The Hakawati

One

Listen. Allow me to be your god. Let me take you on a journey beyond imagining. Let me tell you a story.

A long, long time ago, an emir lived in a distant land, in a beautiful city, a green city with many trees and exquisite gurgling fountains whose sound lulled the citizens to sleep at night. Now, the emir had everything, except for the one thing his heart desired, a son. He had wealth, earned and inherited. He had health and good teeth. He had status, charm, respect. His beautiful wife loved him. His clan looked up to him. He had a good pedicurist. Twenty years he had been married, twelve lovely girls, but no son. What to do?

He called his vizier. “Wise vizier,” he said, “I need your help. My lovely wife has been unable to deliver me a son, as you know. Each of my twelve girls is more beautiful than the other. They have milk-white skin as smooth as the finest silk from China. The glistening pearls from the Arabian Gulf pale next to their eyes. The luster of their hair outshines the black dyes from the land of Sind. The oldest has seventeen poets singing her praises. My daughters have given me much pleasure, much to be proud of. Yet I yearn to see an offspring with a little penis run around my courtyard, a boy to carry my name and my honor, a future leader of our clan. I am at a loss. My wife says we should try once more, but I cannot put her through all this again for another girl. Tell me, what can I do to ensure a boy?”

The vizier, for the thousandth upon thousandth time, suggested his master take a second wife. “Before it is too late, my lord. It is obvious that your wife will not produce a boy. We must find someone who will. My liege is the only man within these borders who has only one wife.”

The emir had rejected the suggestion countless times, and that day would be no different. He looked wistfully out onto his garden. “I cannot marry another, my dear vizier. I am terribly in love with my wife. She can be ornery now and then, vain for sure, petulant and impetuous, silly at times, ill disposed toward the help, even malicious and malevolent when angry, but, still, she has always been the one for me.”

“Then produce a son with one of your slaves. Fatima the Egyptian would be an excellent candidate. Her hips are more than adequate; her breasts have been measured. A tremendous nominee, if I may say so myself.”

“But I have no wish to be with another.”

“Sarah offered her Egyptian slave to her husband to produce a boy. If it was good enough for our prophet, it can be good enough for us.”

That night, in their bedroom, the emir and his wife discussed their problem. His wife agreed with the vizier. “I know you want a son,” she said, “but I believe it has gone beyond your desires. The situation is dire. Our people talk. All wonder what will happen when you ascend to heaven. Who will lead our tribes? I believe some may wish to ask the question sooner.”

“I will kill them,” the emir yelled. “I will destroy them. Who dares question how I choose to live my life?”

“Settle down and be reasonable. You can have intercourse with Fatima until she conceives. She is pretty, available, and amenable. We can have our boy through her.”

“But I do not think I can.”

His wife smiled as she stood. “Worry not, husband. I will attend, and I will do that thing you enjoy. I will call Fatima and we can inform her of what we want. We will set an appointment for Wednesday night, a full moon.”

When Fatima was told of their intentions, she did not hesitate. “I am always at your service,” she said. “However, if the emir wishes to have a son with his own wife, there is another way. In my hometown of Alexandria, I know of a woman, Bast, whose powers are unmatched. She is directly descended, female line, from Ankhara herself, Cleopatra’s healer and keeper of the asps. If she is given a lock of my mistress’s hair, she will be able to see why my mistress has not produced a boy and will give out the appropriate remedy. She never fails.”

“But that is astounding,” the emir exclaimed. “You are heaven-sent, my dear Fatima. We must fetch this healer right away.”

Fatima shook her head. “Oh, no, my lord. A healer can never leave her home. It is where her magic comes from. She would be helpless and useless if she were uprooted. A healer might travel, begin quests, but in the end, to come into her full powers, she can never stray too far from home. I can travel with a lock of my mistress’s hair and return with the remedy.”

“Then go you must,” the emir’s wife said.

The emir added, “And may God guide you and light your way.”

I felt foreign to myself. Doubt, that blind mole, burrowed down my spine. I leaned back on the car, surveyed the neighborhood, felt the blood throb in the veins of my arms. I could hear a soft gurgling, but was unsure whether it came from a fountain or a broken water pipe. There was once, a long time ago, a filigreed marble fountain in the building’s lobby, but it had ceased to exist. Poof.

I was a tourist in a bizarre land. I was home.

There were not many people around. An old man sat dejectedly on a stool with a seat of interlocking softened twine. His white hair was naturally spiked, almost as if he had rested his hands on a static ball. He fit the place, one of the few neighborhoods in Beirut still war-torn.

“This was our building,” I told him, because I needed to say something. I nodded toward the lobby, cavernous, fountain-free, now perfectly open-air. I realized he wasn’t looking at me but at my car, my father’s black BMW sedan.

The street had turned into a muddy pathway. The neighborhood was off the main roads. Few cars drove this street then; fewer now, it seemed. A cement mixer hobbled by. There were two buildings going up. The old ones were falling apart, with little hope of resuscitation.

My building looked abandoned. I knew it wasn’t — squatters and refugees had made it their home since we left during the early years of the civil war — but I didn’t see how anyone could live there now.

Listen. I lived here twenty-six years ago.

Across the street from our building, our old home, there used to be a large enclosed garden with a gate of intricate spears. It was no longer a garden, and it certainly wasn’t gated anymore. Shards of metal, twisted rubble, strips of tile, and broken glass were scattered across piles of dirt. A giant white rhododendron bloomed in the middle of the debris. Two begonias, one white and the other red, flourished in front of a recently erected three-story. That building looked odd: no crater, no bullet holes, no tree growing out of it. The begonias, glorious begonias, seemed to burst from every branch, no unopened buds. Burgeoning life, but subdued color. The red — the red was off. Paler than I would want. The reds of my Beirut, the home city I remember, were wilder, primary. The colors were better then, more vivid, more alive.

A Syrian laborer walked by, trying to steer clear of the puddles under his feet, and his eyes avoided mine. February 2003, more than twelve years since the civil war ended, yet construction still lagged in the neighborhood. Most of Beirut had been rebuilt, but this plot remained damaged and decrepit.

There was Mary in a lockbox.

A windowed box stood at the front of our building, locked in its own separate altar of cement and brick, topped with A-shaped slabs of Italian marble, a Catholic Joseph Cornell. Inside stood a benevolent Mary, a questioning St. Anthony, a coral rosary, three finger candles, stray dahlia and rose petals, and a picture of Santa Claus pushpinned to a white foam backboard.

When did this peculiarity spring to life? Was the Virgin there when I was a boy?

I shouldn’t have come here. I was supposed to pick Fatima up before going to the hospital to see my father but found myself driving to the old neighborhood as if I were in a toy truck being pulled by a willful child. I had planned this trip to Beirut to spend Eid al-Adha with my family and was shocked to find out that my father was hospitalized. Yet I wasn’t with family, but standing distracted and bewildered before my old home, dwelling in the past.

A young woman in tight jeans and a skimpy white sweater walked out of our building. She carried notebooks and a textbook. I wanted to ask her which floor she and her family lived on. Obviously not the second; a fig tree had taken root on that one. That must have been Uncle Halim’s apartment.

The family, my father and his siblings, owned the building and had lived in five of its twelve apartments. My aunt Samia and her family lived in the sixth-floor penthouse. My father had one of the fourth-floor flats, and Uncle Jihad had the other. An apartment on the fifth belonged to Uncle Wajih, and Uncle Halim had one on the second floor — fig tree, I presumed. The apartment on the ground floor belonged to the concierge, whose son Elie became a militia leader as a teenager and killed quite a few people during the civil war.

Our car dealership, al-Kharrat Corporation, the family fountain of fortune, was walking distance from the building, on the main street. The Lebanese lacked a sense of irony. No one paid attention to the little things. No one thought it strange that a car dealership, and the family that ran it, had a name that meant “exaggerator,” “teller of tall tales,” “liar.”

The girl strolled past, indifferently, seductively, her eyes hidden by cheap sunglasses. The old man sat up when the girl passed him. “Don’t you think your pants are too tight?” he asked.

“Kiss my ass, Uncle,” she replied.

He leaned forward. She kept going. “No one listens anymore,” he said quietly.

I couldn’t tell you when last I had seen the neighborhood, but I could pinpoint the last day we lived there, because we left in a flurry of bedlam, all atop each other, and that day my father proved to be a hero of sorts. February 1977, and the war that had been going on for almost two years had finally reached our neighborhood. Earlier, during those violent twenty-one months, the building’s underground garage, like its counterparts across the city, proved to be a more than adequate shelter. But then militias had begun to set up camp much too close. The family, those of us who hadn’t left already, had to find safety in the mountains.

My mother, who always took charge in emergencies, divided us into four cars: I was in her car, my sister in my father’s, Uncle Halim and two of his daughters with Uncle Jihad, and Uncle Halim’s wife, Aunt Nazek, drove her car with her third daughter, May. The belongings of three households were shoved into the cars. We drove separately, five minutes apart, so that we wouldn’t be in a convoy and get annihilated by a stray missile or an intentional bomb. The regathering point was a church just ten minutes up the mountain from Beirut.

My mother and I reached it first. Even though I’d gotten somewhat inured to the sounds of shelling, by the time we stopped my seat was sopping. Within a few minutes, as if announcing Uncle Jihad’s arrival, Beirut exploded into a raging cacophony once more. We watched the insanity below us and waited warily for the other two cars. My mother was strangling the steering wheel. My father arrived next, and since he was supposed to be the last to leave, it meant that Aunt Nazek didn’t make it somehow.

My father didn’t get out of his car, didn’t talk to us. He kicked my sister out, turned the car around, and drove downhill into the lunacy. Aghast and eyes ablaze, my sister stood on the curb, watched him disappear into the fires of Beirut. My mother wanted to follow him, but I was in her car. She yelled at me: “Get out. I need to go after him. I’m the better driver.” I was too paralyzed to move. Then my sister got into the car next to me, and it was too late to follow.

We were lucky. Aunt Nazek’s car had died as soon as it hit the first hill. Always a good citizen, she parked the car on the side, even though there were no other cars on the road. My father had driven past on the way up and hadn’t noticed. He found them, and my cousin May jumped into his car, but he had to wait for Aunt Nazek as she tried to remember where she had put all her valuables. He returned them to us safely, but while he was driving back, a bomb fell about fifty meters away from them, and a piece of shrapnel hit the car’s windshield and got stuck there. No one was hurt, though both Aunt Nazek and May lost their voices for a while, having shrieked their throats dry.

My cousin May said that my father shrieked as well when the shrapnel hit, an operatic high note. However, both my father and Aunt Nazek deny that. “He was a hero,” my aunt would say. “A real-life hero.”

“It wasn’t heroic,” my father would say, “but cowardly. I’d have been too afraid to show my face to my brother if I hadn’t gone back after his wife.”

That day was twenty-six years ago.

Fatima was waiting outside her building, which was covered head to toe in black marble, one of the newer effronteries that have risen in modern Beirut. As if to compensate for the few neighborhoods that had not been upgraded since the war, Beirut dressed itself in new concrete. All over the city, upscale high-rises were being built in every corner, nouveau-riche and bétonné.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said, grinning. I could usually predict her reaction, since she was an old friend and confidante. I was about to get a pretend tongue-lashing no matter what I said.

“Get out of the goddamn car.” She didn’t move to the passenger side, stood with arms akimbo, her blue-green purse dangling from her wrist almost to her knees. She was dressed to dazzle; everything about her flashed, and the ring on her left hand screamed — a hexagonal mother of an emerald surrounded by her six offspring. “You haven’t seen me in four months, and this is how you greet me?” I got out of the car, and she smothered me, covered me in her perfume and kisses. “Much better,” she added. “Now let’s get going.”

At the first sign of traffic, she slid open the visor mirror and interviewed her face. “You have to help me with Lina.” Her words sounded odd, her mouth distorted as she redecorated her lips’ outline. “She’s spending the nights sleeping on the chair in his room. As ever, your sister won’t listen to reason. I want to relieve her, but she won’t let me.”

I didn’t reply, and I doubted that she expected me to. Both of us understood that my father wouldn’t allow anyone other than my sister to take care of him and was terrified of spending a night by himself. He had nightmares about dying alone and uncared for in a hospital room.

“When we arrive,” she said, “kiss everybody and go directly to his room. I don’t think there will be a lot of people, but don’t allow the rest of the family to delay you. I’ll stay with the visitors, not you. He’ll be offended if you don’t rush in to see him.”

“You don’t have to tell me, my dear,” I said. “He’s my father, not yours.”

Fatima left the green city in a small caravan with a retinue of five of the emir’s bravest soldiers and Jawad, one of the stable boys. She understood the need for Jawad — the horses and camels had to be looked after — but she wondered whether the soldiers would be of any use.

“Do you not think we need protection?” Jawad asked as they started their journey.

“I do not,” she said. “I can deal with a few brigands, and if we are attacked by a large band, five men will be of no use anyway. On the contrary, their presence may be a magnet for that large group of bandits.” She felt the emir’s fifty gold dinars that she had hidden in her bosom. “If it were just you and me, we would invite much less attention. Well, nothing we can do now. We are in the hand of God.”

On the fourth evening, in the middle of the Sinai Desert, before the sun had completely set, the party was attacked just as Fatima had predicted. Twenty Bedouins dispatched the city soldiers. Finding little of value among the belongings, the captors decided to divide the spoils evenly: ten would have Fatima, and ten would get to use Jawad.

Fatima laughed. “Are you men or boys?” She stepped forward, leaving a visibly nervous Jawad behind. “You have a chance to receive pleasure from me and you choose this stripling?”

“Be quiet, woman,” said the leader. “We must divide you evenly. We cannot risk a fight over the booty. Be thankful. You would not be able to deal with more than ten of us.”

Fatima laughed and turned back to Jawad. “These desert rats have not heard of me.” She took off her headdress; her abundant black hair tumbled around her face. “These children of the barren lands have not sung my tales.” She unhooked the chain of gold coins encircling her forehead. “They believe that twenty infants would be too much for me.” She took off her abayeh, showing her seductress’s figure, stood before the Bedouins in her dress of blue silk and gold. “Behold,” she said. “I am Fatima, charmer of men, bewitcher of the heavens. Look how the moon calls his clouds; see how he crawls behind his curtains; watch him hide in shame, for he refuses to reveal himself when I show my face. You think you peons will be too much for me, Fatima?” She raised her hands to the vanishing moon. “Think whether twenty of you would satisfy me, Fatima, tamer of Afreet-Jehanam.” She glared at the men. “Tremble.”

“Afreet-Jehanam?” the leader cried. “You conquered the mighty jinni?”

“Afreet-Jehanam is my lover. He is no more than my plaything. He does my bidding.”

“I want her. I refuse to have the boy. We have to redivide the spoils. This will not do.”

“No,” the leader said. “We cannot have everyone get what they want. That is not the Arab way. It has already been decided.”

“I want the woman as well,” cried another man. “You cannot keep her to yourself and give us this waif of a boy.” An argument ensued. Everyone wanted Fatima, except for one man, Khayal, who kept insisting, “I really want the boy,” to anyone who would listen. But no one listened. The nine men who were given Jawad but wanted Fatima grew livid. Rules or no rules, they had been cheated. They had no idea Fatima was so talented. They had been deceived and wanted their appropriate share. The goods, as any idiot could see, had not been divided equally. Battle lines were drawn, swords unsheathed. Quickly, the ten killed the nine.

“I think the boy is winsome,” said Khayal.

Twenty lustful eyes stared at Fatima.

“Now, now, boys,” she said coyly. “Was that really necessary?”

“It is time, Sitt Fatima,” the leader said. “We are ready.”

“Well, I am not. I must choose who goes first. The first lover is very important. He will help me set the stage for what is to come. Should I go with the one who has the biggest penis? I like that, but sometimes he who has the biggest is the worst lover, and that will force me to work harder. This should be amusement, not labor. Which of you has the smallest penis? A man with a small member would be more eager to please me, but then, as hard as it is, it is not as satisfying. Choosing the first lover should not be taken lightly. I have much to consider.”

The leader huffed and puffed. “There is nothing to consider. I go first. I am the best lover, and the rest can take turns after I am sated.”

“You are not the best lover,” another brigand said. “If you were, your wife would not be leaving her house in the middle of the night.” Those were the last words that man uttered. The leader unsheathed his sword once more and cut off that man’s head.

“You should not have killed him,” another cried. “It is not right that you go first. We should let Sitt Fatima decide. She is the expert, not you. She should decide on the order. Since I have the biggest penis, I believe I should go first.”

“You do not have the biggest,” argued another. “I do.” He lifted his desert robe. “Look here, Sitt Fatima. I have the biggest, and I promise you I am not a bad lover. You must pick me.”

“Put that tiny thing away,” the leader said. “I am the leader, and I go first.”

“It is thickness that matters, not length.”

“I still want the boy. I just want the boy.”

“Your member is no bigger than a thimble.”

“You take that back. Admit that mine is bigger than yours or prepare to die.”

And the men fought till death. The leader was left standing — the leader and the boy-lover, who had remained out of the fray. “The best of all men awaits you, your ladyship.” The leader puffed up like a pigeon. “Let us begin.”

“Let us,” she said. “Undress and show me my prize.”

“Come to me,” he said once he was nude. “Look. I really have the biggest one.”

“No,” Fatima said. “Mine is bigger.” From under her dress, she took out her knife and cut his penis off and slit his throat.

“Pack everything back into the caravan,” Fatima told Jawad. “We have some way to go before we settle for the night. Gather these dead men’s horses. I will go through their things. We will leave this arid wilderness richer than we arrived.”

“But what shall we do with this man?” Jawad gestured toward his admirer.

“By your leave, I would like to invite the boy into my tent,” Khayal said.

“The boy is neither captured nor a slave,” Fatima said. “Since he has free will, you must convince him, charm him into your tent. We have seven nights before we reach my home city, Alexandria. You have seven nights to seduce him. You may begin tomorrow.”

And Fatima looked up at the sky and its stars and thanked the moon for his help.

And Fatima, Jawad, and Khayal led their numerous horses, camels, and mules into the night.

“Ah, the smell of salt and sand,” Fatima told her companions. “There is no elixir on this blessed earth like it.”

During the day’s march, our three travelers reached the blue-tongued shores of the Mediterranean. That night, they camped on the beach. Much to Khayal’s disappointment, Jawad unfurled his own tent after watering, feeding, and brushing the pack animals. After a dinner of bread, dried meat, and dates, Fatima poured herself a cup of wine. “Shall we begin?”

“Begin?” Khayal wondered. “You mean my seduction? Am I supposed to perform publicly? I would prefer to talk to Jawad in private.” He bent his head. “I am, in large measure, a discreet man.” He lifted his head and looked at Jawad, sitting next to Fatima. “You would appreciate a discreet man, I am sure.”

Jawad shrugged. Fatima said, “Discretion is boring.”

“My lady,” Khayal said, “our agreement was that I seduce the boy in seven nights, not that I perform the seduction publicly. That would be unfairly humiliating.”

“Love is unfairly humiliating.”

Jawad nodded. “I do not know much of love, but I do know that it is humiliating.”

“I must protest,” Khayal said. “The Prophet — may the blessing of God be upon him — said, ‘He who falls in love and conceals his passion is a worthy man.’ ”

“Being a bore is in itself unappealing,” our heroine said. “Being a bore and a liar to boot makes a man rebarbative, as well as dishonored. Lying with the Prophet’s words? You might as well remove your headdress and shave your beard. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said, ‘He who falls in love, conceals his passion, and is chaste, dies a martyr.’ If you wish to become a martyr, that can be arranged easily, but it is already too late to conceal your passion.”

“And chastity is not what he is after anyway,” Jawad added.

“The desert nights are long and bare,” Fatima said. “Entertain us, or begone. If you desire to possess this boy, you must convince him.”

“Convince me.”

“Move him.”

“Move me.”

“Wait.” Khayal stood up. The light of the fire cast flickering shadows on his long white robe. He was a thick-shouldered man, with a hawkish beak and full, heavy eyebrows. “I will do what you ask if I have to, but allow me one final attempt at convincing you that discretion works best in matters of love. I can tell you the story of Bader, son of Fateh.”

“I am not sure I am willing to be convinced. Are you, my dear Jawad?”

“Well, I do like stories.”

“There you go. The boy likes stories. Tell us the tale of this Bader.”

Khayal said, “There was a Córdoban, from a great family, by the name of Bader ben Fateh. He was a man of faith, circumspect, a gracious host, well mannered, a beacon of good breeding. I was traveling in Játiva when I began to hear of his exploits. It seems he had lost all modesty by falling in love with a musician by the name of Moktadda. I knew this boy, and I can tell you he did not deserve Bader’s love; he did not deserve the love of one of Bader’s slaves. Bader spent a fortune on this honorless dullard, welcomed him into his house, and closed it to his other guests. He plied the peasant with the most expensive wines. I heard that our man had removed his kaffiyeh, unwound his head-rope, showed his full face, rolled up his sleeves.

“He cast off the leash of propriety. He fell prey to that ravenous beast, desire. He became the subject of gossip, a notorious story in the harems, a news item in the diwans. His reputation became the object of derision. He lost his standing, his honor, his respect.

“The young musician had not wanted his indiscretion revealed, and Bader’s loss of social standing made him a less desirable partner. The object of his passion ran away from him altogether, and refused ever to see him again.

“Had Bader valued discretion, had he folded his secret in his heart, couched his desires, he would not have lost everything. He would have worn the robe of well-being, and the garment of respectability would not have become threadbare. He would have been able to keep both his honor and his lover had he chosen a more circumspect style. Allow me a modest approach.”

“Modesty is dull,” Fatima said.

“So was the story,” Jawad said.

“So true. Didactic stories should only be told to children and to the faithful.”

“I weep for the poor children who have to listen to such stories.”

“Are you seduced, my dear Jawad?”

“I am sleepy.”

“Ah, at least the night passes. I pray that we will be gifted with a better seduction tomorrow. And a good night to all.”

My father’s face told a different story. He looked wan, haggard, and old — very old. And thin. His wedding band danced upon its finger like a shower-curtain ring. He had spent an hour telling Lina and me that he felt grand. He was happy that I had flown in to spend Eid al-Adha with him, but we should spend it at our home. He wasn’t ill anymore. He sounded better. He moved around better. He laughed better. He wanted to go home.

The cast of light in the room was disturbing, slightly nauseating. The antiseptic white walls. The fluorescent lights. It was midmorning, but the sallow curtain diffused a pale gray-green glow. Lina had been going out to the balcony to smoke, always making sure the curtain was drawn so my father wouldn’t see her and crave a cigarette.

“I’m doing so much better,” my father announced. “I feel formidable.”

I pulled back the curtain to let some genuine light in, opened the sliding door for air. It was pitch-perfect weather, two clouds maculating a clear sheet of blue, an early spring in February. I stood for a moment with my back to the room, enjoying the play of the flimsy breeze upon my face. I considered for a moment returning to the waiting lounge to relieve Fatima and Salwa, my sister’s daughter, who were entertaining the visitors.

“I know you think I don’t know what I’m talking about,” my father went on, “but I feel better, and I don’t want to spend another night in this godforsaken place.”

The Chinese say prolonged illness can make one a doctor. My mother used to say prolonged illness made one a curmudgeon. My mother was wiser. I turned around and looked at the high nightstand, made sure that her framed passport-sized photo was still there, next to her silver locket, which my father insisted brought him luck.

“We have to wait and find out what Tin Can has to say.” Lina regarded my father with soft eyes. When she was younger, my sister took after my mother, but as she matured, my father’s softer features overcame her face. Lina curled up on the recliner, laid her head back, imitating a Henry Moore sculpture. Her heels poked into the chair’s plastic upholstery.

“Talk to him, darling,” my father whimpered. He grasped the bed rail, pulled himself onto his side in order to face her. He scratched the small protrusion in his chest where the pacemaker and defibrillator were. I turned around again and watched the sky.

My father could afford the best medical care in the world. Lina had dragged him to Johns Hopkins, to the Cleveland Clinic, to Paris, to London. Yet he always returned to the just-competent Tin Can. He didn’t have any illusions in that regard. My father was the one who had dubbed him Tin Can, because he was about as effective a doctor as a tin can. But he was family, Aunt Nazek’s brother, my father’s brother Halim’s wife’s brother, and that to my father was more valuable than credentials or prestigious alma maters. In the last few years, he had refused to travel for medical attention and sought only the family doctor.

I heard my voice speak. “And the doctor told the poor father, ‘The only way to heal your son is to take his heart.’ ”

Their voices joined mine. “ ‘For the evil jinni has made himself a home there.’ ”

My father laughed. “Don’t do this to me.” He clutched his heart, pretending pain. “My evil jinni doesn’t like to be amused.”

“You’re still ever so strange,” my sister said. “What possessed you to think of that? How long has it been since you’ve heard that line? Thirty years?”

“More than that,” my father said. “My father died thirty years ago, and he wasn’t telling those stories of his by then. It must have been thirty-five, maybe thirty-seven years.” He took a raspy breath. “God, Osama, you were such a young boy then.”

My grandfather actually told me those stories of his until the day he died. He was a storyteller after all, in spirit and in profession. My father tried at different times to get him to stop filling my head with fanciful narratives, but he never succeeded.

“What are you staring at?” Lina asked me. “Turn around and look at us.”

“Look,” I said. “Look here. March has come in.”

The sky was a perfectly cut aquamarine. As in most Mediterranean cities, Beirut’s late winter can be either stormy and brumal or magnificently clear, smelling of sun-dried laundry.

“It’s still February, stupid boy,” Lina said. “It’s just a break. The storms will come back.”

“A glorious break.”

She came up behind me. “You’re right. It is glorious.” Her arms encircled me, and I felt her weight upon my shoulders.

“I want to see,” my father whined from his bed. “Help me up. I want to see.” We moved to the bed, helped him sit up, turn around, and stand. He leaned on my sister, the tallest of us three. I dragged the intravenous stand with its deflated balloons behind him as he shuffled the eight steps to the balcony. The cheeks of his rear end jiggled and seemed to droop a little lower with each step. On the balcony, the three of us lined up to admire the false spring and the sun that bathed the sprawling mass of rooftops.

My father catnapped on the hospital bed. Outside, Lina inhaled each puff of her cigarette as if it were her last. She smoked so rapidly that the tip of the cigarette burned into a miniature red coal. She leaned back against the balcony railing, stared up at the sky. I stared down. On the third floor of the hospital, where illnesses were less grave, two women whispered to each other on their balcony like two pigeons cooing. Across the street, in the distance, stood a house that showed severe signs of aging. From where I stood, its shutters looked rotted.

“He’s dying,” she said, her voice noncommittal.

A thick growth of weeds covered the house’s garden. Tall fronds of wild thistle, a few of the tips flowering yellow. “We’re all dying,” I said. “It’s just a matter of when.”

“Don’t start with your American clichés, please. I can’t deal with that now.” She shook her head, her black hair covering her face for an instant. “He’s dying. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you.” Just then, a car trumpeted its horn, one long uninterrupted burst. My sister jumped to check that the sliding door was completely shut. “What makes you think this time is different?” I asked. “He’s been dying for so long. He always pulls through.”

“He won’t always pull through. It gets more difficult each time.”

“I know that. But why this time?”

She took a deep breath as she faced me. I could see her chest expand and deflate. My sister was much taller than I. It was with her height that she took after our mother, but Lina was even taller, bigger. Boucher instructed his pupil Fragonard to paint women as if they had no bones. Fragonard could have painted Lina. She was the antithesis of straight lines or angles. Graceful, like my mother.

I, on the other hand, inherited my teeth from my mother, not her height. We both had two crooked upper front teeth. She never fixed hers, because they accentuated her beauty, the flaw making her appear more human, accessible, more Helen than Aphrodite. She didn’t fix mine, thinking it would also work for me. It didn’t. Alas, unlike her, I had quite a few other flaws.

“Tin Can gives him three months at most,” Lina said.

“Tin Can said the same thing four years ago.”

“You have to be with him to notice the difference. He’s not going to make it, and he knows it.” She sighed and flicked her cigarette onto the street below. “I don’t know what to do.”

The old house across the street must not have been abandoned. A pile of plastic chairs stood outside the door. A stray electric wire, long and lax, stole power from the main city lines. A pigeon settled on the wire, which drooped and seemed about to snap. The pigeon did not last more than a second or two before flying off.

“Shall we begin?” Fatima asked on the second night. She sipped her cup. Sated, with full stomachs, the three travelers sat around the small fire.

“We shall,” Khayal replied. “Would my beloved care for a cup of wine to help smooth the rough edges of this evening?”

Fatima raised her eyebrows; her eyes asked if Jawad was interested. He nodded. “One cup only for tonight,” she said. “Until you get used to it.”

And Khayal lifted his cup. “May my beloved get used to much.” He gulped, smacked his lips, paused for dramatic effect. In a sonorous voice, he began to recite:

A woman once berated me

Because of the love I feel

For a boy who huffs and struts

Like an untamed young bull

But why should I sail the sea

When I can love grandly on land?

Why hunt for fish, when I can find

Gazelles, free, for every hand.

Let me be; do not blame me

For choosing a road

In life that you have rejected,

Which I will follow till the day I die.

Know you not that the Holy Book

Speaks the definitive truth:

Before your daughters

Your sons shall be preferred?

“Magnificent,” Fatima cried, applauding enthusiastically. “One can always rely on the brilliance of Abu Nawas for entertainment. Who would have thought that a desert dweller would be able to quote the city poet? I am impressed. Are you not, my dear Jawad?”

“Does the Holy Book really say that a man should choose his sons before his daughters?”

“In matters of inheritance, my boy, but the poet took some liberties. More, more, our master reciter. Tell us more.”

I no longer wish to sail the sea

I prefer to roam the plains

And seek the food that God

Sends to all living creatures.

“A delight,” Fatima said. “How lovely and bawdy that Baghdad poet was. I would have loved an opportunity to drink wine and match wits with Abu Nawas. Was that not marvelous, Jawad?”

“It surely was,” Jawad replied. “I, too, am duly impressed. My suitor is learned and sensitive, but his poetry speaks nothing other than his preference for a certain kind of love. That he likes boys does not make him more desirable to me. It simply means he has good taste. His poetry is entertaining but does not move this listener. I do not feel seduced this night either, but I do feel sleepy.”

“So true. So wise. We have been dutifully entertained this night, but not seduced. Let us hope for a better temptation tomorrow. And a good night to all.”

On the third night, Khayal poured wine into Jawad’s cup. He stood before his audience. “I am a vessel filled with contrition. Forgive me, I beg you. Allow me to begin anew.”

“There is no need for forgiveness,” Jawad said.

“Please,” Fatima said, “favor us with your seduction. We sit here, parched earth awaiting its promised thunderstorm. Quench our thirst, we beg you. Begin.”

“I stand humble before you,” Khayal began, “a once-proud man debased by love.” His shoulders slumped. “I may look like nothing much at this moment, but looks can be deceiving.” His voice grew. “The cover does not fit the content of the book.

“I am first a warrior. I have fought in God’s army. From the coasts off Mount Lebanon to the hills of the Holy Land, heads of infidels have rolled off my sword by the hundreds. I have slain Papists in the west, Byzantines in the north, Mongols in the east. My spear knew no mercy in defending our lands. I am feared in every corner of the world. Europeans use my name to frighten their children. Courage is my companion; honor rides before me, loyalty at my side. My sword is swift, my spear accurate. I am the answer to every caliph’s prayers.”

“Well said,” Fatima called out. “One can see the influence of al-Mutanabbi.”

“Who is that?” Jawad asked.

“I will tell you in a little while, my dear. Let us allow our seducer to continue. I am sure he is not done yet.”

“I stood upon a hill watching the enemy ships drop anchor along our shores. They were soaked twice, first by milk-streaked clouds that rained upon them announcing my arrival, and then it rained skulls. I rode my steed swiftly, saw our enemy approaching as if on legless steeds. I could not distinguish their swords, for their clothes and turbans were also made of steel. I attacked even though it meant certain death, as if hell’s heart pumped all about me. Heroes and warriors fell before me, whereas I remained standing, sword wet and unsheathed. Victorious, I stood with my brethren, faces shining with ecstasy, exchanging smiles of joy. The foreigners had no real experience of the color red. I painted it for them. Blessed are war, glory, and eminence. Blessed is my audience, for allowing me the honor of introducing myself.”

“And blessed are you for sharing,” Fatima said.

“I feel honored,” said Jawad, “and grateful to be in your presence. But tell me, who is this al-Mutanabbi?”

Fatima guzzled her cup of wine. She kept her head back for a moment. She held out the cup, and Jawad poured. And Fatima declaimed:

I am he whose letters were seen by the blind,

And whose words were heard by the deaf.

She paused, smiled at Jawad, and had another sip. “Al-Mutanabbi was the greatest poet of the Arabic language, but more important, he is my favorite. He was blessed with the reckless audacity of imagination, full of astonishing metaphors. He suffered much in his life, because he was born with the two grand infirmities: he was poor and he was Arab. He came into the world early in the tenth century, in Kufa, south of Baghdad. He began to recite poetry of an exquisite beauty that had never been heard before nor has since. He claimed that God Himself inspired his poetry. Hence, the name: al-Mutanabbi, the one who claims to be a prophet.”

“Conceit,” said Jawad.

“Quite,” added Fatima. “As an eighteen-year-old, he was imprisoned and tortured for his heresy. When he was released a few years later, he was once again penniless, powerless, and homeless — the poet in eternal exile. He had nothing to sell but his words, and he was willing. But who would be willing to buy? Most of the city-states were ruled no longer by Arabs, but by Muslims from all over whose native tongue was not Arabic. These princes, whom he wanted to praise, did not fully understand his words. So al-Mutanabbi, full of pride and arrogance, attached himself to the only Arab ruler in the area, Sayf al-Dawlah, the young prince of Aleppo, who was making a name for himself by protecting the northern borders from the evil Byzantine Empire.

“And al-Mutanabbi fought at the young prince’s side and praised him, immortalized him in verse so eloquent it has been known to make roses wilt in shame for not matching its beauty.

“But then al-Mutanabbi discovered he had a problem. The young prince, like most Arab rulers throughout the ages, fancied himself a poet as well. He began to compose puerile poems praising himself and belittling the great poet. And al-Mutanabbi could not answer back.”

“That is what being a servant is all about,” said Jawad.

“The situation did not improve,” Fatima went on. “Al-Mutanabbi left Aleppo for Cairo, attached himself to a different ruler, a king by the name of Kafur. The king promised the poet a province if he would sing the king’s praises. But Kafur never kept his promise. He was warned by his vizier, a smart man who recognized the poet’s genius, that if the king went back on his word he would live eternally as a mocked man, a historical joke. And the king was known to have said, ‘You want me to assign a province to this power-hungry poet? This man who claims prophecy after Muhammad, will he not claim the kingdom after Kafur?’

“And al-Mutanabbi left Kafur’s court and mocked him, immortalized him in verse so expressive it has been known to make snakes recoil in horror for not matching its venom.

“He wandered to Shiraz, in Persia. He then attached himself to Adud al-Dawlah, but this ruler, too, was unable to satisfy the poet’s needs. So the poet tried to return to his Iraq, but was waylaid and killed by brigands along the way. He was the man who in his prime said:

The stallions, and the night, and the desert know me,

And the sword, and the spear, and the paper, and the pen.

But had to say before his death:

I am nothing but an arrow, shot in the air,

Coming down again, unheld by its target.

And he was killed just north of Baghdad, where all poets go to die.”

My aunt looked as if she were awaiting a barium enema. Her frail frame didn’t settle completely in the chair, and her eyes wouldn’t settle on anything. Because of her age and ill health, her fretfulness exhibited itself in erratic slow motion. She opened her handbag, and her bony fingers took out a cigarette.

“What’s the matter with you, Samia?” my father asked. “You know you can’t smoke in here. One would think you’ve never been to a hospital before.”

“I’m just worried about you.” She spoke slowly, gulping for breath. Her speech pattern had changed drastically since her last petite stroke. “I’m afraid that you’re hiding things from me. Just tell me, tell me the worst.” She forced the cigarette back, crushing it into its box. “My heart is weak, but it can deal with any bad news if it’s about my only remaining brother.” Lina kept trying to catch my eye. “Don’t hide things from me.” Lina lifted her eyebrows, grinned conspiratorially. “It’s as if I’m not part of this family anymore just because I’m old.” Lina mouthed the exact words as my aunt said them: “No one tells me anything.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” my father said. “I’m doing just fine.”

I stood up so my aunt wouldn’t see me giggle. “I should go to the waiting room. I think the hospital has a two-visitor rule in this ward. I’m surprised the guard hasn’t said anything yet.”

“Stay here.” My sister put her hand up, a border guard stopping an immigrant attempting to cross. “Your aunt’s here to visit you as much as your father. Sit back down and tell your aunt all about what you’ve been doing since she last saw you.” My aunt looked bewildered, if not bewitched. “Your aunt would love to hear about your life, I’m sure. Tell her what it’s like to work as a computer programmer in the great city of Los Angeles.”

When I was a young boy, my aunt used to say that she would be the first of the five siblings to die. She had made that pronouncement to her children, other family members, and random strangers. “Just do as I say,” she would tell me when I was seven. “I’ll be the first to die, and you’ll regret having aggravated me.” She was the oldest of the five, born in 1920, and even as a young woman, she wore infirmity like an itchy, gaudy shawl around her shoulders. She stopped saying she would be the first thirty years ago, when Uncle Wajih died.

“How many tranquilizers have you taken?” Lina asked my aunt.

“Have you gained weight?” Aunt Samia replied.

My aunt’s eyes almost shot out of their sockets. Her lips and the skin around them seemed to have suddenly been invaded by a thousand lines. The noise in the hallway was that of an approaching army, a police team rushing in for a bust. The bey entered the room, followed by a flock of suits. You would think that in 2003, in post-feudal Beirut, one would have little use for clan chiefs and titled nobles, but traditions are not easily erased in our world. The bey no longer collected taxes, tributes, or royalties, but favors and loyalties were still his to claim. Though this latest incarnation of the bey was thirty, he looked like a boy of seventeen trying on his father’s favorite suit. All smiles, he attempted to appear official and officious. He greeted us all perfunctorily, though his eyes never left my father, whereas it was my cousin Hafez, one of the bey’s entourage, who held my father’s attention.

Fatima, looking furious and threatening, viperlike, followed them into the room. The entourage must have sped past the visitors’ lounge or she would have stopped them.

“How are you doing, dear uncle?” the bey said.

My father didn’t reply. My sister did, loudly. “How did you all get in here? We can’t have this many visitors. There are rules.”

Everyone stopped moving. The very air seemed to perspire. A couple of men ahemmed. “It’s quite all right, Lina,” Hafez said. A nervous laugh escaped his lips. “The guard won’t report us. We’re here because we care about my uncle.” He was a few weeks older than I, but he had the face of a boy.

“Then care outside, in the visitors’ room. The guard shouldn’t have let you in. I won’t allow it. No more than two visitors at a time.”

All the men stared at her. Hafez’s hands moved from his sides, trembling, up and down. His eyes were those of prey about to be swallowed. “You’re overreacting, my cousin. We won’t overstay. I’m sure my uncle is happy to have the bey here.” He looked to my father for support.

“Only two visitors. Everybody follow me to the waiting room.” Lina, with Fatima’s help, directed the confused crowd to the door. Fatima actually pushed one of the men out. “Come out with me,” my sister said to my aunt. “Help me be a good hostess. You, too, Hafez. Unless you want to be one of the two. Just two people. Everybody else has to leave.”

“But I’m not a visitor,” Hafez mewled. “I’m family.”

Lina turned to me. “Stay.” She got closer, bent down to pick up her handbag, spoke softly so no one else would hear. “Make sure he doesn’t get excited or emotional. And if the bey asks for money again, come out and get me.”

My aunt was still sitting, not comprehending what was happening. Lina helped her up. “Why am I leaving?” my aunt asked.

“I need your wit,” Lina replied.

After setting up camp on the fourth night, Khayal began: “I am a poet. By the age of three, I was able to astonish all who heard my eloquent use of our illustrious language. I learned to read and write. I memorized the greats, the not-so-great, and the horrid. I have won more poetry wars in the Syrian countries than anyone has before me. I know panegyric poems, I know love poems. I can recite the entire Muallaqat, the qasidas. I am familiar with ghazal poems and khamriyas, the Bacchic songs.”

“Tonight the poet offers bravado,” Fatima said. “How delightful!”

“I am in awe, but I am not seduced yet,” Jawad said.

“I am a lover. Boys from Baghdad to Tunis remember me in their dreams. I am the one whose exploits are recalled fondly by every lad, no matter how many he has had after me. I am the one who has left behind a trail of conquests as long as the Nile itself.”

“Boasting and fireworks.” Fatima applauded. “Every poet needs to show off.”

“I do not find what he said particularly enticing,” Jawad said. “I appreciate the technique, but my soul is unmoved.”

• • •

And on the fifth night, Khayal said, “I must beg your forgiveness. I have been doing this all wrong. I implore you to forget what has come before and allow me a new beginning.”

“Go on, please,” said Jawad.

“No need for apologies,” added Fatima. “You may not have seduced us, but you have certainly entertained us on this long journey, and for that we are grateful. Proceed.”

And Khayal began:

“My love for you, Jawad,

Leaves me no health or joy,

You are the moon that has taken on

The shape of a boy.”

“Oh, how scrumptious,” Fatima cooed. “Back to Abu Nawas. We are going to have an evening of love poems. You will enjoy this, Jawad.”

“Your face reveals a down so light

A breeze might steal it, or a breath;

Soft as a quince’s bloom that might

Find in a finger’s touch its death.

Five kisses and your face is cleared

While mine has grown a longer beard.”

“Ah,” sighed Fatima, “that must be Latin.”

“I am pleased,” Jawad said, “but if my suitor finds me beautiful, does that necessarily mean that I should find him so in return? This form of poetry is fun, delicious, but my soul remains untouched. It only increases my longing for the ineffable.”

“Your name means ‘horse.’ My name means ‘horseman.’ We were meant to ride together. Can you not see?”

“I can see that I still do not feel seduced. My heart flutters not.”

“Your daughter is a strong woman,” the bey said. His mustache twitched when he spoke, and paralleled his thick brows. He dragged the chair closer to my father’s bed. My father refused to look at him, kept his eyes fastened on Hafez, who hovered, unable to control his nervous energy, and seemed torn between opposing overseers. My father followed his every movement disapprovingly. My father’s father had been employed by successive beys, treated as one of their many servants. I didn’t think my father ever forgave his for that, and it was going to take quite a bit of time for him to forgive Hafez for becoming a toady by choice. “What are you doing here?” my father asked him. “Why didn’t you come when you heard I was hospitalized?”

“It’s not his fault, Uncle,” the bey said, his voice unctuous. “I wanted to come see you, and I wanted him to accompany me. I was a little busy, as you can imagine. Don’t blame your nephew. Now, please, tell me about your health. Are you feeling better?”

“So you couldn’t come without your master,” my father told Hafez.

“I called Lina every day,” Hafez said quietly, head bent as if he were speaking to the floor. His tie folded upon itself, bashful.

“But how is your health?” the bey asked.

Lina stuck her head into the room. “Your mother needs you, Hafez,” she said curtly, with a disapproving glance at the bey. My father shot her a pleading look. “We’ll be right back,” she said to him, and to Hafez, “Now.”

I knew I should stay with my father, but I could not bear it. I followed them out.

Aunt Samia was agitated and gasping for air. Her respiratory problems belied her true concern. “Is my brother offending the bey?”

“Ah, the illustrious bey, father of all,” I said.

Hafez took his mother’s hand and glared at me. “You’re so American,” he said. “Why is it that you’re quiet all the time but when you do speak all you do is irritate people?”

“Kiss my ass, Hafez,” Lina hissed. “If anyone shouldn’t mention the word ‘irritating,’ it’s you, you dumb shit.”

“Why do we always resort to strong language?” Aunt Samia asked no one in particular. “It’s all my father’s fault. He had such a tongue, that one. Shit, shit — that’s all he talked about.”

Hafez ignored her. “I didn’t mean anything, just that he’s always so critical. Look, Osama, you know I love you. You know that. But you’re forever disapproving. You make it seem that you feel superior to all of us.”

I took a deep breath, tried to sound measured and contrite. “From now on, I will watch what comes out of my mouth.”

Lina grabbed me by the arm and pulled me aside. “Walk.” We walked past the guard and down the hall. “Speak,” she said.

“I’m fine. What gets me is the ‘You’ve become American’ part. That’s what everyone says instead of ‘You’re fucked up.’ They might as well say they hate me.”

My sister burst out laughing. “Sweetheart, you’re such a treasure. They don’t hate you.” She began to walk me back to the room, a mother hen who instinctively knew she’d been away from her chicks for too long. “They hate me. You’re not that important.” She chuckled. “You’ve lived in America for twenty-five years, what are you supposed to become? An orangutan? They’re just saying you’re different.”

“I was different before I left here. And so are you.”

“Of course. Me they call the crazy one. They called my mother the bitch. You’re just the American.”

And on the sixth night, Khayal said, “My lovely. We are but a day away from your destination. I fear I have little time, and I regret how much I wasted of it. It seems that I do not have the ability to charm you, nor have I any skills in seduction. Let me try to convince you by telling you the story of the poet and Aslam.”

“I love stories.”

“This is a well-known story, which I have read in Ibn Hazm’s treatise on love, The Ring of the Dove. In the Arab lands of Andalusia, there was a literary man, Ahmad ben Kulaib al-Nahawi, a poet of great stature, well known for his verse, especially his poems about Aslam, the boy whose name means ‘to surrender.’ Students from all over Córdoba went to al-Nahawi’s house to study with him. The boy was one of the students. He was beautiful, refined, well read, earnest, and talented. The teacher fell in love with the student, and soon patience deserted the once-stoic man. He began to recite love poems to him. Tongues wagged. His witty verses of surrender to Aslam were repeated at gatherings in the red city.

“When Aslam heard of the gossip, he stopped visiting his mentor, cut off all classes of any kind. He restricted himself to his house and his stoop. The teacher stopped teaching, did nothing other than walk the street in front of Aslam’s house, hoping for a furtive glimpse of his beloved. The dust of his footsteps rose every day and settled only in the evening. Aslam no longer sat on his stoop in daylight. After sunset prayers, when darkness melded into the evening light, overpowering it, Aslam would venture just under the doorjamb for his fresh air.

“When he could no longer lay eyes upon beauty, the poet resorted to guile. One evening, he donned the robes of peasants, covered his head the way they did, took chickens in one hand and a basket of eggs in the other. He approached Aslam, kissed his hand, and said, ‘I have come to you, my lord, to deliver this food.’

“ ‘And who might you be?’ Aslam asked.

“ ‘I am your servant, my lord. I work for you at the farm.’

“Aslam invited the man into his home, asked him to sit for tea, had his slaves take the eggs and chickens into the kitchen. He asked the poet whether the farm was in good shape. The poet replied that all went well. But when Aslam began to ask about the farmers and their families, the poet could not answer.

“And Aslam looked beneath the disguise and saw his nemesis. ‘O brother,’ he said. ‘Have you no shame? Have you no compassion? I am no longer able to attend classes. I have not left my house for the longest time. Is it not enough that I am unable to sit on my own doorstep during the day? You have deprived me of everything that gives me comfort. You have turned me into a prisoner in the jail of your obsession. By God, I will never leave the sanctuary of my home; neither day nor night will I sit on my own stoop.’

“The poet called on his friends, confessed to everything that had happened.

“His friends asked, ‘Have you lost your chickens and eggs?’

“Despair descended upon the poet, leaving him ill and bedridden. A friend, Muhammad ben al-Hassan, paid a visit to the poet, saw him looking ashen and feeble. ‘Why are you not being seen by a doctor?’

“ ‘My cure is not a mystery, and doctors cannot heal me.’

“ ‘And what will cure you?’

“ ‘A glimpse of Aslam.’

“Pity took root in Muhammad’s heart. He paid a visit to Aslam, who greeted him as a gracious host would. After the tea was served, the poet’s friend said, ‘I beg a favor of you. It is about Ahmad ben Kulaib al-Nahawi.’

“ ‘That man has made me infamous, the object of salacious jokes. He has besmirched my name, my reputation, and my respect.’

“ ‘I do understand, but allow the Almighty to be the final judge. All that he has done can be forgiven if you see the state he is in. The man is dying. Your visit would be merciful.’

“ ‘By God, I cannot do that. Do not ask it of me.’

“ ‘I must. Do not fear for your reputation. You are but visiting the sick.’

“Aslam begged off again and again, but the friend kept insisting, reminding him of honor, until Aslam agreed. ‘Let us go, then,’ the friend said.

“ ‘No. I am unable to do it today. Tomorrow.’

“Muhammad made him swear and left him to return to the poet, told him of the next day’s visit. Light returned to the poet’s eyes.

“The next day, Muhammad arrived at Aslam’s house. ‘The promise,’ he said as he greeted his host. And they left for the poet’s house. But when they reached the door, Aslam stopped, blushed, and stuttered, ‘I cannot. I am unable to move my foot forward. I have reached the house, but I cannot enter.’ And, swift as a racehorse, he ran away.

“The friend ran after him, grabbed Aslam by his cloak. Aslam kept running, and a piece of cloth remained in Muhammad’s hand.

“One of the poet’s servants had seen the guests approaching the house and had informed his master, so when Muhammad entered the house alone the poet was gravely disappointed. He snatched the piece of cloth. He insulted Muhammad, cursed at the world, swore at fate, yelled in anger, wept in sorrow. His friend withdrew to leave, but the poet grasped his wrist.

“ ‘Go to him,’ the poet said. ‘Tell him this:

Surrender, O lovely one,

On the sick, have pity.

My heart desires your visit

More than God’s own mercy.’

“ ‘Do not stray from the Faith,’ Muhammad admonished. ‘What is this blasphemy?’ He left the poet in anger, but had barely reached the street when he heard the wails of mourning. The poet, Ahmad ben Kulaib al-Nahawi, had died, clutching torn wool in his bony fingers.

“And this is true: years later, on a horribly rainy day, when only ghosts and jinn could walk unprotected, the cemetery warden recognized Aslam, who by then had become a grand poet himself, sitting on the grave of Ahmad ben Kulaib al-Nahawi, paying his respects, visiting the dead, utterly drenched. Rain streaked his face like tears.”

And Fatima’s face was wet as well. “That is a cheerless tale,” she said.

“I feel sad for the poets,” Jawad said. “My heart is in pain. I am touched.” Jawad looked mournfully at his companions. “But I am not seduced.”

The bey made small talk, tiny talk, and my father replied with monosyllables or grunts. He was saved by my niece and a nurse entering the room. I knew for a fact that Salwa disdained the bey and all the traditions he represented, but from the look she gave him, the bey would have thought her an acolyte. Far along into her pregnancy, her wavy black hair forming a halo about her beatific, motherly-to-be face, she announced that my father needed some blood drawn. The nurse nodded. I noted that he didn’t have any syringes or needles or tubes. My father closed his eyes, unable to disguise his relief, or not caring to.

I walked the bey to the elevator, and as we passed the waiting room, all his sycophants hurried out. When the elevator doors opened, he didn’t enter. He finally decided to talk to me. “Your father is a fine man.” He wanted to sound mature, but it was difficult since he looked like a marionette. “You should be proud of him.”

I looked at him. One of his men was holding the elevator doors open. There were at least six other passengers, but not one complained.

“You should also be proud of your grandfather,” he said. I noticed all eyes on me. The elevator doors kept trying to close. “I always liked you. You should come and visit.” He stepped into the elevator and disappeared behind the closing doors. I stared at the spot where he’d been.

“Why does your father have to be rude?” Hafez said. He was holding his mother, acting as her cane. “Would it hurt him to be nice to the bey? The bey loves him, always says great things about him. We owe the bey so much. He shouldn’t treat him that way.”

Hafez was the closest cousin to me in age, and the family had assumed that we’d have so much in common, we’d grow up to be twins. We actually turned out to be total opposites. We were supposed to be best friends, but we barely got along. He was an insider, and I an outsider.

His mother chided him: “Don’t talk about your uncle like that.”

“He’s just like Grandfather,” he said. “Obstinate.”

Hafez didn’t know what he was talking about. My grandfather had an altogether different kind of obstinacy from my father’s, which is why they could hardly speak to each other. Each wanted the other to see the world his way, but neither was willing to share spectacles. As I turned around, I heard Hafez say, “Why does Uncle disrespect me so? It’s not as if his children made anything out of themselves.”

Back in the room, I heard the same comparison. My father was apoplectic. My sister was trying to calm him down. “He’s just like his grandfather,” my father mumbled. “Obsequious, ass-kissing dimwit. Just like his grandfather. Son of a whore.”

Ah, my grandfather, the progenitor of this mess we called family.

And on the seventh night, outside the gates of Alexandria, Khayal knelt before his adored, defeated. “I have nothing more to offer, nothing but myself. If you want me to leave you, I will depart before the dawn, but if you take my hand, I will make you the same covenant that Ruth made with Naomi: Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die, I will die and there I will be buried.”

Jawad took Khayal’s hand.

Two

Look here,” my grandfather said, pointing at the only colorless spot on the map spread across the wooden table. I sat beside him, but my head couldn’t get close enough for me to see. I stood on the chair, put a knee on the rickety table, felt as if I were floating atop a world of color. I saw Lebanon. I was able to recognize my country in faded purple, but his finger was farther north, above Tripoli. Turkey in yellow ocher. The exact spot discolored, bleached. “This is where I was born.” He didn’t look at the map, as if his fingers could find his birthplace by touch. “Urfa, it’s called. Now they call it Şanliurfa. Means ‘glorious Urfa.’ Damnable Urfa is more like it.”

He cursed easily, smoothly, one reason my mother didn’t want me spending too much time with him. But Aunt Samia always insisted on it. He was family. I was a descendant. She was headstrong. That day, she had driven her three sons and me up from Beirut, dropped us at his house in the morning, and left to make her monthly visits in the village. My cousins preferred to play with the bey’s nephews. As was their habit, Hafez, Anwar, and Munir walked up to the bey’s mansion the instant their mother drove off. My grandfather did not allow me to leave him.

“I am of a time when maps had fewer colors,” he was saying. Shaggy white hair sprouted as profusely from his ears and brows as it did from his head. He wasn’t in a good mood.

I didn’t always understand what he said, but that never stopped him. He stood up. I remained above the map, hovering in its sky. He gesticulated wildly; the floorboards creaked beneath his pacing, an off-key Morse code. “They say Şanliurfa has a mixture of Turkish and Arabic cultures. Sometimes they might even mention the Kurds. But never, if you see all the brochures and travel agents, never do they mention the Armenians. As if we were never there.”

“Who are they, and who are we?” I asked

He stopped and stared out the grimy window into the distance as pinecones crackled in the iron stove.

Ah, Urfa, city of prophets. Jethro, Job, Elijah, and Moses spent part of their lives there, but it will always remain the city of Abraham, his birthplace. Yet Urfa’s history is far more complex than mere myths, mere tales. It is Osrhoe, it is Edessa. It is in the Bible, the Koran, the Torah.

In the days of the mighty King Nimrod, there lived a young man named Abraham, son of Azar, an idol-maker. Out of wood, Azar sculpted beautiful gods that the people loved and worshipped. Azar would send his son to market with the idols, but Abraham never sold any. He called out, “Who’ll buy my idols? They’re cheap and worthless. Will you buy one? It won’t hurt you.” When a passerby stopped to look at the beauty of the craftsmanship, Abraham slapped the idol. “Talk,” he said. “Tell this honest man to buy you. Do something.” There would be no sale.

Of course, his father was upset. He was losing money and had a nonbeliever for a son. He told Abraham to believe in the gods or leave the house. Abraham left.

Abraham walked into a temple while all the townsfolk were in their own homes preparing for an evening of worshipping their beloved gods. Abraham held out food for the gods. “Eat. Aren’t you hungry? Why don’t you talk to me?” Again he slapped their faces, one by one. Slap, move over, slap. But then he took an ax and chopped the gods to pieces, some as small as toothpicks. He chopped all but the largest, and put the ax in this idol’s hand.

When the people came to worship their gods, they found them in a large pile around the chief idol. They bemoaned their fate and that of their gods. “Who would do this?” they cried in unison, a chorus of wails.

“Surely it was someone,” Abraham exclaimed. “The big one stands there with a guilty ax in his hand. Perhaps he was envious of the rest and chopped them up. Should we ask him?”

“You know they don’t speak,” the priest said.

“Then why do you worship them?”

“Heresy,” the people called, and took him to see his king.

My grandfather was the product of an indiscreet affair. His father was Simon Twining — like the tea — an alcoholic English doctor, a missionary helping Christian Armenians in southern Turkey. His mother, Lucine, was one of the doctor’s Armenian servants.

My grandfather’s first name, Ismail, was predetermined. What would you call a son of your maid if you lived in Urfa? His last name was not Twining. The doctor’s wife wouldn’t allow that. It was Guiragossian, his mother’s name. He received his full name, our family’s bane, in Lebanon, as a full-fledged hakawati.

What is a hakawati, you ask? Ah, listen.

A hakawati is a teller of tales, myths, and fables (hekayât). A storyteller, an entertainer. A troubadour of sorts, someone who earns his keep by beguiling an audience with yarns. Like the word “hekayeh” (story, fable, news), “hakawati” is derived from the Lebanese word “haki,” which means “talk” or “conversation.” This suggests that in Lebanese the mere act of talking is storytelling.

A great hakawati grows rich, and a bad one sleeps hungry or headless. In the old days, villages had their own hakawatis, but great ones left their homes to earn fortunes. In the cities, cafés were the hakawatis’ domain. A hakawati can tell a tale in one sitting or spin the same tale over a period of months, impregnating it with nightly cliffhangers.

It is said that in the eighteenth century, in a café in Aleppo, the great one, Ahmad al-Saidawi, once told the story of King Baybars for three hundred and seventy-two evenings, which may or may not have been a record. It is also said that al-Saidawi cut the story short because the Ottoman governor begged him to finish it. The city’s despot had spent every night enthralled and had been recalled to Istanbul for growing lax with the affairs of state, even neglecting the collection of taxes. The governor needed to know how the tale ended.

The bey first met my grandfather, a waiflike, hungry thirteen-year-old hakawati, in a sleazy bar in the Zeitouneh district of Beirut before the Great War. My grandfather had been eking out a meager living by entertaining customers in between various salacious or pseudo-musical acts. The bey was inordinately charmed by the witty stories. When he inquired after my grandfather’s background, the young Ismail provided three different improbable tales in a row. On the spot, the bey hired my grandfather to be his fool, and from that point on referred to him as “al-kharrat,” the fibster, or “hal-kharrat,” that fibster. One day, feeling generous, the bey decided to give the rootless boy some dignity. Since my grandfather had no papers, no documented father, the bey called in favors, paid bribes, and offered his boy a new birth certificate, baptizing him with a fresh name, Ismail al-Kharrat.

The little hakawati arrived in our world in the early evening of January 16, 1900. Simon Twining was telling the tale of Abraham and Nimrod to a rapt audience of his wife, his two daughters, his two Armenian maids, and four Armenian orphans in his care.

“Abraham stood defiantly before his king.” The language English, the tone rising, the voice smooth. “King Nimrod grew nervous, since it was his first encounter with a free soul. ‘You are not my god,’ Abraham told Nimrod.”

Lucine felt the first pang of pain; a wave of nausea swept through her. She breathed deeply, dismissing the pain as transitory, because the baby had one more month to go. She steadied herself, felt grateful that the stool was four-legged. The doctor believed three-legged furniture to be the work of Satan. It was unstable and mocked the Trinity.

“The young man grew in stature when he defied the hunter-king Nimrod. ‘Who is this mighty God you speak of?’ asked the frightened king.” The doctor picked up the long-handled broom leaning on the corner behind him, lifted it above his head. The handle almost knocked off a small box that he had placed below the angle of a ceiling beam to catch the droppings of a pair of swallows nesting there.

Lucine’s second shot of pain arrived three fingers below her belly button, four to the right. She struggled for breath but made no sound.

“Abraham was resolute. ‘He it is who gives life and death,’ he answered, his gaze unwavering. The king said, ‘But I too give life and death. I can pardon a man sentenced to die and execute an innocent child.’ ” All the children gasped. Lucine felt flushed and dizzy. “Abraham said, ‘That is not the way of God. But can you do this? Each morning God makes the sun rise in the east. Can you make it rise in the west?’ Nimrod grew angry, had his minions build a great big fire, and ordered Abraham thrown into it. The men came to carry Abraham, but he told them he could walk.”

Just at that instant, as Abraham walked into the blazing fire, Lucine’s scream was heard throughout the valley. Water spread beneath her four-legged stool, on the scrubbed stones, collecting in the grooves that acted as miniature Roman aqueducts.

A hakawati’s timing must always be perfect.

Ah, births, births. Tell me how a man is born and I will tell you his future.

A seer had told King Nimrod that one shortly to be born would dethrone him. The king beheaded the seer as the bearer of bad tidings. He called his viziers into the throne room and commanded the death of all newborns.

What to do? Adna, pregnant with baby Abraham, left her home in Urfa without having time to pack, walked carefully across town, and headed toward a cave in one of the surrounding hills. There she gave birth. Abraham arrived with eyes open, inquisitive and watchful. The baby did not cry. Adna had no milk. The baby reached for her hand, placed two of her fingers in his mouth, and suckled. One finger supplied milk and the other honey.

And now you want to know how the hakawati was conceived, so listen.

The spring before his birth in Urfa. The sun was setting, the temperature had cooled, and the last birds were settling in the highest branches. Dr. Twining was walking home when he saw his maid, Lucine, standing on an unstable log, trying to cover the outhouse with dry palm branches, a seasonal chore: a true ceiling would trap odors, so sun-dried branches mixed with lavender and jasmine covered the top. The faux plafond protected from the elements, provided a botanical sweetness, and allowed God the choice of not looking directly at a family excreting.

The colors deepened at that time of day, allowing Dr. Twining to see his maid, with her back to him, as a mirage — ephemeral, shimmering, divine. Turkeys, chickens, rabbits, geese, three dogs, and two tortoises could all be seen moving around the perched Lucine. She was their daily feeder, and they were waiting for her. The doctor was grateful that he could provide selfless service to all the unfortunates, to the needy and the meek. A solitary swallow flew low in front of him. He saw the forked tail clearly. He fixed his gaze on Lucine, saw that she wasn’t a mirage; she moved back and forth on the unsteady log. “Lucine,” he called out. The chickens dispersed at his shout. Lucine looked back, her eyes surprised, as if they were questioning the reason for all this. She lost her balance. She opened her mouth to ask for help, swayed forward once, then stiffened, rigid as a column, and fell. Turkeys and geese scattered in all directions.

By the time he reached her, she had still not uttered a sound. She leaned against the gray wall of the outhouse, holding her bare ankle, having pulled up her skirt slightly to look at it. He bent down to examine it. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Let me see.” She removed her hand, and his took over, pressing gently. She shuddered. “That hurts?” he whispered. She nodded. His fingers pressed below the joint, gently stroked her sole. She remained quiet. “I think it’s a sprain.” His thumb and forefinger formed a gentle vise, massaging her calf. “Does this hurt?” She shook her head. Her eyes were new to him. He held her ankle with his right hand. His left massaged up farther, almost to the knee. “Does this hurt? And this? This?”

Fate, I tell you.

He consumed her right then, uncomfortably, outside the outhouse, the faint malodor acting as an aphrodisiac.

“Why would Abraham want to kill Ishmael?” I asked my mother as she undressed for the night. I, already in my pajamas, lay in bed waiting for her, trying to make my small body fit the large indentation my father had worn into the mattress.

“God asked him to sacrifice his son, but then God allowed him to substitute a sheep.” She put on her blue cotton nightgown and, in a maneuver that I always considered the height of acrobatic achievement, removed her brassiere from under the nightgown.

“Was it a boy sheep?”

“I assume so.” She finally smiled at me, chuckled, and shook her head. “Only my little Osama would wonder about that.”

She sat at her vanity to remove her makeup, which still looked wonderful. The entire family had been at Aunt Samia’s apartment to celebrate Eid al-Adha, Abraham’s sacrifice, the only holiday the Druze celebrate. I loved Eid al-Adha. Kids got money from adults during the holiday. All I had to do was walk up to any relative and smile, and I would get coins that jingled in my pockets.

“Why would God ask him to do that?”

She poured démaquillant onto a cotton ball and delicately wiped her face, sliding her hand from top to bottom. “It was a test,” she said, looking in the mirror. “He wouldn’t have let him kill his son.”

“Did he pass the test?”

“Yes, of course, dear. That’s why it’s a holiday and we get to eat so much and get fat. Two whole lambs, and nothing left. I think that’s a record.”

I propped myself on my elbow to watch her more easily. Usually when I moved around in bed, she would tell me to keep still so I could fall asleep faster, but not tonight, probably because of the holiday.

“But what if God didn’t stop him? Would he have killed his son?”

“Is that what’s worrying you?” Finally done, she walked to her side of the bed. She looked quite different without makeup, more girlish. “It’s just a story, Osama. It’s not real.” She slowly got into bed. “Stories are for entertainment only. They never mean anything.”

“Grandfather said it happened on a mountain and God stopped Abraham’s hand just as he was about to cut Ishmael’s throat. He was on a mountain that was close to the sky, and it was a clear day, too, so God was able to see everything.”

“Your grandfather says many things that aren’t true. You know how wild his stories are. You know he never went to school or anything like that. It’s not his fault. But you don’t have to believe the same things he does. If you think something he’s saying is too foolish to be true, then it is.” She stretched, clicked off the light switch on the wall. “Don’t let his stories trouble you. Don’t let any story trouble you.” She turned me around and hugged me. We were together like quotation marks. “Now go to sleep.”

“I don’t like Abraham’s story,” I said to the dark. “It’s not a good one.”

After a slight pause, “I don’t like it, either.”

I thought about the story. “If God asked you, would you kill me?” I felt her shudder.

“Now you’re being silly,” she said. “Of course I wouldn’t do such a thing. Go to sleep and stop thinking.”

“But what if God asked you to?”

“He won’t ask me.”

“What if he asked Dad to kill me? Would he do it?”

“No. Now, don’t be annoying.”

I could not stop thinking. “What if God told someone to kill another person — would that be okay? You couldn’t put the killer in jail if God told him to do it. What if God told someone to kill a lot of people? Like how about the Turks or the French? God tells a man to kill all the French, and he goes out and shoots every Frenchman he sees. Bang, bang, bang. Is that okay? Does he get blamed? What if—”

She shushed me. She covered my mouth with her left hand. I could smell verbena, her moisturizing lotion. “God doesn’t talk to people,” she whispered in my ear. “God doesn’t tell anybody to do anything. God doesn’t do anything.”

“But people believe God talks to them.”

“Stupid people, only stupid people.”

I heard a mosquito’s buzz. I sat up, announced its presence to the room.

“Damn,” she said. “I thought the room was sprayed.” She stood up, considered ringing the buzzer for the maid, then opened the nightstand drawer and removed one Katol. Without turning on the light, she pushed the green spiral insecticide into its stand, struck a match to it. In the sudden flare, she looked like a movie star, her dark hair falling around her face.

“You don’t believe in God, do you, Mother?” I asked.

She looked at me as if I were a stranger, then blew out the match, throwing her face into darkness. “No,” she said, “I don’t believe there is a God.” I heard the hollow sound of the match falling in the waste-basket. “But I don’t want you talking about this with other people. It’s not something we talk about. Do you understand?”

“But how do you know there’s no God?”

“Because, if there’s a God, your father would have been smitten already. Now, for the last time, go to sleep or go to your room.”

The odor of the mosquito killer, mixed with verbena, permeated the room.

That night, in the comfortably furnished parlor while everyone else slept, the doctor confessed everything to his wife. His back to the mild fire, he knelt before her, wept. She put down her knitting and listened to his elaborate explanations. He was weak, only human. He didn’t know what had possessed him. It wasn’t Lucine’s fault. It was his. If only he could castrate himself, his life would be so much simpler, he would be a better human being, the husband she deserved. She remained quiet. It would never happen again, he promised her. It was an accident. Inconsequential. He would once again prove worthy of her trust. She was his anchor. She was his faith. Would she forgive him?

“What about her ankle?” his wife asked.

Puzzled, the doctor could think of nothing to say.

“Is her ankle all right?” she asked.

“It’s a severe sprain,” he responded. “It’ll be back to normal in a month or so, but she needs to be off it for three or four days.”

His wife went back to her knitting. Looking down at her work, she said, “That’s going to be difficult. It’s hard to keep that girl off her feet. She’s so industrious and loyal. I don’t know if she’ll be able to stay still for three days.”

Her husband walked back to his chair. He took out his pipe and his tobacco pouch. He began his nightly ritual. “We’ll just have to force her.” He lit the pipe, took a few puffs, waited for the shreds of tobacco to turn amber before blowing out the match. “For her own good.”

“You’re right. I’ll have to find her some chores that don’t require her to move about.”

He opened his book, and the bookmark fell on his lap. “Just make sure her leg is elevated.”

“Yes. The sprained ankle always above her heart, to make sure it doesn’t swell too much.” She paused, smiled at him; then her fingers resumed their spidery work.

A cast-iron woodstove dominated my grandfather’s sitting room. The exhaust pipe, big enough for a soccer ball to roll through, extended all the way across the room to the ceiling on the other side. He removed the stove every spring, yet when he brought it back in late autumn he placed it in the exact same spot, across the room from the hole in the ceiling. He stuffed the stove with split oak, pine, and pinecones throughout the cold season. The sitting room always felt like a slow-burning oven. And whenever the capricious wind changed direction, aggressive smoke puffed back into the room, searing my lungs. If I complained, my grandfather chided me for not liking the scent of burnt pine, for being a spoiled city boy used to gardenias and lavender handpicked from the gardens.

In winter, the stove became the center of his universe. He cooked on it, brewed his maté, his tea, his coffee. He moved his bed next to it. He left his sitting room only to go to the bathroom at the back of the house.

The next day, Lucine’s ankle was swollen and her leg blue to the knee. The doctor’s wife brought her a pink oleander and placed it in a chipped glass beside her bed. She raised the bottom end of the bed on bricks. She cleaned Lucine’s bedpan. Lucine mumbled incoherent apologies, too shy to speak directly to her madame.

Two weeks later, the doctor stood next to his wife in the doorway of the maids’ room, watching Zovik, the second maid, help Lucine vomit into a rusty metal pail.

“Make sure the ankle doesn’t move,” the doctor instructed Zovik.

“This is the will of God,” his wife whispered to him.

Lucine’s ankle remained swollen for the rest of her life, all thirteen months of it.

“Play me something,” my grandfather said. He slumped on his small couch, the cigarette between his fingers a nub, totally forgotten.

“But you don’t like what I play,” I said.

My grandfather heaved a sigh of impatience. The cigarette burned his finger. He dropped it on the couch. He stared at his hand, astonished. He stamped the cigarette with the palm of his hand. The butt bounced off the cushion, hit the floor already extinguished. “Pfflt. I never said I don’t like what you play.” He raked his curly white hair with both hands, but it remained as unruly as it always was, as unruly as he was. “You’re my flesh and blood.” His beard was scraggly but clean. His clothes were unruly as well.

“You said I play like a donkey.”

“Well, then, come here and play something different and don’t play like a donkey.” He patted the cushion next to him, took out his tobacco pouch, and began to roll. I didn’t move. Keeping his eyes fixed on his cigarette, he said, “There’s nothing worse than a reluctant performer. All this ‘I don’t know if I can’ and ‘I’m really not ready’ is shit on shit. Someone asks you to play, just play. Enjoy your time in the sun and don’t whine about it.”

I brought his oud and sat next to him. “I don’t like your oud. It has the wrong strings.”

His eyes rolled. “Pfflt. Who cares about stupid things? Just play.”

I started with a simple scale to limber up my fingers, just as Istez Camil taught me. My grandfather sank deeper into the couch, the collar and shoulders of his black jacket rising above his ears, almost to the top of his head. I moved slowly into a maqâm, but it didn’t sound right. The oud was no good. I tried to compensate, but my grandfather stood up suddenly.

He walked to the stove, opened the top, and threw his cigarette in. “You play like a donkey. What has that idiot of a musician been teaching you? Who listens to all that Iraqi crap?”

“People love what I play. Everybody says I play like an angel, like a sweet angel.”

“You play like a donkey angel.” He scrunched up his face. He lifted his hands to his cheeks, pretended to make them talk. “Plunk, plunk, plunk. I can make music. Look. Tum, tum, tum.” He took out his dentures, held them in front of his mouth. “I can play music, that nobody wants to listen to. Can you? Can you?”

I turned my back to him. “I’m not listening to you. You don’t know good music and your oud is horrible.”

“Why don’t you play something interesting?” I didn’t have to look at him to know that he had put his dentures back where they belonged. “Play a song instead of that donkey shit. Songs are better. Tell me a story. Sing a story for me.”

“I don’t want to. You do it.”

He picked up his oud and sighed. He shook his head and said, “In Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and northeastern Iran, the word ‘bakhshi’ means a player of the oud, singer, and storyteller. I am a bakhshi, you are a bakhshi. The word comes from Chinese and arrived with the advent of the smelly Mongols.” He plucked two notes before going on: “On the other hand, the storytelling musicians of Khorasan in Iran think ‘bakhshi’ comes from ‘bakhshande,’ which means a bestower of gifts, because of the musical gift God has bestowed on them. I have always appreciated thinking of the oud player as a storyteller, as a bestower of gifts.”

He played horribly, had a lousy voice that was always off-key. He sang a song about a boy who had more luck than brains.

• • •

In the summer, by Lucine’s fifth month, everyone knew she was carrying a boy. The signs were obvious: she had already gained twelve kilos (boys are bigger); her belly was completely round (girls are awkward, the uterus never fills out perfectly); she was constantly in pain, having spent her entire first trimester on her back (boys are always too much trouble); she did not recover easily, her ankle remained swollen (boys are self-centered, draining all the mother’s healing energies); she was radiant (boys make their mothers happy).

On a hot day, a hobbling Lucine sprinkled well water on the ground to keep the dust from rising. One of the tortoises retracted into its shell when it felt the water drops. Lucine wanted to make sure that the spot beneath it did not remain utterly dry. She waddled indelicately. She pushed the tortoise with her bare foot and her ankle gave out. She almost stumbled.

She touched her ankle, which had refused to heal, and prayed to the Virgin. She dragged herself over to the mulberry tree and sat in its shade. She stretched her legs, pointed her toes. To test the ankle’s strength, she pushed against a rock the size of a melon and moved it slightly. She placed her toes under it and pushed again. The pain this time was piercing, causing her to faint.

“It’s the ankle,” the wife said.

“I’m not so sure,” the doctor said. He massaged Lucine’s ankle, noted a red mark on the top of her right foot. He showed it to his wife. “Are the girls inside?” he asked. It did not take him long to find the white scorpion. Under the rock, crushed as thin as a sheet of paper, its sting its last defiant act. “This is not a good sign.”

When I told my grandfather I was hungry, he gave me a piece of dry bread sprinkled with sea salt. “Your midmorning refreshment, my little lord. That’s what I used to have every morning for a snack when I was your age. All the orphans waited impatiently for this, between breakfast and lunch. Just taste it. You’ll like it.” I refused to look at him. He moved around incessantly, like a windup toy that never completely unwound. “Here I am trying to infuse you with culture, my flesh and blood, my own kin. You don’t want this, you want that. When I was your age, I had to eat what I was given.”

I turned. I made sure that my back was toward him wherever he moved.

“You won’t eat my bread. There are children who’d kill to have a piece of bread. You have so many things and you’re still not happy. I didn’t have any toys when I was your age. But I entertained myself. I didn’t need toys like you do. I used to make myself slingshots. I’d climb the only high tree in our backyard, a black mulberry, and use the fruit as ammunition against the Muslim boys. I didn’t use stones, because I’d have gotten in trouble, but hitting a boy with a mulberry was a lot more fun anyway. The fruit stained a rich purple. Every time I hit a boy, I’d raise my arms like a champion and almost lose my balance, but I never fell. Those boys used to call us names. They called us unbelievers and without history. I didn’t care, mind you, but the doctor’s daughters always cried. Barbara and Jane. Those were their names. See, I still remember, even after all these years. I can still remember their names. I haven’t lost anything. Or was it Barbara and Joan? It was one or the other. Ah, who cares?”

“I don’t.”

“Listen,” he said. “Listen. Our house was right outside the city walls. I mean right outside — the remnant of the ancient Roman wall was the back wall of our house. The wall extended beyond the house and marked half our garden. I’d climb the wall at night and yell without any sound, yell at the world: I am here. I’m here, like Abraham. I could see Abraham’s pool when I stood on the wall. It shimmered in starlight. It bubbled eternally. Full of sacred fish, guarded and fed regularly.”

“Who fed them?”

“The Muslims, of course. When Nimrod ordered Abraham into the fire, God intervened and manifested his glory to the hunter-king. The sycophants opened the oven door expecting to see nothing but charred remains, except there the prophet was, as glorious as ever; the young Abraham was singing, sitting indolently on a bed of red roses, red like the color of fresh blood. Thousands upon thousands of crimson rose petals. The courtiers ran away in terror as if they had seen a jinni or an angel. Abraham, unblemished and untouched, walked out of the furnace, smirked as he passed Nimrod, and went home. The king, the mighty warrior, frightened and furious, called his army. He built the greatest catapult the world had ever seen. But no, he said, one is never enough. He built another, an exact replica. In the catapults’ cradles, his men put pile upon pile of burning wood. He doused the fire with more oil, added pinecones for sound effects. He gave the order to unleash his fury at his nemesis. But God changed the catapults to minarets. He transformed the fire to water, and the pool of Abraham came to exist. He changed the fagots to carp, and the fish gave life to the pool. For thousands of years, the freshwater pool has given sustenance and nourishment to Urfa’s people. The dervish Muslims guard the pool and give back to God by taking care of his sacred fish. I played there when I was your age. I swam with the fish of God.”

Sunlight finally broke through the windows. The air smelled sweet and fragrant. “Were they like other fish?” I asked.

“No, of course not.” He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture, his pale, bony wrists protruding from frayed white cuffs. “They were special fish. Sparkled like gems at night, colors you’d never see. If only I could show them to you. And the dervishes looked so holy in their traditional outfits, the white robes and red hats.”

“Aren’t they the ones that dance? I’ve seen them. They’re beautiful and grand.”

“They twirl. That’s how they pray. And they are beautiful.”

“I want a God that makes me twirl.” I jumped off the couch. I untucked and unbuttoned my shirt so it would flow like a robe. “Like this. I can do this for God.” I held my hands out. I twirled and twirled and twirled. “Look,” I said. “Look.”

The Dutch painter Adriaen van der Werff, an accomplished, rather sentimental and repetitive minor master, painted a Biblical scene of Sarah offering her Egyptian slave girl, Hagar, to Abraham. Of course, Hagar looks nothing like an Egyptian. Chestnut hair — close to blond, even — and she has the lightest skin of all three figures, Nordic features, too young and beautiful. She is at the bottom of the painting; only her torso is shown, naked from the waist up. A piece of clothing (a petticoat?) and her right forearm cover her right breast. The right hand on her left breast serves to accentuate the sumptuous nipple. She kneels beside the bed, looks down at her naked belly, demure, submissive, excluded from the discussion between Sarah and Abraham.

Sarah, a crone, stands behind Hagar, talking to her husband. She is fully clothed in drab material, her white hair partially veiled. Abraham is naked on the bed, a navy-blue sheet covering everything below his navel. He has a thick brown beard, but his muscular chest is completely hairless, his abdominals defined. His hand rests on Hagar’s sensuous bare shoulder beneath him. He looks happy with the offer, smug almost.

“You see,” Sarah says, “that the Lord has prevented me from having children. Go into my Egyptian slave girl. It may be that I build my family through her.”

Abraham listened to the voice of Sarah and went into her Egyptian slave girl.

Months later, the sky swelled with glory, and the valley began to color and bloom. Abraham’s face had lost its winter pallor; his hair remained black, never-changing, with its widow’s peak. Sarah’s eyes were swollen, full of tears, her face blotchy. She stared at Abraham, hoped he would not notice her. She had urged him to sleep with her Egyptian. God spoke through her. Hagar would provide him with a male heir, and Sarah would be elevated, if not in his eyes, then surely in her own. Sarah never imagined that Abraham would fall in love with the slave, treat her as a wife. He had such affection for Hagar. And she grew. She still behaved herself, but the look on her face was no longer that of a slave. It was more graceful, more self-assured, the look of someone who belonged. The slave had quickly gotten used to salvation.

“You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering,” Sarah informed her husband. “I put my servant in your arms, and now that she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.”

“She is your slave,” Abraham replied. “Do with her what you think best.”

“We should call the midwife,” the doctor’s wife said. “We don’t want people to talk.”

“Fine. Fine. Call the witch. I will make sure she doesn’t make things worse. Tell her to keep her mouth shut. I don’t want to listen to her tiresome life story once more.”

Zovik interrupted the midwife’s supper — boiled rice and lentils with a touch of cumin. She told Zovik she would come soon after she finished her meal, but then she actually heard Lucine’s wail. She jumped up off the ground, almost knocking over the brass tray and the dish of lentils. Nimble for a woman her age and weight, she ran out the door, with a concerned Zovik trailing behind. “Why did you wait so long?” the midwife asked. “Why does everybody wait so long?”

A crowd milled outside the doctor’s house. Some had come from as far as two or three neighborhoods away to discover the source of the wails and to discuss their significance. The midwife squeezed through the crowd, ran into the house, and found the children clustered outside the maids’ room. As she approached, the wail started as a low rumble, rolled forward like a tumbleweed in harsh winds, and reached a crescendo that almost brought her to her knees. The children’s faces registered shock, followed by dismay, and then they slowly began to cry. The doctor’s wife came out of the room. “I can’t take this anymore,” she said to no one in particular. “To your rooms, children. You have no business here. Don’t forget your prayers, your teeth, and your eye drops. Now go to sleep.” She disappeared into the hallway.

Lucine lay in bed, her eyes staring at the ceiling, her lips praying, her brows and forehead anticipating the next contraction. The doctor seemed agitated and slightly bewildered. The midwife asked if the water had broken and whether the baby had begun to reveal itself.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“It’s definitely a boy. Boys don’t like to come out if there’s another male in the room. Boys like to be enticed into coming out. Boys want to be made to feel special.”

“That’s nonsense. I wish you’d stop it.”

“O Holy Virgin. This boy seems to be having problems finding his way out.” She stroked Lucine’s belly. Once, twice, three times. “Listen to me, my boy. We want you out here. You’re our special boy. If you come, I’ll tell you a story. Come.”

Once, there was a little boy who lived with his grandfather in a small hut in a small village. This boy was so tiny that everyone called him Jardown, the rat. Jardown loved his grandfather, who in turn loved Jardown more than anything in the world. His grandfather took care of him, cooked for him, and told him stories.

One day in fall, his grandfather told the other village men that he was getting old and could not bring home as much firewood as he used to, and that the boy, Jardown, was too small to carry all they needed for the approaching winter. The other men told him not to fret. They would all send him their sons the following day, and they should be able to collect enough firewood to last for two or three winters.

The next day, all the village boys arrived at the cottage. Jardown’s grandfather gave each boy a piece of bread, a piece of chocolate, and two drops of condensed milk. “This is to thank you for helping us. Go into the forest and bring back as much firewood as you can. Take care of Jardown while you’re out there. He is younger and much smaller than any of you.”

The boys went into the forest, each carrying his bread and chocolate and condensed milk. Some began to collect firewood while others chopped down dying trees. Every boy was doing his share, except for Jardown, who sat on a big rock with his feet dangling above the forest floor.

“Jardown,” one of the boys said, “why aren’t you cutting wood?”

“My grandfather gave you a piece of bread so you would cut wood for me, too.”

So the boys cut more wood. When they thought they had enough, they gathered all the wood in bundles to carry back to the village. Each boy carried his own bundle — each boy except for Jardown, who still sat in the same place.

“Jardown,” another boy said, “why aren’t you carrying a bundle?”

“My grandfather gave you all a piece of chocolate so you would carry my bundle.”

The boys picked up Jardown’s bundle and began to leave, but then they noticed that Jardown was not moving. “Why aren’t you coming with us, Jardown? We are going home.”

“My grandfather gave you all two drops of condensed milk so you would carry me when I got tired.”

A boy much bigger than Jardown lifted him onto his shoulders. They began the long trek home. Soon, however, the sun shrank and everything grew dark. The boys walked and walked and walked and walked, but they couldn’t find their way out of the forest.

“Which way is the right way?” one of the boys asked.

“This way.” “That way.” “No, that way.” “No, this way.”

In the distance the boys heard the vicious barking of a dog. In the opposite direction from the barking, they saw a light. They wondered which they should walk toward, the barking or the light. After much deliberation, they asked Jardown: “Which way should we go, Jardown? In one direction we have a dog barking. Should we go there, or should we go where there is light?”

Jardown, the smart one, pondered the question. He said, “If we go toward the dog, it might bite us. I think we should go toward the light.”

The boys walked toward the light, which was coming from a cottage in the middle of the forest. They knocked on the door, but no one answered. They entered and decided to wait there till morning, when they would be able to see their way back.

After they settled in the cottage, the boys heard a loud noise that sounded like a huge wild animal outside the door. The boys scuttled about and hid behind every piece of furniture. Some went behind the curtains, two crouched under the sofa, one even went up the unlit chimney flue. The door opened, and a big, hairy monster walked in — big as in bigger than a camel standing on its hind legs, but not quite as big as an elephant; hairy as in even hairier than a bear and with a big beard and long hair. He walked in, the sound of each step echoing through the house. The monster took a deep breath. “What’s this I smell?” he asked. “It smells like I have humans in here. Young, tasty flesh. I love the smell of boys. Where are they? Where are the yummy boys?”

He searched behind the chairs, under the sofa. He found each boy, one by one. He even located the boy in the chimney. The boys huddled in the middle of the room.

“What are you boys doing in my house?” the monster asked. One of them said in a low, quivering voice, “We can’t find our way home.”

The monster looked at the feast of boys in front of him, the aroma of tender flesh making him drool. He realized that he wouldn’t be able to eat all the boys in one sitting, there were so many of them. The best thing to do would be to get the boys to bed and then eat them one by one while they slept. The monster told the boys: “Allow me to be your host. Spend the night here. I know the way back to your village, but I can only find it when there is light. In the morning, I will show you the way back home. No one finds his way in the dark. Sleep here, where it is safe.”

The boys relaxed, breathed a sigh of relief, and went off to bed. Not Jardown. Being the smart one, he realized what the monster was up to. He’d stay awake so the monster wouldn’t eat them. The monster waited diligently and uncomplainingly outside the boys’ room, counting out time. He peeked from behind the door and asked quietly, “Who is asleep and who is awake?”

“Everybody is asleep,” Jardown replied, “but Jardown is awake.”

“Why is Jardown awake? What does Jardown want?”

“Jardown can’t sleep because every night before bed his grandfather bakes him a loaf of bread.”

So the monster went into the kitchen, lit the fire, and began to bake a loaf of bread. When he finished, he brought the bread to Jardown and went back out of the room to wait for the boy to sleep. Dawn was breaking when the monster asked quietly from behind the door, “Who is asleep and who is awake?”

“Everybody is asleep,” Jardown replied, “but Jardown is awake.”

“Why is Jardown awake? What does Jardown want?”

“Jardown can’t sleep because every night before bed his grandfather brings him water from the river in a sieve.”

The monster thought that Jardown would go to sleep as soon as he brought him water from the river in a sieve. He hurried out of the house to the river. As soon as he was out, Jardown woke all the boys. “Hurry,” he told them. “We must run. The monster wants to eat us. We have to get out of here. It is almost light out, and we can see our way back home. Hurry.”

The boys ran out of the house. They got to the river and noticed the monster in the distance trying to fill the sieve with water. The boys quickly and quietly swam to the opposite side, the older ones helping the younger ones across. When they had finished, the monster looked up and saw his banquet of boys across the river. He ran after them. “Let me come with you. I know the way back home. I can help you. How did you get across the river?”

Jardown pointed to the millstones near the monster. “The best way to cross the river is to put one of those stones around your neck and walk across. That’s how we did it.”

The monster put one of the millstones around his neck. He walked into the river, and the heavy stone pulled him down to the bottom. The boys ran home, and Jardown went to his grandfather, who was very happy to see him, having worried all night.

This is the story of Jardown, the little boy who outwitted the big monster, and that is why, in winter, when the river gets rough, if you get close to the white, raging water, you will be able to hear it saying, “Everybody is asleep, but Jardown is awake,” followed by a deep, long sigh.

• • •

The hakawati, all one and a half kilograms of him, arrived in a lake of blood. His mother had been noisy, but the baby was quiet. After being assured that it was a boy, with ten toes, ten fingers, and an abundance of unruly, matted hair, Lucine took a deep breath and swallowed hard. She asked the midwife if her baby was alive.

“He breathes,” she said. “But barely. He’s the smallest baby I’ve ever seen. He’s no bigger than a rat.” She lifted him by the right leg, shook him, and spanked his behind.

“He’s not crying,” his mother said. “Why isn’t he crying?”

The midwife held the hakawati as if he were a dead ferret. She was about to shake him harder when the doctor admonished her. “Give him to me,” he said. Ismail began to cry the instant he landed in his father’s arms. The doctor passed him right back to the midwife.

Someone had placed the evil eye on the baby. It wasn’t only that he was a bastard, tiny, and not very healthy. He was an ugly baby and would grow up to be an ugly child, an ugly adolescent, and an ugly man. There was no escaping that. But, of course, his mother loved him.

“Let me see him,” Lucine said. She reached out her arms for the crying baby. She did not recognize anyone in his face. “What an angry boy.”

Oh, and he also had colic.

“Should I try to feed him?”

The doctor thought there was no point yet, but the midwife disagreed. “Feed him. Feed him. Train him to eat. It’s never too early. You have no milk yet, but all the activity will get you milky. He will probably get nothing but glue first, but it’s all good. He’s so small that he needs every drop of food. If you don’t produce milk, there’s Anahid, but I think you’ll cow fine.”

Lucine unbuttoned her blouse and took her left breast out. The doctor gasped involuntarily, stared indelicately. The hakawati took to the breast as a hummingbird takes to the air. The breast provided no milk, so he began to cry again. He cried for an hour, for two, for three. The house didn’t sleep. The doctor’s wife went in to look at mother and child but could offer no solace. She sent her husband.

“I don’t think I have any milk yet,” Lucine said. In the flickering light of the one candle, she showed him her breast, pushed her chest out toward him, squeezed her nipple. “Look,” she said. “Look.” He looked. “No milk yet.”

He cupped her breast, held its weight in his palm. “Lucine,” he whispered, “I can see now why your name chose you.” He brushed a callused finger across her nipple. “Lucine, my moon.” He bent down and licked it. Milk flowed. She moved his head gently, brought her son’s mouth to it. The hakawati suckled.

Do you know the story of the mother of us all?

“Hagar” comes from the Arabic word for “emigrate,” and Hagar did so a number of times. She was a princess in the pharaoh’s court. A beauty promised to the pharaoh at a young age, she had her own rooms and a coterie of slaves at her command. The pharaoh had decided to save her for a rainy night, and drought still reigned over Egypt. Her master-to-be, Abraham, was in Egypt with his wife, Sarah, whom he was trying to pass off as his sister. She was sixty-five and beautiful. Abraham was afraid that if the pharaoh knew she was his wife he would kill Abraham and take her. The pharaoh, besotted with Sarah, took her anyway. The pharaoh prepared himself for an evening of pleasure. He had Sarah wait for him in the palace’s red room, which he reserved for his most special assignations. He walked into the luscious room and found Sarah already naked on red satin. But God made His presence felt again. Suddenly all the pharaoh could see was an old hag, with wilted eyes, withered skin, frizzled gray hair, bosoms like drained yogurt bags. He covered his kohled eyes in horror and disgust and anguish. “Your face has more wrinkles than my scrotum,” he said. “Acch. Get out of this room and leave my sacred realm.”

However, Hagar, enamored of Abraham’s faith, begged the pharaoh to give her to the God-fearing couple before they were forced to flee. The pharaoh asked her why she’d want to leave such luxury. She stood before him, demure, eyes downcast. “Because I believe,” she said.

The pharaoh was horrified, confused by this encounter with a faith he didn’t comprehend. He wondered whether Hagar would turn into the repulsion that was the other one. “Go,” he commanded in an angry voice for all to hear, all including their strange god. “Leave this world and follow your new masters out of my Egypt.”

Abraham took her as a slave, a handmaid for Sarah. Hagar left Egypt, becoming rootless, torn, living wherever her master staked his tent. An emigrant.

• • •

The hakawati cried and cried. “That makes for strong lungs,” Zovik said.

He cried, he suckled, he shat, he slept, he cried. By the third day, after the excitement of the new birth had evaporated, Lucine felt the family’s tension. The doctor’s girls no longer wanted to see the baby. The wife walked more heavily in the house. The baby’s lungs grew stronger. His mouth grew stronger as well, hurting her nipples. The baby sucked until her breasts emptied, then screeched for more.

“I think I should bring Poor Anahid,” Zovik said. “She can feed him as well.”

Anahid’s son, ten days old, had died the morning of the hakawati’s birth. Anahid’s husband, who couldn’t afford mosquito nets, had gone to the Harrar Plain to find work. Anahid had gotten up that morning later than she would have expected. It took a moment to register that her baby had not woken her up. When she rose up from the floor where she slept and looked at her baby in his basket, her first reaction was to weep. Crimson welts, rashlike bumps, and minute pink protrusions covered his entire body. She carried her only son, his breathing labored, and left her house, calling for help. But by the time others arrived, her son had taken his last breath.

The gathering crowd discussed who would have been able to place such a powerful curse. Nothing else could explain the number of mosquitoes required to drain all of an infant’s blood. There must be more to it. Look, some said, look at this. Some bites were different from others. Someone lifted the blanket from inside the baby basket. At least three heads stared at the straw within. White lice. Anahid remembered that she had brought the straw the day before. She fainted. No one had heard of lice killing a baby, or of mosquitoes killing a baby. Was the combination fatal? Was such a loss of blood possible? What would Anahid’s husband say when he came back? Did he have a powerful enemy?

Her husband arrived in the afternoon, heard the news, went into his house, and beat Anahid unconscious. He didn’t unpack. He left and wasn’t heard from again.

Afterward, Anahid walked out of her house in a daze. When the residents of the Armenian quarter of Urfa saw Anahid — childless, with her two black eyes, swollen lips, the hair on the right side of her head more sparse than on the left — they were no longer able to call her by her first name only. She became Poor Anahid.

And Poor Anahid became the hakawati’s wet nurse. Yet four milky breasts weren’t enough. Ismail ate and ate, and when there was no more milk, he cried.

“That boy is not human,” the wife told the doctor.

The days grew warmer in Urfa. The skies became less dark and menacing. Spring approached. Yet the hakawati still couldn’t get enough. His wails kept everyone in the neighborhood awake. He cried, he suckled, he slept, he cried.

Pregnant, tired, and frightened, Hagar lumbered across the bleak desert. She had fled. Earlier that morning, Abraham had kissed her sweetly, left a tingle in her soul. She blushed, returned the kiss, and watched him leave. Content and hopeful, she resumed her chores.

Sarah decided to sharpen the cutlery. She fetched the knives and flint stones. With each stroke, she looked up at Hagar; sparks flew. Hagar was not stupid.

In the desert, she came across no one. The ripening sun dried her throat. She stopped, wiped the sweat out of her eyes. When she reopened them, lo and behold, God stood before her.

“Hagar, servant of Sarah,” God called out to her, “where have you come from and where are you going?”

“I am running away from my mistress, Sarah.”

“Return to your home, Hagar,” God said. “Go back to your mistress and submit to her. I will watch over you. I will protect you. Be not afraid, for you are my daughter. Return and announce to the world that your son will beget many nations. I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count. You will be mother to the world.”

“You are El Roi,” Hagar said to God.

“Look,” my grandfather said, pointing at his ankle with his forefinger and his hawkish beak of a nose. “Can’t you see the scorpion sting? See this mark. It has been there since before I was born.” I knelt to look at the mark. The ankle was skinny, bony, and hairless, the skin pale and blue and thin pellucid. “Isn’t this proof? Your eyes can tell you the truth. Whose reality is more real?”

“But the scorpion bit Lucine and not you,” I said, looking up at him.

“Don’t you ever listen to what I’m saying?” He rose off the chair, moved toward the stove. He removed the top lid, stoked the fire with an aluminum spatula. “It was a curse, I tell you. Someone placed a curse on me before I was born. Lucine was stung by a white scorpion, and everyone knows white scorpions are magical. The sting was meant for me. I was born poisoned, which is why I cried and cried, but no one understood me. I was unable to get enough food. I needed all the nourishment to fight the evil poison inside me. It was a costly battle, but I won.”

He lifted his right fist in the air like a champion. “Come,” he said. “Join me.” We walked a victory lap around the stove, cheered by the roar of an invisible crowd, our arms raised in celebration and pride. My grandfather had to crouch to pass under the exhaust pipe.

Long, long ago, a child was born to the prophet Abraham and his slave, Hagar. He was called Ishmael, Abraham’s first progeny, and would grow up to be a prophet and the father of the Arab tribes. Abraham loved his beautiful baby, who looked like a miniature version of him. Being eighty-six, he had given up hope of ever holding a child of his own. He carried the infant everywhere. And Sarah boiled with bilious jealousy. One evening, after dinner, Sarah confronted Abraham. “I had a dream. God spoke to me, telling me you should send Hagar and her son into the desert and leave them there for a month.”

By the light of the fire, the prophet saw his wife, a woman grown old. “I do not understand why He would ask that. They cannot survive alone out there.”

“Who are we to question His commands? Oh, and they should be left there with little food or water. He said that, too.”

Lucine realized the chicken soup didn’t taste right, but she ate it anyway. What surprised her was that she was the only one who developed diarrhea. She assumed it was because of her weakened condition. Within a few hours, her baby followed suit, and she was no longer allowed to feed him. Poor Anahid was promoted to sole feeder that day. The hakawati wasn’t getting enough from four breasts, reduced to two, his wails grew louder, reaching registers few eardrums could tolerate.

Lucine’s interminable diarrhea made her weak. She could no longer move or be moved to the outhouse. Bedpans had to be scoured on the hour. By the third day, her skin seemed to collapse about her bones, except for her ankle, which swelled larger. By the fourth day, it became apparent she was not recovering. Her last words were directed to her son: “Just shut up. Just shut up for once.”

Lucine Guiragossian, almost seventeen, died of acute amoebic dysentery.

Abraham led his slave and his son across the desert, journeyed for many long and dangerous days and nights, following Sarah’s direction. They stopped at a desolate place. Abraham did not know it then, but the place was already sacred. The first prophet, Adam, had built a temple of worship to the one God on that spot. Nothing of the edifice was left standing. All Hagar saw was the hot sand, the bare hills, the yellow sun, the deathly-blue sky. Abraham gave her a little food and water, prepared to leave her there.

“How can you abandon us?” Hagar begged her master. “How can we survive with so little water in this forsaken place? Is this your decision or the will of God?”

“It is His command.” Abraham closed his satchel, avoiding her eyes.

“Oh, that’s not so bad, then.”

Abraham left them to the silent and lonely desert. There was not a sprig of grass anywhere in the valley, not one tree, not a bird in the sky, not one insect. Hagar looked at the two hills that enclosed the valley, but they offered scant protection or provision. When she ran out of water, the baby began to cry, which seared her heart like a branding iron. She ran up one hill, reached the top, scanned the desert for an oasis; nothing but scalding sand. She ran up the other hill. Disheartening, bleak, sandy emptiness. She kept hearing her baby cry, no matter how high she climbed. She descended to comfort him. His throat seemed parched. She laid him down once more, ran up one hill, down again, up the other, hoping she had missed something. Finally surrendering, she returned to her child. They would die together. He lay on the ground kicking the sand with his feet. As he kicked and kicked, lo and behold, water gushed from the ground, tumbled over sand and rock — a cold stream was born. Ishmael quieted down once he drank some water, and he slept peacefully in his mother’s arms. Hagar looked up at the sky to thank her Lord and saw flocks of birds. They circled before alighting to drink from the sacred stream. Bedouins and travelers saw the hovering birds, knew that they had found water. The tribes adjusted their routes to find its source. They arrived in the valley, saw how peaceful it was, and were awed by its bewitching beauty. They looked up to where the water source was and saw a comely Egyptian in a blue robe, resting, her infant asleep on her breast, the light of the sun bathing them in a golden sheen. Even though the tribes were still infidels then, they bowed in silence to the mother and child, so as to not disturb them. They decided to settle in the valley. This was the beginning of the holy city of Mecca. When Abraham returned for his Hagar and Ishmael, he found the valley a blooming oasis with hundreds of palms pregnant with juicy dates, and he thanked God for saving his family.

Every year, pilgrims at the hajj remember the story of Hagar and her baby. They arrive from all over the world to worship, to run between the two hills, Safa and Marwa, praying that God will provide for them the same way He provided for Hagar and Ishmael.

The baby didn’t stop crying. Poor Anahid fed him, carried him. Zovik carried him. Even the doctor’s wife. No change. Finally, the doctor had had it. He walked in on Zovik, who was trying to coo the baby quiet. “Give him to me,” he scowled.

Hesitating, but not daring to show reluctance, Zovik handed the hakawati to his furious father. The hakawati stopped crying the instant his father’s hands touched him.

The silence was shocking. The hakawati fell asleep in his father’s arms. The doctor, unable to look at anything but his baby, stood rooted to the spot, mouth open, eyebrows raised like arches under Roman bridges. He remained there until his wife called him. For the first time, the doctor told his evening story with a baby in his arms.

“From touch to touch,” Zovik whispered to Poor Anahid. “From touch to touch.”

Three angels came to visit Abraham on his ninety-ninth birthday. Sarah invited them into the tent and crouched outside, listening to their every word. One of the angels informed Abraham that God was happy with him. “God will increase the size of your family,” the angels said. “By your next birthday, your wife, Sarah, will deliver a son.”

Everyone in the tent heard Sarah’s cackling laugh. She tried to control herself, but the idea of being pregnant in her nineties was hilarious. All of a sudden, she was laughing, her body shaking, though no sound escaped her lips. She clutched her throat. She stood up, ran into the tent.

“You will not have a voice until your child is born,” the angels said.

Outside, on the other side of the tent, Hagar snickered silently.

“The doctor built a bed for me,” my grandfather told me. “You see, he was a carpenter first, then a deacon, then a doctor. He spent hours making the bed, carved each leg by hand, with high sides so I wouldn’t fall. On each of the four corners, he carved a horse’s head. He ordered the bolts and screws all the way from England. The wood was local oak, and he stained it a dark brown. I had the most beautiful bed in the house. I slept in it even when I was much too big. I would lie with my legs tilted up on the side.”

Poor Anahid watched the doctor work on the bed. She couldn’t keep still. The baby nestled in the doctor’s shoulder satchel. As long as he was in the doctor’s vicinity, the baby was as calm as the Mediterranean in early summer.

“Why are you hovering, Anahid?” the doctor asked. “Is there something you need?”

“I suggest that we not use straw,” Poor Anahid said.

My mother’s long eyelashes fluttered when she slept. It would be wrong to assume you could get away with anything when she first fell asleep: the slightest movement was enough to wake her. When I put my finger close to her eyelashes so I could know what they felt like, she opened her eyes. I closed mine, pretended to be dozing. “Are you asleep?” she asked.

“Everybody is asleep,” I said with eyes closed, “but Jardown is awake.”

“Jardown will get a spanking and will have to sleep in his own bed if he’s not asleep very soon.”

• • •

“The doctor wasn’t a good storyteller,” my grandfather said. “Well, he wasn’t bad, but he certainly didn’t have the gift. And he was English after all.”

“What was wrong with his stories?”

“They were just common. He always told his favorite stories from the Bible. Stories with obvious moral lessons are like eels in a wooden crate. They slither over and under each other, but never leave the tub. In my day, I told some of the same stories, but mine soared. His problem was that he believed. Belief is the enemy of a storyteller.”

“But he told a story every evening after dinner, and all came to listen to him.”

“Pfflt.” He waved his hand and lit another cigarette. “I didn’t say all came to listen. All the foreigners did. At the time, there were no hotels or inns or anything like that in Urfa, so the foreign travelers stayed with the doctor. Those foreigners were always impressed with the doctor’s storytelling. They didn’t know any better. If they spoke Turkish, they could have gone to the café in the Eyyubiye neighborhood and listened to a good hakawati. If they spoke Kurdish, they might have had to ride for an hour south, because the best hakawati in the region was in a village up Damlacik Mountain. And the Armenian storytellers, my God, they were all over. But the doctor never listened to any of them, and neither did anyone who stayed at the house. Before I knew any better, I enjoyed the doctor’s stories. But then he kept repeating the same ones over and over. No imagination. And heaven forbid, if he should forget something, his wife was right there to correct him. Who needs that? I wish someone had told me about what went on outside the doctor’s puny realm. I had to find out on my own — the hakawatis, the pigeon wars, the traditions — I discovered it all by chance. Had the doctor’s wife not been wicked, I might never have seen the world, and you certainly wouldn’t have been born — now, would you?”

When he left to pee, I ran back to the table, climbed up the chair to the tabletop, and tried to find Urfa again, tried to find the mountain where the best storyteller was.

“You’re so ugly,” Ishmael told Isaac, “and you sure have the biggest nose I’ve ever seen.” The fourteen-year-old laughed, and in his arms, baby Isaac smiled with him. It was the baby’s weaning ceremony.

Sarah took her husband aside. “Look. He mocks my son. I will not have it. The slave’s son deems himself superior. Cast him out, I tell you. Cast them both out.”

Abraham tried to reason with his wife. They had sent Hagar and Ishmael away once before. It was not right. It was not fair.

“Cast them out again, and this time don’t go back for them.”

And Abraham sent his son away, never to see him again, father and son separate for eternity. To quell the pain in his heart, Abraham tried to forget his elder boy, distracted himself with extra chores and trivial whatnots, but the boy never forgot his father. When Abraham died, Ishmael returned to bury him. Ishmael and Isaac buried their father in the Cave of Machpelah, in the field that Abraham had purchased from the Hittites.

“This is now the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron,” my grandfather said, as his finger settled on the fading map upon the rickety table, “where the sons of Sarah are still trying to cast out the sons of Hagar.”

“Tell me the story of Abraham sacrificing Ishmael on the mountain.”

“No, I already told you that one. It’s common, too common. Boring, even. It was the doctor’s favorite story, and he told it so badly. It’s so hackneyed and clichéd. A story needs to be bewitching.”

Once, not too long ago, there was a little boy, about the same age as you, who lived with his family in a small village, not unlike this one, not too far from here. The family did not have much money. The father was a stonemason, the mother looked after the house, cooked delicious meals. All the children had their own chores to do. Our boy was the family’s shepherd.

Every morning, he would take the sheep out to pasture. He watched them graze, made sure they did not wander, and protected them from foxes, wolves, and marauding hyenas. The sheep liked him and trusted him, so they didn’t stray far from our boy. His job became easy, and every day he had time to play. At first, he played with sticks and stones: he made a sheep pen by staking twigs in four corners; small stones were his sheep. But then the little lambs came into his make-believe pen, clamoring for his attention. So he stopped playing with sticks and stones and became one of the lambs, jumped with them, bent down and pretended to chew on the wild-lavender bushes, bleated with them.

When he returned home that evening, he wished he were a lamb because he had had fun playing. Before he went to sleep, he heard his parents arguing about money. “We have so many mouths to feed,” the mother said. “How can we find enough for all of them?”

“We have the sheep,” the father said. “We have some money. I am working. We’ll survive. We have for generations.”

But they kept on arguing, and the boy slept fitfully.

The following day, he and the lambs played again, watched over by the ewes. The boy and the lambs ran and jumped and jostled each other. He returned home very happy, but when he opened the door to tell his parents all about his day, he found them arguing.

“How could you have promised that?” the mother asked. “We don’t have enough to feed our children, and now you want to have a feast? Have you no conscience? Don’t you understand how bad our situation is?”

“How dare you?” the father yelled at the mother. “This is the bey we’re talking about. It’s an honor. When he comes here, the house will be blessed. I don’t understand how you can think of not wanting him in your home. Most people would die for the opportunity.”

The mother whispered, “What has the bey done for my family?”

The father slapped the mother. The boy ran into his room.

Before he fell asleep, our boy prayed. He wished he were a lamb and could play all day without any worries. He wished his family could be happy. He wished that he could be the one to provide them with happiness. He loved his family so much. He woke up the next day in the sheep pen. He looked around and saw all his friends, the other lambs, happy that he was in their midst, finally one of them. They bleated in joy. All of them pranced up and down.

The father and mother came out of the house together and walked toward the pen.

“Danger, danger,” said the eldest ewe. “The evil ones are here.”

“No, no,” said our boy. “They are not evil. They are my family.”

“When those two show up together,” another sheep said, “one of us disappears.”

The father and mother came into the pen. They tried to figure which lamb to pick.

“Look at me,” the boy yelled. “Look at me. Look at me.”

“This one,” the mother said. “He is noisy.”

“He looks plump and juicy,” the father added. He placed the noose around his boy’s head and walked him out of the pen.

“The poor lamb,” the eldest ewe said as the sheep watched him being taken away.

“Daddy, Daddy,” the little lamb said. “I’m a lamb now. Isn’t this a miracle?”

And his father took out the knife and slit his throat.

And the little lamb watched his own blood leave him.

And his father cut off his head.

And his father hung him from his ankles to drain him.

And his mother began to skin him with her own hands. She would lift a small part of his skin and punch between the skin and body, lift, punch, lift, punch, until she finally cut the last attached skin at his ankles. And she chopped off his feet and hands. And she took out all his insides. And his mother cooked him over a slow-burning fire.

His father waited. His mother cooked. His brothers helped set up the large table under the giant oak. His sisters cleaned the house and cleaned and cleaned. They got dressed in all the fineries. By lunchtime, they were lined up waiting. The mother wondered where our boy was. His brothers suggested he must be daydreaming somewhere as usual. He had gotten out of doing the chores, that sneaky brat. The family waited and waited and waited. Finally, the mayor arrived and said that the bey had decided not to come to the village.

The lamb was placed in the middle of the table. The whole family salivated.

“You outdid yourself,” the father told the mother.

“This lamb was particularly succulent,” the mother said.

And the boy felt his father tear into him.

“Pass your plates, children,” the mother said. “We’ll get to have a great meal for a change.”

And the boy felt his brothers bite into his flesh. He felt his sisters chew sumptuous pieces of him.

“This tastes so good,” his brothers said.

“The best meal we’ve ever had,” his sisters said.

And the mother brought out his stomach. His siblings fought over his intestines.

“You take this, my dear,” his father told his mother. “I know you love it.”

“And you take this, my dear,” his mother told his father, “for I know you love it.”

“And I am happy,” said the father.

“And I am happy,” said the mother.

And the boy felt his mother bite into his testicles.

And the boy felt his father swallow a piece of his heart.

And the boy was happy.

Three

Fatima dressed for her entrance to the city. She covered her hair with a scarf of sheer red silk, around her forehead a chain of gold. Her neck held beads of lapis lazuli, her right breast supported a small brooch of gems, seven rings of silver encircled her left arm. She tightened the twined belt around her waist and made sure it held the sword firm. She wore her heavy robe, which concealed everything underneath.

It was only after she finished dressing that Jawad came out of Khayal’s tent. Embarrassed to have been discovered, he blushed, tried to speak, but ended up stuttering.

“I see you have made your choice,” she said. “I am pleased. I grew to like our suitor and would have been troubled had we been forced to send him away.”

And our three travelers entered the gates of Alexandria. Bast’s house was at the northern edge of the city, along an estuary. The healer stood outside, throwing morsels into the water. Fish surfaced, mouths open, snatching the bread before it hit.

“I had expected you earlier,” Bast said without turning, still feeding her pets.

“We were delayed,” Fatima said.

“And so expertly disposed of. Well handled, if risky, I must say. Not all obstacles will be as easily surmountable. More will be asked of you.” When she ran out of bread, she brushed off her hands and turned around. “You are more beautiful than I expected, and it is to be hoped you will become more beautiful still. Follow me, and leave the lovers outside. You will be separated soon, and they should not hear my counsel.”

“Why not?” Khayal asked, but the heedless healer had already begun walking toward her house.

“Can we trust her?” Jawad asked.

Fatima raised her left hand to quiet them and followed the healer into her domain.

“Afreet-Jehanam your plaything?” Bast asked. “That is quite a boast. Sit. Sit.” She pointed in the general direction of an area where various possibilities for seating existed. A pale fire burned in the chimney but added no heat, since it was cold neither outside nor in.

“Men are gullible.”

“True. It is also true that a boast is dangerous. One always ends up paying its price. Now, my dear, what have you brought me?”

“A lock of my mistress’s hair. She would like to give birth to a healthy and wise son.”

Puzzled, the healer shook her head. “But why did you bring a lock of the woman’s hair? That is not of much use. It is the father who determines the gender of his offspring, the mother its traits. I would need a lock of his hair to understand the issue, and hers would have provided the solution. You should have known that. Do not look so troubled, my dear. I would not return a resourceful woman empty-handed, for I, too, am resourceful.” She stretched on her toes, rummaged through the small cabinets hanging from the ceiling. “I have something that I have not used in a long time.” She bent down behind a table, and Fatima could no longer see her, but she heard the sound of heavy objects being dragged along the floor, and then the sharp meow of a cat as it scurried out. “Oh, Cleopatra, how could I know you were lying there? You have to tell me these things.” The healer resurfaced, fully erect now. Her chin settled on her hand, and her eyes focused on the ceiling. “I have to remember where I put it. Ah, of course, how stupid of me.” She picked up a long wooden spoon and one of the glass vials on the table and walked over to Fatima. “Please stand up, my dear.”

Bast knocked the worn cushion off the barrel Fatima had been sitting on and removed the lid. She stirred the contents with the spoon and dropped the vial into the barrel. “Your salvation,” the healer said, raising the vial, which was now filled with an amber liquid. “Any woman who drinks this within seven hours after intercourse will conceive a healthy male child. No guarantee on other qualities, though — the parents have to take care of those.” She pushed a cork stopper into the vial and put her hand out. From under her breast, Fatima took out a gold dinar and gave it to her.

“No haggling?” Bast asked.

Fatima raised her eyebrows for the Arabic “no.”

“Pity. And would you seek any further advice?”

“I cannot seek a husband, my lady,” Fatima replied, “for I am but a slave, and I do not wish for one at this time.”

“Ah, husbands are what most seek in coming to me. Pardon me, but I must mollify my poor Cleopatra or she will allow me no sleep tonight.” Bast walked away and stopped. “Your humility belies an arrogance, Sitt Fatima, but no matter, you will soon grow wiser. You should have asked for my counsel, but I will give it anyway. Rise, Fatima, and leave quickly. Time is of the essence. What you have to face, you must face alone, or others will be hurt. Leave your home city. It is not time for you to be back here. You will not be a slave for long if you make the correct choices, and the correct choices are always the most difficult ones.” She took a deep breath, lowered her head, stared at the floor, then looked back at Fatima, who no longer recognized the woman in front of her. The healer’s hair began to unfurl, and the air surrounding her head began to shimmer and sparkle. “Show me your hand,” Bast commanded. Fatima stepped toward her, but the healer held her palm out. “Stop. Show me your palm.” Fatima raised the palm of her left hand, and Bast recoiled. “Fatima’s hand. Leave now, quickly, and have courage.”

Bast turned away. “Here, kitty. Come here, Cleopatra.”

And the three travelers left Alexandria in a hurry. “Could we not have spent the day and seen the sights?” Jawad asked. “Seems a shame. I have never been to any city but my own. Khayal says the lads in Alexandria wear no underpants.”

“It is true,” Fatima said. “But I could not linger. We must make haste.”

For seven days, they rode with little rest, until they had crossed most of the Sinai. For seven days, Fatima felt her doom follow her, but spoke nothing of it. She heard the earth thump a rhythm that matched her heart’s. They rode into the deserts of Palestine.

“We cannot keep up this pace, Sitt Fatima,” Jawad said. “The horses cannot make it without a rest. We must ease up, or none will survive and neither will we.”

Fatima reluctantly agreed. They set up camp before the sun set. And she waited.

Fatima heard her name being called from below. She heard the low rumble before the lovers did, before the pack animals. She felt the tremor beneath her feet, and, as if her soles had ears, she heard the sand speak: “Fatima, I come for you, Fatima.”

The horses whinnied. The noise grew louder; the earth shook. The camels fled. Two untied mares joined them. Jawad seemed to struggle. His instinct was to try and corral them, but he was petrified. The mules stood still. That stillness — there was a moment of it, of unequivocal tranquillity, only an instant — and then the earth exploded. Between Fatima and the two lovers a hole yawned, spewing a hot yellow fire. The flames flickered here and there, but did not change color. Unnatural, they were like giant fronds of an anemone. A giant blue head appeared, the fire its hair. The jinni glared with three red eyes and growled, showing two rows of daggerlike teeth.

“Save yourselves,” cried Fatima to Jawad and Khayal. Yet she herself remained rooted.

His putrid stench would have suffocated an infant — the smell of months-old eggs, rotting garbage, and decaying flesh. Hundreds of black crows picked at his teeth for bits of food. They flew in and out of his nose, looked like flies because of his size. The hides of seven rhinos made up his loincloth. He wore a necklace of human skulls that hung to his navel, with two loops around his neck like a pearl collar. Through the space between his legs, she could see Jawad and Khayal fleeing.

“So — I am supposed to be a plaything of yours?” His voice poured forth, slow and sibilant, dripping like unsweetened molasses.

She waited until Jawad disappeared behind the jinni’s thigh before replying, “I offer you my sincere apologies, sire. I meant you no disrespect. It was said to escape certain death. We were waylaid. I had no other choice.”

“It was a boast,” he shouted, with a force that shook everything within leagues.

“It was silly. Anyone can tell you are no one’s plaything. Why, look at you. You are so grand and powerful, and I am nothing but a helpless maiden. Who would believe what I said?”

“Quiet.” His voice almost knocked Fatima over. “You think your wit will save you this time?” He opened his hands, and ten red fingernails sprang out, ten swords, each as tall as she was. “I want to smell your fear, woman. I am Afreet-Jehanam.” His blue chest puffed out. “Tremble.”

“I have forgotten how.” She took out her sword, held it steadily in front of her.

He laughed. The jinni struck with the nails of his thumb and forefinger, and she scampered away, moved the sword from her right hand to her left, ran toward her attacker. But he was Afreet-Jehanam. He nonchalantly flicked his pinkie and chopped off her hand. She fell to her knees. Looked at her sword-clutching left hand on the ground in front of her. Her wrist sprayed blood. She clutched it with her right arm. Raise it above heart level, she remembered, raise it above heart level. Would it matter?

“Tremble,” he said.

“Kill me.”

He shrugged. He raised a finger. She closed her eyes. She heard the sound of metal hitting metal. Opened her eyes. Jawad was on his back, his sword next to him. “Is today some kind of day of fools?” the jinni asked. “Am I to be attacked by pests?” Khayal arrived running and stopped between Jawad and the jinni, who said, “Yes, definitely the day of dying fools.” He raised his arm with its five finger-swords to strike.

“Stop,” Fatima yelled. “You have no quarrel with them. I am the one you want.”

“This one tried to attack me from behind. He must die. They both must.”

“Spare them. Look at the boy. He has just discovered love. Look into his eyes. Do not end his happiness. Be merciful, sire. He has just begun to live. Kill me, not them.”

The jinni considered the situation. He raised an arm to the heavens. The crows flew up, circled his lethal fingernails. He moved his arm, and they shot out like javelins into the empty sky. When he brought his arm back down, he announced, “I will not kill the lovers.” The crows began a descent, flew as if they were a flock of black pigeons. “I will not end your life, either, for you are not worthy of being killed by me.” He picked up Fatima’s hand from the dusty ground where it lay and used her sword as a toothpick, sucking the gaps between his teeth, producing a thunderous noise, savoring the taste of his mouth, smacking his lips. “You have begun to bore me. I had expected a better fight. It will be much more entertaining to hear you try to explain how your plaything left you without a hand.” He walked toward the crater in the ground. “Much more fun to watch you muddle handless through your ignoble life.” He stepped into the hole. “If you think you are worthy of being killed by my hand, come to my world and claim yours.” He chortled as his head disappeared. “I am sure you will be able to find your way to the plaything.”

Jawad, sweating from exertion and the sun’s harsh rays, rushed to check on Fatima’s arm. He tore off his sleeve and tied it around the bleeding wrist. He began to tear off his other sleeve, but Fatima stopped him. She pushed the silver bracelets around her arm farther up. When she could not push anymore, Khayal took over. The rings acted as a tourniquet.

“We must leave,” Khayal said. “You may not be fit to be moved, but we have no choice.”

“The jinni might return,” Jawad said.

“Go,” she said, her voice labored, her breathing shallow. “I must travel a different path. Leave now. Linger not.”

“You cannot make it on your own,” Jawad said. “You are weak. Where do you wish to go, in any case? We must run away from here.”

She attempted to stand up, faltered, swayed, and sat back down. “I must retrieve my hand. Leave me.” She placed her only hand on Khayal’s shoulder and used him as leverage to lift herself. “Tell the emir I met my doom.” She did not sway. “Or tell him I will be back soon. Or choose not to return. Find your own place in this world. Take care of each other. Either way. I must descend.” She looked into the crater. “Now, be a good boy,” she said to Jawad, “and find me a staff. The yucca there would do.”

“How do you propose to retrieve your hand?” Khayal asked. “Do you think Afreet-Jehanam is going to give it back to you? And what good will it do? You cannot reattach it. Be not a fool, Sitt Fatima. Come with us.”

“I must have my hand.”

“But it is the devil’s hand, and the devil has it now. An unnecessary appendage.”

“It is the devil’s hand, and it is also mine. And I must take it back.”

“Do you know what the Prophet said about left hands?”

“Stop pestering me. I know my religion. I want my left hand so I can wipe my butt.”

And Jawad handed her the yucca staff. “May God, the merciful and compassionate, be your guiding light.” And Fatima descended into the hole.

A starchy nurse jiggled into the hospital room in white pants and white sneakers. “Who’s going to be getting a bath now?” she announced jovially.

My father was glum, his face furrowed. Seeing his nephew as one of the bey’s lackeys had enraged and disoriented him. I glanced at the board on the wall to read the nurse’s name. With a red felt pen, she had written “Nancy” in a hippie script and had drawn a smiley face, but one eye had gone missing. She was full of inept cheer. She kept up a steady stream of chatter, more river than stream. She began to undress my father, and remove the electrodes, the white and the blue pads that transmitted his vitals to the nurses’ station. With a postcard smile that showed a large overbite, she said, “This is private. Don’t you think?”

I had only to look at my sister’s face to realize something was amiss. My father sat on the bed, back slumped, legs dangling above the bright, sterile floors. When he turned toward me, I saw defeat. He tried to smile. “Don’t you have better things to do than hang around here?” he asked, his voice frail.

“Here, Salwa,” Lina handed the stethoscope to her daughter. “You’re better at this.”

“You don’t have better things to do, either?” my father asked my niece.

Salwa, almost nine months pregnant, looking about to explode at any moment, sat behind him on the bed. She moved the stethoscope along his back, as if playing an imaginary game of solitaire checkers. She closed her eyes, and her face sagged, strangely serene. “I hear water,” she said.

My sister sighed. She hesitated for an instant before regaining her stage persona. “All right,” she announced to the room. “We’ll have to get more Lasix.” Tin Can was on her mobile’s speed dial. She spoke machine-gun style, her voiced pitched high. “Done,” she said. “He’ll call the nurses. We’ll get rid of the water.” She walked around, then abruptly left the room. She returned with a nurse, who proceeded to inject the diuretic into one of the intravenous tubes.

And my father began to pant. He still had not urinated an hour later. His laborious inhalations gurgled. Shallow breaths. He cracked feeble jokes. He tried to move, but just getting his arm to behave was arduous. Breathe in. Breathe out. Wheeze. Gurgle. He wilted in his bedding, drooped before our eyes. Lina tried to appear composed, but she did not fool anyone.

Salwa held my elbow and walked me out of the room. “He doesn’t want you to see him in this condition.” I started to go back in, but she held my arm. “Just relax,” she said. “He’s having a fit of pique. He doesn’t want anyone but my mother to see him suffer. He doesn’t want me in there, either. He thinks my seeing him will distress the baby.”

From the doorway, I could see the lower half of his body, the tension in his legs below the hospital gown, the curling of his toes with each breath.

Fatima felt weak and moved gingerly. It did not take long for the light to dissipate. She realized she had no plan, no weapon, and no energy to speak of, but the one thing she lacked and needed most was a torch. The ground was uneven, but not dangerous, descending at a reasonable angle. She proceeded into the dark until she could see no more. Blind, she became more careful. One tiny step followed by another. The staff tested where her foot was to land. Quiet was the rule of the place. Quiet until, “I believe you might need this, madame,” and then there was light.

“It gets more treacherous from here on down,” the red imp said. He sat on a protruding burnt-orange rock, four or five times his size — he was no larger than a boy of three, a miniature jinni, with hooves dangling above the ground. He held out a tiny kettle-shaped oil lamp. “Come. Take it.” He grinned. “I will not hurt you.”

“I would not know how to carry it. I cannot walk without this staff, and I have only one hand. Look,” she said.

He jumped off the rock, pranced up to her with no little animation. She jerked her handless arm away. “I just want to see,” he said.

She extended her arm. “You can look, but do not touch.”

The little demon stared at her wound. “You need a healer. May I remove the bandage?”

She shook her head. “I need my hand.”

“Reattaching it might prove to be a problem,” he said, laughing. “But let us see if we can figure out a way for you to carry the lamp.”

“You can be my light,” she said.

“Oh, no. Not where you are going. You received the call.” He circled around her. The top of his bald head seemed to move up and down with each step. “We cannot tie it anywhere on your clothes. Oh, but I can slip the handle onto your finger, and you can hold both the lamp and the staff. Here, try this.”

“Why are you helping me?”

“Because you need help. Bring down your hand. I cannot reach that high.” And he slipped the lamp onto her forefinger. “With this ring, I thee wed.”

“It is the wrong finger, and you are the wrong species.”

“And you are dying.”

“I have not given up yet.” She looked ahead.

“I hope you will,” said the imp. “Now go. You do not have much time. I must wait here. And when you die, remember me in your prayers. Call me Ishmael.”

She marched, the lamp illuminating her descent, until the walls, ground, and ceiling converged on a circular gate. She approached, held up her staff to see the gate better, swept the back of her hand against it. It was black agate. She pushed against it, but it would not budge. “Open, Sesame,” she said. The gate did not respond, but there was movement in the shadows.

“My name is not Sesame.” The imp was the same size as Ishmael, and just as red. She noted that both had horns but no tail, which she took as a good sign. “It is Isaac,” the imp said. “Ishmael is my brother.”

“I seek entry,” she said.

“And I seek payment,” Isaac replied.

“I can pay.”

“I know that.” He flicked his hand, and the gate creaked open. “I am nobody’s fool. You are top-heavy with money. I will lighten your load. I will take fifty gold dinars.” He had the same silly gait as Ishmael.

“I will give you ten.” She walked through the gate. “You should have asked when you had a better bargaining position, before I came through. I will not overpay now.”

“Fifty.” He clenched his fists, tensed his stomach, and jumped twice. “Not one dinar less. I do not compromise. Everyone will make fun of me if I do. I was told you are carrying fifty. That is my price.”

“Whoever told you I had fifty gold dinars was lying.”

“Why do I get the troublemakers? You are dying, and with your last breath you haggle. You must be Egyptian.”

“From Alexandria.”

“Oy. I am being punished. Give me your money, madame. It is the law. You will not need it where you are going. Save us both the trouble.”

“I have forty-nine, one dinar less. I will give it for an answer to a question.”

“Ask.”

“How many have gotten out of here alive and human?”

“Wrong question. They always ask the wrong question. None. None have gotten out of here alive and human. Now give me the gold.” He climbed up her robe, stuck his hand in her bosom, and took the coins. Fatima wanted to admonish the imp, but held her tongue. “I shall help you,” Isaac said, counting the gold, “for I am fond of obstinate troublemakers. When you are asked to surrender a belonging, it behooves you to do so without bargaining. Surrender is the key.”

Fatima descended farther into the tunnel. The air turned moist, made her feel heavier with each step. She held up her staff and lamp, saw moss the color of emerald filling every crevice, yet her path remained barren. Various night insects roamed the moss, feeding, scurrying, creating a living, ever-changing Persian carpet. She wished she could touch; wished her lost hand could graze upon the surface. And she reached the second circular gate, carved of emerald. She pushed, shoved. “Open, Isaac.”

“My name is Ezra.” A little orange imp jumped out of a cloud of orange dust.

“I seek entry.”

“And I seek payment. I will have your robe.”

“But it is much too big for you. You could fit ten of your kind in this robe.”

“I have a large family. Give it.” He climbed up the robe, unfastened the clasp, shinnied up above her head, held on to the back of her collar, and jumped. Fatima teetered. Ezra dangled in midair, hanging on to the collar. “Let go,” he said. “It is my robe.”

“Wait, I am wounded. I lost a hand.”

Ezra jumped down, ran around. “May I see?” he asked. “Please?”

“You will have to help me with the robe first.” She patted the pocket of her dress to make sure the vial of potion was there, and not in her robe.

And the imp Ezra said, “Uncover your wound so I can see.”

“I cannot, for I do not have a free hand.”

“You need a healer.” Ezra bunched up the robe and lifted it above his head, almost disappearing under it. “Proceed with your journey,” her bundled robe seemed to say. “Your time is limited. And, for being kind to me, I will offer you help. In this realm, if someone asks you to uncover your wound, do so.”

Beyond the emerald gate, the air grew heavier still, reeking of an earthy stew. She came upon the mushrooms. Small at first, multihued, reds, sienna, ocher, browns, and greens. As she marched deeper, the numbers increased. Cuddled and coddled by the moist air, a metallic-blue mushroom grew as big as a shed. Next to it was one with velvet skin the color of avocado. Fatima felt hunger pains. The third gate was of lapis lazuli. “Let me guess,” she said to the dark beyond. “Your name is Abraham.”

“No,” the approaching yellow imp said. “I am called Jacob.”

The price of entry was her necklace of lapis beads, and she paid it.

And Jacob said, “I will offer you help, dear mistress. The paths of folly are not always distinguishable from the ways of wisdom. Please, hurry.”

Below Jacob’s gate, unrecognizable dark fruit seemed to sprout from jutting rocks. The fruit was veined, streaked, with the texture of polished marble. She stopped and reached out with her wounded arm; a bat flew down from above and covered the fruit with its satiny black wings. Its eyeless face snarled at Fatima. Bats everywhere, thousands upon thousands, hanging from fruits, from rocks. Bats flew singly in every direction, creating a barely audible, disconcerting symphony. Yet her path remained clear.

The gate was gold; its keeper was Job, the green imp; and his price for passage was the brooch of gems. The imp Job said, “I will offer assistance, madame, for you need help. Remember, sometimes it is wiser to choose death.”

Fatigue possessed Fatima entirely, took root within her soul, flourished, sprang leaves within her veins. She wished to lie down, but the earth beneath her was not inviting. She should have stopped back at the moss, left her body to the insects of the night. She should have lain down in the giant-mushroom beds. She should keep moving.

She came across a small ruby lying alongside her path, and then a sapphire, a diamond, another ruby, and then a pile, and then piles. Gems of all sizes, gold of all shapes, treasure chests that would make kings and queens salivate. And she did not have the energy to reach. She passed a gilded mirror lying against the wall. She watched her reflection, but she did not look like anyone she knew. She moved on.

The gate was mahogany, and its keeper was a blue imp. She wept as she paid with her red headscarf of silk and the gold chain around her forehead. “Your light seems to be dimming,” Noah said. “I will offer help. Delete the need to understand. In this world and that of tales, the need is naught more than a hindrance.”

Grief approached like an infection, overpowering her gradually and irrevocably. She marched, cried. A tear fell to the ground before every step, her dragging feet deleting any trace of the watermarks. The crows were in Noah’s domain, and their food was carcasses. Most of the bodies were human, flayed, hanging from rusty hooks, dripping an endless supply of red. Black birds on the ground drank from brooks of blood flowing on either side of her path. The ravenous crows fought over rotting morsels. She could not lie down here.

Elijah’s gate was turquoise. “I seek entry,” she said, “but I have nothing more to give.”

“I will take your clothes,” the indigo imp said. “Your ragged dress, your undergarments, even your shoes. I will be of service to you. I offer you this. Down here, you are always naked.”

Past Elijah’s gate, the earth upon which the dead walked was muddy ash and smoke, like the remnants of soup stock left to simmer but long forgotten. The walking dead mimicked her, thousands upon thousands — a colony of purposeless ants, they muddled about, bumping into each other, eyeless or eyes not seeing. Men, women, and children; horses, cats, and dogs; lions, tigers, and apes; dwarfs, demons, and giants. Dead. Whatever outfits any wore were frayed, their flesh decayed. She shivered. None crossed her clear path. And she came upon the seventh gate.

“I know who you are,” Fatima said to the keeper of the marble gate.

The violet imp looked surprised. “And I know who you are,” he said.

“This must be the final gate. I have arrived at the last domain. You are Adam.”

“It must be so. Welcome, my lady. Yet I still require payment. I will take the seven rings of silver around your arm. You will no longer need them.” He climbed to her shoulder, pushed down on the rings. She felt the flooding pain as they fell, dragging Jawad’s bloodied shirtsleeve. The blood thumped in her arm. It dripped from the stump where her hand used to be, drained slowly. She stared at her wound, felt her fight seep out of it.

“Walk,” Adam said. “You do not have far to go.” He blew out her lamp. “You do not need this down here. Move. I will help you. I offer this. In the underworld, death awakens.”

“And you call this help?”

She marched. As she had expected, snakes slithered everywhere except along her path. Boas, asps, and rattlers. Desert snakes, swamp snakes. She barely noticed them. Naked, helpless, exhausted, and bereft, she staggered forward. Dullness, her sole possession, clung to her.

And the ground fell below her.

And the ceiling lifted higher.

And the walls opened before her.

And Afreet-Jehanam sat on his throne.

“Approach me, seeker,” he said.

My father had his eyes closed; his breathing was shallow and slow. An oxygen mask nestled in the skin of his face. He opened his eyes, an effort that obviously exhausted him, and closed them again. My niece and I stood on either side of his bed.

Tin Can arrived with two other doctors. As if they were part of a club, all three had trimmed black beards and short curly hair — Tin Can had the bushiest eyebrows. I didn’t recognize the other two, though they obviously knew the family. “You’re not looking too well, Mr. al-Kharrat,” one of the doctors said. He wore a Titian-red shirt under his white coat. “We can’t have that. The Adha holiday is tomorrow, and your family’s all here.”

My father smiled wanly behind the mask. He tried to remove it but couldn’t. Lina leaned over and pulled it down a little. He mumbled something.

“He says maybe Ali and the Virgin can intervene,” Lina said. Everyone laughed. I didn’t understand the joke, probably the punch line of a ditty making the Lebanese rounds, to which I was yet to be privy.

The doctor in the red shirt said he wanted to look at the vitals and left for the nurses’ desk. The third doctor, a pulmonologist with sea-bass eyes, listened to my father’s lungs. Tin Can suggested to my niece that she shouldn’t remain standing for so long. The pulmonologist asked why the electrodes were not attached. My sister gasped. Dr. Titian returned and sheepishly announced that there were no vitals, because the monitors had not been recording. Two nurses rushed in. One dragged a portable machine, and the other hurriedly attached electrodes to my father’s chest. The overbite nurse who had given him a bath at noon had forgotten to reattach the tabs, and the other nurses and doctors had not noticed in more than five hours. Doctor Titian pressed buttons on the machine. “Something’s wrong,” he said. He walked over to my father. “The pacemaker has stopped.” Dr. Titian looked at the lump in my father’s chest. He tapped it twice, went back to his machine, then back to my father’s chest, then the machine.

And the jinn returned to my father’s eyes. Instantaneous. His face muscles relaxed. His bony fingers ungripped the bed rail. He took a deep breath.

“Don’t scare us like that,” Tin Can joked.

“Now you can celebrate the holiday,” the pulmonary specialist said.

“With your whole family,” Dr. Titian, my father’s cardiac surgeon, added.

With the palm of my hand, I covered my sister’s eyes. I gently forced her to close them. She had a murderous glare. “Breathe,” I whispered. “Breathe.” She rested her arms on my shoulders. My hand remained on her face until I felt it dampen.

Fatima wanted to tell the jinni to return her hand. She wanted to challenge him. She craved revenge. She genuflected before Afreet-Jehanam. “I have come down to die.”

“Yes.” His deep, sibilant voice made her soul shudder. “My world is a wonderful place to die.” He opened his hand, and sixteen black scorpions slithered across his blue fingers toward her. “Yet do I detect a bit of resistance?”

“No, sire,” she replied. “I have seen the light. I surrender.”

A forked tongue unfurled out of the jinni’s mouth. “Ah, the sweet smell of surrender excites me so.” She did not cringe when the scorpions crawled up her body. She wished one of them would sting her. When he stood up, his throne dissolved into hundreds of asps. “You will be my plaything.” She did not flinch at that, either. “Our plaything.” And a young boa coiled around her handless arm.

Afreet-Jehanam picked her up, cradled her in the palm of his hand. He brought her closer to his face, but his stench did not bother her. “It pleases me that you finally submit to my desire.”

She wanted to laugh. “We are not much of a match sexually.”

“But we are, Sitt Fatima. Size is not everything.”

The first scorpion stung her in the throat, and a cobra bit into her stump. The scorpions stung all over her body. Afreet-Jehanam laid Fatima down on a bed of shimmering snakes. And the demon began to shrink — half his size in a blink of an eye, another half in another blink, until he achieved the dimensions of a large, muscular man. But the transformation did not stop there. He removed the third eye from his forehead and made it disappear. His skin grew paler in color; the burning hair turned black, a human nose appeared. And a human hand reached out for her.

Fatima saw the most handsome of men bring his face close to hers. He kissed her. She kissed back. And life surged through her. She made love to him. In some moments she saw him as a man, in others as a demon. And she was being stung and bitten. She was a riverbed. She was a mere channel of life and its stories. She gained strength.

Fatima woke up. She felt refreshed and rejuvenated, filled with vigor. Afreet-Jehanam, no longer human, leaned on his elbow next to her. “You are beautiful,” he said.

“I am without a hand,” she replied.

“You are without much,” the demon said, “and so you are beautiful.”

She looked at her wound, saw it honestly for the first time: the lines of blood, the clots, scabs growing, the tissue attempting to heal itself out of grief and loss, the skin trying to forget what was once there. But the air about her missing hand began to shimmer in startling waves. A mass grew from her wrist, bubbled out like slow-boiling lava. She saw it swell, felt her blood pour into it. Stumps sprouted, and fingers began to form. And Fatima moved the fingers. Her hand was back. “This is unlike any hell I could have imagined,” she said.

“Hell? I am insulted. Whatever possessed you to think of my realm as hell?”

“Well,” she said, “you are a demon. This is the underworld. I just assumed.”

“Ah, humans. Your ideas of hell are nothing more than the lees and dregs of unimaginative minds long since dead. Listen. Let me tell you a story.”

Once there was and once there was not a devout, God-fearing man who lived his entire life according to stoic principles. He died on his fortieth birthday and woke up floating in nothing. Now, mind you, floating in nothing was comforting, lightless, airless, like a mother’s womb. This man was grateful.

But then he decided he would love to have sturdy ground beneath his feet, so he would feel more solid himself. Lo and behold, he was standing on earth. He knew it to be earth, for he knew the feel of it.

Yet he wanted to see. I desire light, he thought, and light appeared. I want sunlight, not any light, and at night it shall be moonlight. His desires were granted. Let there be grass. I love the feel of grass beneath my feet. And so it was. I no longer wish to be naked. Only robes of the finest silk must touch my skin. And shelter, I need a grand palace whose entrance has double-sided stairs, and the floors must be marble and the carpets Persian. And food, the finest of food. His breakfast was English; his midmorning snack French. His lunch was Chinese. His afternoon tea was Indian. His supper was Italian, and his late-night snack was Lebanese. Libation? He had the best of wines, of course, and champagne. And company, the finest of company. He demanded poets and writers, thinkers and philosophers, hakawatis and musicians, fools and clowns.

And then he desired sex.

He asked for light-skinned women and dark-skinned, blondes and brunettes, Chinese, South Asian, African, Scandinavian. He asked for them singly and two at a time, and in the evenings he had orgies. He asked for younger girls, after which he asked for older women, just to try. Then he tried men, muscular men, skinny men. Then boys. Then boys and girls together.

Then he got bored. He tried sex with food. Boys with Chinese, girls with Indian. Redheads with ice cream. Then he tried sex with company. He fucked the poet. Everybody fucked the poet.

But again he got bored. The days were endless. Coming up with new ideas became tiring and tiresome. Every desire he could ever think of was satisfied.

He had had enough. He walked out of his house, looked up at the glorious sky, and said, “Dear God. I thank You for Your abundance, but I cannot stand it here anymore. I would rather be anywhere else. I would rather be in hell.”

And the booming voice from above replied, “And where do you think you are?”

Fatima chuckled. Her hands touched her stomach, and suddenly she wondered if she was pregnant. She knew it was possible. History was filled with tales of half-demons. Would her child resemble Afreet-Jehanam, the ugly demon, or her lover, the most beautiful of men? And what if she was carrying a girl? An unattractive son might be one thing, but a daughter who looked like a demon? The potion. “I need my things.”

“Needs, wants, desires,” Afreet-Jehanam said. “I might as well be telling children’s tales.” He paused, looked into his beloved’s eyes. “I can dress you in royal clothing, in silks and furs, in emeralds and pearls. What need you of past belongings?”

“One can never be free from the past and its pull.”

Afreet-Jehanam waved his hand, and in a moment the red imp Ishmael came running with her clothes. “I collected everything,” he said, “except for the robe. Ezra likes it quite a bit. He thought I wanted it for myself and would not give it up.”

Fatima took the vial from the dress’s pocket. “Has it been seven hours yet?”

“No,” the grand demon said. Fatima drank the liquid. “But there was no need,” he added. “Had you not panicked, you would have realized that it is a boy. Magic potions are redundant.”

Ishmael looked stunned. “I am going to be an uncle?”

“I must leave,” Fatima said. “I must complete my mission.”

“Why?” Afreet-Jehanam asked. “You have ingested the potion you were to deliver.”

“I am not free. I will return. As to the potion, I have another plan. I must continue. I am still far from the green city. The sooner I leave the better.” Her lover opened his hand, and in his palm Fatima saw her decapitated hand. “That is my third hand,” she said.

“And in it I will place my third eye,” he said. “This will be the proof of our union. Place it upon your person and no demon will dare hurt you. Place it above the door of your house and evil will never enter.”

She took the talisman, and it transformed in her hands. It became stone, turquoise, and the eye in the palm a slightly darker blue.

“Stay the night,” the demon said. “You will be with your masters in the morning.”

Four

According to my grandfather, I owed my existence, my special place in the world, to either of two things, the slaughter of a stud pigeon or the swallowing of matches. Depending on which story he was in the mood to tell, one of those two events forced him to escape Urfa, or, as he sometimes said, provided him with the opportunity of a lifetime.

There were always Armenian orphans living in the Twinings’ household, but none stayed more than a year or so. The Twinings, being good missionaries, found homes for the various children. My grandfather, though, was a different story. Since Poor Anahid became the Twinings’ maid and he was her charge, he lasted for eleven years. My grandfather claimed, and he was probably right, that the missionary doctor harbored some feeling toward him, his bastard offspring. My grandfather was an anomaly both in his length of stay at the house and in the timing of his escape to Lebanon. One can safely assume that all the orphans he grew up with, those who were not massacred during the Great War, escaped to Lebanon during the great Armenian orphan migration. My grandfather was ahead of his time. He survived the doctor’s wife, and he didn’t have to deal with the genocide and its consequences. He was blessed; hence, so was I.

In his early years, Ismail’s father carried him everywhere, even after he learned to walk. But one day, after my grandfather’s second birthday, the doctor’s wife told her husband, “Shame on you. You treat this orphan better than you treat your own blood. Do you not love your daughters? Do they not deserve your attention?” The doctor was embarrassed. “This is Barbara,” his wife added, “and this is Joan. Maybe you’ve forgotten who they are.”

Simon Twining put my grandfather down and took his daughters for a walk.

When my grandfather was four, the doctor tried to teach him to read and write, but his wife said, “Don’t be silly, my husband. English will be of little use to him. We’ll send him to school with the other Armenians. He’ll learn his language and be able to talk to his people.”

However, when my grandfather, after services on Sundays, joined the other children for Bible study with the doctor, she did not object.

“I come from a time when ink was still liquid and lush.” My grandfather broke silence as he stoked the fire. “None of this cheap Biro shit. My father’s wife thought teaching me to write was money ill spent and time wasted.” He performed the maté ritual — poured hot water from the kettle onto the metal straw, after which he ran a lemon peel across it. He replaced the now sanitized straw in the maté gourd and passed it to me. “You might think the doctor’s wife was mean, and she was, but you’d be missing the point of the story. I wasn’t allowed to learn to read, but Bible study is more valuable for a hakawati. Look at the great one, Umm Kalthoum. She was born into the poorest of families in a remote village of the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt. Umm Kalthoum should have been married off at twelve or thirteen. She would’ve remained unschooled and mothered a dozen kids: Muslim girls weren’t allowed to be educated in that part of the world. But here’s the gift, you see. At a very young age, girls are taught to read the Koran and nothing else. It gets hammered into them every day. For a singer, that’s the greatest of gifts. She learned tone and rhythm, learned perfect enunciation and breath, voice projection, inflection — you name it. She never mumbles. One can understand every word she utters. She mastered the witchcraft of voice. When the time was right, she opened her mouth, unleashed her soul, and helped all of us get closer to God. It was a gift, I tell you. The doctor’s wife may have been spiteful, but fate was on my side.”

Poor Anahid and Zovik cared for the boy, treated him as their own, but they were servants in a house that desired constant labor. My grandfather followed them around, and the maids made sure he didn’t interfere with their work.

It was at an early age that he learned to entertain himself. Sticks became his companions, and stones his toys. His inner world redecorated the outer one. His imaginary friends proved more loyal than any real ones, if only because, unlike the latter, they existed. He ate, slept, played, learned some, and avoided the Muslim boys and their Turkish insults. By the age of five, he was expected to do minor chores around the house. When he was six, the chores were no longer minor. Two years later, the doctor’s wife decided the boy should learn a trade. “Who knows how long we’ll be here to take care of him?” she said. “Better that he figures out a way to earn enough to fill his bottomless stomach.” My grandfather was given to a pigeoneer to be trained.

That was how my grandfather got swept up in the great pigeon wars of Urfa.

Long before the one God, long before Abraham, long before the city was Muslim, before it was Ottoman or Turkish, pigeons used to carry the souls of Urfa’s dead up to the heavens. Pigeons have had a special place in Urfa’s heart ever since.

“It’s not true what the Chileans say, that pigeons are rats with wings,” my grandfather said. “What do they know in Chile? You know it was a pigeon that announced the presence of land to Noah on his ark, the European rock dove, the same pigeon you see in all the cities of the world. Chile? Pfflt, let them go sour with their undrinkable pisco.”

Most homes in Urfa had ornately covered holes for the pigeons, but some had pigeon houses on their outside walls that were a diminutive replica of the original house, a clone birthed out of its forehead. In some neighborhoods, the birds had tiny palaces, with mini — crescent moons atop miniature minarets; the architectural designs of the pigeon palaces far surpassed those of the surrounding human houses.

“I hate pigeons,” my grandfather added, “but it’s not because they’re rats.”

My grandfather’s mentor was an Armenian, Hagop Sarkisyan, who in turn worked for a Turk by the name of Mehmet Effendioglu. Though not a wealthy man, the latter was a pigeon fancier who owned over three hundred pigeons. Hagop trained the pigeons and had four boys to assist. Being the youngest, my grandfather had the worst job, cleaning the shit.

“Shit everywhere,” he said. “Shit in the coops, on the terrace, on the roof. Do you have any idea what it’s like to deal with so much shit? Of course you don’t. You have a maid to pick up after you. I cleaned pigeon shit every minute of the day, and when I went home I had to wash it off me. My hair is as wild as it is today because I had to wash it so much when I was a boy.”

Hagop, the pigeoneer, was the main flocker. His first assistant was in charge of feeding the pigeons, giving them the best seeds and the strongest vitamins. The pigeons had to be good-looking and sturdy. During the off-season, this assistant steered one or two of the pigeon flocks, though not the primary one, and never, ever, while the war raged. Mehmet, the master, sat on the roof and watched.

“It was only during the battles that I didn’t have to clean,” my grandfather said. “I was allowed to watch the birds fly. I have to admit, they were beautiful up in the skies, circling and circling around an imaginary drain, then shooting out, diving like an Israeli jet. In those moments, I forgave the pigeons their shit.”

Ah, the wars, the wars. The pigeon wars of Urfa had been going on for over a thousand years. The war started every November and ended every April, which coincided, not by coincidence, with the worst weather for pigeons to roam, an aerial endurance test. In the afternoon, at four-thirty sharp, the warmongers of Urfa ascended to their roofs, where the cages were, and unleashed their flocks into the heavens. The fluttering cacophony of thousands upon thousands of wings and the jingling sounds of pigeon jewelry were heard in every corner of the city. Upon each roof, a pigeoneer steered his birds; his unblinking gaze never left his soaring flock. A long cane with a black ribbon at its end was his instrument. With each wave, he directed his birds’ flight. And when he swung a large arc, his flock dived into the middle of another, disturbing the symmetry, confusing his adversary’s pigeons.

“Hagop was good, but not outstanding. There was another pigeoneer, an Armenian by the name of Eshkhan, who was the prince of them all. He could direct his pigeons by simply whistling. Tweet, and his flock would circle; tweet, and it would come home. Eshkhan won the war more often than not, and it wasn’t because he had the best pigeons. He could have sold his cocks for a fortune and bought better pigeons to train, but he never did. You see, everyone thinks it’s about the money, but it isn’t. It’s about bragging rights. It’s about manhood.”

The war was won by him who had lost the fewest pigeons to either capture or death. He who ensured his pigeons didn’t get lost or exhausted was a pigeoneer worth his salt, and not many were. Every day as the war raged, pigeons soared until fatigue seeped into their wings; oxygen rebelled and escaped their blood. Out of the sky, birds dropped, falling like bombs released by fighter squadrons, littering the earth with deformed corpses. Dazed, bewildered, and confused, some birds followed unfamiliar flocks and landed on alien rooftops, to be captured and paraded that evening at the local café, the spoils of war, the dishonor of their pigeoneers, the dilution of manliness.

“There are wars in the Lebanese cities,” my grandfather said, “but they’re not anything like those up north. It’s done for fun here. It might get nasty in Beirut, but it’s not a real war. If one of your cocks ends up with someone else’s flock, you can get it back. The gentlemen’s rule in Beirut is first time free. You see, in a warless zone, most of the cocks are mated, and a pigeon always wants to return home to its mate, so it’s hard to keep a captured cock. You’d have to slay it. In a war zone, each team has about two hundred cocks and five hens. The flying teams consisted only of males, primarily Dewlaps. It’s about the war, not pigeon fancying. The pigeoneers in Beirut have teams of all kinds of pigeons: Dewlaps, Tumblers, Apricots, Jews, Fava Flowers, you name it. The fanciers who were attached to their pigeons would never dare fly them during the war.”

The pigeon keepers gathered at the Çardak Café, as they had for hundreds of years. They kept score of the previous afternoon’s battles by counting the captured pigeons. Cages adorned all the walls of the café, and fanciers could admire or buy the caught birds. The original owner of a pigeon had first dibs, but only if the new owner wanted to sell.

“But you couldn’t buy the peşenk,” my grandfather said. “The peşenk was the leader of the team of pigeons. You can’t win the war without a great one. All the other cocks follow him in flight. If a peşenk lands on another’s roof and is captured, the original owner retires from the war. Checkmate. He has to get rid of his team and start a new one. The peşenk can never be bought. He’s the chief of the clan, the mightiest of all.”

My grandfather took a sip of maté, craned his neck, and spoke to the ceiling. “They say that talent skips a generation, which means that my father or my mother would have been a great pigeoneer, because, unlike my youngest, your uncle Jihad, I certainly wasn’t. I have no idea where he got his talent from, and, thank God, he had the intelligence to stop when he did. He wouldn’t listen to me, of course. Nobody does. But one day he finally understood that being a pigeoneer is a lowly vocation. Now, listen here. Just because I said I wasn’t a good pigeoneer doesn’t mean I didn’t have other talents. Fate’s schedule is not always naked and clear.

“One evening, I was bemoaning my luck. I was hungry and tired. I had been cleaning shit for about six weeks and seeing no way out of it. The damned doctor’s wife said I whined a lot. She said there weren’t that many options for a wayward boy like me. But she was mistaken, you see, only I didn’t know it then. Remember, I was eight. So here I was, sweeping the main coop after a battle, and the stupid Mehmet calls. He hands me a fluffy, shiny black pigeon in a cage to take to the Çardak Café and give it to the owner.

“I went to the Çardak Café. Impressive, let me tell you, big and wide and busy. But then it was all pigeons. Pigeons, pigeons everywhere. Cages on the walls, on the counter, on the tables, under the tables. I began to get nervous. I thought maybe, if I lingered, the owner would ask me to clean the shit. I delivered the pigeon and ran out as fast as I could. I turned the corner, and there it was. I don’t know what made me stop. I was running hard, and maybe I needed to catch my breath. Maybe God sent me a sign. Maybe it was written.

“What befuddled my young eyes was another café, the Masal, old but not historic, well lit but decrepit, smoky and dank. There were no doors, and the metal shutters were rolled up. There were tables outside, but the silent patrons had their backs turned to the street. Why be with people if you’re going to be quiet? Why sit outside if you’re not going to look at the world? And then I saw what enthralled everyone’s attention. Inside, on a chair upon a small dais, sat the hakawati.

“He sat on his throne like a sovereign before his subjects. He wore a fez and Western clothing. A waxed black mustache two hands wide dominated his face. I couldn’t see his mouth move. He held a book in his lap but hardly looked at it. I moved closer and heard his silky voice. Magic.

“He was a Turk, and, mind you, my Turkish wasn’t very good at the time, but I heard him. I listened with my ears, my body, and my soul. He regaled us with the story of Antar, the great black warrior poet. He was in the middle of the tale, but my soles spread roots into the tiles of the pavement. I was enchanted.

“How can I describe the first time I encountered my destiny? A god’s fire burned in my breast, my heart aglow. In comparison, my life before that moment had moved at a sad and sluggish pace. Ah, Osama, I wish I could make you feel what it is like when you finally align yourself with God’s desires for you. I had received the call.”

By the light of a small bed lamp, I could see the curvy silhouette of Uncle Jihad’s head and its replica, a larger shadow projected on the wall. He tucked me in a bit too tightly. As my father’s younger brother, my number-one babysitter, and my favorite storyteller, he had the job of getting me to sleep, since my parents were having a dîner assis. My mother had told him to put me to bed and come right back, but he seemed distracted, lost in his thoughts. Though he said he wanted to make sure I slept by telling me a great bedtime tale, his heart didn’t seem to be in it.

“Once, there lived a happy young prince,” he began. He stared at the headboard.

“You said you’d tell me how I came to be.” I rolled to one side and then the other to unsecure the sheets. “You promised.”

“That’s what I’m doing.” He picked up the drink he had set on the nightstand, his fingers smearing the perfect outline of the dew that had gathered on the tall glass.

“I’m not a prince.”

“I’m not starting the story with you.” He took a sip of scotch, and his eyes sparkled for the first time. “Why would you think you’re the prince?”

“You told me. You said you’d tell the story of how I became me.”

“My dear Osama.” He gulped more of his drink and grinned. “You should know better by now. The story of who you are is never about you. I’m starting from the beginning.”

“If you do that, you’ll barely be able to make dessert.”

He laughed. “Let me worry about that. So where was I before I was ingloriously interrupted? There were two young princes.”

“It was one happy young prince,” I said.

“Well, now they’re brothers, and I’m not sure how happy they were. Let’s say they were content and loved each other. One day, the princes went hunting in the forest, but the younger brother didn’t have the heart to kill any animals. They ended up shooting arrows into tree trunks. The younger prince asked his brother, ‘Can you hit that flag over there?’ and the older prince cocked his arrow and shot it and bored a hole in the flag. But it wasn’t a flag. A very old and ugly woman admonished them, ‘Why did you shoot my underwear? I’ll teach you to respect other people’s laundry.’ She clapped her hands twice, and suddenly the princes found themselves in a forest they knew not. They walked in every direction but couldn’t figure out how to get back home. Night fell. The following morning, they woke up and were still lost. ‘We have to find food or we’ll starve to death,’ said the older prince. They found a pigeon in a tree. The older prince aimed his weapon, but the pigeon said, ‘I implore you, noble prince. Don’t shoot me. I have two sons at home, and they’ll perish if I don’t bring back food for them.’

“The older prince said, ‘But we’ll die, too, if we don’t eat you.’ And the younger prince said, ‘We can feed on berries and root vegetables. Look, there are parsnips here, and rhubarb and radish.’ The older prince felt pity and unstrung his bow. ‘I’ll repay your deed of mercy, my prince,’ said the pigeon, and flew away. ‘How can a pigeon repay a debt?’ asked the older prince. ‘We could have roasted him and served him with a berry-and-parsnip sauce.’ ”

“That sounds like an awful sauce,” I said.

“Any sauce is good when you’re hungry. The boys walked and walked and reached rushes that grew near a lake, and there they saw a wild duck. The older prince loved duck meat, confit with pearl potatoes, as did the younger. The older prince cocked his arrow, but the duck said, ‘I implore you, noble prince. Don’t shoot me. I have two sons at home, and they’ll perish if I don’t bring back food for them.’ The older prince dropped his weapon, and the duck said, ‘I’ll repay your deed of mercy, my prince.’ Farther along, the princes saw a stork standing on one leg and cleaning itself with its long beak. The older prince took careful aim, but the stork said, ‘I implore you, noble prince. Don’t shoot me. I have two sons at home,’ and the prince unstrung his bow. ‘We’ll sleep hungry tonight,’ he said, but the younger said he’d make a fabulous vegetable ratatouille, and he did, and it was sumptuous.

“The following morning, the boys walked and walked until they reached a castle where an old king was standing at the steps. ‘You seem to be looking for something,’ the king said.

“The older prince replied, ‘We’re looking for home, but we can’t seem to find it.’

“The king said, ‘What luck! I’ve lost my companions. Work for me, and I’ll feed you and clothe you until you find your home.’ The boys became the old king’s companions and told him stories and entertained him. But not everything was wonderful: the king had a nasty vizier.”

“There’s always a nasty vizier,” I interrupted.

“Someone has to be nasty. This vizier, who was envious of the princes, told the king, ‘It’s my duty to inform Your Majesty that these boys are up to no good. They mock the court. Why, just the other day they boasted that if they were your stewards not a single grain of rice would be lost from your storehouses. They must be shown their place. Mix a sack of rice with one of lentils, and have the boys separate the two in an hour’s time. Show them where arrogance leads. Boasting must never be left unanswered.’

“The king was a good man, but he was nothing if not gullible. He gave the order to have the bags mixed and told the boys, ‘When I come out of my diwan in an hour, I expect the lentils to be separated from the rice. If the job is done, you’ll be my stewards, and if it’s not, I’ll cut off your heads.’ The princes tried in vain to convince him that they hadn’t been boastful. The king’s servants led the boys to a room where the rice and lentils were strewn all over the floor.

“The boys fretted: this was a week’s task for a thousand men. ‘We are doomed,’ said the older prince. They sat amid the rice and lentils and hugged each other. A pigeon appeared at the window and asked, ‘Why are you sad, my princes?’ and the older prince explained what the king had ordered them to do. ‘Be not concerned,’ said the good pigeon. ‘I am the king of pigeons, whose life you spared when you were hungry. I will repay my debt as promised.’ The king of pigeons flew away, and returned accompanied by a million pigeons, who set about separating the rice from the lentils. Uncountable wings flapped, the resulting air moving piles around the room, and thousands of beaks pecked at rice and lentils. Work, work, work — the pigeons made two large piles in minutes. The king couldn’t believe his eyes. He asked his servants to look through the heaps, but not one grain of rice could be found among the lentils. He praised the boys’ industriousness and talent and made them his stewards.

“The vizier was apoplectic. The next morning, he told the king, ‘The boastful boys have been at it again, saying that if they were the keepers of your treasures not one ring would ever be lost or stolen. Put these vain boys to the proof, Your Majesty. Throw your daughter’s ring into the river, and order them to find it.’ The foolish king believed the vizier once more and ordered the ring thrown into the river.”

“Why do people always believe liars?” I asked.

“We all need to believe. It’s human nature. So the king told the princes, ‘I understand that you boys are fond of boasting. I’ve thrown the princess’s ring into the river. I’ll be in my diwan for an hour, and when I come out, I expect you to have found the ring. If the task is done, you’ll be the keepers of my treasures, and if it’s not, I’ll cut off your heads.’ The princes sought the river. The younger prince walked up and down the bank, and the older prince waded in, but neither could find anything. A duck floated down the river and asked, ‘Why are you sad, my princes?’ and the older prince explained what the king had ordered them to do. ‘Be not concerned,’ said the good duck. “I am the king of ducks, whose life you spared. I’ll repay my debt.’ The duck flew away and returned with a million ducks. They swam up and down the river, diving underwater in teams, duck heads bobbing and weaving, until the ring was found. When the king returned from the diwan and saw the ring, he made the boys his keepers of the treasures.

“Seeing that his efforts had been foiled once more, the vizier hatched his master plan. He knew the king had tried to learn sorcery and necromancy and had failed and failed, so the vizier said, ‘The boys have not ceased their boastful ways. They have said that an exceptional child shall be born in the palace this night, the brightest child in the universe, the most beautiful, the most delightful, but not only that. These vain boys were not satisfied with a child of such exceptional qualities. They said they asked the jinn to make the boy even more special and the jinn complied. They said the child will be the best oud player in the world, and boasted that if Your Majesty hears the child play the instrument, Your Majesty will weep. Such bluster will never do.’ Since the king had never been able to communicate with the jinn, he boiled with rage upon hearing this news. ‘If this miracle doesn’t happen tonight,’ he threatened the princes, ‘I’ll cut off both your heads, and I’ll bury your bodies without prayers in unclean soil, and you’ll meet those demons you’re communing with.’

“In their rooms, the princes huddled and hugged. At least with the first two tasks they had known how to begin, even if they couldn’t have accomplished much without help. But how could one find a child?”

“A stork.”

“Of course. The stork tapped at the windowpane, and the princes opened the window. The older prince explained about the miracle. ‘Be not concerned,’ said the good stork. It flew away and returned carrying a bundle swaddled in white cotton. The stork gently placed the bundle on the floor, and out of it crawled the most beautiful baby in the world, and the princes fell in love with him right away and knew that they would cherish this boy forever and ever. The baby crawled over to the oud lying next to the bed and began to play an exquisite melody.”

“A maqâm?”

“But of course. The melody was so charming that everyone in the palace began to wake, wanting to know where this music was coming from. They all rushed to the room and saw with their own eyes the miracle of this most special baby playing the oud. The king heard the song, and his heart expanded, and he wept. The beautiful princess loved the baby and she said, ‘This boy will be my son, and this prince will be my husband.’ The older prince married the princess, and their son was the most special boy in the world.”

“What happened to the nasty vizier?”

“He went to France, where all the jealous people are.”

“That’s not a good story. I wasn’t born playing the oud. I learned how to.”

“You’re simply remembering how to play, my dear boy.” Uncle Jihad drained his glass completely. “You’re claiming what you’ve always known.”

“What about Lina?”

“Hers is a different story,” he replied.

“How can that be? She’s my sister. We can’t have different stories.”

“Who says?”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “A family has one story.”

And my grandfather said, “The next evening, when the pigeon battle was over, I cleaned everything as fast as I could and ran back to the Masal. But I had arrived late. The hakawati was well into his story and had resolved the cliffhanger.

“ ‘Please,’ I interrupted, calling to him from outside. ‘How did Antar escape the deadly trap? It would seem impossible. I must know how,’ I said in broken Turkish. I must have confounded him. He glared at me, unblinking. The owner of the café came at me. ‘Get out of here, you dirty scoundrel,’ he yelled. ‘Get back to where you came from, you unbeliever.’

“Now, mind you, insults meant nothing to me. They bounced off me like iron bounces off a magnet. No, I mean like two magnets or something like that. After all, Barbara and Joan used to insult me every day, and the other assistants at work said horrible things. I felt bad that he thought I was dirty, so I said, ‘I’m only dirty because I’ve been cleaning shit, and that’s why I was late, and if I went home to clean up I’d miss more of the story.’ It obviously didn’t impress the owner, who waved a threatening cane in my direction. ‘If you don’t scram, I’m going to tan your behind,’ and I said, ‘That’s not fair. It’s not my fault I have to work. I want to hear the tale.’ The owner raised his cane, and I was about to flee when I heard a horsy guffaw. A fat man, most respectable, in an expensive fez, suit, and tie, sat laughing at a table outside. Hookah smoke erupted out of his wide mouth. ‘Why are you insulting a future customer, my man? Let the boy stay and listen to the tale,’ he said, and the owner replied, ‘His kind will never be a customer, effendi. He’s a street boy.’ Before I could contradict him, the effendi said, ‘He’s a working boy, not an urchin. How can you turn away a boy who wants to hear a story? Come, my boy. Sit at my table, and open your ears. I don’t mind the smell of shit. And bring this boy some tea and something to eat. We have a story to listen to.’

“And that was how I was taken under the wing of Serhat Effendi.

“I was in paradise. I hardly spent any time at home anymore. Each day, as soon as the battle was over, I hurried to the Masal to hear the hakawati. I sat at Serhat Effendi’s table every evening. I was served a highly sweetened glass of hot tea and a cheap sandwich, which was still better than anything I was getting at home. The effendi was nice to me. He didn’t mind my stink, and he treated me with the utmost respect. Once, when I asked how I could repay him for the daily meal, he replied that my job was to keep him company, because he didn’t like being by himself at the café. But we hardly ever talked, except for the times I arrived a bit late and he’d whisper in my ear what I had missed. On my ninth birthday, he bought me a delicious lokum.

“The hakawati enchanted me, that much I know. Yet I began to notice that the effendi wasn’t as impressed. One night, after the storyteller had left us with another cliffhanger and Serhat Effendi was preparing to leave, I asked him whether he liked the story. You have to remember, he was showing up six nights a week to listen to this. He replied, ‘The story I like very much.’ I realized that what he had said was incomplete and hoped he would elaborate. ‘I have heard it woven more lusciously.’ He realized I didn’t understand, because he went on, ‘The story of Antar is one of the standards. This man tells it well, yet it seems that romance is not his forte. He does wonderfully with the travails and triumphs of the poet but seems to consider Abla, his enchantress and beloved, a trifle. We’re getting half a story. Don’t worry, though. It is very near the end, and we’ll get someone else next week.’

“Do you know why I’m telling you this, Osama? It’s because you should know that, no matter how good a story is, there is more at stake in the telling.

“And the effendi was right. The following week, we had a new hakawati, a much older man. At the designated time, he strode up to the dais and greeted his audience. He announced he would like to tell the story of Antar, the great black poet. I shouted, ‘No,’ and I was by no means the only one. The hakawati apologized and asked, ‘Do you not like the story, gentlemen? I assure you it is the best tale ever told. Antar was the greatest of Muslim heroes, the most passionate of lovers, and most devoted to the faith. This story is one of the finest. Trust me. Even though I’m here for only two weeks and will have to resort to an abridged version, I will enchant you.’ The listeners all as one yelled back, ‘But we have just finished hearing it. The hakawati before you told the tale of Antar.’

“The hakawati paused and contemplated the situation for a brief moment. ‘Shame. It’s an uncalled-for shame that you were forced to listen to a pitiful version of the great story told by an incompetent dunce.’ A man spoke up. ‘It was a delightful version.’ ‘Never mind,’ said the new hakawati. ‘I’ll bewitch you with my version, and you’ll forget everything that came before me.’

“The audience still objected. A few were angry. It was then that I noticed that Serhat Effendi, wearing a bemused grin, wasn’t participating in the impromptu discussion. ‘We don’t want to hear the same story,’ the crowd shouted, and Serhat Effendi called out, ‘Master Hakawati.’ The room quieted as the hakawati acknowledged the effendi. ‘Your reputation precedes you,’ the effendi said. ‘Your exquisite style is the talk of every connoisseur in our lands. We are blessed to have you here in our humble town, and we beseech you to treat us to your specialty, the tale of Majnoun and Layla. It is said that your rendition had the gracious princess weeping for two whole weeks.’ ‘Seventeen days,’ corrected the hakawati. ‘And that the Christian men of Istanbul who heard your version converted to the true faith.’ ‘That is true,’ said the hakawati. And Serhat Effendi finished with, ‘Is it, then, owing to our modesty that we are to hear the story of Antar instead of your masterpiece?’ ‘I beg your forgiveness, effendi,’ the hakawati said. ‘I would have been honored to tell you my signature tale. Unfortunately, I was instructed that under no circumstances am I to take longer than two weeks for my story. Two weeks, effendi. The only story I can tell in two weeks is that of Antar. I cannot insult my audience with a shorter version of my masterpiece. But please, dear audience, remove those sad masks from your faces. It pains me so. The happy news is that in a fortnight I’ll be replaced by a young hakawati — a child, really, trying to make a name for himself. The owner says he’s very good — for a Circassian, that is.’ And here the hakawati paused before adding, ‘And it seems the youngster is willing to work for a cup of unsorted and uncooked lentils.’

“The patrons had a fit; the café exploded. Men screamed at the owner, who tried to placate his customers. ‘Yes, of course you deserve the best,’ he repeated, until, finally, he had to apologize and promise the hakawati he could stay for as long as he needed. The hakawati smiled.

“After only the opening, Urfa realized it was in for a feast. Word of him and his words spread throughout the town. The next evening, the place was packed. Many couldn’t find a seat. Twenty fully veiled women stood outside, refused seats, and didn’t interact with any of the patrons. They listened, moved and unmoving. The following night, it was forty women on one side and more than a hundred men on the other. And when the masterly hakawati told of Majnoun’s exile in the desert to avoid looking at the sweet face of his beloved, every veil turned moist, and every mustache as well. Zeki, the master storyteller of Istanbul, bewitched our little town for eight months straight.

“When I die and people begin to tell you that I wasn’t a great hakawati, you tell them I studied with the best, Istez Zeki of Istanbul. Only Nazir of Damascus was as good as Zeki, and I studied with him as well. To find a better hakawati than those two, you’d have had to go to the lands of spices and Shahrazad, to Baghdad and Persia. Zeki was a master. The only reason he ventured into our backwater town was that he had to escape Istanbul for a few years. You see, even though he was in his eighties, he had seduced a vizier’s wife. There was a price on his head. But he was so loved that other Ottoman officials helped him leave the capital. They told him to stay away for a couple of years, until they soothed the vizier’s feelings. He never returned. He was asked by an affluent man to work in Baghdad, where he was killed.

“Well, maybe I didn’t exactly study with Zeki, but I certainly studied him. Don’t tell anybody that, because it’s hard for people to discern the nuance. I heard him every evening and never missed a session. I studied his technique, his use of voice, tone, and inflection. When he paused, his audience held its breath. He was by far the best at silence. On my walk back home, I would practice saying the same words he did, in the same manner he did. I would move my hands in his way. As he reached a touching moment in the story, he had a habit of holding his hand out in front of him, palm toward God, as if offering Him that lovely moment or, better yet, offering Him the souls of all his listeners. When Zeki told us about the desert birds attempting to distract Majnoun from suicide, he had a different whistle for each bird. On the way home, I was able to whistle the way he did, and I became very good at it. His whistling birds broke open my heart. ‘Oh, Majnoun,’ the desert wren whistled, ‘kill yourself not. Consider all pleasures life can offer,’ and the quail whistled, ‘Rediscover the enjoyment of eating. Do not forsake life.’ Bewitching.

“Studying him wasn’t as easy as it sounds, because I had to be two different people simultaneously. My first listened to the story and lived in its world, and my second studied the storyteller and lived in his.

“But, then, I didn’t just learn from Zeki. God smiled upon my face and smote one of the pigeon assistants. I didn’t see what happened, but I heard everything, because I was in the main coop, cleaning. It was peace season. The assistant, his name was Emre, was flying a flock. Mehmet and Hagop were on the roof with him, drinking their tea. It seemed Emre was unable to get the pigeons to fly higher. He kept swinging his stick wider and wider, but the pigeons flew in a low circle. Hagop mocked the boy. My feelings were torn. I was happy, because Emre always mocked me, but I knew he would later take out his frustration on me.

“A troubled Emre couldn’t understand what was happening. He cursed at the sky. One of the pigeons excreted, and, of all places, the shit fell right into Emre’s eye. Mehmet screeched and said that was good luck. Temporarily blinded and befuddled, Emre covered both his eyes, cursed once more, and tried to walk away. He stumbled and fell off the roof and onto the pavement, headfirst. The building was just one story, and the ground was only hard sand. Mehmet and Hagop thought it was amusing. They roared with laughter before they considered that Emre could be hurt. When they looked over the ledge and witnessed the burgeoning pool of blood, their laughter stopped. The boy Emre became stupid and blind, and I was promoted.

“I no longer had to clean shit. Now I was responsible for feeding the pigeons. If it’s not one hole it’s another. I was also sent on errands and such. I had another boy, beneath me, to do all the shitty work. I wasn’t paid more, because, after all, Mehmet was a Turk. But I was done with work much earlier, so I was able to leave and check other cafés in the city. At first I couldn’t hear the other hakawatis, because they, too, told their tales in the evening, and I was committed to Zeki. But I would go into a café and ask the patrons to tell me stories. Most of them loved to do it, unless they were playing cards or backgammon. Someone would start a story. ‘There was or there was not,’ a man would say, and take it from there. His friends would help him tell it, correct him when he missed something, and take over if he faltered for even a second.

“Zeki ended his story when his audience ran out of tears. I felt bereft and alone when he left, but I wasn’t alone, because all his audience felt the same way. I tested every hakawati in Urfa. I even saw a Kurd, and though I didn’t understand any of the words he said, I liked the way he said them. But I didn’t do that for long, because Serhat Effendi expected me at his table. He told me, ‘You can search far and wide for the great stories, but in the end, the best ones come to you.’

“I practiced. I spun yarns for Zovik and Poor Anahid. I told stories to the uncaring pigeons as they mated. I spoke to trees, flowers, sticks, and stones. One morning, I began to tell a tale to Hagop, and he smacked me. ‘I don’t care about what you have to say,’ he yelled.

“I practiced singing like Zeki. Whenever there was a song in the story, Zeki sang it. I was happy. I had a job. I had a passion. But I had no family, and that would be my curse. You see, the family I was part of was beginning to crumble like moldy Bulgarian cheese.”

The first time I saw a real hakawati perform was in the spring of 1971, after I had just turned ten. My grandfather had come down from the mountain unannounced to visit Uncle Jihad. Lina and I were in my uncle’s living room with the two of them. Lina was there to study the paintings in Uncle Jihad’s monographs, and I was there because I had nothing better to do. There were dozens of books and monographs strewn all over the place — on the coffee table, the floor — but I was more interested in the conversation between my uncle and his father.

“I don’t want to go alone,” my grandfather said, in a tone that was both pleading and astonished that he had to restate his wish. His fingers counted worry beads.

“I can’t,” Uncle Jihad said. “I have to look after the boy.” That was a lie. I didn’t need looking after.

“We’ll bring him.” My grandfather’s gestures were becoming more expansive. “It’ll be better that way.” His hair seemed to shoot out in at least eleven different directions. “We can take Lina, too.” He looked strange. He wore the traditional Druze trousers — black, with a billowing pouch below the crotch that could hold a small goat. The religious Druze wore them, and he certainly wasn’t religious. I had never seen him dressed like that before.

“No,” Lina declared, without removing her eyes from the pictures she was perusing on the coffee table. She had her arms crossed in front of her. “I’m not going to some cheap café in some ugly neighborhood. And you,” she said to me, “stop staring at my breasts.”

“I’m not,” I replied too quickly.

Uncle Jihad grinned. “A girl after my own heart. My darling, you can’t control the entire world.”

“I’m not trying to control the world,” she said, still not moving her head. “Just him. I get enough stares from other people. I don’t need it from him, and he’ll stop if he knows what’s best for him.” She contemplated a Brueghel painting of a woman who descends into hell and fills her basket with goodies. Uncle Jihad loved Brueghel.

“Sweetheart, it’s because they’re new,” Uncle Jihad said. “In a couple of months, everyone will get used to them.”

“Why are we talking about the girl’s tits?” my grandfather yelled. “We were talking about me. I come down to the city to visit my children, but my children pay no attention to me.”

Lina looked like a colorful statuette, immobile, trying hard to stifle a laugh.

“Goddamn it, Father,” Uncle Jihad said. “Watch your mouth. Let’s stop talking about the café. You know that Farid will be furious if you go there, more so if you take his children with you. Why don’t we do something else? We can visit your in-laws. You haven’t done that in ages.”

“Damn my in-laws,” my grandfather replied. Lina’s lips curled into a full smile. “And damn Farid, too. Who’s the father of whom here? He should be worried about my getting angry, not the other way round. I want to go. I’m seventy-one years old, and I’m dying soon. This could be my last chance. Don’t you have any compassion?”

“What’s the point, Father? You know they’ll kick you out the minute they see you. They always do.”

“No, no. Not this time. That’s why you have to come with me. They’ll think we’re a family, and they won’t recognize me, because I’ll be going incognito.” From his vest he took out a white Druze skullcap and a large pair of eyeglasses that made his eyes balloon like the eyes of a goldfish in a tiny bowl. “See? I look like a peasant from the mountain.”

Lina and I doubled over laughing. As I tumbled on the sofa, my head banged hers. My grandfather looked at his hysterical audience and began dancing and twirling around for us so we could admire him in full regalia. One of my hands rubbed the bump on my head, and the other wiped the funny tears from my eyes.

“Come on. Let’s go,” my grandfather said. “Please take me.”

“I want to go,” I said. I sat back up on the sofa. Lina studied me from her prone position. “I want to see the storyteller.”

“That’s my boy.” My grandfather beamed.

“Oh, shit,” Uncle Jihad said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

And on a clear April morning in Beirut, the four of us — my grandfather, Uncle Jihad, Lina, and I — drove to hear the hakawati.

“Time was much longer then,” my grandfather said, “in the old days.”

We drove in my uncle’s Oldsmobile convertible. My father called it the problem car, but he couldn’t convince Uncle Jihad to get rid of it. Since we owned the Middle East’s exclusive Datsun and Toyota dealership, my father expected everyone in the family to drive one or the other. The business had begun as a Renault dealership, but the family had sold those rights to be the exclusive retailers of the Japanese cars.

“You could tell a story for a whole month then, but now who’d listen? Everyone wants it quick, as if life itself was quick.”

My mother drove a Jaguar. My father overlooked it, because she’d always driven Jaguars. She complained that the Japanese cars were horrible, that the back ends slid sideways on mountain curves like a belly dancer’s fat butt. She drove incredibly fast and claimed she needed a car that handled well. My father insisted the Japanese were consistently improving their cars, which would soon become the most reliable cars around, not simply the cheapest.

“Mind you, it’s not that this hakawati isn’t a fool,” my grandfather said. “He’s an incompetent dimwit who wouldn’t be able to talk himself out of his execution, but we can’t blame him in this case, can we? We’re lost, I tell you.”

My father persuaded Uncle Jihad not to drive the Olds to work, which wasn’t a problem, since the dealership was a distance of four blocks from our apartment building. My father wasn’t able to persuade him to stop calling the car Hedy, after an American actress my uncle considered “the most divinely beautiful creature on this blessed earth.”

“And then there was radio,” my grandfather said. “A curse.”

“And television,” my uncle added.

“Double curse. But who watches those ugly French and English stories?”

“I do,” Lina said. Her condition for coming on this expedition was that she would get the front seat and the top would be down. My grandfather told her that princesses sat in the back, and she replied that princesses got assassinated if they did. Grandfather wasn’t pleased about being relegated to the back seat. He had tried the age-before-beauty tactic, but my sister’s stubbornness was famous. He got to glare at the back of my sister’s hair for the trip, and I sat behind Uncle Jihad, the nape of his neck my primary view. Lina turned on the radio, moved the dial from an Arabic music station to one playing a strange beat. “Get up,” the singer wailed. The second verse sounded French. The bass thump-thumped. The singer wanted to be a sex machine.

“Turn that off,” my grandfather said. Lina didn’t. Uncle Jihad did.

“What’s the point of riding in a convertible if we can’t have loud music?” Lina said. She had a red ribbon tied as a headband, and she moved away from the windshield so her hair would flow in the wind, but there wasn’t much wind at the speed we were driving. “We should be driving on the freeways of America.”

“The Autobahn is better,” Uncle Jihad claimed.

“Why don’t you just drive on the airport runway?” My grandfather imitated their tone of voice. “Just drive off and fly.”

We were in a neighborhood I had never been to before. The streets narrowed, as did their buildings, and cars were parked helter-skelter. Gaudily hued laundry dripped water from balconies. Earthen pots of red geraniums and green herbs covered windowsills. Layers of posters desecrated every wall. Some were partially torn, revealing the poster underneath; the left eye of a politician appeared beneath the right arm of a scantily clad redhead smoking a cigarette, with the slogan shouting, “Experience the lush life.”

Then the posters changed, became neater and less colorful. Pictures of Gamal Abd al-Nasser and Yasser Arafat, and pictures of others I didn’t recognize. Photographs of Palestinian martyrs. The phrase “This generation shall see the sea” covered a map of the occupied lands. Ahead, three teenagers in army fatigues, with Palestinian kaffiyehs stylishly draped on their shoulders, waved their rifles at us to stop. One of the teenagers stared wide-eyed at the car. Another gawked at my sister’s breasts. I wanted to warn him that she was sensitive. My grandfather moved forward in his seat and said firmly, “Look elsewhere, young man.” The boy mumbled something apologetically and stared at the tire of the Olds.

“Now, why are such fine young men as you stopping our car?” Uncle Jihad asked. “We’re not going anywhere near your camp.”

The oldest of the three, who looked no more than fifteen, stood straighter. “Our orders are to check suspicious cars in the neighborhood. The Israelis are going to try something sneaky.”

“True,” my uncle said. “You can’t be too careful. And I’m sure you boys are doing an exemplary job. You look like smart boys. Hold on. Are you the young lions? You’re part of my friend Hawatmeh’s Ashbal, aren’t you?”

All three boys fell back half a step. In a quiet voice, the eldest asked, “You know the valiant leader?”

“But of course. Didn’t you recognize the car? Who else but the valiant leader has such impeccable taste and magnificent manners as to offer such a wonderful gift to a lowly friend like me? I feel so overwhelmed whenever I think of him. May God show him the path to victory.”

“Oh, sir, do not speak of yourself as lowly,” the leader said. The other boys nodded in unison. They all stroked the car with their hands. “The valiant leader would never offer such a magnificent car to anyone who is not deserving. You’re a great man, sir. Your modesty is a lesson for all of us.”

“You’re very kind, my boy,” Uncle Jihad said. His bald head swayed as if he were being enchanted by a lovely melody. “I’m not deserving of adulation. But please give my regards to the valiant leader, and tell him — oh, I don’t know, tell him that the car is a treasure and I’m ever so grateful.” The boys cleared a path for us, and as we drove away, Uncle Jihad waved farewell to them like passing British royalty.

“My son,” my grandfather said. Uncle Jihad bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment.

“You bought the car in Tehran, didn’t you?” Lina said. “I remember. You had it driven here.” She leaned back on the headrest and laughed, tried to imitate our mother. “Do you even know their stupid leader?”

“Yes,” my uncle said, “that I do. He’s a jackass. Every year he buys a few cars for his toadies. I charge him triple, and he thinks he’s robbing me blind. Sad, really. Breaks my heart.”

“You’re wasting your talents, son,” my grandfather said. “In a different era, you could have been the greatest, probably better than your silly father.”

“You’re very kind,” Uncle Jihad said.

“Don’t patronize me,” my grandfather said.

“No, I mean it. But I’m not wasting the talent. I’m a car salesman, the modern storyteller. We’re doing really well, Father. In the last year, we’ve made more money than in all the previous years combined. It seems that this is what I was born to do.”

“Stop fooling yourself,” my grandfather said. “Stupidity is unbecoming.”

My father didn’t like old Arabic cafés. According to him, only gamblers, drunkards, and swindlers patronized them. I assumed that everyone around us fit the description, because the café looked like every other one Uncle Jihad had taken me to. White paint peeled off the walls in sheets; cigarette and hookah smoke fumed the dank air. The customers sat on cheap wooden chairs with twine seats. The square tables were either Formica or white plastic. Greaseproof wraps and balls of foil speckled a few of the tables. Two kids roamed the room: a tea boy carried glasses filled with the scalding amber liquid, and a coal boy carried a brazier to replenish the hookah’s embers. On a small wooden platform, a lonely chair was pushed back against the dirt-stained wall. This was where the hakawati would sit. This was where my grandfather’s goldfish eyes remained fixed.

“I’m sure he’ll use props,” my grandfather sneered.

“I want to see how fast you’ll get kicked out of here.” Lina smiled at him, and he laughed.

My glass was too hot to hold, so I moved my lips toward it and slurped a bit of tea. It was too sweet. Lina leaned forward, too, laid her head on her crossed arms on the table, and looked up at my grandfather. “Do you think he is good at accents?” she asked.

“You’re nothing but trouble,” he replied. “He is awful at accents. You knew I’d say that, because it’s true. He’s Egyptian. They wouldn’t know any accent other than theirs if it kicked them in the ass. But what’s horrible about him is that he doesn’t know how ghastly he is. Even his native accent is atrocious, and I don’t think he’s really Egyptian. He sounds like a foreigner in every accent.”

“Like Dalida,” I piped.

“But he must be good,” Lina said. “They brought him all the way here.”

“No one brought him here. He’s probably getting paid two cups of tea for this. He’s that bad. Just you wait. You’ll see. Ah, look. Here comes the dimwit.”

The hakawati, a man in his fifties or sixties, wearing a fez and an Egyptian jalabiya that was short and threadbare at the ankles, walked in from the boisterous kitchen. He carried a plastic sword in his right hand and a tattered book in his left. His gray mustache was waxed into glistening loops. My grandfather stared contemptuously, his nostrils flaring as if he smelled vomit. His tongue clucked. He muttered to himself. I heard only the word “book.”

The hakawati lifted the jalabiya slightly and stepped onto the dais. He walked to the front and bowed, even though no one had clapped.

“Look at the silly peacock,” my grandfather hissed.

“Don’t, Father,” Uncle Jihad said. “You’re working yourself up.”

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” the man announced. Lina and I both covered our mouths to hide our laughter. He cultivated his vowels, elongated them, and reaped a pretentious inflection.

“All the tra-la-la,” my grandfather whispered. “Show-off.” He turned away, and his elbow knocked his tea glass, almost tipping it over.

“In the name of God, the most compassionate, the merciful,” the hakawati began.

“He’s going religious on us,” Grandfather snickered.

“Praise be to God, the Lord of justice, the Benefactor, the Faithful, and I state there is no god but God alone and He has no partners, a statement that saves whoever states it on the Day of Judgment, the Day of Religion, and I state that our master Muhammad is His slave and His prophet and His honest lover, may God pray on his soul, and on the souls of his honorable, decent, and virtuous relatives, and on the souls of his upright friends.”

“Pfflt,” Grandfather said to the table.

“And so,” the hakawati proceeded, “God in all His glory made the stories of the early heroes a model to the faithful, a guide to the ignorant, a warning to the infidels, and I heeded God’s wishes in choosing to tell this tale, for I saw that it contained the triumph of Islam and the humiliation of the mean infidels, and I looked up other stories but couldn’t find one that was more truthful or offered better proof or was wiser than the story of al-Zaher Baybars, the hero of heroes, to whom God promised eternal victories as a reward for his unwavering faith, and what glorious and enchanting details I shall relate to you were told to me by my teachers — Sofian, the grand hakawati of Algeria, and Nazir, the Damascene hakawati of the Hamidieh — as they heard from their illustrious teachers, may God have mercy upon all of them.”

And my grandfather stood up, his chair clank-clanking as it fell to the ground. Uncle Jihad quickly covered his face with both hands. My grandfather pointed a finger at his nemesis. “You,” he bellowed. Behind the glasses, the red lines in his eyes looked like mighty rivers on a map. “You’re a pretender. You’ve never met Nazir. You’re not worthy of eating his shit.”

The hakawati was speechless, his fez askew.

And my grandfather resumed his tale. “Just as the morning star outshines all others, Murat’s beauty surpassed any in the city of Urfa. His splendor was such as to make poets weep for not being able to describe it adequately or honorably. Yet this most obvious of traits was exceeded by his modesty. He was studious, honest, kind, and devout, which were amazing qualities for any man, but he was — what? — a boy of seventeen or so. Everyone wished him for a son, but the girls — the girls wished him for a husband. They prayed every night. They swore vows they could never keep, but in the end it didn’t matter, for few of Urfa’s girls could marry a dervish, and that was what he was.

“Like all dervish boys his age, Murat had to practice his religious rites and rituals relentlessly. But, unlike other boys, he took his duty of watching Abraham’s pool seriously. No Narcissus he. Wearing his religious dervish uniform — a fez hat, short white skirt atop white breeches — he stood guard ceremoniously, didn’t move, play, interact with the other boys or passersby. When not watched by an elder, the other boys broke loose, relaxed, and did what all boys do. Every dervish turned devilish. But Murat believed that God was always with him, and behaved accordingly. Like a statue sculpted by a master artist, the boy stood still before the pool, watched from atop his shoulder by God and from across the street by a gaggle of girls.

“Some of the girls were veiled, most were not. Muslims, Christians, Turks, Arabs, Armenians, Kurds, they came for a glimpse of heaven. But one kept coming back again and again. She knew his schedule. She wasn’t allowed to get close to him, so she began to talk to him from across the pool, across the street, making a fool of herself. She didn’t follow the well-worn laws of discretion. She arrived early and waited anxiously for him, standing as if her knees were unsure they could support her weight. And when Murat appeared, dressed in his glorious dervish outfit, she yelled, ‘Look at me!’ The boy was so devout he didn’t hear or see her. That is the greatest and deepest wound for a girl of fifteen, and that’s how old my half-sister was.

“My father was the shah of his realm, and, like most shahs, he had no inkling that the realm was imploding. Did he notice the simmering stew of war? Did he feel the tension in the world? Did he hear the dying gasps of empire? Did he realize that the city’s Turks had begun to regard him and his English family suspiciously? Obviously, he was on a mission. God had sent him to minister to the poor Christians in Urfa, and that was what he was doing. Did he notice that the people he was ministering to were getting poorer? The Armenians of the area were not being hired anymore. Did he notice that many more were having ‘accidents’? He was spreading the word of God. He was ministering to a people but didn’t realize how terrified they were growing. Did he feel the tension between the Turks and the Armenians?

“Did he feel the tensions at home? Did he see his daughters growing up? He didn’t realize his elder daughter, Joan, was of marriageable age until she turned sixteen and his wife had to point out that there were no eligible husbands for her daughter in Urfa. He suggested she could wait for another year, and if not, he could send her to his wife’s sister in Sussex. His wife didn’t know what to do. She tried to point out that the world they knew was disappearing, that the Urfa they knew was disappearing, that the daughters they knew were disappearing. But the doctor had a job to do, a job that meant something, a job that defined who he was.

“And he paid no mind to Barbara the troubled. Barbara hated me, just like her sister and her mother did. She was closer to me in age, only five years’ difference, so her insults were more humiliating. What still upsets me to this day is that every now and then a few Muslim boys would call her names — infidel, unbeliever — and she’d get melancholy, weep for days on end, but then she’d turn around and call me an orphan bastard. She wasn’t always melancholy. Often she’d get excited about one thing or another — a game she’d played, a new dress she wanted. She would jump like a bunny while talking. She talked faster than anyone I’ve known.

“Once, I got stuck in the mulberry tree. I was young, maybe five, maybe six. I had climbed the tree for some fruit and ended up on a branch with my rear end higher than my head. My legs dangled from either side of the branch. I got scared and froze in place. I was relieved when Barbara saw me, because I thought she would get help, but instead she got a cane. I don’t know why she did it. She whipped my bare feet and laughed. I couldn’t lift my legs for fear of falling, and she didn’t stop whipping my soles. I cried so hard that Zovik came out running. She tried to take the cane away, and Barbara turned on the maid. She caned Zovik. She hit Zovik over and over until she tired. She threw the cane at Zovik and went into the house.

“Of course, I avoided Barbara after that. I tried to be anywhere she was not. And once I began to work, that became less and less difficult. Before she finally turned to me for help, I probably hadn’t spoken to her in over two years, and that’s while living in the same pious house.

“She was in love, she told me, and I must help her. She said her heart was afire and she needed a go-between, a boy to inform her boy of the possibility of love. This wasn’t some lovely fairy tale. Do you think I’m crazy? In the middle of her confession, I turned around and bolted. But where could I go? She was my half-sister. She came after me the second day. ‘You must help me. I have no one else. I will die, and it will be your fault.’ I scampered away again. I spent one night at the Masal; the next night I slept on Mehmet’s roof. Poor Anahid was worried sick. She screamed at me when she saw me. Then Barbara screamed at me. I ran again and stayed away for about two weeks. But Barbara forgot about me the same way she remembered me. All of a sudden, I was no longer part of her grand scheme. I didn’t try to find out what her new plans were, but by the time I returned to sleeping at home, Poor Anahid and Zovik had heard about Barbara and Murat. Now, you have to remember that Barbara was still only stalking Murat, and the poor boy hadn’t yet acknowledged her existence. He must have known, I think, because the other boys must have told him. Whether it was so or not, he didn’t look at her. And everybody began to talk. One day, a Turkish boy approached Barbara. If she was willing to love Murat, why could she not love him? He might not be as beautiful as Murat, but he could reciprocate, and he certainly could please her. Horrified, she slapped the boy and bolted home. The next day, another boy approached, and another. She stopped running away and ignored her new suitors.

“The city of Urfa had nothing but Barbara to talk about. Mehmet asked me if I had slept with the crazy English maiden. Hagop wondered if it was true that she walked around naked in the house. The boys wanted to know if her father had his way with her every Wednesday. The English, her mother and father, were of course the last to know.

“Barbara finally did the unthinkable. She waited until Murat finished his duties, and, in full view of all the other boys, she walked up to him and declared her eternal love. And he listened. Now, Barbara was not the most attractive of girls, but she wasn’t ugly, either. It wasn’t about beauty for the boy. I assume he was flattered: not many boys are chosen. Being the honorable person he was, he informed her that there was no hope for love. He was a Muslim and she a foreigner. She said he didn’t have to do anything other than allow her to gaze at him. Even if she could not possess him, even if she only walked beside his shadow, she would die fulfilled.

“The following day, Barbara resumed her passion and her position. And now he paid attention. Soon they were seen walking together. Soon they were walking unseeing. They paid naught but each other any mind. Soon the tongues of Urfa walked as well, and the scandal of all scandals erupted. And so did our house. Her perplexed father tried to talk to her. When her mother found out, she caned Barbara and locked her in her room. Her mother left the rattan leaning outside the door to remind the household that Barbara was in for another round. But Barbara, crazy Barbara, wouldn’t bend. She yelled and wept in her room. Apparently, that was nothing compared with what happened to Murat. He began to turn up at watch with black eyes and was unable to stand erect for the duration of the sacred guard shift. He neglected his studies of the Koran. He no longer had time for friends. He stopped twirling.

“What is it about unfulfilled love that turns its flames to infernos? No lock, no house, no rain, no sandstorm, no parent, and certainly no religion could keep the boy from being seen on certain nights atop the stone wall only paces away from her window, declaiming his obsessive love for Barbara in verse. She was seen in the streets not too far from her house, her mother dragging her back by any means at her disposal. ‘Why?’ Barbara was heard to wail. ‘Why am I forbidden one glimpse of my beloved?’

“This went on for months and months. Barbara and Murat were seen holding hands in the ruins of the Crusader castle. They stared forlornly into each other’s eyes behind the great mosque. I admit that I once carried a letter from Murat to Barbara. As I was leaving home to wash after feeding pigeons all day, he approached me and pleaded. I couldn’t refuse. Barbara forgave me all my past sins.

“ ‘I can’t keep her in chains,’ her mother said. ‘Begin packing,’ her father replied. ‘We’ll leave by the end of the year.’

“The leaves of my familiar life had begun to yellow.

“That year — I was eleven — it became obvious early on that it was to be the year of the great pigeoneer Eshkhan again. He was dominating the war. His peşenk seemed invincible. Short orange feathers rose in odd angles on the top of his head — hence his name, Bsag, which means ‘crown.’ He led attacks into other flocks that caused chaos worthy of Judgment Day. Veterans of the wars lost more birds that year than in all ten previous seasons combined. Eshkhan’s flock would ascend into the skies, and descend with twice their number. In one memorable battle, three pigeoneers lost their peşenks, which was a first as far as anyone could recall. Envy reared her poisonous head. How was he doing it? What was his secret? At the Çardak Café, the pigeoneers moaned and groaned. It wasn’t fair. Half of them could no longer compete, and the other half had no chance of winning. And the great Eshkhan laughed at all of them.

“By the time March came along, Mehmet had lost almost half his team. He pretended that he wasn’t upset, but he beat the assistants at the merest provocation. If one of his pigeons fell out of the sky, he beat me because I didn’t feed it well. If the coop wasn’t spotless every second of the day, he beat the shit-cleaner. One afternoon, Eshkhan’s peşenk attacked Mehmet’s team, and Mehmet flew into a rage. He began to scream across the roofs, ‘How could you? I have nothing to fight you with. It’s over. What’s the point if not to humiliate me?’ And, of course, that was the point — that was the point of any war.

“And Mehmet remembered that war is never meant to be fought fairly. The next day, he searched and searched and bought the comeliest hen in the land. It was an old trick, a very old trick, and Eshkhan’s peşenk fell for it. When Eshkhan’s team flew above Mehmet’s roof, Hagop, grasping the hen by its tiny legs, raised his hands in the air. The pigeon fluttered its wings. Bsag saw the bait. He broke out of formation, circled above the roof, and landed on the ledge to investigate: Is this a beauty I see before me? Now, having a pigeon land on your roof and capturing it are two different things, especially a cock as wily as a peşenk. You can’t allow him to see the net that will capture him, and since Bsag landed on the ledge, we couldn’t approach him from behind. Still, the first assistant tried. He jumped clumsily and fell on his face, and the peşenk flew back up to the clouds. Of course, the boy received a beating.

“But — before Bsag escaped, I saw his secret. I discovered the source of his power. On the pigeon’s white-feathered chest hung the most beautiful ornament I had ever seen: a tiny turquoise Fatima’s hand that warded off any evil.

“There was a big fight at the café. Eshkhan called Mehmet a lowlife, among other things. Mehmet returned the insult. Eshkhan punched Mehmet and bloodied his nose. Mehmet was unable to return the blow, because he was held back. Eshkhan yelled, ‘Let’s see you try that again. Do you think my cock will fall for that old trick a second time?’

“He did. Bsag landed on the ledge, and the same thing happened. When the first assistant tried to capture it, the bird flew away. There was another brawl at the café. On the third night, three veterans with their own nets joined our group. Everybody wanted Eshkhan to lose. They waited for the peşenk to land. He did, on the ledge again. No one moved, for fear of frightening him. The veterans stalked. I whistled. I whistled exactly the way Eshkhan whistled, exactly the way he directed his peşenk. I didn’t know what the signals were, but my whistling was enough to confuse the poor bird. Bsag looked at me, uncomprehending, and a net descended upon him. The veteran who captured him unleashed a victory cry up to the skies.

“Mehmet took Bsag out of the net, cut off his head with a serrated knife, and threw the still-shuddering body onto the street.

“Barbara had begun to calm down. She was sixteen now, and I figured she was becoming more mature. She asked me to bring home some matches from the Masal Café, saying she needed more than were available in the house. I couldn’t refuse such a simple request. After all, there were enough matches in the house to burn it down, so I assumed she wanted them for something inconsequential.

“The evening Eshkhan lost the pigeon war and his peşenk was killed, I stole one hundred matches from the Masal and gave them to Barbara. She kissed me. That was the first time anybody other than Poor Anahid or Zovik had kissed me. I watched her break the phosphorus tip of each match and swallow it. After the fourth or fifth, I asked her what she was doing. She waved me away with a dismissive flick of the wrist. She swallowed the tips one by one.

“The house woke up to the sound of her crying and retching. Poor Anahid, Zovik, and I huddled in the doorway and watched as her father tried to examine her, as her sister tried to comfort her, as her mother tried to talk to her. Barbara had the yellowest skin I had ever seen.

“And Zovik whispered, ‘You don’t trample upon fate. Evil will close its circle.’

“Barbara vomited and vomited. Her sister was holding her. Her mother began to cry. She called out, ‘Barbara, Barbara, talk to me. What’s going on?’ But she wouldn’t touch her daughter. When the doctor noticed the broken matches on the ground and under the bed, he moaned, ‘Oh, no.’ Her mother saw, and the first word out of her mouth was a strident ‘Whore.’

“Barbara vomited some more. Her father whimpered, ‘You didn’t have to take so many.’ He looked vanquished. His eyes seemed to be melting. Her mother’s eyes were afire. ‘How could you do this? How could you be so disloyal? How could you betray your faith?’ she hollered.

“ ‘If you had only told me,’ the doctor said. ‘You are my child. For you, I would have done it. For you, I would have gotten rid of the baby.’

“Barbara had trouble breathing. Her life evaporated before our eyes. She clutched her father’s wrist. She said, ‘I did not pleasure him enough,’ and gasped her last breath.

“Of course, I didn’t go to work that day. The doctor’s wife went crazy. She went to her room and began to pack. ‘I am leaving hell,’ she said. Thank God, no one asked where Barbara had gotten the matches. But then the doctor’s wife came up to me and yelled, ‘You live while your better died. I want you out of this house.’ She moved toward me, but Poor Anahid quickly shoved me behind her. The doctor’s wife slapped Poor Anahid and retreated to her room.

“Poor Anahid sent me to our room and told me not to come out no matter what was happening. I stayed there for hours and heard all kinds of things going on in the house. Then one of the pigeoneer’s assistants arrived. I thought he was going to ask me to go to work, but he told Zovik that Mehmet no longer had any need for my services. Mehmet also suggested that I leave town, because Eshkhan had vowed to kill me in front of four witnesses. He had been told that I whistled, captured his peşenk, and killed him with my own hands.

“It wasn’t true, of course. But who would believe me? I wouldn’t be able to convince Eshkhan. And if I did, then maybe Mehmet would kill me. I was in trouble. Zovik and Poor Anahid were crying in our room. The doctor’s wife was crying in hers.

“Poor Anahid and Zovik decided that I should leave as soon as possible. They were at their wits’ end and knew no one I could be sent to. I told them that I knew someone who might help. We left our room quietly, tiptoeing along the corridor, hoping not to be seen, and went to see Serhat Effendi. The effendi said I should go far away. He had a cousin stationed in Cairo. He had not written to him in a while, wasn’t sure where he was exactly, but the effendi could find out his address in a month’s time. Poor Anahid told him I didn’t have a month. He said I should go to Cairo anyway. There should be no problem finding his cousin, since there couldn’t be that many Turks in Cairo. He gave me a letter and money to buy train and boat tickets.

“The only thing I knew about Egypt was that Abraham and Moses and Hagar left it and were happy never to return. Back at home, Poor Anahid packed my few clothes. ‘You can’t go to Cairo,’ she said. ‘How will you find his cousin? That’s just crazy.’ ‘And do you think a Turk will take in an Armenian orphan just because his cousin asked him to?’ said Zovik. ‘You must go somewhere safer,’ said Poor Anahid. ‘Beirut. Go to Beirut. Seek out the Christians. Go to a monastery. They will feed you and care for you.’ I knew less about Beirut.

“I said my last goodbyes to Zovik and Poor Anahid. I didn’t say goodbye to my father,” my grandfather said to me. “I came to Beirut and created our story.”

The cold made me shiver, and I huddled closer to the stove. My grandfather drank his bitter tea, a palliative for his digestive problems. “When I’m no longer in this world,” Grandfather said, “and they ask whether you believed me, what will you say?”

I didn’t think he expected a reply. He sat next to his stove, looking dejected. His pant legs were pulled up high enough that I could see his pale, hairless shins.

“You’re eleven now,” he said, “and I was eleven.…” His voice trailed into nothingness before he whispered, “You know now who I am.” He removed the metal lid of the stove with the spatula and threw in his spent cigarette. He stood slowly, creakily, and stomped to his room. When he came out, he handed me an old white kerchief. “You are my blood,” he said. “This is for you.”

Inside the kerchief was a jewel, a tiny turquoise Fatima’s hand with dark-brown and black blood encrusted in its grooves.

Five

The entire palace buzzed with stories of Fatima’s arrival. Some said the slave girl had come back on a flying carpet, which rose back into the heavens after the traveler alighted. Fatima had returned with a herd of jeweled elephants. She was accompanied by a band of brigands or a thousand jinn. She wore a crown of rubies. She wore a robe of gold.

The emir and his wife interrupted their breakfast on the terrace and hurried into the palace. The vizier and the courtiers were gathered around Fatima in the throne room. Fatima greeted the emir and his wife with the requisite courtesy. The emir was oblivious to the change, but his wife realized, not without some weariness and concern, that the woman before them was no longer a slave. Fatima bowed too well. The emir insisted she regale them with stories of her adventures, and she did, albeit with a few omissions: adventures, yes; assignations, no.

“Will the healer be able to help us?” the emir’s wife asked.

“Absolutely. She gave me the cure.”

“And the underworld? You entered Afreet-Jehanam’s domain and he gave you back your hand?” the emir asked.

“He felt I earned it.”

“Preposterous,” the vizier scoffed.

“It was as I said,” Fatima replied.

“Are you certain?” the emir said. “No one can doubt your courage, Fatima. There is little need to salt and pepper the story.”

“She arrived on a flying carpet,” said one of the courtiers. “I saw her. She descended from the heavens.”

“The underworld is not up there,” the vizier said. “No man has ever descended to a demon’s lair and made it back alive. This tale is a lie. I would suggest the slave girl offer some proof of her exotic journey.”

“Would you be willing to place a wager?” Fatima asked. “If I produce proof, are you willing to surrender everything you have on you at this moment?”

And the vizier agreed. Fatima brought her left palm to her face and blew on it. Red dust appeared, multiplied, and formed a cloud that hovered before her. The imp Ishmael ran out of the dust. His brother Isaac followed, toward the vizier. “I claim all the gold,” he said. Fatima’s breath turned into orange dust upon touching her palm, and Ezra jumped out. Jacob ran out yelling, “The jewelry is all mine.” Job disagreed. “It is mine, I tell you.” The dust kept swirling above Fatima’s palm, then turned blue, and Noah emerged, followed by Elijah. Violet Adam was last.

“I must catch my breath,” Fatima said.

The eight little demons climbed all over the vizier, undressed him, relieved him of all possessions. They left him naked, mouth agape in shock. A mistake. “Help me, Ishmael,” Isaac said, pointing at the vizier’s mouth. The red brothers jumped back onto the vizier’s head. Isaac and Ishmael came away with his gold teeth.

“Quite a reasonable return,” Noah said.

“She bargains well,” Isaac said. “She is from Alexandria. We shall be rich in no time. A most fortunate partnership.”

“Next time, try to bet with someone wearing fur,” Ezra said. “I love sable.”

“You think as small as your mother’s vagina,” said Adam. “Next time, Sitt Fatima, have someone wager a harem.”

Fatima blew into her palm again, and white dust appeared. The imps sauntered into the cloud and faded. “I think that was proof enough,” she said, smiling lazily at the emir and smoothing the creases of her robe with the palms of her two hands.

When I arrived at the hospital room the second morning, my father was sitting up in bed, pillows fluffed behind his back, white tabs attached to his chest, smiling, trying his hardest to appear jovial and nonchalant. Another brush with the unmentionable inevitable averted. His face was pale and fatigued, but his eyes darted about the room as if operating on a separate generator. Lina suppressed her wariness, and weariness, doing her best imitation of Auntie Mame. “It’s going to be a glorious day,” she chirped. “We should call the restaurant and order. They just might run out of lamb.”

It was half past nine. Soon sunlight would begin to creep along the floor and fill the room, reducing the fluorescents to redundancy.

“I don’t think that’s necessary.” Even though my father hadn’t used his oxygen mask all morning, he held it in his hand.

“We can’t break with tradition just because we’re here. I’ll ask the restaurant not to use salt, and if they can’t, you’ll only eat a little. We can’t have Eid al-Adha without lamb.”

“I don’t think it’s wise to order,” my father said. “Samia will probably send us some of her meal when they’re done. She’ll be insulted if we order.”

“She doesn’t have to know,” Lina said. “She may forget about us, and if she doesn’t, do we really have to eat it? Can’t we have good lamb for a change?”

“You’re being mean. If anything is our tradition, it’s that we celebrate together, with Samia’s meal.”

I walked to the glass sliding door, saw a sliver of the sun perched atop a building across the street. The newer building looked colossal next to the little house with rotted shutters, two incompatible siblings with different genes.

The emir and his wife dragged Fatima into their private quarters to inquire about the cure. “The healer said it is about the stories,” Fatima said, “the tales you choose to tell. Your lordship likes romance, which is why you have twelve daughters. Girls like love stories, whereas boys love adventure stories. The next time you make love, make sure to tell an adventure story and not one of romance.”

“But I love stories of unrequited love,” the emir said, “of exalted suffering. I love desire and the obstacles lovers have to overcome. I do not like tales of killing, maiming, and trying to prove who is stronger than whom. Those can be devastatingly boring.”

“But adventure stories are the same as love stories,” his wife argued. “And no matter, you must tell me an adventure story tonight. It has been prescribed. This is so exciting. I will hear a new tale. Do not take offense, my dear, but your stories have been getting stale for a while, the buzzing of listless houseflies and not the bites of mosquitoes. I have cravings for adventure.”

That night, after coitus, the emir’s wife demanded her tale. “No romance,” she said. “No star-crossed lovers. I want a story that will engage a different organ, not my heart.”

“A sexual story, then,” the emir said.

“No, I want death and destruction. I want virile heroes who overcome evil. At least one city must be destroyed. I want a son and you want a son.”

“Virile heroes? How about faithful heroes? Wait. Wait. I know which story. I know now. Listen.” The emir began his story thus:

In the name of God, the most compassionate, the merciful.

Once, long before our age, the king of Egypt, ruler of the lands of Islam, was despondent because his realm was in disarray. The Crusaders thrived along the coast, behaved as if they owned the land. Corruption and perfidy dwelt in the hearts of the administrators of his realm. The foreigners were able to bribe, hoodwink, and deceive any official they chose. King Saleh wept in shame, for he knew that if he did not rule more wisely his great-grandfather Saladin, the great Kurdish hero who crushed the Crusaders and unified the lands, would not welcome him in paradise. King Saleh was watching that kingdom slowly crumble and putrefy.

One night, the honest king had a discomfiting dream. He called on the intelligentsia of the land, the philosophers, the judges, and the poets. “Hear me. I want to know whether last night was a propitious night for dreams.”

The wise men replied, “By all means, Your Majesty. Last night offered a clear vision. It was the seventeenth of the month. The moon was not blighted.”

“I was stranded in a desert, defenseless, surrounded by a thousand hyenas. But dust rose, and there appeared seventy-five magnificent lions. The lions attacked the hyenas, and, in a fierce battle, the grand ones annihilated their enemies and cleared the desert of the vermin. What can this dream mean?”

And the wise ones said, “Our lord, the hyenas are the nonbelievers and infidels who wish you harm. The lions are the righteous warriors who will protect you. It is imperative that you purchase seventy-five slaves to save the kingdom.”

The king informed the most honest slave-trader in the city that he required seventy-five Muslim boys fit for a king and palace life, twenty-five of them to be Circassians, twenty-five Georgians, and twenty-five Azeris. The slaver said, “But, Your Majesty, we have nothing like this in the city. One would have to visit the big slave-markets closer to their lands for an order of that size. I have a keen eye for good slaves and a keener ear for differing tongues, but I am no longer the man who can go on this quest. The past years have been hard for my trade, and I have run up much debt. I would surely be arrested by my debtors on my travels, and my belongings, slaves or money, would be confiscated. I was famous and successful once, but my fortune drowned in the Red Sea and was overwhelmed in a sandstorm in the Sahara.”

And the king’s astute vizier asked, “Master slaver, may I test your ear? From my tongue, can you gather my origin?”

“Surely, my lord. Your father is a Turk and your mother is Moroccan.”

The king knew he had the man for the job. He ordered his assistants to write a decree saying that the slaver worked for the king and should not be interfered with, and that any of his debts could be collected from the king’s treasury. He ordered his treasurer to pay the man the price of the slaves, and set aside compensation for the slaver’s labor to be paid upon delivery. He ordered his tailors to make the slaver a better outfit, and to bring forth seventy-six fancy slave-costumes. “For I have one more request,” the king said. “I want one more boy.” The king’s audience looked puzzled, for he seemed to be speaking mechanically, as if he were reciting a godly lesson. “The boy must be intelligent, strong, precocious, and witty. He must have memorized the Koran. A beautiful face he must have. A lion’s folds must appear between his eyes. A beauty mark, its color red, will be found on his left cheek. And he must answer to the name of Mahmoud. If you find him upon your travels, bring him to me, for he is the one.”

“My dear Salwa,” my father called as my niece entered the hospital room, “why are you here? It’s a holiday. Shouldn’t you be relaxing at home with your husband?”

“For heaven’s sake, where else will we be today?” Salwa said as her husband followed her in. My father’s face brightened at Hovik’s appearance. I wondered how long it would take my father to poke fun at his Armenianness. Not long. Hovik was fourth-generation Beiruti, and of the four languages he spoke he was least fluent in Armenian, but my father could never resist the temptation to mock his origins. My father always spoke to him in the grammatically incorrect Lebanese dialect the first immigrants were known for. And Hovik loved it.

After helping Salwa to the recliner, he kissed my father and replied to his questions in the bad dialect, mixing the gender of nouns and chuckling. He looked so young in contrast to my father, whose cross-hatched wrinkles, those not thrown into shadow by his enormous nose, multiplied as he laughed.

“Go home,” my father told him, using the feminine.

“I am home,” he replied.

The emir of Bursa heard there was a slaver in town in possession of a decree from King Saleh. The emir asked the slaver the reason for his arrival, and the slaver explained King Saleh’s request. The emir said, “You must be my guest for three days, to rest and recuperate. You can try the slave markets in the city, but I do not believe they will have all the boys you are looking for. After you have gathered your strength, you can try the markets farther north.” The slaver thanked the emir for his generosity.

Upon finishing the morning prayers on his second day, the slaver heard a seductive sound. Was it the buzzing of early bees or the cooing of mourning doves? The faint sound flooded his heart. He followed it until he reached one of the palace’s courtyards. Around a shimmering pool sat boys reading the Koran, and the sound bewitched the slaver. An Azeri boy called Aydmur broke the spell by asking, “What can we do for you, my lord?” And the slaver said he was the guest of the emir and wondered who they were. “We are slaves to the most honorable emir. We are Circassians, Georgians, and Azeris. We are all Muslims. Every one of the seventy-five of us is the scion of a king, a famous warrior, or an emir, but fate has determined to make us owned.”

At lunch, the slaver said to the emir, “My lord, when I told you yesterday that King Saleh wished to purchase a group of slaves, you replied that such a group could not be found in this city. Yet I found exactly what I was searching for in your courtyard.”

Light left the emir’s face, and dark settled in. “I said you could not find such a group for sale. Those boys belong to me, and I do not wish to part with them. They are to become my personal guards.”

The slaver felt his heart failing, for he could not argue.

That night, the emir was startled during a dream. He felt a hand touch his chest, and the face of fate appeared before him. The hand became a millstone, and his heart tightened. His breathing became labored. He could not muster the energy to twitch a muscle, and his soul wished to escape his body. And the face said, “Let my slaves go.” The millstone turned back into the hand, and the emir could breathe again. The face disintegrated, and as it disappeared it said, “Do not accept any payment less than seventy-five thousand dinars. Demand eighty-five thousand first, and settle for seventy-five.”

Before they could wear their new clothes, the boys were sent to the baths. While washing, the slave Aydmur noticed a sickly boy by himself in a corner, having trouble breathing the steam-laden air. Aydmur, the Azeri, asked, “Stranger, may I be of assistance?”

And the sickly boy said, “I am weak. My master is inside this room, and I must wait here even though the air is much too heavy.”

Aydmur’s heart ached as he watched the boy suffer, and he began to cry. When the slaver asked Aydmur why he was sad, the slave said, “The sight of this boy’s suffering wounds my soul.” The slaver asked the boy his name, and the boy said, “My name is Mahmoud.” The slaver asked, “Do you know the Book of God?” and the boy replied, “I have memorized the Koran.”

The boy had a beauty mark on his left cheek, but it was blue and not red. The slaver hesitated, then said, “You are a weak boy and not much use to anyone. Your owner must consider you a worthless burden.” And life rushed through Mahmoud’s face. “I am anything but worthless,” he said. The lion’s folds appeared at the bridge of his nose. “I am the son of kings.” The blue beauty mark turned red. “I am worth more than a rude man can afford.”

“Then I thank God, the merciful, that my king is not a rude man,” the slaver said, and begged Mahmoud’s forgiveness. The slaver asked to see Mahmoud’s owner, a Persian, and paid him for the boy. He turned Mahmoud over to Aydmur and said, “Take your brother and wash him. When he is clean, dress him in this remaining suit. Our mission here is done. We will begin our journey home after the baths.”

Aunt Nazek and her daughters arrived next. My father asked why they were not at home celebrating, but he couldn’t mask his glee. Aunt Nazek appeared surprised at his surprise. “We’re here to wish you a Happy Eid,” she told my father. “We’re all coming. I thought you knew that.”

“I’m not here to wish him a happy holiday.” Her daughter May bent down to kiss my father. “I’m here for my quarter.”

My father laughed. “If I had one, I would give it to no one but you.”

“Well, then, you must have one.” May opened her purse, took out some coins, and handed them to my father.

“By God. Where did you ever find them? I haven’t seen these in twenty years.”

Fatima swept into the room, all pomp and perfume, hugged me, and climbed on the bed next to my father. Having lost her father at an early age, she treated mine as hers, and he adored her like no other. She wiggled one arm under him, hugged him, and laid her head on his pillows, scrunching her coiffed hair. My sister joined them on the other side. She took one of the quarters, held it up to the light, and examined it as if it were a perfect diamond instead of a coin that had lost any value after the old currency’s collapse. “You used to be able to buy so much with it,” she told her daughter. “Not like today, when you can’t buy anything for thousands of pounds.”

“Don’t listen to your mother,” Fatima said. “Other people may have been able to buy things with a quarter, but it wasn’t your mother. She just likes to pretend.”

“In my time,” my father added, “I used to be so proud if I earned a quarter in one day.”

Aunt Samia knocked and walked in with her daughter, Little Mona.

Lina held the quarter up. “Look.”

“Oh my God.” Mona grinned. “Blessed Eid al-Adha. Look, Mother. A quarter. Do you remember those?”

“Of course,” responded Aunt Samia. “Do you think I’m brain-dead? Where are the boys?” She looked left and right, as if her sons could be hiding in the corners. “Listen,” she said to Lina. “I already talked to the guard, so I don’t want any problems from you. It’s Eid al-Adha, and we’re all going to be here. But where is everybody?”

At first, I didn’t know what she was talking about. I thought she was just being her usual odd self. Even my father, who understood her better than anyone, missed what she said.

“Your boys are at your home, where they should be, waiting for the meal,” my father said. “They’re with their families, my dear.”

“Don’t be stupid, brother. We can’t bring the kids here. This is a hospital. The in-laws are feeding them.” Tin Can’s wife came in and greeted everyone, then Mona’s husband. Hafez, his wife, and their eldest son followed. It was when Aunt Samia said, “I need to sit. I’m not going to eat standing up,” that my father understood. His face reddened. He looked ecstatic.

The convoy entered Damascus, where its ruler, Issa al-Nasser, saw the Circassians and told the slaver, “Those boys look more like women than men,” and when he saw the others added, “These are a little better,” and when he saw Mahmoud, “This one is too ill. Why did you not discard him along the way and save yourself the burden?”

In the morning, when they were leaving Damascus, one of the slaver’s debtors stopped him. “You owe me one hundred dinars,” the man said, “and I will not let you leave without payment.”

The slaver said, “Brother, let me pass this one time. I am on an urgent mission for the king. I have a royal decree. You will get paid, but let it not be now.”

“Then I will take this boy until I get paid.”

Mahmoud’s new owner took him to his wife, whose name was Wasila, and who was the meanest of women, as mean as seven hives of African wasps. She examined the sickly lad. “He is not much of a boy, but he will do,” and she began to assign him the difficult jobs: carrying the mortar from one room to the next, cleaning the outhouse, filing the corns and bunions on her feet. Mahmoud grew sicker, yet Wasila would not relent. “He is going to die soon anyway,” she was heard to say, “so why should I not make use of his brief stay in the world?”

And the boy ran away. He walked into the desert. That night, the twenty-seventh of Ramadan, the holy month, Mahmoud lay down on the sand to die. He had been ill for too long. He was hungry, thirsty, and alone. But the hours passed and he neither slept nor died. When the night was two-thirds spent, by God’s will the sky opened its doors and there appeared before Mahmoud’s young eyes a dome of light so pure. From the heavens the light shone upon the land. He saw everything before him for leagues and leagues. He heard no sound, no rooster crow, no dog bark, no tree rustle. This was the true Night of Fate. The boy stood on his feet with difficulty and announced upward, “Hear me, O Lord. I beg Your forgiveness and plead for Your mercy. I beseech Thee, Almighty, in honor of this sacred, propitious night, to grant me this wish. Make me a king. Let me rule Egypt and the Levant and the rest of the lands of Islam. Bless me with victories over Your enemies and mine. Between my shoulders, plant the resolve of forty men, and I will sow Your will upon this earth. Make me Your king. Make me Your servant. You are the grantor. You are the powerful. You are the merciful. There is no God but You.”

And the boy was healed.

The next morning, Mahmoud returned to his mistress, Wasila, and begged her forgiveness for running away. “Forgiveness is not mine to give,” Wasila said, “and neither is mercy, so do not ask.” She pulled the boy by the ear, dragged him to the backyard, and tied him to a pole. First she slapped his face, then she hit him. But she decided that was not enough of a punishment. She built a fire and raised a burning stick to flog him with. And God sent her sister-in-law, Latifah, to knock on her door. When Latifah entered, Mahmoud yelled, “I am at your mercy, my lady, for I am your neighbor.”

Latifah saw the boy and pleaded with Wasila: “Forgive this boy, for my sake.” And Wasila said, “I do not forgive, nor do I wish to, and who are you to interfere with my affairs?”

Sitt Latifah grew angry. She untied the boy and walked him over to her house. And she called for a judge and for two notaries.

When her brother arrived to claim the boy, Sitt Latifah asked in front of witnesses, “Have you bought this boy?” and her brother replied, “No. He is mine as security. His owner owes me one hundred dinars, and I will not let go of him until I receive my payment.”

Sitt Latifah paid her brother one hundred dinars. “The boy is now mine.” She turned to the judge and the notaries. “Ask this man, my brother, whether I have anything of his that belonged to our mother or father.” They did, and her brother replied that nothing of hers was his. “Then note this down,” Sitt Latifah said, “for I do not wish him or his to claim anything at a future date. And note this, and make it binding. All my money and all that is mine, all that I own and all that my hand grasps, belongs to this boy once I depart this world. If God will have me, I will leave with only a piece of cloth, and the rest will remain with the boy, whom I will take as my son. I will call him Baybars, the name of my deceased son, for he looks like him. To all I have said, you are witnesses.”

Samia’s son Anwar and Tin Can rolled in a gurney topped with crates of food, forcing everyone to move closer together. The aroma of roast lamb instantly vanquished the medicinal smells. Lina was about to say something, but she held back, overcome and overwhelmed.

“No, no,” Aunt Samia said. “Take it outside. There’s not enough space in the room. There’s more family coming. We can serve ourselves.”

“So much food,” Aunt Nazek said.

“So much of us,” Aunt Samia replied. “And what about the other patients? Who’s going to bring them lamb on Eid al-Adha?”

“My lovely Samia,” my father said, “what have you done? You’re going to have Adha here? In a hospital room?”

Aunt Samia looked confused and unsure. “Of course she is,” Lina piped in. “Since we can’t take you to her house, she brings her house to you.”

“Exactly,” Aunt Samia said. “What did you think? I even brought my silverware and china. I’m not going to have my Adha meal on cheap plates. Do you know how long it took the boys to get everything up here? Two lambs I cooked. Not a smidgen of salt. You’re my brother. For you, I won’t put salt in my meal, but only for you. Now, where’s everybody else?”

Baybars became Sitt Latifah’s blessed son, and she doted on him. One day, as mother and son walked through the souk, Baybars admired a bow. The merchant asked if he liked it, and the boy told him it was magnificent. The merchant said the bow was made by a famous hero two hundred years earlier, had been used by none other than the great Saladin, and Baybars could have such a masterpiece for the measly sum of two dinars. Baybars said, “My dear man, that is a bargain. This is the most beautiful instrument I have seen.” Sitt Latifah giggled. Baybars blushed and asked, “Are you laughing at me, dear lady?”

And Sitt Latifah replied, “No, my son, I am laughing at fate.”

She removed her veil, and the merchant saw her face and bowed. “My lady,” he said. “Please accept my apologies. I did not know.”

Latifah ignored the seller and spoke to her son. “This is not a bow worthy of you. It is cheap, terribly crafted, and has a will of its own. No warrior has ever touched it or ever will. Come, allow me to show you your destiny.” When she reached their house, Sitt Latifah led Baybars through the courtyard. She stood before a door, took a key from her cleavage, and opened the door. Baybars saw a hall with hundreds of bows and thousands of arrows, enough for an entire army. He picked the closest bow and realized he had been naïve. The merchant had lied. And his mother said, “I am called Latifah the bowmaker, because my father was a bowmaker, and my grandfather was before him, and his father was before that. All the heroes of our world had to visit Damascus to purchase bows from our workshop. And you, my glorious Baybars, stumble upon its hearth.” Sitt Latifah gestured toward the entire room. “This is now yours. All of it belongs to you, but it may behoove you to pick one weapon and call it yours.”

At first, Baybars considered the bows, but then he looked around and saw daggers, spears, bows, and swords that shone with a heavenly brilliance and beauty. One Damascene sword looked common, did not call attention to itself. He picked it up and noticed the exquisite workmanship. He placed it under his belt, and the sword radiated warmth to his belly.

One morning, Baybars watched another boy carry a pail up a ladder leaning against the barn. The boy entered an upper door, and Baybars followed him. Baybars saw the boy tying a rope around the pail’s handle and asked him what he was doing. “I have to feed al-Awwar,” the boy replied. “He will not let anybody into the barn, so the only way we can feed him is to lower his food from up here.” Baybars looked over the edge and saw a great blue-black horse huffing and puffing, pawing at the ground. “Is he really one-eyed?” Baybars asked.

“No,” the boy answered. “His eyes are as keen as a falcon’s. He is called Awwar because he has a white patch over one eye only. Do you see it?”

“Yes, and he has a white mustache as well.”

“True,” the boy said, “but do not make fun or he will get very angry. He is terribly fond of his mustache. And do you see the curvy white lines between his shoulders? The mistress says these lines run exactly like the Euphrates and the Nile.”

“Then this is my horse,” Baybars said. “I will ride him.”

The boy informed Baybars that no one could ride the horse, but Baybars untied the rope from the pail and knotted it around his waist. “Let me down and you will see.” The boy held on to the rope, Baybars descended slowly, and al-Awwar stared. The horse snorted, retreated, and then attacked. Baybars began to climb the rope as it was being let down. Al-Awwar’s head struck Baybars’s buttocks, and he began to swing like the tongue of a church bell. He called for help. Al-Awwar watched with a bemused look. After Baybars was pulled back to the top, he leaned over the edge and spoke these words: “I shall return.”

An army sergeant by the name of Lou’ai arrived at the house that afternoon and asked if he could speak to Baybars. The sergeant said, “My lord, I understand you wish to ride a great horse, and I have one for sale. Please, let me show you.” And there, on the street, was a magnificent roan stallion. “You can have him for forty dinars only. He is worth a lot more, but I can no longer keep him. He has been my trustworthy companion, but I have not been paid for months. I cannot feed my children, let alone feed him. He deserves a good owner.”

Baybars saw the horse’s eyes follow every move of Sergeant Lou’ai. “This is your horse,” Baybars said. “You should not be separated, for you have been faithful to each other.” He asked the sergeant to wait. He went into the house and returned with fifty dinars. “I offer this for teaching me a lesson in loyalty. May your horse continue to be your honest companion for many years to come.”

“Your generosity claims no boundaries,” the sergeant said. “The doors of paradise will forever be open to you.”

On the second day, back in the barn, the servant boy lowered Baybars, who held an apple in his hand. Al-Awwar approached and smelled the apple. He snorted, retreated, and attacked. He hit Baybars in the exact same spot as on the previous day, and Baybars went swinging again. This time, Baybars did not call for help. On the third day, Baybars was dropped with two pears. Al-Awwar approached, smelled the pears, and ate them. Baybars was pleased. When the horse finished his meal, he snorted, retreated, and attacked. Baybars swung happily. On the fourth day, Baybars was dropped with a bunch of grapes. Al-Awwar had him swinging after finishing off the fruit. On the fifth day, Baybars had seven figs, and al-Awwar ate to his heart’s content and allowed the bearer to stay. But the horse would not let Baybars approach him. Whenever Baybars moved, the horse was sure to sidestep in the opposite direction. “Allow me on your back,” Baybars pleaded. “Let me see the rivers and the land between your shoulders, for I will rule these lands one day. Be my horse, be my friend.”

On the sixth day, Baybars descended with three sheets of amareddine, the dried-apricot paste. And this time, the horse loved the feast so much he licked Baybars’s face, but when Baybars bent to pick up the saddle, al-Awwar attacked again.

That night, Baybars complained to Sitt Latifah, and she said, “No one has been able to ride al-Awwar, because he is a war stallion. He can only be ridden by a great warrior.”

“But I will be a great warrior.”

“So will every boy,” Latifah said. “I cannot help you. I can, however, tell you a story about our great stallions. Listen, and hear me. Once, a long time ago, in an age long past, in a time of heroes and wars, there were three stallions. Heroes had ridden them during many battles, from one war to the next. The three horses grew old and weary. The heroes who had inherited them decided to set their steeds free as a reward for their years of faithful service. The horses were unbridled and unsaddled, unyoked into the wilds. The horses ran with the sand winds. Free at last. The heroes watched them gallop with an abandon that had not been seen in years. The horses ran toward a river to drink and wash themselves. Suddenly the sound of a bugle was heard, and the horses froze. The river lay before them, the bugle sound behind, and the great horses were torn. The heroes watched aghast as their stallions returned to them at a slow trot. A boy had amused himself by playing the bugle, and the horses returned for war. Those horses were the ancestors of all the great Arabians, which is why all warriors, from the far isles of Europe to the great mountains of China, have descendants of the three horses as their steeds.”

Baybars kissed the top of Latifah’s head and thanked her for the story. And on the seventh day, Baybars descended with three sheets of amareddine and a bugle. When al-Awwar finished eating, Baybars played “al-Khayal”: “I am the rider, let us ride.”

And Baybars rode al-Awwar out into the desert. He rode far from Damascus, rode until he reached the mountains west of the city, until both he and his horse were encapsuled in a sheen of sweat. Upon their return, as they neared the city, the sword shook. Baybars placed his hand upon it and felt it quiver once more. Al-Awwar stopped. Four men waited for Baybars to approach. He nudged his horse and rode slowly and warily forth.

“Greetings, traveler,” the leader said. He was Damascene, but his three slaves were as dark as oak bark. They were muscular and huge; their horses looked like ponies beneath them. They were mighty warriors from the land of the rivers on the far coast of the enigmatic continent.

“Greetings, but I am not a traveler,” Baybars said. “I am returning home.”

“No matter,” the man interrupted. “To continue on this road, you must pay a toll.”

“This is a public road to Damascus. Does the ruler of the city know about this?”

“Commander Issa is my cousin. He suggested I earn a living, and I have taken his advice. Consider your payment a kindness tax. It is my generosity that allows you to breathe. Pay tribute to my benevolence or my African slaves will cut you and set free your captive soul.”

Baybars bowed his head. “Then I fear I must repay your kindness,” he said. When Baybars lifted his head back up, al-Awwar charged the men. The sword unsheathed itself, its action moving faster than its master’s will. The leader quickly retreated behind his slaves and cowered. Al-Awwar understood which of the men was the target. The stallion squeezed between the slaves’ horses and attacked the leader’s stallion, causing its rider to fall off. Al-Awwar stomped the coward dead.

And then Baybars’s sword had to parry the attacks of the three powerful warriors. With each blow, Baybars felt his bones rattle, yet his weapon would not give or break. One warrior attacked from the right, one from the left, and the last tried to get to Baybars from the front. Al-Awwar shoved the first horse and drove the second to the ground. He frightened the third enough that it jerked back; Baybars’s sword thrust forward, past the warrior’s defenses, and stopped before his heart. A drop of blood appeared on the sword, but it did not pierce farther. The warrior looked down upon the weapon and saw his doom.

“A dishonorable cat plays with its prey before the kill. Finish this.”

“I choose not to,” Baybars said, “for I have no quarrel with you or your friends. I wish to return home. Leave me be and you are free to do as you please.”

“If the situation were reversed, you would not be alive.”

“Then I am happy it is not,” Baybars replied. “If you wish to die, so be it. I am providing an alternative.”

The warrior’s chest inflated; Baybars’s sword retreated but did not disengage. “If you do not kill us,” the African said, “then we will become your slaves.”

Baybars put his sword in its scabbard. “I cannot own you, for I myself am owned. Go,” the future slave-king said. “May God guide your path.”

“He has,” the mighty warrior said. “We choose to serve you till our dying days.”

The ruler of Damascus, Issa al-Nasser, called for Baybars and demanded information about his cousin. “He did not return to his house last night,” said the commander, “and yesterday you entered the city with his slaves.”

“The man sought to rob me,” Baybars replied. The commander was horrified to hear the news. He called on his vizier to imprison and try Baybars for murder. The vizier explained that no crime had been committed: Baybars acted in self-defense, and there were witnesses. They could not arrest Baybars in daylight. Syrian justice needed to be meted out surreptitiously.

That evening, as Baybars walked through the yard toward the outhouse, six soldiers jumped over the wall and attacked him from behind. They covered him with a large burlap sack soaked in an anesthetic potion. They carried him over the wall and took him outside the city gate. The soldiers rode into the desert until they arrived at a Bedouin camp. One of them told the chief of the tribe, “Here is the boy, and here is the promised bag of gold. The commander wishes never to see this ugly boy’s face again. Take him with you to the holy desert, and sell him to a ruthless owner. Or kill him. The commander does not care, as long as he gets rid of the troublemaker. The boy is wily. Do not let him escape.”

“Escape?” the chief asked. “We have killed men for lesser insults. We have transported boys across the deserts for generations. Go. Return to your corrupt city, and tell your master the boy has vanished for all eternity.”

The Bedouins did not have a full understanding of the concept of time. Eternity did not last the night. When Baybars did not appear for dinner, Sitt Latifah called her servants and asked if anyone had seen him. None knew the whereabouts of their master. The three African warriors announced that they would search for Baybars.

Baybars awoke to the feel of a hand covering his mouth. He could not move his roped arms. The face of a man coalesced before him, and the mouth said, “Be quiet.” And the man untied Baybars. “Come with me,” he said. “Quietly.”

Baybars followed the man out of the tent. At the opening, a Bedouin lay on the ground. An ear-to-ear gash spoke of the Bedouin’s immobility. The rescuer led him away. Shortly thereafter, Baybars heard the whinnying of al-Awwar, and he felt joy. The African warriors held the reins of Baybars’s stallion. “I believe you should never be separated from this,” one of the warriors said, handing Baybars his sword. Baybars thanked him and mounted al-Awwar.

Baybars’s savior climbed into his saddle. “You may not have recognized me.”

“I may not have recognized you at first,” Baybars said, “but even in such poor light, no one can mistake the beauty of your glorious roan. I am grateful, Sergeant.”

“The gratitude is mine,” Sergeant Lou’ai said. “When your warriors inquired about you, I was thankful to be given the chance to be of service. Finding you could never be a problem. All I had to do was ask your horse.”

Baybars suggested they return to the city, but the sergeant and the warriors objected. “These Bedouins are now your mortal enemies,” one of the warriors said. “They will never rest until they avenge the dishonor of your escape. You do not leave enemies behind. There are only thirty of them.”

“But we cannot kill them while they sleep,” Baybars said. “Do we have to wait till morning?”

“Not at all,” another warrior said. He struck a flint and lit a torch. He unleashed a burning arrow high into the night. The warrior unshackled a ferocious war cry. “Wake up, cowards,” he shouted. “You are about to die. Arise, heathens, and face your death.”

Baybars led the mighty warriors into battle. As his sword killed its first victim, and the first drop of an enemy’s blood stained his tunic, our hero banished the child he once was. The warriors massacred the Bedouins. Upon his return to the city, Baybars split the battle’s spoils among the five of them, but he handed the bag of gold to the sergeant. “Would you please inform the ruler of Damascus that I believe he may have misplaced this?”

We ate in all kinds of positions, standing, seated, kneeling, silverware clanking, shoulder to shoulder, back to back, crowded in a hospital room, as good an Adha meal as the family had ever had. Loud followed by sated quiet. My sister kept her eyes fixed on my father to gauge his condition. Tin Can, wiping lamb sheen off his black beard, announced that he had better get back to work. “I’m too stuffed to walk, but I have to,” he said.

Everyone took this as an exit cue and began to leave. Finally, only Lina, Salwa, Hovik, and I remained with my father. He clutched the oxygen mask in his hand a little tighter. “Are you all right?” my sister asked him. She took the mask from his hand and placed it on his face. He wasn’t. The panic in his eyes startled me.

Thirty minutes later, we had to call Tin Can back, because my father’s breathing became labored, and water had resettled in the swamps of his lungs.

Commander Issa lounged on a divan and contemplated the bag of gold on the brass table. He gulped his wine. He was entertaining the king’s emissary, who had arrived from Egypt to collect taxes. A feast of delicacies lay before them. “I do not understand why you are allowing an inconsequential matter of an errant boy to trouble you,” his guest said.

“Inconsequential?” the commander huffed. “The damned boy killed my cousin.”

“But you were about to kill your cousin,” the taxman mumbled with his mouth full. “You said he was an embarrassment to manhood. The boy did you a favor.”

“I can kill my cousin if I wish, because he’s family. This boy, Baybars, is impudent.”

“Why not do what everyone does with impudent boys? Send him to Cairo. Let him become the king’s problem. Invite him for lunch, and I will impress him with the glory of Cairo and its court. I have yet to meet a boy who does not wish to be king.”

Every cook in the palace worked on the following day’s luncheon. Baybars could not believe his eyes or his nose or his tongue. The king’s emissary said the feast was nothing compared with the grandness of the king’s meals. He talked of the excitement of the holy court and regaled Baybars with tales of honor and glory. “The riches of Cairo,” the emissary said, “are beyond a mere boy’s imagination. Every hero from across the seas sails for the city to prove his mettle. It is the only home for men of worth.”

“I must visit,” Baybars said.

“You must.”

“I must ask my mother’s permission.”

“You must.”

Sitt Latifah was not happy to have her son leave, but she realized that he was smitten. “You have an aunt in Cairo,” she told him. “Her husband is an important vizier. I will write my sister so she may care for you. Ask all those who believe in you to follow you there, so you will not be alone. I will pack enough so you will want for nothing in Egypt. And ask God, the merciful, to watch over you.”

And Baybars prepared to meet his destiny.