While the twins slept in their bed, millions of black ants crept into the room and carried the dark boy out the window and onto the balcony, whence he was flown off by fifteen young jinn. Still asleep, Layl was delivered to the monster sitting under the second willow.
Much to the emir’s wife’s horror, the monster did not hesitate. Hannya raised the arm carrying the sword and cut off Layl’s head. She proceeded to cut off his arms and legs, then dug out his heart and cut off his testicles.
The head she gave to ten hyenas. “Take this to your den. Guard and protect it, for by its power you will produce the sturdiest of offspring.”
Twenty eagles received the arms. “Take these to your nest. Guard and protect them, for by their power your wings will increase in strength and your feathers will decrease in weight.”
The legs she gave to thirty monkeys. “Take these to your trees. Guard and protect them, for by their power you will grow more nimble.”
The torso she gave to the lions. “Take this to your lair. Guard and protect it, for by its power you will be the most powerful of beasts.”
The heart she kept for herself. The testicles she gave to the emir’s wife. “Destroy these, for as long as they exist the demon king can resurrect himself.”
The emir’s wife stared aghast at the bloodied testicles in her hand. “How can I destroy them? I have no experience with such things. I am naught but simple royalty.”
“Destroy them as you wish,” hissed the monster, “but do not fail me.”
The emir’s wife swallowed the testicles in one gulp. The monster smiled.
And the scream of Shams was heard round the world.
I stood at the door of the hospital room with my carry-on strapped on my shoulder, hesitating as if I needed permission to enter. On the plane, I had visualized many different scenes, but none matched the sight of my dying mother unconscious, or the despair planted on my father’s face. Reality always flabbergasted me.
My father moved from despair to fury as soon as he caught sight of me. He couldn’t speak, simply glared, angry and teary. Now, that was a scenario I had pictured. He considered it egregious that I would be anywhere but at his side during troubled times. When I saw Fatima in the visitors’ lounge, she told me to be strong, and I knew she wasn’t only speaking of my mother’s decline. He sat on my mother’s left side and Lina on the right. When she looked at me, I realized I was late. My sister’s face was the tuning fork that forced induction. My knees buckled and I stumbled like a newborn foal. The metronomic beats of the monitor, the jagged peaks of colored lines on the monitor nauseated me. My mother’s timed breathing.
I wanted to say that it wasn’t my fault, that I’d taken the first flight out and made good time. Nothing would escape my lips. My sister hugged me, and my head nestled in her bosom. I squeezed my eyelids shut so I wouldn’t have to look at her breasts, at my father, or at my mother.
My father hadn’t shaved in at least four days, and his face seemed to grow a fresh wrinkle with each beep of the monitor. He stooped over the bed, sheltering my mother.
“She won’t make it through the night,” Lina whispered in my ear. When she felt me shudder, she added, “She knew it. She said goodbye.” She massaged my shaking shoulders, and then led me out to the balcony for her cigarette. “She knew you were coming,” she said, raising her voice a bit to contend with the traffic below. “Don’t worry. It wouldn’t have mattered. She’s been on heavy morphine for a week, didn’t understand much, and didn’t really try to make sense. But she knew, so she kept saying goodbye while reciting stanzas.”
A cleansing breeze whipped around the small veranda. I could hear the distinctive whooshing and popping sounds of two plastic bags being kited by the wind. “I should go back in,” I said.
“Wait,” Lina said. “Give him a minute.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.” I couldn’t look at her, but heard her tears. I stared through the picture window at my Hermès-turbaned mother and my father at her side. “What did she say?” I asked.
Lina put her arm around me. “She hasn’t been able to speak clearly for a while.”
“You should’ve called me earlier.”
“Don’t do that,” she said. “I’ve kept you updated. It just happened quicker than I’d expected.”
“What did she say?”
“How much she loved us, how much she loved you.”
“Be more specific.” I shook my head. “Please.”
“I don’t know, she was rambling in three languages. It wasn’t clear or uplifting or anything. She recited poetry that made little sense. She mixed lines and made some up, I think. She was smiling the whole time. She said she loved you, I swear.”
My body slumped. “I want to go back in.”
“She thought the male nurse was our father. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She looked at the nurse and offered him the Saadi line ‘I’d rather be shackled to you in hell than stroll in the Garden with another.’ Well, our father tried to get her to repeat it to him.”
A graceless laugh escaped her lips.
Shams’s sorrow was so deep that his wail of lament lasted one incessant week. He did not sleep or eat, and none could console him or interrupt the howl. His cry of sadness forced every creature that heard it to shed tears. The imps tried in vain to comfort him, pleading with him to help them search for his twin, but he could not hear them. They wept and begged, but Shams wailed on and on.
“Go,” Isaac told his brothers, his cherubic cheeks waxy wet. “Ishmael and I will watch over him. The rest of you must find our sister and nephew. Ask every human, every jinni, every beast and insect. North, south, east, and west, search every crevice of the world. Find them.”
The emir’s wife knocked on her son’s door, knocked again and again. The wailing broke her heart, and she wanted to mother him. She opened the door, gingerly and shyly, and entered. In the middle of the room, her prophet hugged himself, formed an orb upon a chair, his face buried in his thighs. The howl poured from his body. Isaac and Ishmael—brother demons, not parrots—each on one knee, each redder than blood, stroked Shams’s head and kissed it.
She waited, crying, hoping Shams would acknowledge her. She took a deep breath to calm her soul. She cleared her throat, but the sound she made could not compete with that emanating from her prophet. “Shams,” she called. “My son.”
Isaac and Ishmael glared at her, but Shams—Shams looked at her with loathing, his eyes redder than the two demons. He raised his arm, his palm facing her. “Blood be upon you.”
Out of nothing, out of the immediate air, blood soaked her. First her hands dripped; strings of blood fell from her fingers to the floor. She thought she was wounded, but it was not so. Her hair felt sticky. She looked at the floor, where a large puddle of blood had formed. Ecru turned to red, and her robe became soaked and clung to her body. Her legs felt viscous and clammy, and her vagina felt full. She desperately wanted to lift her robe and examine her privates but was unable to do anything other than scream and run for help.
By the time my mother’s funeral ended, my father looked as if he had been through wash, rinse, and spin-dry cycles in one of those tiny washing machines that fit under the kitchen counter. Still, he had to find the energy to be with all who came to offer him obsequies. He was so tired by the end of the day that he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. In the morning, we had to prepare for visitors. The day following the funeral, our house was full of people, hundreds, until bedtime—the post-death rituals meant to exhaust one out of grief. The second day, repeat.
I walked into his room the third day after the funeral. My sister was fixing his tie, getting him ready for another day of condolences. My father looked up and saw me, and his face clouded once more, a confusion of ire and despondency. “Happy you could join us,” he said, as if I had been somewhere else for the previous three days.
“I’m sorry.” I waited, then decided to put everything on the table. “I’m going t
o leave this morning. I have to get back to work.”
“But you just got here,” my sister said.
“You’re not leaving,” my father fumed.
“I have to.” I clasped my hands behind my back. “I really have to.”
“Why did you even bother to come?” my father snapped.
“Look. I’m very sorry, but I have to leave. I’m needed at work. You don’t need me for the condolences.”
“We need you,” my father said. “Your place is here.”
“I was here. But I also have commitments.”
“If you leave, I’ll never speak to you again. I’ll disown you.”
“No, you won’t,” Lina interrupted. “You’ll not do that. You don’t mean that.”
“If you leave now,” my father said, “you are not my son.”
“I am your son,” I said.
“No son of mine abandons his father.”
Nineteen
One day, a bizarrely dressed man walked into the diwan. He spoke a language that the court’s translator did not understand. Surprising everyone, Baybars replied to the stranger in his language and treated him with the utmost respect and hospitality. The sultan read the letter the messenger had brought and began to weep. Othman rushed to his friend’s side. “What is it, my lord? Tell me and I will realign the sun and the moon to ease your sorrow.”
Baybars handed the letter to Othman, who could not read it. “I can barely read Arabic, my king. Why would anyone send you a letter in this strange language?”
“To test if I am the one,” Baybars said, “and this is not strange. It is my native tongue.”
One of the Uzbeks took the letter. “Shall I translate? This is one of the many languages of the vast province of Khorasan, which means where the sun rises, where bakhshis play the oud and sing the great glory of God. The letter is from Shah Jamak of Samarkand, addressed, he hopes, to his lost son: ‘In the name of God, the compassionate and the merciful. To our son, the prince of believers, sultan of Egypt and Syria, whose name is Mahmoud ben Jamak and whose mother is the Lady Heather. Know, my son, that, from the moment God decreed that you leave us, your mother and I have been unable to enjoy food or slumber. Your mother grieves, and I comfort her and tell her God cannot allow her suffering to go on forever. A few days before this writing, your mother found a coin embossed with your image on the obverse, and she fainted, knowing that her son lived and had become the sultan of Islam. I write to inquire whether this is true. Tell me, I beg you. Are you my son?’ ”
Baybars wept, and his friends joined him. “Deliver a letter to my parents. Inform them that I will be arriving soon.” He stood up, holding the royal scepter close to his heart. “Tell my father who I am.”
It took me a few minutes to realize what my sister was up to. She wanted me to understand, but I was missing the clues she was throwing out. Breadcrumbs are harder to see along phone lines. She was entertaining herself at my expense and my father’s. We had our trivial talk—I was doing fine, she was as well—before the vicarious seduction began.
“Come home for Christmas,” she said. “We miss you.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” It had been eleven months since I had been to Beirut, since my mother’s death.
“Don’t be silly. Of course it’s a good idea. It’s always a good idea.”
She went on to tell me about all the crazy family goings-on: how Uncle Halim had flipped completely, the stories he was telling, the scandals he was unleashing; how Aunt Samia hadn’t talked to her youngest son for a month because she told him she didn’t want a birthday present, and he believed her. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” she added.
“Well,” I said, “you always keep me informed.”
“It’s not the same as being here. Come home.”
“I can’t. I’m too depressed.” I sighed, and, as usual, the instant I uttered those words, gloom filled me.
“We’ll take care of you. You need to be with us.”
“I don’t think I can deal with things now.”
“Yes, you can,” she insisted. “Hold on a minute.” She didn’t cover the mouthpiece, and I heard my father pleading in the background. All I could decipher was “Tell him. Tell him.”
I felt the eight tentacles of an octopus squeeze my marrow.
“I’m not taking no for an answer,” my sister said. “We’ll even pay for the ticket. You’re coming home.”
“He’s telling you what to say.”
“The weather has been wonderful. We’re thinking of going to the mountains for a few days.”
“He’s furious with me.” I heard the embarrassing whine in my voice, but I couldn’t stop. “He hasn’t been able to speak to me for almost a year. The last words he said to me were that I’m not his son. I know he didn’t mean it, but still, he shouldn’t have said it.”
“We miss you terribly,” she said. “I’m glad you’re coming.”
“Why is he doing this? This is going to be hell.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, laughing. “It most certainly will be fun. And I’m going to enjoy it.”
Baybars prepared for the trip to Khorasan and Turkmenistan. “It behooves us,” said Layla, “to ask your mother, Sitt Latifah, to join us, my king. Family should meet family.”
“Of course,” cried Baybars. “Brilliant.” He turned to Sergeant Lou’ai. “Ride forth to your hometown, and inform my mother that I am in need of her wisdom.”
The convoy set forth. An impeccably outfitted battalion of the slave army rode the best Arabians of the lands, and a thousand slaves in most exquisite dress accompanied them. The king had filled a hundred treasure chests with textiles from Egypt and Syria, some embroidered with silver and gold, others of pure silk. He brought with him trays of silver, antiques of gold, and brilliant jewels from the southern lands of Africa. They left the land of the Nile and crossed the Jordan, the Euphrates, and the Tigris. They reached the lands of Persia and the mountains of Khorasan. Baybars rested in the holy city of Mashhad and sent Othman ahead to Samarkand. “Ride ahead, my friend, and inform my father that his son is near.”
And when the shah heard of his son’s arrival, he said, “What glorious news. Let us ride out and greet the sultan. Announce to my wife that her son arrives.”
When Baybars saw his father’s convoy approach, he and his companions climbed on their horses and set out to meet it. The great warhorse al-Awwar trotted toward the shah, and father and son hugged while still atop their steeds. The men in both convoys were touched by the unfolding scene before them, father and son brought together again, and expressed their appreciation by raising their swords, shouting, and cheering at the sky.
My father didn’t stand up to greet me, nor did he utter a word. He simply nodded in acknowledgment. I said hello and asked how he was doing. He nodded once more. He slouched a bit and extended his fingers to stare at them. “Hope you’re feeling better,” I said.
He nodded. I looked at my sister and arched my eyebrows. She led me into my room, where my suitcase was already open on the settee but not yet unpacked.
“He’s very happy to see you,” Lina said. “He’s just sleepy.”
“He couldn’t even look at me,” I said.
“Don’t be daft. Of course he looked at you. He doesn’t want you to know he did.”
In the palace of Samarkand, Queen Heather ran to Baybars and nearly toppled him. She kept hugging him and squeezing him and kissing him. “You are Mahmoud, my son. I would swear to it on Judgment Day, before God the Divine.” She kissed him so many times that she grew dizzy. “Wait. Let me rest.” She sat on her cushions. “My eyes have seen the impossible sublime. My son, the sultan of Islam. While I carried you, I knew God had great plans for you.” Baybars knelt before her and kissed her hands. “A mother knows,” she added. “The king of kings even I did not imagine, but I knew you were chosen. I was pregnant with destiny.”
“Be joyful, Mother. Your son bows before you. To help assuage
your past sorrows, I offer you this.” And Baybars opened the chests of dazzling gifts. “More important, this is the honorable Sitt Latifah. She adopted me when I had nothing and offered me all that is hers. She raised me and taught me to care for God.”
The queen leapt to her feet and kissed Sitt Latifah. “My son has two mothers, further proof that he is blessed. Come sit beside me and regale me with stories of what he was like away from me.” The two women talked of their son and told stories of former times.
“I, too, had two mommies,” said Queen Heather. “My mother had a twin sister, and no one could tell them apart, not even my father. They raised me as one.”
I tried to force myself back to sleep. Not a dash of light penetrated the rolled-down shutters. The nightstand clock read four-eleven. I shut my eyes and hoped. I rolled over, but the mattress didn’t seem to want to readjust, as if it knew what was best for me and was waiting for the end of my silly experiment. I resigned myself to its will. In the silent apartment, I could hear the movement of warm air within the heating system. The vents would expel the air with a sound like the long harrumph of an ogre. I could also hear my niece’s aged hamster running its wheel in her room—a hamster that had been around forever, apparently immortal.
I rose with the emergence of first light and had to remind myself to put on shorts and an undershirt. I left my room, not having to tiptoe—bare feet on marble barely made any noise—and walked through the corridor, the den, the main living room, and into the kitchen. I opened the fridge and couldn’t figure out how anything was arranged. Soft light suddenly seeped from under the maid’s door. I heard faint rustling before Fely opened the door, still adjusting her uniform, which looked like polyester pajamas.
The Hakawati Page 54
