The Perils of Improvisation
Time was when my heart would jump for joy when I saw the crowd coming towards the wild oak to hear one of my tales. In those days, I felt only pride and, elation. Not for one moment was I apprehensive. I had this belief that I could do no wrong. After my first sentence, I had them hooked, and I only let them go with
my last sentence. Often I had not even thought about what I would be telling my audience ten seconds before I opened my mouth. That was then. Now, because of the incline on the way to the wild oak tree, I am already out of breath by the time I get to its shade. And I can hear my heart beating like a small drum. I no longer have the power to ramble on, to chop and change.Time was when like the champion pastry-makers who twist and turn their dough as they knead it, throw it up in the air and make it spiral down like a snake or a swan, I fearlessly did whatever came into my mind with my words, and they never failed me. Now, if I try a little variation, I become confused, I start stuttering and they laugh. Time was when they laughed at the situation I was describing, at the antics of my characters, at the comedy of the situation, now they are more likely to laugh at me. And the truth is that after a sleepless night, today I haven’t got a fresh story for this lot. The well of my inventiveness has run dry as the sands under the midday sun.
Still, my version of the story of the jealous man asking to be blinded in one eye so his hated rival would lose both eyes went down eXtremely well last time I used it.
Some twenty years ago.
I don’t expect many people remember it. Insha Allah it will work and my bowl will fill up to the brim. Bismillah!
Allah’s peace be with you my dear listeners. So many people gathered here this Friday afternoon, to listen to the ramblings and rantings of a doddering old fool, after hanging on to every word of the Imam in his Friday khutba. Fills my heart with as much joy as you will no doubt be filling my bowl with fulus al-aïs-salaam. Oh, I notice an ajnabi or two in the crowd… Fulus al- aïs-salaam? you wonder. Means blessed money. Come to think of it, since you’re here, Mister, and want to hear my story, it must mean that you understand our vernacular. There was no need for any explanation.
Get on with the story, Khair-ud-Dine ibn al-Rasheed! Or shut up if you’ve got nothing new to say, someone is shouting. The time when I was as revered as the Imam is now gone. I knew this day would come.
You effendi, in the scarlet jellaba, I am grateful to you for your impatience. Shows you are a true aficionado. Trust me, sir, you won’t be disappointed. But you must remember that patience is a great virtue. Please reassure me that you don’t just burst into your bedroom, push your wife on the bed, part her legs and empty your load inside her, when you feel like making the beast with two backs. You look like a caring husband, unless appearances deceive. No, I am sure you begin with a few loving words to the object of your desire, I have no doubt that you follow up with a few caresses, maybe a kiss, a mouthful of baclava, a small sip of Shirazi … but who knows maybe you are a busy man and do not have too much time?
I should have dealt with the heckler with greater aplomb, made a little joke which would have caused my audience to chuckle and end up on my side. My comments were uncalled for. But at least that made a titter run through the crowd.
My venerated Moallim Qayyum Bin Qayyum, who could bring tears to the eyes of the deaf by his rendering of the qasidas, and to whom I owe everything, taught the stuttering idiot that I was the value of the preamble. Idiot, he’d say, you don’t gobble your soup the moment it is served. It may be boiling hot and you burn your f-g tongue.
If truth be told, he was a rather vulgar man.
You begin by plunging your spoon in, you watch the steam rise, you blow on it, and only when it is ready do you swallow it. Yes, he always called us idiots! In his wisdom, humiliation was the best pedagogy, Allah bless his soul and forgive his sins. He also never ceased telling me that I was so lacking in talent that I should become a market hukkawati because people would surely fill my bowl out of pity in the knowledge that I would starve were I to do anything else. You groan your disapproval of his words, I can hear, but again he was a wise man and knew how to shame us into learning. Thank you for your indulgence. Thank you for being here.
The moment of truth has now come. Bismillah.
Today, I have a great tale of jealousy. It was the creation of my beloved Moallim. Allah forgive him his sins.
No point telling my audience that he exacted a heavy price on my beloved mother before taking me on as an apprentice. And that was not his worst sin.
Once, someone told the Caliph that two of his most trusted courtiers were gnawed by intense hatred and jealousy towards each other. This made him very sad, for he valued both of them, their judgements and their counsels. He summoned each of them and questioned them separately about their problems with each other, and discovered that the animosity was not rooted in anything tangible. Neither lusted after the wife of the other, they were both equally well-off, neither having to tighten their belts, and they were both healthy. He could not understand the cause of the envy. Often it is Shaitan’s doing. He exults in creating conflicts among men.
After one sleepless night, his majesty found a solution to his dilemma. Next day he summoned both men together.
“My friends,” his omnipotence began, “I am sorry that you are so jealous and full of hate for each other, but I value both of you very much. Equally in fact. You have both done excellent work for the kingdom, and I want to reward you. Waqaf, you ask me for any gift and it’s yours, diamonds, gold jewellery,
silks, peacocks, land, a young bride or two, just say the word and they’re yours. Waqeef, same thing. Jewellery, diamonds from Golconda, swans, you name it…”
The two men were overwhelmed with joy. They had been expecting, at the very least, to be reprimanded, perhaps even punished. A few weeks in the dungeon maybe. Now this!
I’m going to ask for gold, lots of gold, a steed, a brace of peacocks, thought Waqeef a new teenager bride … maybe two … just ask
Me, thought Waqaf, I will _” But the flow of his wishes and desires was suddenly turned off.
There is one condition, though, declared the Caliph. Who cares about conditions? They both thought. If you want me to walk on my head, so be it. I will, thought one courtier. The other formulated very much the same thought in his head. Just one change. If you want me to walk naked across the palace courtyard, I will be happy to strip…
How do I know what was in the men’s thoughts, I hear you ask. A short answer is that I am the hukkawati, the characters in my stories have no choice but do, say and think what I want them to. Right?
You sometimes have to take an aggressive stand.
And the condition, the Caliph who had a good sense of drama, continued in a booming voice, is whoever asks first_ and it shall be accorded_ the other one gets_.
As I feared, a collective and cynical Ha! greeted this morsel. I could sense the sneer dripping from this as drool drips from the corner of the mouth of a toothless drunk. This is quickly changing into a roar of disapproval. The worse thing that happens when one is doing one’s best to impart all the threads of the tale to one’s audience, is not heckling, for any hukkawati worth his salt not only knows how to parry, but like a wrestler he knows how to use the momentum of his adversary against him and score a point. He uses the words of the poor fellow, twists them round in an appropriately mocking style, resulting in the wag becoming the laughing stock.
No, what we dread most is people losing interest in our tale and beginning to chatter among themselves. And they are doing just that. I can even hear some words. “The old duffer is passing an old tale for new”. “Like in the Aladin story, when the magician was offering new lamps for old”, his neighbour responds. It is obvious that there isn’t a single person in my audience who had not heard the story I was planning to tell them. One fellow is pulling his neighbour by the sleeve, and I can hear my punchline. “… one man asks to be blinded in one eye…”. And I can hear response of the other one “so his enemy gets both eyes plucked out. Hmm, who hasn’t heard that stupid tale hundreds of time before?”. “Old tale … as old as his tongue…” Why is my hearing so perfect? I am asking myself. The hum of the crowd notwithstanding, I hear every jaundiced opinion being emitted. “Old for new, henh he’s regurgitating a corny old story!” I think what does it for me was when I heard the word “regurgitate. No self-respecting hukkawati can outlive the reputation of being a regurgitator. My moallim disappeared into a cave for two weeks after he was accused of recycling an old tale in Damascus. Or so he told us, but then like a good story-teller, he loved making things up. Can I save the situation? Will it be the end of my career? The destruction of my reputation? Ya Allah, you are compassionate and omnipotent. Show me a way out.
I don’t know what possessed me. I must assume a self-assured attitude.
My friends, ha! ha! ha! whoever gave you the idea that I’m passing old cloths for me. The story I was about to tell you is as fresh as tomorrow morning. If you will bear with me, you will find that there won’t be any blinding in it. Whatever gave you the idea?
I heard my own words with a shock. Why had I made a promise I knew I could not deliver. Where was that story I promised coming from? I had burnt my boat and don’t know how to swim. If I am to open my mouth again, I must not stop. One thing they never forgive is hesitation. You repeat a sentence, you contradict yourself, turn a red deer into a brown camel, change water into wine, nobody notices. You make up a new word, ditto. The laughter was becoming nightmarish, but I was not going to back out.
Bear with me brothers and sisters. Trust me, please listen.
You Waqaf, the Caliph says, if you ask for one hundred gold dirhams and a new steed, Waqeef gets two hundred gold dirhams and two new steeds. You Waqeef … but neither putative beneficiaries of the Caliph’s largesse was paying any attention. I am a Chess player, Waqaf was thinking, this appears to be a thorny problem, but I’m sure I’ve solved more difficult ones. Waqeef was also convinced that he would soon crack this nut. Hazrat Suleiman al-aïs-salaam, had the wisdom to deal with the two mothers who both claimed the baby by decreeing that the child should be cut in two, with each mother getting one half. You remember the story, I do not need to tell it. Al’iskandar al Akbar faced with the Gordian knot found the answer right away. He drew out his Great Sword, raised it above his head and brought it down with his full force on the aforesaid knot, with a cry of Allahu Akbar!
What neither man was thinking was: I’ll ask for a massive gift, and if that son of a dog gets twice, I’ll still be the second richest man in the kingdom, bar the Caliph.
That’s not how the minds of jealous people work.
Normally at this juncture in my narration, I pretend that it is getting late and that I would tell them the dénouement next time. My dear listeners, I tell them, I thank you for being such an indulgent audience. I’ll tell you how the story ends next week, Insha Allah.
They know this is a tease.
I always tease them, like grannies tease their grandchildren, and they love it. Everybody knows that I would never leave them in that frustrating position. No man would stop half way when his woman is as wet as a leaky house. I pass the bowl, and they fill it up in the hope that I would then reveal the ending. And of course I always do. As a youth, I watched Qayyum bin Qayyum torture his audience and leave them with only the promise of the resolution in a week’s time. I think he was a bit of a sadist. I swore to myself that I would never have recourse to this type of cruelty. The clever ones in the audience might realise that I am time-wasting as I am stuck and did not yet know how to make good my promise to tell them a fresh tale. I still have no idea. Often that’s where a half-promise of something lubricious comes in handy. Whilst they salivate a bit, you hope your brain will go into overdrive, and hey presto, here’s your ending. I must admit that it does not always work. Ideas sprout when one is least expecting them.
My friends, you know me, you’ve been listening to my ramblings for years now. Never have I been accused of peddling pornography. If certain things happen between a man and a woman, and it is important to the story, then I will tell it as it is, for truth is sacred. The Wilayat is very strict on laws of decency, and quick to withdraw our licence, or issue a fine, but if I convince them of the necessity of the saucy bits to the unfolding of the tale, they will listen. I naturally expect responsible parents to put their fingers in the ears of innocent children. If the best way to deliver a point to you, my worthies, is to use a sexual metaphor, why, good people, I will not eschew that route. I hope we understand each other.
I knew that I was rambling to gain time, but I hope they don’t.
Anyway, where was I? As I was saying, a story is very much like the act of creation. No sensible man will just lie on top of his woman, one shake and two thrusts and he’s done. No hukkawati worth his salt will tell a story like this: “the young couple met many an obstacle, but they overcame them all, got married and lived happily ever after.” A chef producing this dish to his hosts will be laughed out of court. Where’s the salt, where the spices?
Like the structure I am using, taught to me by the genius story-teller, though no saint he, Quayyaun bin Quayyum, a story needs an introduction. Call it foreplay if you will. The narrator picks his own rhythm, and he needs a response from his audience, for without this the listener loses interest.
They seem to be savouring the narration and enjoying what they hear.
The accomplished hukkawati, my friends, feeds his listeners with information and details in measured quantities. Too little, you, my friends lose interest and go to sleep, too much and you choke. This goes on for as long as it takes. The clumsy story teller reveals the punchline prematurely, and fails to fulfil the contract that he had signed.
I pride myself that I do not err in the opposite way. When I am ready, I ejaculate my words into your receptive ears, and the tale is done.
I am aware of growing discontent among my listeners, but inspiration is not forthcoming.
Back to Waqaf and Waqeef. They had both racked their brains and the solution both had been sure was there for the taking seemed elusive.
I hope nobody realises that I am talking about myself. I feel faint. I want to stop and go home, but I hear these words coming out of my own mouth, although they were not germinating from any seed produced by my brain.
The Caliph looks at them questioningly. He notices small tentative lip movements in both his subjects, but feels no vibrations, hears only silence. His mood begins to darken. He frowns before saying, You have twenty seconds, or the prize is forfeited.
You said, Oh, Magnificence, that whatever I ask, Waqeef gets double? says Waqaf boldly. It might have been Waqeef, it doesn’t really matter. Immediately Waqeef — or Waqaf thrusts his head forward.
Father of the Sun, Guarantor of Justice, your generosity is second only to Allah’s. Waqaf is overjoyed that his rival had taken the bait. What an idiot! he is thinking, I will now get double of what he is asking.
Oh Caliph of Islam! he hears Waqeef say, I have everything, but as you made us an offer, can I beg for a new wife, a thirty-five year old widow. Although he really likes his women young, preferably teenagers, he had a reason for this, as you will see.
Waqeef, the Caliph said, your wish granted! We will immediately scour the land together and when you have found what you wanted, we will then continue and you will get to choose a seventy year old bride for our friend Waqaf…
I hope no one has realised that it is the same old hackneyed story, but I gave it a new polish.
