“They’re not just your kids,” my grandfather replied. “And don’t blame me for this one. I was telling how I married your mother. An old man has a right to reminisce, and children need to know where they came from.” He refused to look at my father.
“Every time you tell one of your stories, something horrible happens.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the story of how I met your mother.”
My mother sat up, stretched lazily, smiled beatifically at my grandfather. “You know, Uncle Ismail, the story might not be appropriate for the children. You see, if you tell the story, they’ll grow up believing that the whole family, almost everyone in this room, wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the bey.”
“That’s not true,” both my father and grandfather said.
“And we wouldn’t want that, would we?” she asked.
The hospital kept to a Mediterranean schedule: visiting hours after siesta were from four till eight. Evening had blued the room. I was tired, yet an orderly was just beginning the dinner round. He wouldn’t enter my father’s room. I nestled next to Fatima on the recliner; her arm swallowed me up. “I’m scared,” I whispered.
“You know, grief feels very much like fear, almost interchangeable,” she said. “You’d think we’d get used to grief, but we never do.” She stroked my hair gently, scratched my hair, clicked her fingernails together. We called that “cleaning lice.” Fatima’s Italian mother used to do that. I’d loved it as a child, and I loved it now.
Lina trudged into the room, looking like she was about to disintegrate — eyes puffy, skin dark beneath them. She acknowledged Fatima and me but went directly to my father’s bed.
“Have they all left?” Fatima asked. My sister nodded in between heaves and tears. Fatima waited. “What about Salwa?”
“Hovik took her home,” Lina replied.
“Good. She looked exhausted. Not as exhausted as you, though. You’re going home. Sleep in your bed tonight.”
“No. It’s quite all right. I’ll stay here.”
“No, I’ll stay. You go home. You can’t keep sleeping on the recliner. I’ll take over.”
“I’m not going home,” my sister said. “He wants me here. I’m used to the recliner. If he wakes up and doesn’t see me here, he freaks. I have to.”
The sound of the machine — inhale, exhale — echoed inside my skull. Aspiration, beep, beep, expiration. My head seemed to melt upon itself. I heard myself say, “No, you both go home. I’m staying.” They gawked as if I were a poltergeist. “I need time with him, and you need the rest.”
Fatima blew kisses my way. She hurriedly collected my sister’s belongings.
Lina wouldn’t take her eyes from mine. I blinked. “You sure?” she asked.
Fatima picked up my sister’s overnight bag, kissed me, and dragged my sister toward the door. Lina disentangled herself and came over. “Go to the nurses’ desk and they’ll give you a pillow and blanket.” She hugged me. “Call me if anything happens.” She squeezed me tight. “It was always just you and me, stupid. Always was, always will be.” And she kissed the top of my head. The sound of the kiss echoed in my skull.
When my grandfather discovered he’d been rejected, he pleaded his case to the bey. This was the girl for him, he said. He loved her. No other would do. If Najla wouldn’t marry him, who else would? Could the bey intercede on his behalf? And the bey did. He called Jalal Arisseddine, asked him to reconsider. The hakawati was his protégé, a decent fellow. The bey himself would make sure the girl was taken care of. The girl wouldn’t find a better husband, after all. She was an orphan of impure parentage, and had a disreputable deceased brother — three strikes.
The girl’s brother agreed to marry her to the bey’s hakawati. The girl’s mother did not.
And the bey called Mona Arisseddine. She put on her mandeel and trudged up the hill to the mansion. The bey gave her the same spiel, and she said no. He repeated the same words, and she said no again. He repeated them once more, and she rejected his offer a third time. She left the befuddled bey and returned home.
The bey called his mother. His mother said, “I am ashamed to have raised such a fool.”
And the bey’s mother put on her mandeel and trudged down to visit Mona Arisseddine in her home. The mothers discussed the hakawati. Mona said he had no family. The bey’s mother reminded Mona that she didn’t, either, and she’d turned out to be a wonderful mother. Mona said the man was an entertainer. The bey’s mother ruminated on how quickly we forgot.
Could he make her happy? The bey’s mother told Mona to ask her daughter.
The mothers asked Najla if she thought the hakawati could make her happy.
Najla looked at both women and said he made her laugh.
Wedding torches would flare.
Mountain weddings were known for many things: the feast and the accompanying feeding frenzy; the dancing, the Lebanese dabké and the dances of the swords and shields; the rites of riding to collect the bride; and most of all the zajal, the poetry duels.
At weddings, poets competed in praising the bride, the groom, luminaries attending the wedding, and matrimonial traditions in general. They also dueled, entertained the crowds by engaging in boasts and insults, composing verses on the spot. A poet was guaranteed an invitation to every wedding. A good one was even paid. At some weddings, amateurs joined in, tried their luck in verse. My grandparents’ wedding became famous for a verse.
A tasteless, reprehensible quatrain uttered by none other than the evil Sitt Hawwar.
A groom with a huge mouth filled with many needless words,
Yet no incisor and no molar,
Married a girl with a bigger mouth,
Whose teeth entered a room before her.
I followed the aromas emanating from the kitchen, but knew better than to go in. I stopped in the prep room. Aunt Samia was complaining to someone, most probably Aunt Nazek. “I can’t take it anymore,” she was saying. I grabbed a piece of bread from the table and bit into it. “I don’t know why she thinks she needs to keep her nose so high up in the air,” I heard her say. “It’s not like she produced a bushel of sons, just a toad of a girl and a gnat of a boy.” I bit into the bread again and again.
My grandfather came up from behind and covered my eyes. I knew it was him because of his smell, but I couldn’t tell him I knew, because my mouth was too full. “It’s only me,” he said, chuckling. “And don’t eat the bread by itself when there’s so much food around.”
As noiselessly as possible, he moved a chair next to the table, motioned for me to stand on it. He uncovered a deep bowl in the middle of the table, moved it closer. I could see the stew inside. “The secret,” he whispered. He tilted his head, and I did the same. I saw soft steam churning upon itself, imagining a porcelain cover no longer there. “The bowl has lips,” he said, “and can tell you stories, if only you allow your ears to hear or your nose to smell.”
“Or my lips to kiss,” I said softly. I bent, and the steam caressed my lashes, licked my lips. I stuck out my tongue and licked right back.
Aunt Samia walked in. “Put that filthy tongue back where it came from.”
I jumped off the chair and ran out as fast as I could. I heard her ask, “How could you let him do that, Baba?” but I didn’t hear his response.
He found me on the terrace, leaning over the railing, staring at the rosebushes in the gated garden below. “That was fun,” he said. “I bet you don’t know what was in the pot. I know you think it’s chicken stew, but it most certainly is not. It’s imp stew. You have to catch those little devils, no bigger than chickens but very hard to trap. Killing the imps is never easy. You have to find them at the right time of the year and freeze them. That’s how you do it. Not easy.”