The Hakawati (87 page)

While the twins slept in their bed, millions of black ants crept into the room and carried the dark boy out the window and onto the balcony, whence he was flown off by fifteen young jinn. Still asleep, Layl was delivered to the monster sitting under the second willow.

Much to the emir’s wife’s horror, the monster did not hesitate. Hannya raised the arm carrying the sword and cut off Layl’s head. She proceeded to cut off his arms and legs, then dug out his heart and cut off his testicles.

The head she gave to ten hyenas. “Take this to your den. Guard and protect it, for by its power you will produce the sturdiest of offspring.”

Twenty eagles received the arms. “Take these to your nest. Guard and protect them, for by their power your wings will increase in strength and your feathers will decrease in weight.”

The legs she gave to thirty monkeys. “Take these to your trees. Guard and protect them, for by their power you will grow more nimble.”

The torso she gave to the lions. “Take this to your lair. Guard and protect it, for by its power you will be the most powerful of beasts.”

The heart she kept for herself. The testicles she gave to the emir’s wife. “Destroy these, for as long as they exist the demon king can resurrect himself.”

The emir’s wife stared aghast at the bloodied testicles in her hand. “How can I destroy them? I have no experience with such things. I am naught but simple royalty.”

“Destroy them as you wish,” hissed the monster, “but do not fail me.”

The emir’s wife swallowed the testicles in one gulp. The monster smiled.

And the scream of Shams was heard round the world.

I stood at the door of the hospital room with my carry-on strapped on my shoulder, hesitating as if I needed permission to enter. On the plane, I had visualized many different scenes, but none matched the sight of my dying mother unconscious, or the despair planted on my father’s face. Reality always flabbergasted me.

My father moved from despair to fury as soon as he caught sight of me. He couldn’t speak, simply glared, angry and teary. Now, that was a scenario I had pictured. He considered it egregious that I would be anywhere but at his side during troubled times. When I saw Fatima in the visitors’ lounge, she told me to be strong, and I knew she wasn’t only speaking of my mother’s decline. He sat on my mother’s left side
and Lina on the right. When she looked at me, I realized I was late. My sister’s face was the tuning fork that forced induction. My knees buckled and I stumbled like a newborn foal. The metronomic beats of the monitor, the jagged peaks of colored lines on the monitor nauseated me. My mother’s timed breathing.

I wanted to say that it wasn’t my fault, that I’d taken the first flight out and made good time. Nothing would escape my lips. My sister hugged me, and my head nestled in her bosom. I squeezed my eyelids shut so I wouldn’t have to look at her breasts, at my father, or at my mother.

My father hadn’t shaved in at least four days, and his face seemed to grow a fresh wrinkle with each beep of the monitor. He stooped over the bed, sheltering my mother.

“She won’t make it through the night,” Lina whispered in my ear. When she felt me shudder, she added, “She knew it. She said goodbye.” She massaged my shaking shoulders, and then led me out to the balcony for her cigarette. “She knew you were coming,” she said, raising her voice a bit to contend with the traffic below. “Don’t worry. It wouldn’t have mattered. She’s been on heavy morphine for a week, didn’t understand much, and didn’t really try to make sense. But she knew, so she kept saying goodbye while reciting stanzas.”

A cleansing breeze whipped around the small veranda. I could hear the distinctive whooshing and popping sounds of two plastic bags being kited by the wind. “I should go back in,” I said.

“Wait,” Lina said. “Give him a minute.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong.” I couldn’t look at her, but heard her tears. I stared through the picture window at my Hermès-turbaned mother and my father at her side. “What did she say?” I asked.

Lina put her arm around me. “She hasn’t been able to speak clearly for a while.”

“You should’ve called me earlier.”

“Don’t do that,” she said. “I’ve kept you updated. It just happened quicker than I’d expected.”

“What did she say?”

“How much she loved us, how much she loved you.”

“Be more specific.” I shook my head. “Please.”

“I don’t know, she was rambling in three languages. It wasn’t clear or uplifting or anything. She recited poetry that made little sense. She
mixed lines and made some up, I think. She was smiling the whole time. She said she loved you, I swear.”

My body slumped. “I want to go back in.”

“She thought the male nurse was our father. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She looked at the nurse and offered him the Saadi line ‘I’d rather be shackled to you in hell than stroll in the Garden with another.’ Well, our father tried to get her to repeat it to him.”

A graceless laugh escaped her lips.

Shams’s sorrow was so deep that his wail of lament lasted one incessant week. He did not sleep or eat, and none could console him or interrupt the howl. His cry of sadness forced every creature that heard it to shed tears. The imps tried in vain to comfort him, pleading with him to help them search for his twin, but he could not hear them. They wept and begged, but Shams wailed on and on.

“Go,” Isaac told his brothers, his cherubic cheeks waxy wet. “Ishmael and I will watch over him. The rest of you must find our sister and nephew. Ask every human, every jinni, every beast and insect. North, south, east, and west, search every crevice of the world. Find them.”

The emir’s wife knocked on her son’s door, knocked again and again. The wailing broke her heart, and she wanted to mother him. She opened the door, gingerly and shyly, and entered. In the middle of the room, her prophet hugged himself, formed an orb upon a chair, his face buried in his thighs. The howl poured from his body. Isaac and Ishmael—brother demons, not parrots—each on one knee, each redder than blood, stroked Shams’s head and kissed it.

She waited, crying, hoping Shams would acknowledge her. She took a deep breath to calm her soul. She cleared her throat, but the sound she made could not compete with that emanating from her prophet. “Shams,” she called. “My son.”

Isaac and Ishmael glared at her, but Shams—Shams looked at her with loathing, his eyes redder than the two demons. He raised his arm, his palm facing her. “Blood be upon you.”

Out of nothing, out of the immediate air, blood soaked her. First her hands dripped; strings of blood fell from her fingers to the floor. She thought she was wounded, but it was not so. Her hair felt sticky. She
looked at the floor, where a large puddle of blood had formed. Ecru turned to red, and her robe became soaked and clung to her body. Her legs felt viscous and clammy, and her vagina felt full. She desperately wanted to lift her robe and examine her privates but was unable to do anything other than scream and run for help.

By the time my mother’s funeral ended, my father looked as if he had been through wash, rinse, and spin-dry cycles in one of those tiny washing machines that fit under the kitchen counter. Still, he had to find the energy to be with all who came to offer him obsequies. He was so tired by the end of the day that he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. In the morning, we had to prepare for visitors. The day following the funeral, our house was full of people, hundreds, until bedtime—the post-death rituals meant to exhaust one out of grief. The second day, repeat.

I walked into his room the third day after the funeral. My sister was fixing his tie, getting him ready for another day of condolences. My father looked up and saw me, and his face clouded once more, a confusion of ire and despondency. “Happy you could join us,” he said, as if I had been somewhere else for the previous three days.

“I’m sorry.” I waited, then decided to put everything on the table. “I’m going to leave this morning. I have to get back to work.”

“But you just got here,” my sister said.

“You’re not leaving,” my father fumed.

“I have to.” I clasped my hands behind my back. “I really have to.”

“Why did you even bother to come?” my father snapped.

“Look. I’m very sorry, but I have to leave. I’m needed at work. You don’t need me for the condolences.”

“We need you,” my father said. “Your place is here.”

“I was here. But I also have commitments.”

“If you leave, I’ll never speak to you again. I’ll disown you.”

“No, you won’t,” Lina interrupted. “You’ll not do that. You don’t mean that.”

“If you leave now,” my father said, “you are not my son.”

“I am your son,” I said.

“No son of mine abandons his father.”

Nineteen

O
ne day, a bizarrely dressed man walked into the diwan. He spoke a language that the court’s translator did not understand. Surprising everyone, Baybars replied to the stranger in his language and treated him with the utmost respect and hospitality. The sultan read the letter the messenger had brought and began to weep. Othman rushed to his friend’s side. “What is it, my lord? Tell me and I will realign the sun and the moon to ease your sorrow.”