The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine

The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine

First Lines: Listen.  Allow me to be your god. Let me take you on a journey beyond imagining.  Let me tell you a story.

The Hakawati is a tale about Osama al-Kharrat and his return to Beirut after many years in America to celebrate the feast of Eid al-Hada and be with his dying father.  Beirut in 2003 is very different then the Beirut Osama remembers from his childhood having suffered through bombardment, civil war, and other military actions.  Osama finds himself surrounded by his  friends and family along with the gossip, bickering, and stories that have always accompanied the group.

Throughout the book Osama narrates the story of his family from his great-grandparents and his grandfather, a hakawati or storyteller by trade.  Interwoven with this family story are two classic tales from the middle east as well as tales from the Koran and the Bible.  Much like a Matryoshka, or Russian nesting doll, the tales nest within each other leading to an entrancing, complex narrative.

When I first started reading this book, I felt I needed to know where each tale was in regards to the other but once I allowed myself to go with the flow, that didn’t matter.  I learned I had to trust the author to get me back to where I needed to be within each tale.  I learned that the hakawati would tell tales in cafes night after night picking up the story where he left off, spinning for days or even weeks a magical tale. In many respects, the author mimics the Hakawati with each tale breaking off and starting again.

This would be an excellent “stuck in an airport” book because I found myself losing track of time while reading it.  I came to care about Osama and his family as well as being very caught up middle eastern tales.  This book points out the importance stories have in our lives – family stories, stories of births and beginnings, stories of endings, stories of connections.  The novel also asks the question “Where do we come from?”  Is it a place indicated by a home, is it the people around us, the people important to us, or the stories we tell ourselves.  In the novel, Osama feels disconnected from his father and from Beirut but in returning and reconnecting to his family and his stories, Osama finds a connection with his father and ultimately with himself.

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