The Hakawati (4 page)

The cast of light in the room was disturbing, slightly nauseating. The antiseptic white walls. The fluorescent lights. It was midmorning, but the sallow curtain diffused a pale gray-green glow. Lina had been going out to the balcony to smoke, always making sure the curtain was drawn so my father wouldn’t see her and crave a cigarette.

“I’m doing so much better,” my father announced. “I feel formidable.”

I pulled back the curtain to let some genuine light in, opened the sliding door for air. It was pitch-perfect weather, two clouds maculating a clear sheet of blue, an early spring in February. I stood for a moment with my back to the room, enjoying the play of the flimsy breeze upon my face. I considered for a moment returning to the waiting lounge to relieve Fatima and Salwa, my sister’s daughter, who were entertaining the visitors.

“I know you think I don’t know what I’m talking about,” my father went on, “but I feel better, and I don’t want to spend another night in this godforsaken place.”

The Chinese say prolonged illness can make one a doctor. My mother used to say prolonged illness made one a curmudgeon. My mother was wiser. I turned around and looked at the high nightstand, made sure that her framed passport-sized photo was still there, next to her silver locket, which my father insisted brought him luck.

“We have to wait and find out what Tin Can has to say.” Lina regarded my father with soft eyes. When she was younger, my sister took after my mother, but as she matured, my father’s softer features overcame her face. Lina curled up on the recliner, laid her head back, imitating a Henry Moore sculpture. Her heels poked into the chair’s plastic upholstery.

“Talk to him, darling,” my father whimpered. He grasped the bed rail, pulled himself onto his side in order to face her. He scratched the small protrusion in his chest where the pacemaker and defibrillator were. I turned around again and watched the sky.

My father could afford the best medical care in the world. Lina had dragged him to Johns Hopkins, to the Cleveland Clinic, to Paris, to London. Yet he always returned to the just-competent Tin Can. He didn’t have any illusions in that regard. My father was the one who had dubbed him Tin Can, because he was about as effective a doctor as a tin can. But he was family, Aunt Nazek’s brother, my father’s brother Halim’s wife’s brother, and that to my father was more valuable than credentials or prestigious alma maters. In the last few years, he had refused to travel for medical attention and sought only the family doctor.

I heard my voice speak. “And the doctor told the poor father, ‘The only way to heal your son is to take his heart.’ ”

Their voices joined mine. “ ‘For the evil jinni has made himself a home there.’ ”

My father laughed. “Don’t do this to me.” He clutched his heart, pretending pain. “My evil jinni doesn’t like to be amused.”

“You’re still ever so strange,” my sister said. “What possessed you to think of that? How long has it been since you’ve heard that line? Thirty years?”

“More than that,” my father said. “My father died thirty years ago, and he wasn’t telling those stories of his by then. It must have been thirty-five, maybe thirty-seven years.” He took a raspy breath. “God, Osama, you were such a young boy then.”

My grandfather actually told me those stories of his until the day he died. He was a storyteller after all, in spirit and in profession. My father tried at different times to get him to stop filling my head with fanciful narratives, but he never succeeded.

“What are you staring at?” Lina asked me. “Turn around and look at us.”

“Look,” I said. “Look here. March has come in.”

The sky was a perfectly cut aquamarine. As in most Mediterranean cities, Beirut’s late winter can be either stormy and brumal or magnificently clear, smelling of sun-dried laundry.

“It’s still February, stupid boy,” Lina said. “It’s just a break. The storms will come back.”

“A glorious break.”

She came up behind me. “You’re right. It is glorious.” Her arms encircled me, and I felt her weight upon my shoulders.

“I want to see,” my father whined from his bed. “Help me up. I want to see.” We moved to the bed, helped him sit up, turn around, and stand. He leaned on my sister, the tallest of us three. I dragged the intravenous stand with its deflated balloons behind him as he shuffled the eight steps to the balcony. The cheeks of his rear end jiggled and seemed to droop a little lower with each step. On the balcony, the three of us lined up to admire the false spring and the sun that bathed the sprawling mass of rooftops.

My father catnapped on the hospital bed. Outside, Lina inhaled each puff of her cigarette as if it were her last. She smoked so rapidly that the tip of the cigarette burned into a miniature red coal. She leaned back against the balcony railing, stared up at the sky. I stared down. On
the third floor of the hospital, where illnesses were less grave, two women whispered to each other on their balcony like two pigeons cooing. Across the street, in the distance, stood a house that showed severe signs of aging. From where I stood, its shutters looked rotted.

“He’s dying,” she said, her voice noncommittal.

A thick growth of weeds covered the house’s garden. Tall fronds of wild thistle, a few of the tips flowering yellow. “We’re all dying,” I said. “It’s just a matter of when.”

“Don’t start with your American clichés, please. I can’t deal with that now.” She shook her head, her black hair covering her face for an instant. “He’s dying. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you.” Just then, a car trumpeted its horn, one long uninterrupted burst. My sister jumped to check that the sliding door was completely shut. “What makes you think this time is different?” I asked. “He’s been dying for so long. He always pulls through.”

“He won’t always pull through. It gets more difficult each time.”

“I know that. But why this time?”

She took a deep breath as she faced me. I could see her chest expand and deflate. My sister was much taller than I. It was with her height that she took after our mother, but Lina was even taller, bigger. Boucher instructed his pupil Fragonard to paint women as if they had no bones. Fragonard could have painted Lina. She was the antithesis of straight lines or angles. Graceful, like my mother.

I, on the other hand, inherited my teeth from my mother, not her height. We both had two crooked upper front teeth. She never fixed hers, because they accentuated her beauty, the flaw making her appear more human, accessible, more Helen than Aphrodite. She didn’t fix mine, thinking it would also work for me. It didn’t. Alas, unlike her, I had quite a few other flaws.

“Tin Can gives him three months at most,” Lina said.

“Tin Can said the same thing four years ago.”

“You have to be with him to notice the difference. He’s not going to make it, and he knows it.” She sighed and flicked her cigarette onto the street below. “I don’t know what to do.”

The old house across the street must not have been abandoned. A pile of plastic chairs stood outside the door. A stray electric wire, long and lax, stole power from the main city lines. A pigeon settled on the wire, which drooped and seemed about to snap. The pigeon did not last more than a second or two before flying off.

“Shall we begin?” Fatima asked on the second night. She sipped her cup. Sated, with full stomachs, the three travelers sat around the small fire.

“We shall,” Khayal replied. “Would my beloved care for a cup of wine to help smooth the rough edges of this evening?”

Fatima raised her eyebrows; her eyes asked if Jawad was interested. He nodded. “One cup only for tonight,” she said. “Until you get used to it.”

And Khayal lifted his cup. “May my beloved get used to much.” He gulped, smacked his lips, paused for dramatic effect. In a sonorous voice, he began to recite:

A woman once berated me
Because of the love I feel
For a boy who huffs and struts
Like an untamed young bull
But why should I sail the sea
When I can love grandly on land?
Why hunt for fish, when I can find
Gazelles, free, for every hand
.
Let me be; do not blame me
For choosing a road
In life that you have rejected
,
Which I will follow till the day I die
.
Know you not that the Holy Book
Speaks the definitive truth:
Before your daughters
Your sons shall be preferred?

“Magnificent,” Fatima cried, applauding enthusiastically. “One can always rely on the brilliance of Abu Nawas for entertainment. Who would have thought that a desert dweller would be able to quote the city poet? I am impressed. Are you not, my dear Jawad?”

“Does the Holy Book really say that a man should choose his sons before his daughters?”

“In matters of inheritance, my boy, but the poet took some liberties. More, more, our master reciter. Tell us more.”

I no longer wish to sail the sea
I prefer to roam the plains
And seek the food that God
Sends to all living creatures
.

“A delight,” Fatima said. “How lovely and bawdy that Baghdad poet was. I would have loved an opportunity to drink wine and match wits with Abu Nawas. Was that not marvelous, Jawad?”

“It surely was,” Jawad replied. “I, too, am duly impressed. My suitor is learned and sensitive, but his poetry speaks nothing other than his preference for a certain kind of love. That he likes boys does not make him more desirable to me. It simply means he has good taste. His poetry is entertaining but does not move this listener. I do not feel seduced this night either, but I do feel sleepy.”

“So true. So wise. We have been dutifully entertained this night, but not seduced. Let us hope for a better temptation tomorrow. And a good night to all.”

On the third night, Khayal poured wine into Jawad’s cup. He stood before his audience. “I am a vessel filled with contrition. Forgive me, I beg you. Allow me to begin anew.”

“There is no need for forgiveness,” Jawad said.

“Please,” Fatima said, “favor us with your seduction. We sit here, parched earth awaiting its promised thunderstorm. Quench our thirst, we beg you. Begin.”

“I stand humble before you,” Khayal began, “a once-proud man debased by love.” His shoulders slumped. “I may look like nothing much at this moment, but looks can be deceiving.” His voice grew. “The cover does not fit the content of the book.

“I am first a warrior. I have fought in God’s army. From the coasts off Mount Lebanon to the hills of the Holy Land, heads of infidels have rolled off my sword by the hundreds. I have slain Papists in the west, Byzantines in the north, Mongols in the east. My spear knew no mercy in defending our lands. I am feared in every corner of the world. Europeans use my name to frighten their children. Courage is my companion; honor rides before me, loyalty at my side. My sword is swift, my spear accurate. I am the answer to every caliph’s prayers.”

“Well said,” Fatima called out. “One can see the influence of al-Mutanabbi.”

“Who is that?” Jawad asked.

“I will tell you in a little while, my dear. Let us allow our seducer to continue. I am sure he is not done yet.”

“I stood upon a hill watching the enemy ships drop anchor along our shores. They were soaked twice, first by milk-streaked clouds that rained upon them announcing my arrival, and then it rained skulls. I rode my steed swiftly, saw our enemy approaching as if on legless steeds. I could not distinguish their swords, for their clothes and turbans were also made of steel. I attacked even though it meant certain death, as if hell’s heart pumped all about me. Heroes and warriors fell before me, whereas I remained standing, sword wet and unsheathed. Victorious, I stood with my brethren, faces shining with ecstasy, exchanging smiles of joy. The foreigners had no real experience of the color red. I painted it for them. Blessed are war, glory, and eminence. Blessed is my audience, for allowing me the honor of introducing myself.”

“And blessed are you for sharing,” Fatima said.

“I feel honored,” said Jawad, “and grateful to be in your presence. But tell me, who is this al-Mutanabbi?”

Fatima guzzled her cup of wine. She kept her head back for a moment. She held out the cup, and Jawad poured. And Fatima declaimed:

I am he whose letters were seen by the blind
,
And whose words were heard by the deaf
.

She paused, smiled at Jawad, and had another sip. “Al-Mutanabbi was the greatest poet of the Arabic language, but more important, he is my favorite. He was blessed with the reckless audacity of imagination, full of astonishing metaphors. He suffered much in his life, because he was born with the two grand infirmities: he was poor and he was Arab. He came into the world early in the tenth century, in Kufa, south of Baghdad. He began to recite poetry of an exquisite beauty that had never been heard before nor has since. He claimed that God Himself inspired his poetry. Hence, the name: al-Mutanabbi, the one who claims to be a prophet.”