The Hakawati

by Rabih Alameddine

  I thanked him and got up to leave. “Remember,” he said, “put everything we talked about in the essay. And don’t mention the music-and-math theory, okay?”

  As I closed the door, I heard my father say quietly, “He’s just a little immature sometimes. Not always.”

  Before she led me to the office, I asked Josephine where the men’s room was. I went in, peed, masturbated, and sneaked a couple of puffs from a cigarette. The essay I wrote elaborated on my theory of combining math and music, and I included a timeline graph as well.

  I had just stepped out of the shower when Uncle Jihad opened the bathroom door on his side. I covered myself with the towel. I was starting to hate the idea of a bathroom with doors connecting two rooms. “It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before,” he said as I wrapped the towel around my waist. He tilted his bottle of cologne and dabbed a few drops on his scalp.

  “I see you broke the perfume bottles as well,” I said. He laughed.

  Uncle Jihad used to tell a story about a parrot, the pet of an oil-and-perfume merchant. For years, the parrot entertained customers with tales and anecdotes. One night, a cat chased a mouse into the shop, which frightened the parrot. She flew from shelf to shelf, breaking bottles in her wake. When the merchant returned, he hit the parrot with a blow that knocked off her head feathers. The bald parrot was upset for days, until, one morning, a man with no hair entered the shop, and the bird yelled in joy, “Did you break the perfume bottles as well?”

  Uncle Jihad washed his hands, building layers of lather. “I think the dean really wants you.” He talked to my image in the mirror.

  “Yes. I think I’m in.” I dried myself with a second towel. “My father wants me to take Melanie dancing.”

  “He told me. I think it’s a good idea. He thinks you spend too much time studying and reading. Melanie will have fun, and it’ll be good for you.”

  “He should take her dancing.”

  “He’s not the dancing type.”

  He stared at my chest, probably wondering why I hadn’t filled out yet. I went into my room and put on a UCLA T-shirt Melanie had bought for me.

  “Where did they meet?” I asked.

  “At the baccarat table.”

  “Did he stop to think she’s almost as young as Lina?”

  “Hey,” he said, shaking an admonishing finger, “I don’t want you to say anything like that. You can’t even think that.” He stood before me in my room, his face an angry red. He looked exhausted, for some reason.

  Chain-smoking, Lina had finished three cigarettes on the balcony. She gestured for me to get rid of Hafez, running her forefinger across her throat. She may have left the room, but her specter hadn’t. “I hear you went to the old neighborhood,” Hafez said. “I go there quite a bit these days so I don’t forget. I can take you into your apartment if you want.”

  “That might be interesting.”

  “Why don’t you play the oud for him?”

  I hesitated, surprised. “Hafez, I haven’t played the oud in about thirty years.”

  It was his turn to look stunned. “Why? You were so good. What happened?”

  “I switched to guitar a long time ago, and then I stopped playing that. I got bored.”

  “I don’t understand.” His voice rose to more than just a whisper. He seemed more animated. “Everyone was so envious of you. The family used to talk about your playing. How can you get bored with music? I wouldn’t have.” He smiled at me, and his eyes regained a bit of luster. “I guess I should go now, look in on my mother. Call me if you want to go to the old neighborhood.” I walked with him to the door, four steps. “I would have kept on playing if I had your talent,” he said. “Yes, I would.”

  That night, my sister and I were in my father’s room. The lights of the ward had dimmed. She cuddled herself in the recliner, and I sat on the floor, leaning against the bed. She poked me with her foot, once, twice. Go home. Go home. I held her foot with both hands, pressed my thumbs along the heel.

  “Hafez isn’t the only one who was disappointed you stopped playing,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever forgiven you. No one has. When Salwa was a child, I used to regale her with stories of how amazing you were. She never got to hear you. She tried to take up the oud, but she wasn’t any good. I should blame you for that as well.”

  “Blame me.” I pinched her foot. “I only played when I was a child.”

  “And I have to admit that I wasn’t as fond of your guitar.”

  “You’re the one who made me learn to play.”

  She reached for the water bottle on the side table. “I can tell you a strange story about Hafez. If you want, that is.”

  “Of course I do. Gossip stokes the fire of my soul.”

  “Hah. Well, where do I start? For the last six or seven years, Hafez has been disappearing a few afternoons every week. You know that, right? He swore to his wife that he wasn’t cheating, but he wouldn’t tell her or anyone what he was doing. I knew Hafez wasn’t cheating—it’s Anwar who’s the asshole philanderer. It was just that no one knew what Hafez had been up to. Anyway, a few years ago, Fatima decided she wanted to go to the souk in Tripoli, do the tourist thing, mix with the common people. She dragged me along, and there we were, in the gold market, when we saw him. He was carrying a tourist guide to Lebanon, in English, holding it front side out, so everyone could see. He tried to look bewildered and engrossed, gazing around as if he were seeing everything for the first time. Just as I was about to call him, a woman walked by him and said in English, ‘Welcome to Lebanon.’ His face lit up as if he had swallowed the sun, the moon, and all the stars. Then he saw us and turned as red as a ripe summer tomato. He swore us to secrecy and explained. It turned out his favorite pastime was to stroll around various places pretending to be a tourist. He did it mostly in Beirut, but he hit all the other major hot spots of Lebanon, too. He walked all over the place with a guidebook, desperately trying to be seen as someone other.”

  Shavings of light were strewn on the avocado carpet. I had slept late. I heard nothing downstairs. I drew open the curtains on a glorious day, the light clear and merciless. I put on shorts and sunglasses, went out on the balcony for my morning smoke. I lay back on the chair, soaking up sunlight, and hummed “California Dreaming.”

  “All the leaves are brown.” A cold gust of panic. I jumped out of my seat and hid my cigarette behind my back. Melanie stood at the balcony door in shorts, her sunglasses hooked into her bikini bra; she carried a tray with a coffeepot and two cups. “Sorry about startling you, but I thought you might want a cup of coffee up here. They went shopping.” She had a touch of roguishness to her smile. “You can take the cigarette out of your butt.” I had to laugh. She sat down, poured us coffee. Her bikini top covered nothing but her nipples. “We don’t have to go dancing if you don’t want. We can go to a movie and tell them we went dancing.”

  “It’s just that I hate disco,” I said. “I never go to dance clubs.”

  “That’s settled, then.” She lit a cigarette. “What do you like to do? What did you do in Beirut on Friday nights?”

  “Planted explosives, shot at pedestrians from balconies, that sort of thing.” She almost choked on her coffee, gave her weird snort. “Mostly stayed home or hung out with a friend,” I said. “Played music. Got stoned.”

  “You want to get high tonight?” She gauged me with her eyes.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I have a friend in town we can go see. He’s got a great record collection and killer weed. We’ll spend the evening there. He’s an honest dealer. Every college student needs one of those.”

  I settled back in my chair, drank the coffee. I looked at her hands, perfectly manicured. She was wearing much less makeup. I admired her attractive profile, the chin small yet angular, the European nose, small and tilted up. My mother couldn’t compete with that nose; hers was thin, though long and curved like a bird’s beak. My mother was known for her beauty, but it was an altogether di
fferent kind. “Do you ever think of my mother?” I asked.

  “I don’t know your mother.”

  I looked at the clear sky, a much different blue than in Lebanon.

  When my father and Uncle Jihad walked into the living room, Melanie almost spoiled the surprise. She flitted about like a three-year-old girl on a sugar high, unable to keep the smile off her face. She wore black hot pants and a sleeveless denim jacket that reached her calves. I sat on the big sofa, facing the door, my right foot across my left knee, looking all too important. My father began to guess at something peculiar. “You’re looking at a UCLA student,” I announced.

  My father’s face broke out in unadulterated joy. He leapt across the room, picked me up, and hauled me over his shoulders. I squealed, unable to control my delight. Melanie was jumping up and down. She was about to embrace Uncle Jihad but pulled back at the last moment.

  “I’m so proud of you,” my father said from below.

  “Well, put me down,” I said, chuckling. He did, but with a bear hug. I had to push him away, because I couldn’t breathe. “Dean Johnson called. They want me. I can check in to the dorms on Monday, and classes start on Wednesday.”

  “Did you call your mother?”

  “Yes, I told her. We have to pay tuition on Monday, Dad.”

  “Okay. Let’s go open up a bank account for you. And here.” He gave me an American Express card with my name on it. “This is a company account. Use it only in case of an emergency. Do you understand? I’ll give you a monthly stipend. I want you to write down every expense you incur. I want to see a monthly report. Every single penny.”

  I hesitated, but this had to be the best possible time to broach the subject. “I want to buy a guitar, Dad.”

  “No, absolutely not. No more guitars. I told you that in Beirut. You’re here to study. I don’t want to hear another word about guitars anymore. Find another hobby.”

  “But, Dad, I’m really good. I need to practice.”

  “No whining and no guitar.”

  Melanie’s friend Mike lived in a small apartment on Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles. As we walked along an open corridor, I saw the blue light of televisions flickering behind drawn curtains, heard the canned laughter of sitcoms. Fonzie on the tube delivered his bon mot, “Aaay!” The apartments all faced a glittering swimming pool. Melanie knocked on a door with the number seven in tarnished brass. Mike opened the door, wearing gray swim trunks, blue T-shirt, and red flipflops. He was tall and muscular, with wavy black hair, a heavy mustache, long wiry sideburns, and small yellow wire-rims atop a predatory nose. A scar as white as marble ran down his neck. “You must be Osama.” His voice was twice the size of mine. “Melanie has told me a lot about you.”

  A light-brown mutt jumped up on Melanie the instant she walked through the door. She shrieked, almost stumbled, and hugged the dog. “Bobsie,” she said in baby talk, “you’re still the cutest dog, aren’t you?”

  The apartment had an avocado-green carpet, a cheaper version of the hotel’s. An elaborately framed Patrick Nagel print hung on one wall. I sat on a yellow-green Herculon sofa next to Melanie. Small talk ensued. How did I like America? Land of the big and tall and perfect teeth. Was I looking forward to living in Los Angeles? Better than spending every evening in the bomb shelters of Beirut.

  Melanie opened a shoebox on the cable-spool coffee table. “Smell,” she said, holding a sprig of marijuana under my nose. “It’s great stuff.”

  “It smells great, but I’m sure it’s not as good as hash. In Lebanon, we throw this out. Hash is the pollen.” I sat back and almost knocked a chrome lamp over.

  “I don’t think I want to throw out this grass.” Mike smiled as he walked to his entertainment center and put an Al Di Meola record on. Melanie rolled a joint using a contraption with a Stars and Stripes motif. She lit the joint and passed it to me. “This is good shit.”

  The first hit went straight to my head. I petted the dog, who jumped up on the sofa and put his head on my lap. “He likes you,” Mike said.

  “I had a wonderful dog called Tulip who died of a heart attack over a year ago.”

  “Your dad told me the dog was run over by a car,” Melanie said.

  “No, no. She had a heart attack. I was in the mountains, and Tulip was with my parents in Beirut. There was a lot of fighting, and all the noise scared her so much it caused the heart attack. I was really upset that I wasn’t there when she died. But my dad took care of everything.”

  I took another hit, feeling high yet slightly unsettled. Loose change nestled in the sofa. Mike poured a bag of tortilla chips into a blue crystal bowl—my first taste of Mexican food. “Were you living in Beirut itself?” Mike asked between tokes. “In the middle of the war?”

  “Yes. I was even shot at a couple of times. It’s crazy. You can’t imagine what it’s like.”

  He smiled as he rolled another joint. “I can imagine. I did three tours in Vietnam.”

  I wasn’t sure I heard him correctly. I was already stoned, feeling wonderful. “Did you say you were drafted three times?” Melanie was looking at me with a shit-eating grin. She passed me the second joint, stood up, and danced seductively to the music.

  “No, drafted once.” He lay back in his chair, legs wide apart. “I reupped a couple of times.” He looked as stoned as I felt. I stared at his muscled calves.

  “Why did you do that?” I slurred my question.

  “I really don’t know.” He put his glasses back on, took them off, breathed on his lenses, and polished them with his T-shirt. Melanie walked through the beaded curtain into the kitchen and reappeared with a beer and a Coke in either hand, showing me both. I pointed at the Coke. Mike took the beer. “Who knows why we choose what we choose,” he said, reaching over to open my can of Coke. “Maybe because life in-country seemed to be more real than it was back in the world.” He smiled gently. “You doing okay? You need anything?”

  “Tubular Bells” was playing, but I couldn’t figure out when the music had changed. Mike was saying something that sounded like “Plei Me Special Forces Camp.” I wasn’t sure I liked the music, even though I’d heard it numerous times before. “Battle of Ia Drang.” Mike’s left hand massaged my neck. “Beirut must have been horrifying, too.” Minuscule creases appeared on his forehead. “Sex and death, death and sex, or vice versa.” He held another joint to my lips with his right hand, and I took more drags. “M-60 machine guns gung ho.” I started seeing Linda Blair’s head rotating, and I couldn’t stop giggling. I tried to apologize to Mike but was unable to stifle my laughter. How could my father forget how Tulip died? My father told me he held Tulip in his arms as she had a heart attack. Now my father didn’t remember how she died. I wondered if I could forgive my father for that. The Nagel print was ugly. I wondered if anybody in the world had a Nagel original. I took a sip of Coke and stuffed my face with tortilla chips. One of the throw pillows had a honeycomb pattern that made me dizzy. I kept attempting to figure out whether it was a black pattern on a white background or vice versa. I laid my head back on the chair, looked up at the cottage-cheese ceiling. I snapped my head back quickly. “I just thought of Hendrix and got scared,” I said loudly. I was alone in the room.

  “Tubular Bells” repeated itself. Crumbs of tortilla chips remained in the crystal bowl. I pushed the bowl until it fell off the table and cracked.

  Melanie emerged from the bedroom adjusting her skirt, hobbling on one shoe, the other in her hand. “It’s midnight,” she said cheerfully. “We don’t want to be too late.” Mike followed her out, wearing only boxer shorts.

  I stood up while Melanie applied her lipstick, fixed her hair at the mirror. “It was nice meeting you,” Mike said. I walked out the door without replying.

  Melanie drove the Cadillac back to the hotel. I pulled down the visor and looked at myself in the mirror. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” I lied. “Do you think I have ugly teeth?”

  “No, they’re not ugly
. If you think they are, they can be fixed, but I think they’re cute—sexy, even.”

  “Not sexy enough for you to have sex with me,” I said, staring straight ahead. I felt her hesitation. “Don’t worry,” I added. “I don’t want to have sex with you anyway.”

  “I know,” she said, shyly and evenly. “I didn’t think you did.”

  One minute my sister was talking to me, whispering quietly about nothing in particular, and the next her voice faded. Even in sleep, she seemed tense, her breathing more hamsterish than restful. I slowly lifted myself off the floor. The muscles of my lower back and hamstrings groaned and objected. I walked around the bed toward my father. He seemed to be incrementally imploding, as if his wan skin were unhurriedly devouring his insides, and his body would soon collapse upon itself once the meal was finished.

  When it would get to be my time to leave, I hoped I’d go quickly, suddenly and unexpectedly, like Uncle Jihad, not like my father, and not like my mother.

  I held my father’s hand and stroked his dry hair, willing myself to imagine a reflex, an indication of responsiveness to my touch. I wanted to believe. I bent down and kissed his forehead, and my shirt grazed the ventilator tube. I felt an urge to take an iron bar, smite the machine, crush it. The pathetic rage of the impotent.

  I kept praying for some form of movement from my father. I bent my face into the slit of his line of sight, hoping my dimly lit familiar and familial face would comfort him.

  Once, when I was eight or nine, my parents took me to London, my first visit to the brooding city. My mother had wanted to walk in Hyde Park. My father, who never understood why people still walked, decades after the automobile had been invented, said he’d come along because he didn’t want to stay in the hotel by himself. We left the lobby through the revolving doors and were inundated by a weaving multitude of people. My mother turned back into the hotel, but my father stood his ground, mesmerized. He held my hand and watched as a sea of pale skin engulfed him. He looked confused for a moment, and then he smiled and said good morning in Lebanese to a passerby in a suit. The man smiled and replied in Lebanese as well. He bowed his head, and his palm sought his heart in an exaggerated gesture. He nodded toward me in acknowledgment and continued on his way. The Lebanese face, unknown yet familiar, had moored my father. Happy again, he led me back into the hotel.