Francine wrote a paper about outsider rage. I don’t have to explain it to you, do I?
Choosing the Best Song to Play at a Mass Drowning
When Nikolaos, the cross-dresser of Skala Sikamineas, described your conversation, he said you kept balling your fists and digging your fingernails into the palms of your hands, as if trying to not lose yourself. Tales of the Smyrna fires were what upset you. I was intrigued by the fact that he said you knew the history of the area better than he, that you’d researched the subject extensively, yet you still couldn’t control your temper, particularly when he told you what his grandmother, a young girl at the time, witnessed while she was stranded among the terrified crowd at the port of Smyrna.
His grandmother was seven as the Ottoman Empire imploded at the end of the First World War. Her Greek family lived in Smyrna, Izmir now. She was happy in the cosmopolitan city. Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived and worked there, Armenians, Greeks, Turks, Arabs, Kurds. But then the Greek army invaded at the behest of the Western allies, specifically the British prime minister, David Lloyd George. Get your land back, the Greeks were told, the land that the Turks thought of as Turkey, the one the Greeks thought of as Greater Greece. Oops.
She was ten or eleven when the Greco-Turkish War ended in 1922. Turkish nationalists drove the Greek forces all the way back to the city where she lived. And her idyllic life shattered. Her entire family was killed except for her and one sister, two years older. You empathized with the young girl’s tragedy, but what captured your imagination was the Great Smyrna Fire.
Three days after the Turks took back control of Smyrna, a devastating fire erupted and destroyed at least half the city—the Christian and Armenian neighborhoods but not the Muslim or Jewish ones. Depending on who was writing the history or who was telling the tale, anywhere between ten thousand and a hundred thousand Greeks perished.
But that was not what upset you, was it?
Most of the Armenians and Greeks who survived ended up suffering a bit more than death by fire. Many of the women were raped. Most of the refugees were sent into the interior of the country, where they died an even harsher death. Thousands of deaths, some historians claimed as many as one hundred thousand.
Definitely upsetting, but that was not what made your blood percolate in its veins.
When the fire started, Nikolaos’s grandmother and her sister ran to the port along with thousands of Greek refugees. They crammed the waterfront. Many ended up jumping into the water to escape the flames even though they could not swim. Allied ships docked at the harbor refused to pick them up. The allies were supposed to be neutral. They could not get involved.
No, even that was not what made you as angry as Achilles.
To alleviate the discomfort of the sailors who had to listen to the cries for help from drowning refugees, the British ships played loud music on their speakers. Refugees wailed while listening to popular tunes of the time.
Nikolaos told me you kept asking him in your bad French if his grandmother recalled any of the songs that were played. She didn’t. He wasn’t sure she remembered, but he was sure that she didn’t tell him before she died. Nikolaos said you were hoping that it wasn’t Al Jolson singing “Swanee.” You wanted to know, desperately wanted to, as if knowing what song thousands of refugees were forced to listen to as they drowned could help ease your suffering.
Choosing the Best Way to Deal with an Ill-Mannered Boor
Francine wrote the outsider rage article in 2009 after an incident where she behaved unprofessionally—unprofessionally according to her but certainly not in my book. A colleague working at Chicago Lakeshore Hospital called her in to consult on the case of a twenty-two-year-old Guatemalan woman diagnosed with mutism. The patient had not spoken for nine months and exhibited symptoms of depression and anxiety. She had episodes of hiccups that lasted for hours. Francine read the patient file and noted that the young woman had been brought to the hospital by her sister and not by her husband, an older white male. The patient, though remaining mute, was responsive with Francine, going so far as to smile once.
Her colleague asked Francine to join him in explaining the situation to the husband. She did not like the man, was predisposed not to from looking at the file, but then he exacerbated matters by ignoring her and speaking only to her colleague, who also happened to be a white male. She would speak, and the husband wouldn’t even look her way. He interrupted her a number of times, until she’d had enough.
She told me she wanted nothing more than to slap him and she almost did. It wasn’t just that she’d been wondering whether he was abusive to his wife. It wasn’t just that she’d deduced that the marriage was unequal, a colonialist betrothal. He had married his wife while on “vacation” in Guatemala. It was the fact that this man dared to treat Francine as unworthy of his attention, to treat her as a subaltern, an outsider. She seethed, something almost as rare as a unicorn sighting, as you know. If the man only looked at her, she was sure she would knock him over with her venomous eyes. She was about to slap him, truly, wound up her arm to do it, but her hand stopped at his cheek. She held his face between thumb and palm, sternly telling him he was an ill-mannered boor.
Now, that would have been a fireable offense had she been working for Lakeshore. Under normal circumstances she might have lost her medical license. But the man was terrified. He didn’t file a complaint. One of the nurses joked that he turned mute—mute with stupefaction. Her colleague was stumped, unable to fathom why she’d lost her temper. He told her that of course the man was offensive, but he’d seen her brave much worse without batting an eyelash. Her impassivity was legendary.
The three nurses who witnessed the exchange, two black women and a Puerto Rican gay man, were not flummoxed by her behavior. They were standing behind the boor, and all three gave Francine the thumbs-up.
She was furious with herself for reacting. She began to write the article as soon as she got home.
I told her one of my favorite bad surgeon jokes: no one would dare insult me because they knew I’d cut them up.
Choosing the Best Lipstick Shade to Wear to the Hospital
Before Sumaiya would get into the ambulance, she had two major concerns. The first was who would watch over her daughters while she was away. Mazen offered to do it, but I wanted to bring him along with me. The tonsured man and his wife ended up the volunteer babysitters. The second concern was how Sumaiya was to go to a hospital when she looked grotesque. How indeed? She explained to Emma and me that she had not packed any makeup while preparing to flee for her life, an oversight. She rarely used much, but she preferred not to be seen by strangers without a good foundation. I felt almost certain then that she had encephalopathy due to high ammonia levels, and she was going to get worse, with progressive delirium. Emma extracted a tube of lipstick from the horn of Amalthea that was her pocket, but Sumaiya thought it too bold. The tonsured man’s wife was able to help, since she had remembered to pack some makeup while fleeing for her life. Not well packed, though, she said, it was damaged during the sea voyage. The powder was damp and lumpy, the lipstick verdigrised. Sumaiya was happy, I grateful.
Even though the ambulance did not have its siren turned on, I still had a lot of trouble following it. The pressure of being in the middle of a short caravan with Emma and the Swedish contingent in a car behind and the ambulance ahead strained my nerves. That would not have been as bad had I not made the mistake of turning on the GPS on my phone. The ambulance had different ideas than my mobile on how to get to the Mytilene hospital. Bugs Bunny sounded not too happy.
The ambulance would drop Sumaiya off at the emergency entrance of the hospital. Sammy and one Swedish physician were with her, whereas Emma and I, in different cars, would have to search for the hospital’s parking lot. She had mentioned that the one time she’d been to the hospital she had to drive in circles at least three times before she found it.
Without my
having to say anything, Mazen turned on his phone and had his GPS direct us. He picked up my mobile from the cup holder and turned off Bugs Bunny.
“Your driving is astounding,” he said. “After all these years, you’re still able to handle a stick shift like a champion. Whoever taught you must have been a genius. He should be given a Nobel Prize in physics.”
At a stoplight, a middle-aged Greek woman crossed the street. She hunched in a gust of wind that tore at her ancient, patched cardigan. She looked Syrian, like a relative of ours. She glanced back at the ambulance, perhaps wondering why it didn’t turn on its sirens and run the red light.
“What happened back there?” I asked Mazen.
I wondered whether this was the right time to talk about his apoplectic tantrum since I wasn’t sure I’d be a good listener, what with being on edge behind the ambulance. Yet he and I were alone in a car at a stoplight. In a way, the red light made it seem appropriate.
“I got angry,” he said.
We looked at each other askance, which was our way of telling each other: That was the worst joke ever or Are you kidding me?
“I’d say I was surprised you weren’t angry,” he said.
“Oh, I was. Only I didn’t end up screaming. I haven’t seen you this upset before. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you angry, for crying out loud.”
“Well, I stopped smoking,” he said. “It’s nicotine withdrawal.”
“You stopped smoking eight years ago,” I said.
“I’m still suffering. You don’t know what it’s like.”
I lifted my hand off the steering wheel as if to slap him.
“Okay,” he said. “I shouldn’t have gotten so angry, but I couldn’t help it. I loathe these Westerners who have fucked us over and over for years and then sit back and wonder aloud why we can’t be reasonable and behave like they do with their noses up in the air as if they’re smelling shit. I hate their adulation of their own imaginary virtues. She actually said they don’t love their daughters with an upper-class English accent. May Satan tie her forked tongue for eternity. Maybe I was furious because I miss my daughter immensely. Ever since she moved to Dubai, I hardly ever see her. Maybe it was because I want to kill my daughter since she refuses to give me a bushel of grandchildren, goddammit. I’ve been good. I deserve grandkids. Maybe I raged and you didn’t because I’m not as used to those assholes. Maybe because I wanted a cigarette. Maybe I went ballistic because I should have. What’s the word you used to describe your rage all those years ago?”
“Righteous,” I said.
A housefly buzzed out of nowhere and landed on the inside of the windshield, bulbous iridescent body, gold-skeined wings; a prisoner in the car, she rubbed her hands in consternation or in glee. The swiftness with which Mazen caught the fly still impressed me after all these years. He shook his fist and held it before me to blow on for good luck. With the usual panache, he threw the dazed insect onto the dashboard.
“Yeah,” he said, looking ahead, into the distance. “Maybe it was righteous.”
How to Steal a Bath
“You’re wrong as usual,” Mazen said. “You’ve seen me angry many times. I’m insulted that you don’t remember.”
“I don’t,” I said. “I assume I must have, but nothing comes to mind.”
“What about the bath?”
“What bath?”
“When I tried to get you to steal the bath,” Mazen said with an exaggerated huff, “and you failed miserably.”
My laughter burst out suddenly, accompanied by a fricative snort. My fingers tightened around the steering wheel. I’d almost forgotten.
I was ten, since Mazen and I still shared a bed. As I was walking back to our bedroom, I noticed the door to the bathroom open. The tub was filled with the most enticing water, limpid and blue—a beckoning, hot spring lake in a snowy white room. The late-afternoon light forced the steam to dance along the water’s surface. I must have sighed when I walked into our room, because Mazen, lying on the bed, wondered what was going on. I told him I’d never wanted to soak in a bathtub as much I did now. He jumped off the bed to see for himself. We heard our sister talking to our mother in the kitchen. He led me by the hand toward them, but we stopped right outside the door. In the most nonchalant tone he could muster, Mazen asked Aida if she’d set up the bath. When she said yes, he told me to go jump into the bath while he went into the kitchen and distracted her. I undressed down to my underpants in my bedroom, as usual when taking a bath, then went into the bathroom with my comics because that’s what one did, soak in a tub with a comic book. I peed before stepping into the tub. I’d taken too much time. Only one foot was in the water when Aida rushed into the bathroom, grabbed me under my armpits, and hauled me out of the tub. She was sixteen then and much larger than I was. She dragged my limp naked form across the bathroom and pushed me out the door. Humiliated, my buttocks pressed onto cool stone tiles, my legs splayed before me, I saw the streak of kanji my wet foot had traced on the floor. My white briefs landed on my face. Mazen cracked up. Aida made sure to tell us that we, her sons-of-bitches brothers, were not as smart as we thought we were, not smart at all, as she slammed the bathroom door and locked it.
“No,” I said. “You’re the one who’s wrong as usual. You weren’t angry. You were laughing and mocking me.”
“I yelled at you,” he said. Pink bubbled up to his cheeks, and his impish eyes reminded me of the boy he was. “I couldn’t believe you didn’t lock the door. Who doesn’t lock a bathroom door?”
“No yelling,” I said. “You were on the floor laughing.”
“Yelling, I tell you,” he said. “I was angry at you for not locking the door, for screwing up my genius plan.”
“Laughing.”
“Yelling.”
One Hospital Is Much Like Another, One Job Same Same
I had been with Sumaiya as she waited to get an X-ray, but I felt like a fifth wheel, so I left the room. Emma stayed with her. The doctors knew where to find me if they needed a translator. In the corridor-cum-waiting room, my brother and Sammy were deep in a whispery conversation that halted as soon as they noticed me. I answered their unasked questions. Nothing yet, no news. I sat on an apple-green plastic chair on the other side of Sammy, asked what the two of them were talking about.
“Your brother was telling me all about his wonderful children,” Sammy said.
“A bit of boasting,” Mazen said. “My apologies. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Not at all,” Sammy said. “You should be proud of them. I would be as well. My greatest wish is for my daughters to grow as accomplished as yours.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Mazen and I said at the same time, even though we both were blatant nonbelievers.
The hospital might have been more worn, might have looked different, atypical, but it felt quite familiar. White walls, white walls. Crow’s feet radiated from the eyes of the windows. A sickle of pale light fell on my boots.
Sammy kept trying to sit up, as if he needed to be at military attention, but within moments he would be bent over again, his head nearing his knees. He was probably exhausted, definitely nervous. Each time someone opened the door on our left, spurts of cold, shallow wind would force him to put his hands in his coat pockets.
“She’s not going to make it, is she?” he said, and a look of profound desolation crossed his face.
I hesitated. He seemed to have resisted the false enticements of optimism without much help from me. The Syrian phrase he used was a bit odd. Translated literally, it would be: “She’s not going to finish,” the object not specified. We use the same phrase—also meaning “she’s not going to be saved”—more often than “she’s going to die.”
“No,” I said. “She’s not going to make it. We’re trying to figure out a more accurate diagnosis in order to see how we can lessen the pain, maybe ease her way.
”
Upon our arrival at the hospital, the admitting nurse, wearing a heavy fleece coat over her scrubs and a suspicious eye, asked us what the problem was. She seemed the type of nurse I got along with best: smart, not young, compassionate, even-keeled, and she’d seen it all. When the Swedish doctor explained Sumaiya’s condition, the nurse faltered for only a second. Her face showed a “why are you bringing her here” expression before she told us in a tone that combined sympathy and helpless resignation that there was little she could do. No MRI machine, a blood panel would take some time to return from the lab, and even then would not be complete. Still, she said, we should do what we could. A person untrained in nursespeak would have erroneously thought her uncaring.
I did not blame her for wondering why we brought Sumaiya to her hospital. We all knew of the country’s financial crisis. Hospitals were stretched to the limit.
Sammy remained quiet with his thoughts for a while. His bronzed hands poked through tightly fastened cuffs. I wished Francine were with me. She knew how to deal with situations like this much better than I. Her mere presence was comforting. I felt nervous, if not outright afraid, when I had to tell patients and their loved ones that there was no hope. I’d done it numerous times, of course, part of the job, but I had yet to be inured to it and never improved at it, whereas Francine had the ability to be intimate with grief and the grieving, to hold wounded souls in her hands.
“She knows,” Sammy said. “She didn’t think she would make it this far. She made me promise to keep going if she died along the way. She wanted me to leave her body unburied and keep on going, as if I could have done that.”
“She made you promise?” I asked.
“Yes,” Sammy said. “She was sure she wasn’t going to make it to the Turkish border, let alone all the way to Izmir. She didn’t want us to slow down and waste time. She made me promise, so I lied. I told her we would leave her wherever she dropped. For the sake of the girls, I said, I would let her be. But I knew and she knew that I would never leave her. I wouldn’t be able to stand as a man if I left her unburied. Just the thought. She wanted to believe that she wouldn’t be a burden, so I promised. But she grew stronger along the trip, I swear. By the time we were in the boat and everyone was getting sicker, she was getting stronger.”
The Wrong End of the Telescope Page 15