Rabih Alameddine - The Hakawati

By the light of the fire, the prophet saw his wife, a woman grown old. “I do not understand why He would ask that. They cannot survive alone out there.”

“Who are we to question His commands? Oh, and they should be left there with little food or water. He said that, too.”

Lucine realized the chicken soup didn’t taste right, but she ate it anyway. What surprised her was that she was the only one who developed diarrhea. She assumed it was because of her weakened condition. Within a few hours, her baby followed suit, and she was no longer allowed to feed him. Poor Anahid was promoted to sole feeder that day. The hakawati wasn’t getting enough from four breasts, reduced to two, his wails grew louder, reaching registers few eardrums could tolerate.

Lucine’s interminable diarrhea made her weak. She could no longer move or be moved to the outhouse. Bedpans had to be scoured on the hour. By the third day, her skin seemed to collapse about her bones, except for her ankle, which swelled larger. By the fourth day, it became apparent she was not recovering. Her last words were directed to her son: “Just shut up. Just shut up for once.”

Lucine Guiragossian, almost seventeen, died of acute amoebic dysentery.

Abraham led his slave and his son across the desert, journeyed for many long and dangerous days and nights, following Sarah’s direction. They stopped at a desolate place. Abraham did not know it then, but the place was already sacred. The first prophet, Adam, had built a temple of worship to the one God on that spot. Nothing of the edifice was left standing. All Hagar saw was the hot sand, the bare hills, the yellow sun, the deathly-blue sky. Abraham gave her a little food and water, prepared to leave her there.

“How can you abandon us?” Hagar begged her master. “How can we survive with so little water in this forsaken place? Is this your decision or the will of God?”

“It is His command.” Abraham closed his satchel, avoiding her eyes.

“Oh, that’s not so bad, then.”

Abraham left them to the silent and lonely desert. There was not a sprig of grass anywhere in the valley, not one tree, not a bird in the sky, not one insect. Hagar looked at the two hills that enclosed the valley, but they offered scant protection or provision. When she ran out of water, the baby began to cry, which seared her heart like a branding iron. She ran up one hill, reached the top, scanned the desert for an oasis; nothing but scalding sand. She ran up the other hill. Disheartening, bleak, sandy emptiness. She kept hearing her baby cry, no matter how high she climbed. She descended to comfort him. His throat seemed parched. She laid him down once more, ran up one hill, down again, up the other, hoping she had missed something. Finally surrendering, she returned to her child. They would die together. He lay on the ground kicking the sand with his feet. As he kicked and kicked, lo and behold, water gushed from the ground, tumbled over sand and rock — a cold stream was born. Ishmael quieted down once he drank some water, and he slept peacefully in his mother’s arms. Hagar looked up at the sky to thank her Lord and saw flocks of birds. They circled before alighting to drink from the sacred stream. Bedouins and travelers saw the hovering birds, knew that they had found water. The tribes adjusted their routes to find its source. They arrived in the valley, saw how peaceful it was, and were awed by its bewitching beauty. They looked up to where the water source was and saw a comely Egyptian in a blue robe, resting, her infant asleep on her breast, the light of the sun bathing them in a golden sheen. Even though the tribes were still infidels then, they bowed in silence to the mother and child, so as to not disturb them. They decided to settle in the valley. This was the beginning of the holy city of Mecca. When Abraham returned for his Hagar and Ishmael, he found the valley a blooming oasis with hundreds of palms pregnant with juicy dates, and he thanked God for saving his family.

Every year, pilgrims at the hajj remember the story of Hagar and her baby. They arrive from all over the world to worship, to run between the two hills, Safa and Marwa, praying that God will provide for them the same way He provided for Hagar and Ishmael.

The baby didn’t stop crying. Poor Anahid fed him, carried him. Zovik carried him. Even the doctor’s wife. No change. Finally, the doctor had had it. He walked in on Zovik, who was trying to coo the baby quiet. “Give him to me,” he scowled.

Hesitating, but not daring to show reluctance, Zovik handed the hakawati to his furious father. The hakawati stopped crying the instant his father’s hands touched him.

The silence was shocking. The hakawati fell asleep in his father’s arms. The doctor, unable to look at anything but his baby, stood rooted to the spot, mouth open, eyebrows raised like arches under Roman bridges. He remained there until his wife called him. For the first time, the doctor told his evening story with a baby in his arms.

“From touch to touch,” Zovik whispered to Poor Anahid. “From touch to touch.”

Three angels came to visit Abraham on his ninety-ninth birthday. Sarah invited them into the tent and crouched outside, listening to their every word. One of the angels informed Abraham that God was happy with him. “God will increase the size of your family,” the angels said. “By your next birthday, your wife, Sarah, will deliver a son.”

Everyone in the tent heard Sarah’s cackling laugh. She tried to control herself, but the idea of being pregnant in her nineties was hilarious. All of a sudden, she was laughing, her body shaking, though no sound escaped her lips. She clutched her throat. She stood up, ran into the tent.

“You will not have a voice until your child is born,” the angels said.

Outside, on the other side of the tent, Hagar snickered silently.

“The doctor built a bed for me,” my grandfather told me. “You see, he was a carpenter first, then a deacon, then a doctor. He spent hours making the bed, carved each leg by hand, with high sides so I wouldn’t fall. On each of the four corners, he carved a horse’s head. He ordered the bolts and screws all the way from England. The wood was local oak, and he stained it a dark brown. I had the most beautiful bed in the house. I slept in it even when I was much too big. I would lie with my legs tilted up on the side.”

Poor Anahid watched the doctor work on the bed. She couldn’t keep still. The baby nestled in the doctor’s shoulder satchel. As long as he was in the doctor’s vicinity, the baby was as calm as the Mediterranean in early summer.

“Why are you hovering, Anahid?” the doctor asked. “Is there something you need?”

“I suggest that we not use straw,” Poor Anahid said.

My mother’s long eyelashes fluttered when she slept. It would be wrong to assume you could get away with anything when she first fell asleep: the slightest movement was enough to wake her. When I put my finger close to her eyelashes so I could know what they felt like, she opened her eyes. I closed mine, pretended to be dozing. “Are you asleep?” she asked.

“Everybody is asleep,” I said with eyes closed, “but Jardown is awake.”

“Jardown will get a spanking and will have to sleep in his own bed if he’s not asleep very soon.”

• • •

“The doctor wasn’t a good storyteller,” my grandfather said. “Well, he wasn’t bad, but he certainly didn’t have the gift. And he was English after all.”

“What was wrong with his stories?”

“They were just common. He always told his favorite stories from the Bible. Stories with obvious moral lessons are like eels in a wooden crate. They slither over and under each other, but never leave the tub. In my day, I told some of the same stories, but mine soared. His problem was that he believed. Belief is the enemy of a storyteller.”