The Hakawati

by Rabih Alameddine

  Alas for poor Saadi, the winsome cupbearer was not destined to be his wife. Fate would never permit happiness to a man of such talent—a content poet is a mediocre one, a happy poet insufferable. Saadi married a Xanthippe, one who would make the original blush in shame for falling so short in shrewishness. And Saadi was forced to lay down the most exquisite poems bemoaning his matrimonial misfortunes and compose even greater lines insulting his wife.

  The humble King al-Zaher Baybars entered his first diwan to the cheers of the adoring nobles and wise men of the land. He listened attentively to news of his kingdom and began to bestow titles and responsibilities upon his people. Aydmur became a prince and the leader of the kingdom’s army; Sergeant Lou’ai, the emir of the lands of the Levant. Baybars called on the Turks, the Kurds, the Turkomans, the Circassians, the Arabs, the Persians, and all the other nationalities to present heroes who were worthy of leading them, and he made these men the emirs of their tribes. The Uzbeks and the African warriors became his official companions and bodyguards. And all rejoiced—all except for Othman, who sat glum and morose. Baybars asked his friend why he was not in a happy mood, and Othman replied, “You gave all these men new robes and bestowed titles upon friends and strangers, yet you forgot your own brother.”

  A shamefaced Baybars declared before the world that Othman was now an emir, and a smile crept over the new emir’s face. Othman returned home to Layla, who greeted him with “Welcome, my emir. I am glad it is only a minor title, because I would not want to deal with your big head had he given you a title of note.”

  Othman said, “Emir is a title of great worth.”

  “Of course it is, dear. How many men were made emirs today? And how many emirs were there before today? These are the lands of Islam. Kings, sultans, and caliphs are as common as camels. Emirs? There are as many emirs as there are males in these parts.”

  The following day, Othman was even more glum and morose in the diwan, and King Baybars asked, “Why are you unhappy, my brother?”

  “Because I am a trite emir.”

  • • •

  And what of Marouf? Have you forgotten him? Ma’arouf, who had been searching for weeks and months and years for his son all over the Mediterranean?

  The nun—the nun raised the infant Taboush for two years in the palace of Thessaly. While carrying a large gift for Taboush’s second birthday, she slipped in descending the stairs, and her soul ascended to the Garden. “Oh well,” said King Kinyar. “I must assign someone to raise the boy now that the nun has betrayed us.” He picked one of his men at random. “You will be the boy’s guardian. Raise him and care for him. Teach him to be a man. If you fail, you and your descendants will be tortured to death.” The guardian raised Taboush and cared for him. Every day he took the boy for walks outside the palace, to the lovely hills and meadows of Thessaly.

  One day, Marouf came across Taboush along the road, and the father’s heart fluttered and raced. Marouf greeted Taboush’s guardian and asked if the boy was his son, and the guardian informed him that the boy was the king’s son. And Marouf looked into the boy’s eyes and saw his father’s eyes and his grandfather’s eyes, and he said to himself, “This is my son. I know him as I know myself.” Marouf began to show up on the same road every day so he could play with Taboush. He brought him gifts and sweets, and Taboush began to love him. Marouf had a plan to take the boy with him off the island, back to Maria, and was waiting for the right opportunity. Marouf would whisper into his boy’s ears, “You are honor descended from honor. You are my son and the light of my eyes.”

  The guardian grew suspicious and informed the king about the man who was befriending his son. The king ordered the guardian not to take the boy on his walk the following day and instead sent a full squadron of a hundred men. The soldiers attacked Marouf, beat him, and brought him to the king, who shackled Marouf and jailed him in an isolated cell of iron. “You thought you could take my son away from me,” the king said, “but I will take your liberty and pride. You will live here, beneath our royal feet, until you rot and decay. Meditate upon your folly, for you now have the time.” And when he was left alone, Marouf wondered what was to become of him, the chief of forts and battlements, without son, without wife, without honor.

  To say that there was a class difference between my mother’s family and my father’s would be like saying that a Rolls-Royce is a slightly better car than a Lada. Even my grandmother’s family, the Arisseddines, sheikhs though they might be, were no match for the Khourys. Luckily for my father, she was from a small branch of the family that was not closely related to the first president of the republic. Still, a sensible man wouldn’t have undertaken to woo a woman who had the same last name as the man who was running the entire country.

  Aunt Samia considered my mother’s family cursed. “It’s not your mother’s fault,” she’d say. “She never had a chance to understand family. The curse began long before your poor mother was born.” My mother’s father was an only child—probably the biggest curse, according to my aunt. He was both orphaned and widowed. My maternal grandmother died when my mother was only three, and my grandfather remarried a Belgian. “Could you have worse luck?”

  My mother had two half-siblings. “But they don’t really count, do they?” my aunt would ask. “They visit the ruins of the Roman temples during a trip to Lebanon, and that makes them Lebanese? That’s not family.”

  My grandfather was intelligent, educated, and successful, but if you pointed out to my aunt that he couldn’t have been cursed, what with having all those qualities and being an ambassador to boot, she replied, “True, but we’re talking an ambassador to Belgium.”

  My mother grew up in Belgium, where her father emigrated. When she was fourteen, a cousin suggested that my mother should return with her to Beirut. My grandfather and his Belgian family stayed in Brussels, and my mother went with the cousin—my grandfather in essence admitting that his daughter would have a better chance of finding a suitable husband in Lebanon. My mother’s separation from her immediate family was fortunate. My father would have to persuade her to marry him—a ridiculous task to be sure, but not as impossible as persuading the rest of her family as well.

  However, my grandfather the hakawati always said that my father and mother were fated to be married, and, of course, there was a story, one concerning an improbable nocturnal meeting between an Arisseddine and a Khoury in late June 1838 during the Battle of Wadi Baka.

  In 1831, Ibrahim Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, temporarily liberated Greater Syria, including Lebanon, from the yoke of the Ottomans. At first the populace was happy to be rid of the corrupt and unjust Ottomans. But Ibrahim Pasha proved no better, and in 1838 the Druze revolted. At Hawran, site of the first battle, fewer than fifteen hundred Druze fighters defeated some fifteen thousand Egyptians. The Egyptians kept replenishing their forces, however, and the Druze couldn’t. What was left of the rebels retreated down to Wadi al-Taym, until only four hundred bunkered in Wadi Baka. Ibrahim Pasha himself led his army of thousands against those four hundred.

  With the help of Emir Bashir of Lebanon, Ibrahim Pasha had forced Maronite fighters to help him against the Druze. Most refused the call and hid in the mountains. Those unable to disappear joined the battle but never took their swords out of their scabbards. One was a Khoury, my mother’s great-great-grandfather.

  When the Druze rebels realized they could hold out no longer, they decided to wait for nightfall and attack. They would kill as many as they could before dying, and perhaps a few of them would be able to escape. One was an Arisseddine, my father’s great-great-grandfather.

  The Druze attacked at night. Almost all of them were killed. Khoury saw a couple of riderless stallions trotting away from the battle and caught up to them and took their reins. Beneath the belly of one of the horses, a badly injured Arisseddine was holding on for dear life. Khoury unsheathed his sword for the first time, handed it to the rebel, and sent him on his way.

  Their descendants were
married one hundred and eighteen years later.

  One day, a man walked into the diwan saying, “I have been victimized, O Prince of believers. I have been violated. Redeem my honor, my lord, I beg of you.” Baybars asked the man to tell him the story. “I am a merchant from Syria, and every year I travel to Egypt to trade. Usually, I avoid al-Areesh, because King Franjeel demands high toll taxes, as if the roads belonged to him and his foreign friends. This year, I was carrying perishables and had to travel the shortest route. I set money aside for the unfair toll, but when my caravan passed by al-Areesh, the king’s army confiscated my entire merchandise, including my camels, my horses, and my voluptuous Kazak slave, whom I had just bought only two days earlier. It is not fair.”

  The story angered Baybars, who said, “I am not happy with these alien kings who do not respect treaties that they themselves forced upon us. Al-Areesh is Egypt. It is time we reclaimed our city. Prepare the armies.”

  “No, no, no, no,” cried Emir Othman, and Layla said, “Of course I am coming.”

  In the Crusader fort of al-Areesh, King Franjeel berated Arbusto. “Were it not for your holy robes, I would cut off your head right now. This is your fault. You tempted me with riches, and now Baybars the barbarian is coming for me.”

  The unperturbed Arbusto replied, “Do not fret. You know this fort is impenetrable. Shut the gates and I will take care of the rest. I will call on the other coastal kings for help. I will speak first to the king of Askalan. Hold the fort and the slave army will be defeated.”

  “I will come with you,” announced the cowardly king. “I will leave the commander of the fort in charge. Shut the gates.”

  “There,” said Aydmur, pointing to the offending edifice a short distance away. “The fort of al-Areesh is secure and sturdy. Unless we get into the fort, we will lose many men. So far, no general has discovered a way of breaking into the fort of al-Areesh.”

  “I am tired of this endless equestrian journey,” announced Layla. “Let us rest. When night falls, I will open the gates.” She dismounted from her mare and rubbed her sore behind. “I will give you a signal with my torch when it is accomplished. I have been talking to my people on the inside. It will not be difficult.”

  “People on the inside?” Othman glared at his wife. “You will not be going. I will not allow it. No wife of mine opens gates. I will open them.”

  That evening, with the help of his wife, Othman dressed in a priest’s robe, combed his hair in Arbusto’s manner, held a jingling censer in his hand, and walked to the gates. The guards, believing he was Arbusto, rushed to let him in. They bowed before him. Othman extended his hand and waited until each man had kissed it. “I am grateful for such a courteous reception,” he said. “In return, I offer my blessings.” He lit the incense—myrrh mixed with opium—and said, “Inhale my blessings, deeper and deeper.” Soon the guards were traveling on a different plane. Othman opened the gate and signaled the slave army. The fort of al-Areesh was vanquished before its defenders realized they were being attacked.

  “Well done,” Layla told Othman, and Harhash said, “You inspire him to new heights.”

  “The coward Franjeel is not here,” huffed Baybars, “and neither is Arbusto.”

  “They left for Askalan,” Layla said. “They meant to raise an army to assail us while we laid siege to al-Areesh.”

  “Their plan was foiled,” said Aydmur, “and the next will fail.”

  “While you raze this fort,” said Layla, “I will ride ahead and uncover their next plan.”

  “No, no, no, no, no.” Othman stomped his foot.

  My mother’s first admirer was her second cousin Karim—his father and her deceased mother were first cousins. She was fifteen and enrolled at a Carmelite boarding school when he decided that she would make him a suitable wife. Karim had everything going for him, or at least he seemed to think so. He was twenty-three, the eldest son of a prosperous man, and had surprised everyone, himself most of all, by passing the baccalaureate. And since he graduated high school, his father began to groom him for a career in Lebanese politics.

  He met my mother at a family gathering. My mother swore she didn’t say a word to him and he never noticed. She was busy eating while he regaled her with his stories and future plans. Since she proved to be a first-rate listener, Karim began to woo her in earnest by sending a single red rose and a box of Harlequin chocolates stuffed with almonds to her school every Wednesday. She didn’t care for him one way or the other, but her girlfriends loved the chocolates.

  He wrote to her father in Brussels, who in turn wrote to my mother wondering what was going on. My mother put his mind at ease by saying she had no intention of marrying before getting a university degree. The young man courted my mother for four and a half months, during which she barely had to utter a single syllable. He visited her once and brought her a potted succulent, an asclepiad that had impressed him mightily. It was after his remarkable second visit that he received a call from Brussels telling him that my mother never wanted to see his face again, under any circumstances. It wasn’t the asclepiad.

  He had arrived for the second visit, their third meeting, in his best gabardine suit, his mustache soldered with wax, his face flushed with pride. He showed my mother off to the woman accompanying him, a lady in her thirties, whom he introduced as his father’s first cousin’s young wife, a new aunt. “Isn’t she pretty?” he said of my mother. “And she’s smart, too. She’ll finish school.” My mother was about to tell him that she didn’t wish to be anyone’s exhibit, to be shown off like some antique carpet or fine embroidery, when she suddenly realized that she was the one he was trying to impress. The gloating smile, the studied placement of the hand around his aunt’s waist, and the forced coziness were meant to convey to the young beloved that her suitor was a man of the world, a man who had mistresses, a man who was desired. He wasn’t just anybody. He wanted to impart the idea that she, too, could aspire to be special because someone special wanted her.

  My mother called her father. Karim stopped sending her Harlequin chocolates stuffed with almonds. Her girlfriends were miffed, and one actually wondered aloud why my mother couldn’t have waited till the end of term to break her suitor’s heart.

  “I would have preferred to stay and watch the fort being pulverized,” Harhash said. “It is not as if one can witness total destruction every day.”

  “Be quiet,” Othman said. “A friend would not complain. A good friend would support a man whose wife keeps shaming him in public. A good man would not concern himself with a fort when it is his friend’s honor that is being pulverized.”

  “Will one of you wake me when this tired diatribe is over?” Layla said. “My husband is beginning to sound like a muezzin, repeating the same words five times a day. Shame, if you ask me. Whereas the blind muezzins are uniformly dull, my husband was once interesting, but he has been reduced to a single-whine conversationalist.”

  After twilight, Layla knocked on the gate of Askalan. “Who’s there?” asked a voice.

  “A luscious dove,” answered Layla.

  The gatekeeper slid open the peek hole, and his mouselike face appeared in the aperture. “The luscious doves have repented and retired. Everyone knows that.”

  “Do I look retired to your ugly eyes?”

  “I have never seen a luscious dove before. Why should I believe you? Why would a luscious dove come to this city? I think—”

  Quicker than the strike of an asp, Layla’s hand slipped through the viewer. Her fingers poked the gatekeeper’s eyes, squeezed his nose, and jerked his face forward, slamming it into the gate. She held on to the gatekeeper’s nose, and he screeched, “Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. I believe you. I will open the face—I mean the gate. I will open the gate. I swear.”

  The three travelers entered the city. Layla spoke to the gatekeeper. “These two men are my personal physicians. Inform the working women of the city that I have arrived, and that I expect them to pay their respects in the morning.�
�� The gatekeeper’s eyes were filled with lust and desire. She used only her third-best smile on him. “We need a place to sleep. Lead the way, and make sure my mare is fed and groomed tonight.”

  Baybars and his slave army raised the kingdom’s flags outside Askalan. One of the African warriors asked permission to assume the duties of crier. “Hear me, foreigners,” the African bellowed. “The king of kings has arrived, and he demands your capitulation. Inform Brigitte, the usurper king of this city, that he is to abdicate. Surrender all and we will allow you to return to your countries. Resist and we will drop these walls upon your heads. Give up your arms or this fort will become a mausoleum interring your bodies for all time.”

  “Well said,” Baybars cheered, and Aydmur added, “I am in awe.”

  “I am dying, Egypt, dying of boredom,” cried Layla from the city’s parapet. “Will you not come in and conquer already?” As the gigantic metal gate slowly lifted, Othman appeared at the entrance, gesturing for the mighty army to invade. Baybars’s army entered Askalan, whose soldiers were surprised to find themselves fighting within the city walls. Swords hit their marks, and maces descended upon the heads of infidels, and Askalan fell quickly.

  Baybars asked Othman where Arbusto and the kings were, and Othman said, “We are late. Arbusto decided to travel to King Diafil of Jaffa and ask for his assistance. King Franjeel of al-Areesh told King Brigitte about the size of our army, and both decided to join Arbusto in Jaffa.”

  The victorious King Baybars said, “After razing this fort, we will head to Jaffa, the den of sin.” And Othman asked his wife, “Does that mean we ride ahead?”

  The beautiful city of Jaffa had three glorious lighthouses, three anxious kings—Franjeel, Brigitte, and Diafil—three lust-stricken guards at the eastern gate swearing unwavering fealty to the luscious dove, but no Arbusto, who had left by sea, allegedly to fetch reinforcements from Europe. As the three kings prepared for a siege of their city, Layla prepared the three porters at the gate. “No, no, no,” she said. “Touch without permission and you lose the offending hand. I will come back one evening soon, and when I do, you will open the gate when I tell you. You will do whatever it is I tell you. Is that understood?”