The Hakawati

by Rabih Alameddine

  “Who goes there?” Maria asked.

  “I am Marouf, your husband.”

  Maria whimpered and mewled. “You, Marouf, search for me, but you will not find me yet. I am as alive as this wrecked loom, and as empty as this dispirited yarn. Without my son, I do not exist, and without your son, you are not a man. He is on an island called Tabish. Bring me my son or I will not leave this mausoleum.”

  Marouf joined his wife in weeping. He climbed down the tower, returned to the port, and sailed for Tabish. He searched the island. He scaled its hills, unseated its rocks, uprooted its trees. He tore up its monastery brick by brick, log by log. He could not find his son. Marouf knelt before the uncompromising sea and cried again, bemoaning the capriciousness of fate. “By the life of my father, and his father before him, and his father before all, I swear upon their blood that pulses through my veins, I will find my son, my blood, my life.”

  “It’s almost time,” my mother said. She made Lina stand up and display herself. My mother, Aunt Samia, and the girls made sure that nothing was left to chance. No one seemed satisfied with the dress. It wasn’t store-bought, but it was definitely designer-rushed.

  “You’re so beautiful,” Aunt Samia said. “You make us proud.” Lina looked perplexed, as if she weren’t sure the conversation was about her. “Look at her,” Aunt Samia told Mona. “Look how she carries herself. This is how a bride should be on her wedding night.” What I had never thought I would see, a blushing Lina, manifested itself before my eyes. “Learn from her, my daughter. Her head always high, beaming, full of confidence. If only my mother could see you now. She would be proud, just as I am.”

  My mother took my sister’s hand, brought it to her lips, and kissed it.

  “Get the veil,” Aunt Samia said. “You don’t want your father to have to wait when he gets here.” She held the fabric in her hand and examined it like a tester at a textile factory. “Are you using it as a train? Come on, girls. Make yourselves busy.” She turned to me. “What are you doing in this room, my boy? Get out of here. We have to talk about the honeymoon, and you shouldn’t be hearing this.”

  “There won’t be a honeymoon yet,” Lina said. “He doesn’t have time. We’ll do it when the war ends.”

  Aunt Samia’s face twitched. It seemed for an instant that her energy was about to crumble, but she caught herself in time. “That’s a great thing, if you ask me. Why go on a honeymoon and leave your loved ones behind while a war is going on? I didn’t have a good time on my honeymoon, so I don’t recommend them. My husband slept for the whole week in Cairo. You don’t believe me? Go out and ask him what was the best thing he saw in Cairo and he’ll tell you the pillow at the Hilton. You’ll probably have to wake him up to ask him, but he’ll tell you. Honeymoons—honeymoons are not for our family.”

  “Are you ready?” my mother asked. She shooed everyone from the room. “If you want to see the bride come out, you had better be out yourselves.”

  I looked at Lina, and she shook her head for me to stay. At the door, my mother announced, “I’ll send your father in a minute.”

  “Mother,” Lina called. My mother stopped and turned around. She waited for Lina to say something, but Lina couldn’t speak. My mother closed the door and walked toward her.

  “I want to kiss you,” my mother said, “but it’s not a good idea. Air kisses, however, won’t harm the makeup.” My mother held both of Lina’s hands, and they air-kissed three times. My mother walked toward the door. “You’d better be ready.”

  My father, dapper and lordly, held his hand out to my sister. Lina hesitated, snatched one last glance at her reflection, and moved toward him. Arm in arm, they took one step and faltered. “I’m leading,” my father joked. They recommenced, but the march still looked off-kilter, as if my father had practiced for this moment all his life and life decided not to cooperate.

  I had expected my father to be more subdued, but I had underestimated his resilience. He didn’t appear to be a man who had just survived the death of a second brother, his best friend at that. I lagged behind, stopped, and watched them as they passed down the darkened corridor into the light of the living room. Cheering, applause, whistles, and ululations broke out loud enough to obliterate Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” piping out of the speakers. Someone, I assumed Uncle Akram, began drumming the derbakeh. A woman burst into the mountain wedding song, a paean to the beautiful bride. By the time I reached the end of the corridor, my father had handed his daughter to Elie, who was desperately trying to look confident in a suit instead of his usual fatigues. Elie looked around at the crowd before quickly kissing Lina—a brief peck to signify eternal commitment. Uncle Akram, visibly upset with Mendelssohn’s discordant competition, knocked the record player with his thigh. A scratch was heard, and then the strings stopped, and Uncle Akram banged the drum harder, with a faster syncopation.

  The newlyweds carved the cake. Elie tried to put his arm through Lina’s, but the fork kept getting in the way. A piece of cake fell on her sleeve and to the floor. She laughed. My mother shook her head. A couple of kids reached for the fallen morsel. The bey’s grandson, bundled up in two sweaters despite the room’s heat, stuffed the cake into his mouth. Our future bey looked up to Lina, opened his mouth wide, extended his tongue, and showed her the piece of extra-moist cake in his mouth.

  Everyone seemed in a festive mood, but it wasn’t just the wedding. Wartime parties are always inhibition-loosening, euphoric affairs. I tried to talk to Elie, but he seemed to be avoiding me—and the rest of the family, for that matter. It was disconcerting to see a militiaman with dozens of fighters under his command, a killer of men, desperately avoid making eye contact. When I cornered him to offer best wishes, he interrupted by blurting, “It’s not my fault. It was supposed to be just fun,” sounding like a terrified four-year-old, his eyes expanding to encompass the top half of his face.

  • • •

  My feet were sore, my arches throbbed. The last of the guests were filing out, but it wasn’t yet time to break up the receiving line. Lina looked the most tired of all, whereas Elie seemed to be gaining strength as the festivities wore on. Aunt Wasila and her children left with the guests, as did Uncle Halim and his family. Aunt Samia took off her heels and began to help the servants clear the tables, until my mother asked her to stop.

  “Give me twenty minutes to freshen up and I’ll be ready to go,” Lina told Elie.

  He cleared his throat. “It’s probably best if I go back to Beirut with my men.” He could not lift his gaze from his shoes. “They have to be there just in case, and—uhmm—I don’t think it’s right if there’s a fight and I’m not there. We might get attacked.”

  “On your wedding night?”

  “Well, the enemy bastards don’t care about my wedding night,” he stammered.

  “I guess you should go, then,” Lina said.

  “Yes, I guess I should.” He backed away with slow, irresolute steps. “Thank you, everyone. That was a great wedding.” He looked briefly at my mother. “I wish my family could have been here. Thank you.” He walked out, hollered at his inebriated men. They got in three battered Range Rovers and sped down the hill toward the city. In the distance, Beirut, enveloped in utter darkness, swallowed the red rear lights whole.

  “I guess I should change anyway,” Lina said.

  “Yes,” my mother replied. She sat on the sofa and propped her feet on the small ottoman. “Change into something more comfortable, and I’ll make you a good scotch.”

  As soon as Lina went into her room, my father allowed his rage to conquer his face. He dumped his body next to my mother. His heat and intensity radiated across the room. I knew that if he said one thing he would explode.

  “I’ll make you a good scotch, too,” my mother said.

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Aunt Samia said. “Maybe they will get attacked tonight.”

  “Ha,” my mother snorted. “You shouldn’t have said that.” She shook her head. “Ha.” She
asked my father, “Is there anyone we can call?” My father chuckled.

  You might have asked yourself what happened to the boy. You might have wondered why his father did not find him. Listen. Another storm brewed the waters of the Mediterranean and forced a ship carrying Kinyar, the king of Thessaly, to the island of Tabish. The king and his crew explored the island and discovered the monastery. “This is the cuddliest child my royal eyes have ever seen,” announced Kinyar. He reached out to pick up the son of Marouf and Maria, but a powerful slap knocked him on his behind. He looked around in terror. His men drew their weapons. They saw nothing. “Why do you smite me?” Kinyar asked the monastery. “I am the father of this boy, come to deliver him to his mother.” He reached for the infant again, and this time he was not felled. He ran out with the boy, and his men rushed after him, fumbling and stumbling. They stole away on their ship.

  The galleon from Thessaly stopped a pilgrim ship heading toward the Holy City. The king boarded the captured ship and declared, “I seek a volunteer, a wet nurse to feed my child. I will slay you all unless you give me what I want.”

  A young nun said, “I have given my life before and I will give it once more. There is no need for all of us to die.” Kinyar took her to his ship and allowed her companions to go their way. The nun exposed her breast to the hungry boy, and milk miraculously flowed. “The baby will live,” the nun said, and Kinyar said, “I will call him Taboush, after the island that offered him to me.”

  We had an early breakfast the morning following the wedding. My father had a piece of bread stuck in his throat. He coughed, smacked his chest, and reached for his glass of water. My mother kept watch, with a mild concern, from across the table. He cleared his throat, lit a cigarette, and sipped his coffee. “I’m going to check on our home,” he announced.

  “There’s nothing to check on.” My mother spread butter on her toast. She was the only one in the family who buttered her bread. “We took everything that’s of any value.”

  “I have to check on the building. Unless we make our presence felt, we’ll have squatters moving in.”

  “The reason we don’t have squatters is that the neighborhood is still dangerous. Be reasonable. It’s not worth the risk, and your showing up once a month isn’t going to stop refugees from taking over.”

  “I’ll be careful,” he said.

  A bit later, I told my mother I was taking a long walk and sneaked into the car with him. If my mother didn’t approve of my father’s going to the old neighborhood, she certainly wouldn’t have wanted me to tag along. “Onward to our next adventure,” he said. We passed many checkpoints along the way, crossing from one militia zone into the next, and none gave us any trouble. You could probably encounter every militia and every denomination driving from our mountain village to the neighborhood in Beirut.

  We arrived, and I felt off-balance. Our neighborhood hadn’t been hit as badly as others, but it was scarred. It was also Twilight Zone uninhabited.

  My father checked each apartment. In ours, the furniture was shrouded with dusty linen, but anything that would fit into a car had been moved. Only one window was broken. I went to my room. My bed, bookshelf, and dresser looked like giant misshapen children dressed as ghosts for Halloween. My father gave Uncle Jihad’s apartment a cursory inspection. He didn’t wish to tarry there. I lingered. I walked around the living room and dining room. The coverings in this apartment had a palpable finality.

  Uncle Jihad’s numerous obsessions were notorious. He was a devoted Italophile, a Brueghel aficionado, a film buff, a lover of folktales, and a collector of rare stamps, movie magazines, miniature crystal sculptures, matchboxes, restaurant menus, and Lebanese earthenware. His apartment used to be full of his essence, knickknacks and whatnots all over the place. Everything had been cleared out. Almost everything. Discarded on the floor I found a postcard of a Brueghel painting, Mad Meg, one of his favorites. Two things I could never forget about the painting, the determined look of Mad Meg herself, the I-will-get-what-is-rightfully-mine-in-this-hellhole attitude, and the giant freak using a poker to empty his butt of its contents while the crowd below him eagerly waited for the about-to-fall treasure. I picked up the card and examined the browns and ochers and reds, the weird creatures in hell, the spears and shields and misplaced heads, the animals and half-ships and battlements, and the woman, seemingly the only full human, an unsheathed sword in her right hand, a basket of goodies in her left, a filled bag tucked in at her waist, walking with a helmet and a steely determination. She got what she came for and it was time to leave. Just as I remembered. I pocketed it.

  I walked into the den, and the movie wall was still up. It could not be moved. Through the years, Uncle Jihad had cut out images from movie magazines, particularly Italian ones, and had pasted a collage onto the whole wall. A window had been broken in the den, and a piece of glass had embedded itself in a picture of the Ferris wheel in The Third Man. I pulled it out and cut my index finger. I shoved my finger in my mouth and sucked on my wound.

  I began to see the wall with Zen eyes. Movie stars stared back. At least three Marilyns, one in which she sat in a director’s chair, looking back. Jane Fonda in Klute and Barbarella, Bette Davis in Jezebel and Now, Voyager, Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Warren Beatty as Clyde lay on top of Faye Dunaway as Bonnie. Marlon Brando sat next to Jack Nicholson. Sophia Loren broke down on her knees in Two Women, Anna Magnani broke down in any one of her movies. Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour, Julie Christie in Doctor Zhivago. Hedy Lamarr in a long evening gown, her left arm behind her back, the hand encircling the right elbow, the poster saying “Il piu grande film per la stagione 1948–49, Disonorata.” Katharine Hepburn shared a scene with John Wayne, Glenda Jackson got off a train, Shirley MacLaine looked astonished. Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer performed with the von Trapp kids. A horrified Joan Crawford, subtitled So che mi uccidrerai! Shirley Temple, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Jimmy Stewart. Three-quarter view of Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall. A shirtless James Dean. A shirtless Sean Connery. Three versions of a mustached Burt Reynolds. Natalie Wood running joyfully toward her youth-gang boyfriend. Maria Callas sitting in an alcove in Pasolini’s Medea. Olivia de Havilland, Twiggy, and Ingrid Bergman. All the colors faded except for Marlene Dietrich’s lipstick, which seemed to have been touched up, her cigarette interrupting the red. A shark, Robert Shaw, Roy Scheider, and Richard Dreyfuss advertised the film Lo squalo. Gene Kelly dancing, Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan. Beach scenes from Dr. No and From Here to Eternity. Dustin Hoffman with a woman’s thigh and on a horse surrounded by Indians. The Oscar in multiples. The delicious underarm of Rita Hayworth in Gilda, the sumptuous eyes of Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun. Mae West, belle of the nineties. Franco Nero, gorgeous with a five-o’clock shadow, Robert Redford and Paul Newman, Steve McQueen in Tom Horn, William Holden and Kim Novak, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Ursula Andress, Romy Schneider, and Dalida. Judy Garland, Judy Garland, Judy Garland.

  But in the lower right corner, one image was scraped away, with the wall’s plaster showing through. I didn’t have to be told who scraped it off or what picture it was. After Uncle Jihad’s death, my father wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see the image of Alan Bates and Oliver Reed kissing fiercely. My father must have spent quite a bit of time scraping.

  My finger still bled. I dabbed the blood around my lips and kissed the forlorn space. The red imprint of my lips matched Marlene’s.

  Fourteen

  Adam was bored. The Garden was lovely, but he wanted someone to talk to. “Dear God,” he prayed, “I need company.” God gave him a mate. Out of his tail, a woman was created, but Marwa turned out to be as mischievous as a monkey. Adam was not happy. “Dear God, I need better company.” Eve was brought forth from the thirteenth rib of his right side. Decent women can claim Eve as their ancestor. All giddy girls are descendants of Marwa.

  This legend has a Jewish counterpart in that of Lilith, who was created at the same t
ime as Adam, of the same dust. “I am your equal,” she said. “I will not lie helpless beneath you. I, too, seek fulfillment.” Adam was not happy. God made Eve from his side, to stand by him, to support him, to submit to him.

  And Lilith? Lilith coupled with demons on the shores of the Red Sea. God forsook her.

  I cannot tell you whether Fatima is a descendant of Lilith or Marwa, but I can tell you she had little to do with Eve.

  In her part of the world, Fatima was famous—infamous, if you prefer, but not in the Western sense. She wasn’t a film star, her face didn’t appear in magazines, her name wasn’t bandied about in professional journals. She was famous in Arab terms, in discreet terms: she was talked about. No story was juicy enough if Fatima wasn’t on the gossiper’s tongue. Fatima didn’t couple with demons. She preferred short, filthy-wealthy Gulf Arabs, and “coupling” wouldn’t be the right word to use. Her reputation was solidified with her first marriage—solidified, mind you, for she’d already developed one by simply being Mariella’s little sister.

  Story of her first marriage: June 1981, I had just graduated from UCLA and was hired as a computer engineer and programmer by Ellisen Engineering, the only company I’d ever work for. Fatima was studying psychology at the University of Rome and was due to graduate. She didn’t. Like my sister before her, she got married. Unlike my sister’s, her marriage lasted longer than her wedding, but not by much. He was an inordinately rich Saudi prince, a young one, one of numerous siblings, not in any line to rule, maybe a ministry one day. He met her in Rome and was besotted. He had never known anyone like her, he claimed, and probably would never again. “I liked him all right” was what Fatima would always say. His family wasn’t too happy but didn’t disapprove. The boy was Saudi, after all, and he had at least three more chances to improve his selection. The trouble began at the wedding, which I couldn’t attend because of work. It seemed the prince’s mother and his homely sisters kept good-naturedly pestering the bride, joking and demanding that she get pregnant. “Shouldn’t we finish the wedding first?” she replied. Two months later, when her mother-in-law inquired if Fatima might be pregnant, Fatima rolled up a newspaper—a Lebanese Al-Nahar—and smacked the princess on the nose three times: Don’t—smack—put your nose—smack—in my business—smack. As horrifying as that was, puppy-training her mother-in-law wasn’t the reason for the divorce. Horror of horrors, the prince took his wife’s side. When, finally, the prince’s father asked his son if Fatima had ever laid a hand on him, the prince turned crimson, and the nature of the couple’s sexual relationship was discovered. Even that could have been hushed up—this was the Arab world, after all—if the prince hadn’t admitted, much to his humiliation, that, even though they had been having sex since they met, he had yet to earn coitus. Straw, meet camel.