“I must catch my breath,” Fatima said.
The eight little demons climbed all over the vizier, undressed him, relieved him of all possessions. They left him naked, mouth agape in shock. A mistake. “Help me, Ishmael,” Isaac said, pointing at the vizier’s mouth. The red brothers jumped back onto the vizier’s head. Isaac and Ishmael came away with his gold teeth.
“Quite a reasonable return,” Noah said.
“She bargains well,” Isaac said. “She is from Alexandria. We shall be rich in no time. A most fortunate partnership.”
“Next time, try to bet with someone wearing fur,” Ezra said. “I love sable.”
“You think as small as your mother’s vagina,” said Adam. “Next time, Sitt Fatima, have someone wager a harem.”
Fatima blew into her palm again, and white dust appeared. The imps sauntered into the cloud and faded. “I think that was proof enough,” she said, smiling lazily at the emir and smoothing the creases of her robe with the palms of her two hands.
When I arrived at the hospital room the second morning, my father was sitting up in bed, pillows fluffed behind his back, white tabs attached to his chest, smiling, trying his hardest to appear jovial and nonchalant. Another brush with the unmentionable inevitable averted. His face was pale and fatigued, but his eyes darted about the room as if operating on a separate generator. Lina suppressed her wariness, and weariness, doing her best imitation of Auntie Mame. “It’s going to be a glorious day,” she chirped. “We should call the restaurant and order. They just might run out of lamb.”
It was half past nine. Soon sunlight would begin to creep along the floor and fill the room, reducing the fluorescents to redundancy.
“I don’t think that’s necessary.” Even though my father hadn’t used his oxygen mask all morning, he held it in his hand.
“We can’t break with tradition just because we’re here. I’ll ask the restaurant not to use salt, and if they can’t, you’ll only eat a little. We can’t have Eid al-Adha without lamb.”
“I don’t think it’s wise to order,” my father said. “Samia will probably send us some of her meal when they’re done. She’ll be insulted if we order.”
“She doesn’t have to know,” Lina said. “She may forget about us, and if she doesn’t, do we really have to eat it? Can’t we have good lamb for a change?”
“You’re being mean. If anything is our tradition, it’s that we celebrate together, with Samia’s meal.”
I walked to the glass sliding door, saw a sliver of the sun perched atop a building across the street. The newer building looked colossal next to the little house with rotted shutters, two incompatible siblings with different genes.
The emir and his wife dragged Fatima into their private quarters to inquire about the cure. “The healer said it is about the stories,” Fatima said, “the tales you choose to tell. Your lordship likes romance, which is why you have twelve daughters. Girls like love stories, whereas boys love adventure stories. The next time you make love, make sure to tell an adventure story and not one of romance.”
“But I love stories of unrequited love,” the emir said, “of exalted suffering. I love desire and the obstacles lovers have to overcome. I do not like tales of killing, maiming, and trying to prove who is stronger than whom. Those can be devastatingly boring.”
“But adventure stories are the same as love stories,” his wife argued. “And no matter, you must tell me an adventure story tonight. It has been prescribed. This is so exciting. I will hear a new tale. Do not take offense, my dear, but your stories have been getting stale for a while, the buzzing of listless houseflies and not the bites of mosquitoes. I have cravings for adventure.”
That night, after coitus, the emir’s wife demanded her tale. “No romance,” she said. “No star-crossed lovers. I want a story that will engage a different organ, not my heart.”
“A sexual story, then,” the emir said.
“No, I want death and destruction. I want virile heroes who overcome evil. At least one city must be destroyed. I want a son and you want a son.”
“Virile heroes? How about faithful heroes? Wait. Wait. I know which story. I know now. Listen.” The emir began his story thus:
In the name of God, the most compassionate, the merciful.
Once, long before our age, the king of Egypt, ruler of the lands of Islam, was despondent because his realm was in disarray. The Crusaders thrived along the coast, behaved as if they owned the land. Corruption and perfidy dwelt in the hearts of the administrators of his realm. The foreigners were able to bribe, hoodwink, and deceive any official they chose. King Saleh wept in shame, for he knew that if he did not rule more wisely his great-grandfather Saladin, the great Kurdish hero who crushed the Crusaders and unified the lands, would not welcome him in paradise. King Saleh was watching that kingdom slowly crumble and putrefy.
One night, the honest king had a discomfiting dream. He called on the intelligentsia of the land, the philosophers, the judges, and the poets. “Hear me. I want to know whether last night was a propitious night for dreams.”
The wise men replied, “By all means, Your Majesty. Last night offered a clear vision. It was the seventeenth of the month. The moon was not blighted.”
“I was stranded in a desert, defenseless, surrounded by a thousand hyenas. But dust rose, and there appeared seventy-five magnificent lions. The lions attacked the hyenas, and, in a fierce battle, the grand ones annihilated their enemies and cleared the desert of the vermin. What can this dream mean?”
And the wise ones said, “Our lord, the hyenas are the nonbelievers and infidels who wish you harm. The lions are the righteous warriors who will protect you. It is imperative that you purchase seventy-five slaves to save the kingdom.”
The king informed the most honest slave-trader in the city that he required seventy-five Muslim boys fit for a king and palace life, twenty-five of them to be Circassians, twenty-five Georgians, and twenty-five Azeris. The slaver said, “But, Your Majesty, we have nothing like this in the city. One would have to visit the big slave-markets closer to their lands for an order of that size. I have a keen eye for good slaves and a keener ear for differing tongues, but I am no longer the man who can go on this quest. The past years have been hard for my trade, and I have run up much debt. I would surely be arrested by my debtors on my travels, and my belongings, slaves or money, would be confiscated. I was famous and successful once, but my fortune drowned in the Red Sea and was overwhelmed in a sandstorm in the Sahara.”
And the king’s astute vizier asked, “Master slaver, may I test your ear? From my tongue, can you gather my origin?”
“Surely, my lord. Your father is a Turk and your mother is Moroccan.”
The king knew he had the man for the job. He ordered his assistants to write a decree saying that the slaver worked for the king and should not be interfered with, and that any of his debts could be collected from the king’s treasury. He ordered his treasurer to pay the man the price of the slaves, and set aside compensation for the slaver’s labor to be paid upon delivery. He ordered his tailors to make the slaver a better outfit, and to bring forth seventy-six fancy slave-costumes. “For I have one more request,” the king said. “I want one more boy.” The king’s audience looked puzzled, for he seemed to be speaking mechanically, as if he were reciting a godly lesson. “The boy must be intelligent, strong, precocious, and witty. He must have memorized the Koran. A beautiful face he must have. A lion’s folds must appear between his eyes. A beauty mark, its color red, will be found on his left cheek. And he must answer to the name of Mahmoud. If you find him upon your travels, bring him to me, for he is the one.”