Rabih Alameddine - The Hakawati

The midwife changed the third son into a white calf. The calf looked up at his father just as the sword was about to fall, and the king held his hand. “I refuse to be the father of this,” the king said. “Inform the butcher I want this calf’s heart for dinner.”

The queen wept and asked, “What happened to my children?” The king spoke to her. “I have offered you everything and received pain and disdain in return. I can bear no more. I refuse to be a husband to you.” He forbade his queen to leave her chambers, and he stopped visiting.

The butcher received the calf and thought to himself, “This is a majestic specimen. It would be a shame to kill it for a fleeting meal. I will kill another calf and save this regal animal for breeding.” The calf proved that the butcher understood his beasts, for he grew to become a white bull of unparalleled size and beauty. The great bull matured among the rest of the king’s cattle until, one day, a new milkmaid appeared, and he fell in love. The young maiden flinched and blanched when the great white bull approached her. She ran away from him, and he did not chase her, for he did not wish to frighten his beloved. She joined the other girls as they milked the cows, but her eyes kept surreptitiously moving back to the magnificent beast.

The following morning, the white bull led the cows to a meadow where a profusion of spring flowers bloomed. Joy blossomed on the milkmaids’ faces upon seeing the flowers, and they set forth picking narcissi, roses, hyacinths, violets, and thyme. The bull cooed a lover’s call, and the maiden went up to him, garlanded his broad neck with gardenias, his silver horns with violets, hyacinths, and thyme. The bull sighed in pleasure and slumped down on the grass before his beloved. The maiden climbed astride the great bull, and he rose and carried her away. The other milkmaids blushed at the sight of a virgin astraddle the great bull. He carried her for leagues and they came across an old crone resting on a large rock. The maiden greeted the crone who asked, “Is he your husband?” The girl said he was not, and the crone asked, “Is he your brother?” The maiden swore that he was not. “Then why are you not veiled?” the crone wondered.

“He is but a beast.” The maiden stroked her bull’s neck.

“He is a boy in love. A witch had changed him into a bull.”

“That is awful,” cried the maiden. “He would have been such a handsome man. Is there anything we can do?”

“There always is. Changing one species to another is difficult, requiring magic, skill, and elaborate potions. Regaining its original form is easy, requiring nothing more than the pure, true love of one of its kind.”

The maiden asked, “Are you suggesting—” But when she glanced up, the crone was no more. The bull lay on the grass once again, and the maiden climbed off his back. “I will love you,” she told him, and kissed him. They made love in the meadow, and when the maiden finally opened her eyes, fulfilled and filled, she saw above her the perfect prince.

The milkmaids heard of the miracle and informed the butcher, who wanted to see for himself. The butcher told the boy, “You look familiar, almost as if you are family.” His wife trembled, and her face flushed, so the butcher beat her until she told the truth.

The king listened to the story and ordered the two sisters and the midwife beheaded in the public square. He visited his queen for the first time in years and apologized, but she said, “I had offered you everything and received pain and disdain in return. I will bear no more. You have killed my sons. I refuse to be your wife.”

The king said, “I was wrong. How can I make up for it?”

“Die,” the queen replied.

And so it was. Guilt and sorrow did the disloyal king in. The queen witnessed her son’s rise to the throne, and the milkmaid wore the crown of the betrothed.

I was trying to stop crying. My knee hurt, my elbow hurt, and the bruise on my left upper arm was turning darker by the second. Uncle Jihad knelt before me, calming and shushing me. He had put his first-aid kit on the dining-room table and me on one of its chairs.

“They were older than me, too,” he said. “They were Wajih’s friends. That’s what drove my mother crazy. Wajih didn’t do anything, but he didn’t stop his friends. He was too scared. He just watched. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. These boys don’t hate you. They’re scared of you. You’re much smarter, more talented.”

“And much smaller,” I snapped. “And there are a lot of them.”

“I know that.” He swabbed mercurochrome on my knee. “But this won’t last long. Soon you’ll be running these stupid boys in circles. Soon they’ll be shining your shoes and picking up after you.” He tickle-poked my stomach. “You’d like that, right?”

“But what’ll I do now? I can’t wait till soon.”

“I’ll take care of things now. Don’t worry.”

“You won’t tell my father?”

He mimed running a needle and thread through his lips. He covered my knee with a Band-Aid and began to examine my elbow.

“What’ll I tell them when they see me like this?” I asked.

“Tell them you fell.”

“You’re telling me to lie to my parents?” I stared at him.

“I’d never do such a thing,” Uncle Jihad replied in mock seriousness. “Never, ever lie to anyone, let alone your parents; lying is bad. But being discreet is good. You fell, right? Maybe they pushed you, but still, you fell. That’s what we’ll say. We’re not going to tell your parents everything, for their own good. We don’t want them to worry unnecessarily.” I flinched as he dabbed hydrogen peroxide on my elbow. “Wait here,” he said. “I think we’ve earned some fruit juice.” He went to his kitchen and returned with two tall half-filled glasses of pomegranate juice.

“Are you going to tell me what happened to you that day?” I asked.

“I was watching the village boys. It was cold but clear, so all the boys that weren’t working were sledding down the hill. Snow had fallen for three straight days, so it was perfect. They didn’t really have sleds, of course, only broken wooden boxes. I saw Farid with his friends, but before I could reach them, four or five big boys jumped me. They were Wajih’s friends, so they couldn’t have been less than fifteen or so. They lifted me up and put me in a box and pushed it downhill. They were amusing themselves. I was too frightened to scream and had no idea what to do. My feet and hands were inside the box. The sled picked up speed. Even the laughter of the other boys stopped. I finally heard Farid screaming for me to use my hands to slow the box. I tried but couldn’t. Farid was running down the hill, but I was sliding too fast and toward a cliff. It was a small cliff, mind you, but a huge drop to fly over in a wooden box. Everyone, including me, thought I was a goner. And I was. I hit the edge and flew with my box, higher and higher, until a large pine tree bent its hand and picked me up out of the sky.”

“The hand of a pine tree?”

“Imagination, my boy. Cum grano salo. The branch of a pine tree, it was. It felt like a hand because the tree caught me while I was flying. The hand of God came down and took the form of a pine branch. By my coat it caught me, while the box kept soaring higher and shattered when it hit the ground. I was saved.”

“How did you get down from the tree?”

“It took forever.”

The Chinese magnolia trees were covered with divine pink-and-white blossoms, practically the only beautiful sight anywhere near my classes. Unlike the rest of the university, the science campus was unsightly, mostly built in the ugly sixties: large cubes of concrete whose windows opened upward, as if the buildings were sticking their collective tongues out at the world and saying, “We’re ugly and we don’t care.”