Rabih Alameddine - The Hakawati

“Yes.” His deep, sibilant voice made her soul shudder. “My world is a wonderful place to die.” He opened his hand, and sixteen black scorpions slithered across his blue fingers toward her. “Yet do I detect a bit of resistance?”

“No, sire,” she replied. “I have seen the light. I surrender.”

A forked tongue unfurled out of the jinni’s mouth. “Ah, the sweet smell of surrender excites me so.” She did not cringe when the scorpions crawled up her body. She wished one of them would sting her. When he stood up, his throne dissolved into hundreds of asps. “You will be my plaything.” She did not flinch at that, either. “Our plaything.” And a young boa coiled around her handless arm.

Afreet-Jehanam picked her up, cradled her in the palm of his hand. He brought her closer to his face, but his stench did not bother her. “It pleases me that you finally submit to my desire.”

She wanted to laugh. “We are not much of a match sexually.”

“But we are, Sitt Fatima. Size is not everything.”

The first scorpion stung her in the throat, and a cobra bit into her stump. The scorpions stung all over her body. Afreet-Jehanam laid Fatima down on a bed of shimmering snakes. And the demon began to shrink — half his size in a blink of an eye, another half in another blink, until he achieved the dimensions of a large, muscular man. But the transformation did not stop there. He removed the third eye from his forehead and made it disappear. His skin grew paler in color; the burning hair turned black, a human nose appeared. And a human hand reached out for her.

Fatima saw the most handsome of men bring his face close to hers. He kissed her. She kissed back. And life surged through her. She made love to him. In some moments she saw him as a man, in others as a demon. And she was being stung and bitten. She was a riverbed. She was a mere channel of life and its stories. She gained strength.

Fatima woke up. She felt refreshed and rejuvenated, filled with vigor. Afreet-Jehanam, no longer human, leaned on his elbow next to her. “You are beautiful,” he said.

“I am without a hand,” she replied.

“You are without much,” the demon said, “and so you are beautiful.”

She looked at her wound, saw it honestly for the first time: the lines of blood, the clots, scabs growing, the tissue attempting to heal itself out of grief and loss, the skin trying to forget what was once there. But the air about her missing hand began to shimmer in startling waves. A mass grew from her wrist, bubbled out like slow-boiling lava. She saw it swell, felt her blood pour into it. Stumps sprouted, and fingers began to form. And Fatima moved the fingers. Her hand was back. “This is unlike any hell I could have imagined,” she said.

“Hell? I am insulted. Whatever possessed you to think of my realm as hell?”

“Well,” she said, “you are a demon. This is the underworld. I just assumed.”

“Ah, humans. Your ideas of hell are nothing more than the lees and dregs of unimaginative minds long since dead. Listen. Let me tell you a story.”

Once there was and once there was not a devout, God-fearing man who lived his entire life according to stoic principles. He died on his fortieth birthday and woke up floating in nothing. Now, mind you, floating in nothing was comforting, lightless, airless, like a mother’s womb. This man was grateful.

But then he decided he would love to have sturdy ground beneath his feet, so he would feel more solid himself. Lo and behold, he was standing on earth. He knew it to be earth, for he knew the feel of it.

Yet he wanted to see. I desire light, he thought, and light appeared. I want sunlight, not any light, and at night it shall be moonlight. His desires were granted. Let there be grass. I love the feel of grass beneath my feet. And so it was. I no longer wish to be naked. Only robes of the finest silk must touch my skin. And shelter, I need a grand palace whose entrance has double-sided stairs, and the floors must be marble and the carpets Persian. And food, the finest of food. His breakfast was English; his midmorning snack French. His lunch was Chinese. His afternoon tea was Indian. His supper was Italian, and his late-night snack was Lebanese. Libation? He had the best of wines, of course, and champagne. And company, the finest of company. He demanded poets and writers, thinkers and philosophers, hakawatis and musicians, fools and clowns.

And then he desired sex.

He asked for light-skinned women and dark-skinned, blondes and brunettes, Chinese, South Asian, African, Scandinavian. He asked for them singly and two at a time, and in the evenings he had orgies. He asked for younger girls, after which he asked for older women, just to try. Then he tried men, muscular men, skinny men. Then boys. Then boys and girls together.

Then he got bored. He tried sex with food. Boys with Chinese, girls with Indian. Redheads with ice cream. Then he tried sex with company. He fucked the poet. Everybody fucked the poet.

But again he got bored. The days were endless. Coming up with new ideas became tiring and tiresome. Every desire he could ever think of was satisfied.

He had had enough. He walked out of his house, looked up at the glorious sky, and said, “Dear God. I thank You for Your abundance, but I cannot stand it here anymore. I would rather be anywhere else. I would rather be in hell.”

And the booming voice from above replied, “And where do you think you are?”

Fatima chuckled. Her hands touched her stomach, and suddenly she wondered if she was pregnant. She knew it was possible. History was filled with tales of half-demons. Would her child resemble Afreet-Jehanam, the ugly demon, or her lover, the most beautiful of men? And what if she was carrying a girl? An unattractive son might be one thing, but a daughter who looked like a demon? The potion. “I need my things.”

“Needs, wants, desires,” Afreet-Jehanam said. “I might as well be telling children’s tales.” He paused, looked into his beloved’s eyes. “I can dress you in royal clothing, in silks and furs, in emeralds and pearls. What need you of past belongings?”

“One can never be free from the past and its pull.”

Afreet-Jehanam waved his hand, and in a moment the red imp Ishmael came running with her clothes. “I collected everything,” he said, “except for the robe. Ezra likes it quite a bit. He thought I wanted it for myself and would not give it up.”

Fatima took the vial from the dress’s pocket. “Has it been seven hours yet?”

“No,” the grand demon said. Fatima drank the liquid. “But there was no need,” he added. “Had you not panicked, you would have realized that it is a boy. Magic potions are redundant.”

Ishmael looked stunned. “I am going to be an uncle?”

“I must leave,” Fatima said. “I must complete my mission.”

“Why?” Afreet-Jehanam asked. “You have ingested the potion you were to deliver.”

“I am not free. I will return. As to the potion, I have another plan. I must continue. I am still far from the green city. The sooner I leave the better.” Her lover opened his hand, and in his palm Fatima saw her decapitated hand. “That is my third hand,” she said.

“And in it I will place my third eye,” he said. “This will be the proof of our union. Place it upon your person and no demon will dare hurt you. Place it above the door of your house and evil will never enter.”

She took the talisman, and it transformed in her hands. It became stone, turquoise, and the eye in the palm a slightly darker blue.

“Stay the night,” the demon said. “You will be with your masters in the morning.”

According to my grandfather, I owed my existence, my special place in the world, to either of two things, the slaughter of a stud pigeon or the swallowing of matches. Depending on which story he was in the mood to tell, one of those two events forced him to escape Urfa, or, as he sometimes said, provided him with the opportunity of a lifetime.