“At the first lull in the faux shouting match, Ali noticed me standing there, pointed at me, and said, ‘This is the young man I told you about.’ Without even allowing him to finish the sentence, Kamal yelled, ‘Run away, young pup. Run as fast as your legs can take you. Stay away from this invertebrate of a man, whose only intention is to worm his way into the life of his betters and feed on their loves, for he has none of his own.’ See? I told you I had found home.
“Of course, Ali told me to ignore Kamal and began to explain my duties. I had assumed I’d be cleaning up after the pigeons and feeding them, but he already had another boy for that. No, he surprised me. He wanted me to seduce the birds. A confounding task, if I say so myself. ‘Make them fall in love with you,’ Ali said. ‘I want the pigeons to want to return home for you.’ I had no idea what he was talking about. I must have stood there staring at him like a fool, which elicited gales of laughter from the two old coots. ‘Don’t worry, young pup,’ Kamal said. ‘You’ll soon understand Lazy Brain’s speech. He wants you to go into the cages with the birds and get them used to you. It’s another one of those easy tasks that Lazy Brain can’t master.’
“So my job was to be with the pigeons, spend time in the cages, hold them and pet them if they let me. That’s what I understood, and that’s what I did for the first few days. I’d show up after school. The elderly twins would be chatting up a storm and arguing about little things and big things. I thought at first that there was nothing they could agree on, but I was wrong, of course. They could both agree that it was a lot of fun to tease me.
“ ‘Are you loving those two Tumblers enough?’ Kamal would ask, and Ali would add, ‘Look at that Lemon. She seems to be moping because you’re not paying attention to her.’ I’d get so flustered that I’d walk to the pigeons they were talking about, and the pigeons would move out of my reach. I thought I could never get them to love me. Yes, I was that gullible.
“There was a wonderful pair of Istanbuls that I admired a great deal. Beautiful to look at, dark-gray feathers speckled with white, and an orange chest that seemed to have been inflated with an air pump. They’d grown to an immense size, as big as chickens. They were inseparable, and the cock seemed totally smitten with his mate. He’d coo to her, and she loved it. Four or five days after I had started, I was watching them, and my world seemed to shrink to the size of those lovers. She strolled on the ground, jerkily pecking at seeds, and he followed her every step, cooing and engrossed. She stopped and turned toward him, and he nuzzled her neck. Then he started to stroll, and she followed. ‘You’re beautiful,’ I said to them. I realized that I had spoken out loud to a pair of birds. I looked around, and the twins seemed bemused. ‘You do know how to pick your boys,’ Kamal said to Ali. It was the first time I’d heard one address the other without a slur.
“After that, the volcano released its pressure, and I began to talk to the pigeons incessantly. I talked to them about everything. I told them how lovely they were. I warned them of the dangers of the world, complimented them on their choice of partners. I talked and talked, and Ali and Kamal had found the boy who was going to entertain them for a long time. The pigeons did respond. They may not have understood a word I said, but they began to enjoy the sound of my voice. When I ran out of things to say, I’d just prattle. And you can probably figure out what happened. I talked and talked, and one day I started on what I do best. For my audience, pigeons and humans, I began to tell stories.”
Sharbel sat on my right and Ziad on his, third row from the front, far enough from the proctor, but not back in the suspicious rows. As I received the exam from the student in front of me, my hand shook so hard that I had trouble separating my sheets and passing the rest. I put the exam on my desk but didn’t look at it. That was my ritual. I had to calm myself before every test. If I didn’t settle my nerves, my handwriting would be illegible. Once I had myself under control, I rolled quickly, so I never worried about the time it took me to relax, though today I needed more time, because of the cheating. Sharbel had assured me I wouldn’t get in trouble, because I could swear that I didn’t know someone was copying off me, but I knew he lied. If I made a mistake, Sharbel, and then Ziad, would copy it. I didn’t think any of us could use innocence as an excuse, and I also didn’t think either of them would be gallant enough not to finger me if they got caught. They were Lebanese, after all.
I closed my eyes, breathed in and out. I concentrated on moving my breath to my arms and then to my knees. I imagined myself writing smoothly. As I visualized myself smiling triumphantly, walking outside, lighting a victory cigarette, a hard poke on my right shoulder almost knocked me off my chair. Sharbel’s eyes were those of a lamb about to be slaughtered. He raised questioning eyebrows, terrified because I wasn’t even reading the exam.
I began the first problem. I glanced Sharbel’s way. He was pretending to work, his unmoving pen to the paper, but he did nothing until I finished the first sheet and slid it aside. Then he began writing furiously. I finished another sheet, and he nudged me. I looked up. I’d covered the previous sheet before he was ready. When I tried to move it, I was slammed forward. The American student sitting behind me saw us cheating and kicked my chair violently. I looked around and pretended blamelessness. Why did he kick my chair and not Sharbel’s? Size, it was always size. Sharbel was at least one foot taller and eighty pounds heavier. I tried to collect my papers about me, but Sharbel nudged me again. I was sure the kicker would rat on us. I began to shiver. I worked fast, struggling to control my pen, submitted my exam, and ran out. I had twenty-five more minutes to spare. I could feel Sharbel’s glare boring into the back of my neck.
“Not to brag,” Uncle Jihad said, “but I was good even then. I remember the first story I told the pigeons. I was in one of the two better cages, where all the Rashidis, Sharabis, and black Bayumis were. Those were some of the birds that Ali would hate to lose, so I told them this story from the Tales of the Homing Heart.
“There was once a poor shepherd from a village in the mountains. He was so poor he couldn’t feed his children, and the family slept hungry more often than not. One night, he was so hungry that he dreamed of Beirut, the city of prosperity and bread. He decided he’d go to the city and make his fortune. He didn’t even wait a minute, but packed a small satchel and walked all the way to Beirut. He looked for work, talked to every merchant, builder, baker, cook, and watchmaker in the city. He begged to be hired, but no one wanted him. He tried the following day, and the following, but he couldn’t find any work. How was he to make his fortune? A week later, and he still had found nothing. He was hungrier than he had ever been, and lonelier than he could have imagined. He was tired, and when night fell, he went into a mosque and lay down on the carpet to sleep. But in the middle of the night, policemen woke him up and beat him and took him to jail. He stood before a judge, who asked why he broke into the mosque. The shepherd told about the dream, but the judge was not impressed and sentenced him to three days in jail. ‘Dreams are for fools,’ the judge said. ‘Only last night, I dreamed of a treasure buried in the mountains, in a field where two sycamores, two oaks, and a poplar cast shadows that moved like dancing men. Do you see me leaving my job to chase after the treasure of dreams?’ The shepherd spent three nights in jail. When released, he ran all the way back home and sought the familiar field where two sycamores, two oaks, and a poplar cast shadows that moved like dancing men — the field where he had been allowing his sheep to graze for all those years. He dug out the treasure and became rich and fed his family and was able to sleep every night sated and content.”