The Hakawati (42 page)

“Samia,” my grandfather pleaded, “stop it.”

“The neighbors, Samia,” my father added. “The neighbors will hear.”

Anwar and Hafez pushed all the way back in their chairs. Lina sat forward. Uncle Jihad seemed to have lost interest. He tried to distract Little Mona, who was staring at her livid mother.

“You hate Jalal because he wanted you to give the money back to Mama. But you hid it. He isn’t the bastard. You are. You’re a lowlife.”

“If it weren’t for the children,” Uncle Halim yelled back, “I’d smack you from here to the village, you big-mouthed idiot.” Aunt Nazek moved closer to him, tried to calm him, but he stood up. “I returned
the money. I didn’t hide it. You’re a big fat liar.” He shook his finger at her. “You’re lucky the children are here.”

“This is unreal,” my grandfather said.

“I’m not a liar. You hid it. You hid the money.”

My father stood up. From the look on his face, you could see it was over. He seethed. “Everybody just eat shit and shut up,” he screamed. Quiet. My father sighed. “Samia. He was eight years old. You were—what?—twelve? What’s the matter with you? You were children. What the hell does it matter what he did then? How much did he hide? Was it one quarter or two?”

“I don’t care,” she said, but we all heard the defeated whine creep back into her voice. “He stole my money.” Her rapid breathing slowed. “He stole my money again. I can prove it.”

“Eight?” my mother asked Uncle Jihad.

“Yes.” He nodded, stroked Little Mona’s hair. “I was about as old as this one here. I was traumatized, I tell you.” He blinked once, twice. Looked up to the ceiling in mock sorrow. “That incident scarred my life.”

“And you.” My father turned to his. “Why do you keep telling my kids these stories?”

“They’re not just your kids,” my grandfather replied. “And don’t blame me for this one. I was telling how I married your mother. An old man has a right to reminisce, and children need to know where they came from.” He refused to look at my father.

“Every time you tell one of your stories, something horrible happens.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the story of how I met your mother.”

My mother sat up, stretched lazily, smiled beatifically at my grandfather. “You know, Uncle Ismail, the story might not be appropriate for the children. You see, if you tell the story, they’ll grow up believing that the whole family, almost everyone in this room, wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the bey.”

“That’s not true,” both my father and grandfather said.

“And we wouldn’t want that, would we?” she asked.

The hospital kept to a Mediterranean schedule: visiting hours after siesta were from four till eight. Evening had blued the room. I was
tired, yet an orderly was just beginning the dinner round. He wouldn’t enter my father’s room. I nestled next to Fatima on the recliner; her arm swallowed me up. “I’m scared,” I whispered.

“You know, grief feels very much like fear, almost interchangeable,” she said. “You’d think we’d get used to grief, but we never do.” She stroked my hair gently, scratched my hair, clicked her fingernails together. We called that “cleaning lice.” Fatima’s Italian mother used to do that. I’d loved it as a child, and I loved it now.

Lina trudged into the room, looking like she was about to disintegrate—eyes puffy, skin dark beneath them. She acknowledged Fatima and me but went directly to my father’s bed.

“Have they all left?” Fatima asked. My sister nodded in between heaves and tears. Fatima waited. “What about Salwa?”

“Hovik took her home,” Lina replied.

“Good. She looked exhausted. Not as exhausted as you, though. You’re going home. Sleep in your bed tonight.”

“No. It’s quite all right. I’ll stay here.”

“No, I’ll stay. You go home. You can’t keep sleeping on the recliner. I’ll take over.”

“I’m not going home,” my sister said. “He wants me here. I’m used to the recliner. If he wakes up and doesn’t see me here, he freaks. I have to.”

The sound of the machine—inhale, exhale—echoed inside my skull. Aspiration, beep, beep, expiration. My head seemed to melt upon itself. I heard myself say, “No, you both go home. I’m staying.” They gawked as if I were a poltergeist. “I need time with him, and you need the rest.”

Fatima blew kisses my way. She hurriedly collected my sister’s belongings.

Lina wouldn’t take her eyes from mine. I blinked. “You sure?” she asked.

Fatima picked up my sister’s overnight bag, kissed me, and dragged my sister toward the door. Lina disentangled herself and came over. “Go to the nurses’ desk and they’ll give you a pillow and blanket.” She hugged me. “Call me if anything happens.” She squeezed me tight. “It was always just you and me, stupid. Always was, always will be.” And she kissed the top of my head. The sound of the kiss echoed in my skull.

When my grandfather discovered he’d been rejected, he pleaded his case to the bey. This was the girl for him, he said. He loved her. No other would do. If Najla wouldn’t marry him, who else would? Could the bey intercede on his behalf? And the bey did. He called Jalal Arisseddine, asked him to reconsider. The hakawati was his protégé, a decent fellow. The bey himself would make sure the girl was taken care of. The girl wouldn’t find a better husband, after all. She was an orphan of impure parentage, and had a disreputable deceased brother—three strikes.

The girl’s brother agreed to marry her to the bey’s hakawati. The girl’s mother did not.

And the bey called Mona Arisseddine. She put on her mandeel and trudged up the hill to the mansion. The bey gave her the same spiel, and she said no. He repeated the same words, and she said no again. He repeated them once more, and she rejected his offer a third time. She left the befuddled bey and returned home.

The bey called
his
mother. His mother said, “I am ashamed to have raised such a fool.”

And the bey’s mother put on her mandeel and trudged down to visit Mona Arisseddine in her home. The mothers discussed the hakawati. Mona said he had no family. The bey’s mother reminded Mona that she didn’t, either, and she’d turned out to be a wonderful mother. Mona said the man was an entertainer. The bey’s mother ruminated on how quickly we forgot.

Could he make her happy? The bey’s mother told Mona to ask her daughter.

The mothers asked Najla if she thought the hakawati could make her happy.

Najla looked at both women and said he made her laugh.

Wedding torches would flare.

Mountain weddings were known for many things: the feast and the accompanying feeding frenzy; the dancing, the Lebanese dabké and the dances of the swords and shields; the rites of riding to collect the bride; and most of all the zajal, the poetry duels.

At weddings, poets competed in praising the bride, the groom,
luminaries attending the wedding, and matrimonial traditions in general. They also dueled, entertained the crowds by engaging in boasts and insults, composing verses on the spot. A poet was guaranteed an invitation to every wedding. A good one was even paid. At some weddings, amateurs joined in, tried their luck in verse. My grandparents’ wedding became famous for a verse.

A tasteless, reprehensible quatrain uttered by none other than the evil Sitt Hawwar.

A groom with a huge mouth filled with many needless words
,
Yet no incisor and no molar
,
Married a girl with a bigger mouth
,
Whose teeth entered a room before her
.

I followed the aromas emanating from the kitchen, but knew better than to go in. I stopped in the prep room. Aunt Samia was complaining to someone, most probably Aunt Nazek. “I can’t take it anymore,” she was saying. I grabbed a piece of bread from the table and bit into it. “I don’t know why she thinks she needs to keep her nose so high up in the air,” I heard her say. “It’s not like she produced a bushel of sons, just a toad of a girl and a gnat of a boy.” I bit into the bread again and again.

My grandfather came up from behind and covered my eyes. I knew it was him because of his smell, but I couldn’t tell him I knew, because my mouth was too full. “It’s only me,” he said, chuckling. “And don’t eat the bread by itself when there’s so much food around.”

As noiselessly as possible, he moved a chair next to the table, motioned for me to stand on it. He uncovered a deep bowl in the middle of the table, moved it closer. I could see the stew inside. “The secret,” he whispered. He tilted his head, and I did the same. I saw soft steam churning upon itself, imagining a porcelain cover no longer there. “The bowl has lips,” he said, “and can tell you stories, if only you allow your ears to hear or your nose to smell.”

“Or my lips to kiss,” I said softly. I bent, and the steam caressed my lashes, licked my lips. I stuck out my tongue and licked right back.

Aunt Samia walked in. “Put that filthy tongue back where it came from.”

I jumped off the chair and ran out as fast as I could. I heard her ask, “How could you let him do that, Baba?” but I didn’t hear his response.

He found me on the terrace, leaning over the railing, staring at the rosebushes in the gated garden below. “That was fun,” he said. “I bet you don’t know what was in the pot. I know you think it’s chicken stew, but it most certainly is not. It’s imp stew. You have to catch those little devils, no bigger than chickens but very hard to trap. Killing the imps is never easy. You have to find them at the right time of the year and freeze them. That’s how you do it. Not easy.”

“Oh, come on.”

“It’s true. And you have to blanch them to get rid of their red color, so no one can tell that it’s imp stew. You don’t want your guests to throw up, now, do you?”

“But the guests would taste them.”

“Oh, no, imps taste like chicken. Samia is just trying to trick us.”

I didn’t say anything. I heard his breath.

“Does your father still like his meat?” my grandfather asked.

“Ask him,” I said.

“He’s not here, is he? So—I’m asking you. Does he still sneak into the kitchen and eat the aliyeh when no one is looking?”

“What’s aliyeh?”

“It’s the fried lamb and onions and garlic and salt and pepper. What you need to prepare to add flavor to the stew. When your grandmother would cook, she’d have the best aliyeh—well, she had the best everything. She was the best cook ever to walk this cursed earth.”

“Our cook is probably better. That’s what everyone says.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. No one will ever be as good as your grandmother. Her cooking woke the dead and the gods. Where was I? Your father. Well, your devious father would crawl into the kitchen on his hands and knees, holding a piece of bread between his teeth so it wouldn’t touch the floor. He’d get to the stove, stand up quickly, and dip his bread into the aliyeh while it was still frying, pick up as much as he could in that morsel, and run out before his mother caught him. He’d run, blowing on the food in his hand to cool it. Blow, and duck to avoid your grandmother, who ran after him. It was a game they played, and he had to stuff the bread in his mouth or she’d take it from him. He must have been your age, or maybe a little older. We couldn’t afford much meat when he was younger. We couldn’t afford imps, either.”

Nine