The Hakawati (73 page)

A group of three veiled women turned their heads as she passed them. Two men ran to check the license plate of the car, and one of them dialed his cell phone. Fatima walked through the glass doors of the mall seemingly oblivious, but I knew better. I hurried in after her.

She didn’t slow her step inside, didn’t look right or left. The black abayeh was not as formless as it first appeared, its finely sewn lines and folds accentuating her buxom and indolent body. Shoppers whispered in hushed tones as she passed. Men looked utterly confused, their faces showing naked lust and fear. They had no means to approach her. Faltering and off-balance, they ogled. She got on the escalator.

“Am I just supposed to follow you?” I asked.

“Of course, dear, if it makes you happy, but you can walk alongside me, too. I do provide options.” She entered a record store, looked around, moseyed from section to section, and finally headed toward the Arabic compact-disc racks. “Come along.” She ran her graceful fingers through a stack of discs, some of traditional Arabic vocalists, others more contemporary.

“I didn’t know you liked that stuff,” I said.

“I certainly don’t. I’m here for you, dear. This is all for you.” She held up an Umm Kalthoum disc. “Look.” The top of the plastic wrap had been sliced delicately with an X-acto knife. She tore through the wrap with her impeccably manicured fingernails, extracted a handwritten note from the disc box, and read it to me. “ ‘If you like the music of Umm Kalthoum as much as I do, we probably have even more things in common. I’m a good man, twenty-four, gentle, educated, and very respectful of ladies. Let’s talk. Here’s my cell phone number.’ ”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I could only imagine her face as she looked at me, smug, bemused, probably laughing.

“There are others. Look. Kazem al-Saher. Three different discs have notes. These boys are so desperate. So many of them.” She took out another note, different boy, same request.

“That’s sad.”

“It is,” she replied quietly, and sighed. “Damn. Once upon a time, I thought it was amusing.” She chucked the discs onto the rack, crumpled the love notes, and turned around. “Let’s go.” She took out her phone. “I’m ready,” she told her driver.

I followed her down the escalator. “Whenever I feel blue,” she said, “which is not very often, I try to come to Riyadh. I feel so wanted.” She paused. “I’m inspired by the braves.” She marched toward the exit. The automatic doors burped in noxious heat. No fewer than twenty men, Saudis clad in expensive desert robes, waited in the scalding temperature. As soon as the identifying Mercedes reached the curb, they twittered; she was the bell to Pavlov’s dogs.

A tall, handsome man walked quickly toward her. He slipped between us, and his hand touched her ebony abayeh, leaving a small yellow Post-it note on her back, with a handwritten phone number. I squinted, trying to read it, but another man blocked my view as he stuck on another note. Only two braves.

The Post-it notes glimmered in the sun as she walked toward the open door of the Mercedes. Two lonely gold islands in a sea of oil black.

The emir’s wife had an ominous premonition that the prophet’s thirteenth-birthday celebration was going to be a disaster. It was not an unqualified premonition, for she had been witnessing the horrific changes in her son for the previous month. He had become moodier and crankier. His healing powers seemed to be fading, if not disappearing completely. His rebellious heart no longer cared. He would touch the supplicants and no change occurred. He could only pretend to heal for about ten minutes before giving up in a huff and returning to his room.

The emir’s wife could no longer lie to herself about what the twins were doing in that room. She had caught them frolicking in the garden on more than one occasion. And when she tried to reason with him, Shams told her to perform unnatural sexual acts upon herself.

At her wit’s end, she tried to talk to Fatima, her nemesis, who only said, “All boys go through this stage. Leave him be. He is no longer the same person he was as a child. The powers he possessed then have transformed. Guruji has died. Mourn for him, but let him go. None of
us is the same person in each stage of our life.” And the emir’s wife hated Fatima even more and promised to dedicate her life to the eradication of that woman.

The largest crowd of all appeared on the morning of the thirteenth-birthday celebration to witness Shams becoming a man. Their prophet and his companion stood before them, drunk on wine, and laughed. And the prophet yelled, “Eat my shit, you dimwitted bastards. Have you nothing better to do? Go home.”

The horrified emir’s wife heard the woman’s voice echo in her head. “It is time.”

Fifteen

I
stood before the hospital vending machine and contemplated the latest existential crisis: Was drinking insultingly horrible coffee better or worse than spending the morning decaffeinated? I allowed the machine to slurp my money. Dark, viscous liquid poured out of a crooked funnel. I picked up the paper cup and almost spilled the coffee on Aunt Wasila and her daughter, Dida. My free hand settled above my heart to calm its startled beat. Dida kissed me. I tried not to stare at her nose, which she had recently had cut and reshaped to Anglo-Saxon.

“I won’t kiss you,” Aunt Wasila said. “I know you hate fake sentimentality.” She shoved a baker’s box into my chest, and I could feel it was still warm. “Fresh croissants. And better yet.” She took out a thermos out of her Prada handbag. “Better than that gunk in your hand.” I could have kissed the tiles beneath her feet. “I was hoping that if I arrived early I’d get a chance to see him briefly,” she said. “I know he doesn’t like anyone to see him infirm, but he won’t know I’m there.” I looked from mother to daughter. “Just me,” Aunt Wasila said.

I showed Aunt Wasila to my father’s room, and she stood rigid before his bed, examining and measuring. It was impossible to believe she was his age. Her look, posture, and demeanor did not speak the language of the aged. A momentary fear startled me; I was afraid the aroma of fresh croissants would disturb my unconscious father. My sister poured three cups of coffee out of the thermos. She handed one to Fatima and took a sip. Aunt Wasila nodded at them and turned to leave. I walked her back to the visitor’s room.

Aunt Wasila was our family’s lightning rod. She was to our family what Israel was to the Arab world, the one who could unite everyone in
hating her. As soon as she married Uncle Wajih, she embarked on a prolonged war against the family, at times clandestine, at other times overt. Only my mother was spared. Aunt Wasila didn’t consider her an enemy, because she figured out early on that my mother cared not one whit about the family—or about her, for that matter. Both women were outsiders. My mother cherished the role, for she had no wish to belong. Aunt Wasila did, and sought revenge for her exclusion.

On August 6, 1945, the day the Americans dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, our family—my grandfather, my grandmother, their five children, my great-grandmother, and even my great-uncles Jalal and Ma
an—walked to Aunt Wasila’s village, literally a stone’s throw away, to inquire about the availability of her hand in marriage. According to Uncle Jihad, who was thirteen at the time, everything ran smoothly. Aunt Wasila was surrounded by her mother and numerous aunts. It became obvious that Uncle Wajih was impressed with Aunt Wasila, and the feeling was mutual, because she began to smile, converse, and engage with our family. She would suddenly stand up, grab a tray of refreshments, and run up to the guests, her head snapping right and left, depending on whom she was talking to. Aunt Samia, already twenty-five, wasn’t forgiving of the sixteen-year-old girl. “What does he see in her?” she asked her mother softly. “She moves like a cornered lizard.” Unfortunately, Aunt Wasila’s nephew, who was too young to welcome the guests, was hiding behind the old couch. He heard Aunt Samia’s comment. The next day, our family was informed that Aunt Wasila had chosen another suitor.

It’s hard for me to envision Aunt Wasila as that young village girl. By the time I came into the world, my father’s siblings had all relocated to Beirut, the company was up and running, and Aunt Wasila was never seen in anything but pants except at funerals and weddings. The idea that she was once quasi-innocent, forced to be demure and wear traditional Druze dress, was incomprehensible to anyone who knew her. Compared with her, Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir were blushing maidens.

Aunt Wasila eventually changed her mind about Uncle Wajih, and they were married in 1946. She moved into my grandparents’ house. That was an arrant family mistake. Aunt Samia believed it was Aunt Wasila who persuaded her husband to ask his parents to move out of their bedroom, which was bigger than the newlyweds’. The bitter
internecine war between my aunts erupted. In years to come, many would try to broker a peace between the two women. All attempts were unsuccessful. Aunt Samia felt that her nemesis had committed the most dastardly of sins: she had treated my saintly grandmother with disrespect. As for Aunt Wasila, she could never forgive because she was a congenitally hateful woman.

When I was born, Aunt Wasila had been married for fifteen years and had had enough of the family. Though she lived in the same building, she and her children hardly interacted with us, much to the consternation of my father and Uncle Wajih. By 1974, when Uncle Wajih passed away, the breach was complete, and that shook my father. He tried rapprochement many times and failed abysmally. Once, in 1996, he dragged himself to her house and begged her to relent.

“I’m an old man,” he told her. “I don’t want to go to my grave with my family scattered. I’m not asking that you fall in love with the family, only that we don’t remain so distant. People mock us.”

“I show up to the important functions. I haven’t abandoned the family.”

“I’m asking you to forgive,” my father said.

“Some things can never be forgiven.”

“It was so long ago,” my father pleaded. “It’s almost fifty years now.”

“Some things can never be forgiven.”