The Hakawati (67 page)

“Bring me my son,” the king said. Baybars rushed to his king’s bedside. “You built a neighborhood for me once, my son,” the king whispered. “Give me a mosque that will bear my name for eternity.”

Baybars called on the architects, builders, and artisans. “I will not know sleep and neither will you until this stately mosque stands in honor of our sultan. Begin.” A mosque of unequaled grandeur was erected in one month. On the Friday after it was finished, the king visited the mosque, helped by his attendants. “I am a happy man,” he said. He returned to the diwan and tried to sit, but was unable. He was carried to his bed. “Turn me toward the Qibla,” the king said. “We belong to God, and to Him we return.” He lay facing east. “I witness that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is the Prophet of God.” The king died.

Our village sparkled at sunset. A guard in a dark suit and frayed white shirt, with a machine gun hanging on his shoulder, stopped the taxi at the gate to my father’s house. He bent his head to peer through the driver’s window. “Who’re you?” he asked.

“Who’re you?” I replied.

He cracked up. “Who’re you? You’re not dressed for a wedding.” Another machine-gun-toting, cheap-suited man joined him and bent to check me out. He grinned, obviously having begun his libations early.

“If the groom was worthy,” I said, “I’d have dressed better, but since he’s no more than a silly communist betraying the great cause, I can’t be bothered.”

Both men broke into tipsy laughing fits. The second man exclaimed, “I know you.”

I tried to sound grave. “Go tell your leader that such frivolities are beneath him. I’m here to give him a tongue-lashing.”

“Spare the poor man,” joked the first. “He doesn’t know the trouble he’s getting into.”

More men gathered around. The floodlit house was about twenty yards from the gate, and the entire front garden was overfilled with fighters desperately trying to pass for wedding guests. The bey’s guards alone numbered more than thirty. Ever since the civil war started, he’d begun to pick up protection the way a stray bitch in heat picked up studs.

“I know you,” the second guard repeated. “We met a year ago. You’re not here.”

“I certainly am not. I’m a figment of everyone’s imagination. Now, make way. Don’t make me get out of the car.”

The men guffawed. One shouted, “The brother of the bride is here.” Another corrected, “The brother of the new boss has arrived.” A machine gun was fired into the air, momentarily shocking any merriment out of my system. It was followed by another and another. A few yards away, the bey’s guards followed suit, joining Elie’s militia in an ecstatic firing orgasm.

After the machine guns stilled, the diesel generator took over, an old one that sounded like the chugalug of a steam train. The electricity in the village was off. My father had built this house as a summer home, but the fighting had forced the family to move into it temporarily. Though it was comfortable enough as a vacation house, it was neither spacious nor adequate for full-time family living. It was definitely not grand enough for a wedding.

My father came out of the house when he heard the machine-gun welcome. Guests hadn’t begun to arrive yet. When he saw me emerge from the taxi, he looked as if someone were speaking to him in a language he couldn’t grasp. The expression on his face was worth all the trouble I had gone to. I could see him wanting to move toward me. I imagined the muscles beneath his suit tensing, waiting for a release that had been long in coming. I climbed the five steps toward him. His eyes wore a moist film of my face. As soon as my lips kissed his cheeks, his arms engulfed me. I allowed myself to melt in his arms.

Another round of machine-gun fire shocked us apart. The men, touched by the unfolding scene before them, father and son brought together again, expressed their appreciation by firing at the sky.

My father led me into the house. A cursory glance showed the family and close friends getting set for the arrival of guests, a raucous flurry of activity. My cousin Hafez was the first to notice me, from across the hall. He was sipping a scotch as he pushed a table to one side with his thigh. Shock bloomed on his face, then a smile. He mouthed, “What, my brother?” I smiled back.

My mother emerged from the corridor that led to the bedrooms. Whenever she felt pressured, whenever she felt she was fighting alone against the world, the first thing she did was make sure she looked her best. Even had I not known much about the reasons for this wedding, I would have guessed she didn’t approve, because she looked striking. Farah Diba would have killed the shah to look like her. My mother wore a high chignon, pinned randomly with a number of single cream pearls. The front of her black hair was pulled tight, with a part in the middle. Her ears wore four pearls each, a black surrounded by two creams and a large teardrop cream dropping below the others. Her strapless dress was cream-colored as well, fitted and tight, studded randomly with the same pearls. “Tell the idiots to stop shooting,” she snapped at my father. “It’s a wedding, not a bacchanal.” She stopped, stared at me, aghast. I smiled. Her hand covered her mouth. She shivered, swayed, and dropped to one knee. I heard the faint rip of material. My father rushed to her. Soon practically everyone in the house surrounded her.

“Make room,” yelled Aunt Wasila, rudely pushing people aside. “Don’t crowd her. She needs to breathe.” The bey, who was bending to help my mother, was unceremoniously shoved aside with the others. “Clear out. Guests will be arriving soon.”

“I thought he was a ghost,” my mother told my father.

“He’s not, my dear. He’s all real.” His concern made his smile seem wistful. “Are you all right?” He helped her stand.

“She’ll be fine. Just give her a few minutes.” Aunt Wasila took my mother by the hand and led her back toward the corridor. “You,” she called to me, “come in and speak to your mother while she recovers.” On the floor, a fallen pearl gleamed in her wake.

Maria awoke in dimness. She felt woozy and disoriented until she realized that the bed was swaying gently. She asked, “Where am I?” and Arbusto, covered in darkness, said, “At sea. Toward Genoa.” Maria
tried to guess at what had happened. She considered what had befallen her, such humiliation after such glory. She wept in silence and surrendered her fate to God. For three days and three nights, tears were her lovers, her intimates. And on the third day, a storm erupted.

The sky unleashed its waters, filling the sea beyond its brim. The only light to lead the way was lightning, and thunder called the boat in every direction. A fateful gale broke the mast. Storms and squalls battered the lonely ship for days and weeks and months and months. Sailors lost their sanity, and their captain lost control of his vessel. On the day the storms abated, Arbusto climbed to the deck of the ship, which was moored on the shallow shores of an island.

“Where are we?” Arbusto asked the captain, who replied that the island was called Tabish. A neglected monastery peeked above the woods blanketing the island. The captain sent the passengers ashore with his men, who had to cut wood to repair the ship’s battered ribs of oak.

Upon the deserted island, Maria felt even weaker, and labor overwhelmed her. “I must relieve myself,” she informed her kidnapper, and walked into the woods. Arbusto did not object, nor did he accompany her, for he knew the island presented no possible escape. Into the forest she marched and marched, concentrated on one step followed by another, did not dwell on her hopelessness. She reached the monastery and climbed upon the abandoned altar, where she delivered a baby boy as beautiful as the new moon. Maria covered her son in her robe, kissed him, and said, “Your fate, food to hungry fish, is certain if you accompany me. I leave you in God’s house, to His mercy.” She closed her wet eyes, knelt on her weary knees, and prayed. “Promise me, O servant of this holy site, in the name of God and all His illustrious prophets. Guard this boy, and protect him from any evil that may prey upon his soul.”

She left her boy and returned to the ship. A week later, she was brought before her father in Genoa. Arbusto realized that, if he could pass as a king’s judge, why not as a priest. He donned the apparel of a man of God and led Maria to an audience with the king, who asked his daughter, “Have you abandoned your faith?”

“I have abandoned more than that.”

“You must be punished for marrying a Muslim,” her father said. “You will be a prisoner in your quarters for the rest of time.” And a
weeping Maria spent her days gazing out her window, waiting for God’s redemption.

The tear was on the left hip of my mother’s dress, minor but conspicuous. Aunt Wasila knelt and examined it. My mother swiveled sideways before the full-length mirror, her hand smoothing the rent fabric. “Let’s try to tape it from the back,” she said.

I wondered why Aunt Wasila was being so helpful. She had always kept her distance from the family, and all the more since Uncle Wajih had passed away four years earlier.

“Tape is tacky,” Aunt Wasila said. “It’s a small tear. Where’s your sewing kit?”

“You look great,” I murmured.

“You don’t,” my mother said. “Go change.”

I explained that my bag hadn’t arrived yet. She asked if I was having any problems in Los Angeles. Dissatisfied with my simple no, she asked about school. Aunt Wasila pulled a long thread through the rip.

“I thought you’d need me,” I said.

My mother relaxed visibly. “That’s sweet. Now, comb your hair. You’re wearing jeans to your sister’s wedding. What’s this world coming to?”

My cousin Mona knocked and entered, paying Aunt Wasila no mind. “Lina wants to know why her brother hasn’t gone in to see her,” Mona said, and laughed. “Although she didn’t exactly call him her brother.”

Lina kicked out all our girl cousins when I entered her room. “They fuss so much that I end up trying to soothe their nerves instead of the other way round.” She sat on a taboret, gazing at her reflection in the mirror. Her makeup was done, and she already had on her wedding dress. All that was left was pinning the veil. “Are you trying to steal my thunder?” she asked.

“When have I ever been able to do that?” I sat down on the bed. My feet hurt. “How can I compete when you look so grand?”

“You’re being so nice. How come? Are you sober?”

I stretched out on her bed, sank my head into her pillow, breathed in her perfumes. I fervently wished that we could lie there and listen to
David Bowie or be howled and moaned at by Led Zeppelin, the two of us. She stood up, and I tried to see if she’d gained weight. She stood taller than anyone in the family. My mother was tall as well, but she was thin and bony. Lina wasn’t fat, but she could fill a dress, which made it difficult to gauge her weight. She sat on the bed, leaned back on her arms. “I wish I could lie down, but my hair would be a disaster if I did.”

I got on my knees, crushed two pillows together, and placed them at the foot of the bed. “Lie this way,” I said. “Trust me.”

She lay back gently, her neck held up by the pillows, and her hair floating in air. She patted the bottom half of her dress, which seemed to rise like a soufflé once she was prone. “Take my shoes off. Ah, that’s much better.”