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.”