The Hakawati

by Rabih Alameddine

  My grandmother and great-grandmother rode a jitney to Beirut and arrived at Maan’s house unannounced, as usual. For my grandmother, the choice of which brother to approach wasn’t complicated. Neither of the two was terribly well off, so that wasn’t an issue. Jalal was the more respected, the better educated, but he was also more aloof. My grandmother also felt that his household was less stable, because his writings were creating a stir. Since the French were losing control over events in Europe, they were exerting it on their colonies, and Jalal was paying the price. She was closer to Maan. She trusted him.

  My grandmother laid out her tale. Briefly, sticking to the essential points, she informed her brother that her youngest sons needed to attend a better school. If they remained in the village, they would have no future. It wasn’t because they were her sons that they deserved better. It was because they had potential. My great-uncle agreed without equivocation, allowing her to keep the rest of her practiced arguments in her breast. “Do not come seeking aid, my sister,” he said. “Assume it. I should have suggested it myself. That scamp of yours, the youngest, should be sent to the best schools. He’s much too smart for his own good.”

  And my grandmother broke into fountains of tears.

  Within two weeks, my father and uncle were separated from their parents and siblings. Maan had the boys move in with his family and attend a boarding school in Beirut. The agreement at first was that the boys would go up to the village on Saturday afternoons, after school, and return on Sundays, but it was honored less and less as the boys found more and more excuses to stay in the city. My father and Uncle Jihad would never again consider the village their home. They spent a week or a month there from time to time. During the civil war, when Beirut flayed itself, my father even stayed in his summer home in the village for a while. And Uncle Jihad—Uncle Jihad considered the village “quaint and authentic, without any of the usual tourist traps. Or even tourists, for that matter.”

  The bedroom was dark and quiet, except for the desultory sounds of cars passing below and the momentary reflection of their headlights on the window curtain. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. I had smoked a joint and was delightfully numb.

  There was a whispery knock on my door, so quiet I wasn’t sure I heard correctly.

  “Are you asleep?” A voice asked softly from behind the door.

  “Everybody is asleep,” I replied, “but Jardown is awake.”

  “Say what?”

  I jumped off the bed. I recognized the inquisitor when I opened the door, acne-faced Jake or Jack or John or Jim from three rooms to my right. He said he had noticed the ephemeral yet distinctive smell seeping from under my door. He and his roommate had run out of dope, and they wondered whether I was willing to share. I was invited to their room, to hang, as he called it, and they would return the favor somehow.

  Their cramped and cluttered room was lit by a desk lamp only, and they must have run out of dope recently, because the room reeked. The stoned roommates, in identical jeans and T-shirts, sat on one bed, their backs leaning on the wall, against a poster of the three Charlie’s Angels and one of a tall basketball player. Jake or Jack or John or Jim lit the joint I gave him. They were both smiling stupidly, and I probably was as well. We couldn’t start a conversation successfully. Jake’s roommate asked if I wanted to listen to any music. I shook my head and picked up the guitar lying on the second bed. I played “Stairway to Heaven.”

  “He’s good,” Jake told his roommate, who took another drag. In the dark, the joint seemed ablaze.

  “He plays so well, but it’s cold and distant,” his roommate said, in a voice that seemed to emanate from a haze. “It’s as if the playing is there, but he’s not.”

  I sat up. “What was that?” I asked, but I couldn’t get either one of them to repeat what was said. Their eyes were glazed, far away lost. They did not seem to recognize I was there at all.

  “I was born in a time when lands had fewer borders,” Uncle Jihad said. “There were many nationalities in Beirut, and boys came to our school from all over the world. The change was almost too much for me, but your father, he took to the school like a gourmet to foie gras. He befriended three other boys, and they became inseparable. They’re still friends to this day. Me? I was lost for a long time. I didn’t make any friends for a few years. You can say I made friends with two trees, two big trees in the middle of the school, a carob and a Kermes oak that couldn’t have been any less than four hundred years old. I spent all my free time up in those trees. Everyone called me Tree Boy for the longest time. I called the carob tree Chacha and the oak Charlemagne. I preferred trees to people. After that I preferred pigeons, but it was trees first.

  “My father has his pigeon stories and I have mine, for life, like a good tale, repeats itself. I noticed my first flock of pigeons in the skies of Beirut when I was a boy of thirteen. They were always there, but, like most people, I’d been oblivious. Notice their existence once and you begin to see them everywhere, all the time. I had no idea at the time that my father had been a pigeoneer when he was young, and apparently a terrible one. My father told us very little about his growing up. I guess he was embarrassed about his background, or maybe he was saving his best stories for you. I saw my first flock, and ten minutes later I saw my second, and then my third and fourth, and all of a sudden my skies brimmed with pigeons. One afternoon, atop Charlemagne, while admiring a flock in flight, I began to guess at the presence of magic. I was able to discern the art, as well as the logic, of flight patterns. The realization was both gradual and instantaneous. Magic. And as soon as I had my epiphany, my eyes understood where to look for the locus of the sorcery. Though I couldn’t see him, the wizard himself must have been on the roof of the old three-story building below the school.

  “The following afternoon, I ran to the building and asked about the pigeons. The shopkeeper on the ground floor told me to go up to the roof. The pigeon fancier, an aged man, realized I was a smitten boy. He allowed me to walk around and look at his prize collection.

  “There were five cages on the roof, each of them bigger than my bedroom. One cage had young pigeons of different breeds, another had only coupled pigeons. One was empty because the birds were being flown. I walked around and fell in love. I wanted to say something clever, so that the pigeoneer would like me and I’d be able to visit again, but my mind was numb. He was obviously a gentleman, but I wondered whether he’d let me come up a second time, or a third. Wouldn’t he quickly tire of a young boy who wanted to spend time with pigeons? I got scared and stuttered, ‘Can I work for you?’

  “The pigeoneer looked me up and down. He smiled and shook his head no. He said I was too young and obviously from too good a family to work for him. I went from taciturn to loquacious in less than a second. I told him that I could come every day after classes, he was only a few meters from the school, and I was a fast learner, and would do whatever he asked and never complain, and that I looked like I was from a good family because I was going to a good school, but I was from the mountains, and my family was still up there, and I really wanted to make the pigeons fly, and he should try me out. It became obvious that he was trying his best not to laugh out loud. He said he could only afford one lira a week—which was a fortune, and he knew it. Had I walked away when he told me he wouldn’t hire me, I would have failed the first test of a pigeoneer. He always said he knew the instant I came to the roof that I would end up a pigeoneer, that he saw it in the obsessive twinkle of my eyes.

  “The man’s name was Ali Itani. He was a Shiite, and he owned the old building—which had no elevator, I should add. I showed up to work the following afternoon and found him arguing vociferously with Kamal Hourani, a man who looked like his identical twin except he was a Catholic. ‘You brother of a whore wouldn’t know what honor was if it smacked you on the side of the head,’ one would say, and the other would reply, ‘Honor? You lowlife want to talk to me about honor?’ They were both seventy-one at the time, and they wore th
e exact same clothes, except for the shoes: checkered navy-blue shirts, and tailored pants that were worn and frayed. Ali’s shoes were black moccasins, whereas Kamal’s were burgundy, both pairs comfortably kneaded by years of wear. Though their insults were getting worse and worse, they were standing close to each other in a relaxed posture. My Sherlock Holmes mind reasoned that their arguing was a common occurrence. It turned out that Ali Itani and Kamal Hourani had been best friends since they were six years old. They both swore to me that they had been insulting each other nonstop since 1898. They had lived through schooling, work, marriage, family rearing, widowhood, two occupying powers, one Great War, numerous small wars, religious conflicts, and independence, without ever thinking of ceasing their rude insults. I felt I had entered the Garden.

  “That was my first interaction with the great city of Beirut. Of course, I had been living there for over seven years, since I was five, but it seemed that I had only been a tourist. Like all cities, Beirut has many layers, and I had been familiar with one or two. What I was introduced to that day with Ali and Kamal was the Beirut of its people. You take different groups, put them on top of each other, simmer for a thousand years, keep adding more and more strange tribes, simmer for another few thousand years, salt and pepper with religion, and what you get is a delightful mess of a stew that still tastes delectable and exotic, no matter how many times you partake of it. Those men seemed to have been together for eons, and since they’d run out of conversation long ago, all that was left was ribbing and mockery and repeating the great tales to each other.

  “At the first lull in the faux shouting match, Ali noticed me standing there, pointed at me, and said, ‘This is the young man I told you about.’ Without even allowing him to finish the sentence, Kamal yelled, ‘Run away, young pup. Run as fast as your legs can take you. Stay away from this invertebrate of a man, whose only intention is to worm his way into the life of his betters and feed on their loves, for he has none of his own.’ See? I told you I had found home.

  “Of course, Ali told me to ignore Kamal and began to explain my duties. I had assumed I’d be cleaning up after the pigeons and feeding them, but he already had another boy for that. No, he surprised me. He wanted me to seduce the birds. A confounding task, if I say so myself. ‘Make them fall in love with you,’ Ali said. ‘I want the pigeons to want to return home for you.’ I had no idea what he was talking about. I must have stood there staring at him like a fool, which elicited gales of laughter from the two old coots. ‘Don’t worry, young pup,’ Kamal said. ‘You’ll soon understand Lazy Brain’s speech. He wants you to go into the cages with the birds and get them used to you. It’s another one of those easy tasks that Lazy Brain can’t master.’

  “So my job was to be with the pigeons, spend time in the cages, hold them and pet them if they let me. That’s what I understood, and that’s what I did for the first few days. I’d show up after school. The elderly twins would be chatting up a storm and arguing about little things and big things. I thought at first that there was nothing they could agree on, but I was wrong, of course. They could both agree that it was a lot of fun to tease me.

  “ ‘Are you loving those two Tumblers enough?’ Kamal would ask, and Ali would add, ‘Look at that Lemon. She seems to be moping because you’re not paying attention to her.’ I’d get so flustered that I’d walk to the pigeons they were talking about, and the pigeons would move out of my reach. I thought I could never get them to love me. Yes, I was that gullible.

  “There was a wonderful pair of Istanbuls that I admired a great deal. Beautiful to look at, dark-gray feathers speckled with white, and an orange chest that seemed to have been inflated with an air pump. They’d grown to an immense size, as big as chickens. They were inseparable, and the cock seemed totally smitten with his mate. He’d coo to her, and she loved it. Four or five days after I had started, I was watching them, and my world seemed to shrink to the size of those lovers. She strolled on the ground, jerkily pecking at seeds, and he followed her every step, cooing and engrossed. She stopped and turned toward him, and he nuzzled her neck. Then he started to stroll, and she followed. ‘You’re beautiful,’ I said to them. I realized that I had spoken out loud to a pair of birds. I looked around, and the twins seemed bemused. ‘You do know how to pick your boys,’ Kamal said to Ali. It was the first time I’d heard one address the other without a slur.

  “After that, the volcano released its pressure, and I began to talk to the pigeons incessantly. I talked to them about everything. I told them how lovely they were. I warned them of the dangers of the world, complimented them on their choice of partners. I talked and talked, and Ali and Kamal had found the boy who was going to entertain them for a long time. The pigeons did respond. They may not have understood a word I said, but they began to enjoy the sound of my voice. When I ran out of things to say, I’d just prattle. And you can probably figure out what happened. I talked and talked, and one day I started on what I do best. For my audience, pigeons and humans, I began to tell stories.”

  Sharbel sat on my right and Ziad on his, third row from the front, far enough from the proctor, but not back in the suspicious rows. As I received the exam from the student in front of me, my hand shook so hard that I had trouble separating my sheets and passing the rest. I put the exam on my desk but didn’t look at it. That was my ritual. I had to calm myself before every test. If I didn’t settle my nerves, my handwriting would be illegible. Once I had myself under control, I rolled quickly, so I never worried about the time it took me to relax, though today I needed more time, because of the cheating. Sharbel had assured me I wouldn’t get in trouble, because I could swear that I didn’t know someone was copying off me, but I knew he lied. If I made a mistake, Sharbel, and then Ziad, would copy it. I didn’t think any of us could use innocence as an excuse, and I also didn’t think either of them would be gallant enough not to finger me if they got caught. They were Lebanese, after all.

  I closed my eyes, breathed in and out. I concentrated on moving my breath to my arms and then to my knees. I imagined myself writing smoothly. As I visualized myself smiling triumphantly, walking outside, lighting a victory cigarette, a hard poke on my right shoulder almost knocked me off my chair. Sharbel’s eyes were those of a lamb about to be slaughtered. He raised questioning eyebrows, terrified because I wasn’t even reading the exam.

  I began the first problem. I glanced Sharbel’s way. He was pretending to work, his unmoving pen to the paper, but he did nothing until I finished the first sheet and slid it aside. Then he began writing furiously. I finished another sheet, and he nudged me. I looked up. I’d covered the previous sheet before he was ready. When I tried to move it, I was slammed forward. The American student sitting behind me saw us cheating and kicked my chair violently. I looked around and pretended blamelessness. Why did he kick my chair and not Sharbel’s? Size, it was always size. Sharbel was at least one foot taller and eighty pounds heavier. I tried to collect my papers about me, but Sharbel nudged me again. I was sure the kicker would rat on us. I began to shiver. I worked fast, struggling to control my pen, submitted my exam, and ran out. I had twenty-five more minutes to spare. I could feel Sharbel’s glare boring into the back of my neck.

  “Not to brag,” Uncle Jihad said, “but I was good even then. I remember the first story I told the pigeons. I was in one of the two better cages, where all the Rashidis, Sharabis, and black Bayumis were. Those were some of the birds that Ali would hate to lose, so I told them this story from the Tales of the Homing Heart.

  “There was once a poor shepherd from a village in the mountains. He was so poor he couldn’t feed his children, and the family slept hungry more often than not. One night, he was so hungry that he dreamed of Beirut, the city of prosperity and bread. He decided he’d go to the city and make his fortune. He didn’t even wait a minute, but packed a small satchel and walked all the way to Beirut. He looked for work, talked to every merchant, builder, baker, cook, and watchmaker in the city. He begged to be h
ired, but no one wanted him. He tried the following day, and the following, but he couldn’t find any work. How was he to make his fortune? A week later, and he still had found nothing. He was hungrier than he had ever been, and lonelier than he could have imagined. He was tired, and when night fell, he went into a mosque and lay down on the carpet to sleep. But in the middle of the night, policemen woke him up and beat him and took him to jail. He stood before a judge, who asked why he broke into the mosque. The shepherd told about the dream, but the judge was not impressed and sentenced him to three days in jail. ‘Dreams are for fools,’ the judge said. ‘Only last night, I dreamed of a treasure buried in the mountains, in a field where two sycamores, two oaks, and a poplar cast shadows that moved like dancing men. Do you see me leaving my job to chase after the treasure of dreams?’ The shepherd spent three nights in jail. When released, he ran all the way back home and sought the familiar field where two sycamores, two oaks, and a poplar cast shadows that moved like dancing men—the field where he had been allowing his sheep to graze for all those years. He dug out the treasure and became rich and fed his family and was able to sleep every night sated and content.”

  Jake or Jack or John or Jim and his roommate asked me over a week later. They brought the weed, I brought my guitar. We smoked so much, so quickly, we were floating in bliss in minutes. “Let me see your guitar,” Jake said.

  I was so stoned that I could barely stand up, but I managed. I sat next to him with my guitar, and he looked at the instrument with awe, stroked the neck with his hand.

  “That’s so beautiful,” he cooed.

  “It’s a J200.”

  “What’s that?” Blank eyes looked up at me.

  I wanted to tell him it was a brand, a name, but words wouldn’t leave my lips. I played a note; it plunked, because his hand was still on the neck. I moved away from him and played a few chords. The roommate asked to borrow my guitar. He held it briefly, and then strange sounds shot out: fast strums of inexplicable chords that had no rhythm or reason. He shook his head punkishly, like a pendulum on methamphetamine. He sang hoarsely, off-key. “I like to play with passion,” he said. “And I love your guitar. I felt great playing it. I felt real.”