The Hakawati

by Rabih Alameddine

  “Who should prepare to die?” King Kade asked.

  “He who plays with angels,” Fatima said. “Thy doom arrives.”

  When the second albino lifted her, Fatima took a match from her robe. “Fire,” she whispered, and a flame burst forth. She lit the angel’s wings, which burned immediately. He released Fatima and wailed in pain and grief. She whispered, “Fire,” again and burned the second albino’s wings. The albinos bent over in agony, burned and melted until nothing of them was left. She turned to King Kade and sent a flame in his direction.

  He extinguished it with a flick of his wrist. “You cannot harm me with trivial magic,” he said. “I have defeated warriors much more powerful than you.”

  “But none wilier,” she said. “And none, I am sure, as beautiful.”

  And she threw the last of the mud at the magician’s tunic.

  I recognized Uncle Jihad’s broad, meaty face behind the silly white beard. His wet laugh was identifiable. He had stuffed at least two pillows under his red coat. I walked up to him, pointed at his beard, and said, “You spoke Italian to Mariella, then to Fatima. You’re no Santa.”

  He puffed out his chest, and the corners of his mouth disappeared into a smile behind his lifeless beard. “I hear someone speaking,” he said in English, “but I can’t tell where it’s coming from. Is there a poor, helpless child who doesn’t know that I fly across the world and speak to all children in their native language? Where’s this child who doubts who I am? Let him come forward.” He swiftly picked me up before I could escape his grasp.

  “Speak Congolese, then,” I challenged.

  “Blah, blah, blah, blah, naughty little boys, blah, blah, blah.”

  “That’s not a language. You’re making it up.”

  “What? You understand Congolese now? I’ve spoken the language since the beginning of time. It’s primitive, you know, but it’s delightful, because each ‘blah’ has a different meaning, depending on intonation. Want me to tell you a Congolese story?”

  “No,” I said. “No story. Not now. Can I have my present, please?”

  The Christmas party was at Uncle Halim and Aunt Nazek’s apartment. Santa Claus had come to our flat the year before. That gathering had been so successful, and the children had had so much fun, that the family decided to repeat it at Aunt Nazek’s, even though no one other than my mother had ever put up a Christmas tree before. To ensure that the party took place in her home, Aunt Nazek had bought a colossal fir tree. It didn’t fit in her living room. My mother couldn’t take her eyes off it. She’d be talking to someone, and her gaze would inadvertently flip back to the giant tree. The ceiling should have been at least a meter higher. The top of the tree had broken in two places; one segment ran along the ceiling, and the tip angled toward the floor. The silver star on top pointed down at a wooden footrest in the corner. From behind us, we heard a woman’s voice whisper, “Is the footrest supposed to be the barn or the crib?”

  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 nipple
s 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.”

  “That was not a happily ever after,” I said. “You promised to only tell me stories with happy endings.”

  “You’re right, but that’s easy to fix. Orpheus died and descended into the underworld and was able to look at Eurydice as much as he wanted.”

  “And they lived happily ever after.”

  “That they did.”

  “How come it’s always bad to look back?” I asked. “What if something is going to hit you from behind? What about rearview mirrors?”

  “I don’t really know,” he replied.

  I paused. “Would you have tried to retrieve Grandmother from the underworld?”

  “Hmm.” He hesitated, cast his eyes upward as if contemplating. “I don’t think she would’ve wanted me to. It was the right time for her to leave. Eurydice died before her time, which was why Orpheus went down to get her.”

&nbs
p; “If I die,” I said, “will you come for me?”

  “I’ll turn the world upside down and inside out. I’ll find you wherever you are. I’ll not only come for you, I’ll bring an entire army. You’re my little hero. That’s what you are.”

  Who will raise the dead again? Fatima found her lover, Afreet-Jehanam, human-sized and demonlike, lying prone and lifeless on the white altar of King Kade. The imps jumped atop the altar. Weeping, Ishmael said, “Our brother is dead.” Fatima ran her fingers through the demon’s hair, which was no longer yellow and fiery, just unresponsive blue strings of air. She kissed his inert lips. “Wake,” she said, but he remained dead. She kissed his palm, pressed his hand to her chest. She used his swordlike fingernail to cut her lip. She kissed him again. “Wake,” she said, “drink my blood,” but he remained dead. She removed the loincloth of rhinoceros hide and held his listless penis. She put the penis in her mouth and licked. “Wake,” she said. “I am not done with you yet.” And the penis grew rigid, but the jinni did not breathe. She climbed on the altar. “Wake,” she said. “I am Fatima, tamer of Afreet-Jehanam, vanquisher of King Kade. I am master of light and dark. Wake.” She straddled her lover, descended upon him until he was inside her. She felt the force of life tremble within her. And his hair was enflamed. She bent down and kissed him. A streak of blood dripped from her lip to his, down across the convex curve of his cheek. It transformed into a young mud snake upon touching the altar.

  “Wake,” she said, and he opened his three red eyes.

  Elie leaned on his motorcycle, looking ruffled and agitated. He didn’t notice me until I was right in front of his face. He was now sixteen, and my mother always said that was a horrible age, because you were mean, unhappy, and uncharitable most of the time, and you ended up listening to American music. Elie was moving up in the militia. He already commanded a troop of boys who were older than he was, and, more important, he now carried two guns. He stared at his shoes. I stared at him until a sudden flutter flashed in the corner of my eye. Mariella walked out of the lobby, wearing a drunken smile and a sweater so tight her breasts looked like a high shelf. She whistled a Beatles melody. She strolled by, pretended not to see us. She was a bad actress, but Elie was fooled. “I’m here,” he called.