Carnival Read Online Free PDF Page A

on his old clothing, saddled his camel, rolled up one of his non-flying carpets, and left us. After his departure, none of his carpets would stay on the ground. They swirled around the tents like little hummingbirds, they flew around and sideways and upward in the angles of angels and birds. The only photo of my father was a poster of him sitting on a suspended carpet, legs folded, his moustache curled against a background of clapping monkeys, smiling cats, and painted clowns.
    After my father’s departure, my mother took to the ropes, and for days she swung, cried, and wailed at the top of the tent. She wove a large web in the sky and trapped clowns and lion tamers, sword swallowers, and the one and only Alligator Man, and dragged them to our little trailer behind the main circus tent.
    She would lock me up in a bed of cobwebs and try to hypnotize me to sleep so she could play, but I would wake in a daze, guessing at the arrival of the Wolf Boy or the Skeleton Man. And I would climb onto one of my father’s carpets, fly below the ceiling and watch, with a bird’s-eye view, my mother tangled in ropes with a fellow trapeze artist, chained beneath the magician’s saw, or roaring like a lion under the long leather boots of the animal keeper. And I, who was flattered that the ringmaster was coming to our house, happy to be in the presence of this carnival of flesh, gasps, and pleasurable groans, would lie still on the carpet and watch my mother’s acts and, imagining my father on his camel crossing the world, I would happily masturbate.
    We always wondered whether he had survived his journey back. After all, the bearded lady said, a camel is a highly visible animal. Camels can’t hide, camels are too sluggish to fly, and too patient, too curious, too opinionated, and too stubborn a creature to kneel for robbers, fall to dictators, or flee the cold.
    Now when I remember my mother and her collection of bare-assed companions, when I lie back on one of my father’s carpets and float above the world, I journey through those ancient lands of guns, trenches, and blood, the troubled lands of Slavs, Germans, Latins, Assyrians, Arabs, Turks, Kurds, and Greeks. In those nations where young men were drafted and women wept and populations were transferred and people starved and burned by the millions, I landed my carpet, I witnessed, I rectified, and I flew again.
    BOOKS
    HOW ARE YOU, Zainab asked as she appeared, with her books and her combed wet hair, from behind the entrance door.
    Long night, I said. The world is a circus and it will always be. By the way, I have a book to show you.
    Do you have it on you?
    No, it is in my apartment, I said. Why don’t you come up and I’ll make you a cup of coffee before you leave. A coffee will keep you awake and attentive, because listening to God’s words can be confusing, all those contradictions. Personally, I would be afraid to fall into an eternal boredom. Besides, I said, your hair is wet. Maybe you should cover it, or you could wait a bit, have a cup of coffee until it dries, and that way you won’t catch a cold.
    So considerate and sweet, she said, but I don’t have time to come in and I am not done with the stack of books you left at my door last week. I am not sure why you think I would be interested in The History of Court Jesters or The History of the Comic Grotesque. Are you trying to tell me something, Fly? My dissertation, may I remind you, is on religion.
    But, yes indeed, I think clowns could be an essential addition to your thesis. Is there anything on earth or in heaven more potent than a good dose of mockery and laughter?
    Oh, Fly, you take life too seriously, she said, and giggled at her own joke. And don’t worry too much about my hair. It should be okay.
    Have you or any members of your family been to the black stone for the pilgrimage? I asked her.
    What an odd question for an early morning.
    I was thinking of my father, who went in the stone’s direction .
    Is that