him. Everything you do in your life is a way of running away from your father.”
“I’m not running away from him.”
“Oh yes you are. You’ll never forget the fierce battle that broke out between the two of you over matters of principle. Not for a moment have you forgotten the stance he took against your religiosity. And you’ve never forgotten the stance you took against his addiction to alcohol.”
“See? You’ve got it right. You said, ‘my religiosity’ and ‘his addiction.’”
“Don’t forget that it was you who used these words for the first time in this house. A year before you graduated from high school you came to us and said, ‘From now on I’m going to be religious. I’m going to shorten my dishdasha and grow out my beard, I’m not going to listen to singing, and I’m not going to do anything that’s forbidden.’ And you called your father an addict.”
“Didn’t he die an addict?”
“I told you: Bakhit Zahir Bakhit hasn’t died. He’s here in this heart. Does he deserve this kind of disregard from you just because he used to drink? Among the friends you’re so crazy about, isn’t there somebody who drinks? Suppose one of your friends became an alcoholic. Would you treat him this harshly? The reason you’re so hard on Bakhit is that he predicted the end of your religiosity. From the beginning he said to you, ‘You’ll go back on this decision at the earliest opportunity.’ The people who upset you by telling you the truth, you hate, and the people who keep quiet about your insanity, you love. Be fair. Bakhit Zahir Bakhit is a great man. He made a lot of mistakes. I don’t deny that. But he’s a human being, and a human being, whether he’s right or wrong, deserves to be respected. How can you give yourself the right to make mistakes and deny it to others? Why is it that the only thing you remember about your father is the stance he took against you?”
She was quite agitated. It was as though I was discovering a mature woman before me for the first time. The little girl had disappeared from her eyes, and rage had descended in her place. This rage creates strangers that we don’t recognize. It leads to astounding, unexpected discoveries. Umm Khalid, my mother, was defending my father even though she was the first person to have been stabbed by his daggers. What does Time do to us, my Saturnine poet? What does it do to us?
I said to her, “I’m going. Do I have your permission?”
“I won’t stop you,” she replied. “Go.”
So I went up to my room.
In the room that looked out over the hair-raising discord between the houses, a discord that ended with the minaret that wrestled with the noonday sun, I rested my head on a pillow made of a memory to wait for the Saturnine poet. The Saturnine poet only appeared when he wanted to, and would leave me in the throes of suspense whenever I wanted him. I had drawn the curtain, leaving the window open in the hope that a breeze would blow in and relieve the intensity of what I was feeling. I gazed at the fan with its symmetrical arms. It looked like a flower with a white center. I closed my eyes to see the ones who lived behind my eyelids. I heard a peculiar rustling, and it seemed to me that someone had pulled the curtain back, closed the window, and drawn the curtain again.
Epiphanies in the Presence of the Saturnine
So the Saturnine really had come, just as I’d hoped.
“Move over,” he said. So I did. He lay down beside me and covered his lower half with the blanket. He placed his hands under his head and began staring at the ceiling like me.
“Have you come to sleep?” I asked him.
“And are we really awake to begin with? Are human beings really awake? Everything that happens in life proves that it’s nothing but a passing dream. Do you really think it’s worth all this trouble, Khalid?”
“I think it is.”
“What fate awaits you in this earthly existence? Death. Therefore, everything you’re doing now will end with death. All this scrambling for life will lead to death. So, then, Khalid Bakhit, why are you scrambling for death? Is death worth suffering for, Khalid?”
“Not all deaths are the same, Saturnine. Do you know how many people the Earth has given birth to before me?”
“No one knows that but God.”
“It’s given bi
rth to a number that we can’t count. In any case, of all the people who have been born, lived, and died, how many do we know?”
“. . .”
“Very few. Now suppose, for example, that the names of one hundred thousand people have come down to us in history. What is a number like this, compared with the hundreds of billions of people who lived before us—assuming there have been that many? Nothing. And even of these one hundred thousand, we may find that there are no more than a thousand truly great people. Yet these people’s lives were worth something.”
“But how did they end up, Khalid? Didn’t they die? What good did it do them for their names to live on?”
“They didn’t die, Saturnine. They’re alive. Are Mutanabbi and Shapiro Daghs the same?”
“Who is this Shapiro Daghs?”
“Some person we don’t know. He must have lived and died without leaving a trace. That’s why Mutanabbi outdid him! Mutanabbi is still alive, my friend.”
“And Shapiro Daghs died! Ha ha ha!”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
My face registered agitation. I hate it when my facial expression lets people hear the roar of the anger inside me. Picking up on the anger, the Saturnine gently touched my fingers. Looking me in the eyes, he said, “I’m not making fun of you. You’re making fun of yourself. Just tell me what you want out of this life.”
I said, “I want to be more than just a passerby whose tracks are erased by the wind.”
“And is being confrontational the way to achieve that?” he asked.
“When have I been confrontational?” I shouted.
“All this, and you claim you’ve never been confrontational? What escapism! What escapism!”
“Escapism again!”
“Your mother is right, Khalid. You’re nothing but an escapist.”
“Confrontational and an escapist. How can that be?”
“You might be trying to escape and collide with others as you go. Remember this well. You’re nothing but an escapist.”
“I’ve told you, Saturnine: I am not an escapist.”
Earth Weeps, Saturn Laughs Page 9