Rabih Alameddine - The Hakawati

I poured myself a glass of fresh grapefruit juice as my father read the morning paper. Melanie was already dressed in a light-green summer suit. She was standing by the tall windows. “Looks like it’s letting up,” she said. “Might turn out to be a nice day. We can probably walk.”

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Shopping,” my father said. “I should get your mother something.”

My father went to his room to get dressed, and I sat down and phoned my mother. I had forgotten to call when I first arrived, as I had promised. She wanted to talk. “I miss you already.” I grunted acknowledgment. “Will you make sure to take care of yourself?” I looked around the room. “You will call me once a week?” I watched Melanie light a filtered Kool cigarette and drink her coffee. I used the word “mama” to make sure she knew who I was talking to. Melanie turned around in her chair, crossed her legs. “I don’t care how old you are, you’ll always be my baby.” A lipstick stain appeared on the filter. Melanie used her forefinger to flick the ash dramatically. “I don’t know what I’ll do without you here.” Smoke curled out of her mouth. The lipstick was pink this morning. “You’re your mother’s only son.”

When I hung up, Melanie smiled at me tentatively. “Aren’t you a little young to be going to college?”

“I’m terribly smart.”

“I can see that.” Her laugh included an unattractive snort.

My father wanted to take our rented Cadillac to Rodeo Drive. Uncle Jihad wanted to walk, since it was only across the street from the hotel. The doorman suggested we take the hotel’s car, which dropped us off at Giorgio’s, two blocks away. The four of us must have appeared quite a tableau to passersby, a hodgepodge family of sorts.

The salesman zeroed in on my father, ignoring the rest of us. It must have been the Brioni suit. My father explained what he wanted. The salesman, an attractive young man, looked normal below the belt, but his torso leaned back at an almost unnatural angle, his left arm draped across it, and his right hand seemed to tweak an imaginary string of pearls. All of a sudden, both forefingers pointed at my father. “I have something that may be just perfect,” he said, and scampered across the floor, disappearing from sight. He returned with bundles of cloth in delectable colors, reds, variegated greens, yellows from lemon to ocher. He put them on the counter and spread one out. “Cashmere shawls,” he said. “No woman can resist.” His hand smoothed the fabric in a wide arc. “You just have to pick the color.”

“What do you think?” my father asked. I wasn’t sure which of us he was asking, Melanie or me.

I stepped forward, touching the fabric in the same wide arc. “This is beautiful.”

“I think so, too,” Melanie said.

My father went through the pile, picked a deep-sienna shawl. “You think your mom will like this?” I nodded. He handed the shawl to the salesman. My father kept looking, picked up a blue-green shawl, and held it next to Melanie’s eyes. “And this one, too,” he told the salesman. Melanie blushed.

“I want you to know something,” my father said in Arabic. “She’s not a prostitute.”

I stammered something unintelligible. I didn’t know what to say.

“I’m not paying her.” He was staring at a far corner of the store.

“Okay.” I stared at the other corner.

“She wants to be a singer. I can’t tell if she’s any good. I don’t understand this music. She sings a lot, so listen and tell me.”

It began to rain softly. Uncle Jihad carried a bottle of cologne and whistled a Lebanese tune. He picked up a loud yellow scarf, flicked one end over his left shoulder, examining the effect in a full-length mirror. Melanie looked at a dress on a hanger, fingered the material. “Why don’t you try it on?” my father suggested.

“He is loved,” I said above the dins of the room.

My sister had taken Nisrine to the visitors’ room. Fatima had returned and claimed my sister’s seat. The diminishing red numbers of the dialysis machine entranced her, as they did me. Twenty-two minutes, thirteen seconds. Salwa held my father’s hand.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“It’s so obvious Nisrine loves him,” I replied. “You can’t fake that reaction. It broke my heart watching her.”

“Yes,” she said. “They were lovers once.”

“No,” I blurted. “No. It only seemed that way because they both loved to flirt.” My niece just looked at me, her eyebrows forming the top halves of question marks. “How would you know anyway?” I said. “You weren’t even born.” My voice faltered. “It can’t be. He flirted with her in front of my mother. He wouldn’t have done that if it were for real. They were friends.”

Fatima raised her arms in despair and sighed.

Salwa looked at me with my mother’s eyes, brown and wide. In a steady voice, she said, “She was one of his many mistresses.”

“How can you be sure?” I asked, my voice much weaker than hers. “I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but all you’re going by is what Lina tells you.”

“He paid for her eldest son’s schooling. You know that.”

“Of course,” I replied. “They were friends of the family.”

“Stop, Osama,” Fatima ordered, loud enough to shock the technician awake. “Take our word for it. If you want me to list all his mistresses, I will. Maybe it’s time you talked to your sister and compared notes.”

Lina filled her lungs with smoke on the balcony. I studied the straight lines of building rooftops. “How could you not know they had an affair?” Lina asked. We both looked out at the calm Mediterranean, which could be seen through a large gap between two buildings.

“God, Osama. You know he slept with other women. You couldn’t have been that blind. Why do you think she finally left him?”

“Please. I’m not stupid. He didn’t hide his womanizing from me. He was proud of it. I just didn’t think he’d do it with Nisrine. I don’t know why. Not her.”

She leaned forward on the railing and took another drag. “Why not her?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I huffed. “Maybe because she was a friend of the family. Maybe because my mother knew her. Maybe because we all knew her. I don’t know.”

She reached out and pulled me to her. I took the cigarette from her hand and noisily smoked half of it. “Bad form,” she said.

“Yes, that’s it,” I snapped. “It’s fucking bad form. That’s what it is.”

I felt her shake before I heard her laugh, a staccato outburst. It took a few seconds for me to join in. I tapped the cigarette ash too hard, and the glowing cinder dropped toward the street below. “I can’t fucking believe it,” I said.

“Fuck yes.”

“But you’re wrong. She didn’t just leave him because of his philandering. You know that. It wasn’t just the women.” I gripped the balcony’s rail, took a loud breath. “He had this way of looking at women he was flirting with, an expressive quality — humorous, even. It was as if his eyes asked them to confide in him, to tell him their stories.”

“His eyes never invited me to share with him,” she said.

“Me, neither.”

We sat at the burnt-orange dinette set, my father, Melanie, and I, waiting for Uncle Jihad to finish his shower. My sister had called and teased me as usual. She said my mother missed me so much she went out and bought a pot of hydrangea, and now no one could tell I was gone. My father smoked, read the paper, and drank his coffee. He made a gurgling sound with each sip. “We have to ask about residence,” he said. “Where will you stay?”