The Hakawati by Alameddine Rabih Read Free Book Online Page B

walked up to the bey’s mansion the instant their mother drove off. My grandfather did not allow me to leave him.
    “I am of a time when maps had fewer colors,” he was saying. Shaggy white hair sprouted as profusely from his ears and brows as it did from his head. He wasn’t in a good mood.
    I didn’t always understand what he said, but that never stopped him. He stood up. I remained above the map, hovering in its sky. He gesticulated wildly; the floorboards creaked beneath his pacing, an off-key Morse code. “They say Şanliurfa has a mixture of Turkish and Arabic cultures. Sometimes they might even mention the Kurds. But never, ifyou see all the brochures and travel agents, never do they mention the Armenians. As if we were never there.”
    “Who are they, and who are we?” I asked
    He stopped and stared out the grimy window into the distance as pinecones crackled in the iron stove.
    Ah, Urfa, city of prophets. Jethro, Job, Elijah, and Moses spent part of their lives there, but it will always remain the city of Abraham, his birthplace. Yet Urfa’s history is far more complex than mere myths, mere tales. It is Osrhoe, it is Edessa. It is in the Bible, the Koran, the Torah.
    In the days of the mighty King Nimrod, there lived a young man named Abraham, son of Azar, an idol-maker. Out of wood, Azar sculpted beautiful gods that the people loved and worshipped. Azar would send his son to market with the idols, but Abraham never sold any. He called out, “Who’ll buy my idols? They’re cheap and worthless. Will you buy one? It won’t hurt you.” When a passerby stopped to look at the beauty of the craftsmanship, Abraham slapped the idol. “Talk,” he said. “Tell this honest man to buy you. Do something.” There would be no sale.
    Of course, his father was upset. He was losing money and had a nonbeliever for a son. He told Abraham to believe in the gods or leave the house. Abraham left.
    Abraham walked into a temple while all the townsfolk were in their own homes preparing for an evening of worshipping their beloved gods. Abraham held out food for the gods. “Eat. Aren’t you hungry? Why don’t you talk to me?” Again he slapped their faces, one by one. Slap, move over, slap. But then he took an ax and chopped the gods to pieces, some as small as toothpicks. He chopped all but the largest, and put the ax in this idol’s hand.
    When the people came to worship their gods, they found them in a large pile around the chief idol. They bemoaned their fate and that of their gods. “Who would do this?” they cried in unison, a chorus of wails.
    “Surely it was someone,” Abraham exclaimed. “The big one stands there with a guilty ax in his hand. Perhaps he was envious of the rest and chopped them up. Should we ask him?”
    “You know they don’t speak,” the priest said.
    “Then why do you worship them?”
    “Heresy,” the people called, and took him to see his king.
    My grandfather was the product of an indiscreet affair. His father was Simon Twining—like the tea—an alcoholic English doctor, a missionary helping Christian Armenians in southern Turkey. His mother, Lucine, was one of the doctor’s Armenian servants.
    My grandfather’s first name, Ismail, was predetermined. What would you call a son of your maid if you lived in Urfa? His last name was not Twining. The doctor’s wife wouldn’t allow that. It was Guiragossian, his mother’s name. He received his full name, our family’s bane, in Lebanon, as a full-fledged hakawati.
    What is a hakawati, you ask? Ah, listen.
    A hakawati is a teller of tales, myths, and fables (hekayât). A storyteller, an entertainer. A troubadour of sorts, someone who earns his keep by beguiling an audience with yarns. Like the word “hekayeh” (story, fable, news), “hakawati” is derived from the Lebanese word “haki,” which means “talk” or “conversation.” This suggests that in Lebanese the mere act of talking is storytelling.
    A great hakawati grows