“Never trust the storyteller,” advises one of the thousands of characters who inhabit Rabih Alameddine’s 2008 novel, The Hakawati, “but always trust the stories.”
It’s good advice, and the reader will be well-rewarded by trusting the hundreds of tales that comprise this chaotic and brilliant novel that deftly interweaves Islam, magic carpets, automobile sales, every possible form of sexuality, Hell, the Lebanese civil war, slavery, the Crusades, jinni, princesses, witches, Greek myth, Gibson guitars, Palestinian militias, deserts, crossdressing, serpents, crossdressing serpents, and everything but an Aladdin’s lamp.
At its most basic level, The Hakawati exposes the conflicting feelings of an Americanized Lebanese ex-pat who returns home to attend to his father’s dying. The ex-pat comes from a line of professional Hakawatis, or storytellers. His grandfather was court hakawati to the local royalty. His father, uncle and sister prove to be hakawatis, too; they are Toyota salespeople in war-torn Beirut. Within the stories they tell are other hakawatis, who give birth to additional tales-within-the-tale. The result is a dense and exhilarating 512-page magic carpet ride. The proof of Alameddine’s skill is that one never confuses the thousands of characters (even though several bear the same name). Each of his men, women, and monsters is a distinct creation, however wrought out of very familiar Thousand-and-One-Arabian-Nights material.
For the gay crowd, this book has peculiar rewards. It begins with an older man on a seven days’ journey trying to seduce a younger one solely through storytelling around a campfire, and ends with a tragic, powerful homosexual interracial pairing of royal demon-spawn with a gift for makeovers and spa treatments. Among the comic figures inbetween are eight apparently gay imps with Old Testament names, each of whom has his own bright skincolor (collectively, the original rainbow flag?) and diverse talents with which he assists the warrior heroine of one of these tales to achieve her conquests.
Many of these tales have surprise endings, but none is achieved with gimmicks. The whole is organic, vines growing through one another in a dense weave, making it sometimes hard to determine where one tale ends and another begins – and I mean that in the best way: Alameddine has created a whole separate and complex world where there are no simple lessons and nothing can be divorced from its context. The storyteller might be a bit of a liar, but the stories are all true.
review by Scott D. Pomfret, author of "Since My Last Confession: A Gay Catholic Memoir" (www.sincemylastconfession.com)
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