The Hakawati by Alameddine Rabih Read Free Book Online Page A

blood drawn. The nurse nodded. I noted that he didn’t have any syringes or needles or tubes. My father closed his eyes, unable to disguise his relief, or not caring to.
    I walked the bey to the elevator, and as we passed the waiting room, all his sycophants hurried out. When the elevator doors opened, he didn’t enter. He finally decided to talk to me. “Your father is a fine man.” He wanted to sound mature, but it was difficult since he looked like a marionette. “You should be proud of him.”
    I looked at him. One of his men was holding the elevator doors open. There were at least six other passengers, but not one complained.
    “You should also be proud of your grandfather,” he said. I noticed all eyes on me. The elevator doors kept trying to close. “I always liked you. You should come and visit.” He stepped into the elevator and disappeared behind the closing doors. I stared at the spot where he’d been.
    “Why does your father have to be rude?” Hafez said. He was holding his mother, acting as her cane. “Would it hurt him to be nice to the bey? The bey loves him, always says great things about him. We owe the bey so much. He shouldn’t treat him that way.”
    Hafez was the closest cousin to me in age, and the family had assumed that we’d have so much in common, we’d grow up to be twins. We actually turned out to be total opposites. We were supposedto be best friends, but we barely got along. He was an insider, and I an outsider.
    His mother chided him: “Don’t talk about your uncle like that.”
    “He’s just like Grandfather,” he said. “Obstinate.”
    Hafez didn’t know what he was talking about. My grandfather had an altogether different kind of obstinacy from my father’s, which is why they could hardly speak to each other. Each wanted the other to see the world his way, but neither was willing to share spectacles. As I turned around, I heard Hafez say, “Why does Uncle disrespect me so? It’s not as if his children made anything out of themselves.”
    Back in the room, I heard the same comparison. My father was apoplectic. My sister was trying to calm him down. “He’s just like his grandfather,” my father mumbled. “Obsequious, ass-kissing dimwit. Just like his grandfather. Son of a whore.”
    Ah, my grandfather, the progenitor of this mess we called family.

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

Two
    L ook here,” my grandfather said, pointing at the only colorless spot on the map spread across the wooden table. I sat beside him, but my head couldn’t get close enough for me to see. I stood on the chair, put a knee on the rickety table, felt as if I were floating atop a world of color. I saw Lebanon. I was able to recognize my country in faded purple, but his finger was farther north, above Tripoli. Turkey in yellow ocher. The exact spot discolored, bleached. “This is where I was born.” He didn’t look at the map, as if his fingers could find his birthplace by touch. “Urfa, it’s called. Now they call it Şanliurfa. Means ‘glorious Urfa.’ Damnable Urfa is more like it.”
    He cursed easily, smoothly, one reason my mother didn’t want me spending too much time with him. But Aunt Samia always insisted on it. He was family. I was a descendant. She was headstrong. That day, she had driven her three sons and me up from Beirut, dropped us at his house in the morning, and left to make her monthly visits in the village. My cousins preferred to play with the bey’s nephews. As was their habit, Hafez, Anwar, and Munir