The Hakawati (94 page)

The line hummed in appreciation. The emir’s wife glanced to her
left to make sure the scribe was writing down every wise word of her short yet exquisite sermon. An unfamiliar movement in the line caught her eye. She glanced up and noticed a man and his wife raising the robe of the man standing in front of them—thirteenth in line—and fondling his genitals. Before she could open her mouth to demand that they stop, she was struck once more with the surge. This time, she felt her soul shake. This time, she knew it was not going to be pleasant. This time, she was not the only one who felt it. The line was no longer straight; some supplicants looked confused, others terrified, still others lustful. One woman turned toward the temple gate and exposed her plentiful breasts. The floor rumbled, the pillars shimmied, and the emir’s wife felt two more surges rush through. Her skin tingled and her vagina buzzed and the temple gate burst into an infinity of tiny shards and toothpicks.

She wanted to exhort her seekers to calm down. She wanted to shout out a warning. Her lips moved of their own accord, and she heard herself whisper, “He comes.”

And into the diwan came a messenger bearing a letter from the emir of Bursa to the illustrious Baybars. The emir wrote that the Mongol queen of Kirkuk, a sorceress and half-sister of Hulagu Khan, had threatened to destroy his city if he did not comply with the outrageous duty payments she was demanding. “Let us return that barbarian to the hell from which she came,” decreed Baybars. “Taboush will lead an army against her. I pronounce him king of Kirkuk, with all the attendant duties and honors.”

The messenger cleared his throat. “Your Majesty, courage and valor may not be a match for this wily queen’s witchcraft.”

“Then we must certainly send her someone wilier,” Baybars said. “Othman, would you be so kind as to ask your charming wife to attend the diwan?”

Taboush led a few battalions of the slave army out of Cairo, accompanied by a most unwarlike-looking group: Othman, Harhash, Layla, and seven of her luscious-dove friends.

“Why are they traveling with us?” asked Othman.

“I do not know much about witchcraft,” Layla replied, “so I thought I would ask Maysoura, whose tea-leaf reading is unsurpassed. However, she refuses to be anywhere that Lama is not, and hence I had to
ask both. Rania thinks she communicates with the spirits of her deceased paramours, and that might come in handy, although it is hard to imagine what use dead philanderers might be. Umm Jihan says she can conjure jinn, but only on full-moon nights and not during Ramadan. Rouba
ia can do astonishing card tricks, and she has studied necromancy. Soumaya vows that she can change the position of weightless objects with her mind, and Lubna works with potions. I do not know if any of their powers will be helpful, but they are good company, and Lubna brews a marvelously refreshing drink using fermented hops and water.”

“Should I start worrying now?” asked Harhash, and Othman replied, “Why wait?”

The witch queen’s mighty army laid siege to the fort of Bursa. Upon hearing Taboush’s war bugle, the enchantress turned her attention to the slave army. The Mongolian queen babbled, cursed, gestured wildly, and sent forth one of her soldiers to challenge the heroes. The Mongolian’s reek preceded him by a hundred meters. Layla held her nose.

“None of them bathe,” explained Othman. “They mean to frighten enemies with the stench.”

Taboush nudged his horse toward the Mongolian fighter. “I will answer the call. Let us end this quickly.”

“Wait,” cried Layla. She searched through the saddlebags and brought out a jar. “Allow me.” She ran her forefinger inside the jar and dabbed cream beneath Taboush’s nose. “A mix of cucumber, lavender, verbena, and rose petals. You will smell nothing but this.”

Taboush trotted toward the Mongolian. The barbarian was quick and strong. His arms moved like palm fronds in a swirling sandstorm. But Taboush was a great warrior, a scion of great warriors trained by great warriors, and he parried every stroke the maniac attempted. After an hour of sweat and blows, Taboush saw his opening and with one stroke decapitated his enemy. The Mongolian’s head alit five horse lengths away.

“I do not like the looks of this,” said Othman.

“That foreigner was not human,” said Harhash. “Had I not seen blood spurting, I would have sworn he was a jinni. We must find out how this is accomplished.”

Taboush roared victoriously, and another of the witch’s men, a
Chechen, trotted out to fight him. The joust followed a similar pattern. An exhausted Taboush returned to his army dragging the two corpses behind him.

“If he goes out tomorrow,” said Harhash, “they will wear him down and kill him.”

“Both fighters fought the same way,” said Layla, “with unusual strength and quickness.”

Othman walked over to the corpses. “I will sneak into their camp,” he said, sounding nasal because he had his nose covered. “I will be a Chechen.”

“His clothes are too bloody,” said Layla. “You will have to wear the Mongolian’s.”

“But I do not look like a Mongolian.”

“Who is going to look at your face when your odor is so sickening? You think you will suffer? I am sending my pigeon, who has to endure being hidden on your person.”

And Majnoun stepped through the temple he had once possessed. Coral eyes flaring, hair afloat and aflame, he moved across the hall like a lion surveying his realm, like a tiger stalking his prey. His iridescent robe shone and shimmered with the many colors of fire. Three fire-breathing imps walked on his left, three on his right, one before him, and one behind. Neither violet Adam, indigo Elijah, and blue Noah on Majnoun’s right, nor green Job, yellow Jacob, and orange Ezra on the left, looked impish. Isaac and Ishmael, sizzling and smoking, carried their agate-and-gold swords. And when Majnoun halted before the emir’s wife, every ecru robe in the temple turned an inimitable bright color.

“The prophet returns,” the line of seekers said.

“Son,” the emir’s wife said. “You have returned.”

“I am not your son,” Majnoun said, “and never was. You never carried me.” He snapped his fingers. The emir’s wife screamed as Ezra, Jacob, and Job jumped upon her and searched every inch of her body. Job raised his arm triumphantly, clutching Fatima’s hand. Majnoun turned around and strode out of the temple with his fighting imps. The emir’s wife tried to compose herself. The searching, the touching—she had had a divine orgasm, stigmata.

My feet felt heavy upon the broken and jagged stone of the stairs. Hafez bounded up two at a time, but I could barely manage one. Vigor filled his body—even in repose, as he stood waiting for me on each floor.

“We’ll only go to your home,” he said. “I don’t like the squatters in ours, and they don’t like me much, either. The wife in your home is quite nice and will let us in. She’s trying to be accommodating, hoping we’ll let her stay once the courts start dealing with this neighborhood.”

I caught my breath. “Will we?”

“That depends on you. It’s your apartment. You decide.” He turned, climbed the next flight of stairs, and waited on the third floor. “I’m kicking the bastards in our place out.” He lowered his voice as if the walls had ears. “They’re insufferable ingrates. I’ve tried talking to them a few times, but not once have they invited me in. They probably think I’ll steal something. They won’t allow me to see my own home.”

I hesitated on the last step to the fourth floor, but Hafez was already knocking. A young woman opened the door, a colorful scarf hastily wrapped about her face. She held a crying baby in her arms, a toddler clung to her left thigh, and a girl of about four studied us from a few steps away. The woman seemed perplexed but offered Hafez a wan smile. No one moved, and for a moment the family looked as if they were posing for a Diego Rivera mural.

“My husband is away,” she said softly, a southern lilt to her accent.

“That’s quite all right,” Hafez replied. “I apologize for disturbing you. This is my cousin who’s visiting from America. I don’t mean to inconvenience you, but I was wondering if I could bring him in for a few moments. This is the home he grew up in.”

She hesitated, seemed even more perplexed. “I have very little to offer guests,” she said. “I haven’t been to the market in several days.”

“No need to offer us anything. We can’t stay long, for we have to return to the hospital quickly to be at his father’s bedside. My cousin wishes to recall good memories before he departs.”

“Yes, of course,” she said, opening the door wider. “Come in.”

The foyer was no longer a foyer. It had become a storage room, with cartons piled up. A cheap runner probably covered the absence of marble tiles, which had always made a distinctive clack when my mother’s
heels stepped on them. The woman led us to a living room that contained nothing but three wooden dining chairs and a rusty metal garden table with a stained-glass top. No curtains covered the windows, which were cheap aluminum-framed sliders. Outside, the balcony no longer had a railing, no whorls of metal roses, nothing to protect one’s heart from falling overboard. I hesitated to look at the dining room, where Lina used to practice her piano daily. In what world would the piano exist now?

“Please, sit,” the young woman said. “I’ll make some coffee.”

“No, please,” said Hafez. “Allow us a few minutes to look around, and we’ll soon leave you be. Don’t trouble yourself.”

Her face reddened. “Do you intend to look at the back rooms?”

“Not if it’ll disturb you. We don’t have to go back there. How about the first room here? That’s his bedroom. Can we go in there for a moment?” When she nodded, Hafez took my arm and dragged me out of the living room, back through the foyer, and into my bedroom. He closed the door behind him. “Do you remember now?”

We were surrounded by crates piled floor to ceiling. There was nothing else, barely a walkway between them. Spiders had spun intricate webs of desolation in three of the ceiling’s corners. I edged to the window. Two bullet holes in each of the top corners radiated jagged scars. Hafez followed me, the crates forcing us closer than I would have liked. I was ill-at-ease and off-kilter, made uneasy by either Hafez’s behavior or the past.