The Hakawati

by Rabih Alameddine

  That night, my grandmother berated her husband. How would they be able to support themselves? They still had an unmarried daughter. The bey gave my grandfather two days of rest before calling him to the mansion. “Tell me a story,” the bey commanded, and my grandfather did. “You have served my family well,” the bey said, and resumed paying him his weekly salary. And my grandfather remained at his master’s beck and call until the day he died—my grandfather, that is, not the bey, for when the master dies his son takes over his possessions.

  The al-Kharrat Corporation was birthed officially in 1955. Like most newborns, it began life small and odd-looking. My father had asked his old Iraqi school friend Khaled Mathaher, an up-and-coming businessman—or, as Uncle Jihad used to call himself when he started out, a businessboy—for advice. The reply had come in a letter from Baghdad that became a family keepsake. “Automobiles!” it shouted. “Sell automobiles. Cars are the future.” The Mathaher family had a Renault dealership in Baghdad, and Khaled would help my father obtain one for Lebanon. And the story began.

  Listening to the advice of my grandmother and not my grandfather, my father registered the corporation as a family business, with the four brothers, Wajih, Halim, Farid, and Jihad, as partners. The fact that my father listened to his mother and not his father wasn’t surprising—my father didn’t get along with his father, was embarrassed by him, and rarely if ever listened to him. He should have on this occasion, because my grandfather’s counsel proved to be prescient. My grandfather told my father that his two older brothers shouldn’t be part of the corporation. My father could hire them or help them, but if they were partners, he and Uncle Jihad would have to work around their incompetence for years to follow. My father not only ignored the advice, he convinced Uncle Jihad that Uncle Wajih should be president of the company, since he was the eldest. My grandmother brimmed with joy as she saw her family reunite.

  My great-uncle Maan offered his two charges a final gift, two small plots of land in Beirut. One would become the family workplace, the first dealership, and the other the family home, the building that would be erected not long after as one of the pledges my father made my mother if she married him. The army of angels, friends of my father and Uncle Jihad, provided loans—with no interest, of course. The dealership building was one shoddily built room that barely had space for six clean desks. In its lot, the company opened its doors with three cars, which were sold the first day. “A bang,” Uncle Jihad used to say. “We opened with a bang.”

  Within a year, they added the Fiat dealership, and then the exclusive Arab-world Toyota and Datsun dealership a few years later. On the day the Japanese contracts were signed, my father and Uncle Jihad bought their first custom-made Brioni suits, and my mother received a diamond necklace whose price no one talked about publicly.

  My father did accept my grandfather’s advice on one thing, the poetic choice. Yes, my mother was seduced with poetry. My mother was a romantic but not a fool. In the two years during which my father pursued her, after he had declared his intentions to Uncle Jihad and her, she had made a point of objectively gauging whether he would make her a good husband. She studied him, found out almost everything there was to know about him: where his career was going, how he treated his family, his level of education or lack thereof, his womanizing. She claimed to have kept a notebook of checks and balances. She tested him. She misbehaved in public to observe his reaction. She made him wait when he picked her up. She interviewed him endlessly.

  For his part, my father interviewed Uncle Jihad. What would she like? He never bought flowers that weren’t approved by my uncle. My mother kept no secrets from Uncle Jihad, and she soon found out that he kept none from my father. My mother would point out a wonderful dress to Uncle Jihad, and the next day a package would arrive at her house. My father knew who her favorite singers were, what her favorite food was, and of course, who her favorite poets were. My father sent her poems, and my mother adored that. He sent her poetry she knew well. Whether it was Rilke, Dickinson, or Barrett Browning, she knew the Westerners. She loved the old Arabs, al-Mutanabbi or the Muallaqat—Amru al-Qais and Zuhair in particular. My father worked hard.

  One day, my grandmother asked him when he intended to marry, and he told her about my mother even though she hadn’t consented to marry him yet. He confessed his entire seduction scheme. And my grandfather, in his usual obstreperous manner, interrupted, “But you’re no poet.” When no one understood what he meant, he elaborated. “Only a poet can sing a familiar poem and make it sound as if it has never been uttered before. Only a hakawati can bewitch with a tale twice-told. You have to dazzle her with something she doesn’t know, a poet like Saadi. Lovers flock to lesser poets, but few are better than him.”

  When my grandfather recited some lines from Saadi, my father wasn’t impressed, but later, when my mother sat him down to talk, he could come up with nothing else.

  “I know you could make me happy,” she said. “I know you would take care of me, but we’re such different people. That could be hell for the both of us.”

  And my father replied, “It is better to burn with you in hell than to be in paradise with another. The scent of onions from a beautiful mouth is more fragrant than that of a rose held by an ugly hand.” Stunned, my mother searched for a translation of Saadi seemingly forever. He became one of her favorites. Even on her deathbed, she quoted him to the nurses.

  My mother agreed to marry my father if he pledged three things: to become more successful, to buy her a better home, and to stop his womanizing. Two out of three.

  Back in Cairo, Othman lay on the sofa and admired his wife as she undressed. By the light of a dozen candles, she rubbed a concoction of olive oil and verbena onto her arms. Othman said, “I am pleased that bedtime modesty is not something you insist upon.”

  She raised her gaze slowly, looked into his eyes to gauge his meaning, but he lowered his quickly in embarrassment. Though she returned to applying the lotion, pretending nonchalance, they knew each other too well. He saw her ears were pricked. “I have been thinking,” he said.

  In the glow of candles, she massaged the lotion onto the two expansive worlds of her breasts. She discreetly made sure he had the appropriate reaction before moving to her neck. He blinked rapidly. “I have been thinking that we cannot go on like this. A pre-emptive strike is needed.” He tried to clear his retinas of the delicious impression, tried to clean up his mind so he could complete a lucid thought. “I have been remiss, my wife. I have not been myself lately. Arbusto has been allowed to roam free, creating trouble, for much too long. He is my enemy, and I have not dealt with him. It is time.”

  “Yes, he is a rogue worthy of your time.”

  “I will capture him and drag him on his knees before the king.”

  “A most noble goal, to be sure.”

  “Will you help me?”

  She did not look up from the task at hand, but it was of no avail. He had seen surprise and delight flush her face. “You never have to ask, my husband.”

  “I want to hunt the villain, who must be causing trouble somewhere in the coastal cities. We will not return to Cairo without Arbusto enchained and on a leash.”

  “We?”

  “I need your help.” He smiled at his wife. “You do have so many leashes.”

  “You and I?”

  “Partners.”

  “And my husband’s enemies will rue the day they were born.”

  Naked, she climbed atop Othman, and kissed him. “Say it.”

  “We leave tomorrow,” he said, laughing.

  She kissed him again. “Say it.”

  “We should start packing.” His eyes sparkled like diamonds along a riverbed.

  She kissed him once more. “Say it.”

  “You are my wife.” He took a deep breath and returned her kiss. “I would rather live for eternity as your slave than spend a single moment without you.”

  Seventeen

  The first bullet bored through the pa
ssenger door of one of the dealership’s cars, a blue Toyota, in April 1976. The war—or “skirmishes,” as everyone called it then—had begun a year earlier, but the company still hadn’t been severely affected, since its customers, like the rest of the Lebanese, foolishly assumed that the trouble wouldn’t last long, the Palestinians and the militias involved were simply letting off steam. As a matter of fact, some in the family considered the war further proof of the blessed luck of the corporation and my father’s inspired business acumen. Hadn’t my worrywart father bought insurance coverage for almost every conceivable disaster, including war? Blind luck wasn’t responsible for this decision. My father had imagined that he would one day be so successful that the Israelis would blow up his company in a fit of pique. (They actually did, in 1982, but it wasn’t in a fit of pique.) Uncle Jihad drove the blue Toyota home as a keepsake. Insurance would pay for it.

  Until the day of his death in 1974, Uncle Wajih was president of the corporation, with the problems predicted by my grandfather. Uncle Halim was not a problem, though. He worked for the company from the beginning, did whatever he was asked, and didn’t care to make decisions. As a brother and a full partner, he was included in most discussions and was happy to go along with whatever was happening. He bragged to anyone who listened that he was the company’s dynamo, but even he didn’t believe himself. Uncle Wajih, on the other hand, believed himself. My father and Uncle Jihad must have forgotten to mention he was supposed to be president in name only.

  The bigger the company grew, the bigger his head. By the seventies, when the company was outselling all other Lebanese dealerships combined, he had become so arrogant in his dealings with strangers as to be unbearable. Uncle Jihad and my father had to work around him. He was agreeable most of the time, but every now and then, he made sure to stand against his younger brothers to prove his worth. My father and Uncle Jihad had to find ways of outmaneuvering him. In the early days, they sought my grandmother’s intervention. They had to drive up to the village and persuade her to drive down with them and talk to her eldest.

  When the Japanese arrived, all were ecstatic except for Uncle Wajih. In order to raise the money to sign the Japanese contract, the company had to sell its rights to Fiat. He decided to put his foot down and refused to budge. He even insulted the Japanese executive visiting Beirut. My grandmother wasn’t able to persuade him to change his mind. Uncle Wajih insulted her as well, by suggesting that she knew nothing about the corporate world. Of course, my grandmother was horrified. Everyone assumed Aunt Wasila was pulling his strings. Aunt Samia swore it was so. No brother of hers would ever insult his mother unless his wife put him up to it.

  At their wits’ end, Uncle Jihad and my father sought Aunt Wasila’s help. They explained the situation and were able to convince her easily. She took care of the rest. Uncle Wajih left the office for home, and returned the following morning to yell at everyone to work harder so they wouldn’t wreck his Japanese contract.

  While Uncle Wajih was alive, not one Lebanese—or Arab, for that matter—ever thought twice about having an incompetent man as president of a successful family company. Whenever buyers or suppliers needed anything, they asked Uncle Jihad or my father. It was the non-Lebanese who had trouble understanding. The baffled foreigners considered the time spent listening to Uncle Wajih a waste.

  The business went from success to success under my father and Uncle Jihad. It would take a couple of years of war for the Lebanese division of the company to grind to a temporary halt, but even then there was hardly a financial ripple, because the company had dealerships doing good business in twelve other countries. There was more than a ripple emotionally, though, since by then the Lebanese dealership was essential to how my family defined itself.

  It was in 1977, after the death of Uncle Jihad, that the company began to lose focus. His loss was demoralizing, and particularly devastating to my father, who would never really care about the company again. Neither he nor Uncle Jihad had prepared anyone to take over. After all, in 1977, my father was only forty-seven. No one else could do his job, so he showed up at the office when the bombs took a rest, but he didn’t do much.

  Again, however, the corporation was blessed. Ten days after my sister’s wedding, when Lina finally grasped that her life wasn’t going to be anything like she’d imagined, that she was probably never going to see Elie again, nor did she want to, she decided to reinvent herself. She would get her first job. Pregnant and feeling slightly bloated, she showed up at the dealership and began her conquest. Within a couple of years, she was running the corporation.

  Othman, holding the reins of two horses, scanned the vast skies. “Where is he?” he asked his wife.

  “There.” She pointed toward the north. “You will see him as soon as he crosses below the white cloud.” The pigeon’s red color deepened under the cloud. The bird circled twice before landing on her hand. He cooed to his mate and entered his cage. “ ‘We have a destination,’ ” Layla announced, reading the pigeon’s message. “ ‘The nasty one is in Antioch.’ ” After receiving the message, the couple ran across an envoy from Aleppo carrying a letter to the sultan in Cairo. The messenger refused to divulge the content of the missive, even to an emir.

  “Trouble in Antioch?” Othman asked the messenger.

  “How did you know? The mayor of Aleppo is begging the king to send an army to help him fight King Fartakamous of Antioch, who is laying siege to Aleppo as we speak.”

  “Our army will soon be on the move,” Othman said to his wife. “Where do you think we should go, Aleppo or Antioch?”

  “Antioch. Combat is not the best use for our talents. Let us leave that to the warriors.”

  Othman and Layla entered Antioch easily. The city was almost empty—armyless, kingless, and Arbustoless. “Now to work,” Othman said.

  That evening, a pretty boy from Shiraz visited the couple. He stood by the door and bowed before Layla. “A luscious dove commands and I obey. I understand you seek information. This humble yellow rump is at your service.”

  Noticing Othman’s confusion, Layla explained, “ ‘Yellow rump’ is what unscrupulous men call the boys they abuse for pleasure, an insult referring to the use of saffron as lubricant. In some cities, the boys have begun to form cadres and are claiming the name.” She returned to the boy. “Sit, sit. Tell us what happened here.”

  The boy nodded and said, “The priest Arbusto tried to persuade our king to declare war upon the sultanate. Fartakamous declined, saying that the great sultan had been collecting Crusader kings like a child collects insects. He had no wish to be crushed.”

  “A wise king,” interjected Othman.

  “But not as wily as Arbusto, who befriended the king’s son, Kafrous, my master and owner. A few days ago, Arbusto accompanied Kafrous on a ride and returned bedraggled with a corpse. He claimed to have been attacked by a garrison from Aleppo. The king led an army to crush Aleppo while Arbusto went to get reinforcements from King Francis of Sis.”

  “For your help,” Layla said, “we will free you once our army liberates Antioch,” and she sent the boy on his way. “Let us be off to Sis.”

  Naturally, the great slave army defeated King Fartakamous of Antioch, and he joined his brethren, Kings Louis IX, Franjeel, Brigitte, and Diafil, as Baybars’s prisoners. And Baybars crushed the walls of Antioch. The hero of a thousand tales received another flowery letter from his friend Othman. “Lead your army to Sis,” it began, “and may its fort crumble upon your magnificent arrival. The mellifluous evil one convinced King Francis of the lie that the sultanate wished to murder the innocent monarchs. The gullible king shut the gates of Sis and declared war upon you. That was his last decree, for he soon found himself unable to forswear slumber. He will continue to sleep until your advent, because his wakefulness bores my charming wife. His guards have been searching the fort; they seem to have misplaced the king. My dutiful wife, and not I, will greet you and open the gates. The unhappy news is that Arbusto fled before our a
rrival, and therefore I have gone south to Tripoli. King Francis and a dozen of his sleeping officers await you with bated breath. Do hurry, for my wife wishes to rejoin me as quickly as possible.”

  A few weeks later, Layla and Harhash rode through the Lebanese mountains above Tripoli. As the city’s fort came into view below, twelve mean-looking riders blocked their way.

  “Usually, I kill my victims instantly and relieve the corpses of their possessions,” said the leader, “but I have never encountered beauty unprotected on these roads before. I could be persuaded to delay your death.”

  “Oh, how silly.” Layla unleashed her nail-studded whip, striking from nine paces away, and the brigand flew forward off his horse and landed dead at her horse’s hooves. She turned to one of his men, who looked less stunned than the rest. “What are you doing here?”

  “What? How did you recognize me? I am in disguise. I just infiltrated this group.”

  “Infiltrated?” asked one of the brigands, but that was the last word he uttered, for Othman struck him down. Harhash shook his head in confusion. “Why would you want to infiltrate an incompetent band of amateurs?”

  “Amateurs?” asked another of the brigands, but Layla had only to feign a whipping motion and the brigand turned and fled in terror, followed by his companions.

  “I had to,” Othman said. “Arbusto could not persuade King Bohemond of Tripoli to declare war, so he is recruiting brigands to cause trouble and force the sultan to attack. I hoped to come across Arbusto if I joined them. But why did you ride with my wife?”

  “She needed protection,” Harhash said. Layla and Othman stared at him. “Well, I was bored. One battle, two battles, they all begin to look the same. I prefer your adventure. I was crushed that you left Cairo without me. Shame. I thought I meant something to you; I thought I was your friend.”