Rabih Alameddine - The Hakawati

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

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.”

On the fortieth day after King Saleh’s death, the king’s council met at the diwan to elect a new leader of the faith. “I should be king,” said many a council member. King Saleh’s widow, Shajarat al-Durr, sent a note with one of her attendants that said, “I am fit to rule.” Some demanded, “The new king must be Arab,” but others came back with “The king should be Turkoman.” The Kurds refused any such suggestion. “There shall be no king who is not a descendant of the king. King Saleh has a son in the city of Tikrit called Issa Touran Shah. He must be king.” The council agreed and dispatched Kurdish envoys with a letter informing their kinsman Issa Touran Shah that he was the new sultan of Islam.

The envoys found the new king drunk in Tikrit, his face buried in the generous breasts of an Ethiopian slave girl, his lips devouring her supple skin. “What can I do for you?” he muttered in between grunts. The messenger handed him the letter, and Issa Touran Shah in turn gave the letter to his girl. “Read it to me,” he said. “My eyes have a higher priority.”

“The world is not everlasting,” read the slave girl. “Your father has passed away.”

“That is bad,” followed by what sounded like the squeal of a piglet.

“You are now king.”

“That is better,” followed by what sounded like the snore of a sated glutton.

King Issa Touran Shah left Tikrit and headed toward the great city of Cairo. In the great city, the king visited the tomb of his father, where he kissed the ground, read the Fatiha, and asked God to guide His servant. God may have guided the king, but wine complicated the directions. In the diwan, he teetered upon his chair, and Prince Baybars whispered in his ear, “Fear God and cease your drinking. Your subjects deserve a sober ruler.” The king promised to drink no more, but he appeared sheepish and even more inebriated the following day.