Joseph Wambaugh - The Blue Knight

“The boy saw a child in the moonlight, covered with sores, stomach bloated, barely able to walk. Her teeth were loose, eyes and gums crusted, and a recently broken nose made it hard for her to breathe. He examined her face and saw that at no time could that face have been more than homely, but now it was truly awful. He spoke to her a few moments and found she was thirteen years old, a wandering refugee, and he remembered the proud and vain demand he had made of God the night before. He began to laugh then, and suddenly felt stronger. He couldn’t stop laughing and the laughter filled him with strength. It alarmed the girl, and he saw it, and finally he said, ‘The God of Armenians has a sense of humor. How can you doubt someone with a sense of humor like His? You’re to come with me, my little dev .’

“‘What do you want of me, sir?’ she asked, very frightened now.

“‘What do I want of you?’ he answered softly. ‘Look at you. What do you have to offer? Everything has been taken from you and everything has been done to you. What could anyone in the world possibly want of you now? Can you think of what it is, the thing I want?’

“‘No, sir.’

“‘There is only one thing left. To love you, of course. We’re good for no more than this. Now come with me. We’re going to find our Armenia.’

“She went with the half-starved, wild-eyed boy. They survived together and wandered to the Black Sea, somehow got passage, and crossed on foot through Europe, through the war and fighting, ever westward to the Atlantic, working, having children. Finally, in 1927, they and five children, having roamed half the world, arrived in New York, and from force of habit more than anything, kept wandering west, picking up jobs along the way until they reached the Pacific Ocean. Then my mother said, ‘This is as far as we go. This ocean is too big.’ And they stopped, had four more children, sixty-one grandchildren, and so far, ten great grandchildren, more than forty with the Kamian name that would not die in the ditch in Armenia. Most of his sons and grandsons have done well, and he still likes to come here sometimes once a week and play his oud for a few people who understand.”

So that was the story of old Kamian, and I didn’t doubt any of it, because I’ve known a lot of tough bastards in my time that could’ve pulled off something like that, but the thing that amazed me, that I couldn’t really understand, is how he could’ve taken the little girl with him that night. I mean he could’ve helped her, sure. But he purposely gave himself to her that night. After what he’d already been through, he up and gave himself to somebody! That was the most incredible thing about Mr. Kamian, that, and how the hell his fingers knew exactly where to go on that oud when there were no frets to guide them.

“You eat plenty, Bumper?” asked Yasser, who came to the table with Ahmed, and I responded by giving him a fat-cat grin and patting him on the hand, and whispering “ Shukran ” in a way that you would know meant thanks without knowing Arabic.

“Maybe you’ll convert me, feeding me like that. Maybe I’ll become a Moslem,” I added.

“What you do during Ramadan when you must fast?” laughed Yasser.

“You see how big Abd’s kids?” said Yasser, lifting his apron to reach for his wallet, and laying some snapshots on me that I pretended I could see.

“Yeah, handsome kids,” I said, hoping the old man wouldn’t start showing me all his grandkids. He had about thirty of them, and like all Arabs, was crazy about children.

Ahmed spoke in Arabic that had to do with the banquet room, and Yasser seemed to remember something.

“Scoose me, Bumper,” said the old boy, “I come back later, but I got things in the kitchen.”

“Sure, Baba ,” I said, and Ahmed smiled as he watched his father strut back to the kitchen, the proud patriarch of a large family, and the head of a very good business, which Abd’s Harem certainly was.

“How old is your father now?”

“Seventy-five,” said Ahmed. “Looks good, doesn’t he?”

“Damn good. Tell me, can he still eat like he used to, say ten, fifteen years ago?”

“He eats pretty well,” Ahmed laughed. “But no, not like he used to. He used to eat like you, Bumper. It was a joy to watch him eat. He says food doesn’t taste quite the same anymore.”

I started getting gas pains, but didn’t pop a tablet because it would be rude for Ahmed to see me do that after I’d just finished such a first-rate dinner.

“It’d be a terrible thing for your appetite to go,” I said. “That’d be almost as bad as being castrated.”

“Then I never want to get that old, Bumper,” Ahmed laughed, with the strength and confidence of only thirty years on this earth. “Of course there’s a third thing, remember, your digestion? Got to have that, too.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Got to have digestion or appetite ain’t worth a damn.”

Just then the lights dimmed, and a bluish spot danced around the small bandstand as the drums started first. Then I was amazed to see Laila Hammad run out to the floor, in a gold-and-white belly dancer’s costume, and the music picked up as she stood there, chestnut hair hanging down over her boobs, fingers writhing, and working the zils , those little golden finger cymbals, hips swaying as George’s hands beat a blood-heating rhythm on the darbuka . Ahmed grinned at me as I admired her strong golden thighs.

“How do you like our new dancer?”

“Laila’s your dancer?”

“Wait’ll you see her,” said Ahmed, and it was true, she really was something. There was art to the dancing, not just lusty gyrations, and though I’m no judge of belly dancing, even I could see it.

“How old is she now?” I said to Ahmed, watching her mobile stomach, and the luxurious chestnut hair, which was all her own, and now hung down her back and then streamed over her wonderful-looking boobs.

“She’s nineteen,” said Ahmed, and I was very happy to see how good-looking she’d turned out.

Laila had worked as a waitress here for a few years, even when she was much too young to be doing it, but she always looked older, and her father, Khalil Hammad, was a cousin of Yasser’s, who lingered for years with cancer, running up tremendous hospital bills before he finally died. Laila was a smart, hard-working girl, and helped support her three younger sisters. Ahmed once told me Laila never really knew her mother, an American broad who left them when they were little kids. I’d heard Laila was working in a bank the last couple years and doing okay.

You could really see the Arab blood in Laila now, in the sensual face, the nose a little too prominent but just suiting her, and in the wide full mouth, and glittering brown eyes. No wonder they were passionate people, I thought, with faces like that. Yes, Laila was a jewel, like a fine half-Arab mare with enough American blood to give good height and those terrific thighs. I wondered if Ahmed had anything going with her. Then Laila started “sprinkling salt” as the Arabs say. She revolved slowly on the ball of one bare foot, jerking a hip to each beat of the darbuka . And if there’d been a small bag of salt tied to the throbbing hip, she would’ve made a perfect ring of salt on the floor around her. It’s a hot, graceful move, not hard at all. I do it myself to hardrock music.

When Laila was finished with her dance and ran off the floor and the applause died down I said, “She’s beautiful, Ahmed. Why don’t you con her into marrying you?”

“Not interested,” said Ahmed, shaking his head. He leaned over the table and took a sip of wine before speaking. “There’re rumors, Bumper. Laila’s supposed to be whoring.”