The Hakawati

by Rabih Alameddine

  “She doesn’t have to know,” Lina said. “She may forget about us, and if she doesn’t, do we really have to eat it? Can’t we have good lamb for a change?”

  “You’re being mean. If anything is our tradition, it’s that we celebrate together, with Samia’s meal.”

  I walked to the glass sliding door, saw a sliver of the sun perched atop a building across the street. The newer building looked colossal next to the little house with rotted shutters, two incompatible siblings with different genes.

  The emir and his wife dragged Fatima into their private quarters to inquire about the cure. “The healer said it is about the stories,” Fatima said, “the tales you choose to tell. Your lordship likes romance, which is why you have twelve daughters. Girls like love stories, whereas boys love adventure stories. The next time you make love, make sure to tell an adventure story and not one of romance.”

  “But I love stories of unrequited love,” the emir said, “of exalted suffering. I love desire and the obstacles lovers have to overcome. I do not like tales of killing, maiming, and trying to prove who is stronger than whom. Those can be devastatingly boring.”

  “But adventure stories are the same as love stories,” his wife argued. “And no matter, you must tell me an adventure story tonight. It has been prescribed. This is so exciting. I will hear a new tale. Do not take offense, my dear, but your stories have been getting stale for a while, the buzzing of listless houseflies and not the bites of mosquitoes. I have cravings for adventure.”

  That night, after coitus, the emir’s wife demanded her tale. “No romance,” she said. “No star-crossed lovers. I want a story that will engage a different organ, not my heart.”

  “A sexual story, then,” the emir said.

  “No, I want death and destruction. I want virile heroes who overcome evil. At least one city must be destroyed. I want a son and you want a son.”

  “Virile heroes? How about faithful heroes? Wait. Wait. I know which story. I know now. Listen.” The emir began his story thus:

  In the name of God, the most compassionate, the merciful.

  Once, long before our age, the king of Egypt, ruler of the lands of Islam, was despondent because his realm was in disarray. The Crusaders thrived along the coast, behaved as if they owned the land. Corruption and perfidy dwelt in the hearts of the administrators of his realm. The foreigners were able to bribe, hoodwink, and deceive any official they chose. King Saleh wept in shame, for he knew that if he did not rule more wisely his great-grandfather Saladin, the great Kurdish hero who crushed the Crusaders and unified the lands, would not welcome him in paradise. King Saleh was watching that kingdom slowly crumble and putrefy.

  One night, the honest king had a discomfiting dream. He called on the intelligentsia of the land, the philosophers, the judges, and the poets. “Hear me. I want to know whether last night was a propitious night for dreams.”

  The wise men replied, “By all means, Your Majesty. Last night offered a clear vision. It was the seventeenth of the month. The moon was not blighted.”

  “I was stranded in a desert, defenseless, surrounded by a thousand hyenas. But dust rose, and there appeared seventy-five magnificent lions. The lions attacked the hyenas, and, in a fierce battle, the grand ones annihilated their enemies and cleared the desert of the vermin. What can this dream mean?”

  And the wise ones said, “Our lord, the hyenas are the nonbelievers and infidels who wish you harm. The lions are the righteous warriors who will protect you. It is imperative that you purchase seventy-five slaves to save the kingdom.”

  The king informed the most honest slave-trader in the city that he required seventy-five Muslim boys fit for a king and palace life, twenty-five of them to be Circassians, twenty-five Georgians, and twenty-five Azeris. The slaver said, “But, Your Majesty, we have nothing like this in the city. One would have to visit the big slave-markets closer to their lands for an order of that size. I have a keen eye for good slaves and a keener ear for differing tongues, but I am no longer the man who can go on this quest. The past years have been hard for my trade, and I have run up much debt. I would surely be arrested by my debtors on my travels, and my belongings, slaves or money, would be confiscated. I was famous and successful once, but my fortune drowned in the Red Sea and was overwhelmed in a sandstorm in the Sahara.”

  And the king’s astute vizier asked, “Master slaver, may I test your ear? From my tongue, can you gather my origin?”

  “Surely, my lord. Your father is a Turk and your mother is Moroccan.”

  The king knew he had the man for the job. He ordered his assistants to write a decree saying that the slaver worked for the king and should not be interfered with, and that any of his debts could be collected from the king’s treasury. He ordered his treasurer to pay the man the price of the slaves, and set aside compensation for the slaver’s labor to be paid upon delivery. He ordered his tailors to make the slaver a better outfit, and to bring forth seventy-six fancy slave-costumes. “For I have one more request,” the king said. “I want one more boy.” The king’s audience looked puzzled, for he seemed to be speaking mechanically, as if he were reciting a godly lesson. “The boy must be intelligent, strong, precocious, and witty. He must have memorized the Koran. A beautiful face he must have. A lion’s folds must appear between his eyes. A beauty mark, its color red, will be found on his left cheek. And he must answer to the name of Mahmoud. If you find him upon your travels, bring him to me, for he is the one.”

  “My dear Salwa,” my father called as my niece entered the hospital room, “why are you here? It’s a holiday. Shouldn’t you be relaxing at home with your husband?”

  “For heaven’s sake, where else will we be today?” Salwa said as her husband followed her in. My father’s face brightened at Hovik’s appearance. I wondered how long it would take my father to poke fun at his Armenianness. Not long. Hovik was fourth-generation Beiruti, and of the four languages he spoke he was least fluent in Armenian, but my father could never resist the temptation to mock his origins. My father always spoke to him in the grammatically incorrect Lebanese dialect the first immigrants were known for. And Hovik loved it.

  After helping Salwa to the recliner, he kissed my father and replied to his questions in the bad dialect, mixing the gender of nouns and chuckling. He looked so young in contrast to my father, whose cross-hatched wrinkles, those not thrown into shadow by his enormous nose, multiplied as he laughed.

  “Go home,” my father told him, using the feminine.

  “I am home,” he replied.

  The emir of Bursa heard there was a slaver in town in possession of a decree from King Saleh. The emir asked the slaver the reason for his arrival, and the slaver explained King Saleh’s request. The emir said, “You must be my guest for three days, to rest and recuperate. You can try the slave markets in the city, but I do not believe they will have all the boys you are looking for. After you have gathered your strength, you can try the markets farther north.” The slaver thanked the emir for his generosity.

  Upon finishing the morning prayers on his second day, the slaver heard a seductive sound. Was it the buzzing of early bees or the cooing of mourning doves? The faint sound flooded his heart. He followed it until he reached one of the palace’s courtyards. Around a shimmering pool sat boys reading the Koran, and the sound bewitched the slaver. An Azeri boy called Aydmur broke the spell by asking, “What can we do for you, my lord?” And the slaver said he was the guest of the emir and wondered who they were. “We are slaves to the most honorable emir. We are Circassians, Georgians, and Azeris. We are all Muslims. Every one of the seventy-five of us is the scion of a king, a famous warrior, or an emir, but fate has determined to make us owned.”

  At lunch, the slaver said to the emir, “My lord, when I told you yesterday that King Saleh wished to purchase a group of slaves, you replied that such a group could not be found in this city. Yet I found exactly what I was searching for in your courtyard.”

  Light left the
emir’s face, and dark settled in. “I said you could not find such a group for sale. Those boys belong to me, and I do not wish to part with them. They are to become my personal guards.”

  The slaver felt his heart failing, for he could not argue.

  That night, the emir was startled during a dream. He felt a hand touch his chest, and the face of fate appeared before him. The hand became a millstone, and his heart tightened. His breathing became labored. He could not muster the energy to twitch a muscle, and his soul wished to escape his body. And the face said, “Let my slaves go.” The millstone turned back into the hand, and the emir could breathe again. The face disintegrated, and as it disappeared it said, “Do not accept any payment less than seventy-five thousand dinars. Demand eighty-five thousand first, and settle for seventy-five.”

  Before they could wear their new clothes, the boys were sent to the baths. While washing, the slave Aydmur noticed a sickly boy by himself in a corner, having trouble breathing the steam-laden air. Aydmur, the Azeri, asked, “Stranger, may I be of assistance?”

  And the sickly boy said, “I am weak. My master is inside this room, and I must wait here even though the air is much too heavy.”

  Aydmur’s heart ached as he watched the boy suffer, and he began to cry. When the slaver asked Aydmur why he was sad, the slave said, “The sight of this boy’s suffering wounds my soul.” The slaver asked the boy his name, and the boy said, “My name is Mahmoud.” The slaver asked, “Do you know the Book of God?” and the boy replied, “I have memorized the Koran.”

  The boy had a beauty mark on his left cheek, but it was blue and not red. The slaver hesitated, then said, “You are a weak boy and not much use to anyone. Your owner must consider you a worthless burden.” And life rushed through Mahmoud’s face. “I am anything but worthless,” he said. The lion’s folds appeared at the bridge of his nose. “I am the son of kings.” The blue beauty mark turned red. “I am worth more than a rude man can afford.”

  “Then I thank God, the merciful, that my king is not a rude man,” the slaver said, and begged Mahmoud’s forgiveness. The slaver asked to see Mahmoud’s owner, a Persian, and paid him for the boy. He turned Mahmoud over to Aydmur and said, “Take your brother and wash him. When he is clean, dress him in this remaining suit. Our mission here is done. We will begin our journey home after the baths.”

  Aunt Nazek and her daughters arrived next. My father asked why they were not at home celebrating, but he couldn’t mask his glee. Aunt Nazek appeared surprised at his surprise. “We’re here to wish you a Happy Eid,” she told my father. “We’re all coming. I thought you knew that.”

  “I’m not here to wish him a happy holiday.” Her daughter May bent down to kiss my father. “I’m here for my quarter.”

  My father laughed. “If I had one, I would give it to no one but you.”

  “Well, then, you must have one.” May opened her purse, took out some coins, and handed them to my father.

  “By God. Where did you ever find them? I haven’t seen these in twenty years.”

  Fatima swept into the room, all pomp and perfume, hugged me, and climbed on the bed next to my father. Having lost her father at an early age, she treated mine as hers, and he adored her like no other. She wiggled one arm under him, hugged him, and laid her head on his pillows, scrunching her coiffed hair. My sister joined them on the other side. She took one of the quarters, held it up to the light, and examined it as if it were a perfect diamond instead of a coin that had lost any value after the old currency’s collapse. “You used to be able to buy so much with it,” she told her daughter. “Not like today, when you can’t buy anything for thousands of pounds.”

  “Don’t listen to your mother,” Fatima said. “Other people may have been able to buy things with a quarter, but it wasn’t your mother. She just likes to pretend.”

  “In my time,” my father added, “I used to be so proud if I earned a quarter in one day.”

  Aunt Samia knocked and walked in with her daughter, Little Mona.

  Lina held the quarter up. “Look.”

  “Oh my God.” Mona grinned. “Blessed Eid al-Adha. Look, Mother. A quarter. Do you remember those?”

  “Of course,” responded Aunt Samia. “Do you think I’m brain-dead? Where are the boys?” She looked left and right, as if her sons could be hiding in the corners. “Listen,” she said to Lina. “I already talked to the guard, so I don’t want any problems from you. It’s Eid al-Adha, and we’re all going to be here. But where is everybody?”

  At first, I didn’t know what she was talking about. I thought she was just being her usual odd self. Even my father, who understood her better than anyone, missed what she said.

  “Your boys are at your home, where they should be, waiting for the meal,” my father said. “They’re with their families, my dear.”

  “Don’t be stupid, brother. We can’t bring the kids here. This is a hospital. The in-laws are feeding them.” Tin Can’s wife came in and greeted everyone, then Mona’s husband. Hafez, his wife, and their eldest son followed. It was when Aunt Samia said, “I need to sit. I’m not going to eat standing up,” that my father understood. His face reddened. He looked ecstatic.

  The convoy entered Damascus, where its ruler, Issa al-Nasser, saw the Circassians and told the slaver, “Those boys look more like women than men,” and when he saw the others added, “These are a little better,” and when he saw Mahmoud, “This one is too ill. Why did you not discard him along the way and save yourself the burden?”

  In the morning, when they were leaving Damascus, one of the slaver’s debtors stopped him. “You owe me one hundred dinars,” the man said, “and I will not let you leave without payment.”

  The slaver said, “Brother, let me pass this one time. I am on an urgent mission for the king. I have a royal decree. You will get paid, but let it not be now.”

  “Then I will take this boy until I get paid.”

  Mahmoud’s new owner took him to his wife, whose name was Wasila, and who was the meanest of women, as mean as seven hives of African wasps. She examined the sickly lad. “He is not much of a boy, but he will do,” and she began to assign him the difficult jobs: carrying the mortar from one room to the next, cleaning the outhouse, filing the corns and bunions on her feet. Mahmoud grew sicker, yet Wasila would not relent. “He is going to die soon anyway,” she was heard to say, “so why should I not make use of his brief stay in the world?”

  And the boy ran away. He walked into the desert. That night, the twenty-seventh of Ramadan, the holy month, Mahmoud lay down on the sand to die. He had been ill for too long. He was hungry, thirsty, and alone. But the hours passed and he neither slept nor died. When the night was two-thirds spent, by God’s will the sky opened its doors and there appeared before Mahmoud’s young eyes a dome of light so pure. From the heavens the light shone upon the land. He saw everything before him for leagues and leagues. He heard no sound, no rooster crow, no dog bark, no tree rustle. This was the true Night of Fate. The boy stood on his feet with difficulty and announced upward, “Hear me, O Lord. I beg Your forgiveness and plead for Your mercy. I beseech Thee, Almighty, in honor of this sacred, propitious night, to grant me this wish. Make me a king. Let me rule Egypt and the Levant and the rest of the lands of Islam. Bless me with victories over Your enemies and mine. Between my shoulders, plant the resolve of forty men, and I will sow Your will upon this earth. Make me Your king. Make me Your servant. You are the grantor. You are the powerful. You are the merciful. There is no God but You.”

  And the boy was healed.

  The next morning, Mahmoud returned to his mistress, Wasila, and begged her forgiveness for running away. “Forgiveness is not mine to give,” Wasila said, “and neither is mercy, so do not ask.” She pulled the boy by the ear, dragged him to the backyard, and tied him to a pole. First she slapped his face, then she hit him. But she decided that was not enough of a punishment. She built a fire and raised a burning stick to flog him with. And God sent her sister-in
-law, Latifah, to knock on her door. When Latifah entered, Mahmoud yelled, “I am at your mercy, my lady, for I am your neighbor.”

  Latifah saw the boy and pleaded with Wasila: “Forgive this boy, for my sake.” And Wasila said, “I do not forgive, nor do I wish to, and who are you to interfere with my affairs?”

  Sitt Latifah grew angry. She untied the boy and walked him over to her house. And she called for a judge and for two notaries.

  When her brother arrived to claim the boy, Sitt Latifah asked in front of witnesses, “Have you bought this boy?” and her brother replied, “No. He is mine as security. His owner owes me one hundred dinars, and I will not let go of him until I receive my payment.”

  Sitt Latifah paid her brother one hundred dinars. “The boy is now mine.” She turned to the judge and the notaries. “Ask this man, my brother, whether I have anything of his that belonged to our mother or father.” They did, and her brother replied that nothing of hers was his. “Then note this down,” Sitt Latifah said, “for I do not wish him or his to claim anything at a future date. And note this, and make it binding. All my money and all that is mine, all that I own and all that my hand grasps, belongs to this boy once I depart this world. If God will have me, I will leave with only a piece of cloth, and the rest will remain with the boy, whom I will take as my son. I will call him Baybars, the name of my deceased son, for he looks like him. To all I have said, you are witnesses.”

  Samia’s son Anwar and Tin Can rolled in a gurney topped with crates of food, forcing everyone to move closer together. The aroma of roast lamb instantly vanquished the medicinal smells. Lina was about to say something, but she held back, overcome and overwhelmed.

  “No, no,” Aunt Samia said. “Take it outside. There’s not enough space in the room. There’s more family coming. We can serve ourselves.”

  “So much food,” Aunt Nazek said.