I tell stories when it rains. I am a spout of water spouting lies.

That’s the only way the chapel can survive the deluge. I release rivulets of verbal vomit.

The East has its Scherazades, damsels delaying the Sultan’s sword on their necks for yet another night. You won’t find such beauties here.

You will find us, grotesque answers to the Arabian arabesques.

Divert the water from the walls or risk erosion by the tides of history. And what is storytelling if not a diversion?

So here is one story for you, gazing up at me from underneath your yellow umbrella, marveling at my open-mouthed form.

I was born in the hold of a merchant vessel sailing from China to Africa. Our mother, Xiao Mi, belonged to the kind ship captain. She was a gray tabby with bewitching green eyes. In exchange for the captain’s affection and the scraps of food off his table, Xiao Mi patrolled every nook and cranny of the ship for rodents and pests. She must have met some ne’er do well while the ship was docked at an Indian port – I am told he was an orange tom and that I take after him – and so my mother was pregnant when the vessel resumed its journey on the maritime silk road. She gave birth to us when we reached Muscat.

I was destined to be named Yuan Yuan for three reasons: first, because I fought with my four siblings constantly for the biggest share of our mother’s milk, getting fatter and meaner than the rest; second, because when I didn’t have my way I would meow repeatedly, my mouth always open in loud indignation; and third, because I had so many hairballs that I ended up vomiting most of what I had eaten, making me even hungrier. I began to steal from the ship’s pantry. My favorite was the salted beef and pork, the cheese, and the fresh cod that had just been fished from the waters surrounding us. I was admonished and reprimanded countless times by my mother, but I was very stubborn.

My siblings weren’t nearly as tolerant of my delinquency as my mother was. I always wonder what they said to her after reboarding the ship in Zanzibar when she inevitably asked them about my whereabouts.

Their plan was devious. They told me that the ship was to be docked at the port for four days, when in reality it was going to be only three. Our mother chose to stay onboard while all five of us roamed the bustling streets of Zanzibar in search of rats and squirrels. On the third morning I woke up under the fruit vendor’s cart to find my siblings absent; I thought they had had enough of Zanzibar.

I was giddy. More rats for me.

But when I got back to the harbor, our ship was no longer there. My heart sank from the betrayal.

Licking my fur and my wounds, I snuck into a trader’s bag and, not finding any potable water, got drunk on a bottle of rum with a loose cork. I fell asleep, only to wake in another ship, this one belonging to Sinbad the Sailor.

I cried ceaselessly, yearning to go back to my home ship. One day, I was listlessly rummaging through the goods in the hold until I came across a magic lamp that was both shaped like – and smelled sharply – of salmon. I licked it three times, and there appeared before me a genie. He looked just like a human being – he didn’t have the red or blue skin like the genies from my mother’s bedtime stories. He had a long white beard and wore a matching pistachio-green tunic and turban. He had chartreuse eyes just like my mother. Instead of hovering nebulously in the air like I had expected him to, this genie had very tangible, human feet that seemed stuck to the fish-shaped magic lamp.

“Who dares to wake me from my slumber?” he bellowed.

I jumped from sheer terror and hid behind the gunny sacks of grain.

“I can see you, you know,”  said the green genie in a gentler voice.

I timorously reemerged.

“What is your name, child?” he asked.

“Yuan Yuan. And yours?”

“Khizr. I can grant you one wish.”

“Just one?” I said, my fear suddenly transformed to indignation. “Aren’t you supposed to give me three?”

“Aha!” he cried triumphantly, shooting his emerald-ringed finger into the fetid air of the hold. He smiled, then proceeded in his calmer baritone. “I could tell from the first moment you licked my lamp that we have a glutton in our midst. For you, only one.”

I was rather disappointed, but one wish was better than none.

“I want to go home.”

“I can grant you that wish,” the genie said. “But on one condition, and with a warning. You must stop your gluttony, otherwise not only will you not go home, but the rest of your life will be one of perpetual emesis. That is the most fitting punishment for you.”

I was horrified by such a fate. I hated vomiting from my hairballs. Emesis, my lifelong nemesis! An eternity of heaving! But because I missed my family so dearly – even my siblings, notwithstanding their treachery – I  agreed to the condition, though with much apprehension. Khizr said that I would be reunited with my family in three days if I behaved myself.

Sinbad’s ship docked at Alexandria, and there I began to roam the streets as I had in Zanzibar. Oh, how I wished I had stayed on the ship, away from the temptations of the Egyptian bazaar!

On the second day, my resolve had broken and I ransacked a chicken coop. When I had narrowly escaped from the irate vendor pursuing me, I stopped at a ceramicist’s store. Around me were beautifully molded and painted clay pots and urns and sculptures of diverse animals. Among these items, still panting heavily from the chase, I turned to stone.

The next day, a builder from France stopped at the store and, after grinning delightedly at my gaping, immobile pose, bought and installed me along with the rest of my new siblings at this chapel. At least there is no possibility of abandonment here.

And Khizr’s curse did not come to pass entirely. I do get an occasional reprieve from vomiting when the rain stops, as it seems to be doing now.