The Hakawati (69 page)

My mother took my sister’s hand, brought it to her lips, and kissed it.

“Get the veil,” Aunt Samia said. “You don’t want your father to have to wait when he gets here.” She held the fabric in her hand and examined it like a tester at a textile factory. “Are you using it as a train? Come on, girls. Make yourselves busy.” She turned to me. “What are you doing in this room, my boy? Get out of here. We have to talk about the honeymoon, and you shouldn’t be hearing this.”

“There won’t be a honeymoon yet,” Lina said. “He doesn’t have time. We’ll do it when the war ends.”

Aunt Samia’s face twitched. It seemed for an instant that her energy was about to crumble, but she caught herself in time. “That’s a great thing, if you ask me. Why go on a honeymoon and leave your loved ones behind while a war is going on? I didn’t have a good time on my honeymoon, so I don’t recommend them. My husband slept for the whole week in Cairo. You don’t believe me? Go out and ask him what was the best thing he saw in Cairo and he’ll tell you the pillow at the Hilton. You’ll probably have to wake him up to ask him, but he’ll tell you. Honeymoons—honeymoons are not for our family.”

“Are you ready?” my mother asked. She shooed everyone from the room. “If you want to see the bride come out, you had better be out yourselves.”

I looked at Lina, and she shook her head for me to stay. At the door, my mother announced, “I’ll send your father in a minute.”

“Mother,” Lina called. My mother stopped and turned around. She waited for Lina to say something, but Lina couldn’t speak. My mother closed the door and walked toward her.

“I want to kiss you,” my mother said, “but it’s not a good idea. Air kisses, however, won’t harm the makeup.” My mother held both of Lina’s hands, and they air-kissed three times. My mother walked toward the door. “You’d better be ready.”

My father, dapper and lordly, held his hand out to my sister. Lina hesitated, snatched one last glance at her reflection, and moved toward
him. Arm in arm, they took one step and faltered. “I’m leading,” my father joked. They recommenced, but the march still looked off-kilter, as if my father had practiced for this moment all his life and life decided not to cooperate.

I had expected my father to be more subdued, but I had underestimated his resilience. He didn’t appear to be a man who had just survived the death of a second brother, his best friend at that. I lagged behind, stopped, and watched them as they passed down the darkened corridor into the light of the living room. Cheering, applause, whistles, and ululations broke out loud enough to obliterate Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March” piping out of the speakers. Someone, I assumed Uncle Akram, began drumming the derbakeh. A woman burst into the mountain wedding song, a paean to the beautiful bride. By the time I reached the end of the corridor, my father had handed his daughter to Elie, who was desperately trying to look confident in a suit instead of his usual fatigues. Elie looked around at the crowd before quickly kissing Lina—a brief peck to signify eternal commitment. Uncle Akram, visibly upset with Mendelssohn’s discordant competition, knocked the record player with his thigh. A scratch was heard, and then the strings stopped, and Uncle Akram banged the drum harder, with a faster syncopation.

The newlyweds carved the cake. Elie tried to put his arm through Lina’s, but the fork kept getting in the way. A piece of cake fell on her sleeve and to the floor. She laughed. My mother shook her head. A couple of kids reached for the fallen morsel. The bey’s grandson, bundled up in two sweaters despite the room’s heat, stuffed the cake into his mouth. Our future bey looked up to Lina, opened his mouth wide, extended his tongue, and showed her the piece of extra-moist cake in his mouth.

Everyone seemed in a festive mood, but it wasn’t just the wedding. Wartime parties are always inhibition-loosening, euphoric affairs. I tried to talk to Elie, but he seemed to be avoiding me—and the rest of the family, for that matter. It was disconcerting to see a militiaman with dozens of fighters under his command, a killer of men, desperately avoid making eye contact. When I cornered him to offer best wishes, he interrupted by blurting, “It’s not my fault. It was supposed to be just fun,” sounding like a terrified four-year-old, his eyes expanding to encompass the top half of his face.

•   •   •

My feet were sore, my arches throbbed. The last of the guests were filing out, but it wasn’t yet time to break up the receiving line. Lina looked the most tired of all, whereas Elie seemed to be gaining strength as the festivities wore on. Aunt Wasila and her children left with the guests, as did Uncle Halim and his family. Aunt Samia took off her heels and began to help the servants clear the tables, until my mother asked her to stop.

“Give me twenty minutes to freshen up and I’ll be ready to go,” Lina told Elie.

He cleared his throat. “It’s probably best if I go back to Beirut with my men.” He could not lift his gaze from his shoes. “They have to be there just in case, and—uhmm—I don’t think it’s right if there’s a fight and I’m not there. We might get attacked.”

“On your wedding night?”

“Well, the enemy bastards don’t care about my wedding night,” he stammered.

“I guess you should go, then,” Lina said.

“Yes, I guess I should.” He backed away with slow, irresolute steps. “Thank you, everyone. That was a great wedding.” He looked briefly at my mother. “I wish my family could have been here. Thank you.” He walked out, hollered at his inebriated men. They got in three battered Range Rovers and sped down the hill toward the city. In the distance, Beirut, enveloped in utter darkness, swallowed the red rear lights whole.

“I guess I should change anyway,” Lina said.

“Yes,” my mother replied. She sat on the sofa and propped her feet on the small ottoman. “Change into something more comfortable, and I’ll make you a good scotch.”

As soon as Lina went into her room, my father allowed his rage to conquer his face. He dumped his body next to my mother. His heat and intensity radiated across the room. I knew that if he said one thing he would explode.

“I’ll make you a good scotch, too,” my mother said.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Aunt Samia said. “Maybe they
will
get attacked tonight.”

“Ha,” my mother snorted. “You shouldn’t have said that.” She shook her head. “Ha.” She asked my father, “Is there anyone we can call?” My father chuckled.

You might have asked yourself what happened to the boy. You might have wondered why his father did not find him. Listen. Another storm brewed the waters of the Mediterranean and forced a ship carrying Kinyar, the king of Thessaly, to the island of Tabish. The king and his crew explored the island and discovered the monastery. “This is the cuddliest child my royal eyes have ever seen,” announced Kinyar. He reached out to pick up the son of Ma
rouf and Maria, but a powerful slap knocked him on his behind. He looked around in terror. His men drew their weapons. They saw nothing. “Why do you smite me?” Kinyar asked the monastery. “I am the father of this boy, come to deliver him to his mother.” He reached for the infant again, and this time he was not felled. He ran out with the boy, and his men rushed after him, fumbling and stumbling. They stole away on their ship.

The galleon from Thessaly stopped a pilgrim ship heading toward the Holy City. The king boarded the captured ship and declared, “I seek a volunteer, a wet nurse to feed my child. I will slay you all unless you give me what I want.”

A young nun said, “I have given my life before and I will give it once more. There is no need for all of us to die.” Kinyar took her to his ship and allowed her companions to go their way. The nun exposed her breast to the hungry boy, and milk miraculously flowed. “The baby will live,” the nun said, and Kinyar said, “I will call him Taboush, after the island that offered him to me.”

We had an early breakfast the morning following the wedding. My father had a piece of bread stuck in his throat. He coughed, smacked his chest, and reached for his glass of water. My mother kept watch, with a mild concern, from across the table. He cleared his throat, lit a cigarette, and sipped his coffee. “I’m going to check on our home,” he announced.

“There’s nothing to check on.” My mother spread butter on her toast. She was the only one in the family who buttered her bread. “We took everything that’s of any value.”

“I have to check on the building. Unless we make our presence felt, we’ll have squatters moving in.”

“The reason we don’t have squatters is that the neighborhood is still dangerous. Be reasonable. It’s not worth the risk, and your showing up once a month isn’t going to stop refugees from taking over.”

“I’ll be careful,” he said.

A bit later, I told my mother I was taking a long walk and sneaked into the car with him. If my mother didn’t approve of my father’s going to the old neighborhood, she certainly wouldn’t have wanted me to tag along. “Onward to our next adventure,” he said. We passed many checkpoints along the way, crossing from one militia zone into the next, and none gave us any trouble. You could probably encounter every militia and every denomination driving from our mountain village to the neighborhood in Beirut.

We arrived, and I felt off-balance. Our neighborhood hadn’t been hit as badly as others, but it was scarred. It was also
Twilight Zone
uninhabited.

My father checked each apartment. In ours, the furniture was shrouded with dusty linen, but anything that would fit into a car had been moved. Only one window was broken. I went to my room. My bed, bookshelf, and dresser looked like giant misshapen children dressed as ghosts for Halloween. My father gave Uncle Jihad’s apartment a cursory inspection. He didn’t wish to tarry there. I lingered. I walked around the living room and dining room. The coverings in this apartment had a palpable finality.

Uncle Jihad’s numerous obsessions were notorious. He was a devoted Italophile, a Brueghel aficionado, a film buff, a lover of folktales, and a collector of rare stamps, movie magazines, miniature crystal sculptures, matchboxes, restaurant menus, and Lebanese earthenware. His apartment used to be full of his essence, knickknacks and whatnots all over the place. Everything had been cleared out. Almost everything. Discarded on the floor I found a postcard of a Brueghel painting,
Mad Meg
, one of his favorites. Two things I could never forget about the painting, the determined look of Mad Meg herself, the I-will-get-what-is-rightfully-mine-in-this-hellhole attitude, and the giant freak using a poker to empty his butt of its contents while the crowd below him eagerly waited for the about-to-fall treasure. I picked up the card and examined the browns and ochers and reds, the weird creatures in hell, the spears and shields and misplaced heads, the animals and half-ships and battlements, and the woman, seemingly the only full human,
an unsheathed sword in her right hand, a basket of goodies in her left, a filled bag tucked in at her waist, walking with a helmet and a steely determination. She got what she came for and it was time to leave. Just as I remembered. I pocketed it.

I walked into the den, and the movie wall was still up. It could not be moved. Through the years, Uncle Jihad had cut out images from movie magazines, particularly Italian ones, and had pasted a collage onto the whole wall. A window had been broken in the den, and a piece of glass had embedded itself in a picture of the Ferris wheel in
The Third Man
. I pulled it out and cut my index finger. I shoved my finger in my mouth and sucked on my wound.