The Hakawati (50 page)

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?”

“Don’t know. Maybe the dorms.” I looked around the suite. “Maybe I’ll stay here. This is grand enough for me.”

“It’s nothing compared with the suite in Las Vegas. We had a swimming pool in the room.”

“It’s true,” said Melanie.

“In a hotel room? Why? Did you swim in it?”

“No,” my father replied. “Why should I swim in a pool?”

“I don’t know. You have a pool in your room, you should swim in it.”

“That’s silly.” He crushed the cigarette in the ashtray and picked up the paper.

“Oh, Dad, you just have no imagination.”

Melanie had to stop herself from laughing.

My father folded his paper. “Why don’t you two go out dancing tomorrow night? You two should go to a dance club and have fun. What’s the name of the place you told us about?”

“My Place,” Melanie said. “It’s the
in
club.”

“You want us to go dancing?” I asked, to make sure I’d understood correctly.

“Yes. Go out and have fun. I don’t want to go to a dance club. My ears won’t be able to handle it. You two kids like music. Go out and have fun.”

Uncle Jihad came down whistling a polka, his feet keeping time on the stairs. He hesitated for a moment, appearing concerned, and his face blanched. He seemed to lose his breath, but it was only a brief interruption of the polka, a musical hiccup. He descended the stairs happily. My father stood up. “Let’s go,” he said. “We don’t want to be late to the interview.”

In the waiting room, my cousin Hafez leaned over and whispered into my ear, “I must see him. I must.” His moist eyes pleaded, regarded me with such ardor, as if I were a saint and my blessing was what he lived for. Or was it my father’s?

“I’ll ask Lina.”

“Please, don’t. You know she wouldn’t let me.” His hand fell on my knee, like my father’s used to whenever he wanted me to pay attention. “I’m asking you.”

It was as if I were seeing him for the first time. Hello, I’m your cousin Hafez. We grew up together and spent hours and days and weeks and months and years in each other’s company, but you have no clue who I am. Let me introduce myself. I was supposed to be your twin, but …

Hafez hesitated slightly at the door before entering the room with me. My sister smiled at him. I cocked my head toward the balcony, and Lina understood. She gestured a need for a cigarette and stood up. She slid the balcony’s door silently and glided out.

Hafez and I were a study in contrasts, I in Nikes, jeans, and a UCLA sweatshirt, and he in suit and tie and Italian moccasins. My disheveled hair was badly in need of a trim, and his was gelled and styled. He looked more like my father in his prime than I ever did. He was a family man with three teenage children, and I was nothing more than an unkempt teenager, even though only six weeks separated us. He was always more our family than I was.

He stood at the foot of the bed, what had been my space in the room. He looked as if he was about to cry but still wasn’t used to the idea. He stared at my father as if he wanted to tell him something, or wanted my father to make things right. “I guess his heart is tired,” he whispered. He inhaled deeply. He was standing as close as possible without our touching. “I hadn’t expected him to fall before my mother. She has been all right this week, with all the family here for Eid al-Adha, but she’ll begin to get worse when Mona returns to Dubai and Munir to Kuwait. They—” He stopped. His face flushed, and he shut his eyes. The only reason his brother and sister hadn’t flown back to their homes in the Gulf was that they would have to return to Lebanon for my father’s funeral.

The UCLA campus was as big as a whole city. School hadn’t started yet, but the campus was busy nonetheless. My father gave Melanie a couple of hundred dollars to shop at the student store. The engineering department was an entire building. The size of the dean of engineering was proportional. He was six feet six and round, with a ruffle of double chins draped over his starched white collar. He introduced himself as “Dean Johnson, but call me Fred.”

“I understand you’re quite the intelligent young man,” the dean said. He seemed jovial and pleasant, a nice person, with a cheerful, impish expression on his fleshy face.

“I test well.” I had the right instincts for multiple-choice questions.

“Have you taken the SATs yet?” He leaned back in his chair.

“Yes, I have. Everything is in the folder.”

He reached for the folder and perused the papers. “You scored sixteen hundred?” he asked—rhetorically, I presumed.

“We had to have him take the GCE with the British Council,” my father said. “We weren’t sure there would be any baccalaureates this year, because of the war.”

“This is very impressive,” Fred said, shaking his head. “I wish you had come to me a little earlier. Admissions have been closed for a while.” He kept looking at all my scores. “Are you considering any other university?” he asked, not removing his eyes from my papers. “Wait. Don’t answer that. Let me make a phone call.” He stood up and left his office.

Neither my father nor Uncle Jihad nor I spoke a single word while the dean was out, as if any syllable would bring down a jinni’s curse upon the proceedings. But then Uncle Jihad stood up, went over to my father, and bent his head. I heard the sound of my father’s lips meeting Uncle Jihad’s head. A good-luck kiss.

The dean re-entered the office, obviously excited. He leaned on his desk in front of me. “I may have been able to do something, but I have to ask you some questions. Are you sure UCLA is the right school for you? Have you thought about what we have to offer?”

“Yes. I like the school. I like Los Angeles.”

“And there’s a war back in your country, right?”

“Yes,” I replied, unsure where that was going.

“And UCLA is your only chance right now for an uninterrupted education, right? UCLA will provide you a peaceful setting where you can pursue a degree and continue your record of academic excellence.
Isn’t that so?” I nodded. “Good. Then that’s settled.” He laughed heartily. “Here’s what I need you to do, young man. I’d like you to fill out an application for admission to the university. It has to be done right away, so I can take it to the admissions office before they close. That also includes an essay. Do you think you can do that now?” I nodded once more. “Good. Josephine outside will put you in an empty office, and you can get to work. I’ll talk to your father here about logistics.”

“Can I also take music classes?” I asked. I heard my father sigh.

The dean looked at me quizzically. “It’s not the norm for engineering students to take music classes.”

“Shouldn’t it be?” I asked. “In the Middle Ages, the music and mathematics departments were one and the same. You couldn’t study one without the other. They’re complements, really. It stayed that way until the last century. The separation of music from mathematics is recent.”

“You don’t need to study music,” my father said sternly. “You’ve already studied enough music. We won’t discuss this anymore.”

“Filling out the application may take some time,” the dean told my father. “You can wait, or I can send him to the hotel by taxi, whichever is more convenient.”

“Are you sure you can get him in?” my father asked.

“No, I’m not sure. The dean of admissions is willing to look at his records. That’s a very good sign. I’ll find out soon. In any case, here’s the application.” He handed me some forms. “Just take it outside to Josephine, and she’ll find you a quiet place to fill it out.”

I thanked him and got up to leave. “Remember,” he said, “put everything we talked about in the essay. And don’t mention the music-and-math theory, okay?”

As I closed the door, I heard my father say quietly, “He’s just a little immature sometimes. Not always.”

Before she led me to the office, I asked Josephine where the men’s room was. I went in, peed, masturbated, and sneaked a couple of puffs from a cigarette. The essay I wrote elaborated on my theory of combining math and music, and I included a timeline graph as well.

I had just stepped out of the shower when Uncle Jihad opened the bathroom door on his side. I covered myself with the towel. I was starting to hate the idea of a bathroom with doors connecting two rooms.
“It’s not like I haven’t seen you naked before,” he said as I wrapped the towel around my waist. He tilted his bottle of cologne and dabbed a few drops on his scalp.

“I see you broke the perfume bottles as well,” I said. He laughed.

Uncle Jihad used to tell a story about a parrot, the pet of an oil-and-perfume merchant. For years, the parrot entertained customers with tales and anecdotes. One night, a cat chased a mouse into the shop, which frightened the parrot. She flew from shelf to shelf, breaking bottles in her wake. When the merchant returned, he hit the parrot with a blow that knocked off her head feathers. The bald parrot was upset for days, until, one morning, a man with no hair entered the shop, and the bird yelled in joy, “Did you break the perfume bottles as well?”

Uncle Jihad washed his hands, building layers of lather. “I think the dean really wants you.” He talked to my image in the mirror.