The Hakawati

by Rabih Alameddine

  Every year, pilgrims at the hajj remember the story of Hagar and her baby. They arrive from all over the world to worship, to run between the two hills, Safa and Marwa, praying that God will provide for them the same way He provided for Hagar and Ishmael.

  The baby didn’t stop crying. Poor Anahid fed him, carried him. Zovik carried him. Even the doctor’s wife. No change. Finally, the doctor had had it. He walked in on Zovik, who was trying to coo the baby quiet. “Give him to me,” he scowled.

  Hesitating, but not daring to show reluctance, Zovik handed the hakawati to his furious father. The hakawati stopped crying the instant his father’s hands touched him.

  The silence was shocking. The hakawati fell asleep in his father’s arms. The doctor, unable to look at anything but his baby, stood rooted to the spot, mouth open, eyebrows raised like arches under Roman bridges. He remained there until his wife called him. For the first time, the doctor told his evening story with a baby in his arms.

  “From touch to touch,” Zovik whispered to Poor Anahid. “From touch to touch.”

  Three angels came to visit Abraham on his ninety-ninth birthday. Sarah invited them into the tent and crouched outside, listening to their every word. One of the angels informed Abraham that God was happy with him. “God will increase the size of your family,” the angels said. “By your next birthday, your wife, Sarah, will deliver a son.”

  Everyone in the tent heard Sarah’s cackling laugh. She tried to control herself, but the idea of being pregnant in her nineties was hilarious. All of a sudden, she was laughing, her body shaking, though no sound escaped her lips. She clutched her throat. She stood up, ran into the tent.

  “You will not have a voice until your child is born,” the angels said.

  Outside, on the other side of the tent, Hagar snickered silently.

  “The doctor built a bed for me,” my grandfather told me. “You see, he was a carpenter first, then a deacon, then a doctor. He spent hours making the bed, carved each leg by hand, with high sides so I wouldn’t fall. On each of the four corners, he carved a horse’s head. He ordered the bolts and screws all the way from England. The wood was local oak, and he stained it a dark brown. I had the most beautiful bed in the house. I slept in it even when I was much too big. I would lie with my legs tilted up on the side.”

  Poor Anahid watched the doctor work on the bed. She couldn’t keep still. The baby nestled in the doctor’s shoulder satchel. As long as he was in the doctor’s vicinity, the baby was as calm as the Mediterranean in early summer.

  “Why are you hovering, Anahid?” the doctor asked. “Is there something you need?”

  “I suggest that we not use straw,” Poor Anahid said.

  My mother’s long eyelashes fluttered when she slept. It would be wrong to assume you could get away with anything when she first fell asleep: the slightest movement was enough to wake her. When I put my finger close to her eyelashes so I could know what they felt like, she opened her eyes. I closed mine, pretended to be dozing. “Are you asleep?” she asked.

  “Everybody is asleep,” I said with eyes closed, “but Jardown is awake.”

  “Jardown will get a spanking and will have to sleep in his own bed if he’s not asleep very soon.”

  • • •

  “The doctor wasn’t a good storyteller,” my grandfather said. “Well, he wasn’t bad, but he certainly didn’t have the gift. And he was English after all.”

  “What was wrong with his stories?”

  “They were just common. He always told his favorite stories from the Bible. Stories with obvious moral lessons are like eels in a wooden crate. They slither over and under each other, but never leave the tub. In my day, I told some of the same stories, but mine soared. His problem was that he believed. Belief is the enemy of a storyteller.”

  “But he told a story every evening after dinner, and all came to listen to him.”

  “Pfflt.” He waved his hand and lit another cigarette. “I didn’t say all came to listen. All the foreigners did. At the time, there were no hotels or inns or anything like that in Urfa, so the foreign travelers stayed with the doctor. Those foreigners were always impressed with the doctor’s storytelling. They didn’t know any better. If they spoke Turkish, they could have gone to the café in the Eyyubiye neighborhood and listened to a good hakawati. If they spoke Kurdish, they might have had to ride for an hour south, because the best hakawati in the region was in a village up Damlacik Mountain. And the Armenian storytellers, my God, they were all over. But the doctor never listened to any of them, and neither did anyone who stayed at the house. Before I knew any better, I enjoyed the doctor’s stories. But then he kept repeating the same ones over and over. No imagination. And heaven forbid, if he should forget something, his wife was right there to correct him. Who needs that? I wish someone had told me about what went on outside the doctor’s puny realm. I had to find out on my own—the hakawatis, the pigeon wars, the traditions—I discovered it all by chance. Had the doctor’s wife not been wicked, I might never have seen the world, and you certainly wouldn’t have been born—now, would you?”

  When he left to pee, I ran back to the table, climbed up the chair to the tabletop, and tried to find Urfa again, tried to find the mountain where the best storyteller was.

  “You’re so ugly,” Ishmael told Isaac, “and you sure have the biggest nose I’ve ever seen.” The fourteen-year-old laughed, and in his arms, baby Isaac smiled with him. It was the baby’s weaning ceremony.

  Sarah took her husband aside. “Look. He mocks my son. I will not have it. The slave’s son deems himself superior. Cast him out, I tell you. Cast them both out.”

  Abraham tried to reason with his wife. They had sent Hagar and Ishmael away once before. It was not right. It was not fair.

  “Cast them out again, and this time don’t go back for them.”

  And Abraham sent his son away, never to see him again, father and son separate for eternity. To quell the pain in his heart, Abraham tried to forget his elder boy, distracted himself with extra chores and trivial whatnots, but the boy never forgot his father. When Abraham died, Ishmael returned to bury him. Ishmael and Isaac buried their father in the Cave of Machpelah, in the field that Abraham had purchased from the Hittites.

  “This is now the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron,” my grandfather said, as his finger settled on the fading map upon the rickety table, “where the sons of Sarah are still trying to cast out the sons of Hagar.”

  “Tell me the story of Abraham sacrificing Ishmael on the mountain.”

  “No, I already told you that one. It’s common, too common. Boring, even. It was the doctor’s favorite story, and he told it so badly. It’s so hackneyed and clichéd. A story needs to be bewitching.”

  Once, not too long ago, there was a little boy, about the same age as you, who lived with his family in a small village, not unlike this one, not too far from here. The family did not have much money. The father was a stonemason, the mother looked after the house, cooked delicious meals. All the children had their own chores to do. Our boy was the family’s shepherd.

  Every morning, he would take the sheep out to pasture. He watched them graze, made sure they did not wander, and protected them from foxes, wolves, and marauding hyenas. The sheep liked him and trusted him, so they didn’t stray far from our boy. His job became easy, and every day he had time to play. At first, he played with sticks and stones: he made a sheep pen by staking twigs in four corners; small stones were his sheep. But then the little lambs came into his make-believe pen, clamoring for his attention. So he stopped playing with sticks and stones and became one of the lambs, jumped with them, bent down and pretended to chew on the wild-lavender bushes, bleated with them.

  When he returned home that evening, he wished he were a lamb because he had had fun playing. Before he went to sleep, he heard his parents arguing about money. “We have so many mouths to feed,” the mother said. “How can we find enough for all of them?”

  “We
have the sheep,” the father said. “We have some money. I am working. We’ll survive. We have for generations.”

  But they kept on arguing, and the boy slept fitfully.

  The following day, he and the lambs played again, watched over by the ewes. The boy and the lambs ran and jumped and jostled each other. He returned home very happy, but when he opened the door to tell his parents all about his day, he found them arguing.

  “How could you have promised that?” the mother asked. “We don’t have enough to feed our children, and now you want to have a feast? Have you no conscience? Don’t you understand how bad our situation is?”

  “How dare you?” the father yelled at the mother. “This is the bey we’re talking about. It’s an honor. When he comes here, the house will be blessed. I don’t understand how you can think of not wanting him in your home. Most people would die for the opportunity.”

  The mother whispered, “What has the bey done for my family?”

  The father slapped the mother. The boy ran into his room.

  Before he fell asleep, our boy prayed. He wished he were a lamb and could play all day without any worries. He wished his family could be happy. He wished that he could be the one to provide them with happiness. He loved his family so much. He woke up the next day in the sheep pen. He looked around and saw all his friends, the other lambs, happy that he was in their midst, finally one of them. They bleated in joy. All of them pranced up and down.

  The father and mother came out of the house together and walked toward the pen.

  “Danger, danger,” said the eldest ewe. “The evil ones are here.”

  “No, no,” said our boy. “They are not evil. They are my family.”

  “When those two show up together,” another sheep said, “one of us disappears.”

  The father and mother came into the pen. They tried to figure which lamb to pick.

  “Look at me,” the boy yelled. “Look at me. Look at me.”

  “This one,” the mother said. “He is noisy.”

  “He looks plump and juicy,” the father added. He placed the noose around his boy’s head and walked him out of the pen.

  “The poor lamb,” the eldest ewe said as the sheep watched him being taken away.

  “Daddy, Daddy,” the little lamb said. “I’m a lamb now. Isn’t this a miracle?”

  And his father took out the knife and slit his throat.

  And the little lamb watched his own blood leave him.

  And his father cut off his head.

  And his father hung him from his ankles to drain him.

  And his mother began to skin him with her own hands. She would lift a small part of his skin and punch between the skin and body, lift, punch, lift, punch, until she finally cut the last attached skin at his ankles. And she chopped off his feet and hands. And she took out all his insides. And his mother cooked him over a slow-burning fire.

  His father waited. His mother cooked. His brothers helped set up the large table under the giant oak. His sisters cleaned the house and cleaned and cleaned. They got dressed in all the fineries. By lunchtime, they were lined up waiting. The mother wondered where our boy was. His brothers suggested he must be daydreaming somewhere as usual. He had gotten out of doing the chores, that sneaky brat. The family waited and waited and waited. Finally, the mayor arrived and said that the bey had decided not to come to the village.

  The lamb was placed in the middle of the table. The whole family salivated.

  “You outdid yourself,” the father told the mother.

  “This lamb was particularly succulent,” the mother said.

  And the boy felt his father tear into him.

  “Pass your plates, children,” the mother said. “We’ll get to have a great meal for a change.”

  And the boy felt his brothers bite into his flesh. He felt his sisters chew sumptuous pieces of him.

  “This tastes so good,” his brothers said.

  “The best meal we’ve ever had,” his sisters said.

  And the mother brought out his stomach. His siblings fought over his intestines.

  “You take this, my dear,” his father told his mother. “I know you love it.”

  “And you take this, my dear,” his mother told his father, “for I know you love it.”

  “And I am happy,” said the father.

  “And I am happy,” said the mother.

  And the boy felt his mother bite into his testicles.

  And the boy felt his father swallow a piece of his heart.

  And the boy was happy.

  Three

  Fatima dressed for her entrance to the city. She covered her hair with a scarf of sheer red silk, around her forehead a chain of gold. Her neck held beads of lapis lazuli, her right breast supported a small brooch of gems, seven rings of silver encircled her left arm. She tightened the twined belt around her waist and made sure it held the sword firm. She wore her heavy robe, which concealed everything underneath.

  It was only after she finished dressing that Jawad came out of Khayal’s tent. Embarrassed to have been discovered, he blushed, tried to speak, but ended up stuttering.

  “I see you have made your choice,” she said. “I am pleased. I grew to like our suitor and would have been troubled had we been forced to send him away.”

  And our three travelers entered the gates of Alexandria. Bast’s house was at the northern edge of the city, along an estuary. The healer stood outside, throwing morsels into the water. Fish surfaced, mouths open, snatching the bread before it hit.

  “I had expected you earlier,” Bast said without turning, still feeding her pets.

  “We were delayed,” Fatima said.

  “And so expertly disposed of. Well handled, if risky, I must say. Not all obstacles will be as easily surmountable. More will be asked of you.” When she ran out of bread, she brushed off her hands and turned around. “You are more beautiful than I expected, and it is to be hoped you will become more beautiful still. Follow me, and leave the lovers outside. You will be separated soon, and they should not hear my counsel.”

  “Why not?” Khayal asked, but the heedless healer had already begun walking toward her house.

  “Can we trust her?” Jawad asked.

  Fatima raised her left hand to quiet them and followed the healer into her domain.

  “Afreet-Jehanam your plaything?” Bast asked. “That is quite a boast. Sit. Sit.” She pointed in the general direction of an area where various possibilities for seating existed. A pale fire burned in the chimney but added no heat, since it was cold neither outside nor in.

  “Men are gullible.”

  “True. It is also true that a boast is dangerous. One always ends up paying its price. Now, my dear, what have you brought me?”

  “A lock of my mistress’s hair. She would like to give birth to a healthy and wise son.”

  Puzzled, the healer shook her head. “But why did you bring a lock of the woman’s hair? That is not of much use. It is the father who determines the gender of his offspring, the mother its traits. I would need a lock of his hair to understand the issue, and hers would have provided the solution. You should have known that. Do not look so troubled, my dear. I would not return a resourceful woman empty-handed, for I, too, am resourceful.” She stretched on her toes, rummaged through the small cabinets hanging from the ceiling. “I have something that I have not used in a long time.” She bent down behind a table, and Fatima could no longer see her, but she heard the sound of heavy objects being dragged along the floor, and then the sharp meow of a cat as it scurried out. “Oh, Cleopatra, how could I know you were lying there? You have to tell me these things.” The healer resurfaced, fully erect now. Her chin settled on her hand, and her eyes focused on the ceiling. “I have to remember where I put it. Ah, of course, how stupid of me.” She picked up a long wooden spoon and one of the glass vials on the table and walked over to Fatima. “Please stand up, my dear.”

  Bast knocked the worn cushion off the barrel Fatima had
been sitting on and removed the lid. She stirred the contents with the spoon and dropped the vial into the barrel. “Your salvation,” the healer said, raising the vial, which was now filled with an amber liquid. “Any woman who drinks this within seven hours after intercourse will conceive a healthy male child. No guarantee on other qualities, though—the parents have to take care of those.” She pushed a cork stopper into the vial and put her hand out. From under her breast, Fatima took out a gold dinar and gave it to her.

  “No haggling?” Bast asked.

  Fatima raised her eyebrows for the Arabic “no.”

  “Pity. And would you seek any further advice?”

  “I cannot seek a husband, my lady,” Fatima replied, “for I am but a slave, and I do not wish for one at this time.”

  “Ah, husbands are what most seek in coming to me. Pardon me, but I must mollify my poor Cleopatra or she will allow me no sleep tonight.” Bast walked away and stopped. “Your humility belies an arrogance, Sitt Fatima, but no matter, you will soon grow wiser. You should have asked for my counsel, but I will give it anyway. Rise, Fatima, and leave quickly. Time is of the essence. What you have to face, you must face alone, or others will be hurt. Leave your home city. It is not time for you to be back here. You will not be a slave for long if you make the correct choices, and the correct choices are always the most difficult ones.” She took a deep breath, lowered her head, stared at the floor, then looked back at Fatima, who no longer recognized the woman in front of her. The healer’s hair began to unfurl, and the air surrounding her head began to shimmer and sparkle. “Show me your hand,” Bast commanded. Fatima stepped toward her, but the healer held her palm out. “Stop. Show me your palm.” Fatima raised the palm of her left hand, and Bast recoiled. “Fatima’s hand. Leave now, quickly, and have courage.”