The Hakawati (98 page)

“I seek to displace a usurper,” said Taboush.

“The suit of the dupe does not become you. The honorable sultan is our rightful lord.”

“Move aside, Father, for I have no wish to fight you.”

“I shall not,” replied his father. “No one passes while I still breathe.” And neither father nor son moved, but stayed face to face for hours and hours, neither looking away nor surrendering, until the sun finished its daily pilgrimage, for no day is so long that it is not ended by nightfall.

Back in Hannya’s lair, Majnoun, Fatima, and the imps put Layl back together. Adam laid the torso down, Elijah fastened one leg and Noah the other, Job and Jacob secured the arms, and Ezra attached the head. Majnoun returned the heart to its place and watched it glow and glimmer before tuning itself to a normal pulse. Fatima closed the wound and cleaned it.

“Something is missing,” said Ishmael. “He is not whole.”

Elijah said, “He has his penis but no …”

“Testicles,” said Majnoun.

“Bring me that sycophant,” ordered Fatima. “It is time to deal with the mother of betrayal.”

Taboush polished his swords.

“You must kill your father,” said Arbusto. “You cannot fulfill your destiny otherwise He is as stubborn as you are. You are both cut from the same inflexible cloth.”

“I will not.”

During the dark night, Arbusto infiltrated the camp of the sons of Ishmael disguised as a Muslim cleric, and in the morning, he
approached Ma
rouf as the hero mounted his horse. Arbusto offered him a cup of soup and said, “Drink this, my lord. It will give you strength.”

“I have the strength I need,” replied Ma
rouf.

“Then drink this because it tastes good.”

And Ma
rouf drank the poison before riding to meet his son.

“Move aside, Father,” his son said.

“You will have your wish.” Ma
rouf swayed upon his horse. “I have been poisoned. Soon I will breathe no more, and you will be able to pass.”

Taboush watched his father collapse off his horse and die. Grief and guilt, the inseparable siblings, blighted the son. He rued his stupidity, his pride and impetuousness, and the day he arrived in this world. He wailed, mourned, and suffered.

“Bring me the evil one,” Taboush commanded.

When Baybars arrived, he did not find an invading army or a raging battle. He found a contrite hero genuflecting, the corpse of his father on his right and Arbusto in chains on his left. “I have committed sins,” Taboush said.

The chief of forts and battlements was buried with full pomp and colors. The funeral lasted three days. After the mourning, Baybars called on the diwan.

“I can no longer be king,” Taboush said. “I should not exist among the living. I have failed my father. Justice must be served. I cannot walk among honorable men any longer. I will leave the lands of the faithful and seek exile until my soul is cleansed.”

“Stay not away for long,” said Baybars. “Your home always beckons.”

And Taboush walked away. East was his direction; forgiveness and exculpation, his goal.

The emir’s wife no longer dared to set foot in the sun temple proper. She was not afraid of violence or violation—her people were too sweet—but she was terrified of being seduced into the bacchanal. When the prophet made his glorious appearance in the temple, a multihued orgy had erupted, and it had not stopped or decreased in intensity
since. The liveliness, the combinations, the positions. The emir’s wife had tried to stop it the first day, but as she began to talk to the seekers, one handsome supplicant, in the throes of receiving oral pleasures, touched her calf, and the bliss was so intense she felt her robe slowly slip off her shoulders. She had rushed out of the temple, and had spent every waking second since peeking from behind the sun altar. Her prurience was in full flowering bloom. The liveliness, the combinations, the positions.

That morning, she woke and did not bother to wash. She rushed to her favorite position in the temple, where she had a full view yet was unseen, to begin her new daily ritual. She watched, entranced, and slowly her molten insides built up the delicious pressure.

And the colored imps burst in on her secret. Elijah, Ezra, and Job grabbed her, and she felt herself fading, only to re-emerge in a cave, on her knees before her nemesis.

She could not tell at first what frightened her most. Was it a furious Fatima wearing an obvious intent to harm? Was it her almost unrecognizable son, whose red eyes glared with loathing? Or was it the sight of the murdered one sleeping, obviously no longer dead, still as horrifically ugly as ever? It had to be Fatima.

“I did not mean it,” the emir’s wife sobbed. “I did not know.”

“You forsook your son,” chided Ishmael.

“You killed your son,” said Adam.

“And gloried in the killing,” said Jacob.

“Your flesh and blood,” said Ezra.

“The fruit of your loins,” said Elijah.

“For that and more,” said Noah, “you must die.”

“But it is not yet my time,” said the emir’s wife.

“I will retrieve my beloved.” Majnoun’s hand stabbed the emir’s wife. Into her stomach his hand penetrated, and retrieved Layl’s testicles. The emir’s wife breathed no more.

Fatima knelt before her dead double and touched her wound, healing it. “In death, you are complete.”

And Majnoun made his love whole.

Tin Can could not mask his concern. “The dialysis hasn’t helped,” he said, “and his liver seems to be failing.”

My sister shook her head. She looked as if she wanted to say something but had no idea what. My tongue exploded with the taste of tin and aluminum.