Koolaids

by Rabih Alameddine

  It’s a good thing we are leaving. Beirut is a much better place to raise the kids.

  …

  Picasso used to say that at twelve years old he was able to draw like Raphael, but it took years of hard work and dedication to train himself to draw like a child. As usual, with that lovable son of a bitch, he was lying. Lies, lies, lies. He never drew like Raphael, not at twelve, sixteen, twenty-one, forty, or sixty. He was a damn good draftsman, but he was never a Raphael. I love him.

  On the other hand, when I was twelve I could draw better than Picasso. I always wished I could have met him to tell him that. The day he died, I was thirteen.

  Like most children I was drawing at an early age. I was definitely a prodigy. By the age of four, I was able to draw anything I saw, realistically. By the age of six, I was copying drawings of the masters.

  My mother was always proud. My father considered art to be nothing more than a pleasant hobby. He kept suggesting I attempt a more masculine hobby. I was never effeminate, but I definitely was not masculine enough for my father. In his mind, any intellectual pursuit, let alone an intuitive pursuit like drawing, was effeminate. It is no wonder none of my four older brothers went beyond a few years of college.

  I was seven when my father decided to do his fatherly thing. He asked me to show him my drawings. I was nervous as I showed him my work. He looked at my copies of the masters and said, “This is good, but how come you always draw the men? I think you should draw some of the women as well. Come back and show me when you have drawn some women.”

  I ran into my room knowing exactly what to draw. I had seen a copy of Goya’s Nude Maja. I drew a damn good copy of the woman lying down on the sofa. I was not able to get a good face since the reproduction was so small. I decided to improvise. I did a very good drawing of my mother’s face into Goya’s Nude Maja. I ran out of the room and showed it to my father.

  I never saw his hand coming. He had turned beating his children into an art form. He slapped my face only once. That was probably because I ended up on the other side of the room by force of the blow. My mother came running into the room, and he threw the drawing in her face. He left the room saying, “Your son is a pervert.”

  It is true. I am a pervert. A pervert who sold a 60 by 80 called My Mother as the Nude Maja for $300,000 in the mid-eighties at Franklin Gallery on Fifty-seventh Street. Where was that son of a bitch then?

  I was seven then. I didn’ t know any better. I never showed my drawings again for a very long time.

  …

  My mother and I are in the back seat of a huge black limousine. The driver is a bald, husky man. It is nighttime. I start kissing my mother. I begin to make love to her. I lift her evening dress and penetrate her. The driver is watching the sex through his rearview mirror. “Don’t I get any?” he asks. I realize he turns me on. I leave my mother and get into the front seat while the limousine is still moving. I unbutton his fly and start sucking him. He is gratified while my mother sits in the back of the limousine, unsatisfied.

  …

  I woke up to the sound of my sister. She was on the phone. She was crying. I gathered she was talking to my mother. My father must have been out of the house.

  The feeling of guilt is overpowering at times. I have caused such pam.

  She still refused to talk to me. He still ran her life.

  Well, fuck her.

  …

  I remember his eyes the most. There was nothing like them. Nothing. I am not sure what it was. I kept thinking maybe God was trying to punish me. His eyes were unforgettable. I was thirteen when I first met him, 1973. It seemed everything which had happened to me before then had been in preparation for that meeting. His eyes were the first thing I noticed about him.

  I had wanted to meet him for about a year before it actually happened. After all, he was a legend at my school. The only boy who was ever expelled from our school for nonacademic reasons. I guess if he was better academically, they would have found a way not to expel him. Then again, maybe not. Although he was three years older than I, he was only one class ahead. His exploits were celebrated. It is said he once hung Mr. Murphy, the English teacher from New Zealand, on a coat rack. Luckily, I never had to take Murphy, who had a reputation of being a complete creep, but had Johnson, an American from Iowa.

  I met him on a small street, two blocks north of Hamra Street. I was with my friend, Jamal, and he was with his friend, Shaddy, who happened to be Jamal’s cousin. They were sitting outside Shaddy’s building, with a cassette player blaring. He was accompanying the music, or I should say he was playing lead guitar on his acoustic guitar, which may have had something to do with what the cassette player was playing.

  The music playing was Chicago’s third album. It was a cassette, but I was surprised to hear it. I had all their albums, but I had to get them from the States. No CBS or RCA records were allowed legally in Beirut. It was not such a big deal since few artists I liked were on those labels. The biggest star on CBS was Bob Dylan, but his nasal voice was a big turnoff in Lebanon. Still, I heard one could get those records from some stores for only a little extra. Since my uncle still lived in the States, I usually got whatever I wanted.

  We were introduced. I have to say I fell head over heels in love. He was gorgeous. His eyes were blue. That is not altogether rare in Lebanon, but I had never seen anybody that handsome with eyes that color before. I got so nervous, I did not know what to say. He ignored Jamal and me, and asked Shaddy if he liked the music. Shaddy said it was okay, but not great. I don’t know what came over me. If I didn’t say anything, I would regret it for the rest of my life.

  “It is great music. Not as great as their live album, or some of the later ones, but it is a great album.”

  “You’ve heard the live album?” he asked me.

  Ecstasy. Exhilaration. Euphoria. I said exactly the right thing. I was practically panting, but had to sound nonchalant.

  “Live at Carnegie Hall? Sure. I have that album. I have all of Chicago’s albums.”

  “Wow. That’s great. Can I borrow them?”

  It was just him and me. He was talking only to me.

  “I guess so. I don’t usually lend my albums out, but if you promise to take care of them, I can let you have them for a while.”

  “Great. When can I come over to get them?”

  Come over. He was going to come over.

  “I should be home by six.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Ras Beirut. I live in the building next to Marroush. Fourth floor.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there at around seven. I can have a look at what albums you have.”

  My head was spinning.

  “It’s been great talking to you, Karim,” I said. “I have heard so much about you.”

  “I’ll see you later this evening, Samir.” He beamed.

  That is how it all started.

  …

  Death comes in many shapes and sizes, but it always comes. No one escapes the little tag on the big toe.

  The four horsemen approach.

  The rider on the red horse says, “This good and faithful servant is ready. He knoweth war.”

  The rider on the black horse says, “This good and faithful servant is ready. He knoweth plague.”

  The rider on the pale horse says, “This good and faithful servant is ready. He knoweth death.”

  The rider on the white horse says, “This good and faithful servant killed his best friend. Let him suffer.”

  The testy rider on the white horse leads the other three lemmings away.

  My eyes hurt. They hurt from the inside. A constant throbbing.

  …

  March 17th, 1987

  Dear Diary,

  Americans make fun of us. They mock us. My son told me they even had a comedy skit about us on Saturday Night Live.
I am not sure what that is. I think it is a program on television which mocks things. They make fun of us all the time, it seems. They think we are all crazy, maybe even degenerate. The only way they make our suffering palatable is by envisioning us as less than human. We are human. What happened to us could happen to anyone. They refuse to see it. They think all of us just go around killing each other. My son said they had a film showing all the bullets flying over at night and the announcer says in a serious voice, “Come visit us in Beirut, where it is Fourth of July every night.” I don’t think that’s funny.

  …

  The woman comes up to me. I notice the museum director stiffen. I guess she must be a trustee.

  “Mr. Momad, I wonder if you can answer a question for me.” Her voice is nasal, irritating. “It’s Mohammad, Mrs. Winters,” the director says. “It’s his first name.”

  I look at her. I see no need to reply. The director is nervous, but is unsure what his role is in such situations. She keeps going.

  “You are a gay artist, aren’t you?” Pause. Wait for a response. None coming. She continues, “I was wondering what you think of Keith Haring’s work.”

  “He’s dead,” I say.

  The director chuckles and tries to say something, but she keeps going.

  “Yes, I know that. I would like to know what you think of his work.”

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  The director is trying to figure where this conversation is going. He fidgets.

  “That’s what I think too,” she adds. “I don’t know what the big deal about his work is. It’s not bad, but really, what is the big deal? How come he became such a big name all of a sudden? Unlike your paintings, which are truly magnificent, by the way, I find his work to be more decorative, more illustrative. Don’t you agree? What was the seminal work that catapulted him? Where is his tour de force? Which painting is his chef d’oeuvre? Now tell me, what do you think is his one work which you can honestly say made him into a superstar artist?”

  “The AIDS diagnosis?”

  The director drops his champagne glass.

  The museum goes silent.

  …

  Once upon a time there was an island visited by ruin and inhabited by strange peccant creatures.

  “It’s a sad place,” I say, “and too much like my own life.”

  He nods. “You mean, the losing struggle against inscrutable blind forces, young dreams brought to ruin.”

  “Yes,” I tell Coover, “my young dreams are gone. I lost the struggle a long, long time ago.”

  …

  During the war, rumors were rampant suggesting downtown Beirut was not being rebuilt because they found archeological treasures when the buildings were razed, a romantic notion and much more pleasant than the truth. Like most rumors, it was based partially on truth. They did find archeological treasures, from Phoenician urns and pottery to remnants of the Roman law school, the pride of Roman Berytus, from Macedonian spears to Islamic tiles. They found the remains of five thousand years of successive civilizations. According to The New York Times, the finds confirmed the fact that Beirut was founded as early as 3000 b.c., before Jerusalem, Athens, Damascus, or any other current capital. Only Jbeil, once known as Byblos, another Lebanese city north of Beirut, is older. The latter is the oldest city in the world, continuously inhabited for seven thousand years.

  The archeologists had little time to dig through what was found. When the war stopped, the government, run by some of the richest men in the world, which included the militia leaders, wanted to make their money developing downtown Beirut. They had no time for old crap.

  A girl led one of the expeditions. She looked to be no more than fourteen or fifteen, but she was actually nearing thirty, not typical for a Lebanese. Whatever her age, she was an experienced archeologist, a Harvard Ph.D., and a veteran of many archeological digs. She realized her government did not care. She attempted to involve the press, but that proved futile. After the war, the press was the government. She attempted to involve her peers at Harvard. They became interested at first. They reneged as it became obvious which American corporations were involved in rebuilding downtown Beirut and where the money was coming from.

  She would try to salvage whatever she could before they brought in the bulldozers. She was working in a belowground site when she uncovered a death mask. She showed it to the rest of her team. At the moment she held it up, a government employee screamed they had ten seconds to get out. A sewer was opened intentionally to drive them out. They smelled the water before it hit them. The force of the shitty water pulled the death mask away. Within a minute, the team was floating among excrement. They could not save anything. The bulldozers had come.

  …

  “Habibi?”

  “I’m here, dear.” It was frightening. His face was hideous. The most beautiful boy in the world was gone, the swan into the ugly duckling. The KS was feeding on Scott’s face. Omophagia.

  He looked at his face in the mirror. Purple splotches everywhere.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” he said. “I always wondered what it felt like to be a blueberry muffin.”

  …

  FROM: BOURMA@ESTE. ON.NET

  DATE: FRI, 22 MAR 1996 00:50:47 GMT

  SUBJECT:TO MY FELLOW CHRISTIANS

  There have been many things said about who are the true Lebanese on this service. Most of you have an opinion as to what makes a Lebanese and whether we are Arabs. I want to clear up some misconceptions. I am writing this letter to all our Maronite friends in hopes of ending the confusion about our history. Hopefully after reading this, we will be able to stand up for who we are. I will show you why we are the true Lebanese.

  We are the true Lebanese because we are the only descendants of the Phoenicians, the only indigenous people of Lebanon. Every body else came after that. We were in Lebanon for as long as anybody can remember, at least seven thousand years because that is when the Phoenicians established the city of Byblos. We established all the cities in Lebanon-Beirut, Sidon, Tyre, and Tripoli. We gave the world the alphabet. We gave the world the color purple. The Phoenicians were the most well respected people in their time.

  Lebanon was conquered by most of the great empires of antiquity. We were under the Persian empire in the sixth century b.c., and the Hellenistic Seleucid kingdom (which Alexander the Great conquered) in the fourth century b.c. That was followed by the Roman empire. We were baptized as Christians in the second century when we fell under the Byzantine empire. Then we were under Islam in the seventh century, but try as they might, the Muslims were never able to conquer the mountains because of the rough terrain and because the Christians fought valiantly. Most of the Muslims settled in the coastal cities and the Beka’a valley. In the eleventh century, the Druze came to Lebanon, and the Christians allowed them to settle in some villages in the mountains.

  Since 623, Lebanon has been an unwilling part of various Islamic empires up until 1918, when we were liberated by the French. The exception was during the Crusades between 1098 and 1291, when we were under Frankish rule. As you all know, we gained full independence in 1943.

  We are called Maronites because in the fifth century we had our own saint, a monk called Marun. He led his followers against various groups that tried to persecute them. The Phoenicians were Semitic and they spoke a Semitic language. With all the conquests, the Phoenicians, now Maronites, began to speak Syriac. All our church rites and liturgy were in Syriac.

  In summation, Maronites are NOT Arabs, never were, never will be. We are Syrio-Aramaic. We are Phoenicians. We need to be proud of our heritage and revive it. We need to throw away the Arab shackles that everybody tries to bind us with. We are not Arabs. We are Lebanese. Lebanon is the homeland of Christians. We shall refuse to live under occupation. We will always be Christian, always Lebanese.

  Just like our Lord
Jesus Christ, we will rise again. We shall overcome this tragedy and conquer. We will rise again, purer and stronger, to throw out the current aggressors from OUR land. We refuse to wear the labels they give us. We will revive the Syriac language. No Christian should speak the language of our oppressors. I have not spoken Arabic since 1978. We are not Arabs. We are the true people of Lebanon.

  With the true love of our Lord Jesus Christ, I bless you all.

  Roger Dabbas

  …

  Rewriting history is a passion for most Lebanese. Lebanon is a mixture of races from all over Europe and the Middle East, yet everyone tries to lay claim to being the true descendants of the Phoenicians. In reality, any Palestinian, Syrian, and Jordanian may be a descendant as well. Most of the indigenous people of Lebanon actually changed religions and alliances under each occupier. The reason is simple. It saved on taxes. The empires of the area always taxed religious minorities at a higher rate.

  The name of their monk should be written as Maroun, not Marun. The stress is on the second syllable. But obviously the writer is demented. I sent him a note saying my spell checker could not recognize the word Marun. It came up with manure as an alternative, which I felt was appropriate. I received death threats. If you need further proof the writer is demented, look at when he introduces Christianity into the Roman empire. Heck, any idiot knows that Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius were still killing Christians and Jews in the second century. Those were the days.

  …

  Scott was handsome. Surprisingly, since he was relatively shy on the BBS. We enjoyed ourselves. We laughed during the movie when Scott pretended to faint as Deneuve made her first appearance. We went for beers and talked. We had a good time on our first date. We had a better time on our second date and ended up in my bed. He only mentioned Mo on our third date.

  I have to admit I am easily impressed by celebrity. It is a weakness. I don’t go crazy, I never ask for autographs, or anything silly like that. I am just impressed. I think that’s human. Our culture is a celebrity-driven culture, and I am never that bad. Deep down, I’m still the boy from Bethlehem, PA, easily impressed.