“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.