The Hakawati

Six

So — what do you think of the emir’s story?” Fatima asked Afreet-Jehanam. She was lying in her lover’s arms, on the bed of slithering snakes, relaxing and unwinding. She could feel the changes in her body, but she still did not look pregnant.

The jinni, stroking her sensuously, said, “The emir is a good storyteller.”

She shifted her naked weight onto her elbow so she could face him. The snakes released by her movement rearranged themselves. “Is it a good adventure story?”

Afreet-Jehanam stretched and yawned. “The story of Baybars is many lifetimes old. There are numerous versions.”

“I am loving it,” said Ishmael, who was on his knees scrubbing the floor. The imps busied themselves with their chores. Hither and thither they ran.

“Me, too,” Noah chimed in. “It is a delightful story.”

“True,” said Fatima, “but it sounds to me like many of his other stories, without the sentimental romance. Is this tale adventuresome enough? Will this story, unlike his earlier ones, produce the desired effect, a son to inherit his throne?”

“That was your rule,” said the jinni. “I thought you made it up.”

“I did, but I know it to be true.”

“Maybe fate does not wish them to have a son.”

“Ah, fate,” she said. “Is fate anything more than what man chooses to do? Is fate not our expectations of ourselves?”

“If it is true, they will have a son,” Afreet-Jehanam said, “but since the tale being told is not the most traditional of adventure stories, not enough killing and pillaging, he will not grow to be the greatest of warriors.”

“Then he will grow to be wise,” she said. “But the emir’s tale and its hero are young yet. Let us be patient and see what transpires.”

“Whatever may transpire, we can be sure the son will be different,” said the jinni.

“Wonderful.” Ishmael jumped up and down gleefully. “He will be able to decorate that horror of a castle.”

“Oh, great,” said Isaac. “Just what the world needs, another accessorizer.”

Suddenly all the snakes hissed as one, and the scorpions raised their tails and readied their stingers. The crows and bats descended in droves from above. Afreet-Jehanam sat up, a snarl upon his face. But the snarl remained frozen like that of a once-feared predator after a visit to the taxidermist. A magician in white robes and a long white beard materialized out of nothingness. His hand unleashed a white beam that froze the jinni stock-still. The crows attacked first, but hit an invisible shield around the magician and fell stunned to the floor. The bats followed. The snakes spat their venom from below, but it hit the shield and dripped down slowly to the ground. The traces left by the viscous poisons showed the shield to be egg-shaped. With his other hand, the magician let loose a force upon each imp and sent them all crashing into the walls. And his eyes turned to naked Fatima. He waved his arm and waved it again. Fatima felt the talisman, the turquoise hand with its inlaid eye, grow warm between her breasts. Regaining her senses after the initial shock, she bent down, picked up her sword, and charged the magician. Before she reached him, he began to fade. “Whore,” he called before he completely disappeared. She turned around to find her lover gone.

On a Monday morning in June 1967, near the end of term, Madame Shammas entered our class without knocking, not allowing us time to stand up and greet her respectfully. Businesslike, she marched swiftly to Nabeel Ayoub and announced, “Please get your things, son. Your father is here to take you home.” Voice gentle yet authoritative.

Nabeel stood up, bewildered initially, then looked slyly at his classmates, his seated nonspecial friends. He hurriedly packed his things and left the room behind Madame Shammas.

Our teacher, Madame Saleh, stared at the closing door, outside which a muffled rush of high heels echoed. “I want you to behave yourselves, children,” she said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She walked to the door, stopped, turned around, almost caught me stuffing a piece of paper in my mouth. She addressed the bespectacled girl two seats to my right. “Mira, I’m leaving you in charge.”

My spitball missed Mira’s back. Her chestnut pigtail swung like a pendulum as she walked to the front. The class was atwitter, nervous with pent-up energy. We knew we were supposed to misbehave because Madame Saleh was out, but we didn’t know exactly what to do. We settled on throwing crumpled paper at Mira and hissing every time she yelled, “Shut up.”

Ten minutes later, the class was in an uproar. Madame Shammas announced on the intercom that we all should get our things ready to be picked up. The Israelis had begun the war.

Traffic congealed as parents came to collect their children. Some of the adults were nervous, some angry, a few nonchalant. I saw a tiny bump of an accident and two almosts, because the cars were in a hurry. I waited, but no one came for me. The maid had told Madame Shammas that my mother was at her weekly visit to the hairdresser.

One of my favorite programs was Lost in Space. I thought of the Israelis as space aliens. They’re not like us, people said. They come from all over the place and keep coming. They’re foreigners, people said. Godless.

Finally. “There you are, champ,” Uncle Jihad said. He had walked from his apartment, which was right next to ours, not too far from school — five streets, four turns, three jasmine vines, two jacarandas, and one white-oleander bush away.

“There’s a war,” I yelled, jumping up and down.

“Don’t worry.” Uncle Jihad’s belly shook as he laughed, his bald head glittered in the sun. “It’s very far from here.” I hadn’t thought of worrying.

Uncle Jihad walked in a manner that suggested all was proper in the world. I trotted behind him, my eyes unable to stray from the back of his turquoise jacket. He wore his clothes the way a peacock fanned his tail. “Keep up with me,” he said cheerfully.

I grasped the offered hand. I loved his well-manicured fingers and the light smell of lotion emanating from them. We walked hand in hand down the street, a spring in our step.

A radio from a coffee shop across the street screamed that we must dig trenches with our fingernails. “The Palestinian Resistance can be so delightfully melodramatic,” Uncle Jihad said.

The beasts of the underworld looked to Fatima for guidance. The snakes coiled about themselves, holding their heads high, waiting. They looked like thousands of miniature minarets, tiny lighthouses in an infinite sea without a shore. The bats and crows, too stunned to fly, began to gather in groups of their own kind. Fatima sought the imps. One by one she found them, shocked and woozy.

Adam wept. Ezra wailed. “My brother,” Job cried. Each imp shed tears of skin-matching color. “Our brother is gone,” Elijah moaned. “We’ll never see him again,” Noah added. And the scorpions and spiders and the beasts of the underworld joined in mourning.

“Wait,” interrupted Fatima. “What happened? Who was that white son of a whore? Where has he taken Afreet-Jehanam?”

“Do not mention the name of the departed to the bereaved,” Isaac said. “It grates our hearts.” He shook his head in dismay.

“The name of the magician is King Kade, the master of light,” Ishmael said.

“He loathes the underworld and its inhabitants,” Ezra said.

“Considers us parasites,” added Noah.

“His mission is to rid the world of dark,” said Jacob. “That is his vow. Are we dark? Look at me. I am yellow.”

“He is obsessed with jinn,” Ishmael said, “but he does not attempt to use our power. He kidnaps the powerful jinn and tortures them. He chains and whips them, forces them to work on his palaces before he kills them. He had Mithras, the mighty demon, paint a giant mural of bucolic scenes. As he painted, King Kade’s angels threw darts at him and they touched up the mural with dabs of white, dab, dab, dart, dab, dab, dart. And then King Kade sucked the life out of Mithras. Oh, Afreet-Jehanam, my poor brother. What tragedy awaits you.”

“Stop this,” Fatima yelled. “What has become of you? Why are you bemoaning your brother’s fate already? First, we will find that white idiot and kill him; we will annihilate him for coming into our realm without an invitation. After that, we will bring my lover home.”

“No,” said the imps, all eight of them in one voice. “We cannot.”

“Then I will go alone,” Fatima said. “You sit here and cower if you choose. I will fight the bastard myself.”

“There is no hope,” said Ishmael. “He wove a potent spell eons ago. Nothing from the underworld, living or not, can harm him. The most powerful jinn have tried to no avail. Creatures mightier than all of us combined have declared war upon him. The spell he wove cannot be undone. He cannot be conquered by anyone from the underworld.”

“But I am not from here,” announced Fatima. “I will defeat him.”

One by one, the little imps’ facial expressions changed, their demeanor transformed. Ishmael stood up first. “I may not be of any use at the great encounter, but I will make sure you get there.”

“And I will confound his armies,” Job said.

“I will get the carpet,” said Noah.

“Get a few,” said Elijah. “It is a long trip — why be cramped?”

“Come, my lovelies,” Jacob said. He raised his arms and created a yellow orb of mist above his head. The bats flew into it and disappeared. Elijah invited the crows into his sphere, and Adam brought the snakes, the scorpions, and the spiders.

“Let us be on our way,” commanded Fatima, sitting on one of the carpets.

“Upon thy head, King Kade,” said Isaac, “we declare war.”

“North,” said Ishmael. “We go to the land of fog and rain, the land of ice and snow, the land of infinite skies.”

“No, not yet,” said Fatima. “First, I go home.”

Once upon a time, the oud was my instrument, my companion, my lover. I played it between the two wars, started taking lessons during the Six-Day War and gave them up during the Yom Kippur War, a period of seven years.

My mother had wanted me to take piano lessons. “The lessons will be good for you,” she said one evening, when I was sitting on her lap out on the balcony of our apartment. The railing was a whorly arabesque of metal roses sprouting wherever the lines changed angles. My mother’s raised feet rested on one of the few unrosed spots. She attempted to tidy my hair while staring at the swirl of stars in the dark summer sky. “I think you’re talented. I hear you singing all the time.” She pulled my head to her bosom. I felt the softness of her silk housedress on my cheek, my eyes focusing on a print marigold as it heaved and contracted with each breath. The tireless scrapings of cicadas saturated the air. “Never once off-key. You’re my gifted baby.”

I squirmed, pushed myself off her chest with both hands. “I don’t like piano,” I said.

My sister, Lina, had been taking piano lessons for the past four years, ever since she was six, my age now. Her teacher was Mademoiselle Finkelstein, a white-haired, dowdy, bespectacled spinster who smelled of mothballs and vanilla. Whenever Lina slipped, made a mistake as she played the “Méthode Rose,” Mademoiselle Finkelstein would smack her knuckles with a wooden ruler that she used to tap a beat on the top of the piano. I asked Lina why she never complained about being hit. She said that the ruler wasn’t painful, that Mademoiselle Finkelstein only tapped her gently, that she loved her teacher. Her crimson knuckles told a different story. When I asked my father why Mademoiselle Finkelstein was such a cruel woman, he said it was because she was unmarried, which caused women to become bitter, harsh, and unforgiving after they reached the age of thirty. Of course, he explained, they made wonderful teachers, because they had the unfettered time to dedicate to their profession and they knew how to instill discipline. On the other hand, unmarried men, like his younger brother, Uncle Jihad, were simply eccentrics and did not suffer accordingly. The difference, he elaborated, was that men chose to be unmarried, whereas women had to live with never having been chosen.

For Fatima, the bogs of the Nile Delta were a welcoming sight, though the imps held their noses. She bade the carpets descend as they approached Bast’s cottage. “I beg you,” Bast said the instant she saw Fatima. “Do not talk to me of King Kade. I am not having a happy day. Cleopatra wants to mate, and I am in a foul mood. When I bleed, that so-called holy magician of light is not what I want to talk about.” The healer turned around and walked into her cottage.

Fatima and her entourage followed. “Stop being childish and churlish. You are needed.”

“Leave me,” Bast said, trying to stare Fatima down.

“No.” Fatima sat upon one of the barrels in the room, as she had once before.

“At least tell your companions to disappear. They are so colorful they sour my eyes.”

“Self-centered witch,” Elijah harrumphed, and he vanished, leaving a barely discernible indigo cloud that dissipated quickly.

“What is wrong with color?” Ezra asked. “Are you some big-city artist? Oh, never mind.” And he, too, disappeared into his orange cloud, followed by Jacob, Job, Noah, and Adam.

Isaac looked at Ishmael and shrugged. Ishmael grinned. They turned into cats. Isaac became a red Abyssinian and Ishmael an Egyptian Mau with dark eyes. And the Alexandrian healer laughed. “Still too red,” Bast said. Isaac wined his red and meowed.

Istez Camil, the oud teacher, was a widower. I met him at our concierge’s apartment, a small, sparsely furnished two-bedroom unit on the ground floor. I was visiting the concierge’s son, Elie, who was thirteen, seven years older than me. Everybody was gathered around the blue-gray transistor radio, listening to a scratchy news report. The beige waxed-paper shade of a small lamp sitting atop the radio vibrated each time the announcer pronounced an “s.” The concierge sat in the main chair of the living room, his wife next to him on the chair’s arm, Istez Camil in the other chair, and the five children, including Elie, huddled on the floor around the crackling radio.

The perfidious enemy attacked. The mighty Arab army. By the grace of God. We shall conquer. The evil imperialist forces will be crushed, spat the radio.

I noticed an oud leaning against the wall. I bent down, traced my fingers across the delectable wood, along the intricate designs of the mother-of-pearl encrustations, the delicately carved inlaid ivory. The instrument felt bigger than I was. For a moment, I felt lost in its magic.

“Do you like it?” asked Istez Camil, kneeling on one knee, his hand centered on my back.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“My father made it a long time ago.” Istez Camil lifted the oud gently, bringing the front close to my eyes. “Would you like to learn to play?”

“There’s a war going on,” snapped the concierge, looking up at the ceiling. “Can we concentrate a little?” He leaned over and pumped up the volume of the transistor.

We shall get rid of the occupying forces once and for all, liberate all of Jerusalem.

“Ask your parents if they’re willing to pay for lessons.” Istez Camil’s shirt buttons were fastened incorrectly, making his collar look oddly skewed. “And don’t worry about him,” he whispered, discreetly pointing at the concierge. “He’s just a crusty old man who thinks politics is important.”

Elie stood up, stretched languidly, and gestured with his head for me to follow. I heard the concierge mutter as we left the room. Elie didn’t speak, and I tried to keep pace with his long strides. His faded orange jumpsuit, a couple of sizes too big, billowed between his legs with each step. Slim and athletic, he moved with a cocky assurance. He descended the stairs to the garage, entered his father’s tool shed, and handed me a toolbox to carry for him. I almost dropped it, had to lift it with both hands. The toolbox made it difficult to walk. By the time he noticed I wasn’t behind him, he was already up the ramp and on the street. He came back down and took the toolbox with one hand; I followed him unencumbered. We entered the garage of a building around the corner from ours. He stopped in front of an old, rusty motorcycle, put the toolbox down. I broke the silence. “Is that yours?”

Elie nodded. His permanently serious face appeared to be concentrating on the machine in front of him, his lower lip completely hidden behind his jutting upper one.

“Your father lets you have a motorcycle?” I asked.

“He doesn’t know, does he? And he won’t know, because you won’t say anything to anyone about this, will you?”

I raised my eyebrows, but Elie paid no attention. He was on his knees. His wide eyes, their whites gleaming, looked intently at the engine. A vaccination scar on his arm looked like an old, frayed button. He opened the toolbox, handed me two screwdrivers, a box wrench, a monkey wrench, and two pairs of pliers. I held them close to my chest to ensure their safety.

“I got this for free because it doesn’t run,” Elie said, “but I’m going to fix it.” He put his palm out, extending his long, tapered fingers. “Screwdriver.” I carefully placed one in his hand.

“No, not that one. The other one.” Elie tinkered with the engine. “We’re going to win the war,” he said, keeping his gaze on his task, his aquiline nose glued to the motor. “We’re going to annihilate the Israelis, throw them back into the sea.”

“Are you going to fight?”

“I can’t join the army yet. But they don’t need me. We’ll humiliate them. Pliers.”

“Who’s we?” I asked.

“We,” Elie said dismissively. “We, the Arabs.”

“We’re Arabs?”

“Of course we are. Don’t you know anything?”

“I thought we’re Lebanese.”

“We’re that, too,” Elie said. “The Lebanese haven’t started fighting yet, but we will. The Israelis didn’t attack us, but we’re not going to wait. We’ll crush them. And we have a secret weapon. You see, there are five strong countries.” He looked up at me, held up the five greasy fingers of his left hand. “We have two and the Israelis have two. We have Russia and China on our side, and they have America and England on theirs.” His right forefinger pushed down two fingers on each side, leaving his middle finger pointing upward. “So we’re even. But then there’s still France. The Israelis think France is on their side, but she’s not. France will be ours, because France loves Lebanon. France is our secret weapon. We’ll trounce the Israelis for sure.” He brought the last finger down into a clenched fist.

I stared at him with renewed admiration.

“Monkey wrench.”

“King Kade is such a troublemaker,” Bast said, “but he does serve a purpose. A while ago, when I was even more ill tempered than I am today, I considered fighting him, but I came to realize that the warrior shield did not suit me. I was always meant to fight internal battles, not external ones. King Kade was my test.”

“You failed?” Fatima asked.

“Not at all. I won, if you wish to call it that. I prefer to think of it as transcendence. He no longer bothers me.”

“He bothers me.”

“Then you must conquer him, or conquer yourself, whichever is harder.”

“I will defeat him,” Fatima said.

“Of that I am certain.”

“Teach me how.”

“First, you must find him.”

“I think it’s time for Osama to take music lessons,” my mother told my father as she sat on a taboret in front of her dressing table. She was applying makeup, one eye closed, a finger delicately powdering the eyelid with color. I stood to the side, watching her reflection in the mirror. Her thick lashes were as dark as a starless night. She inspected her image, took out her lipstick, applied a coat of red, her mouth forming a demure O. She blotted her lips with a tissue.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” my father said, examining his appearance in the armoire’s long antique mirror. “Our boy is too smart for music.” He winked, then turned his head back to the mirror, continued knotting his tie. “He’s already a year younger than his class. We shouldn’t waste his time with music. He should concentrate on academics. If anything, we should get him into sports to toughen him up a bit.” He stroked two fingers along the deep grooves that ran from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth.

“I don’t think music lessons will interfere with his studies.” She bobby-pinned the final strands into her beehive, applied so much hairspray my eyes watered. “If they do, we’ll just stop them. I’ll talk to Mademoiselle Finkelstein next week and see what she thinks.”

“I want to play the oud,” I said.

“The oud? Why? It’s so limited. You can play anything you want on a piano.” The diamond necklace glittered as she turned around to face me. “With the oud, you can only play Arabic music. You don’t see anyone playing the oud among the great orchestras.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said. She shrugged, turned back to the mirror. “Why aren’t we listening to the news?” I asked. “How come we’re not following the war?”

“Because we have to get ready for dinner,” my mother said. “Don’t worry, dear. The war is far away.”

“Are you going to fight?” I asked my father.

“Me?” He laughed. “Why would I do a thing like that? This war doesn’t concern us at all, has nothing to do with us. We’re a peaceful country.” He ran a hand across his perfectly trimmed hair, used both palms to check for any stubble on his freshly shaved face.

“Don’t we want to crush our imperialist enemy?”

“Not tonight, dear.” My mother stood up, towered over me. She smoothed her dress, examined the mirror once more. “Now, tell me, don’t I look beautiful?”

“You’re beautiful,” I said, dazzled by her blue lamé evening dress.

“Does your father think so?” She picked up her small silver handbag and stuffed her lipstick inside.

“I do,” my father said. He held her in his arms and kissed her cheek. “You’re stunning.”

“Let’s just try not to make fools of ourselves tonight. Can we keep our hands off our hostess? I know it’s difficult, but we can try, can’t we?”

“It’s just flirting, dear,” he said as he walked out the bedroom door. “Only flirting. All women love it. It’s a compliment.”

My mother rolled her eyes to the ceiling lights. She patted my head and left the room, the clack of her high heels on smooth marble reverberating in the foyer, out the door, until she reached the elevator.

The following day, the concierge painted the windows of our apartment blue so the Israelis could not see the lights at night.

“Why would the Israelis want to bomb us?” I asked my mother.

“They don’t. It’s just a precaution. Everyone’s doing it.”

“How will we get the paint off?”

“Nail-polish remover, I think.”

“The army of light — the white army, or whatever they call themselves these days — will lead you to him,” Bast said. “But be careful. Like all bright things, he is deceiving. I doubt you will find him in his first house or his second.”

“The third,” Fatima said, “it is always the third.”

“Seek the highest, for that is where his power lies, in the skies, in the air, up north.”

“How will I defeat him?”

“That I cannot tell you. Each warrior must find her own way.”

“How would you defeat him?”

“Easily,” Bast cackled. “I would entice him into my world. In my mud and muck, he would be lost. But you cannot do that.”

“I have no means to entice him.”

“Be not obtuse,” the healer said. “You have enticed males more powerful. You seduced the one you want to rescue, which is why you have to meet King Kade in his realm, not yours.”

“I need your wisdom. Help me crush him. How can I do it?”

“By opening your eyes. I will offer you a final bit of advice. King Kade is unbalanced.”

“I gathered that from our brief interaction. He called me a whore.”

“There you have it,” Bast said, “and you still refuse to see. Although that is not the kind of unbalanced I meant. King Kade is very strong, much stronger than you or I. Strength, however, is misleading. Anything extreme is unbalanced and must turn into its opposite.” Bast began to search her pantry. With her back to the seeker, she added, “I can see you are disappointed. You were hoping for something else. I will give you this.”

An ecstatic Noah appeared next to Fatima, accompanied by a tiny popping sound. “Take it,” he yelled. “Take them.”

“You have a bright one here,” Bast said. “Too bright. Can you turn a darker shade of blue?” And Noah changed into a dark-blue tabby and jumped onto Fatima’s lap. “Much better,” Bast remarked. She handed Fatima three leather pouches. “This is mud: holy mud, sublime mud, and profane. You have to determine which is which and when to use it. One is from a source in France, one is from a spring between the two hills Safa and Marwa, and the third is from one of the seven mouths of the Nile.”

A meowing Cleopatra appeared at the door. Noah’s hair bristled under Fatima’s hand. Cleopatra jumped onto the table and coyly approached Isaac and Ishmael, who scampered off and out of the cottage. The shocked eyes of Cleopatra followed their trail, then turned toward an obviously frightened Noah, who disappeared in a puff of smoke.

“Oh, Cleo,” Bast said, “they are the wrong species for you, and you are the wrong gender for them.” She studied Cleopatra’s hackled fur. “And on this note, my dear Fatima, kindly emulate your helpers and vanish.”

Istez Camil’s liver-spotted hand shook as he puffed on his cigarette. He seemed uncertain how to sit on the burgundy divan in the living room, didn’t know where to put his arms. From his seat, he could easily see the upright piano in our dining room, and his eyes darted between my mother and the instrument. My mother stood up, took a cup of Turkish coffee from the silver tray brought in by the maid. “You said you wanted it sweet?” she asked as she placed the cup on the coffee table before him and moved aside a vase overflowing with a profusion of cut flowers — lilacs, lilies, and tuberoses.

He nodded, stuttered, a nervous smile on his face. My mother moved an ashtray toward him. She retrieved the other cup from the tray, dismissed the maid, and sat down. She crossed her legs, right knee on left, adjusted her skirt to make sure it fell evenly. She waited until he had had a couple of sips of coffee. “So how long have you been teaching the oud, Mr. Halabi?” She smiled. “Should I call you Istez Halabi? Is that more respectful?”

“No, madame, there is no need,” Istez Camil said. “I’ve been teaching for over twenty-five years.” His gray hair had been recently trimmed; his neck mottled raw from shaving. “I’ve backed up a number of singers and have played professionally since I was thirteen years old. I haven’t been playing much lately. Semi-retired, you see. I’m concentrating more on teaching.”

“That’s nice,” she said. She placed a cigarette in a silver filigreed holder and lit it. “I’ve never really considered the oud for my son. I was thinking piano. Such a delightful instrument. If not that, then I thought the violin. But he seems to be infatuated with the oud.” She looked at me, her eyes gleaming, then back at Istez Camil. “I don’t understand it, really. Don’t you think piano is better at his age? If he plays the piano, he can shift to oud easily if he cares to. But vice versa would be difficult. Don’t you agree?”

“The piano is a wonderful instrument.” Istez Camil stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, his hand no longer shaking. “I’m not sure I’m the right person to answer your questions, though, madame. I would always choose the oud over the piano. Always.”

“Me, too,” I chirped.

“Oh, you.” My mother laughed and slapped the air in front of her, pretending it was me. “Tell me, Istez Camil, why would you not choose the piano?”

Istez Camil looked at the floor, his face flushed like a peony. “It is cold, madame. It’s a cold instrument. Distant, no soul. Whereas the oud — the oud becomes part of you, your body. You engulf it, and it engulfs you.” He lifted his head. “There’s also the idea of tarab to consider.”

“See, that I never understood. I always thought tarab was overrated.”

“What’s tarab?” I asked.

“Hmm, let’s see,” my mother said. She scrunched her face. “I’m not sure I can explain it. It has to do with Arabic music. How would you describe it?”

“Is my boy asking about tarab?” Uncle Jihad entered the room, his voice booming. He wore a dark suit and a linden-green paisley ascot. He lifted me by the waist and kept me up until I kissed the top of his bald head. “Tarab is musical enchantment. It’s when both musician and listener are bewitched by the music.”

Uncle Jihad noticed Istez Camil standing up. “I’m sorry,” he said, putting me down. “I didn’t know you had guests. How rude of me.” He walked over to shake Istez Camil’s hand, but stopped midway. “My God. What an honor.” He gestured wildly, looked toward my mother. “Layla, do you know who this man is? This man is a master.”

“You exaggerate, sir,” Istez Camil said. He remained standing.

“Exaggerate? Let me shake your hand, please. Layla, this man has played with Umm Kalthoum!”

They flew higher and higher, Fatima with the wind in her hair and the imps beside her, three carpets with three passengers each. North they went. “Was the healer helpful?” Jacob yelled, to be heard above the whooshing of air. “I could not tell.”

“It is always riddles,” Job replied. “I hate riddles. I do not test well.”

“She was very helpful,” Noah said. “She gave us mud.”

Elijah groaned. The air grew cooler and clearer, the sun subtler.

“We are about to find out how helpful,” Fatima said. “Look ahead.”

Before them, a distance away, a band of white eagles appeared from behind a snowy mountain peak, and more eagles, and more. “A thousand,” said Ezra.

“Coming for us,” said Elijah.

“A pox upon the son of a whore King Kade,” said Adam. “Our first trial.”

“Do not say that,” moaned Job. “I hate trials more than I hate riddles.”

“How insulting,” Isaac said. “We travel all this way for this. A magician of his stature, and he sends us feathered trifles? I expected so much more. I am grievously disappointed.”

“The magician means to try us with symbols,” said Ishmael. “How childish.”

Job put his hand on his brow and shook his head. “Allow me.” Still cross-legged on the carpet, he raised his arms to the sky and announced, “Try this.” And between Job’s arms formed a cloud from which countless mosquitoes shot out. “A thousand for each of your birds,” he announced. “A thousand upon each of your thousand. A million for you.”

“Mosquitoes?” asked Fatima.

“Hush,” answered Job. “You think me a beginner. Just watch.”

It seemed to Fatima that the mosquitoes traveled faster than any insects she had encountered before, a rushing, rolling, buzzing wave of beige. The white eagles headed directly into the cloud of pests. “I hope they are all females,” Fatima said.

“Please,” he replied. “They are lesbians.”

“Ouch,” exclaimed Ezra.

The mosquitoes did not slow the flight of the eagles instantaneously. It took the predatory birds a minute to reduce their speed, after which they began to fly in circles. Beaks snapped on air, and feathers ruffled. The eagles seemed agitated and confused.

“Not enough,” said Isaac. “The birds are too pristine. Let them suffer.”

Job pointed his hand, and fleas rocketed toward the eagles. Then he sent gnats, mites, and ticks. The lice he saved for last. Splotches of red bubbled on the eagles’ white. “A much better color,” said Isaac. The eagles were overwhelmed and vanquished. Feathers were released from bodies and floated toward the ground. Within a short time, no eagle remained aloft.

Fatima looked below at the carnage. “Sad,” she said.

“Why?” asked Elijah. “They were too pretty.”

“I hate white,” said Isaac. “It is drab and colorless.”

Elie watched the burgeoning yellow-and-blue flames of the bonfire he’d built in an empty lot far from our building, hoping to lure Israeli fighter planes to waste their bombs there. The pop of the burning wood interrupted the eerie silence. The side of my sister’s face was lit by the fire, a flicker in her eye as she stared at Elie. I watched the passing cars, all their headlights painted blue, with only a tiny sliver of a cross to allow white light through. Elie yelled at the sky, a war cry. The hollow at the base of his throat expanded. The ridge of his collarbone vibrated. Lina opened her mouth, but didn’t scream. She was staring at Elie, as if in a rapture.

That night, the Egyptian army downed forty-four Israeli planes over the Sinai. Gamal Abd al-Nasser’s boys are fighting for their motherland, the radio intoned. I sat by the window, illuminated by the soft light of the morning sun. “That’s all lies,” Uncle Jihad said. He switched to BBC Radio: The Israelis are advancing easily. Jerusalem is theirs.

The concierge, Elie’s father, yelled at Madame Daoud on the third floor. “Talk to my husband when he comes in,” she yelled back. “I’m not going to stand here and listen to this.”

“Traitors,” he shouted. “You want the Israelis to destroy our homes.”

“Eat shit.” She slammed the door.

My father bent over the banister and bellowed, “What’s all the shouting about?”

“They haven’t painted their windows,” the concierge said, his voice quieter, meeker. “They want the Israelis to kill us.”

“Don’t be stupid,” my father chided. “You think they want to die? Probably no one told them to until you just started yelling. I don’t appreciate you pestering the tenants. Now, go back downstairs and I’ll talk to them about painting their windows.” He returned to our apartment, muttering, “Nobody knows his place anymore.”

The Daouds were strange in that they rarely opened a window in their apartment. At first, I assumed it was because they were Jewish, but my mother, who was a friend of Madame Daoud’s, told me otherwise. She said that many Jewish families opened their windows. She thought the Daouds kept theirs closed because they had lived for a time in Bologna and everyone knew that Italians were terrified of drafts.

• • •

“It’s those fucking Americans,” Elie said. He lit a Marlboro, flicked the match with middle finger and thumb. “We can crush the Israelis, but we can’t fight the Americans. All the planes are being flown by American pilots.” He took a long drag, banged the worn leather seat of the motorcycle. “Fuck all of them. All the damn American imperialists.”

“Are we losing?” I asked.

He turned, shoved me. I stepped backward, frantically trying to keep my balance. “We’ll never lose. We’ll win the war. God is on our side.” Elie turned back to the motorcycle. I ran out of the garage, up to the apartment, and hoped he wouldn’t notice I was gone.

Behind the first mountain peak stood a huge palace of majestic silver splendor. Three tall towers stabbed virginal white clouds. From above, the palace shone with unearthly brilliance, its silver reflecting the sun’s glory. A large, glittering pool was centered in the courtyard.

“Look at the beautiful women,” Elijah said when they landed in the courtyard. “They have such perfectly formed breasts.”

Seventy-two virgins, beauties with big round eyes and hair of various shades of blond, appeared perplexed at the sight of the colorful imps. As did twenty-eight strikingly white prepubescent boys. “Welcome, travelers,” said one of the girls.

“I think they were expecting only one warrior,” Fatima said. One large divan faced one hundred couches arranged in rows. The surrounding verdant garden soothed the senses. “This must be someone’s idea of paradise.”

“Come,” another houri said. The women and boys wore dresses of sheer silver silk that revealed more than if they were naked. “Join us. Let us ease the weariness of your journey. Allow us to rejuvenate you.” Ten of the seminude and smiling boys carried large jugs of wine. Each resident of the garden carried a cup filled with the burgundy liquid. “Come,” said a boy. “Relax. We can sing tales for you and entertain you.”

A houri stroked the top of Isaac’s head. “Are you truly pure?” he asked.

“We are as chaste as the sheltered eggs of ostriches.”

“How dull,” Isaac replied. “I am going to look around.”

The stunned houri burst into a magical melody, and her sisters joined her. One of the virgins took Fatima’s hand, but she shook it off. “I never lie with a woman whose breasts are more pronounced than mine.”

The song began to falter. “But we are chaste,” said one.

“We are bashful,” said another.

“Neither man nor jinn have touched us,” said another.

“You can have intercourse with us,” said another.

“We have wine,” said another.

“We have song,” said another.

“A truly overflowing cup,” said another.

“Do you not possess desire?” asked another, and Ishmael said, “No.”

“Nothing here of interest,” said a returning Isaac. “The song is in a minor key.”

And the company took to their carpets and flew.

The following day, they sat in our living room looking out of place, three men all the way from Syria. My mother had to serve them coffee, since the maid was packing.

“Are you sure this is necessary?” my mother asked. “It’s not as if anything is happening here. Lebanon will not get involved in the war.”

“The Israelis are coming, madame,” the maid’s father said. His hairy wrist extended three finger widths past the frayed sleeve of his shirt. He would not look directly at my mother. He seemed very tired, with drooping eyelids and a slack jaw. “We can hear them. The girl should be at home.”

“Fine. Fine. I’ll go see that she’s packed.” Lina and I followed her out of the room. “Last time I’m hiring an Arab girl,” my mother said as she walked into the maid’s room.

The girl wore her best dress, chlorophyll-patterned, front-buttoned, hemmed an inch below her knees, showing white calves. A canary-yellow headscarf covered her hair, her worst feature. Standing there, gazing at her open suitcase, she looked much older than thirteen.

“Let me see how you’re doing,” my mother said. She unpacked the top layer, looked underneath. “Anything else going in this suitcase?”

The girl shook her head. My mother rearranged the clothes.

Lina gave me her “I’m about to tell you something you don’t know because you don’t know anything” look. “Mom’s checking to see if she’s stealing anything,” she said in French.

“Tais-toi!” my mother snapped. She reached into her pocket, took out a hundred-dollar bill. “Listen,” she said to the girl. “I want you to have this. You’ve been very good to us. I know it’s a lot of money, but I want you to promise me something. You will hide it. It is only for you. Under no circumstances are you to show it to your father or your brothers. Not even to your husband if they marry you off. This is for you. Only for you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, madame.” She hid the bill in her brassiere. “Thank you, madame.”

“Now get the hell out of here.”

The radio moaned about betrayals, a defeated voice. The air seemed thick. I stood in the concierge’s living room looking at a family of strangers. The concierge’s wife hovered around her guests, concerned. There were four of them: a husbandless woman, a tattered version of the concierge’s wife, and her three children. The woman’s lips were pursed, her eyes blurry. She seemed not to inhabit her ghostlike face. A lethargic fan stirred the air.

“They had so many planes,” said her eldest son, almost a man. “They kept coming and coming. They lit up the skies at night and bombed everything. We didn’t have a chance. Everyone ran away.”

Elie stared. “Did you fight, cousin?”

“Fight? We didn’t have a chance to breathe. They came across so fast we barely had time to run. They used napalm. It burns your skin down to the bone before it kills you. How can we fight that with rifles?”

“We’re lost,” another cousin said. Elie walked out in a huff. I followed quietly.

I tried not to be noticed. My mother refused to look at Uncle Jihad, stilled her gaze upon the ceiling. Both sat on the divan, their legs resting on the glass coffee table. My mother’s morning demitasse remained untouched, no longer steaming.

“She’s gone, Jihad,” she said softly. “She’s gone.” My mother had found out that Madame Daoud had left in the dark of night, gone to Italy to visit family, her husband said.

“No word, no note, nothing.” My mother closed her eyes and sighed.

“Why do you think she’s not coming back?” Uncle Jihad asked. “Her husband is still here.”

My mother slowly lowered her head, opened her eyes, and gave him a “let’s-be-serious” look. “He needs to take care of things before he joins her.”

“You’re being morose.” My uncle laid his hand upon her shoulder. “She’ll always be your friend.”

“Nothing remains,” my mother said, shaking her head. “All is lost.”

“I’ve lost my childhood innocence,” Lina sighed. She was sitting on the piano stool, the upright to her back, its top lid open as if it were letting out a sigh of its own. Forlorn, she showed me her profile like a dejected Egyptian film star. She kept smoothing her skirt without looking down, a practiced, automatic gesture.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“How can I witness the suffering of the Palestinian children and remain childhood-innocent?” She exhaled loudly. “I suffer with them. I’m no longer a child.”

“But you’re ten, stupid.”

“No longer. Because of what I’ve seen, I am now a woman.”

I shoved her off the stool and ran. She came after me.

“It’s over,” my mother said, “and our army didn’t fire a single bullet.”

“It’s not our government’s fault the war ended so quickly,” Uncle Jihad said. “They’re probably still in session, contemplating action.”

We watched the news on television in the family room, thousands of Palestinian refugees arriving in Lebanon, like the rolling, rolling, rolling cattle on Rawhide.

“This chaos is disconcerting. There are so many of them,” my mother said. “What will they do?”

“They’ll wait,” my father said.

“What’s Lebanon? Some kind of purgatory?”

“What’s purgatory?” I asked.

“Come here and I’ll tell you,” Uncle Jihad said, patting his thigh. My legs dangled over the edge of his lap. “According to Dante, there’s paradise above, inferno below, and purgatory, which is like a hospital waiting room or train station until it is decided where one will go.”

“Who gets to decide, God?”

His grin widened. His head shuddered, a noncommittal nod. “Anyone but us.”

And King Kade sent the faithless wind against them. “Now, that is more like it,” said Isaac. Thick white clouds approached. The passengers held on to the carpet hems as the winds grew stronger. A cold, swirling gust blew Jacob off. He fell a few lengths, vanished, and popped back into place. The carpets turned fractious and began to misbehave.

The company was forced to alight in a green meadow with shin-high grass. Noah folded the three carpets into wallet-sized squares and swallowed them.

“This is a lovely meadow,” said Job, “and its color perfect.”

Fatima and the imps walked north. “This is exhausting,” Elijah said. “By the time we get where we are going, I will be too tired to do anything. My hooves are sore. I think we should fly again and risk the winds.” Below them was a deep valley they had to cross to get to the second mountain.

“The next wave comes,” announced Ishmael, pointing his tiny hand. White horses with white warriors atop them galloped toward the imps from below. The riders brandished silver swords above their heads. “I count a hundred, twenty rows of five.”

“Look behind the wave of attackers,” Ezra said. “There are another hundred, and more waiting. They are over a thousand at least.”

“Why are they lined up that way?” asked Fatima.

“Fanatics are not imaginative,” replied Isaac. “Metaphor becomes more important than substance.”

In the center of the valley, a giant white-leaved oak birthed both horses and riders. A leaf would fall to the ground and would change into either man or beast. “May I?” said Adam.

“No,” replied Noah. “Allow me. Sister, may I have one of the bags?”

“Which one?” asked Fatima, hand holding out Bast’s three gifts.

“Methinks it matters not,” the blue imp answered. “I will take this one. It smells of the sacred Nile.” He opened the bag and emptied its contents on the meadow in front of him. “Stand back and admire.” The mud fell upon the abundant grass, divesting it of its fastidiousness and sanctity. The mud spread and burbled. A tiny spring erupted. “Let me help.” Noah brought his hands together. The tiny spring exploded into a river, and the water coursed toward the riders.

“More,” said Isaac. “Teach them suffering.”

Noah brought his hands together once again, and the river water rose. “And it shall be,” Noah said, and unleashed a flood.

The valley basin was soon covered with blue. The horses panicked, and their riders attempted to calm them. When the water covered the bark of the giant tree, the horses had to swim. The spring gushed forth more water, and a lake formed, grew monstrously large. Warriors and steeds drowned. The water reached the top of the white-oak tree. Blue swallowed white.

“Plop goes the white army,” Isaac said.

“Will the oak survive?” asked Jacob.

“Yes,” said Adam, “but it needs protection.” With his arms held high, he formed an orb of dust out of which a giant violet serpent with a golden crest and fiery eyes thrust its head. The snake hissed, flicked its tri-forked tongue. “Come out, Thebes,” Adam said. “This is your new home.” The snake uncoiled its body, swollen and plump. Out of the orb it slithered and slithered and slithered, and into the lake it entered, its scales glittering beneath the water. Thebes devoured the straggling riders one by one. Once sated, it wound its body around the giant white oak below the surface of the lake and rested its head atop the highest branches.

“A snake fit for such a magnificent tree,” Adam said.

In November 1968, the Farouks moved into our building, into the Daouds’ apartment. It had been over a year since the latter had left.

The doorbell was shrill. “Buon giorno, signora,” Uncle Jihad said to Mrs. Farouk when she opened the door. Those were the only words I understood as he rattled hundreds more in Italian. He had the opportunity to practice his Italian quite a bit, because there was one Milanese family in the neighborhood, and one Genovese bachelor, a pilot.

Mrs. Farouk blushed, opened the door wider. She had reddish-brown hair and a complexion that easily flushed. She spoke in Italian, gestured grandly, inviting us in. We followed her into the living room, my white tennis shoes squeaking on the polished blond wood. Her husband sat reading an Arabic novel. Oud music wafted from hidden speakers. Mrs. Farouk introduced Uncle Jihad, Lina, and me to Mr. Farouk, who stood up to greet us.

“We’re the welcome wagon,” Uncle Jihad said, his face bright and beaming. When he was excited, his voice slipped into a higher register. “And I brought the kids to meet yours.”

I felt Lina stiffen before I saw the Farouk girls walk in. Fatima was eight, a year older than I, pretty, skinny, but not the cause of my sister’s consternation. Mariella, thirteen, was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Long, light-brown hair, green eyes, full lips, and a large mouth. She strolled in, knowing her effect on a room.

“Che belle,” Uncle Jihad said, looking at her father. “They seem to have inherited the best features of both of you. A delectable mix of Iraq and Italy. How wonderful.”

She ignored Lina, approached me, offered her creamy hand. “Hello, I’m Mariella,” she said in a fully adult voice. “This is my little sister.”

Mrs. Farouk cleared her throat. “We were so happy to find this place,” she said. Her accent was funny, an amalgam of numerous Arabic dialects. “We weren’t sure about moving to Beirut. We got tired of Amman, and I thought maybe Rome, but then we decided Beirut offers the best of both worlds, don’t you think? And then we found this apartment. How gorgeous, a sign from heaven. It was in such good shape. Do you know who was living here? I intend to send them a note of thanks.”

“You’d have to send it to Israel,” I chirped.

“The Daouds emigrated to Israel,” Uncle Jihad said. “They retired, sold their chocolate factory, and left.”

“Israel?” Mrs. Farouk asked. “Why would they do that? It’s such a dull country. The people are so serious.”

“They’re Jewish,” Uncle Jihad said. “I think they felt safer.”

“I’m Jewish, too. You don’t see me packing to go live on a kibbutz.”

I checked the windows, saw that they were open, a soft, cold breeze rippling the muslin curtains. The oud music was still playing as we all got to know each other. Even Lina asked questions, animated, chattering. “You’ll love the neighborhood. Lots of people of all ages.”

I tuned everyone out and concentrated on the exquisite melody. I had no idea who the musician was, but he was a magnificent oud player. Uncle Jihad laughed loudly. I strained to hear the soft music. Madame Farouk laughed. Noise. I shushed them.

The room turned quiet. Shocked faces stared back at me as I realized what I had done. Quiet seconds elapsed. My heart beat faster; I was about to cry. Uncle Jihad laughed nervously. “I apologize for the boy,” he said. “Sometimes he lives in a world all his own.” He looked at me with a worried expression. Everyone seemed to wait for me to say something.

The oud player took his maqâm into a different key. “I’m sorry.” My voice much softer than usual. “I’m very sorry. I was listening to the music and forgot where I was.” I paused. No one said anything. “I was lost in the music and my lack of manners.”

They broke out in laughter. Fatima was the only one who didn’t. She regarded me with an unwavering, measuring gaze. Uncle Jihad, his arm around my shoulders, said, “This boy is a treasure. Always says the most amazing things.”

“This boy is a jackass,” Lina said.

“How charming that a boy his age can get lost in this music,” Mrs. Farouk said. “My husband will probably want to adopt him.”

Mr. Farouk was smiling, looking intently at me. “This is music from my home.”

“This is Maqâm Râst,” I said, and sat on the palms of my hands.

“How did you know that?” Mr. Farouk asked, surprise registering on his face. I shrugged.

“The boy here is very talented,” Uncle Jihad said. “He plays the oud beautifully, plays day and night. He can play maqâms. He’s studying with Camil Halabi.”

“I can play one maqâm only.”

“I’d love to hear you play,” Mr. Farouk said. “I can play for you, and you can play for me. Would you like that? Your teacher is a great musician. I always thought he was dead. I heard him once, when he came to Baghdad, a long time ago, when the city was still alive, when we still cared about beauty.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Why don’t you let him borrow the album, dear?” he said to his wife. “He can listen to it without anyone disturbing him.”

Fatima appeared in my class two days later. She wore white stockings and a short, lace-trimmed blue dress littered with white daisies. Fragile and wispy, she walked over to Nabeel, who was sitting next to me. “I want to sit here.” Nabeel shrugged, and moved from the seat he had occupied for weeks. She sat down, kept her head lowered, but looked up at me with her brown eyes, appearing both nervous and confident. “You have to be my friend,” she said.

The crystal palace lay atop the second mountain peak. Its size, architecture, and translucence dazzled the eyes. Everything inside — stairs, columns, balustrades; tables, chairs, bookshelves — was made of clear crystal without any obvious imperfection. Sunlight refracted within the great hall, producing shards of fiery color. It was eerily quiet, devoid of life. “I could live here,” said Jacob. “I would want to redecorate a bit, but the lighting is stupendous.”

“It is too sterile,” huffed Isaac. He jumped on one of the lounges, dropped his loincloth, and peed. “You cannot stain the furniture. I could not live here.”

“We might have to,” said Fatima. “The door just closed by itself.”

The eight little demons scampered about the hall in every direction. Ishmael tried the door, which was locked and bolted tight. Ezra and Elijah checked the windows.

“The trials are getting more difficult,” said Job. “I hate that.”

“Cumbersome,” said Isaac, “but not difficult.” He hiccupped, burped, and regurgitated a seed out of his mouth. “Sweet,” he said. “Sister, allow me to have one of the remaining bags.”

“Pick,” said Fatima.

“This one,” Isaac said. “It smells of rich earth.” He spilled the mud onto a spot in the center of the hall and planted the seed. “Watch,” he said. He stood back and admired his handiwork. “Grow,” he commanded, and the ivy crept gradually. Each small vine sprouted another and another.

“Poison ivy?” asked Fatima.

“A variant,” replied Isaac. “Worry not. You are one of us. Poisons are your lifeblood.”

The ivy twined around ankles, covered the floor, and began to ascend the walls. Greenish flowers erupted on the branches as the ivy snaked its way to the ceiling.

“Dull flowers, though,” said Ishmael. He threw morning glories upon the ivy.

“My damned turn,” announced Adam. He changed the floor cover into ground ivy with blue-purple flowers. Noah threw in hyacinth beans. Ezra added cypress vines.

“Xanthous,” said Jacob, and a canary-bird vine flowered in yellow effulgence.

“Xanthous?” snapped Isaac. “Do you make these things up?”

“Let him be,” said Ishmael. “He is a little different, harmlessly so.”

“Sweet,” commanded Elijah, and sweet peas burst forth. “Oh my. I meant jasmine.”

“Stop it,” said Isaac. “If you are going to do this, do it right.” Deep-red bougainvillea covered walls, floor, and ceiling. “I could live here now.” He stepped gingerly across the vine until he reached the door, which was entirely covered. He pushed through the ivy, and the door tumbled and crumbled. “Hurry,” he said. “The palace will not remain erect much longer.”

“The word ‘maqâm’ means ‘place’ or ‘situation,’ ” Istez Camil said. “It also means ‘shrine.’ In music, it’s about scale, but also mood. Do you know what that is?”

“No.” My fingers mechanically ascended and descended the oud’s neck. I had been doing scales for forty-five minutes.

“Each maqâm is related to a specific mood through its structure and modality. When you play a maqâm, the technique should become invisible, so that all that remains is pure emotion. The intent is to induce a certain mood in the listener and yourself. The intended mood will determine what maqâm and what kind of improvisation you will play. For example, if you want to induce a sad mood, you can pick one that’s very microtonal, like Maqâm Saba.”

He nodded, hoping to elicit some form of acknowledgment. I shook my head. Istez Camil stood up, was about to say something, but stopped. He lit a cigarette. “You’re tired,” he said. “We’ll finish this next time.”

I put down my instrument, stretched my fingers. “Why do people think you’re dead?”

“Dead? Maybe because I’ve stopped playing publicly.” Istez Camil looked out the window, his back to me.

“Why did you stop?”

“I played the wrong note,” he said. “I played the wrong mood.” I didn’t say anything, waited for my teacher to elaborate. “My wife had died. I bored my audience. There was only one maqâm I could bear to hear — or play. The audience couldn’t hear the variations of the maqâm I was playing. They grew weary of hearing the same maqâm over and over.”

“Maqâm Saba,” I said. “I love how slowly it moves, how infinitely tender, like teardrops descending along cheeks, a cascade of grace.”

“See? You do understand.” Istez Camil wouldn’t turn around. “A cascade of grace. That’s so wonderful. It describes all the great oud playing from Shah-Kuli or even earlier. It is said that he was the greatest musician that ever lived.”

“Tell me.”

“When the Turks defeated the Persians and reconquered Baghdad in 1638, eight hundred janissaries were killed in an ambush, so the Turks launched a general massacre. They cut the heads of thirty thousand Persians, but the sultan still needed his entertainment. A Persian musician, scheduled to be executed, was brought to the diwan. As his countrymen, friends, and family were being decapitated one by one, the great Shah-Kuli played a maqâm for the pitiless Sultan Murat. He sang so sweetly, played the oud so gently, ended his performance with a dirge that brought every listener to tears.” He turned away from the window, smiled at me. “The listeners’ teardrops descended along the cheeks to the beat of the maqâm. A cascade of grace. And the weeping sultan commanded a halt to the killings.”

There was no palace behind the third mountain peak. The company flew from top to bottom and back, scanned every nook in the steep landscape, but found nothing.

Elijah unleashed the crows. “With thine eyes,” he said, “find.”

Jacob unleashed the bats. “With thine ears,” he said, “find.”

“Could it be inside the mountain?” Adam asked. “I can send the scorpions.”

“Could it be farther ahead?” asked Noah.

“Wait,” ordered Fatima.

Bats and crows scudded over the land. Fatima followed as many as she could with her eyes. “Higher,” she said. “He must be higher.” She unhooked a black ribbon from her hair and held it at arm’s length. She raised it high above her head. A group of seven crows followed her direction and flew above the mountain peak. She jerked her ribbon once more, and the crows flew higher still. Higher, and the crows would reach the clouds. Before she could jerk her ribbon again, one of the crows folded its wings and dropped. Elijah sent its siblings to break its fall and return it to him. The indigo imp held the suffering crow in his hands. “The bird speaks.”

“Call the crows and bats back,” Fatima announced. “I know where King Kade is.”

“Where?” Ishmael asked. Elijah and Fatima both replied, “He is in the clouds.”

The first Thursday of December found Uncle Jihad and me in a small café in Msaitbeh. We’d gotten permission from my parents, since it was a school night. The whitewash was peeling off the walls, which were unadorned, not one picture or painting. We sat at a Formica table that was too high for me. Uncle Jihad greeted all the men, although it was quite apparent that he didn’t fit in this environment. He was by far the most colorful thing to have walked through the doors. There were no women. Not one chin on any man in the full café had seen a razor in at least twenty-four hours, whereas Uncle Jihad’s hairless face and head shone a warm blue from the reflected fluorescents.

By the time my tea — strong, sweet, served in a glass — arrived, the café had grown quiet. A boy, a couple of years older than I, turned the transistor on, and the music began. “You are about to hear the goddess,” Uncle Jihad whispered, and placed his forefinger on his lips.

The introduction began as a simple melody played by violins. The percussion, one derbakeh and two daffs, provided a steady rhythm. The violins repeated the melody, over and over, inducing a hypnotic effect. Most of the men had their eyes closed. Ten minutes passed before the band began to wind the melody down. Applause could be heard from the radio. “She’s onstage,” Uncle Jihad whispered. “She has arrived.” Silence. I could hear some of the men in the room breathing. One second. Two seconds. Ten seconds.

Her voice came on, clear, strong, powerful. The room sighed in unison at her first utterance, then quieted again. A man wearing dark eyeglasses held together with a gray piece of tape leaned back on his chair as if he were about to be showered with rose petals. Another man conducted an imaginary orchestra with both hands, exhibiting a grace that belied his big frame. Gentle pulsations were visible around his temple, large veins following the beat of their own metronome. Umm Kalthoum carried the melody, sang of love in Egyptian dialect, and the words of longing made sense. I had heard the band repeat the melody many times, yet now it seemed the tune was created only for her delivery of these words. She repeated each line, once, twice, three times, more, until it vibrated within me. I listened, ears open, mouth open, eyes wide. When she finished the melody, the room shook. Men applauded, stood up, yelled at the radio.

“Long may you live!” “Again. One more time.” “May God keep you!”

“It didn’t happen,” a man said to the radio. “You have to do it again.”

She did. She began the song again, from the beginning. Now the men talked to the radio after each line. Over the radio, I could hear the men in her audience shouting encouragement to the singer. The leader of the imaginary orchestra repeated an elongated “Ya Allah” after each verse; his eyes rolled up, looking at the tobacco-stained ceiling as if asking Him to come down and listen. Each line became a tease. Will she repeat it? Will she take it further?

When she finished the melody the second time, the audience erupted, the room was in an uproar. A short man stood on a table and shouted, “Allah-u-akbar.” Uncle Jihad looked radiantly happy. She began the same melody again. I was in ecstasy. The room shook in delight.

When she finished, and her audience and the café went still, she waited a little and then launched into a new melody. Same song, same key, a slightly different track, further elaboration of her longing. She repeated this version only twice, then went back to the first, after which she launched into a third melody, did not repeat it. Then first melody again, third, first, second, first. By the time she was done, a full hour into the song, the room was utterly exhausted and hoarse.

We drove home in slow traffic, Uncle Jihad excited, tapping on the steering wheel.

“ ‘Umm Kalthoum’ is a stupid name to call someone,” I said. “ ‘Mother of Kalthoum’—what does that mean? And how could they call her that when she was a girl? She’d have been too young to be a mother.”

“Umm Kalthoum is the quintessential Arab,” Uncle Jihad said. “She’s probably the one person whom all Arabs can agree to love. Ever since they lost the last war, she’s been on a never-ending tour trying to raise Arab morale. Not that it will do any good, but I think it’s wonderful she’s so dedicated. I love people who are passionate about lost causes.”

“Rest for a minute,” Isaac said. “You will be fighting him alone, and you will need your strength. As long as King Kade is alive, we cannot break the spell. We cannot accompany you.”

The imps sat cross-legged in a circle around her, shoulder to shoulder. They had folded two carpets, and were floating below the clouds on the remaining one.

“The most powerful weapon you have is your courage,” Ishmael said. “Yet the line between courageous and foolhardy is hazy at best.”

“Be patient,” said Job.

“Be wary,” said Jacob.

“Be amazing,” said Adam.

The imps stood. Each placed his left hand upon his brother’s shoulder and his right upon Fatima’s body. “We are with you,” they said in unison. “Once and forever.” And they vanished.

“Come sit next to me,” Mariella said, laughing, mischievous, and coquettish. She sat on the faded yellow concrete wall that surrounded the building next to ours. Her legs dangled above the seven tiles in a single pile. She crossed her legs, which hiked her skirt a little higher.

Lina bristled. “Aren’t you going to hit the damn tiles?” she asked Hafez, who held the tennis ball and stared agog at Mariella.

“It’s a stupid game,” Mariella said. “Come sit here and let the children play.” She leaned back, tried to look as adult as possible.

“Can’t you sit somewhere else?” Fatima said. “We’re playing here. You’re right above the tiles.”

“I sit where I please.”

“Go sit with her,” Fatima told me. “If that’s what you want, just go.”

“We don’t need you,” Lina said. “And you’re too slow anyway.”

I joined Mariella on the wall. “Aren’t you going to come and play the oud for us?” she said. “My father keeps asking about you. You should visit.” The ball came hurtling six times in a row, but the tiles remained standing. Mariella pretended to be completely unaware there was a game anywhere in our vicinity. Then the tennis ball, seemingly from out of nowhere, smacked her left thigh. She shrieked.

“Sorry,” Fatima said. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Good shot,” Lina said. The other kids were all laughing.

“You’re a whore, Fatima,” Mariella said. “You’re nothing but a whore.”

I heard the roar of Elie’s motorcycle before it appeared. He turned the corner onto our street, his sunglasses reflecting the afternoon sun. All the kids stopped to stare. Dressed in militia fatigues, he looked much older than he was but still much too young to be driving a motorcycle. He stormed by us without a glance, got off his bike in front of our building. His mother ran out of their apartment to greet him. She hesitated, then slowly, wordlessly, stroked his hair with her right hand, and held it out gently, as if pointing out to him that it was a bit long.

I slid forward to jump off the wall and run over to Elie. Mariella gripped my arm and dug her fingernails into my skin, almost drawing blood. I looked back at her, but she was watching Elie. His father came out, shouting. “Where’ve you been, you son of a dog?” Elie strode past him into the building. His mother stared at their backs.

She felt him. Of that, at least, she was sure. Fatima steered her carpet into the thick clouds. Inside, blinded by white, she ascended slowly, through viscous sky instead of moist, through oleaginous instead of damp. As she approached the topmost layer, as sunlight began to seep in, she felt as if she was slogging through mud. Her progress slowed to a crawl. Breaking through, she saw the castle of mist in the distance. It seemed solid at first glance, but it changed its shape unhurriedly. A tower would shrink, a window appear, a ramp vanish, the whole ever shifting, with a mind of its own. She alit at the gate. As she had expected, she was able to walk on the clouds. The gate slid open for her, and she entered King Kade’s domain. Inside the unfurnished castle, she felt vulnerable, unable to get her bearings. The hall changed with every step. Warily, she moved toward the door, which disappeared when she attempted to open it.

“King Kade, King Kade,” she called to the cavernous space. “Are you not tired of these silly games?” She unsheathed her sword from its scabbard, slashed the wall in front of her. The blade met no resistance. Walls of cloud. She walked through.

Fatima tried on lipstick in front of Mrs. Farouk’s vanity mirror. “I think dark reds suit me better, don’t you?”

“Why’s your name Fatima?” I asked.

“There’s nothing wrong with my name.” Her face creased up in anger, which made her look like a younger replica of her mother, particularly with the weird lipstick.

“I didn’t say there’s anything wrong with it. I just asked why. Don’t yell at me.”

I stood up, but she pushed me back onto the bed. “Then don’t ask stupid questions.”

“It’s not stupid. You can’t have two sisters and one is called an Italian name and the other an Arabic name.”

“Of course you can. What a dumb thing to say. My mom named her, and my dad named me.” She picked up a perfume bottle, turned it upside down on her index finger. It smelled like chemical flowers. She dabbed some behind her ears and lifted her arms toward the ceiling and smeared perfume under each.

“My parents named both of us,” I said. “That’s the normal way. They discussed it for a long time. Osama is my mother’s favorite name.”

“But your sister is Christian and you’re Druze, so don’t talk to me about strange. Did your parents discuss that?”

“Of course. My mom gets the girl, and my dad gets the boy.”

“That’s weird,” she said, then wiped off the lipstick and threw the used tissue in the basket. I did not point out that her mother would guess Fatima had been in her bedroom if she saw the discarded tissue. I followed her out of the room. Outside her apartment, my cousin Anwar sat on the stairs, looking uncomfortable. He stood up quickly and asked if Mariella was home. Without slowing down, Fatima punched him hard in the stomach. I watched my cousin double over. Fatima descended the stairs. Her lips still had a tinge of red. Anwar’s lips were glassy with snot. I ran after Fatima. I didn’t want my cousin to worry about my seeing him cry.

Across the room, King Kade sat atop a massive, ephemeral throne whose color blended with the floor, the walls, and his garments. His hands and face seemed to float in space because of the uniformity of color surrounding them. And King Kade asked, “Have you come to burn incense at my altar?”

“I have come to shatter it. I have vanquished your armies. It is now your turn.”

King Kade laughed, a bubbly and breezy sound. “You amuse me. I can see why the devil kept you. Maybe I will choose to keep you for myself. I shall place you in a gilded cage instead of an engaging parrot and have you entertain me with witty remarks. Approach me, warrior.”

“Prepare to die, fool,” Fatima replied.

King Kade laughed again. “Attempt to say that phrase in a deeper voice, for it does not yet strike fear in its listener’s soul.”

“Then why do you tremble?”

The color of King Kade’s cheeks changed from ashen to bright pink, and a scowl visited his face. He raised his hand and unleashed a beam of fiery light. The talisman between her breasts sucked it in. Fatima’s hand, her ward against evil, turned warmer and bluer the stronger the beam became. “And you think me amusing?” she asked.

“No longer,” King Kade replied. “You have become tiresome.”

He directed his beam toward her sword, which flew across the room, clanging and settling in the corner. She turned to retrieve it and was struck by a heavy blow that felled her.

“You are a fool as well as a whore,” King Kade said. “You may be immune to magic, but you will always be frail. I need no witchcraft to destroy you.”

Two immense albinos with long silver-white hair and large wings sprouting out of their backs towered over the crouching Fatima. The first kicked her and sent her tumbling. The other lifted her above him and threw her against the wall, which seemed to turn solid on impact.

“Fool, fool, fool,” muttered King Kade to himself.

Fatima tried to crawl toward her sword, but the albino picked her up again and threw her against the other wall.

“Who should prepare to die?” King Kade asked.

“He who plays with angels,” Fatima said. “Thy doom arrives.”

When the second albino lifted her, Fatima took a match from her robe. “Fire,” she whispered, and a flame burst forth. She lit the angel’s wings, which burned immediately. He released Fatima and wailed in pain and grief. She whispered, “Fire,” again and burned the second albino’s wings. The albinos bent over in agony, burned and melted until nothing of them was left. She turned to King Kade and sent a flame in his direction.

He extinguished it with a flick of his wrist. “You cannot harm me with trivial magic,” he said. “I have defeated warriors much more powerful than you.”

“But none wilier,” she said. “And none, I am sure, as beautiful.”

And she threw the last of the mud at the magician’s tunic.

I recognized Uncle Jihad’s broad, meaty face behind the silly white beard. His wet laugh was identifiable. He had stuffed at least two pillows under his red coat. I walked up to him, pointed at his beard, and said, “You spoke Italian to Mariella, then to Fatima. You’re no Santa.”

He puffed out his chest, and the corners of his mouth disappeared into a smile behind his lifeless beard. “I hear someone speaking,” he said in English, “but I can’t tell where it’s coming from. Is there a poor, helpless child who doesn’t know that I fly across the world and speak to all children in their native language? Where’s this child who doubts who I am? Let him come forward.” He swiftly picked me up before I could escape his grasp.

“Speak Congolese, then,” I challenged.

“Blah, blah, blah, blah, naughty little boys, blah, blah, blah.”

“That’s not a language. You’re making it up.”

“What? You understand Congolese now? I’ve spoken the language since the beginning of time. It’s primitive, you know, but it’s delightful, because each ‘blah’ has a different meaning, depending on intonation. Want me to tell you a Congolese story?”

“No,” I said. “No story. Not now. Can I have my present, please?”

The Christmas party was at Uncle Halim and Aunt Nazek’s apartment. Santa Claus had come to our flat the year before. That gathering had been so successful, and the children had had so much fun, that the family decided to repeat it at Aunt Nazek’s, even though no one other than my mother had ever put up a Christmas tree before. To ensure that the party took place in her home, Aunt Nazek had bought a colossal fir tree. It didn’t fit in her living room. My mother couldn’t take her eyes off it. She’d be talking to someone, and her gaze would inadvertently flip back to the giant tree. The ceiling should have been at least a meter higher. The top of the tree had broken in two places; one segment ran along the ceiling, and the tip angled toward the floor. The silver star on top pointed down at a wooden footrest in the corner. From behind us, we heard a woman’s voice whisper, “Is the footrest supposed to be the barn or the crib?”

My mother and I turned toward Mrs. Farouk, who was leaning over the sofa. I didn’t understand what she meant, but my mother’s eyes suddenly lit up, her left hand landed on her heart, and she burst out with a laugh so loud the entire room went still. Her laugh, a noisy, sharp aspiration, wasn’t at all ladylike, but she didn’t stop. I nudged her. “What? Tell me,” I said.

“Come sit next to me, my dear friend,” my mother said, “and allow me to discover your entire life story. I know we’ve met, but we haven’t been properly introduced.”

Mrs. Farouk sat on the arm of my mother’s chair, and they began a whispery discussion of décor. “Do tell me about the coffee table,” Mrs. Farouk said. “Where do you think she got it? A reject from a low-end department store in Lahore?”

“Ah, precious. No, no. She had it handmade. She’d seen it in a magazine.”

“Car magazine, no doubt.”

The laugh, the noisy, sharp aspiration.

Lina came and sat next to me. She held her presents, a Monopoly game and a Clue. She asked me what was so funny. I had no idea. My mom winked across the room at Santa, whose whole body vibrated with glee and giggles.

“Do you think the coved ceiling is good or bad for the tree?” Mrs. Farouk asked. “You’d think the curves would refer back to the new angles of the tree, but they don’t somehow. One has to applaud risk takers, though. Brava.”

And my mother exploded again. Lina shrugged. I felt better that I was no longer the only one not getting the jokes. I looked longingly at her board games and then diverted my gaze to the dining room, where I had left my presents — two play guns and a set of exotic matchbox cars with a loopy plastic road. Lina placed her trove on my lap.

“By the way, I hear you’re a friend of Mrs. Daoud,” Mrs. Farouk said.

“She was my best friend,” my mother said. “I miss her terribly.”

“She must be wonderful. The apartment is in such great shape. I didn’t have to change anything. I find it incredible that, out of all the apartments in Beirut, we’d get hers.” She straightened her back, smoothed her hair with the palm of her hand. Her eyes flicked sideways and back. “An Italian woman, so to speak. She lived in Bologna. I’m from Rome. Amazing.”

My mother sighed, and gloom revisited her face. “I can’t forgive her,” she said. “I can’t forgive Israel for taking her from me.”

I woke up to an Israeli gift. They had landed at Beirut Airport, blew up all fourteen planes, and left. “The Israelis called it Operation Gift,” Fatima said. We were sitting under our bush in the gated garden across the street from our building. Fatima and I had a few hiding places, not all hidden, where we separated ourselves from the world. Under the bush, behind the red Rambler that hadn’t moved in years, under the fountain in our building’s lobby, all protected us from Israeli bombings or the infernal company of my cousins.

“My dad said they didn’t just bomb airplanes,” she added. “They broke into offices and wrote all kinds of curse words on the blackboards. They wrote that Arabs are donkeys. They did that. And then someone went to the bathroom on a desk. That’s disgusting.”

“Yuck,” I said. “Number one or number two?”

“Number two.”

Elie came out of the building, glaring ahead, seeing nothing in his path. He cursed the sky as he walked by, his shock of black hair looking like a woodpecker’s crest. Fatima shot him hateful glares. I tried not to blink. “He’s mean,” Fatima said.

The motorcycle roared past us. Mariella held on to a smiling Elie, her hands cozy around his waist. She looked delighted. He had a large gun in a holster around his thigh.

“You mean to defeat me with a mud stain?” King Kade asked sarcastically. “I can calm the raging flood and enrage the dormant sea. I drive clouds away and call them back. I make mountains and forests quake. And you mean to vanquish me with this?” He looked down at the dirty blotch on his tunic. His eyes twinkled as he pointed toward the dark spot and chuckled. He arched his eyebrows and covered his mirthful mouth. He pointed his finger at her, then back at the stain, and broke into a fit of hysterical laughter. The laughing magician was no longer all white, no longer uncontaminated. He laughed and laughed, and his laughter changed gradually, almost imperceptibly, from breezy to throaty and phlegmy, until finally even he noticed the metamorphosis. The stain on his robe spread. His long beard grew shorter in length.

Aghast, King Kade said, “But it is not yet darkness. Night has not fallen.”

The robe grew ragged, shrank. The cloth turned threadbare and tattered before it disappeared, leaving the magician naked. His body released its hairs, and his skin darkened and shriveled. His penis and scrotum withdrew inward, and a vagina began to form. The stomach shrank, and the hips expanded. Sparse black hair sprouted out of the creature’s bald head. Every other tooth in the monster’s snarling mouth dropped to the floor, charring a small circle around it, and the teeth that remained turned as black as soot. The creature’s breath turned vile. Her breasts drooped below her sternum, and her dark nipples elongated and dripped poisonous green bile upon her leathery skin. And the eight imps appeared beside Fatima.

“Envy,” cried Ishmael. “Thy end hath come.”

“Too late,” the monster spat. She backed into the corner, tried to cower behind the throne of clouds. She hissed at the imps. “Vengeance is mine, for your brother has departed our world.”

“And you shall join him,” Ishmael said. He jumped onto the monster and bit into her flesh. Isaac joined him, and his bite produced cries and wails and the sound of breaking bone. Ezra’s sharp teeth descended upon her thigh. Jacob and Job ate her fingers, Noah her knees. Elijah swallowed her breasts. And Adam — Adam received the blood of her neck. They tore flesh, gnawed gristle, and sucked marrow. They crunched bone and chewed sinewy muscle. Their lips and cheeks turned slick and waxy red. The imps feasted until she was no more.

Sneaking out of the apartment with my oud, I ran the twenty-three paces to Uncle Jihad’s door, and knocked. I scurried inside when he opened the door and quickly shut it behind me. I always managed to make Uncle Jihad laugh, even if I hadn’t intended to.

“And which evil organization are you hiding from? The American government? Dr. No? Nixon? The Mossad? The PLO? Just tell me who’s after you and I’ll annihilate the lot of them.”

“I’m not hiding.” I went into his living room to make sure no other family member was there. “I’m being discreet.”

“Ah, discretion,” he said. “The privilege of youth.”

I sat on a chair and said, “Sit, sit,” pointing to the sofa in front of me. “You have to be my audience.”

“My God,” he gushed. He sat down, dog-eared the paperback novel he was holding, and put it aside. “I’m so flattered. I’m overwhelmed. I’m not used to being chosen by genius.”

“Stop it. You have to behave yourself. I’ve learned a new maqâm, and Istez Camil said I should play it in front of an audience for practice. He thinks I play too much by myself and don’t involve others. You’re my practice. Act like an audience, all right?”

He began clapping and cheering. I beamed. “The special one is here. Hurrah. Take a bow.” I bowed from the chair, and he continued clapping. He hooted and whistled until I picked up my oud. He quieted down when I plucked the strings to make sure it was tuned. I limbered up my fingers. “That was amazing,” he said. “More, more.”

“More of what? That was just a scale.” I began to play the maqâm, which I thought was the most beautiful melody in the world. Istez Camil had said that it was hundreds of years old and all music derived from it. I didn’t care, because I didn’t want to play any other music. I wished I were Iraqi and lived in Baghdad, in a house with an enclosed courtyard with a fountain and a pool of water, and I could have guests over all day and all night to hear me play this wonderful maqâm.

Uncle Jihad came over and kissed my brow. “That was beautiful,” he said. He bent his knees to be level with me. “I can’t believe how good you’ve gotten.”

“Istez Camil says I have a hundred more years to go before I can play well.”

“He’s right. But I can say, and I’m sure he’ll agree with me, that you play wonderfully, and with passion. You just need the hundred years of ripening.” I hugged him. He stroked the back of my head. “You should play for your father,” he added. “It might look like he wouldn’t want you to, but he does. Our grandmother, your great-grandmother, played the oud. I bet you didn’t know that. But she stopped playing after she married your great-grandfather. It was the great love story. Let me tell you the story.”

“No, no,” I said. “Tell me a story about the oud.”

“The story of the greatest musician that ever lived,” Uncle Jihad said.

“Did he play the oud?” I asked.

“He played the lyre, which was the ancestor of the oud.”

“Was he Lebanese?” I asked.

“No,” Uncle Jihad replied. “He was Italian. His name was Orpheus. He lived a long, long time ago. Before he came into being, the best musician was his father, the god Apollo. He played better than any mortal since he was a god, and that’s saying a lot. But one day Apollo and the eldest muse, Calliope, had a son called Orpheus. His father gave him his first lyre and taught him to play it. And the son overtook his father, the pupil became better than the teacher, for he was the son of the god of music and the muse of poetry. With each note, he could seduce gods, humans, and beasts. Even trees and plants were still when he played. His music was powerful enough to silence the Sirens. Orpheus was human, but he played like a god, and in doing so, he lost track of his humanity, becoming godlike. All that mattered was the perfect tone, the ultimate note. And then, as all gods must do, he fell — fell in love and became human again.

“Orpheus met Eurydice and married her, but Hymenaeus, the god of marriage, wasn’t able to bless the wedding, and the wedding torches didn’t burst into flames but fizzled instead, and the smoke brought tears to the eyes. Not too long after her marriage, Eurydice was wandering in the meadows and was spotted by the shepherd Aristaeus. Bewitched by her beauty, he whistled his appreciation, whistled low, long, and slow.”

“That’s not right,” I said.

“No,” he replied, “no, it wasn’t. Eurydice got scared and fled. While running away, she was bitten in the ankle by a white scorpion. Eurydice died. And Orpheus was devastated. He sang his song of grief for all to hear. Up in the skies, the gods wept. They wept so much their clothes turned all soppy and shrank. That’s why the gods are depicted seminaked in the great paintings. They cried so much it rained for forty days and forty nights. For as long as Orpheus sang, his eyelids, and the world’s, were forbidden sleep. On the fortieth night, he realized that he couldn’t retrieve his wife by singing to the heavens. He was looking in the wrong direction. He must descend to the underworld and reclaim her.

“His song was his protection against the denizens of the netherworld. The lyre enchanted Cerberus, the giant three-headed dog who guarded the underworld. As Orpheus descended, the ghosts heard his song and shed their dry tears, for they remembered what it was like to breathe. Sisyphus sat on his stone and listened. The three Furies stopped their tortures, joined their victims in the enchantment. Tantalus forgot his eternal thirst for an instant.

“And the song squeezed Proserpine’s heart. ‘Take her,’ said the goddess of the underworld. She called on the god Mercury to bring forth limping Eurydice. ‘Follow Orpheus with his wife,’ Proserpine commanded Mercury. ‘Set her free in his world. But listen, Orpheus, and hear this. Your wife will live again on one condition. You will lead her out of my realm, but you may not look back. If you fail this task, I’ll retrieve her forever.’ Orpheus set out, walked out of the underworld. He heard the god’s winged footsteps behind him, sometimes faint, sometimes not. He trusted and walked forth through passages dark and steep, through dank tunnels and tortuous paths. He believed his love would follow him. Light changed. He could see the gate before him. He looked back and saw his wife dragged back down to the underworld. ‘A last farewell,’ he heard her say, but the sound reached him after she had vanished. And he lost her.”

“That was not a happily ever after,” I said. “You promised to only tell me stories with happy endings.”

“You’re right, but that’s easy to fix. Orpheus died and descended into the underworld and was able to look at Eurydice as much as he wanted.”

“And they lived happily ever after.”

“That they did.”

“How come it’s always bad to look back?” I asked. “What if something is going to hit you from behind? What about rearview mirrors?”

“I don’t really know,” he replied.

I paused. “Would you have tried to retrieve Grandmother from the underworld?”

“Hmm.” He hesitated, cast his eyes upward as if contemplating. “I don’t think she would’ve wanted me to. It was the right time for her to leave. Eurydice died before her time, which was why Orpheus went down to get her.”

“If I die,” I said, “will you come for me?”

“I’ll turn the world upside down and inside out. I’ll find you wherever you are. I’ll not only come for you, I’ll bring an entire army. You’re my little hero. That’s what you are.”

Who will raise the dead again? Fatima found her lover, Afreet-Jehanam, human-sized and demonlike, lying prone and lifeless on the white altar of King Kade. The imps jumped atop the altar. Weeping, Ishmael said, “Our brother is dead.” Fatima ran her fingers through the demon’s hair, which was no longer yellow and fiery, just unresponsive blue strings of air. She kissed his inert lips. “Wake,” she said, but he remained dead. She kissed his palm, pressed his hand to her chest. She used his swordlike fingernail to cut her lip. She kissed him again. “Wake,” she said, “drink my blood,” but he remained dead. She removed the loincloth of rhinoceros hide and held his listless penis. She put the penis in her mouth and licked. “Wake,” she said. “I am not done with you yet.” And the penis grew rigid, but the jinni did not breathe. She climbed on the altar. “Wake,” she said. “I am Fatima, tamer of Afreet-Jehanam, vanquisher of King Kade. I am master of light and dark. Wake.” She straddled her lover, descended upon him until he was inside her. She felt the force of life tremble within her. And his hair was enflamed. She bent down and kissed him. A streak of blood dripped from her lip to his, down across the convex curve of his cheek. It transformed into a young mud snake upon touching the altar.

“Wake,” she said, and he opened his three red eyes.

Elie leaned on his motorcycle, looking ruffled and agitated. He didn’t notice me until I was right in front of his face. He was now sixteen, and my mother always said that was a horrible age, because you were mean, unhappy, and uncharitable most of the time, and you ended up listening to American music. Elie was moving up in the militia. He already commanded a troop of boys who were older than he was, and, more important, he now carried two guns. He stared at his shoes. I stared at him until a sudden flutter flashed in the corner of my eye. Mariella walked out of the lobby, wearing a drunken smile and a sweater so tight her breasts looked like a high shelf. She whistled a Beatles melody. She strolled by, pretended not to see us. She was a bad actress, but Elie was fooled. “I’m here,” he called.

“Oh,” she sighed. “I didn’t see you.” She kept walking, laughed coquettishly. “I want something to drink.” She entered the store on the ground level of the adjacent building, then stuck her head back out. “I’ll be right back.”

“I need to find a place,” he said. I nodded, unsure what to say. “She’s upset because I can’t find a place. She no longer wants to come with me to any of my friends’ places. She thinks it’s beneath her.” He paused, eyed me to make sure I was following. “You’re my friend, right? I’ve always taken care of you, so you’re my friend.” I nodded, still silent. “I have to use your room. Your mom takes bridge classes Mondays and Thursdays. We can go up there then.”

“Why do you want to visit me when she’s not there?” I asked.

“Don’t be silly. I want to use your room. You’re not going to be there.”

“You want to be alone with Mariella?”

“Yes. What the hell do you think I’m talking about?”

“What about Lina?” I didn’t think she’d be happy if she knew he wanted to be with Mariella. My sister liked him.

“Get rid of her.”

Mariella came over and greeted me by bumping me with her hip. “How’s my little boyfriend doing?” She held her Pepsi bottle with both hands, and her lips played with the straw.

“We’re going to use his room,” Elie said.

She didn’t reply, didn’t even look at him. She concentrated on my eyes. I blushed. “I don’t understand why you play the oud for my sister but not for me,” she said. “Don’t you like me?” I blushed again.

I waited in the building’s lobby on Thursday afternoon. Elie had said he’d come down as soon as he was done being alone with Mariella. I waited for a long time. Finally, he came out of the elevator, walked by me, smiled, and grabbed his crotch.

My bed was a mess. The duvet was on the floor, and so was one of the two pillows. The other was crumpled. I tried to make the bed presentable. I smoothed the damp sheets, fluffed the pillows, and covered everything with the duvet. I sat on the bed to make it look less strange.

Istez Camil asked me to repeat the maqâm. My fingers hurt. I was dripping sweat like hanging laundry. I was happy, though. Istez Camil wouldn’t admit it openly, but I knew he was impressed. I could tell because he sat up straight in his chair and his eyes turned into slim slits of brown, unmoving, unwavering, staring at the well-instructed fingers of my left hand.

“Again.” He clapped his hands for a beat. One, clap, clap, one, clap, clap. I finished, and he wanted me to start over again. Sweat dropped into my eyes. I asked him to wait a minute. I wiped my brow, took a sip of water, and scratched my itchy head. “Let me see,” he said. He stood up and held my head. He ran his callused fingers through my clammy hair. He told me to take a break and left the room. My mother rushed in a few seconds later. Anxiety paralyzed my tongue. She held my head down and searched my hair. “Oh my God,” she exclaimed. “Don’t move.” She dashed out of the room. I heard her on the phone but couldn’t discern what she said.

The whole family had to wash their hair with anti-lice shampoo. My mother called everyone in the building and demanded that they all use the medicine. The household linen was boiled and disinfected, and so was my entire wardrobe.

My sister glared every time she walked by me. I worried that she would figure out that Elie had been in my room. All my cousins avoided me. I ended up sitting under the bush in the gated garden, huddled close to Fatima. At one point, my cousins Hafez and Anwar ran toward me and started mussing up each other’s hair and screaming, “Yuck, yuck, yuck!”

At dinner that night, in front of the television news, my mother wouldn’t stop talking about the lice. I remained silent. Uncle Jihad nudged me with his elbow. “See.” He ran his palm over his smooth scalp. “Sometimes it’s good to be bald.”

It seemed every time I saw my grandfather now he was noticeably older and weaker.

He combed my hair and I wept. “I knew you’d need me.” His voice was gentle and soft, elderly and frail. After every stroke of his fine comb, he would dip it into a bowl of scalding, soapy water. “I knew they wouldn’t understand. Your parents are too modern.” He ran his left hand over my eyes, onto my forehead, all the way back to my hair and neck. “These days no one understands feelings, and when I leave this world — soon, probably — who will understand yours?” I cried, couldn’t stop my body from shaking. He combed. “You’re my boy, my blood.”

Seven

In Cairo, Baybars and his followers were housed by his aunt. “You are the son of my sister,” she told him. “You are as dear to me as you are to her. This house is your family home.” She arranged for his belongings to be moved into private chambers. She introduced him to her husband, Najem, one of the king’s viziers. That night, she laid out a wonderful feast. “Tell me about my sister,” she said. “I would love to hear her stories.” And Baybars told her how Sitt Latifah had saved his life and adopted him, how she taught him archery. His aunt’s face flushed with affection.

The next morning, Baybars wanted to breathe the fresh Cairene air. He and his warriors rode into the city. Al-Awwar was not in a good mood and made sure that his rider knew it. What was supposed to be a delightful exercise turned into a battle of wills between horse and rider. “None of our horses are happy,” the warriors said. “The vizier’s stable hands tend the vizier’s horses and not ours. We hired some help, but al-Awwar may require a stableman all to himself.”

Baybars saw that his stallion was not well groomed, his mane was not combed. Baybars apologized to his horse. Al-Awwar arched his neck and snorted.

That night, Baybars asked his uncle Najem if he knew where he could find a capable and worthy groom. The vizier said, “The stablemen’s shop is in the Rumaillah quarter, and you are sure to find a good man there. However, under no circumstance should you hire a young man by the name of Othman. The ruffian is about your age, but he has the criminal experience of an old man. He is a thief and a scofflaw who can only be controlled with a branding iron. The king has issued warrants for his arrest, but he continues to evade the law and find naïve folk to defraud.”

At the stablemen’s shop, Baybars met an old man with a beard as white as swan feathers. Baybars told the chief of the stablemen he was looking for a groom, someone who was clever and strong, honest and guileless. The chief presented a groom, but Baybars did not like him, or the second, the third, or the fourth.

An ostentatiously dressed young man with the face of a rodent entered the shop. Upon seeing him, everyone cleared out except Baybars and the chief, who ran toward the young man and prostrated himself and kissed the offered hand. Othman asked, “Did you get any money in today?” and the chief replied that he had not. “And what is he looking for?”

“He is looking for a groom, but he did not like the ones I showed him,” the chief said. “He must want a special one.”

“Do you like me?” Othman asked. And Baybars said yes.

Othman thought the young man an easy mark: he would work for him that day and rob him that night. Baybars thought, “Either that young man will obey me, or I will kill him and rid the world of a parasite.” Baybars paid the chief stableman five dinars. The chief was about to put the coins in his pocket, but Othman glared at him, and he handed the money over.

Baybars and his groom arrived at Najem’s stable. The instant the other stable hands laid eyes upon Othman, they scattered in every direction. Baybars said, “This is al-Awwar. I can see that he likes you, which is an excellent indication of your good nature. Take care of him, wash him, and feed him.”

Alone in the stable, Othman thanked God for His glorious gift. Equestrian equipment, more valuable than anything he had stolen before, hung from hooks on the wall; beautiful, intricately stitched leather saddles lay in order on a wooden bar. What would he take first? He filled his coat pockets with golden bridles and silver bits. He found a large sack, in which he placed two saddles and five silver reins. He mounted his horse and rode out of the stable.

“Where are you going?” asked Baybars, leaning against the side of the stable.

“I am going to wash the equipment,” Othman replied. “It is the groom’s job. I do not yet trust the servants here. I shall hire people I have used before.”

“But I cannot have you spending your own money on my equipment,” Baybars said. “I will give you ten dinars, and you can pay your cleaners with that.”

Greed forced Othman off his horse, and Baybars hit his new groom with the hilt of his sword. He dragged the rascal back into the barn by the hair. “You will learn your lesson, you lying ingrate.” Baybars tied Othman up and hung him from a pole. He noticed that the thief’s belt was a whip. “You wear this to inflict pain,” Baybars said. “Now, then, you will be pained by my righteous anger.” And Baybars whipped Othman until the groom fainted.

Othman awoke to find a multitude of eyes upon him. “Help me down, brothers,” he said, “for I suffer.” The other grooms did not move. “You,” Othman called to the youngest groom. “Come help me down. Let me rest for the night, and in the morning you can hang me up again.” The groom untied Othman and helped him down. Othman hit the boy, tied him up, and hung him in his place. All the other grooms hid. “Fools.” He climbed back on his horse and escaped.

In the morning, Baybars found the young groom hanging instead of Othman. He untied the boy and saddled al-Awwar. He called the grooms and asked if any knew where Othman lived. One said, “He lives in the Rumaillah quarter, in the Sharbeel neighborhood, next to the long well. I do not know the house. He has threatened to kill anyone who says where it is.”

Baybars rode out, and the African warriors emerged behind him. When he reached the neighborhood, Baybars asked a passerby if he knew Othman’s house, and the man ran in the other direction. A second man shouted, “Beware the evil eye,” and he, too, scurried away. A third refused to answer, and a fourth wet his pants and fainted. Baybars walked into the neighborhood bakery. He yelled at the baker, “My master Othman claims you cheated him out of a dozen loaves of bread, and unless you clear this up, he will burn your store down.”

“That is not possible,” the baker replied. “It was only yesterday that I sent a dozen loaves with the boy here.”

“You had better explain it to my master, then, because he is furious.”

The baker told the boy to go to Othman’s house and find out what happened. The boy said to Baybars, “You can ride ahead. I will walk there. It is a shame to make your horse trot at my pace.” But Baybars said, “I have a better idea. Since you like my horse so much, ride him, and we will follow you.” The baker boy could not believe his good fortune. Al-Awwar allowed him to ride, and the boy led the men to Othman’s house. He was about to knock on Othman’s door when Baybars stopped him. The boy realized he had been tricked into revealing the house, and his mind flew in panic. “I will not tell,” Baybars whispered. “Go now.” The boy raced back to the shop. Othman’s mother opened the door and asked Baybars what he wanted. He said he wanted Othman. “And who is looking for him?” she asked, and Baybars replied, “His master. He works for me. I intend to make an honest man of him, to lead him onto a path of righteousness.”

Othman’s mother glared at Baybars and said, “It is about time. I have been waiting so long. My son is in one of the caves of the imam. He is with his men, planning their revenge upon your family, I presume. Find him, and inspire him to virtue.”

“Where do I find these caves?”

“They are near the tomb of the imam, of course. Ask someone. I cannot do everything for you.”

No one would tell Baybars and his companions where the caves of the imam were. From a vendor, he bought ten watermelons and asked that they be delivered to the tomb of the imam. The vendor called an old porter with a donkey. The porter put the watermelons on the donkey’s back and began to march toward the tomb. “Where exactly is your house, sire?” the porter asked.

“I need to go to the caves. I shall pay you double if you lead me there.”

The porter trembled and shook. The donkey, his companion of many years, stopped and moved closer to his master to comfort him. “I cannot take you there,” the porter said. “My soul would be forfeit. Only thugs and murderers roam the caves.”

“If you do not take me to the caves,” Baybars said, “I will claim your life myself.”

The old man took a couple of steps and then whispered into his donkey’s ear, “My penis is bigger than yours, friend.” And the donkey laughed so hard that his knees buckled under him. His stomach reached the ground, and his braying reached the sky. “Look, master,” the porter exclaimed. “My poor donkey is in pain. He cannot go any farther. Please, I must unload him and let him rest here.” He pointed east and added, “The caves are there. You will not miss them. Let my miserable donkey rest.”

Baybars and his companions moved on, leaving the porter and his donkey behind. “He has gone, has he not?” asked Baybars, and one of his warriors, looking back, replied, “Yes, he is riding his donkey toward the city as swiftly as he can.”

There were numerous caves in the hill, and Baybars did not want to search every one of them. One of his warriors unbridled a threatening cry. “Othman, groom of Baybars the bold,” the warrior yelled, “your master demands your presence.”

Othman appeared at the mouth of a cave with eighty men backing him up. “Why did you follow me here?” he asked.

“You are my groom,” Baybars said, “and I am your master. You will either serve me or die.”

“Begone,” Othman shouted. “Leave, or I will have my men tear you into tiny pieces and cook you in unclean water over a slow-burning fire.” The warriors trotted slowly toward the brigands, and, just as slowly, the brigands began to disperse. “Stay here and fight,” Othman commanded. “We outnumber them twenty to one. They only look frightening.” And Othman unsheathed his sword and yelled, “Follow me,” and ran unfollowed toward his nemesis. “May I?” asked one of the warriors. He jumped off his horse, did not take out his sword. He waited for the running Othman and unleashed a slap like fire upon the groom’s face, knocking him to the ground. The warrior tied Othman’s hands and threw him onto the back of the stallion.

When they reached the gates of Cairo, Othman began to whimper. “Please,” he begged, “do not take me into the city with my hands tied and my head uncovered. It is not becoming.”

“You are afraid of being mocked,” Baybars said, “and I am afraid you will run away and break your promise of service.”

Othman vowed to serve his master. The African warrior untied him and offered him a headdress. They reached Cairo, and Othman said, “Please, wait. I pray at the Lady Zainab’s Shrine for good luck each time I enter the city.” And Baybars allowed him.

Othman entered the shrine, knelt on the ground, and prayed, “Dear Lady, mother of us all. I place myself in your protection. Save me from this man.” Othman felt Baybars’s hand on his shoulder. “Smite him, mother of faith. Clobber him now.”

Othman heard Baybars kneel beside him. “You followed me,” Othman whined.

“I will follow you wherever you go,” Baybars said. “My soul will leave me before I leave you.”

“Smite him,” Othman screamed. “Crush him, my Lady. This insane man will not leave me alone. Help your servant.”

And before them appeared the Lady in all her magnificent glory. She shimmered in blue, shone in silver. And her bewitching voice said, “I am happy with you, Prince Baybars. This groom is one of mine, and I will watch over him forever.” The Lady paused, laughed. “The groom has been serving God for years. Let him now serve and obey you.” She placed her hand upon Othman’s head. “I will make sure he follows the virtuous path and fulfills his destiny.”

And a weeping Othman said, “On my honor, I now repent.” He reached for his master’s hand. “I will be your servant.” And a weeping Baybars returned, “And I yours.”

The vizier Najem was livid when he saw Othman on his property. He drew his sword. “Stay your hand, Uncle,” Baybars said, “while I explain. This man has repented. He swore obedience to God. I have taught him proper ablutions and prayers.”

The vizier studied Othman and witnessed faith in his eyes. He congratulated Othman on achieving wisdom and Baybars on finding an honest groom. He then said, “The king hunts in Giza every spring, and all the honorable men follow him. The season is upon us. Our house will begin to make preparations. You are welcome to stay in our tent or bring one of your own.”

Baybars wanted to go, and he wanted his own tent. “I want a big one,” he told Othman. “I want a pavilion worthy of a king. Go and buy me one.” Othman said that a tent that size had to be ordered in advance and there was no time. A disappointed Baybars said, “Well, then, procure me the best you can find. I do not wish to be mocked.”

Othman decided that the best place to find a pavilion worthy of a king was in a king’s court, so that was where he went. He found the servant in charge of the king’s tents, introduced himself, and asked how many tents the king owned.

“Only the chamberlain would know something like that,” the servant said. “There must be hundreds. We have only used ten since I have been here.”

“Well,” Othman said, “if they have been stored for so long, how do you know they are still usable? How do you keep moths away? Are they fresh, or do they smell? Our glorious king should not have flawed tents. I will examine every one of your tents and make sure they are worthy. It will be my duty and honor to serve my king.”

“But there are so many of them,” the servant said.

“True,” Othman replied. “I might be doing this for the rest of my inoffensive life, but I feel it is what I was born to do. Let me start with the biggest pavilion you have.”

“The biggest one is immense. We cannot open it within the palace.”

“That is surely the one I must start with,” Othman said.

And Othman led twenty of the king’s servants out of the palace, carrying a large, bundled pavilion, which could not be unfurled except in pieces.

Baybars exclaimed, “You have outdone yourself, Othman. This is fit for a king.”

“For an old-fashioned king,” Othman said. “Tan is too bland a color. We must change it.” He did not add that, unless the color was turned, the king’s chamberlain might recognize the tent.

“Well,” Baybars said, “do with it what you will. Take it to Giza, and have it set up before I arrive. I am happy to have a tent of my own.” And he left his servants.

Othman told the African warriors, “You three should paint the canvas. Your lands are known for their opulent and bright colors. You would do a much better job than I.”

“A mule would do a much better job than you would,” the first warrior said.

The second added, “So would a dog.”

And the third, “But that does not mean we should do it. It is middling work.”

“Brothers, you insult me,” Othman said, “and I will not defend myself. Yet you swore to serve Baybars as I did, and if his social standing is improved by the painting of this tent, then it is not middling work. I will have the servants of the house do it. We will dye it.”

“Dye?” the first warrior said. “You might as well put up a sign that says the owner of this pavilion is a cheap fool.”

“We need pigment,” said the first. “We need limestone,” said the second. “We need gum arabic,” said the third.

“We have all that,” said Othman.

“Yes,” they said, “but we do not have elephant dung.”

“Will horse dung do?” Othman asked.

Othman and the warriors had to recruit servants and men on the street to help them carry the folded tent to the ship. He asked his mother to join them. “How long has it been since you had a holiday?” he asked her. “I will ask Baybars to hire you. You are the best cook in Cairo.”

At Giza, Othman enlisted every able man to raise the pavilion. He needed a hundred. Once it was erected, he realized that they had nowhere near the furnishings or lamps for a tent that size. “We did not think about that,” one of the warriors said.

“No matter,” said Othman. He walked to the river, where he saw the king’s servants unloading the rugs, pillows, and oil lamps for the royal tent. “My dear fellows,” he said, “the king has commanded that you deliver all the furniture to Baybars’s tent because he wishes to have dinner there.” And then he saw the servants of the king’s judge and told them the same thing. He spoke to all the viziers’ servants. By the time everything was delivered, Baybars’s tent looked as full and beautiful as a golden peacock’s tail.

Baybars arrived the next day and was furious that Othman had commandeered the entire council’s furnishings. “You have made a fool of me,” he yelled. “By God, I will skin you alive for this.” He picked up a stick, and Othman took off with Baybars behind him.

Othman reached the king’s procession. He prostrated himself before his king and said, “Your Majesty, I am under your protection. My master wishes my doom, and he said I could never serve him again unless I extended an invitation to King Saleh.”

“Your deliverance is in hand,” the king said. “Lead us to your master’s tent.”

The processioners had to rub their eyes to be sure that what they saw was not a desert mirage. Before them, Baybars’s pavilion stood as big as a city. Its colors and design were utterly new to them. White lines divided the tent like a quilt. Abstract shapes ran amok in some sections — triangles in olive green, squares in burnt umber, cones in pale lilac, circles in sky blue, ellipses in brown, swoops of yellow ocher. Other sections showed images of the great hunt — russet lions brought down by golden spears, black warriors on white stallions encircling a herd of wildebeest. And the guests looked on in stunned silence. The guests sat in the pavilion, and it still looked unpeopled. Baybars welcomed them all and ran outside and called for Othman. “Who told you to invite all these gentlemen, and how will we be able to feed and honor them?”

And Othman promised to take care of everything. He ran to the king’s cooks. “The king is having dinner at Baybars’s tent but is unsure of the quality of Baybars’s cooks. The king does not wish to insult Baybars, so he commands that you cater the dinner secretly.” He went to each of the viziers’ cooks and repeated the story. To his mother he said, “The entire court is coming to dinner. Please make my favorite dishes. These nobles will think the food their poor subjects eat is a delicacy.”

Within an hour, a feast of immense proportions was served to the king and his nobles. The king said, “In the name of God, the most merciful,” and took the first bite.

“One of my cooks makes a dish very similar to this,” one of the viziers said, “except this is much better. Its flavors are more subtle.”

“And I have the same carpet as this,” another vizier said, “but you can tell that this is of finer silk.”

The king said, “This lentil-and-rice dish is so simple, yet so delicious. Can you find out from your cooks what the secret ingredient is?”

Baybars ran to Othman and asked. Othman asked his mother. “Salt and pepper,” she said.

Everyone ate and was merry, and the king said, “May God bless the host of this feast.”

Back at the court in Cairo, Baybars knelt before his king, who did not recognize the boy his dream had once asked for, since Baybars was no longer Mahmoud. And the king announced, “A gracious host and a possessor of immaculate taste should be rewarded. I hereby offer the suit of prince of protocol to Baybars. He will be responsible for all invitations and events of this court.”

And that was how Baybars became the king’s prince of protocol.

The sound of rolling dice on the backgammon board echoed in the living room. When my father and Uncle Jihad played, the noise was as loud as a demon battle. With every move, they smacked the ivory chips on the board with a bang. They teased each other mercilessly, yelled and screamed in jest. They both liked to gamble and were good at the game. When they played other people, they were more subdued, because money was involved, but they played each other only for quarters, so they could resort to the clamor and the teasing. Manhood, not money, was at stake. I was always afraid that they would break the glass table under the board.

I was lying in bed reading, with the door closed, when the phone rang. I picked up the handset and heard my mother’s voice. She asked me if Uncle Jihad was there. There was no hello, no how are you. She said she’d been trying to get hold of him and figured he must be with my father. “Tell him to come to the phone, but don’t tell him or your father who it is.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Just do what I tell you for once.”

Uncle Jihad left his game and picked up the phone in the foyer. All he said was “Hello,” and then his face seemed to twitch and tighten. He hung up the receiver without saying anything. Before I had a chance to ask what was going on, he put his finger to his lips and smiled, asked me silently to join in his conspiracy. “I have to leave,” he announced to my father. “Clients.”

“On Sunday?” my father said from the living room. “Come finish this game. I’m trouncing you. You can’t deny me that pleasure. My luck will change if we stop. Don’t leave now. Curse you and your ancestors, you insensitive lout. Stay.”

My mother came home carrying a German-shepherd puppy in her arms. The puppy was so cute even my father smiled when he saw her. “What’s this?” he said, and my mother replied that it was time. She gave the puppy to me. I looked at Lina to see if she was jealous, but she wasn’t even looking at the dog. She scrutinized my mother. My mother removed her high heels in the anteroom, something I had never seen her do before.

“You’re right,” my father said. “It’s time the boy learned some responsibility.”

“I’m going to take a bath,” my mother said. “I need it.” She walked by, and I saw a bruise on her instep.

Uncle Jihad came in a few moments later. He went into the living room to finish the game with my father. I carried the puppy in so he could see her. Uncle Jihad asked what I was going to call her. I hadn’t thought of that. The puppy slobbered all over my face as I carried her to my mother’s room. She was still in the bath. I stood outside her bathroom door, felt the change in the moistness of the air. I asked what was the name of my dog.

“Not now, darling.” Her voice always sounded hollow when she was in her bathroom. “I’m resting.”

“The dog needs a name,” I insisted.

“Call her Tulip. That’s the name of a famous Alsatian.”

We didn’t find out about the accident until the following day. My father read about it in the morning paper at work. I heard about it at school. Fatima told me what little she knew; her details were sketchy. My mother had been in a car accident, a four-vehicle pileup. A number of people had died, but my mother was unhurt. I knew that because I had seen her. Other boys in our class began to add details. A big accident. A truck coming from Damascus had careered off at the steep curves of Araya as it descended toward Beirut. It ran over and crushed several cars. My mother’s Jaguar was in the way. She saved herself by flying off a cliff. “Like a magic carpet,” a boy said. “The Jaguar took off into the skies.”

“I meant to tell you,” my mother said when my father came home, “but I was too tired.” When she lay on the burgundy divan, it seemed that the living room’s furniture — the divan, the small Léger hanging above it, the smaller Moghul paintings on the side wall, the glass coffee and side tables — was handcrafted with her in mind.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t,” my father said. “You could have died, and you didn’t think it was important to tell me? Why? Why would you do such a thing?”

My mother held a cigarette and stared at the smoke floating toward the ceiling. “I was going to tell you. I was tired, shocked. I needed a bath. And time passed.”

“But you had time to stop and get a puppy?”

“Yes,” she said. “Isn’t she sweet?”

Everyone in the family used to say that Jaguar should donate their cars to my mother. She was their best advertisement. Elie said she drove like a warrior. Aunt Samia said she drove like a man. Uncle Halim said she drove like a taxi driver. Uncle Wajih said she drove like an Italian. And Uncle Jihad said she drove with élan. It was the way she handled the car that attracted attention. Her left hand hardly touched the steering wheel. She leaned to the left, her side against the door, her elbow jutting out the window, her head propped against her hand. She drove as if the world and its roads belonged to her.

My father sighed. He stopped his pacing. “Why don’t you go to your rooms, children? I need to talk to your mother.”

Both my mother and my sister said, “No.”

“I’m not a child,” Lina added.

“I don’t want to do this now,” my mother said. “I’m all right. The car is totaled, but I’m fine. It happened quickly. I reacted. It turned out I did the right thing.”

“How fast were you driving?” my father asked.

“What difference does it make? The truck lost control. It rolled into our lane. If I’d slowed down, I’d have been crushed like the other cars.”

“You take too many risks when you drive,” my father said. “I’ve told you that a hundred times. You never listen to me.”

My mother inhaled deeply and kept staring at the ceiling.

“This is the third accident,” he said softly. “And you don’t seem to take it seriously.” He looked at her, shook his head, and walked out of the living room, mumbling the word “husband.”

Aunt Samia poured herself another glass of arak. We sat around her dining table. Most of the family was on the terrace. “Why don’t you just hire a driver?” she asked my father. “That would solve all your problems.”

I had eaten too much. My stomach rumbled and rebelled. I didn’t want to leave the table, though, because I wanted my aunt to stop talking about my mother, who had stayed home.

“Stop it, Samia,” Uncle Jihad said. “There’s no way she’ll use a driver.”

“She could’ve been killed,” she said.

“If someone else had been driving,” Uncle Jihad said, “everyone in the car would have been killed. It’s a miracle she survived, but having a driver wouldn’t have saved anybody in this case.” His small towel worked overtime. He sweated profusely and kept wiping his bald head.

“You always take her side,” my aunt said. “You refuse to see, for some reason.”

“He’s not taking anyone’s side,” my father interrupted. He looked weary and drawn. To me he said, “Why don’t you go outside and play with the boys?”

I shrugged.

“Go,” Aunt Samia said. “You can’t stay here. Your father wants you outside.” I shrugged. “See?” she said to my father. “You’re not strict with your family. They’re undisciplined. How will you be able to control them if you let things like this slide?”

“Samia.” Uncle Jihad sighed. “Don’t start. This was a wonderful meal. Don’t ruin it.”

“I’m just thinking of his family.”

“You should think of his family a little less,” Lina said, materializing as if by sorcery. She leaned against the doorjamb. She wore a light dress and short heels and had her hair pulled back, which made her look adult and sophisticated. “After all,” she added, “thinking was never your strong suit.”

My eyes felt hot in their sockets. Aunt Samia wrung the glass of arak with both hands.

My father stood up, livid. I thought he was about to slap Lina, but he controlled himself. “How dare you?” he yelled. “You never speak to your elders in that tone.” His fingers coiled and uncoiled. His hand muscles twitched. “She’s your aunt. How could you? I know we’ve taught you better manners than this.”

Lina hesitated. I could almost see her eyes parsing out all the possible outcomes. In an unemotional voice betraying no inflection, she said, “You’re right, Father. I don’t know what came over me.” She smiled. “I’m really sorry,” she said to my aunt. “I don’t know why I’d say such a thing. Please forgive me.” She turned around and began to walk away.

“You will be punished for this,” my father called to her disappearing back.

They were both lying.

My mother did punish Lina. She had to. “You’re making me do this,” she repeated. “I’ll not allow bad manners in my house.” My father tried to intervene on Lina’s behalf, but my mother would have none of it. My sister was grounded for a week. She was allowed out only to go to school, and would have to have all her meals in her room. I sneaked in the grated-fresh-coconut-and-chocolate balls she liked so much. Then I saw my father sneaking her treats. Uncle Jihad brought her main dishes, all kinds of stews and rice. I thought they were doing it behind my mother’s back, but on the third day, I saw her give Lina a whole plate of cheese desserts.

At the end, Lina was grounded for only four days, because my mother thought she had gained too much weight staying in her room. She spent that time listening to a kind of music I knew little about, hard sounds, harsh chords. This was not the Beatles. This wasn’t the Monkees or the Partridge Family. I peeked through her keyhole to see how one listened to such jarring noise: erratic jumping, jerky hand movements, and head movements bouncy enough to ensure maximum wild hair. I didn’t understand the thump-thump of the bass.

King Saleh of Egypt had a judge who was as evil as his countenance. If one examined his features clearly, one could ascertain that he was touched by Satan: his ears stuck out, and the top of his left had a jagged rip, as if he were a feral cat that had lost a fight. This man, one of the king’s council members, had grown in power through duplicity and treachery. Mischief-making was the sweet his heart craved, and perfidy the air he breathed. He was known by the name Mustapha al-Kallaj, but that was not the one he was born with. He was Arbusto. He was born in Faro, Portugal, the nephew of a king. He was raised in opulence, educated by masters, loved by his parents, but the richest soil and deepest well water cannot turn an evil seed into a fruitful tree.

A sister was born, two years his junior. Even as a young girl, she was as wise as a sage, as beautiful as a perfect emerald. She sat at the feet of her teachers, quenched her thirst for knowledge. She was called the Rose of Portugal, carried herself with the grace of a cypress.

Her iniquitous brother stole her honor on her fourteenth birthday. He impressed himself upon her in her chambers. As soon as her handmaidens heard her shrieks, they rushed to her rescue, only to be slain by his sword. When the foul Arbusto left, his sister crawled to the butchered corpses of her friends and covered her hands in their stillwarm blood.

“The sacrifices you have offered will never be in vain,” she said. “We will walk the Garden together.” She stabbed her heart with a dagger.

In the morning, the girl’s mother wailed, “I have lost two children to the night.” The king ordered Arbusto’s arrest, but none could find him. He sailed to Cairo, and used his scholarship and cunning to masquerade as a learned Muslim.

Arbusto became King Saleh’s judge, and the king relied on his counsel.

Arbusto’s heart filled with hatred and scorn when he saw Baybars in his new suit standing at the diwan’s door as the prince of protocol. He wrote a letter to a man by the name of Azkoul, a malicious soul who delighted in murder, massacre, and mayhem. “As soon as you finish reading this note,” it said, “you should be riding toward Cairo. Come to the diwan, and the man who asks what it is you need is the one I want not breathing. Tell him you have a proposal for the diwan, and offer him a folded piece of paper. When he turns his back to you, strike him dead. I will ensure that you are not punished.” Azkoul flushed with joy at the prospect of a killing.

At the court, Prince Baybars received the paper from Azkoul and turned his back to open the diwan’s door. Azkoul took out his sword and raised it to strike. As Baybars swung the doors open, Azkoul’s bloodied head rolled into the diwan, and his body collapsed behind the prince.

“What manner of murder is this?” bellowed the king’s judge. “How can the prince of protocol kill a seeker of the diwan?”

Two men entered the diwan and bowed before the king. “No one but us killed the seeker,” the fierce Uzbeks confessed. To an astonished council they relayed the story. “The man is named Azkoul; he is an infamous killer. We saw him enter the city and recognized him. We trailed him, knowing that where he travels treachery follows. We saw him raise his sword to kill the prince, who had his back turned, and we struck, cutting a cankerous blight from a devout world.”

And the king said, “Justice prevails again.”

Baybars thanked the Uzbeks for saving his life and invited them to be his guests. The Uzbeks rode with Baybars out of the palace. When they arrived at Najem’s, they asked if this was his home, and the prince replied that it belonged to his uncle. Baybars could not own a house, since he himself was owned. “But that is not true,” one of the Uzbeks said. “We will present our case to the king tomorrow.”

In the morning, the prince and the fighters knelt before the king. The Uzbeks said, “Your Majesty, Prince Baybars is not a slave. He is naught but a son of kings. We have proof of his history and his genealogy.”

The king said, “I would like to hear about Prince Baybars. How did he come about? Who is he? What happened? Tell me his story.”

My grandfather died in April 1973. I had just gotten home from school when Aunt Samia’s panicked Filipina maid called on my mother, saying that my grandfather, who was visiting his daughter, wasn’t doing well. My mother ran up the stairs in her housedress and clogs.

My grandfather lay shivering on the couch, Aunt Samia on her knees before him. She shivered as well, but it was an altogether different kind. “I don’t understand,” she said. “What can I do?” My grandfather clutched his chest with his right hand. When Aunt Samia saw my mother, she begged, “Help me, please.” My mother knelt beside my aunt. Shoulder to shoulder, they seemed to be praying before my grandfather, the altar. I was the only witness.

“His heart,” my aunt said. She had called an ambulance. “He wants to know his name.” Her voice sounded like cheap plastic. “He doesn’t know who he is?”

My grandfather had trouble breathing. He shook his head. “No,” he uttered.

“Hold on, Father,” Aunt Samia said. “Help is on the way.”

“Your name is Ismail al-Kharrat,” my mother said.

“We know you,” Aunt Samia said. “You’ll be fine. We know who you are.”

His eyelids fluttered; his eyes seemed to scream in pain. “He doesn’t know my name.”

“Who doesn’t?” my mother asked. “Osama? He knows your name. We all do.”

“No,” he said. “He knows not.” His tremors subsided.

“Calm down, Father,” Aunt Samia said. “Just breathe. In, out. Don’t worry.”

And he shook again, an unearthly quiver. “No.” His hand tightened.

Aunt Samia whimpered. My mother teared. “He knows your name,” she said. “He always knew your name.”

“No,” he said. “He knows not my name.”

“Say your name,” my mother said. “Whisper in my ears and He will hear it.” Aunt Samia stared at my mother. She grasped her arm. “In my ears,” my mother said. “From mine to His.”

She moved her head to my grandfather’s lips. And my grandfather spoke.

“The Saviour knows your name,” my mother said. “He knows.”

The paramedics arrived five minutes later. They rolled him on the gurney into the elevator. “You drive.” Aunt Samia handed my mother the keys. “You’ll get us there before they do.” They trampled down the stairs. The clamor of my mother’s clogs slapping the stone echoed off the walls. He died on the way.

I knew his names. I knew his story.

My mother didn’t want me to attend his funeral. I was too young, she insisted. I’d be scarred. At first, my father agreed with her. I would attend the consolations but not the burial.

But then Aunt Samia had a fit. And Uncle Wajih had a fit. And Uncle Halim had a fit. I was twelve, a man, and this was family. I became the cutoff: any cousin older than I was (Anwar, Hafez) would attend; younger ones (Munir, etc.) wouldn’t.

My mother wept continuously and didn’t leave her room. By early evening, when the rest of the family and guests began to stream in, she was called out. She wore mourning black, which accentuated the redness of her puffy eyes. Upon seeing her, Aunt Nazek bellowed, “Look. Look and see the grief your leaving has caused.” Aunt Samia beat her chest and yelled, “Why, Father, why? Why did you leave me?”

My father’s cousins, the Arisseddines, took over logistics. They began to send their children out with the death announcement to all the Druze villages. They seemed so efficient and meticulous. The sons of Jalal Arisseddine divvied up the important families, government officials, and parliamentarians. The sons of my father’s uncle Maan divided up the villages and the religious communities. Every time my father approached his cousins, he forgot what he was about to say, and was led back to his chair by Lina, who didn’t leave his side. He seemed shrouded in fog. The Arisseddine women greeted arriving mourners and guided them toward the family. They moved chairs from Uncle Jihad’s apartment into ours. Cups of coffee were in constant rotation.

My mother seemed lost and despondent. She slumped in her chair, back bent, head down, staring at her shoes. More of the ladies cried, and Aunt Samia wailed. The wail woke my mother up. She stood up straight, looked at me, then at Lina across the room, next to my father. She arched her eyebrows when she caught Lina’s eye. My mother wiped her mouth, and Lina took out a tissue and wiped her lipstick off hers. My mother walked over to my father and began whispering in his ear. He nodded once, twice. He shook his head no. He nodded again. And life revisited his face.

It wasn’t an accident that Aladdin was Chinese.

“Once, a long, long time ago, in the land of China,” my grandfather used to start his tale, “there was a mischievous boy called Alaeddine.”

“Why China?” I would ask.

“The Druze and the Chinese are related,” he would reply.

I didn’t look Chinese. I once asked my father if it was true, and he dismissed it as one of my grandfather’s ramblings. So did my mother. “Well, you see,” my grandfather had said, “the Druze believe that when someone dies the soul instantly jumps into the body of a baby being born. So we’re supposed to be able to figure out who was reincarnated into whom. There aren’t that many Druze. The wise men of the Druze, and you know they’re not that wise, realized there was a problem. A Druze would die, and there’d be no one who was born at that same instant. They had to be born somewhere, you see. The dead were sometimes born in China, the land of a thousand dawns. The Chinese believe in reincarnation, which could mean they’re related to the Druze. And, most important, China is far enough away so that no one can check. The Chinese get born over here, and we’re reborn in China.”

When I repeated that to my mother, she thought it was ridiculous.

Yet, as we sat in the living room the day my grandfather died, Ghassan Arisseddine, one of my father’s older cousins, announced quietly to the room, “Lucky are the gentle people in China for receiving you in their midst at this hour.” Neither my mother nor my father flinched.

The family met at eight in the morning to accompany the coffin from the morgue to the village, to the bey’s mansion, where the funeral was being held. The hearse led a motorcade of thirty cars on an agonizingly slow drive up the mountain.

I sat behind my mother in our car — an unhurried, hushed, uphill ride. At a donkey’s pace, the journey’s markers strolled by unfamiliarly, the orange orchard, the three banana groves in a row, the unmarked turnoff, the protruding rock that looked like a detrunked elephant. The lush blue shore that should have danced only shimmied. The change from the green of pines to that of oaks took longer; the shades of ocher lingered, imprinted strange blends onto my retinas.

My mother broke the silence once. “It’s not a good idea to have an open casket.”

My father guided me toward a pavilion where the men gathered. Hundreds of white plastic chairs were set in rows facing another row of chairs with faded russet cushions. The bey, his brother, and his two sons approached our family; all exchanged kisses and condolences. My father had told me to reply with “May you be compensated with your health” to anything that was said to me. There was discussion and insincere protestation about seating arrangements. As the eldest male, Uncle Wajih had the main seat, and the bey sat next to him. Uncle Jihad took the end chair, and I the next one. My father maneuvered himself next to me. The bey’s brother ran up to my father and offered to exchange seats. My father begged off. “I’m sure the seating will be rearranged when others begin to arrive.”

And we sat in silence. My father didn’t bat an eyelash. He gazed at the rows of empty chairs facing him. Uncle Jihad stared to his right, down the hill, at the undulating olive orchards beneath us. A damp, cold gust brushed and licked my face. Uncle Jihad pulled his jacket across his chest. He wept silently. My father didn’t. “Are you warm enough?” Uncle Jihad asked me.

As if planned and coordinated, the residents of three villages arrived at the same time. The men and women separated at the gate of the bey’s mansion and marched up the delicate incline. The women nodded toward us as they ambled by. Before us, the men arranged themselves in a line, whose order, who stood where and next to whom, seemed predetermined. They covered their hearts with the palms of their hands, uttered in unison something I couldn’t understand. My father and uncle and all the men in our line made the same gesture and replied in a different incomprehensible sentence. Their line snaked toward ours; their hands shook our hands. Most of the men kissed the bey’s hand.

The Christian families didn’t perform the same ritual. Neither did the Muslims. All paid their respects. Friends kissed in greeting. Whenever a man of some import appeared, he was given a seat in the family line: You are family. The special men accepted condolences for a couple of rounds before moving into the anonymity of the guests. The Ajaweed, the Druze religious, sat in the first row facing us, fully decked in their traditional outfits.

The bey moved next to my father. He was much older than my father and looked it. He wore an English-cut suit and an awkward-looking fez. “My father loved yours,” he said, twirling his white mustache with thumb and forefinger. A man from a lost era.

“And for that,” my father replied, “we are eternally grateful.”

“If you need anything in these trying times, our family will do whatever it takes.”

“And your generosity is boundless,” my father said to the bey.

They both stood up to greet the new arrivals, the ritual beginning again. As if it were a magician’s trick, Uncle Jihad now sat next to the bey, and my father was on my other side.

“We were so happy to hear the news,” Uncle Jihad said, covering his eyes with dark sunglasses. “A worthy grandson at last. Our family was overjoyed for yours.”

“A birth is always happy news,” the bey said. He flushed, and his eyelashes fluttered spastically in my uncle’s direction.

“The birth made us happy,” my uncle said, “but it wasn’t what brought joy to our hearts. The miraculous news is that the boy looks exactly like you. God smiled upon us.”

The bey giggled and jiggled, tried to stifle his mirth. “Yes, the little bey takes after me.”

“And God raised the degree of difficulty for the ladies of his generation. How will they be able to resist the little rascal’s charms?”

The bey slapped his thigh, and his Jell-O-mold paunch shivered in glee. “How will they indeed?”

We stood up for the next batch. When we sat down, my father’s seat was empty. He sat between his two older brothers. Already bored, Anwar and Hafez elbowed each other. I spent my time counting suits, sports jackets, and religious Druze dress. I counted three fez hats, twenty-three Ajaweed hats, one Borsalino, and seventeen bald heads. The sky lowered, and a spring fog ascended. From the valley below, the thin mist rose languorously toward us, obstructing our view of Beirut. Normally, the whole city could be seen, the multistory buildings along the coast, the old Mediterranean houses, the airport with its crisscrossing beachfront runways. All went blank. I concentrated on the fog, now a translucent layer covering the olive groves. It would rise and cover, in order, the loquat trees, the lemons, the mulberries, and the fig trees. The fog made the village appear to be wobbly, wavering atop a precipice.

Upon seeing a skinny man in an ill-fitting suit walking to a jerrybuilt podium, the cliques of chatterers hushed. He began to recite poetry in a nasal voice, sang beautifully, like a goldfinch with a slight cold. The mood shifted. The poet recalled my grandfather, sang about his family and those left behind. When the poet brought up the years of service to the bey, he called my grandfather the bey’s friend, not his servant. The bey’s face molded into sad at the mention of his own deceased father’s name. A few seats away, Uncle Wajih coughed and cleared his throat in an unsubtle attempt at disguising tears. My father remained stoic.

The poet paused, took a deep breath, and lowered his eyes. The air bristled with a tense silence. The poet began a new verse, raised his voice to the proud skies. He stepped off the podium, and all the men stood up. I felt Uncle Jihad’s hand on my back, guiding me. The family men marched behind the song, and the remaining male mourners followed us. Into the house we went, without a pause in the incandescent song.

The women, all in black with white mandeels, sat in a semicircle around the open coffin, rows and rows. My grandfather looked like a wax model sculpted by an incompetent artist. His hair was combed, forced under control for the first time. His face looked like a composite drawing. The model hadn’t sat for the artist.

The women wailed. Aunt Samia called upon her brothers to resuscitate her father, to breathe the fire of life into his lungs. Village women bemoaned the bey’s misfortune. My sister could only look shocked and dumbfounded. My mother stared at the floor. Behind her sat a silent Mrs. Farouk. The poet sang of my grandfather’s sense of humor. The men stroked the coffin. Uncle Jihad closed his eyes and mouthed words of piety. I placed my palm on the wood, and the coffin shook as if in anger, rejecting my touch. I clasped my hands behind my back. My cousins looked petrified. My mother tried to catch my eye. Calm down, her hands mimed.

The women began their ultimate laments. “Who will replace him?” “How will we live with such sorrow?” “O Lord, be gentle with his journey.” Aunt Nazek draped herself across the coffin, shouting, “Don’t take him away.” Aunt Samia cleared a path for herself by moving two men aside. She held her father’s face with her hands, but withdrew them quickly upon first touch. “You can’t go without me.” She lifted her left leg off the floor and raised her knee, but it wouldn’t reach the coffin. She tried pushing herself up with her trembling arms. “I’m going with you,” she announced.

The men lifted the coffin, raised it above their shoulders. It floated out of the hall. And after prayers, the men carried it to the cemetery. I watched the coffin drown, sink into the mist.

“Are you feeling bad?” asked Uncle Jihad. “Was it the funeral?”

“Why did everybody have to shout so much?” I asked. Tulip lay at my feet, and I used her body as a footstool, the way she liked. “Aren’t we Druze supposed to have silent funerals?”

He sipped his drink slowly, seemed to be having a conversation with the ceiling and not me. “In principle, but not in practice, for how will the dead know that we love them?” he said. “You know, darling, funerals used to be much more dramatic when I was your age. Believe it or not, they are quieter now, more sedate.” He hummed, took another sip. “Why, I can just imagine what they’ll be like when you’re my age now. Probably no one will show up. Bang, bang, bang, and it’s over. Mourners will arrive only if alcohol is being served, like at Irish funerals.” He ran a washrag over his head. “It’s only the funeral, my sweet. You know, some people flagellate themselves on the first day, the third day, the week, and the fortieth. It’s a never-ending process. We have crazy funerals, and that’s it. We’re much more sane, don’t you think?” I assumed the question was rhetorical. “You’re not buying any of this, are you?” I shook my head. “Well, listen. A long, long time ago,” he began, “when the Mongol hordes ran amok in our world, when Genghis Khan scorched the deserts of China and plundered the rest of the world, after the barbarian king had burned Baghdad to its final ember, after he massacred one hundred thousand in Damascus and watched the city’s streets covered in rivers of blood, after the Mongol general descended upon our fertile lands, my story begins. The general’s brother Tu Khan was bored.”

“Tu Khan?” I asked. “That’s a bad pun. That’s not even Syrian good.”

“Don’t interrupt, my boy,” he replied. His eyes, aloft still, were wide-set, dark, and revivified. “I’m on a roll. Tu Khan was bored.”

“Bored, not bird.”

“Acch, now, that’s bad. Listen. Tu Khan decided to have a feast. He brought the seven best cooks in the region and demanded that they create the greatest meal that had ever been served. The cooks toiled and slaved and came up with seven courses. The first course was exquisite, one oyster on a bed of lemon purée. Tu Khan ate it in one bite and wept, for the taste was glorious. To ensure that no one else would share the taste and thereby dilute his experience, Tu Khan had the cook beheaded. The second course was soup, a pork-and-apple consommé. So thin, so clear, so delectable, and its creator was beheaded. Third was sautéed sand dabs, fourth was grilled pheasant, fifth was filet mignon. Off with all their heads. The sixth was rack of lamb, of course. Tu Khan could not believe his tongue. His jaws extended farther, moved toward the plate. Within minutes, his mouth was a hand’s width in front of his face.”

“Ah, Tu Khan,” I said.

“Precisely,” Uncle Jihad went on. “And we kill the penultimate cook. Now, the seventh cook was Beiruti. He was no fool and was in no mood to be killed. He made crème brûlée, using the milk of cows that had drunk their water from the Litani River. Tu Khan had his first bite and wept again. Creamy, smooth, impeccable. But before his second bite, his stomach rumbled. He licked the spoon and his stomach yiked. He had a bowel movement before the third bite, and it wouldn’t relent, the never-ending stool. Plop, plop, diarrhea, dysentery, Tu Khan didn’t have time to move; he soiled his pants and the glorious paisley-infected textile he’d been sitting on. ‘I’m quite all right,’ Tu Khan said, but he really wasn’t. He lost five kilos within the first hour, three more in the second, and another three in the third. Rumble, rumble, his stomach wouldn’t stop self-evacuating. He refused to sleep sitting up and had his slaves place him on the edge of his bed with his ankles in stirrups, so his stool could fire out unencumbered. Boom, boom, all night; his diarrhea was so explosive he was hitting the wall across the room, painting an abstract-expressionist mural. Nothing great, mind you, mediocre painting informed by Lee Krasner. By morning, Tu Khan was dead, wasted away into a stick man.

“The bereaved Genghis refused to have his brother buried in exile, for his soul would remain on earth, eternally searching for home. Genghis would bury him among their ancestors. Grief, sadness, sorrow. A Mongol funeral march began. But grief, sadness, and sorrow weren’t enough to commemorate a man as great as Tu Khan.” And my uncle’s voice grew deeper, more serious. “No. It wasn’t enough. Along the way, the funeral procession killed every living thing it encountered: entire villages, cities; men, women, children, generations of babies not yet born; animals, birds, trees, shrubs, flowers, forests. Everything was smashed along the path, from Beirut to Ulan Bator, a viscous trail of death and devastation to mark the funereal journey.”

He gulped the rest of his scotch. I waited for him to say something.

“I guess we have it better now,” I said. He smiled, nodded. I laughed, nervously. “So when did he marry Rita Hayworth?”

“Stop that.” My uncle laughed. “That’s another story.”

“Now you’re telling me that Genghis Khan destroyed Beirut as well? I thought it was Hulagu who conquered the Middle East. Should I trust you?”

“Never trust the teller,” he said. “Trust the tale.”

The Uzbeks began to tell the king Baybars’s story:

Baybars’s grandfather had three sons, Talak, Lamak, and Jamak. He was old and wanted to test his sons and assess who was fit to succeed him as king. He sat Talak on the throne and told him to rule for one day. That evening, the king asked his eldest how he ruled, and the prince replied, “I was a fierce leopard, and my subjects were sheep.” The second day was Lamak’s turn, and he told his father, “I was a ferocious hawk, and the people were pigeons.” At the end of the third day, the youngest said, “I decided fairly between parties. I helped the persecuted against the persecutors. I tried my best to rule such that when it came time for me to meet God I would not feel a twinge of guilt or remorse.” Much to the consternation of his older sons, the king declared Jamak his heir.

After the king died, Shah Jamak assumed the throne and made his brothers viziers and declared that they would rule the land together. But his brothers plotted to kill him, because the twins, evil and envy, had taken root in their hearts. In the middle of the night, the brothers tied Jamak up while he slept and put him in a large bag. They gave the bag to a warrior slave and commanded him to carry it to the desert and stab it twenty-one times, until it was drenched in red.

The warrior followed orders. In the desert he took out his sword. The voice in the bag said, “Who are you?” to which the warrior replied, “I am your death.”

“That cannot be,” said Jamak, “for my death should be honorable and require to see its victim’s face.” The honest warrior felt shame. He let the king out of the bag. “I have never killed an unarmed man before,” he admitted.

“And you should not start now.” Jamak turned and walked into the desert.

Jamak walked and walked, across flatlands and hills, until, one day, not far from the city of Samarkand, he saw a lion attacking an old man on a horse. The old man called out for help, for he no longer had the strength to fight off the beast. Jamak said to the lion, “Come meet your conqueror.” Unarmed, Jamak held his ground as the lion veered toward him. Just when the beast was about to pounce, the old man, with his last remaining strength, threw his sword to the young savior. With one movement, Jamak caught the sword, drew it from its scabbard, struck the lion’s skull, and killed it. Jamak wiped the blood from the sword onto the lion’s red mane, returned the weapon to its master, and said, “You live another day, Father.”

The old man thanked Jamak and begged him to stay with him so he could honor him as his guest. The two men rode into Samarkand, and a large procession greeted them. Jamak realized he was sharing a horse with the city’s king. “My lord,” Jamak asked, “why were you riding alone when you could have had an army accompany you?”

And the king replied, “I was hunting with my friends, and I saw a doe and stalked it, but I could not get close enough. I followed it until I got lost, and that was when you showed up, at the perfect moment.” The king asked Jamak for his story. The old man admired the shah’s courage, nobility, and wherewithal. He made Jamak a vizier and married him to his daughter, Heather.

The king of Samarkand died, and Jamak ascended to the throne. He ruled justly and honored the heroes who in turn loved him and obeyed him. God blessed him with five sons, the youngest, Mahmoud, being his favorite. One day, the shah went to Friday prayers and saw his brothers, Talak and Lamak, begging outside the mosque. He called his servants and said, “Take these men to the baths, wash them, dress them in the finest clothes, and bring them back to me.” Back at the palace, when Jamak’s eyes fell upon his brothers, who now appeared as he remembered them, he hugged them. He sat them beside him and inquired after their health. The brothers said, “We are here because we missed you so much. We left our lands and lost everything trying to find you. We thank God that you are alive and safe and prosperous.” And Jamak welcomed them and made them viziers. Yet, before long, envy and evil grew even mightier in their hearts.

The brothers had fallen upon hard times. Once Jamak was out of the way, they had ruled the land with darkness and contempt. After much abuse, the people had rebelled and captured the two fake kings, intending to execute them. The brothers begged desperately and dishonorably for their lives. The people released them into exile and found an honest man to rule.

Now the brothers noticed how much Jamak loved Mahmoud, and they formed a plan. They would kidnap Mahmoud and demand the king’s treasury in return. During the night, the brothers tied up the young prince and rode away with him while everyone slept. When the shah discovered that his brothers had disappeared with his son, he cursed his brothers and berated himself for his foolishness. Queen Heather cried and dressed in mourning black.

The brothers took their nephew to a cave and kept him roped, intending to slay him after they received the ransom. They left Mahmoud by himself while they went out to hunt and forage for food. Once they were gone, the prince cried for help. A Persian dervish happened to be passing by, and he rescued the boy. The Persian decided to take Mahmoud to Bursa, where he could sell him for a good price. The prince grew very sick, and the Persian took him to the baths and sold him to a slave-trader who happened to be there because of the fine management of fate.

The king thanked the Uzbeks for their story. He turned to the prince and said, “My son Baybars, you are not a slave.” And Baybars said, “Praise be to the Almighty.”

And that was how Prince Baybars became a free man.

It was the first time I had seen Istez Camil since my grandfather’s funeral. He had shown up for the first day of condolences, but I had been at school. No music was played during the mourning period. Istez Camil seemed more jittery than normal, tired and haggard. He was dressed in a white shirt with moon-shaped sweat stains under his arms, and a pair of thin gray cotton slacks, short at the ankles and chafed at the knees.

Whatever I played seemed easy. Notes flowed from my fingers with a newfound skill. Istez Camil shook his head. His lips were pale, the whites of his eyes unusually flat. “You’re not getting it,” he huffed.

“Not getting what?” I stopped playing, stared at him. “I think I’m playing well, very well, no mistakes.”

“Cascade of grace, remember? This is a cascade of grace no more.” He wouldn’t look at me. “You’re hitting the right notes, but there’s more to this than that.”

“It, this, that,” I snapped. “I’m playing well.” I refused to look at him, too, now. Shocked at my fledgling audacity, I lowered my voice. “You say I’m not but won’t tell me exactly what it is you want, what it is I’m supposed to do. More feeling, more feeling. I’m feeling it now. How can you tell whether I’m playing with feeling or not?”

“I can tell,” he said slowly, “and you can tell.” He stood up, turned his back to me again, and stared out the picture window. “You have to be more honest with yourself. You have to.”

“I’m playing well,” I insisted. I whispered to my shoes, “This is who I am.”

The resumption of my oud lessons wasn’t enough for my sister. She waited for the day when my father began whistling again while shaving in the morning. That afternoon, she shut the door to her room and resumed blasting her insufferable music at full throttle, as my father called it. He would ask her to lower the volume, and she would for a few minutes, before reclaiming the air.

Except I no longer found the music insufferable. I began to discern its simple charms. I also began to discern Jimmy Page’s solos, to guess at Eric Clapton’s peculiar handiwork.

One afternoon, I opened her door without knocking, and found her experimenting with colored eyeliners. She glared at me through her vanity mirror. The space was pregnant with tension and the acidic scent of many perfumes. I lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling. She didn’t say anything. The rustle of my blood coursing through its veins echoed the rhythm of the base. My head buzzed. “Play something weird,” I said when the song ended.

“Kiss my ass, stupid,” she said over her shoulders. “Be like furniture and shut up.” When she stood, I noticed she was wearing tight mauve shorts that clung to her curves like a wet bathing suit.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” My head was propped up on her pillows, and I followed her with my eyes. “You know your father won’t like it.”

“I’m not going to wear this to school. It’ll be all right.”

I didn’t argue. She walked to the closet. For the previous few years, it seemed to me she had been growing taller with each step she took. I remained uncomfortable with the size and shape of her shorts, which made her look unnatural and unfamily. On the floor, next to her feet (in laced-up knee-high black boots), was an album with the face of a man wearing more makeup than she was. “Play that,” I said.

“Shut up,” she replied. “If you want to be in here, you can’t talk.”

The next afternoon, I was back on her bed. She played David Bowie. I was like furniture.

The October War started a few months later. We were winning, yet few seemed to believe it. The Syrians and the Egyptians surprised the Israelis. Radios once again unequivocally blared the Arab victory. “Wait,” my father said. “The Americans won’t let this happen.”

At school, the Palestinian boys beamed, a manifest bounce in their step. They believed it. The student council called for a strike in support of the war. There were supposed to be speeches, but I went home. I saw Lina smoking a cigarette at the mouth of the building’s garage. Elie straddled his idle motorcycle and talked to her. I wondered whether the mauve shorts were to impress him. From afar, Elie, like the Palestinian boys, looked as if he believed.

I lay on Lina’s bed and listened to Deep Purple. She arrived angry, carrying a guitar. “I need you to learn to play.”

“There’s a war going on,” I replied because I had to say something.

“Who cares?” she said. She handed me the guitar as she stormed to her album rack. “You have to play, and you have to play well, and you have to make it look easy, and you have to do it by Saturday night. We have two days. Two days to figure out what you’re going to play and how you’re going to play it impeccably.” She rifled through her collection and picked out Abbey Road. She scratched the Deep Purple album as she quickly removed it from the turntable without replacing it in its cover. “This is what you have to learn. It’s impressive.”

The opening notes of “Here Comes the Sun.”

I had to take the guitar to school. While various student leaders gave speeches, I played in a corner of the cafeteria’s outdoor terrace. Oblivious to anything else, I didn’t hear the Israeli plane until it was right above me, flying low, its noise deafening.

Two seniors sat on the floor next to me, startling me. “Don’t mind us,” one of them said. I knew of him, but never imagined that he’d talk to me. He was the son of a Lebanese woman and a Kuwaiti prince, although he didn’t look it. He was never seen in anything but dirty T-shirts, sweats, and jeans. He had only one pair of sneakers. I guess he desperately wanted to look more like an American than an Arab prince. He didn’t smell as awful as his friend, though.

“Go on,” his friend said. “We can listen.”

“Better than those dumb speeches,” the first added.

I replayed the opening. The Kuwaiti started to sing, and his friend joined him. I was surprised, since I hadn’t considered vocals. I had memorized the song, but hadn’t thought of actually singing it. I wasn’t sure I wanted the song enunciated. I stopped playing. The Kuwaiti raised his eyebrow. “I’m not very good yet,” I said. “I’m just learning.”

“I can tell,” he said. I paused. “That’s not a guitar pick.”

“It’s for the oud. That’s what I play.”

“The oud is for old-fashioned Arabs,” he said. I no longer wished to be an old-fashioned Arab. He extended his hand toward my modern guitar. “Here, let me play.”

He didn’t use a pick, sang a folk song in an American or Australian accent. His playing was bad, and his friend shook his head to an inconsistent beat. The Kuwaiti prince asked me if I liked the song as he handed me the guitar. I told him I did, and his face relaxed, looked grateful.

“I wonder if the speeches are done,” his friend said as they stood up.

“Can you imagine what would happen if we win a war?”

“We almost won. Maybe next time we will.”

I didn’t think they believed. I resumed playing.

• • •

On Saturday, I played “Here Comes the Sun” for Lina. She was impressed, though not as surprised as I thought she’d be. “Aren’t you going to sing?” she asked. I told her that would require more practice, since I had never sung before. She didn’t seem to mind.

That afternoon, we left home sans guitar. Lina wore wild makeup and her mauve shorts. She looked like she’d fit better on Carnaby Street than in Beirut. We rode the bus four stops, and ended up at a coterie of buildings similar to ours, but much more upscale, seven buildings of nothing but marble and glass. She led me into one whose lobby was enclosed, air-conditioned, and stark. In the elevator she suggested that I not talk too much.

A girl my sister’s age opened the door. She had two pigtails that began at the top of her head and descended ungracefully to her shoulders. “You brought your little brother?” The left corner of her mouth crunched up to meet her eye. “Yes,” my sister replied and walked by her into the apartment. I hurriedly followed. I didn’t need to be told that Pigtail Girl was the reason I had to play the guitar, that she had done something to offend Lina.

A dozen boys and girls milled about the large glass-enclosed balcony, chatting noisily and ignoring the rock music. “Try this,” Lina said, pointing to an orange beanbag, and she joined two other girls.

All the teenagers ignored me. They seemed preoccupied with looking modern, cool, and Western. I concentrated on the music, helped myself to a bottle of Pepsi. My sister kept throwing glances at a tall blond boy across the room from her. He seemed too sure of himself, used to being the center of attention, and welcomed it with a modicum of disdain. With Lina, there was no modicum; her disdain was unequivocal and unfettered. Her glances grew less subtle and more hateful. I wondered where he fit in the unfolding drama. I didn’t wonder for long.

Pigtail Girl walked into the room with a guitar. The instant the blond guy saw her, he lifted his arms as if warding off evil. “You have to play for us,” she said, turning the music off.

“No, no,” he said. “I don’t want to ruin the mood.”

“Please,” the girl insisted. “For me.”

My sister struck as quickly as a famished cobra. She snatched the guitar out of Pigtail’s hand. “He doesn’t have to,” she said, as she walked toward me. “The little shrimp here can play. He’s not bad.” She handed me the instrument and plopped herself next to me on the beanbag. “Play,” she ordered, nudging me with her elbow.

I played. My sister began to sing. Her two girlfriends joined in after the second verse. I didn’t look up from the guitar, too nervous. The singing wasn’t very good, but by the last verse, half the company had unleashed their voices.

“That was great,” one of the girls said. “Let’s do it again.”

My sister wouldn’t have been able to contain her glee had she cared to. She looked as if she’d eaten a whole jar of fresh honey. She wasn’t the only one; her two friends were laughing.

“Let’s not,” Pigtail said. “Let’s go back to real music now.”

“Let’s have your boyfriend try to play,” Lina said.

“No,” he snapped.

“Play another song,” one of Lina’s friends shouted to me. “You’re good.”

“I’m learning how to play,” I said quietly. “I don’t know many songs.”

“Another song, please.”

“It’s okay,” my sister said. “One song is enough for now.”

“I can play another song if you can sing it,” I told her. She looked puzzled. I opened “Something.” Her eyes grew wide and their whites glimmered. She began to sing, too loudly, too happily.

I stopped my oud lessons.

Eight

And they all believed in fate. Do you think my grandmother would have married my grandfather were it not for fate? Do you not wonder how he won her?

It was destined. The tale was already told. Everything had been written.

He first saw her at the end of the Great War, in 1918, during the plagues, the lean times, when the infantilizing French occupation replaced the malicious Ottoman one. My grandmother was walking to school with a cousin. Najla wore a mandeel, but she didn’t cover her features. She draped it upon her delicate shoulders. There was a lot of talk at the time about mandeels, sheer or opaque, and whether women should wear them, but I don’t think she was making a statement. She enjoyed showing her face, her luxuriant hair, and my grandfather was lucky enough to catch sight of her. He was besotted. She was a mere fourteen. He was eighteen. He had seen pretty girls before. Yet she was beautiful and ever so graceful. He asked himself how he could make her remember him, and he thought, English. She was walking to the missionary school in the village. He said, in English, mind you, “Hello, my beautiful princess.”

She laughed and said she was a sheikha, not a princess, and the cheeky boy should have known that. She left him standing bewildered on the hilly path. She had said “cheeky” in English, and he had no idea what it meant. He didn’t know whom to ask. Because of his father, the doctor, he could speak some English, but because of the doctor’s wife, he couldn’t read that cursed language. He considered asking the bey, but my grandfather couldn’t risk embarrassing him if he didn’t know. He had to find an Englishman.

There were two of them trying to convert the village. My grandfather hung around the missionary school for two hours before he saw a foreigner exiting a building. My grandfather was polite but insistent. He said, “Pardon me, sir,” over and over, but the man paid no attention; the English never listened. Finally, he shouted, and the missionary stopped. My grandfather asked him what the word meant, and the missionary shooed him away.

Waiting for Najla the next morning, my grandfather sat on a rise above the street, for he did not wish to appear improper. When she approached, he confessed, in Lebanese Druze dialect, “I don’t know what the word ‘cheeky’ means. I don’t think my English is very good.”

My grandmother’s cousin kept pulling at her sleeve, trying to get her to move along. My grandmother replied, looking at her feet, “I don’t speak it well, either. I don’t know what that word means. Last week, they taught us a story about the problem of cheeky boys talking to nice girls in the city of London.”

And he knew she was the one for him.

You’d think there was no way. You might say, granted, this man was the bey’s hakawati, and the bey loved him, but he had no family. The story of his origins was murky. People knew that he was born in some village in the Matn, but no one had heard of the Kharrats. The discovery that the Kharrats didn’t exist wouldn’t happen till much later. How would my grandfather be able to marry a nice Druze girl — a sheikha, no less? Why would a respected family consent to such a marriage?

Well, my grandmother was not as nice as she appeared. Her family had issues.

You know that my father’s paternal grandfather was an English doctor, a missionary, and his paternal grandmother was the missionary’s Armenian servant. My father’s maternal grandparents were almost a carbon copy. My great-grandfather was a Druze doctor who many believed had become an English missionary, and my great-grandmother was his Albanian servant. Yes, it’s true.

Settle down. There are differences, and that’s what makes for a good story.

At five in the morning three days after my arrival, I received the dreaded call. Lina said my father was critical and I should come straight to the hospital. I was shocked and unnerved by the call, but not surprised. My father’s condition had been worsening. Yet, when the phone rang in the dark and I answered, the bed felt much too big.

My sister and her daughter stood weeping in the doorway, their arms intertwined. A multitude of doctors, interns, and nurses hovered above my father in his bed. They looked like seagulls hovering above food. I craned my head to look in, but a seagull closed the door. My sister gasped. One of the flimsy hospital fluorescents hiccupped. Salwa nudged me gently and pointed to the gurney along the corridor. I guided my sister to it and sat her down. Lina stared at an imaginary spot on the opposite wall. My feet felt unmoored, and the ground beneath felt soft. And yet I couldn’t move from my spot leaning against the gurney. I had to remain motionless, as if my soul could get seasick. “They think his lungs might have collapsed.” Lina wasn’t talking to me. She was staring ahead, speaking softly, as if in confession. Her priest, I didn’t look at her, either. “He had trouble breathing the whole night.” She sighed. “It got worse, until he couldn’t get any air in. He looked so scared. He’s probably terrified out of his mind right now.” The groans of a patient two doors away marked time. They were oddly comforting; I imagined their slow pace calming the frantic doctors behind the closed door. With every breath, fear seared my lungs.

Around the year 1880, the sultan pasha left Istanbul on the advice of his viziers. The effete Ottoman Empire had been gasping and wheezing for breath, and it was thought that a goodwill tour of his lands might remind his no longer so loyal subjects to pay their taxes promptly. During his stay in Lebanon, he spent one night in my great-grandfather’s village as the guest of the bey. The sultan was so impressed with the bey’s generosity that he decided to offer his host a remarkable gift, one of his own servants.

“Why is that brother of a whore offering me a maid?” the bey yelled the next morning. “Does he mean my service was lacking? Is he saying my mansion needs cleaning? And he expects me to send someone all the way to Tripoli to get her.” He fumed throughout the morning open-house. The daily visitors and supplicants drank their Turkish coffee in silence, too afraid to speak. It was at that inauspicious moment that my great-grandfather, the young Sheikh Mahdallah Arisseddine, arrived to pay his respects. The bey greeted him with “And you, my boy, will reward my faith by going to Tripoli and bringing me this girl.”

Mahdallah came from a titled family of sheikhs, not princes or beys, not even important sheikhs, but, still, an eminent, respected family of some consequence. He was the youngest of seven, and the first in the family, the first in the entire village, to attend university. His father, not well off to begin with, couldn’t afford to pay for Mahdallah’s college education after raising seven offspring. Wanting to have a Druze doctor in the village, the bey had stepped in. At the time that my great-grandfather was unceremoniously dispatched to fetch the servant, he was one year away from a medical degree from the Syrian Protestant College. He lived in a small hellhole of a room in Beirut; he visited his family — and paid his respects to the bey — in the mountain village whenever he had the chance.

There were many other reasons for the bey to fend for the Arisseddine family. The beys, in all their history and incarnations, were never altruistic. It was obvious while my great-grandfather was still in school with the missionaries that he was brighter than the other village boys. The bey wanted the most intelligent man beholden to him, so he paid for his medical schooling. The bey also hated the fact that someone was smarter than he was, which was why he never tired of having the young man run menial errands for him.

The beys were uniformly unintelligent, probably because of inbreeding — there were only two other families that the men were allowed to marry from. According to my grandfather, inbreeding negatively affected the males, but the women in the family were exceptionally quick. Therefore, my grandfather insisted, the bey’s wife would have recognized that changes were afoot. The politics of the land would not remain the same, and, to maintain their power, the beys couldn’t rely solely on the blind support of the ignorant. They would need a new source of loyalty. Mahdallah Arisseddine and his family, particularly his second son, Jalal, would prove to be the bey’s boon in later years. But now I’m ahead of myself.

My father was drugged unconscious, his head slightly raised. He looked unfamiliar, his nose now enormous, the only part of him that hadn’t shrunk. The ventilator’s thick accordion tube forced its way inside his mouth to his lungs, coercing his chest into expansion and contraction. His chest, sparsely haired, dry, taut, looked like an Indian medicine drum. Thin, translucent ocher-colored tubes drew blood from his side into a dialysis machine, which pumped the cleansed blood back into his system. A catheter attached to a suction machine went up his penis, through the urethra, sucking out his urine.

Effusions of sound. My sister weeping in the corner, her sharp intakes of breath in discord with those of the ventilator. The chugalug of dialysis, the technician in charge of the machine seeming mesmerized by its churning liquid sounds. The metronomic beats of the monitor. Jagged Richter line in red, loopy one in white, a wavy yellow, and a green on a screen above my father’s head. Could Mesmer have ever envisioned the hypnotic movement and sound of these modern contraptions? I needed to slap myself, remind myself this wasn’t a dream, nor was it a repeat of an earlier scene. We’d huddled around a hospital bed for my mother years earlier, and now my father.

I stood at the foot of the bed, staring at him, my left hand touching his foot. My niece entered the room and waddled toward me, looking as if she might give birth then and there. She stood beside me and stroked my back. My sister turned around, wiped her tears with the back of her forefingers.

“One of you has to go out there,” Salwa said. “I need a break. There are a lot of people, and your aunt is driving me crazy.”

“I’ll do it,” Lina said. She moved to my father’s bedside, kissed his forehead. “Everything will be all right,” she told him, her voice breaking again. She covered her mouth, turned around, took out tissues from her bra. “Talk to him,” she said. “Tin Can says he can still hear us. Comfort him. You know how frightened he gets.”

Salwa took my father’s hand and squeezed it. “It’s me, Grandfather.” She looked at me, motioned with her head to the chair. I moved it for her, and she lowered her weight onto it. “Are you in pain?” she asked him. She sounded so mature, confident. “Can you hear me? If you can, squeeze my hand.”

He squeezed. My fingers twitched with a mind of their own.

“Are you in pain? Squeeze my hand if yes.” He squeezed again. “Is it the pillows?” Squeeze. On either side of the bed, Salwa and I raised him a bit by his shoulders. We fluffed the pillows beneath him. “Is this better? Do you need water?” Salwa dipped gauze in a cup and wiped it across his mouth, above and below the ventilator tube. He pressed his lips together, holding the gauze in place for a brief moment. “Your lips look very dry. Would you like me to run moisturizer on them?” He didn’t squeeze. “Do you still hear me?” She stroked his forehead. “Sleep now. I know the dialysis hurts, but it won’t last long. You’ll have new blood. The kidneys aren’t working, and that’s why you’ve been feeling awful. Don’t be afraid. We’re all here.”

She reached out to me. I moved to her side, took her offered hand. She directed me to her shoulders, and I massaged them. “The anesthesiologist said the drugs make him forget everything,” she told me. “I don’t think he’s really awake, do you? It’s probably better that way.”

The story of how my great-grandfather fell in love is relatively well known, so I won’t get into it here. Just think Tristan and Isolde on a train from Tripoli to Beirut, without the deaths or whale weights. There was singing, though, of a different kind.

Who am I kidding? I have to tell you the story, at least the highlights. I can’t help myself. Besides, you might be one of the few people who haven’t heard it.

The Ottoman sultan must have been trying to impress the bey, for the gift was notable, even though it went unappreciated by its recipient. My great-grandmother Mona was more than a maid, not simply a housekeeper. She was an entertainer; she played the oud, had a delightfully soft voice, and knew more than one hundred songs, including some folk melodies from her native Albania. Because she performed the songs of praise well, she was one of the sultan’s favorites, which was why she had remained a virgin in his harem.

I believe she lost her virginity on the train trip.

My great-grandfather must have cursed his luck and the bey’s entire family while he made the long and tiring journey to the northern city. But then he arrived at the sultan’s ship to claim her. He stopped cursing his luck when he saw her walk down the plank with her small oud and her belongings in a satchel. And he thanked God when, four hours later, she sang a story of love that night on the train, sweet chords, dulcet tones. As for my great-grandmother: she had never met a soul who looked at her so adoringly. Hope flowered in her heart, hope of being seen as someone different, someone better, hope of being seen.

“I can’t let you clean house for the bey,” he told her. “I just can’t.”

“I do what I must.”

“I’ll not have you sing for another man.”

At the village, my great-grandfather didn’t go directly to the bey’s mansion. He stopped at his parents’ house, dropped off the oud, and walked to the mansion, with my great-grandmother a step behind. He made the introductions and said, “I beg your indulgence, O Bey. This maid would be of great value to me. I live alone, with no one to take care of me. My room needs a woman’s touch. I can’t have guests since I don’t know how to brew coffee. If you can spare her, I’d love to own her.”

The bey laughed. “You think me a fool. She’ll be doing more than brewing coffee for you. She’s not much to look at, but she’ll do. I don’t need her. Take her. We can’t have the village’s future doctor remain inexperienced in the ways of the world.”

My great-grandparents walked out together with the bey’s blessing.

And my great-grandfather said, “I wish to spend my life with you.”

My great-grandmother said, “I will be your family and you will be my man.”

And my great-grandmother never played the oud for anyone else again.

Years earlier, when the bey married, twenty-one village women cooked for two whole weeks, and the wedding lasted six days. When Mahdallah’s brother married, his wedding lasted three days. My great-grandparents’ wedding lasted all of one hour.

Mahdallah had to state the Shahada and convert to Islam. His first conversion.

Mona brewed coffee for his guests in the small room. They were happy and content, took care of each other, and began to consider a family. Their first son, my great-uncle Aref, was born in Beirut before my great-grandfather returned to assume his rightful duties as the doctor of his home village.

But before I forget, I want to tell you why all Mahdallah’s sons, my great-uncles, have short names (Aref, Jalal, Maan).

On his first day of school, when my great-grandfather, a not very tall eight-year-old boy, met his teacher, she, in her prim, proper British manner, asked if he could speak English.

“Yes, madame. I can.”

She had her doubts, it seemed. She asked if he could read and write the language.

“Yes, madame. I can.”

In a firm, clipped voice, she demanded that he go up to the board and write his name.

He did:

MAHDALLAH ARISSEDDINE

“My dear young man,” the teacher said, “your name is longer than you are.”

And my great-grandfather was so shamed that he swore none of his descendants would ever endure such ignominy.

My niece was crying. My father had stopped responding to her. The technician nodded off next to the dialysis machine. The blood in the tubes looked more black than red, and it re-entered my father no redder. The ventilator inhaled and my father exhaled; he breathed in when it expired. Was that an inversely proportional relationship, or a direct relationship? My math failed me.

I wanted to pray but didn’t know to whom I should direct my pleading. There was no map to follow. My left hand caressed my father’s foot, came across moistureless crags. Lines forming unreal countries along his instep and sole. I walked to the nightstand and poured the verbena-scented lotion onto my hands. I massaged the moisturizer onto the arid skin of his foot. I loved the scent, my mother’s favorite. It made sense that he’d continue to use it. The miniature frame was still next to his bed. Her picture. She retained the same ageless look in every photograph, a regal amalgam of severity and benevolence. I wondered whether I was truly seeing the undersized photo or my memory was filling gaps where my eyesight failed.

Help me, Mother. He was your husband.

The technician opened his eyes. He looked dazed for a moment, stupefied. “Only a few minutes left,” he announced officially.

My niece and I could clearly see the time blinking two minutes, thirty-seven seconds, in big red digits. Thirty-six. Thirty-five.

Salwa gripped my father’s hand. “Everything will be all right, Grandfather.”

The machine beeped: a continuous high pitch that was surprisingly comforting. Pleased with himself, the technician restated the obvious: “It’s over.” He slid aside the single cotton sheet that was my father’s cover. He unhooked tubes from tubes, re-coiled the machine’s, opened a small trapdoor in the front, and put them in. He clamped shut the lonely tubes sprouting from the bloodstained, iodine-blotched skin of my father’s side. Medicinal smells.

“Are we going to remove the tubes?” I asked.

He stared back with confused and tarnished eyes. I wanted to relieve my father of some intrusion. If only I could pull out one tube — one single tube — we would all feel better.

The technician packed his machine more quickly. My niece watched everything in bafflement. We were strangers in a land where the natives spoke an incomprehensible language.

Mahdallah worked as a doctor for a year before he was approached by one of his old teachers. The Englishman made my great-grandfather a sweet offer. The Anglicans would send him to England to study further, to practice and learn in superior hospitals. The mission would pay for everything, for his entire family’s stay in England. The mission, however, could only make this offer to a member of its own congregation. To accept, Mahdallah had to be baptized.

My great-grandfather wasn’t religious. It was just that you didn’t change your religion. It wasn’t done. He may have become a Muslim, but he didn’t practice, didn’t take it seriously. He did it to get married. As a Druze, he couldn’t marry a Muslim or any non-Druze. All he did was state the Shahada, testify that there is no God but God and Muhammad is the Prophet of God. That was it. No big deal. Just a formality.

Baptism. Now, that’s a commitment.

The Anglicans had been trying to baptize Druze for years. The two groups were stuck with each other, like Nile crocodiles and plovers. Most of the infrastructure of the Ottoman Empire was in the cities and Muslim villages. The Catholic French and their charities directed their work at the Christian villages. The English and their missionaries couldn’t set up shop except in the Druze areas. The conversion rate was not very high.

An Englishwoman had pitched camp in the village in 1843. Her name was Helen Kitchen. With a seemingly endless supply of funds, she had a compound built, consisting of three impressive buildings, the first in the village with tiled roofs. There was already a school for boys, so she started one for girls. She made conversion a condition of entry. Girls wanted to learn. They made the sign of the cross, did their homework, left school, got married, and had kids, and no one remembered they were no longer supposed to be Druze.

After a few years, Mrs. Kitchen realized that the girls studied their Bibles and could sing hymns with the best of them but didn’t consider this a religion. When she attempted to make the ritual more serious (baptism?), the girls were shocked and embarrassed. Mrs. Kitchen stopped making conversion a requirement for enrollment. The girls still studied the Bible, sang hymns and Christmas carols, but there was no pretense anymore. Once, when a missionary confronted her, accusing, “But these girls aren’t Christians,” she replied, “Neither was Jesus.”

She educated thousands of girls, many from neighboring villages. She actually became a local. When she died, she was buried in a Druze cemetery. To this day, many Lebanese women, Druze and Christian, visit her grave and keep the site clean.

Mahdallah converted. He was watered. Secretly, though. He refused to baptize his son, Aref. No one suggested his wife convert. He would spend the rest of his life denying that deed.

The family spent four or five years in London. The gray weather didn’t suit them. They didn’t mind the cold — their village was colder — but the lack of sunshine ensured they would never settle in that city.

The village gossips said: The gray weather is making the harem girl barren.

The village gossips said: And God will never bless the betrayer again.

The village gossips were wrong on both counts. My great-grandparents had other children, but it took time — not as long as Abraham and Sarah, but long enough for gossip.

But here are two facts, documented and checked:

My great-grandparents Dr. Mahdallah and Mona Arisseddine and their son, Aref, around five years old at the time, boarded a Belgian-registered ship, the Leopold II, from England to the port city of Beirut, in June 1889.

My other great-grandfather, the esteemed missionary Dr. Simon Twining, accompanied by his recently betrothed, the heart of darkness, sailed from England to Beirut on the identical ship, the Leopold II, in June 1890.

The doctors would surely have met had they been on the same crossing. What would they have talked about, standing on deck, holding on to the railing, looking at the sun drowning in the golden Mediterranean? They wore similar cotton suits of Western cut, white shirts, ties. Their hats were also similar. Mahdallah would not wear his fez until he reached the village. They had countless things in common, or would have in times to come, and the conversation would not lag until, finally, Ah, sir, what say you we blend the seed of my loins with your seed and produce some exasperatingly strange characters: the wicked hag of the mountains, the naïve and haughty villager, the parsimonious simpleton, the talented, frustrated homosexual, and the sexual Sisyphus, who would betray his family over and over and over and over again?

Then there was the evil Sitt Hawwar.

Upon deciding to return to the village of his birth, Mahdallah, while he was still in London, commissioned the village builder, a man by the name of Hawwar, to put up a house. Hawwar charged the young doctor an exorbitant amount of money. One of Mahdallah’s brothers was supposed to oversee the building and its financing, but he must have been distracted, for when the young doctor returned, he found a windowless skeleton of a house with patchy cement floors and only an undercoat of paint.

Mahdallah complained. Hawwar promised to finish the job quickly, before the winter snows. Mahdallah and his family could wait out the house at his parents’. But the wife, the harem girl, the Albanian, insisted the bare-bones house was her home. She moved her family in, shaming the builder into working harder and faster.

That was a mistake. And she compounded the mistake. She didn’t know any better — she was a foreigner. Mona Arisseddine told her neighbors the truth. She said they could have built three houses for what they paid. She mentioned how much her husband paid for each material. The stove wasn’t even new: you could see it was used. “Look,” she kept saying, “look.”

Sitt Hawwar, the builder’s much younger wife, became Mona Arisseddine’s enemy.

Mona Arisseddine told people the builder was a crook.

Sitt Hawwar told people the doctor was a Christian.

Three Druze men showed up at Mahdallah’s clinic one morning to kill the good doctor. The only thing that saved him was a heavy patient load that day. The men walked into the clinic and asked to see him. They were told they would be next. A parent with a sick child entered, and the men decided to let the doctor help the child before they murdered him. Then came an elderly woman, a man with a broken foot, another sick child, and so on. At the end of the day, the sister-in-law of one of the would-be slayers arrived with her ill daughter. She asked her relative what he was doing there, and he replied that he was waiting to exterminate the doctor.

“Are you crazy?” she yelled. “This man is treating my daughter and you want to kill him? Why don’t you go kill a government official or something?”

The three embarrassed killers left, and a village story was born. And the bey warned that he would personally torture and kill anyone who attempted to injure the Druze doctor.

“If that woman hadn’t shown up,” my grandfather said, “you kids wouldn’t be here. Think about that. It was fate. Mahdallah had converted, so he had insulted their faith. Neighbors had killed neighbors before. Why wasn’t your great-grandfather killed? You ask me and I’ll tell you. It was because I was meant to marry your grandmother, of course. Do you see that?”

“No,” I said. The other kids didn’t even hear him. Anwar was too busy pummeling Hafez. Lina, who had been sitting next to me, had disappeared with my other cousins. Little Mona was in Aunt Samia’s arms, fidgeting.

“Stop it, Baba,” Aunt Samia said. “It’s Eid al-Adha, no time for your crazy stories. You’ve no idea what a bad example you set.” She stood up, put her daughter down. “And you,” she admonished me, “why do you just sit there and listen? Why don’t you get into a fight with your cousins? You want people to think you’re a coward? Get in there and smack one of them.”

I jumped off the sofa and ran out of the room, looking for my mother. She wasn’t in the dining room, where the rest of the family was yelling. I sprinted to the terrace. Every apartment in the building had a large balcony, but Aunt Samia’s penthouse had a terrace encircling it. I envied Anwar and Hafez for being able to run around whenever they felt like it.

My father said Aunt Samia got the biggest apartment because she was the eldest.

My mother said Aunt Samia got it by whining for ten whole days that she deserved it because she was married to the most helpless man in the world.

I ran almost all the way around the terrace before I found my mother leaning against a wall, smoking a cigarette. My father was talking, gazing warily at her. She stared out toward Beirut’s dappled rooftops, distracted, as if counting the tines of each television antenna on every roof in the city.

“You’ve been spending too much time alone,” my father said, “and that makes it harder for you to tolerate other people. It’s a family get-together, Layla. You can’t leave before lunch.”

After each drag on her cigarette, my mother moved her hand to cup the bun at the back of her head, as if doubting its existence. The smoke would circle the bun for an instant before dying.

“If those children were mine,” she said, “I would short-circuit them. Poof. Clack. Everything tumbles. The motor sputters, rumble-rumble, dies. No more noise.”

My father’s face tightened in shock. “That’s an awful thing to say, even for you. How could you?”

My mother noticed me. Her lips curled into a smile. “Osama, I don’t want you hanging around your cousins too much. Too many bad habits.”

I knew she’d want me to ask this now, at this moment. “Is it true they kill Christians in the village?”

My father looked at me in horror. “Of course it’s not true. Who told you that?”

“Grandfather said the village men almost killed your grandfather because he was a Christian.”

“How many times have I told you not to believe any of my father’s stories? He’s a hakawati. He makes things up. My grandfather wasn’t Christian. He was a Druze. You know that. If anyone tried to kill him, it was about something else.”

“Yes,” my mother said. The sun struck her face, and she looked brighter. “It was probably about something like an elevator. You know how the Druze are. They’re hospitable, and they take care of their own. Mind your seventh neighbor and all that.”

“Don’t do this,” my father said. “The old man’s tales are more than enough. Let’s not confuse the boy with more, I beg you.”

My mother straightened. “You’re right.” Her crisp voice melded with the sound of approaching steps. “No one tried to kill any Christians in the village. Your grandfather makes things up.”

Lina turned the corner, followed by Anwar, who was always trying to engage her in some convoluted game. “They kill Christians in the village?” she asked.

“No,” my father said. “No, they don’t.” He turned around and faced the railing.

“If it’s true,” Anwar told Lina, “I’ll have to slit your throat with a knife.”

“And before you do,” Lina replied without missing a beat, “I’ll take that knife and shove it up a place that will surprise you.”

Anwar gasped. My parents both yelled Lina’s name. “I have to go talk to that loon,” my father said. “Things can’t go on like this. He’s a menace.”

“Don’t.” My mother held out her hand. “You’ll only upset yourself, and you’ll regret it later. Let it go. Nothing can be done. Not now. Not here.” He took her hand. “Family,” she said, and pulled him to her. She dropped her spent cigarette.

“Oh, no,” Anwar said. “Mother gets upset if anyone leaves cigarettes on the terrace.”

“I’m sure she does.” My mother stepped on the cigarette with her stiletto heel, her calf tensing. She twisted the ball of her foot to the right, to the left, to the right. She took my father’s arm and walked away, leaving a trivial stain of ash, mashed filter, and loose tobacco in her wake.

About the elevator. When Mahdallah returned from London, he was asked by the villagers what he had seen in the great land of abroad.

Many wonders. Strange inhabitants. There were buildings in London where people did not use stairs. A room moved, carried passengers from floor to floor. Moved up and down. Buildings had many floors. Visitors didn’t have to tire themselves by walking up stairs. Why, in the great city of New York, buildings were even higher. Twenty stories or more.

The villagers went away shaking their heads. Should such a foolish man be allowed to walk the streets of the village? Was he dangerous? Should a madman be allowed to mingle with the innocent? A committee was sent to interview the doctor subtly. Luckily for our family, Mona was there. The committee said some villagers had the notion that buildings in the land of the foreign had mobile rooms within them. How exactly did Londoners move between floors?

Before the doctor could reply, his wife jumped in. Why, they ascended and descended stairs, of course. Climbed the stairs when they wanted to go up. Most stairs were made of cement and stone, some of wood, and the latter were often rickety. The doctor stared at his wife, uncomprehending. The committee waited for him to add something. There were great banisters, he said. Beautifully carved. Some staircases were marvelously ornate. Some buildings had a flight of imposing stairs on each side, complete with balustrades and carved mythical animals.

The committee apologized to the doctor. The villagers were simple folk, they said. They always misheard or misunderstood what was being said. The committee begged forgiveness and left the well-grounded doctor to his own devices.

Finally, my great-grandparents had their second child. Jalal Arisseddine was born in 1891. His brother, Aref, was eight then. Mona might have hoped that with Jalal’s arrival people would stop referring to her as the harem girl, since she was now the mother of two sheikhs.

Jalal would grow up to be an important personality in Lebanese history. He was an attorney, a keen student of letters, possessor of a piercing intellect, a man worthy of admiration. Even his critics, and he had many because of his writings rejecting pan-Arabism, respected him. He was jailed three times by the French colonial government. His last internment coincided with the end of Vichy rule in Lebanon. He was released in November 1943, on Independence Day.

Every day he spent in prison, his aged mother brought him food, though she fasted in protest. She could barely walk, but she refused to have anyone carry the meals for her. She waited outside the prison doors on the day of his release.

He came out a hero. She remained that harem girl.

My great-uncle Maan Arisseddine was born in 1894. My father loved him deeply, for he was the man who gave him his early breaks. In the grand scheme of stories, he was nothing, almost an unmentionable, for he was not an odd character or an interesting one. He was a thread, one of many, without which the tapestry would crumble, the yarn fray, and the tale unravel.

But I know of another thread.

Even though the evil Sitt Hawwar loathed my great-grandmother, or probably because of it, she showed up to congratulate the new mother when baby Maan was born. She dragged along her husband, the builder, who was wearing a robe of Chinese silk. She made her husband walk around the small living room. The villagers oohed and aahed, admiring their first view of foreign silk, ignoring the newborn. Now, the proverb was that one should look after one’s seventh neighbor, and Sitt Hawwar was Mona Arisseddine’s second neighbor on the right, so Mona should have treated her even better, or at least been more circumspect. But, then, there was history. And Mona Arisseddine asked her neighbor how much that robe cost.

This story about neighbors arrives from far away, so listen. The parable is Iraqi, all the way from the ancient city of Baghdad; it flew here on waves of air, needing to alight in cavernous ears. Long ago, in a time long past, there lived an honorable Bedouin who was so hospitable and charitable that he was known as Abou al-Karam, Father of Generosity. One day, a poor man raised his tent pole next to the Bedouin’s, and of course Abou al-Karam made sure his neighbor lacked nothing, offering him food, water, and clothing. For seven years, whenever the tribe traveled, their tents remained adjacent. The neighbor became known as Bin al-Kareem, Son of the Generous One. After each of the tribe’s raids, Abou al-Karam would share the spoils with his neighbor: horses, mares, camels, food, slaves, the enemy tribe’s possessions.

By the end of those seven years, Bin al-Kareem and his sons had become wealthy. By the end of those seven years, Abou al-Karam’s youngest daughter had become a desert beauty, lithe and tall as a poplar, graceful as a doe. And Bin al-Kareem’s younger son wanted her. He courted her. He sang verses for her, followed her when she went to the well, knelt outside her tent when she tried to sleep, whispering endearments. The beautiful girl refused him. He stalked her wherever she went, made it impossible for her to move freely. And the girl told her father, who said, “One night more and you will not have to worry about this nefarious boy.”

That night, when the girl went to bed, the boy appeared outside her tent and began whispering to her. “Wait but one more night,” she said, “and you shall receive your just reward.”

At dawn, Abou al-Karam gave the order to break camp. Later that morning, the camels and pack animals were laden and the tribe began to march. For all of the previous seven years, wherever Abou al-Karam pitched his tent in a new camp, Bin al-Kareem pitched his right next to it. That day, arriving at a suitable pasture, Abou al-Karam searched until he found a spot next to a teeming anthill. There he made his home. When Bin al-Kareem arrived to pitch his tent, he said, “O dear neighbor, there is an anthill on my site.”

“So there is,” replied Abou al-Karam, “and God’s earth is wide.”

Bin al-Kareem said nothing further. He drove his family and his belongings away from the tribe, up north, far away from his once-beloved neighbor. But his heart ached, and his mind was troubled. He relived the insult over and over in his head. Why? he asked himself. Why did his friend betray him? One night, he had a dream. He saw Abou al-Karam’s daughter walking in the desert, followed by wisps of clouds, and he divined what might have happened. The next morning, while hunting with his elder son, he said, “What a shame we had to leave our good neighbor. And that daughter. What a beautiful girl. Our family is inferior to hers and there was no hope of matrimony between us, but, still, what a gorgeous lass. A shame we left before you had a chance with her.”

“Shame?” the son yelled. “You call that a shame? Shame on you for uttering such words. Was she not my sister? Did we not eat of the same food? Did we not share the same honor for seven years? Only sons of whores and sons of shame would consider what you’re thinking.”

“Forgive me, my son,” the father said. “The sorrow of parting must have clouded my judgment. Let us return to our tent and forget we had this conversation.”

The next day, while hunting, Bin al-Kareem said to his younger son, “What a shame about that adorable girl.”

“Shame?” sighed the boy. “One night more, Father, and she would have been mine. One night more.”

And the father unsheathed his sword and cut off his son’s head.

And the father wound woolen thread around his son’s head, and wound, and wound, until he had a large ball of yarn. He waited until he met a traveler heading south, and he asked, “Will you carry this gift to my friend Abou al-Karam?”

When the traveler arrived at Abou al-Karam’s camp, he found him in his tent, sitting with guests. The traveler placed the gift before Abou al-Karam, who asked, “Who sends this gift?”

“A man who called you his friend and brother,” said the traveler.

Abou al-Karam summoned his slaves to unwind the yarn. As they unraveled it, they uncovered the son’s head. And Abou al-Karam beat his chest in sorrow, sighed the breath of remorse. He understood that his neighbor of seven years was as true as a brother and as jealous of his name. The guests demanded the tale, and Abou al-Karam told it. The guests all said in one voice that he must marry his daughter to his neighbor’s elder son, which would make Abou al-Karam and Bin al-Kareem brothers.

And so it was. Two neighbors, one superior and one inferior, but equals in honor and pride, became one family, and lived long to take pleasure in their children.

And Mahdallah Arisseddine worked hard. He became a well-respected doctor in the region. Patients arrived from all over. Yet he couldn’t increase the size of his family by much.

Finally, ten years after his third son was born, Mona got pregnant again. This time, everyone knew it was a girl. They had waited long enough. The eldest, Aref, was already twenty-one years old. When Mona was in her eighth month, the doctor was asked to trek to Aleppo to heal a man from the al-Atrash family, a prince from Jabal al-Druze in Syria who had fallen gravely ill while traveling. Mona objected, but Mahdallah said he would be back before she gave birth. She said she didn’t believe him. He said he had never lied to her. She let him go.

Her last words to him were “I’m calling her Najla, after my mother.”

For, although the doctor healed the prince, the doctor died. He spent his last few days away from his family, wasting away in a strange bed, trying to medicate himself, alone, in a city farther north than Tripoli, where he met his wife, a much longer journey.

Like my great-grandmother Lucine Guiragossian, my great-grandfather Mahdallah Arisseddine died of amoebic dysentery. His death in 1904 came four years after hers; his was in the city of Aleppo, a little bit farther south than Urfa, the city where she died.

He died a Druze, but he was buried in a Christian cemetery, since there were no Druze cemeteries in Aleppo. God rest his soul.

This would not be Mona’s only tragedy. My great-uncle Aref was a wild young man. While his father was still alive, he managed to keep himself under some semblance of control. His father’s influence was such that the boy graduated at the top of his class and enrolled in medical school at his father’s alma mater. Mahdallah rented him a small room in Beirut. Aref studied hard, but he also played hard. Rumors of his mad conquests trickled to the village.

To his impressionable teenage brother, Jalal, he said, “All women are different. A Druze woman tastes like half-cooked lamb with rosemary and peppers, a Maronite tastes like beef marinated in olive oil, a Sunni girl like calf’s liver cooked in white wine, a Shiite like chicken in vinegar with pine nuts, an Orthodox like fish in tahini sauce, a Jewish woman like baked kibbeh, a Melchite like semolina stew, a Protestant like chicken soup, and an Alawite like okra in beef stock.”

And Aref tasted them all and more. He wanted a bite of each sect of his land, and that desire developed into a gastronomical obsession. The Sunni (university girl), Maronite (housewife in Sinn el-Fil), Orthodox (housewife in Ain el-Rumaneh), and Druze (maid in Beiteddine) were not difficult to obtain. The Jewish wife of Mr. Salim Kuhin wasn’t hard, either; he met her outside the downtown synagogue. For the Melchite, he had to travel all the way to the Bekaa Valley, to Zahlé, and find Mrs. Ballat, the manager of the pension where he stayed. The Shiite was difficult. He traveled to the south and met a number of girls, but Sidon didn’t open its gates for him. Tyre resisted him as it did Alexander the Great. He had Alexander’s moxie and cunning, but he lacked Two-Horned’s patience and resources. Tyre defeated Aref. He was lucky enough to find a Shiite prostitute in a nightclub near the port of Beirut.

Three days after Aref’s twenty-first birthday, his father died. Aref shook off whatever constraints he may have had. The Protestant was his biology professor, an Englishwoman, but then he decided that, as a nonnational, she wasn’t a representative morsel of the delicious sectarian spectrum. He had to search for three months, fail one class, and barely pass another before he found an appropriate Lebanese Protestant. He rode the train north to Tripoli to savor an Alawite, had to live there for two months before the seduction was complete. He made love to an Armenian in Bourj Hammoud on the way back to Beirut.

When he finished the entire menu, he celebrated with a drunken, boastful evening with friends, and then he returned to the village for a few days, his medical education all but forgotten. Those days dragged into a few more, and those into a few more still, as he grew fond of a married woman, Sitt Yasmine, whose husband was a farmhand for the bey.

Every morning, Aref hid behind the village’s great oak tree, waiting for the farmhand to leave. Then my great-uncle would ride his horse to the house, tie the reins to the window shutter, and entertain himself with Sitt Yasmine. If only he had tied the horse to the back window. The neighbors told the husband he was being cuckolded, but he didn’t believe at first. One morning, a friend took the farmhand by the arm and brought him back to his house. “See,” his friend said, “there’s the horse.” The farmhand yelled, screamed, “O Sheikh, get out of my house now or I will commit murder.” Aref escaped out the back. The farmhand and his friend gave chase, intending to do him harm with a rake, a hoe, and an empty bucket between them. Aref laughed, tried to tie his belt while running. He reached a cascade of olive orchards, the silver-green trees in rows that stretched to the bottom of the hill. He jumped across into the lower orchard, landed on the soft earth, ran a little more, and jumped again, but this time his foot caught in an olive branch. He spun in midair like a tetherball and shot headfirst to the ground. He died on impact.

The farmhand returned the horse to my great-grandmother. She must have opened the door for him with my grandmother Najla in her arms.

Miraculously, Sitt Yasmine remained unharmed. It is said the farmhand was so shocked by witnessing the demise of a sheikh that he forgot his wife’s betrayal and didn’t remember to beat her.

• • •

When my grandfather decided he wanted my grandmother for a wife, he sent word to her brother Jalal, already a respected family man at twenty-seven. Jalal had left the confines of the village for a more cosmopolitan life in Beirut. Since Ismail al-Kharrat didn’t have a family to represent him, he sent one of his admirers, a charming but not very gifted fellow, a sheikh himself, and the first cousin of the bey on his mother’s side. My great-uncle received him as a good host should, but when the guest requested his sister’s hand for the hakawati, Jalal said a simple no. My great-uncle would have laughed, but, as an Arab intellectual, he lacked a sense of humor.

“And that bastard just said no,” my grandfather said. “He didn’t elaborate, felt no need to explain his position. I had my guy prepared with all kinds of wonderful things to say about me and why I’d make a good husband for your grandmother, but the bastard didn’t have the courtesy to let my guy speak. Just no.”

“You can’t call him a bastard, Baba,” Aunt Samia said. “He’s my uncle. He’s the children’s great-uncle. You can’t just curse him like that.”

“The man was a bastard,” Uncle Halim insisted. Already drunk, he sipped his arak delicately. He took another sip and then gulped down the rest. “It’s not like Baba is adding anything new to the equation.”

“You’re taking his side?” Aunt Samia said. She stood up, handed Little Mona to her bewildered husband. “Of all people, you have the gall to say something like that?” Uncle Akram held the girl with his arms straight and outstretched, as if she were smelly locker-room laundry. “In my house?” Mona’s legs dangled in midair. Her father turned his head left and right, hoping someone would rescue him. “You choose to do this in front of all these kids? Do you care if they all grow up to be gypsies with no morals? Maybe you want them to grow up to be Kurds?” She walked toward the kitchen, pivoted, returned to take her daughter. “And you,” she admonished her husband, “you sit here and listen to him insult the family and you do nothing.”

“But it’s not my family.” Uncle Akram looked to my father for support.

“You always resort to that, don’t you? Whenever I need you, you hide.” She took a deep breath, raised her voice. “Uncle Jalal was called a bastard. What are you going to do about it?”

“But he’s not my uncle,” her husband said.

“And he is a bastard,” Uncle Halim said, snickering.

“No,” Aunt Samia said. “No, no, no.” Her daughter began to pout and whimper.

Lina grinned. My mother looked at her and winked. Uncle Jihad, who was sitting on the corner couch, entered the winking fest. Then he nodded at my mother, as if agreeing to something, and threw his contribution into the ring.

“Osama,” he called loudly, “what happened to the money you borrowed from me?” I didn’t understand. “Did you spend all of it?” His voice didn’t match his face. My mother was trying to catch his attention. She nodded to Little Mona and raised her eyebrows. “Samia, my dear,” he said, “why don’t you give me the precious darling?” Aunt Samia, still staring at Uncle Halim, handed her daughter over distractedly. With the little girl in his arms, Uncle Jihad returned to me. “Did you think I’d forget the money, Osama?” He waited a few breaths before adding, “Did you waste the money”—breath—”or did you hide”—breath—”the money?”

My mother grinned, shook her head slowly from side to side in admiration, as if telling Uncle Jihad she was in awe. He shrugged, as if replying it was nothing.

You could count. One. Two. And the jinn of hell broke their chains.

“You stole my money,” Aunt Samia shouted at Uncle Halim, who recoiled visibly. Her face was as red as if dunked in tomato paste, and her eyes were as white and wide as saucers.

“Samia, no,” my father yelled, but she was off in her outraged world.

“It was my money. It was mine. My mother wanted to give it to me. To me. My money.”

“Samia,” my grandfather pleaded, “stop it.”

“The neighbors, Samia,” my father added. “The neighbors will hear.”

Anwar and Hafez pushed all the way back in their chairs. Lina sat forward. Uncle Jihad seemed to have lost interest. He tried to distract Little Mona, who was staring at her livid mother.

“You hate Jalal because he wanted you to give the money back to Mama. But you hid it. He isn’t the bastard. You are. You’re a lowlife.”

“If it weren’t for the children,” Uncle Halim yelled back, “I’d smack you from here to the village, you big-mouthed idiot.” Aunt Nazek moved closer to him, tried to calm him, but he stood up. “I returned the money. I didn’t hide it. You’re a big fat liar.” He shook his finger at her. “You’re lucky the children are here.”

“This is unreal,” my grandfather said.

“I’m not a liar. You hid it. You hid the money.”

My father stood up. From the look on his face, you could see it was over. He seethed. “Everybody just eat shit and shut up,” he screamed. Quiet. My father sighed. “Samia. He was eight years old. You were — what? — twelve? What’s the matter with you? You were children. What the hell does it matter what he did then? How much did he hide? Was it one quarter or two?”

“I don’t care,” she said, but we all heard the defeated whine creep back into her voice. “He stole my money.” Her rapid breathing slowed. “He stole my money again. I can prove it.”

“Eight?” my mother asked Uncle Jihad.

“Yes.” He nodded, stroked Little Mona’s hair. “I was about as old as this one here. I was traumatized, I tell you.” He blinked once, twice. Looked up to the ceiling in mock sorrow. “That incident scarred my life.”

“And you.” My father turned to his. “Why do you keep telling my kids these stories?”

“They’re not just your kids,” my grandfather replied. “And don’t blame me for this one. I was telling how I married your mother. An old man has a right to reminisce, and children need to know where they came from.” He refused to look at my father.

“Every time you tell one of your stories, something horrible happens.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the story of how I met your mother.”

My mother sat up, stretched lazily, smiled beatifically at my grandfather. “You know, Uncle Ismail, the story might not be appropriate for the children. You see, if you tell the story, they’ll grow up believing that the whole family, almost everyone in this room, wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the bey.”

“That’s not true,” both my father and grandfather said.

“And we wouldn’t want that, would we?” she asked.

The hospital kept to a Mediterranean schedule: visiting hours after siesta were from four till eight. Evening had blued the room. I was tired, yet an orderly was just beginning the dinner round. He wouldn’t enter my father’s room. I nestled next to Fatima on the recliner; her arm swallowed me up. “I’m scared,” I whispered.

“You know, grief feels very much like fear, almost interchangeable,” she said. “You’d think we’d get used to grief, but we never do.” She stroked my hair gently, scratched my hair, clicked her fingernails together. We called that “cleaning lice.” Fatima’s Italian mother used to do that. I’d loved it as a child, and I loved it now.

Lina trudged into the room, looking like she was about to disintegrate — eyes puffy, skin dark beneath them. She acknowledged Fatima and me but went directly to my father’s bed.

“Have they all left?” Fatima asked. My sister nodded in between heaves and tears. Fatima waited. “What about Salwa?”

“Hovik took her home,” Lina replied.

“Good. She looked exhausted. Not as exhausted as you, though. You’re going home. Sleep in your bed tonight.”

“No. It’s quite all right. I’ll stay here.”

“No, I’ll stay. You go home. You can’t keep sleeping on the recliner. I’ll take over.”

“I’m not going home,” my sister said. “He wants me here. I’m used to the recliner. If he wakes up and doesn’t see me here, he freaks. I have to.”

The sound of the machine — inhale, exhale — echoed inside my skull. Aspiration, beep, beep, expiration. My head seemed to melt upon itself. I heard myself say, “No, you both go home. I’m staying.” They gawked as if I were a poltergeist. “I need time with him, and you need the rest.”

Fatima blew kisses my way. She hurriedly collected my sister’s belongings.

Lina wouldn’t take her eyes from mine. I blinked. “You sure?” she asked.

Fatima picked up my sister’s overnight bag, kissed me, and dragged my sister toward the door. Lina disentangled herself and came over. “Go to the nurses’ desk and they’ll give you a pillow and blanket.” She hugged me. “Call me if anything happens.” She squeezed me tight. “It was always just you and me, stupid. Always was, always will be.” And she kissed the top of my head. The sound of the kiss echoed in my skull.

When my grandfather discovered he’d been rejected, he pleaded his case to the bey. This was the girl for him, he said. He loved her. No other would do. If Najla wouldn’t marry him, who else would? Could the bey intercede on his behalf? And the bey did. He called Jalal Arisseddine, asked him to reconsider. The hakawati was his protégé, a decent fellow. The bey himself would make sure the girl was taken care of. The girl wouldn’t find a better husband, after all. She was an orphan of impure parentage, and had a disreputable deceased brother — three strikes.

The girl’s brother agreed to marry her to the bey’s hakawati. The girl’s mother did not.

And the bey called Mona Arisseddine. She put on her mandeel and trudged up the hill to the mansion. The bey gave her the same spiel, and she said no. He repeated the same words, and she said no again. He repeated them once more, and she rejected his offer a third time. She left the befuddled bey and returned home.

The bey called his mother. His mother said, “I am ashamed to have raised such a fool.”

And the bey’s mother put on her mandeel and trudged down to visit Mona Arisseddine in her home. The mothers discussed the hakawati. Mona said he had no family. The bey’s mother reminded Mona that she didn’t, either, and she’d turned out to be a wonderful mother. Mona said the man was an entertainer. The bey’s mother ruminated on how quickly we forgot.

Could he make her happy? The bey’s mother told Mona to ask her daughter.

The mothers asked Najla if she thought the hakawati could make her happy.

Najla looked at both women and said he made her laugh.

Wedding torches would flare.

Mountain weddings were known for many things: the feast and the accompanying feeding frenzy; the dancing, the Lebanese dabké and the dances of the swords and shields; the rites of riding to collect the bride; and most of all the zajal, the poetry duels.

At weddings, poets competed in praising the bride, the groom, luminaries attending the wedding, and matrimonial traditions in general. They also dueled, entertained the crowds by engaging in boasts and insults, composing verses on the spot. A poet was guaranteed an invitation to every wedding. A good one was even paid. At some weddings, amateurs joined in, tried their luck in verse. My grandparents’ wedding became famous for a verse.

A tasteless, reprehensible quatrain uttered by none other than the evil Sitt Hawwar.

A groom with a huge mouth filled with many needless words,

Yet no incisor and no molar,

Married a girl with a bigger mouth,

Whose teeth entered a room before her.

I followed the aromas emanating from the kitchen, but knew better than to go in. I stopped in the prep room. Aunt Samia was complaining to someone, most probably Aunt Nazek. “I can’t take it anymore,” she was saying. I grabbed a piece of bread from the table and bit into it. “I don’t know why she thinks she needs to keep her nose so high up in the air,” I heard her say. “It’s not like she produced a bushel of sons, just a toad of a girl and a gnat of a boy.” I bit into the bread again and again.

My grandfather came up from behind and covered my eyes. I knew it was him because of his smell, but I couldn’t tell him I knew, because my mouth was too full. “It’s only me,” he said, chuckling. “And don’t eat the bread by itself when there’s so much food around.”

As noiselessly as possible, he moved a chair next to the table, motioned for me to stand on it. He uncovered a deep bowl in the middle of the table, moved it closer. I could see the stew inside. “The secret,” he whispered. He tilted his head, and I did the same. I saw soft steam churning upon itself, imagining a porcelain cover no longer there. “The bowl has lips,” he said, “and can tell you stories, if only you allow your ears to hear or your nose to smell.”

“Or my lips to kiss,” I said softly. I bent, and the steam caressed my lashes, licked my lips. I stuck out my tongue and licked right back.

Aunt Samia walked in. “Put that filthy tongue back where it came from.”

I jumped off the chair and ran out as fast as I could. I heard her ask, “How could you let him do that, Baba?” but I didn’t hear his response.

He found me on the terrace, leaning over the railing, staring at the rosebushes in the gated garden below. “That was fun,” he said. “I bet you don’t know what was in the pot. I know you think it’s chicken stew, but it most certainly is not. It’s imp stew. You have to catch those little devils, no bigger than chickens but very hard to trap. Killing the imps is never easy. You have to find them at the right time of the year and freeze them. That’s how you do it. Not easy.”

“Oh, come on.”

“It’s true. And you have to blanch them to get rid of their red color, so no one can tell that it’s imp stew. You don’t want your guests to throw up, now, do you?”

“But the guests would taste them.”

“Oh, no, imps taste like chicken. Samia is just trying to trick us.”

I didn’t say anything. I heard his breath.

“Does your father still like his meat?” my grandfather asked.

“Ask him,” I said.

“He’s not here, is he? So — I’m asking you. Does he still sneak into the kitchen and eat the aliyeh when no one is looking?”

“What’s aliyeh?”

“It’s the fried lamb and onions and garlic and salt and pepper. What you need to prepare to add flavor to the stew. When your grandmother would cook, she’d have the best aliyeh — well, she had the best everything. She was the best cook ever to walk this cursed earth.”

“Our cook is probably better. That’s what everyone says.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. No one will ever be as good as your grandmother. Her cooking woke the dead and the gods. Where was I? Your father. Well, your devious father would crawl into the kitchen on his hands and knees, holding a piece of bread between his teeth so it wouldn’t touch the floor. He’d get to the stove, stand up quickly, and dip his bread into the aliyeh while it was still frying, pick up as much as he could in that morsel, and run out before his mother caught him. He’d run, blowing on the food in his hand to cool it. Blow, and duck to avoid your grandmother, who ran after him. It was a game they played, and he had to stuff the bread in his mouth or she’d take it from him. He must have been your age, or maybe a little older. We couldn’t afford much meat when he was younger. We couldn’t afford imps, either.”

Nine

Below, in the underworld, Fatima said, “I must rise.”

“Why?” said Afreet-Jehanam. “You should deliver here.”

“My child shall be born aboveground. He will master this world but must be a citizen of the one above.”

“You do treat me like a plaything,” her lover harrumphed. “I am the father. I should have some say.”

“But you do, dear, you do. Now, get me a carpet, please. I must be going. I do not wish my water to break in midair.”

In the castle, the emir’s wife felt her first pain the same instant Fatima felt hers in the underworld. She held her stomach, smiled at her husband.

“Should I stop the story?” the emir asked. “Should I call someone? Should I boil water? Where’s the midwife? What—”

“No, husband, go on. This Othman fellow begins to amuse me. Just help me with more pillows.” She pushed her body farther up on the bed and adjusted herself with a groan. “The troublemaker comes,” she said. “Pray continue, husband. Distract me.”

Prince Baybars, Othman, the Africans, and the Uzbeks attended Friday prayers at the mosque. The faithful eyed Othman with a mixture of awe, concern, and fear. Othman yelled, “Stop the staring. I have repented to God, who forgives all sins, and now I pray like you do.” The faithful welcomed him to their bosom. Leaving the mosque after prayers, the group heard a barker announcing the availability of the house of Prince Ahmad al-Sabaki, which ran the length of the farmers’ market on one side to the dyers’ market on the other. Baybars asked who owned the house, and the barker answered that it was the four granddaughters of Prince Ahmad.

The barker led the group to one of the four doors of the house, where he said, “Forgive me, lord, but the ladies asked that anyone who wished to inquire about the house must enter through the green door, which no one has been able to open for generations.” Baybars turned the key in the lock, and the door swung open, the hinges sliding silently, as if they had been oiled that morning. The interior of the house was opulent. Othman’s fingers twitched, and he had to clasp his hands together. The barker disappeared and returned a few minutes later to announce that the ladies were ready to greet them.

The men entered a large hall where the four ladies lounged on colorful divans. With one voice the four said, “Which of you opened the door?” and the prince identified himself. “What is your name, young man?” their voice asked. Prince Baybars told them.

“No,” they said. “What is your birth name?”

“I was born with the name Mahmoud.”

“And where are you from?”

“I am from Damascus.”

“No,” their voice said. “Where were you born?”

“I was born in Samarkand.”

“And who are you?” asked the ladies.

And Prince Baybars told the stories of his grandfather and his father, and those of his mother, and those of his uncles. “This is who I am,” he finally said.

The women asked if he could afford the price of the house, and Prince Baybars assured them he could. And their voice said, “You claim wealth but carry no sign of it. You are a dissembler.” Baybars grew angry; the lion’s folds appeared at the bridge of his nose, and his beauty mark turned red. “You are the one,” the ladies’ voice said. “We have been waiting for you for far too long. The house is yours if you can pass a test and make a promise.” Baybars inquired about the test. “That monolith there must be moved.” The ladies pointed to a prehistoric menhir in the corner. “The house was built around it because no one has been able to relocate it. It is known that only its master can lift it.”

Baybars’s men gathered around the monolith. “This should be easy,” one of the Africans said. The Africans and the Uzbeks tried to lift the stone, but it would not budge. Baybars moved in to help, and, lo and behold, the instant he put his hands around the monolith, he lifted it right out. “It is cumbersome but not heavy,” he told his servants. He took a couple of steps, and from behind the menhir he asked the ladies, “And where would you like me to put this?”

“Down,” they said, “so you can make your promise. You must build each one of us a mosque named after her. Promise that and claim your home.”

And that was how Baybars became a homeowner.

My aunt arrived first, in 1920, when my grandmother was sixteen. Najla began labor in the morning. At six in the evening, while she was still in pain, the bey sent one of his attendants to fetch my grandfather. The bey had begun his drinking early and needed entertainment.

“Run,” Great-Grandmother Mona told him. “You’re not needed here.”

The midwife, on her way back home after the delivery, informed the night watchman at the mansion’s gate that the bey’s hakawati had a healthy baby girl. The watchman told one of the servants, who waited to make the announcement until there was a break in the evening’s tale. Had it been a baby boy, the servant would have interrupted.

“It’s a good thing you’re here,” the bey told my grandfather. “No woman wants to announce right after delivery that she had a girl. Wives are very emotional. You should call your baby Samira, after my dear mother.”

Najla called her Samia.

Najla decided she wanted meghli, the sweet made of spices. It was supposed to be served after a boy was born, but Najla said, “If it helps me make milk, then isn’t it just as good for a girl?”

The midwife agreed that all new mothers should eat meghli, but she advised the new mother not to serve it to guests. “Nonsense,” Mona said. “My daughter can’t eat meghli by herself and not serve the guests. I will make the first batch.”

“I want my daughter to be queen of the village,” Najla told her mother, who agreed wholeheartedly. She was almost successful. Aunt Samia blossomed into a queen manquée.

One day, King Saleh was riding through the city when he came to Lady Zainab Street. There were wooden planks spanning a small gulf, and his subjects crossed with difficulty. He felt ashamed that the maqâm of Lady Zainab was not in a more fortunate quarter of the city. He said, “A bridge must be built here, and a small neighborhood, with decent shops and adequate housing.” He put Baybars in charge, and Baybars was honored by the responsibility.

The prince had Othman summon engineers to build the bridge. They hired carpenters and artisans and built a neighborhood so lovely it was as if the Lady watched over it. A marvelous gate protected it, and clean streets invited people in. The prince said to Othman, “Bring me grocers, butchers, perfumers, tailors, oil merchants, coffee traders, and other honest brokers.”

Othman brought the shopkeepers, and they moved into the neighborhood within a couple of months, transforming it into the most popular in the city.

Evil Arbusto, the king’s judge, heard of the miracle, and his blood coursed with envy. He called on his close friend the mayor of Cairo. The mayor inquired why the judge looked sad and was told, “There is a sight in the city that breaks my heart. The slave Baybars has built a lively neighborhood that I would love to see reduced to cinders and ash.”

“I know the neighborhood,” the mayor said. “It will be a pleasure to be rid of it. That scoundrel Othman has bested me a few times, and now I will get him back.” The mayor called on a rogue by the name of Harhash and told him of his wish to burn the neighborhood. Harhash asked where the neighborhood was. The mayor said, “Next to the maqâm of Lady Zainab.”

Harhash recoiled. “I cannot do this. I will burn any other neighborhood, but not the Lady’s neighborhood. That is blasphemy.”

The mayor screamed, “That is not blasphemy, you jackass. You do not even know what the word means. You and your men will burn what I command you to, or I will have you in prison, and you will never see the light of day for the rest of your life.”

And Harhash agreed to commit arson, for he had no other choice. He and two of his men went to study the neighborhood. The men told Harhash, “This neighborhood can only be burned in the middle of the night, when there are no witnesses.” Lady Zainab, the neighborhood’s protector, had made sure the weather was hot enough that a tailor was taking his siesta on the floor of his shop and not his house, and so was able to hear the conversation of the men standing nearby. When they left, the tailor sought Othman and informed him of what he had heard.

Othman and the Uzbek and African warriors rode to the neighborhood. Othman told the gatekeepers to close the gate but keep its portal open. He ordered the residents not to light their night lamps that evening. And the prince’s servants waited for night to fall.

Harhash and his twelve men arrived with barrels of oil and found the neighborhood dark and the gate closed. “This is a blessing,” Harhash whispered. “We can do our job and no one will witness.” He sent one of his men ahead through the portal. As soon as the man entered, one of the Africans banged him on top of the head with his closed fist, and the rogue collapsed unconscious. Othman waited a little and then whistled. Another man walked in and got thumped by another African. Othman whistled again. A third man entered, and this time Othman hit him on the head, but the man did not collapse. He stared wide-eyed at the Africans, and one of them thumped him quickly. Othman sulked. The warriors took turns whistling the rogues in, until Harhash was the last one to be knocked unconscious. The arsonists woke and found themselves tied and lined up before the fiercest-looking men they had ever seen. Harhash began to weep.

“Oh, Harhash,” Othman said, “have times been so tough that you have resorted to playing with fire?” And Harhash replied, “Be not cruel, friend. Do you think me impious enough to commit a dastardly crime with the Lady so close were I not forced to? That these warriors stand here to protect this neighborhood is the only proof I need that the Lady still watches. Now I will never taste the fruits of paradise.”

And Othman joined Harhash in weeping. He sat down on the ground and said, “Oh, Harhash, you are not damned. If you repent before the Lady, as I did, God will listen and forgive.” Harhash and his men gave up their wayward ways and swore allegiance to God. Othman said, “Now you and your men can work for me,” and one of the Uzbeks said, “But you are a servant yourself.” And Othman replied, “True, but I am moving up in the world. Soon Harhash here will be able to afford his own servants. It is an ever-shifting multilevel process.”

Fatima’s room was across the hall from the royal chambers, and the second stab of pain forced a sigh that echoed that of the emir’s wife. Fatima asked her attendants to leave her, but when she was alone, she no longer wanted to be.

“Ishmael,” she said, “come.” And Ishmael popped up next to her in bed. “What an awful-looking room,” he said. “You want your child to grow up to be a scholar?”

“Do something, then.”

“With pleasure,” Ishmael replied gleefully.

“Hold on,” said a materializing Isaac.

“I will do it,” said Elijah. “You have no taste.”

“Go home,” said Ishmael. “She asked me to do it.”

His seven brothers ignored him. Adam turned the drapes violet and Noah changed them to blue. Ezra and Elijah had a wrestling match over the carpet. Fatima’s bedspread had four competing pattern designs. By the time she yelled, “Stop,” the room was a disaster, clashing gaudiness in every corner. She looked around. “This is truly awful. I love it.”

Aunt Samia loved and idolized her mother. For her, my grandmother could do no wrong. God, in all His great bounty, created the world in six days, and on the seventh, He concentrated on Najla. She was the most virtuous woman who had ever lived, the most devout, the most intelligent, the most fill-in-the-blank-with-an-ideal-trait. My poor, poor grandmother Najla, born an orphan, married to a ne’er-do-well hakawati, still managed to raise the perfect family and provide her children with a loving environment. Aunt Samia mimicked her mother’s every movement, modeled her entire personality after her. She learned to cook the same meals, weave the same textiles, cross-stitch the same patterns. Whenever she remembered, Aunt Samia pronounced her “s” the same way my grandmother did, spitting saliva upon the listener. Luckily, she didn’t often remember, and she never did it after her mother passed away.

And Aunt Samia had the same adversary as my grandmother and my great-grandmother: none other than the evil Sitt Hawwar, the builder’s wife, who would commit the most egregious of acts against her. Aunt Samia had thought that she would end up spending her life with her mother, since she remained a spinster long past marriageable age.

“We’ll grow old together,” she used to say to Grandmother.

“No, we won’t,” Najla would reply. “You will get married.”

In the morning, the mayor and his men rode into Lady Zainab’s neighborhood. Surprised to find it still standing, the mayor asked the first shopkeeper if he had seen or heard anything during the night. The shopkeeper replied that he had not, because he had turned off the lanterns and fallen asleep. The mayor yelled, “It is against the law to extinguish the lamps,” and he had his men take the shopkeeper out and beat him. He moved to the next shop and asked that shopkeeper if he had had his lamp extinguished last night. The man replied that Othman had ordered him to, which angered the mayor even more, and he had his men beat the second shopkeeper. The mayor went into the next shop, a perfumery, and told the shopkeeper, “Show me your dried carnations.” The perfumer opened a box, and the mayor said, “This carnation is crooked.” The puzzled shopkeeper said, “Find me a carnation that is not,” and received a terrible thrashing for his insolence. The mayor then asked the dairyman, “Why is cow’s milk white but your butter is yellow?” and he replied, “It is always so,” and he, too, received a whipping. The mayor moved from one store to the next, meting out severe beatings.

The shopkeepers sought Othman, who said, “I will solve your problem, but you must pay me.” The men asked what he wanted, and Othman said, “A tub of your yellowest butter and one crooked carnation and one lamb sandwich and one cup of coffee and one comb of honey.”

The shopkeepers laughed and said, “You help us with the mayor and we will give you two of each.” And Othman added, “Oh, and a dessert as well. One must have sweets. And tomorrow, if anyone sees the mayor in the neighborhood, he must shout, ‘Baklava, baklava,’ to remind me of my sweet reward.”

When the oil merchant saw the mayor at his shop the following day, he yelled, “Baklava, baklava,” and every boy in the neighborhood followed suit. The other shopkeepers began to yell, “Baklava, baklava,” as well. The confused mayor asked, “Who wants sweets at an oil shop?” and he heard the voice of Othman say, “A man like you should think only of bitters, never sweets.” Othman, Harhash, and the warriors surrounded the mayor and his men, disarmed them, and relieved them of their clothes, leaving them all utterly naked. The mayor said, “I am going to arrest you and throw away the key.” Othman laughed. “You cannot arrest me. I work for a prince now. If the king knew what you were up to, he would throw you in jail.”

The warriors carried the naked mayor to the tanner and dunked him in a vat of black dye. “Now he is darker than I,” said one of the Africans. They put the naked mayor on his horse backward and rode him out of town. The neighborhood boys ran after him, jeering and whistling.

And the mayor swore revenge against Othman and Baybars. He had his men buy him a coffin, take him to the diwan in it, and inform the king that Othman had killed him.

Upon seeing his murdered mayor, the king called for Baybars and Othman and asked them what happened. Othman said, “I wish I had killed him, but I did not. Had I not sworn to follow the righteous path, I would surely have slain him.” The king asked him to elaborate, and Othman did, calling his witnesses: the shopkeepers, the warriors, and Harhash.

And Arbusto said, “But you beat up a government official, and here he lies in his coffin before us. This is murder, and you deserve death for it.”

Othman said, “No, I do not. If I am to be killed for killing him, then I should at least have had the pleasure of doing the deed. Now that I think of it, I do not believe God would mind if I killed a dead man anyway.” Othman drew his sword and stabbed the mayor in his coffin. The mayor sat up and died again. “Lazarus?” Othman exclaimed.

The angry king said, “This man was not dead. It was a ruse. My own mayor attempted to deceive his king. It is a good thing he is well and truly deceased. I call on you, honest Baybars, to wear the mayor’s suit.”

And that was how Baybars became mayor of the great city of Cairo.

“Distract me,” Fatima said.

“Let us decorate the room again,” said Job. The imps were lounging around her bed.

“No,” she replied. “Tell me a story, a tale so strange, a tale so true, so wonderful and engrossing that it will seduce my mind.”

“Demon tales,” cried Ezra.

“No,” Fatima said. “I know those too well.”

“Parrot tales,” said Isaac. “Those are the best.”

“I will tell them,” said Ishmael.

“No, I will,” said Elijah.

“Me, me, me.”

And Fatima decided that Ishmael would begin and the imps would take turns. “However, if one of the servant girls comes in here, she is going to be confounded by your presence. Make yourselves less shocking.” Ishmael and Isaac turned into red parrots. The rest followed suit in their different colors. The rainbow-hued parrots perched atop the bed’s backrest, the curtain rods, the lamps, and the short column at the foot of the bed.

My uncle Wajih was born two years after Samia. He arrived with little fuss. “He’s going to grow up wise,” the midwife said. His arrival was the cause of many a celebration. The bey himself blessed my uncle. “He’ll become the head of an illustrious family, a reaper of honor, an amasser of wealth, and a man of substance.” My grandfather offered cigars to all the men in the village. My grandmother offered sweets. Evil Sitt Hawwar had to keep quiet for a while.

My uncle Halim made his first appearance in our world in 1925. There were no delivery complications; the umbilical cord did not accidentally strangle him. Yet my grandmother recognized that something was off the instant she held him in her arms. His head seemed just a tad too warm, and his eyes seemed to flutter jerkily when closed. “He’s going to be a dreamer,” said the midwife.

My father came next, in 1930, and two years later came Uncle Jihad. They were their parents’ favorites. “We were too young,” my grandfather told me once. “It’s not that we didn’t love all our children. We did. But then your father, Farid, was born. We had been married for eleven years. We were — I don’t know — more mature. There was a difference, but it wasn’t intentional.”

I didn’t care. I was busy watching a lizard stand utterly still.

“Your grandmother loved Farid. He was special, much smarter than his siblings. If you placed all three other children on one scale and your father on the other, his intelligence would outweigh all of theirs. And then Jihad — he spoke before he was nine months old. He was brilliant. He made me so proud. How can you blame your grandmother for treating them differently? How can you blame her for loving them more? They were the chosen ones.”

Upon returning to his house, Baybars found the old mayor’s intendants and attendants waiting for him. He inquired how he could help them, and they said, “We offer condolences on the death of the mayor, congratulations on your promotion, and our services.” Baybars asked that each inform him of his duty and salary with the previous administration.

“There were no salaries, sire. The previous mayor slurped any government money that appeared in his bowl. We earned our keep from the duties and taxes paid by Cairo’s cadres of thieves, gamblers, wine merchants, and criminals.”

“And how do you collect those duties?”

“Each cadre has a head, and the head of heads is Commander Khanjar, chief of the city’s gates.” Baybars ordered his new staff to give up their wayward ways. “I will pay your salaries, enough to feed and clothe your families. You may not collect funds from anywhere else. Renounce your past misdeeds, swear vows of honesty, pray, and fast. If I hear of any of you committing a deed that would anger God, I, the mayor of Cairo, will seek revenge.” And his staff swore allegiance to God and Baybars. “Get me Othman,” Baybars demanded.

That night, Baybars and Othman paid the commander a visit at his headquarters. Surrounded by his men, he sat on his chair like a prideful tiger wearing clothes that were much too fancy. Khanjar did not stand to greet his visitors, nor did he ask after their health, because he possessed a head swelled with self-importance.

Baybars greeted the commander with “Peace be upon you.”

Khanjar replied, “I know not peace. State your need, boy. Are you the one who was given the mayor’s suit? Are you the one who fooled Othman and Harhash onto the path of virtue? Follow me, be my boy, and I will reward you. I will take care of all your needs, all your wants, and more.” Othman chimed in, “We have come here to ask for your blessing.”

The commander beamed. Joy and greed burst from his eyes. “Then your presence here is most welcome. If you capture one of my artisans, release him and I will remunerate you. Obey me and acquire wealth, but cross me and you will regret it for the rest of your shortened life.”

“We aim only to please you, my father,” Othman said. “But how will I know if I catch one of your people?”

Khanjar thought. “Maybe if they gave you a secret word. You must punish anyone who does not work for me and spare those who do.”

Othman objected. “No word remains secret in the criminal world for long. It would be better if you introduced us to the members of the cadres. Inform the clans that the new mayor wishes to know them one and all.”

Quawk, began the parrot Ishmael. A quawk here, a quawk there. Let us embark on the tales of the wise parrot. There was once a wealthy merchant who married a young woman of exquisite beauty. On their wedding night, he informed his lovely wife that he would be leaving on an extended journey the following day. His wife asked him not to go. She would be lonely. He said, “My business demands that I travel. I buy my silk in China, my cotton in Egypt. Spice I procure from India, and perfume from Persia. My shops need merchandise,” and she replied, “But I need you. I have no need for money with you by my side.”

Her husband glowed with pride and said, “A moneyless man is a fatherless one, and a home without money is haunted. The sun never shines on an indigent.” But, as the saying goes, a man who is given to much traveling does not deserve to be married.

The following day, the merchant walked to the bazaar and bought a magnificent parrot and a magpie. He charged his wife to obtain the sanction of both birds whenever she had to make a decision. Then he threatened the birds with a horrifying death if they allowed his wife to betray him. And off on his journey he went. Weeks passed, and then months, and the merchant extended his expedition longer and longer. One day, as the winsome wife hung laundry on the roof, she noticed a royal procession below. She saw a handsome prince astride a steed, and her heart was filled with love and lust. The prince chanced to glance up and was dazzled by the fair lady’s loveliness. Upon returning to his castle, he sent an old woman to the lady’s home with an invitation to his palace for that evening, which she duly accepted. Arraying herself in the finest apparel and donning her best jewels, she faced the birds.

“Dear magpie,” she said. “What thinkest thou of the propriety of my purpose?”

“I like it not,” said the magpie. “I forbid thee to leave.”

The lovely lady opened the cage door and wrung the magpie’s neck. She turned to the parrot. “My dear parrot. What thinkest thou of the propriety of my purpose?”

And the prudent parrot said, “My lady. You are most fair tonight. You are lovelier than the new moon, which weeps in shame and quivers with envy at the mere mention of your name. Sit, my lady. Let me entertain you for a while. I am a hakawati, and your gloriousness inspires me to tell a great tale. Allow me to begin.”

Three nights after his meeting with Khanjar, Baybars played host to him; the chief of the gates was to introduce all of Cairo’s thieves and criminals. “Shall we begin the introductions?” Baybars said. “Othman, bring in the first cadre.” Into the hall walked thirty black-robed women, each with her manservant. All bowed before Baybars. “Commander,” Baybars asked, “who are these women?”

“They are the cadre of savage doves, pretty and lethal. They live in all the neighborhoods of Cairo. They approach men and persuade them to join them at their houses. The savage dove plies her victim with wine until he is drunk, and then the manservant covers the man’s face with a pillow and sits on it until the man loses his breath. They confiscate his possessions, bury the body in the yard, and start over again.”

Othman led that group out into a different hall and brought in another, twenty brown-robed women. “This is the cadre of roaming doves,” the commander said. “They are docile and timid until a foolish man believes he has a willing victim. When the man invites the woman to his house, she asks to share some wine. Then she laces his cup with opium, strips him of his wealth, and leaves him unconscious.”

The third group of women wore robes of red. “These are the luscious doves, the most beautiful doves of all, and the most proficient; they trick men into assuming compromising positions and proceed to purloin the house’s belongings as their powerless prey watch. Every man wishes to drink from a luscious dove’s beauty cup, even when he knows it could be lethal.” The fourth group was ten white-robed women. “The cooing doves,” the commander said. “Pickpockets and shoplifters.” The fifth group was twenty-five boys. “The baby porcupines are thieves.” The sixth was ten younger boys. “The hedgehogs are specialized pickpockets. A hedgehog works with a baby porcupine. When they see a possible victim, the porcupine hits the hedgehog, who runs to the man and begs to be saved. While the man comforts the hedgehog, his pockets get emptied.” The seventh cadre was the old doves. “These crones pretend to be sages, seers, and fortune-tellers. They are invited into houses and rarely leave empty-handed.” The eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh cadres were all porcupines: the burglars, the gamblers, the highway robbers, and the murderers.

“The twelfth?” Baybars asked, and the commander replied, “That would be me.”

Baybars left Khanjar in the hall and sought out the assembled horde of criminals. He faced them with Othman and said, “I command you to give up your wicked ways and seek solace in God’s love. Vow to live an honest life and swear not to sin again. He who makes the vow will be set free, but he who does not will be enchained.” And the women said, “But how can we live an honest life if we owe money to the commander? He forces us to work in order to pay him.”

Baybars said, “If you make the vow to God, your debts will be forgiven. Is there anyone here who will not make the vow and give up the life of crime?” There were no raised hands.

Othman lit a fire and with a branding iron marked the left wrist of every reformed criminal, dove, porcupine, and hedgehog in the room. Right after he branded one of the luscious doves, she whispered, “I know thirty-seven distinctly different pleasurable ways of using this branding iron,” causing Othman to flush and blush and rush to the next.

“If anyone wearing this brand is caught committing a crime, the penalty of death will be imposed,” Baybars said. “So it shall be.”

And Baybars returned to Khanjar and said, “My father, I have turned your workers into honest men and women. I will place the children in schools. It is now your turn. You are over eighty years old. Have you not worshipped God in all this time? Have you not prayed or fasted?”

Khanjar replied, “I have never set foot in a mosque. For seventy years, I have stolen from men, betrayed them, and killed them. Do you think I am as easy to convert as my minions? You are a fool, a little mind and a light head.” And he unsheathed his sword and struck, but Baybars’s sword parried the commander’s blow with one smooth motion, its hilt knocking him out. Othman tied him up and dragged the commander to jail, where he spent the rest of his life.

A quawk here, said the parrot Isaac, and a quawk there.

And the hakawati parrot began telling the lovely wife this story:

Four men — a tailor, a jeweler, a carpenter, and a dervish — traveled together on a long journey. They camped for the night and took turns guarding their belongings. The carpenter stood guard first, while the others slept. He saw a big log lying on the ground, and to pass the time he carved a statue of a beautiful woman out of it. The tailor woke up, and as the rest snored, he admired the lovely form and decided to sew a glorious outfit for the lady. Out of divine cloth, he fashioned raiment fit for a queen. It was the jeweler’s turn next, and he created wonderful adornments for the statue with the most precious of gems. And the dervish saw the creation and was so enamored that he prayed to God with all his heart to make her real. When light rose, the four men beheld a breathing woman of such comeliness their hearts were infatuated. Each man claimed her as his wife. They fought, they argued, but they could not arrive at a mutually acceptable decision.

Finally, they saw a Bedouin riding by on his camel and asked him to arbitrate.

“I sculpted her out of wood,” the carpenter said.

“I clothed her.”

“I gave her brilliance.”

“And I gave her breath,” said the dervish.

The Bedouin said, “All four of you have a rightful claim, and I see no way of dividing this woman. I therefore claim her for myself. She was created in the desert, and these are my lands. She will be my wife.”

The five men quarreled and quarreled, but could find no solution to their dilemma. They rode into town, and asked the first policeman they came across to be arbiter. After each man laid his claim, the policeman said, “Each of you has a point, and I cannot decide for any of you, so I claim this charming woman as my own.”

The six men went to a judge and regaled him with their stories. The judge said, “We have a problem here. For the sake of fairness and impartiality, I claim this woman myself. She will be my wife so you can cease your fighting.”

The men squabbled into the night. Finally, the dervish said, “We can come to no resolution, because no man can arbitrate. None can resist the charm of our beloved. We must resort to an inhuman referee, the Tree of Knowledge.”

The seven suitors and the woman marched to the wise tree in the center of town. As soon as they approached the giant oak, its bark split open and the woman ran inside and the trunk closed back upon itself. The Tree of Knowledge said, “Everything returns to its first principles,” and the seven men were shamed.

Aunt Samia was twelve when Uncle Jihad was born. She attended the English missionary school in the mornings and helped her mother with household chores in the afternoon. Since my grandmother was busy with her newborn, Aunt Samia took a daily walk to the bakery of the neighboring Christian village, which the family felt was superior to the one in ours. The baker’s daughter was my aunt’s age, and they struck up a friendship. My aunt began to take the bread walk a bit earlier, visit with the baker’s daughter, and chat. My aunt taught her a song she’d learned at school, “There’s a Beautiful Land Far, Far Away,” and her friend taught her the “Marseillaise.” One day, after spending a week in song, Aunt Samia felt feverish and had problems urinating. My grandmother took her to a doctor in Beirut, and she spent two nights in the hospital. It was a minor infection. She returned to the village and spent a fortnight in enforced bedrest. She lost track of the baker’s daughter.

Unbeknownst to the family at the time, evil Sitt Hawwar started a rumor that my aunt had to have her uterus removed and that she could no longer bear children. Evil Sitt Hawwar didn’t exactly say that my aunt had had an abortion, but she left the suggestion dangling. Not one suitor approached when my aunt matured to marriageable age. As time passed, when a family or a man would ask about my aunt, the rumor would surface. She waited and waited for someone to choose her, wondered what was so awful about her that not one was willing to test a fish hook in her waters. She would not get married for a long, long time: not till three of her younger brothers had married, not till she had to live the ignominy of being a spinster, not till she was thirty-eight and had been lying about her age for some while, not till my grandfather finally intervened and found her the most inappropriate husband in history.

My aunt didn’t tell anyone about her friendship with the baker’s daughter for years. It seemed that, since the timing of her friendship and the ugly rumors seemed to coincide, she felt they were intimately related. She believed she was being made to pay for the crime of fraternizing outside of the alliance of family. She finally came clean to her youngest brother, Jihad, on a night in early 1976, when the war still raged but hadn’t yet forced the family to abandon the building. She confessed in the garage, which acted as our shelter when missiles cried havoc in our skies. Uncle Jihad tried to tell her that what she’d done was not a sin. He said that what happened to her was simply a common medical condition, and that she was a victim of the nastiness and naïveté of mountain people.

“Do you really think you’re being punished for singing songs with a nice girl?”

“It wasn’t about singing.”

“What? Did you do something else — maybe something inappropriate?”

“Of course not. How dare you? She was just my friend. We talked.”

“How’s that wrong? What did you talk about?”

“I don’t remember. We talked about our families, about our villages. We talked about the French and whether they would leave. I don’t really remember specifics.”

“You think you’re being punished with a horrible life because you talked to a girl for a week? That’s irrational and naïve. It doesn’t make sense.”

“You don’t understand.”

Uncle Jihad did not. After trying to reassure her for about a month, he called in the cavalry, my mother. At first, Aunt Samia was horrified that her secret was out. My mother told her she was being silly, something my mother told her on a regular basis. “How can you think that making friends with someone is wrong?” my mother said. “What happened to you was the work of a sinister woman and had nothing to do with any sins. Sitt Hawwar was an evil, despicable person. It wasn’t your fault. And look at you. You life isn’t miserable. You’re rich, you’re the matriarch of a great family, and, most important, your mother would be proud of you if she saw how successful you are. And you know who was punished? Don’t you remember how horribly Sitt Hawwar died? Who was at her bedside when she left this world? No one. Her children were nowhere to be found. Don’t you remember the gossip? She was in the hospital, and guests would pay a visit, and there were no family members around. Could there be a life worse than that? She died alone, and no one cared. Samia, you stupid, stupid girl. Sitt Hawwar lost. Her soul left this world unlamented.”

Aunt Samia felt better. After that day, she began to wear higher heels.

And when the hakawati parrot’s tale was over, Ezra the parrot said, the merchant’s wife retired to her chambers for the night, because it was too late to meet the prince. The following evening, she put on her best robe and demanded the parrot’s permission to leave. Let me tell you a story, the parrot said.

Once, in a land far away, there lived an old king who was terrified of dying. He sequestered himself in his chambers, refusing to see his viziers. He neglected affairs of state. His subjects worried. His attendants wept in private. The viziers had exhausted all options and plans to entice their king out of bed. The king’s glorious parrot spread his emerald wings and flew up to the skies. Higher and higher, into the heavens he soared. He reached paradise and descended into its garden. He picked a fruit that had fallen from the Tree of Immortality. He returned to his master and said, “Take the seed of this fruit and plant it in fertile earth. Feed it love and wisdom and the sapling will turn into a fruit-bearing tree. Old age will forsake whoever eats from the tree’s fruit, and vigor will revisit him.” And the king’s servants were surprised when their master called: “Plant this fruit’s seed in my garden. I wish to glimpse its crop in my lifetime.”

The sagacious bird said, “Remember the legend of the wise King Solomon and the Fount of Immortality. He refused to quench his thirst, for he wished not to outlive his loved ones.”

“Bah!” uttered the king. Life coursed through his veins, hope revived him, and he woke every morning to witness the incremental growth of his tree. “Love it more,” he told his gardeners. “Faster, quicker, it must rise.” The tree grew, and buds burst into flowers, from which small fruit appeared. Finally, the day arrived when the fruit was ripe and ready. “Pick that one,” the vivacious king said. “It looks the most succulent.”

The gardener carried a small ladder to the tree. At the same instant, an eagle high in the clouds saw a slithering snake not too far from the king’s garden. The eagle lunged and clutched the snake, lifting it into the skies. With its final breath, the snake spat out its venom, and one drop fell upon the fruit as it was being presented to the king.

“Bring me an old fakir,” the king demanded. When his servants found one, the king commanded that he taste the fruit. The fakir took one bite, keeled over, and died.

The king raged. “Is that horrible parrot trying to hasten my demise?” He seized the bird by the feet, twirled the parrot above his head, and threw him against the tree. The parrot broke his neck and met his end. The tree became known as the Tree of Poison, and none approached it.

As hope left him, the king grew sickly. He retired to his chambers once more and spent his time cursing the tree from his window. Soon he saw the specter of death approaching.

While things were thus, a vicious young wife quarreled with her old mother-in-law. The girl raised her voice at her elder and cursed. Shocked, the mother-in-law informed her son, and the ingrate took his wife’s side. His mother was so livid and distraught that she resolved to kill herself so her son would be blamed for her death. She sought the garden, bit into a fruit from the Tree of Poison, and was instantly transformed into a youthful beauty.

“What miracle is this?” the lovely girl asked.

The king witnessed the transformation from his window. “How guilty am I?” he said to himself. “I have killed a true friend.” He called his servants in a faint voice. “Pick me a fruit,” he whispered. But wicked death reached him before the picking.

Pictures from Uncle Wajih’s wedding show a young, somewhat distraught Aunt Samia. She didn’t particularly approve of her brother’s marriage to Aunt Wasila. She had on a ridiculous dress, bad makeup; her hair fell long and straight to the shoulder. At Uncle Halim’s wedding, she looked older and not unhappy. At my parents’ wedding, she looked miserable, the effects of Lebanese spinsterhood. One day, my grandfather seemed to wake up from a stupor and realize that his thirty-eight-year-old daughter was still unmarried. My father denied the veracity of this version of the story. He said that the whole family discussed the lack of suitors for my aunt’s hand all the time. My grandmother must have talked to my grandfather about it often, but my grandfather said he’d never paid attention, he was too busy, until, one day, the scales fell from his eyes. “If no man has shown up at our door,” he told my grandmother, “then we must find one.”

From that moment of epiphany onward, my grandfather divided men into two categories: possible future sons-in-law and not. Into the former fell only one man, barely.

Uncle Akram was another entertainer hired by the bey, a percussionist, to be precise. He played the Lebanese derbakeh, and he played it well. But it wasn’t his drumming talent that earned him a job with the bey. After all, percussionists were as common as asses in the mountains. Uncle Akram’s real talent was his narcolepsy, which the bey found comical. The takht — an oud, a violin, maybe a recorder, and the derbakeh — would be playing, someone might be singing, and in the middle of the song, the beat would stop. Uncle Akram’s head would drop to his chest, and he would swim in his sea of dreams. The band would either stop playing or go on without him, taking their cue from the bey’s mood and his level of sobriety. But whether they stopped or not, when Uncle Akram came to, he would pick up the exact beat he had been playing as he fell asleep. That never ceased to send the bey into a fit of laughter. Uncle Akram never figured out he was the object of a joke, and the bey forbade anyone to enlighten him.

My grandfather approached Uncle Akram and asked him to marry Aunt Samia, who was much older than he. My grandfather sweetened the deal by promising to talk to his son Farid about a possible job: my father had just opened the car dealership. My grandfather suggested drumming was not a profession that provided consistent earnings.

My grandmother didn’t think Uncle Akram was a good match for her daughter. Neither did her daughter nor any of my uncles. Yet they all agreed that Uncle Akram was a decent man.

By the time I came along, Uncle Akram had been employed at the dealership for years, and Aunt Samia was nothing like the down-to-earth, austere, hardworking housewives I associated with the mountains. None of my aunts were. I always wondered when the transformation occurred. When did my aunts shed their dry mountain skins and evolve into shiny Beirutis, albeit rough around the edges? None of them had finished high school, and they didn’t read books, so I assumed that money or location was the catalyst of the metamorphosis, but sometimes I wondered if it was just their singular personalities.

In 1985, my father had to be flown to London for an emergency triple bypass. My mother and sister accompanied him, of course, and I flew in from Los Angeles, where I was living. My mother rented an apartment on South Street, off Park Lane. Deciding that neither of my father’s women could care for him — or me, for that matter — Aunt Samia insisted on coming along to take care of all of us. “What will Layla do without her maids? She can’t cook, she can’t clean. She doesn’t know a frying pan from a Crock-Pot. Her daughter is worse. How’s she going to take care of my brother? Balance his books?”

She didn’t understand any language but Lebanese and had completely forgotten what few English songs and words she’d learned in school. This was her first trip outside the Arab world. Yet, when she arrived in London, all she asked of me was to write down the apartment’s address on a piece of paper so she could show the taxi driver where she needed to go.

She was a robust, well-shod, plump sixty-five at the time. The first forty-eight hours, while my father was being prepped for surgery, she stocked the kitchen. She found a supermarket, bought everything we needed all on her own. “There was a butcher in the middle of the market,” she said, telling my father of her first shopping expedition, “but everything was packaged. I couldn’t buy plastic meats. I whistled to get the butcher’s attention, but I didn’t know how to say lamb, so I went, ‘Baa, baa,’ and he understood. I held up one finger and said, ‘Kilo.’ But then he cut a nice piece of meat and covered it as if I were some dog going to chew it. I told him, ‘No, no,’ and gestured with both hands that I wanted it in smaller pieces. He asked, ‘Chop?’ and showed me his knife. I smiled at him, and he chopped the kilo into smaller pieces, but he didn’t understand that it was for cooking. So I call him and say, ‘Chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop,’ and his brains finally worked, and I got my finely chopped lamb. They don’t understand cooking over here.”

When my father was wheeled in for the operation, my mother asked me to take my aunt out to lunch, since the procedure was going to last for at least four hours. Three hours later, we returned. From the window of the cab, I saw my mother crying behind the hospital’s glass door, her hands covering her face, her body shaking. My sister had her arms wrapped around my mother. My heart dropped to my testicles. Aunt Samia bounced out of the black cab before it came to a stop, jiggling muscles and fat on heels. “My brother,” she wailed. “They killed you, my brother.” I flew out of the taxi behind her. My mother, her face still wet, was tying to calm my aunt, who was sitting on the floor in the hospital entrance, her legs splayed before her. “Samia,” my mother said, “he’s going to be fine. I’m crying with relief, not grief. The operation was a great success. The doctors just came out. We’ll be able to see him within the hour.”

It took a moment for Aunt Samia to register the information and change the expression on her face to one of unbridled fury. “You scared me,” she hissed. “You’ve just taken ten years off my life.” My mother shrank back as if slapped. It was rare to see her at a loss. Lina stepped in front of her, steely eyes glaring down at my aunt. Aunt Samia looked appalled. “I’m so sorry,” she said, tilting her head to look at my mother’s face behind my sister. “Forgive me. Please forgive me. I shouldn’t have said that.” She tried to stand up, and Lina didn’t help her. My mother moved forward and lifted her by the elbow. “That was inexcusable.” Aunt Samia began to weep. “I was frightened.”

My father had to recover in the London apartment for two weeks. My aunt cooked and was in charge of the household. My father felt guilty that she had to work so hard and asked me to take her to the Playboy casino, using his membership card. Like most Lebanese, my aunt loved to gamble, and her face sparkled at the news. My father thought I could easily pass as him, since no one ever asked to see anything but the card whenever he went to the club. He was wrong. I handed the card to the receptionist, and he asked if I was Farid al-Kharrat. Realizing that there was a problem, my aunt bounded off like a tiny tank, through the swinging doors and into the casino. When I was allowed in after explaining who I was, I found her already at the blackjack table, sipping a gin and tonic, pointing with her finger for the dealer to hit her.

“And so,” Jacob began, “by the time the parrot had finished his story, the hour was late and the lady could not meet the prince.”

Fatima felt a contraction and heard the scream of the emir’s wife in the other room. She held her palm up and interrupted the story. An excited servant rushed into the room. “The emir wishes to inform you that the mistress is giving birth,” she said. She halted, marveled at the wonder of eight colorful parrots in the room.

“My nephew arrives,” said the parrot Ishmael.

“Wait,” said Fatima. “Wait. There is still time. Tell me how the story ends.”

“The master comes,” announced the parrot Isaac.

“Yes, yes, I know,” said Fatima. “The story. The story.”

“I wanted to tell the story of the dervish and the three coins,” said the parrot Job. “It is most exquisite.”

“For me,” said the parrot Noah, “I would have told my favorite, about Aladdin and the lamp. It is most sublime.”

The parrot Adam said, “I would have told the story of Abraham entering cursed Egypt, how he hid his beautiful Sarah in a chest.”

“Behold the wonder,” said the parrot Elijah. “The master comes.”

“No,” said Fatima, “I have time. Finish.”

“The parrot tells ninety tales,” said Ishmael.

“Maybe more,” said Isaac, “maybe less. And the merchant finally returns home. He notices that the magpie is no more and asks the parrot what happened. The parrot tells him about the prince, about his wife, and about the stories.”

Jacob said, “The merchant, in a fit of temper, slays his wife for her duplicity, and wrings the parrot’s neck for being a witness to his shame.”

“Ooof,” said Fatima.

“Observe the marvel,” said the parrot Job.

“Behold the wonder,” said the parrot Elijah.

“The lord arrives,” said the parrot Isaac.

“Tremble,” said the parrot Ishmael.

“Aiee,” said Fatima.