Skip to main content
Outdated Browser

For the best experience using our website, we recommend upgrading your browser to a newer version or switching to a supported browser.

More Information

Fiction

Mukhtar

By Mohammed Hasan Alwan
Translated from Arabic by William Maynard Hutchins
Saudi Arabia's Mohammed Hasan Alwan observes a young man's musical (and sentimental) education.

When my mother asked me to spend the summer in her brothers’ house in the south, I employed every sophistry of my sixteen years—an age when only a mother pays attention to your budding philosophy of life—to explain to her that life forces surge northward, that the south, from which she and my father came, was becoming obsolete, that Ibn Khaldun (who had inspired this claim) was a great man, that the money could be better spent on a vacation, and that her brothers were actually not that nice.  I attempted to persuade her without abandoning the subdued tone of voice and timidity passed down generation to generation but eventually found myself disembarking from the plane in Abha, motivated only by filial obedience after Ibn Khaldun failed me when my mother discredited his northern chauvinism by pointing out that Nice and Cannes are in the south of France.

During this trip, however, I met Mukhtar, the cook who worked in my uncles’ house.  In his room, which was attached to the chauffeurs’ rooms, he kept three musical instruments, which responded warmly to his touch, and an astonishing number of little figures he made from cotton padding and cloth.  Each represented a Turkish shepherdess he had loved when he was young.  He also heated perfumed oils with the flame of a candle to neutralize the stink of tobacco smoke from the chauffeurs’ nearby rooms.  He kept his digs neat, and this was only fitting for an émigré artist, who had left Turkey many years earlier as he followed his fortunes farther and farther south till he finally settled inside Abha’s old citadel, in my uncles’ residence.

He had the biggest belly I had ever seen, and when he put his arms around his oud, its convex back seemed to press into his belly as if two spheres were squeezing into each other, and his short arms could scarcely reach the strings.  Then he would play me the same merry tune with which he entertained the family’s children.  He would smile at them, but his smiles would have been lost beneath his bushy mustache had they not appeared in his eyes to show us he was smiling.  At first I kept my eyes trained on his right hand as I attempted to unlock rapidly the secret of his dexterity so that I could play like him, thinking that playing an instrument was nothing but a game that could be mastered with a little practice and instruction.  Much later I realized that the first secret to playing the oud is that the left hand, which holds the thinner end of the lute, is by far more important than her sister.

* * *

For the next holiday I asked my mother to allow me to visit Abha, not for Mukhtar’s sake or to be a dutiful son but because of a neighborhood siren, whose weakness wasn’t the infidelity Abu Firas complained of; hers was much worse; she was a hooker.  A woman in her thirties—I don’t know exactly where her husband was—she lived alone in a house two streets away from the large mansion where my uncles resided.  We met when I was walking back from the grocery store.  She called to me from inside her cloak, and I ignored her because I thought she was a beggar.  She, however, persisted in calling me.  Since she didn’t look impoverished, I stopped to listen to her question:  “Are you one of the Ibn al-Rashid?” 

I replied warily, “No, but they’re my uncles, and I’m staying with them.” 

Then she shot back apprehensively, “Would you like to sleep with me for only five hundred riyals?”

The blood froze in my neck vein, I felt the abdominal emptiness that typically accompanies shocks, and my virgin heart pounded insanely.  At first I said nothing; then I hoarsely asked a question that made no sense in this context.  I don’t know what I meant, but I inquired idiotically, “How?”  I said that without knowing what I wanted explained.  Was it how to sleep with her? Or how to have sex, which I had never experienced?  Or even how this extraordinary encounter could have happened while I was just walking along the street?  The important point is that she seized hold of my question cleverly and opened her cloak to show me her large bosom and then her face, which wasn’t at all scary—in fact it was pretty and almost childlike—to calm my adolescent terror.  She yelled to me, “If you want, go get the five hundred.  Then come and knock on the door in the normal way.”

In less than a week I had spent all the three thousand riyals my mother had given me for the vacation; I was forced to ask my grandparents and one of my young uncles for money.  After that I sold my cellphone and asked my mother to send me more cash, alleging that my money had fallen down a drain.  I spent all the funds my mother sent and returned to Riyadh at the end of the vacation after having slept with the woman fifteen times.  All I could recall was her unpleasant acrid smell, my extremely defective pleasures, and a large quantity of visual images of her body—from every angle—that I later made good use of in my bed.  I consoled myself for losing access to her body by turning her into a golden tale no one could top.  I recounted it to fifty friends at school and in our neighborhood and also to relatives.  I had telescoped at least a full year of gradual masculine maturation into one summer holiday.

During my second vacation I came armed with a full six thousand riyals along with many negotiating phrases, which I had lain awake concocting, to lower the price for a session to two hundred riyals, to extend its length to at least a full hour, to stipulate that we bathe together after each coupling, and for her to be totally naked from the moment I arrived until I left, to allow my eyes to store up enough images for subsequent nights I would spend alone in my bed.  During this vacation, Mukhtar the cook also learned my beautiful secret and began to plan for me to enjoy night visits to her house in place of those tense daytime trysts.  He would wait for my return and open the door, which my grandfather went to pains to lock every night himself.

That vacation ended with the following changes.  I had a greater love for the south, where my heart and body had matured, and Abha had become the city of love, the female breast, springtime, rain—synonymous with fertility and deluges—and the city of the woman whose name I do not care to remember.  She had started to desire me and so offered me coquetry, submission, and dalliance that split my heart in two even though she was twice my age.  She began to crave me and would occasionally offer me sex for free or for twice as long.  I started spending much more time in Mukhtar’s room, because he was the only person who would listen to the entire story without interruption and who would make very positive comments that encouraged my burgeoning manhood.  He convinced me that what I was doing was very valuable in enhancing my experience of life and that I was fortunate that it had been easy for me in this city.  Then he began to teach me to play the lute.

* * *

During my third vacation the woman wasn’t there, and I had no pretext for asking about her or for investigating her absence.  I consoled myself for this lost enjoyment by the thought that I had saved for some better pleasure the thousands of riyals I had brought with me.  I had now become a young man who knew enough about women never to be bereft of them, especially now that I actually was nineteen and would soon be allowed to travel abroad—like my young uncles, who were no longer shy about telling me what could be found in Beirut, London, and Cairo by way of accumulated pleasures, asserting that women there were not at all argumentative.  After I actually wrested a pledge from my grandfather that I could take my first trip abroad, I consoled myself with that promise and spent the remainder of my time with Mukhtar and his resonant oud.

Even though I had begun to play quite well, because I had continued my training in Riyadh throughout the winter, Mukhtar always criticized my preference for the high, monotonous strings, saying that this was attributable to the influence of the Arab performance tradition, which prefers melancholy, slow tempos, and the sentimental.  He told me that the oud isn’t a mournful instrument and that the lower part of the lute is the most beautiful.  At first I tended to ignore his philosophy, because I only wanted to learn technique from him, but he insisted on injecting me with thirty years of his memories of the lute, pasture lands, and beautiful Turkey.

“People originally sang to ward off sorrow; it’s perverse for us to make ‘song’ synonymous with ‘sorrow’.”  So I endured long lessons with Mukhtar as I drilled on the low, thinner strings by themselves.  Mukhtar put a mute on the two top strings to keep them from vibrating and forced me to perform an entire maqam using only the three remaining strings.  I discovered then that my dexterity increased exponentially.

Mukhtar told me, “It’s true that the thick high strings might help you elicit some tears from your listeners, but the three low strings will allow you to rally an entire party!  You need to be able to produce both the beat and the melody with a single instrument so you’ll never need silly percussionists.  This convex object with five strings possesses more secrets than you can discover in one lifetime.  This oud, all by itself, has allowed me to survive without a father or mother, a wife, children, or a homeland.  When my lute is with me, I’m happy and merry; I live a full life every day without any anxiety.”

I imagined that at least fourteen girls would circle me on my anticipated trip.  Other young men would arouse no interest because they don’t play the oud.  I could see myself setting the strings of their bodies on fire in a fevered dance.  I would directly control the motion of one hip or the other.  It’s astonishing that we should control women’s bodies, which normally control us!  This oud would no doubt perform miracles.  It would be an important ally for me both in the emotional near future and in my heart’s trajectory to old age.

* * *

I returned from London empty-handed; no women had responded to my glances, pretentious words, or my attempts to devise fresh pickup lines.  I had thought that by being very dapper and wearing a diamond-encrusted watch, which a maternal uncle had loaned me, I would merely need to pick out a sunny table in a coffeehouse and leave all the subsequent moves to a dreamy girl who would throw herself at me.  This didn’t happen, nor did I find the circumstances propitious for playing the oud anywhere, except alone in my hotel room, even though I brought two lutes with me with an eye to the unprecedented Arab surge in London during the summer of 2004.  There was absolutely no evidence to show that women were easy; they never viewed me as anything more than a bump in the London sidewalk.  I tried out all the different outfits in my suitcase, used up a whole container of hair gel and all three bottles of cologne, but had sex with no one in London, and no one listened to me play, except an old guy who cleaned rooms.

When I returned to Riyadh, I might just as well have been returning from a hideous wasteland rather than from a beautiful city.  I was hostile and negative about everything around me and spewed invectives at everything.  I concocted four different stories to restore my pride among my companions.  There was, for example, a Kuwaiti princess who fell for me on Oxford Street.  I fled with her from all the Arab eyes to distant areas on the outskirts of London and its suburbs, where we had an insane (if fictitious) time.  Another tale concerned a Lebanese woman living in London; in my bronze visage and Arab virility she discovered relief from the sexual frigidity of the English.  The third story was about a Moroccan girl I stole with clever dexterity from a rich old Sa‘udi who almost exploded with rage.  The fourth tale was about a British girl who worked in the sweets shop of the hotel.

Whether my mates believed me or not didn’t matter; after the summer holiday, Riyadh is always awash with lies.  No one felt my intense anxiety vis-à-vis my imploded dreams of being a Don Juan.  These crashed from my heart onto the hard ground of Riyadh.  I brooded that I was destined to pay for sex the rest of my life or to marry and limit myself to one woman before I had sampled enough other females.  Stories, tales—talk wasn’t enough to satisfy me, and this is what would sadden me for the rest of my life.

I returned once more to the thick, high strings while singing mawwals under my breath. I experienced bouts of depression that made days at the university seem like the empty nests of birds that never arrive.  My mother started to notice my nervousness, recklessness, and sharp treatment of my relatives.  I refused outright to attend any social events and informed her in a fit of self-justification that I couldn’t stand this country—its policies are wrong and violate human rights—and that I would complete my education abroad.  I put pressure on her widow’s heart, which was consumed by love for her only son.  She agreed to let me travel abroad but demanded that I ask my grandfather too, because she didn’t have enough money to pay for me to study abroad.

When I was in this condition, the worst thing that could have happened was for me to journey to Abha and fail to find any excuses that would convince my grandfather.  So I quit him in a less than civil fashion and headed to Mukhtar’s room.  The moment I got there, I found a Yemeni man I didn’t know.  One of the chauffeurs introduced him to me as the new cook!

Translation of “Mukhtar.” Copyright 2005 by Mohammed Hassan Alwan. By arrangement with the author. Translation copyright 2011 by William Maynard Hutchins. All rights reserved.

English Arabic (Original)

When my mother asked me to spend the summer in her brothers’ house in the south, I employed every sophistry of my sixteen years—an age when only a mother pays attention to your budding philosophy of life—to explain to her that life forces surge northward, that the south, from which she and my father came, was becoming obsolete, that Ibn Khaldun (who had inspired this claim) was a great man, that the money could be better spent on a vacation, and that her brothers were actually not that nice.  I attempted to persuade her without abandoning the subdued tone of voice and timidity passed down generation to generation but eventually found myself disembarking from the plane in Abha, motivated only by filial obedience after Ibn Khaldun failed me when my mother discredited his northern chauvinism by pointing out that Nice and Cannes are in the south of France.

During this trip, however, I met Mukhtar, the cook who worked in my uncles’ house.  In his room, which was attached to the chauffeurs’ rooms, he kept three musical instruments, which responded warmly to his touch, and an astonishing number of little figures he made from cotton padding and cloth.  Each represented a Turkish shepherdess he had loved when he was young.  He also heated perfumed oils with the flame of a candle to neutralize the stink of tobacco smoke from the chauffeurs’ nearby rooms.  He kept his digs neat, and this was only fitting for an émigré artist, who had left Turkey many years earlier as he followed his fortunes farther and farther south till he finally settled inside Abha’s old citadel, in my uncles’ residence.

He had the biggest belly I had ever seen, and when he put his arms around his oud, its convex back seemed to press into his belly as if two spheres were squeezing into each other, and his short arms could scarcely reach the strings.  Then he would play me the same merry tune with which he entertained the family’s children.  He would smile at them, but his smiles would have been lost beneath his bushy mustache had they not appeared in his eyes to show us he was smiling.  At first I kept my eyes trained on his right hand as I attempted to unlock rapidly the secret of his dexterity so that I could play like him, thinking that playing an instrument was nothing but a game that could be mastered with a little practice and instruction.  Much later I realized that the first secret to playing the oud is that the left hand, which holds the thinner end of the lute, is by far more important than her sister.

* * *

For the next holiday I asked my mother to allow me to visit Abha, not for Mukhtar’s sake or to be a dutiful son but because of a neighborhood siren, whose weakness wasn’t the infidelity Abu Firas complained of; hers was much worse; she was a hooker.  A woman in her thirties—I don’t know exactly where her husband was—she lived alone in a house two streets away from the large mansion where my uncles resided.  We met when I was walking back from the grocery store.  She called to me from inside her cloak, and I ignored her because I thought she was a beggar.  She, however, persisted in calling me.  Since she didn’t look impoverished, I stopped to listen to her question:  “Are you one of the Ibn al-Rashid?” 

I replied warily, “No, but they’re my uncles, and I’m staying with them.” 

Then she shot back apprehensively, “Would you like to sleep with me for only five hundred riyals?”

The blood froze in my neck vein, I felt the abdominal emptiness that typically accompanies shocks, and my virgin heart pounded insanely.  At first I said nothing; then I hoarsely asked a question that made no sense in this context.  I don’t know what I meant, but I inquired idiotically, “How?”  I said that without knowing what I wanted explained.  Was it how to sleep with her? Or how to have sex, which I had never experienced?  Or even how this extraordinary encounter could have happened while I was just walking along the street?  The important point is that she seized hold of my question cleverly and opened her cloak to show me her large bosom and then her face, which wasn’t at all scary—in fact it was pretty and almost childlike—to calm my adolescent terror.  She yelled to me, “If you want, go get the five hundred.  Then come and knock on the door in the normal way.”

In less than a week I had spent all the three thousand riyals my mother had given me for the vacation; I was forced to ask my grandparents and one of my young uncles for money.  After that I sold my cellphone and asked my mother to send me more cash, alleging that my money had fallen down a drain.  I spent all the funds my mother sent and returned to Riyadh at the end of the vacation after having slept with the woman fifteen times.  All I could recall was her unpleasant acrid smell, my extremely defective pleasures, and a large quantity of visual images of her body—from every angle—that I later made good use of in my bed.  I consoled myself for losing access to her body by turning her into a golden tale no one could top.  I recounted it to fifty friends at school and in our neighborhood and also to relatives.  I had telescoped at least a full year of gradual masculine maturation into one summer holiday.

During my second vacation I came armed with a full six thousand riyals along with many negotiating phrases, which I had lain awake concocting, to lower the price for a session to two hundred riyals, to extend its length to at least a full hour, to stipulate that we bathe together after each coupling, and for her to be totally naked from the moment I arrived until I left, to allow my eyes to store up enough images for subsequent nights I would spend alone in my bed.  During this vacation, Mukhtar the cook also learned my beautiful secret and began to plan for me to enjoy night visits to her house in place of those tense daytime trysts.  He would wait for my return and open the door, which my grandfather went to pains to lock every night himself.

That vacation ended with the following changes.  I had a greater love for the south, where my heart and body had matured, and Abha had become the city of love, the female breast, springtime, rain—synonymous with fertility and deluges—and the city of the woman whose name I do not care to remember.  She had started to desire me and so offered me coquetry, submission, and dalliance that split my heart in two even though she was twice my age.  She began to crave me and would occasionally offer me sex for free or for twice as long.  I started spending much more time in Mukhtar’s room, because he was the only person who would listen to the entire story without interruption and who would make very positive comments that encouraged my burgeoning manhood.  He convinced me that what I was doing was very valuable in enhancing my experience of life and that I was fortunate that it had been easy for me in this city.  Then he began to teach me to play the lute.

* * *

During my third vacation the woman wasn’t there, and I had no pretext for asking about her or for investigating her absence.  I consoled myself for this lost enjoyment by the thought that I had saved for some better pleasure the thousands of riyals I had brought with me.  I had now become a young man who knew enough about women never to be bereft of them, especially now that I actually was nineteen and would soon be allowed to travel abroad—like my young uncles, who were no longer shy about telling me what could be found in Beirut, London, and Cairo by way of accumulated pleasures, asserting that women there were not at all argumentative.  After I actually wrested a pledge from my grandfather that I could take my first trip abroad, I consoled myself with that promise and spent the remainder of my time with Mukhtar and his resonant oud.

Even though I had begun to play quite well, because I had continued my training in Riyadh throughout the winter, Mukhtar always criticized my preference for the high, monotonous strings, saying that this was attributable to the influence of the Arab performance tradition, which prefers melancholy, slow tempos, and the sentimental.  He told me that the oud isn’t a mournful instrument and that the lower part of the lute is the most beautiful.  At first I tended to ignore his philosophy, because I only wanted to learn technique from him, but he insisted on injecting me with thirty years of his memories of the lute, pasture lands, and beautiful Turkey.

“People originally sang to ward off sorrow; it’s perverse for us to make ‘song’ synonymous with ‘sorrow’.”  So I endured long lessons with Mukhtar as I drilled on the low, thinner strings by themselves.  Mukhtar put a mute on the two top strings to keep them from vibrating and forced me to perform an entire maqam using only the three remaining strings.  I discovered then that my dexterity increased exponentially.

Mukhtar told me, “It’s true that the thick high strings might help you elicit some tears from your listeners, but the three low strings will allow you to rally an entire party!  You need to be able to produce both the beat and the melody with a single instrument so you’ll never need silly percussionists.  This convex object with five strings possesses more secrets than you can discover in one lifetime.  This oud, all by itself, has allowed me to survive without a father or mother, a wife, children, or a homeland.  When my lute is with me, I’m happy and merry; I live a full life every day without any anxiety.”

I imagined that at least fourteen girls would circle me on my anticipated trip.  Other young men would arouse no interest because they don’t play the oud.  I could see myself setting the strings of their bodies on fire in a fevered dance.  I would directly control the motion of one hip or the other.  It’s astonishing that we should control women’s bodies, which normally control us!  This oud would no doubt perform miracles.  It would be an important ally for me both in the emotional near future and in my heart’s trajectory to old age.

* * *

I returned from London empty-handed; no women had responded to my glances, pretentious words, or my attempts to devise fresh pickup lines.  I had thought that by being very dapper and wearing a diamond-encrusted watch, which a maternal uncle had loaned me, I would merely need to pick out a sunny table in a coffeehouse and leave all the subsequent moves to a dreamy girl who would throw herself at me.  This didn’t happen, nor did I find the circumstances propitious for playing the oud anywhere, except alone in my hotel room, even though I brought two lutes with me with an eye to the unprecedented Arab surge in London during the summer of 2004.  There was absolutely no evidence to show that women were easy; they never viewed me as anything more than a bump in the London sidewalk.  I tried out all the different outfits in my suitcase, used up a whole container of hair gel and all three bottles of cologne, but had sex with no one in London, and no one listened to me play, except an old guy who cleaned rooms.

When I returned to Riyadh, I might just as well have been returning from a hideous wasteland rather than from a beautiful city.  I was hostile and negative about everything around me and spewed invectives at everything.  I concocted four different stories to restore my pride among my companions.  There was, for example, a Kuwaiti princess who fell for me on Oxford Street.  I fled with her from all the Arab eyes to distant areas on the outskirts of London and its suburbs, where we had an insane (if fictitious) time.  Another tale concerned a Lebanese woman living in London; in my bronze visage and Arab virility she discovered relief from the sexual frigidity of the English.  The third story was about a Moroccan girl I stole with clever dexterity from a rich old Sa‘udi who almost exploded with rage.  The fourth tale was about a British girl who worked in the sweets shop of the hotel.

Whether my mates believed me or not didn’t matter; after the summer holiday, Riyadh is always awash with lies.  No one felt my intense anxiety vis-à-vis my imploded dreams of being a Don Juan.  These crashed from my heart onto the hard ground of Riyadh.  I brooded that I was destined to pay for sex the rest of my life or to marry and limit myself to one woman before I had sampled enough other females.  Stories, tales—talk wasn’t enough to satisfy me, and this is what would sadden me for the rest of my life.

I returned once more to the thick, high strings while singing mawwals under my breath. I experienced bouts of depression that made days at the university seem like the empty nests of birds that never arrive.  My mother started to notice my nervousness, recklessness, and sharp treatment of my relatives.  I refused outright to attend any social events and informed her in a fit of self-justification that I couldn’t stand this country—its policies are wrong and violate human rights—and that I would complete my education abroad.  I put pressure on her widow’s heart, which was consumed by love for her only son.  She agreed to let me travel abroad but demanded that I ask my grandfather too, because she didn’t have enough money to pay for me to study abroad.

When I was in this condition, the worst thing that could have happened was for me to journey to Abha and fail to find any excuses that would convince my grandfather.  So I quit him in a less than civil fashion and headed to Mukhtar’s room.  The moment I got there, I found a Yemeni man I didn’t know.  One of the chauffeurs introduced him to me as the new cook!

مختار

طلبت مني أمي أن أقضي الصيف في بيت أخوالي بالجنوب، وحاولتُ بحذلقات السادسة عشر آنذاك، العمر الذي لا يلتفت فيه إلى منطقك الفلسفي الناشئ في الحياة إلا الأم، أن أشرح لها أن الحياة تنزع شمالاً، وأن الجنوب، من حيث جاءت هي وأبي، آيلٌ للتقادم، وأن ابن خلدون رجلٌ عظيم، والمال يمكن تدبيره لإجازة أفضل، وأخوالي أناسٌ ليسوا طيبين بما يكفي. حاولت إقناعها بما أملك من صوتٍ خفيض، وخجلٍ متوارثٍ عصا عن عصا، ولكني وجدتُ نفسي أخيراً أترجل من الطائرة في مطار أبها، لا أحمل تبريراً إلا الطاعة، وبعضاً من الجدل الذي لم يرفدني فيه ابن خلدون بعد أن دحضت أمي عنصريته الشمالية، بالإشارة إلى أن نيس وكان، في جنوب فرنسا.

ولكني تعرفتُ في هذه الرحلة على مختار، الطبّاخ الذي يعمل في بيت أخوالي، كان يملكُ في غرفته الملحقة بغرف السائقين ثلاثة آلات موسيقية كلها تحبه، بالإضافة إلى عدد هائل من التماثيل الصغيرة التي يصنعها من القطن والقماش، كلها تمثل راعية أغنام تركية واحدة، كان يعشقها في صباه، بالإضافة إلى زيوتٍ عطرية يبخرها على ضوء الشمعة ليطرد رائحة التدخين التي تتسرب من غرف السائقين القريبة. كان يبقي غرفته أنيقة، بما يليق بفنانٍ مهاجر، ترك تركيا منذ سنواتٍ طويلة، وظل يتبع أقداره جنوباً، فجنوباً، حتى تعلق أخيراً بالقصبة القديمة من أبها، في بيت أخوالي.

كان يملك أكبر بطنٍ رأيته في حياتي، حتى إذا احتضن عوده، بدا ظهر العود المحدب يتلامس مع بطنه في مساحة ضيقه جداً، مثلما تتلامس كرتان مثلاً، وبالكاد تصل ذراعه القصيرة إلى محط الأوتار، ثم يعزف لي اللحن المرح نفسه الذي يحيي فيه أطفال العائلة، ويبتسم لهم ابتساماتٍ بالكاد يظهرها شاربه الكث، لولا أن تشي بها عيناه، فنعرف أنه يبتسم. كنت أعلّق عينيّ على يده اليمنى في البداية، محاولاً أن أفكّ سر مهارته بسرعة حتى أعزف مثله، وكأن العزف ليس إلا لعبةً يمكن ممارستها بقليل من المران والتعلم، قبل أن يصل إلى علمي متأخراً جداً أولى أسرار العود، وهو أن اليد اليسرى المعلقة على الطرف النحيل من العود، أهم بكثير من أختها. 

*   *   *

طلبتُ من أمي في الإجازة التالية أن أذهب إلى أبها، ليس من أجل مختار، ولا براً بها، ولكن من أجل فاتنةٍ في الحيّ، ليس شيمتها الغدرُ كما يقول أبو فراس، ولكن في الحقيقة أن لها شيمةً أسوأ من ذلك بكثير، كانت شيمتها العهرُ! وهي امرأةٌ ثلاثينية، لا أعرف بالتحديد أين هو زوجها، ولكنها كانت تقيم وحدها في منزل يفصله شارعان عن قصر أخوالي الكبير، التقيتها بينما كنتُ أمشي عائداً من البقالة، نادتني وهي متلفعة بعباءتها، فتجاهلتها ظناً مني أنها متسولة، ولكنها ألحت في ندائي، ولم أبصر عليها شظف العيش، فوقفت لأسمع منها سؤالها: هل أنت ابن الرشيد؟، فأجبتُ بتحفظ: لا، ولكنهم أخوالي وأنا أسكن عندهم، فأردفت بسرعة وارتباك: هل تحب أن تنام معي بخمسمئة ريال فقط؟

تجمدت الدماء في عنقي، وشعرتُ بذلك الخواء البطنيّ الذي يصاحب الصدمات عادة، وضاعف قلبي البكر نبضاته بجنون، وبقيتُ صامتاً لوهلة قبل أن يخرج من فمي سؤال مبحوح لا محل له من النقاش، ولا أدري ماذا يعني هذا السؤال، ولكني ألقيته ببلاهة: كيف؟ قلتُ لها كيف دون أن أعي ما هو هذا الذي أريد أن أعرف كيفيته، هل هي كيفية النوم معها، أو كيفية الجنس الذي ما كنتُ قد تذوقته في حياتي قط، أو حتى كيفية أن تحدث لي هذه المصادفة الهائلة في عبور بسيط للشارع، المهم أنها التقطت سؤالي بذكاء، وفتحت لي عباءتها لتريني صدرها الكبير، ثم وجهها الذي لم يكن مخيفاً أبداً، بل مليحاً وطفولياً ليهدّئ من روع مراهق مثلي، هتفت لي: إذا أردت، أذهب وأحضر الخمسمئة، ثم تعال واطرق الباب بشكل عادي.

ونفدت في أقل من أسبوع كل الآلاف الثلاثة التي أعطتني إياها أمي للإجازة، واضطررتُ لطلب النقود من جدي وجدتي، وأحد أخوالي الشباب، ثم بعتُ هاتفي الجوال وطلبتُ من أمي أن تبعث لي غيره بحجة أنه سقط في البالوعة، وبعتُ الذي بعثته أمي أيضاً، وعدتُ للرياض في آخر الإجازة وقد ضاجعتُ المرأة خمس عشرة مرة، لم يبق منها في ذاكرتي إلا عبقها الحاد المؤلم، ومتعي الناقصة جداً، ورتلاً كبيراً من الملامح البصرية لجسدها في كل الأوضاع، أنفقتها كثيراً على فراشي فيما بعد، وتعزّيت على ابتعادها عن منال يدي بأن صارت عندي حكاية ذهبية لا تقاوم، حكيتها لخمسين صديقاً من أصدقاء المدرسة والحي والأقارب، واختصرتُ سنةً على الأقل من النضج الرجولي المتدرج.

وفي هذه الإجازة الثانية، جئتُ مدججاً بستة آلاف كاملة، وبالعديد من الجمل التفاوضية التي سهرتُ عليها لهواجس طويلة لتخفيض سعر المضاجعة إلى مئتي ريال، وتطويل مدتها إلى ساعة كاملة على الأقل، مع اشتراط الاستحمام معاً بعد كل مرة، والتعري التام منذ الدخول وحتى الخروج كي تختزن عيناي ما يكفي من الصور لليالي الفراش الوحيدة، وفي هذه الإجازة أيضاً عرف مختار الطباخ سري الجميل، وصار يخطط لي زيارات ليلية إلى بيتها، بدلاً من تلك النهارية المتوترة، وينتظر عودتي ليفتح لي الباب الذي يحرص جدي على إقفاله كل ليلةٍ بنفسه.

وانتهت تلك الإجازة، بالتغيرات الآتية: أصبحتُ أحب الجنوب أكثر، حيث نضج قلبي وجسدي، وأصبَحتْ أبها مدينة الحب والنهد والربيع والمطر وكل المعاني المرادفة للخصوبة والمشابهة للهطول، وصارت المرأة التي لا أريد أن أذكر اسمها تشتاق لي، لذاتي، وتبذل لي دلالاً وخضوعاً وغنجاً يفلق قلبي نصفين رغم أن عمرها ضعف عمري، وصارت تحنّ إليّ حد الممارسة المجانية والمضاعفة أحياناً، وأصبحت أقضي ساعاتٍ أطول في غرفة مختار لأنه الوحيد الذي يسمع الحكاية كاملة دون مقاطعة، ويترك تعليقاتٍ إيجابية جداً، ومحفزة لرجولتي المتوثبة، ويقنعني أن ما أفعله هو مفيدٌ جداً لتجربتي في الحياة، وأني محظوظ أنها تيسرت لي في هذا البلد، ثم بدأ يعلمني عزف العود.

*   *   *

في الإجازة الثالثة لم تكن المرأة موجودة، ولم يكن عندي مبررٌ كاف للسؤال والتقصي، عزيتُ نفسى عن المتعة المفقودة بأني سأحتفظ بالآلاف التي جلبتها معي لمتع أفضل، وأني أصبحتُ شاباً أعرف عن النساء ما يكفي لئلا أنقطع منهن أبداً، لاسيما وقد بلغتُ التاسعة عشرة فعلاً، ولا ألبث أن أكون مؤهلاً جداً للسفر، مثل أخوالي الشباب الذين لم يعودوا يتحرجوا من الكلام معي عن كل ما في بيروت ولندن والقاهرة من طيباتٍ مكدسة، وأن النساء هناك “أقل” شيء جدلا! فركنتُ إلى ذلك بعد أن انتزعتُ بالفعل وعد السفر الأول من جدي، ورحتُ أقطّع الوقت الباقي مع مختار، وعوده الرنان.

ورغم أني صرتُ أعزف بشكل جيد، لأني واصلتُ مراني في الرياض طوال الفترة بين الإجازتين، إلا أن مختار كان دائماً ينتقد نزوعي للأوتار العلوية الرتيبة، ويقول أن هذا من دافع تأثري بالعزف العربي الميّال للكآبة، والبطء، واستدرار الدموع. أخبرني أن العود ليس آلة حزينة، وأن أسفل العود أبهجه. ولم أكن في البداية أميل للالتفات إلى فلسفته تلك بقدر ما يهمني أن أتعلم منه التقنيات الفنية فقط، ولكنه كان مصراً على حقني بذاكرة ثلاثين سنة من العود، والمراعي، وتركيا الجميلة.

((الغناء في الأصل ضد الحزن، شيءٌ من التشويه أن نجعله رديفاً له))، هكذا قطعتُ جلسات طويلة مع مختار أتمرن على الأوتار السفلية فقط، وضع مختار لاصقاً على الوتريين العلويين حتى لا يهتزا، وأجبرني أن أعزف مقاماً كاملاً باستخدام الأوتار الثلاثة الباقية فقط، استمتعتُ بهذا التحدي، ووجدتني أنطلق بثلاثة أوتار وكأني أعزف على عود مكتمل، وعندما حررنا الوترين الباقيين، اكتشفت أن مهارتي تضاعفت عدة مرات.

قال لي مختار: ((صحيح أن الأوتار العلوية الثقيلة قد تجعلك تحرز بعض الدموع من مستمعيك، ولكن الأوتار الثلاث السفلية، تجعلك تحيي حفلاً كاملاً! من الضروري أن تصنع الإيقاع واللحن بآلة واحدة، لا تكن أبداً بحاجة إلى طبالين تافهين، إن هذا الشيء المحدب ذو الأوتار الخمسة يملك من الأسرار ما لا يمكنك اكتشافه في عمرٍ بأكمله. هذا العود وحده هو الذي أغناني عن أب وأم، وزوجة، وأطفال، ووطن، إذا كان معي عودي فأنا سعيدٌ ومرح، وأعيش كل يوم لي في الحياة، دون قلق!))

تخيلت أربع عشرة فتاة على الأقل متحلقين حولي في الرحلة المرتقبة، وثمة شبان آخرين لا يلفتون الانتباه لأنهم لا يعزفون العود، ورأيتني أشعل بالأوتار أجسادهن لرقص محموم، وأتحكم بشكل مباشر في هزة ذاك الردف أو ذاك، من المدهش أن نتحكم في أجساد النساء بعد أن تعودنا أن تتحكم فينا أجسادهن! هذا العود يصنع العجائب، ولا شك، لا شك مطلقاً، في أنه سيكون حليفاً مهماً لي في غزواتي العاطفية القادمة، وفي المستقبل المهني لقلبي حتى الشيخوخة.

  *   *   *

وعدتُ من لندن ولا شيء جديد، لا النساء استجبن لنظراتي وكلماتي المتكلفة، ولا محاولاتي لابتداع طريقة غير متوقعة للنقاش، كنتُ أظنُّ أنني عندما أفرط في التأنق، وأرتدي ساعة الألماس التي تنازل لي عنها خالي، فإنه يكفيني أن أختار طاولة مشمسة في المقهى وأترك بقية الخطوات لفتاةٍ حالمة تندلق عليّ وحدها. لاشيء من هذا حدث، ولم أجد أيضاً ظروفاً مواتية لعزف العود في أي مكان، ما عدا وحيداً في غرفة الفندق، رغم أني أحضرتُ معي عودين تحسباً لصخب عربي لا مثيل له في صيف لندن 2004، لا شيء على الإطلاق وشى بأن النساء كائنات سهلة، كن يعبرنني وكأنني جزءٌ من الرصيف اللندني المزدحم دائماً، جربتُ كل ملابس حقيبتي، ونفدت قارورة الجل، والعطور الثلاث، ولم أمارس الجنس مطلقاً في لندن، ولم يستمع إلى عزفي سوى خادم تنظيف الغرف العجوز.

عندما عدتُ للرياض كنتُ كالعائد من يباب قبيح، وليس من مدينة جميلة كلندن، بدوتُ ضجراً ومستاءً من كل ما حولي، ومستفزاً بعدد لعناتي الساقطة على كل شيء، اختلقتُ أربع حكايات متنوعة لأرمم بها كبريائي أمام الرفاق، كانت إحداهن مع أميرةٍ كويتية فُتنت بي في إكسفورد ستريت، وهربتُ بها عن الأعين العربية إلى مناطق بعيدة على أطراف لندن، وضواحيها، لنصنع جنوناً ملفقاً، وكانت حكاية أخرى عن لبنانية مقيمة في لندن، وجدت في وجهي الأسمر، وفحولتي العربية، ملاذاً لها من برود الإنجليز الجنسي، والحكاية الثالثة عن فتاةٍ مغربية انتزعتها بذكاء ومهارة من عجوز سعودي ثري كادت أن ينفجر غيظاً، والحكاية الرابعة عن فتاة بريطانية تعمل في محل الحلوى بالفندق.

صدّق الرفاق أو لم يصدقوا، لا يهم، الرياض بعد الصيف دائماً ما تمتلئ بالأكاذيب أصلاً، ولكن أحداً لم يشعر بقلقي الشديد تجاه أحلامي الدنجوانية المنهارة، والمتساقطة من قلبي على أرض قاسية كالرياض، كنتُ أفكر أنه سيتعين عليّ أن أنفق طوال عمري على الجنس، أو أتزوج لأنقلب على امرأةٍ واحدة قبل أن أغترف كفايتي من النساء. الحكايات، الحكايات، ليس عندي حكاياتٌ تكفي، وهذا ما سيحزنني بقية العمر.

عدتُ مرةً أخرى للأوتار العلوية الثقيلة، وأتلفتُ المواويل تحت لساني، ودخلتُ في نوباتٍ من الكآبة جعلت أيام الجامعة تبدو أعشاشاً خاوية لطيور لم تأتِ أبداً، وبدأت أمي تستشعر فيّ عصبيتي، ونزقي، وحدتي في التعامل مع الأقارب، ورفضي التام لكل المناسبات الاجتماعية، وأخبرتها في نوبة تبرير أني لا أتحمل هذا البلد، وأن سياساته خاطئة ومنافية للإنسانية، وأني سأكمل دراستي خارجه. وضغطتُ على قلبها الأرمل، والمبتلى بحب ابنها الوحيد، فوافقت على سفري، وطلبت مني أن أسأل جدي ذلك لأنها لا تملك مالاً كافياً.

كان أسوأ ما يمكن أن يحدث وأنا في هذه الحالة، أن أسافر إلى أبها، فلا أجد أعذاراً تقنع جدي، فأنسحب من أمامه بشكل غير مهذب، متجهاً إلى غرفة مختار التي منذ دلفتها، وجدتُ رجلاً يمنياً لا أعرفه، قدمه لي أحد السائقين على أنه الطباخ الجديد!

 

الرياض

21أكتوبر 2005

Read Next

The covers of the 12 books longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Translated Literature...