Koolaids

by Rabih Alameddine

  My card says I am a Christian, a Maronite, to be exact. When I was ten, I asked Grandma Nabila what it meant to be Christian because I figured out she wasn’t. She looked at me and said, “Well, Makram, it means you can become president of this great country of ours.”

  …

  I never knew what attracted me to the piece. I was not into elephants. I found out from the saleslady the meditating elephant was the god of devotion. Well, devotion was not my cup of tea either. I ended up paying sixty dollars for that thing, which could not have been bigger than an inch.

  I never knew why I carried that thing with me at all times. I am not much of an object person. I own nothing of value. I carried it on me at all times. I became devoted to it.

  When I first found out about the virus, I was crestfallen. I never thought I would survive. I ran back to Arizona, my haven. I said, “Father, can you help me?”

  Father asked me if I was sure I wanted help. I tried to convince him. Father suggested I consider a ritual, as in the old days, an offering to the gods.

  I wondered what I could offer the gods. I was never very religious. I never believed in superstitious silliness.

  I built a small altar in the middle of the desert. I placed my elephant on top. I prayed. I left.

  The next day it stormed. I wanted my elephant back. Father said I made an offering, but if it was still there, I could take it back.

  I found it. Miraculously, it was still there. Miracle of miracles.

  I left Arizona for British Columbia. I stayed in a hotel room. I hid my elephant in a sock. It would have been too embarrassing to leave it in a safe deposit box. I lost it.

  My health improved.

  …

  Addressing a virus, a war, or oneself:

  “Why, with your infernal enchantments, have you torn from me the tranquillity of my early life. . . . The sun and the moon shone from me without artifice; I awoke with gentle thoughts, and at dawn I folded my leaves to say my prayers. I saw nothing evil, for I had no eyes; I heard nothing evil, for I had no ears; but I shall have my vengeance!”

  From “Discourse of the Mandrake,” in Elizabeth of Egypt by Achim von Arnim. Since a plant can’t really talk, I decided to appropriate it. Sorry, Achim.

  …

  Christians fought among themselves again in 1989. Like their Muslim counterparts, they were more vicious eradicating their own.

  General Aoun, after naming himself prime minister, wrestled control of East Beirut from the Lebanese Forces. Bodies were everywhere.

  The assassin of the Lebanese Forces, Nick Akra, was found naked, in bed with his paramour, Samia Marchi, legs entwined, lips still joined. Fifty-two bullets riddled their corpses. Coitus interruptus.

  …

  I am at the post office, opening my mailbox. An old man is next to me getting his mail. He makes a pass at me. I am appalled. I do not like older men who seduce boys.

  He puts his hand inside my pants, and touches my anus. My mind gets all fogged up.

  The man leaves the post office. I follow him in a daze. I want him. He looks back to make sure I follow. I am walking about ten steps behind him. A group of teenage girls, in school uniforms, start walking in between us. They are boisterous and walking slowly. I am afraid I will lose the man. I try to go through them, but they cut me off. I try to ask them to let me by, but they are not listening to me. They talk loudly to each other, completely oblivious of me. I am getting annoyed.

  I try to push my way through. One girl turns around and punches me straight in my left eye. I am no longer drugged. The fog has lifted. I am clearheaded.

  I am back in Beirut. In a stable, hiding. My father walks in. He asks me what I am doing. I tell him I killed him. He is lying on the ground, dead. We both look at his body.

  …

  September 13th, 1993

  Dear Diary,

  While reading the paper today, I noticed the published names of thieves who were arrested. Before the war, the names were always Ahmad, Omar, and Ali. Now it’s Pierre, Georges, and Joseph. Crime is an equal opportunity employer these days.

  …

  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was Mohammad, peace be upon Him. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. For Mohammad, peace be upon Him, said God was neither a son nor a father. 0 People of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion: Nor say of Allah aught but the truth. Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) an apostle of Allah, and His Word, which He bestowed on Mary, and a spirit proceeding from Him: so believe in Allah and His apostles. Say not “Trinity”: desist: it will be better for you: for Allah is one Allah. Glory be to Him: (far exalted is He) above having a son. To Him belong all things in the heavens and on earth. And enough is Allah as a Disposer of affairs. One will find in the Bhagavad Gita all that is contained in other scriptures, but the reader will also find things which are not to be found elsewhere. That is the specific standard of the Gita. It is the perfect theistic science because it is directly spoken by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Sri Krsna.

  Dhrtarastra said: O Sanjaya, after my sons and the sons of Pandu assembled in the place of pilgrimage at Kuruksetra, desiring to fight, what did they do?

  To this I replied: A man can receive only what is given him from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, “I am not the Christ but am sent ahead of him.”

  To this the sons of Pandu replied: We do not believe you. You have AIDS dementia.

  To this I replied: Those who reject Faith and keep off (men) from the way of Allah, have verily strayed far, far away from the Path.

  Live with this, suckers, for I am the Word.

  …

  They were my girls, Marwa and Nawal. I called them the MN girls. I took care of them. They took care of me. I left them everything.

  They were my girls. Like a doting parent, I took pride in every one of their accomplishments. They cowrote a number of published essays. I do not think either one of them ever wrote anything on her own. They collaborated on life.

  They studied my paintings extensively. They would discuss them endlessly. They asked questions I could not answer. They wrote about my work. They became my historians, my chroniclers. They wrote essays for the catalogues of exhibits I had, including the retrospective.

  They were my girls, staunch defenders against a country which wanted to obliterate me from its collective conscious. They arranged my first exhibit in Beirut, in 1995. I never thought I would see the day. The exhibit consisted solely of paintings from Lebanese collections, in Lebanon, France, and Canada. That fact alone left me dumbfounded.

  They both talk about husbands. At twenty-five, they are bordering on spinsterhood by Lebanese standards. It is going to be difficult for either of them to get married, unless it is to a foreigner. In Lebanon, marriage is what I would call quasi-arranged. A boy decides he wants to get married. He tells his parents, who put the word out to the entire family. A search for the appropriate girl begins. The right family, the right background, the right culture are considered. When an appropriate girl is found, the boy and his family pay the girl and her family a visit. If the boy and girl like each other, they start dating for a couple of months, no sex, of course, only dinner and maybe a movie. They get married only if both approve of each other.

  The girls have had a number of suitors. They have not had a single date with any of them, though. My sister’s trick is to simply disappear when suitors arrive. If she has not managed to leave the house before they arrive, she simply jumps in the bathtub and dunks her hair. S
he then spends the next three hours fixing her hair to be presentable. Marwa is more straightforward. She simply comes out, meets the boy, looks straight at him, and asks him something like, “Do you think Kierkegaard meant we can only resolve the mind-body dichotomy through faith, and faith alone, which would mean Schopenhauer was wrong, or do you think he meant there is no resolution, or do you think he was ignorant to even ask the question, since Kant says there is no dichotomy, it is all an illusion?” The mother wraps her boy, even if he does have an erection, and takes him home.

  The girls are part of the war generation. They left Lebanon and saw the world. Would they be able to make the adjustments or would the country accommodate them? They both dated while they were here, but neither would consider it serious. They were never able to completely shed their indigenous relationship with their culture.

  They are a new breed, a new species. I remember Kurt asking them a couple of years ago whose suffering was greater—­Marwa’s, whose family was shattered at an early age, or Nawal’s, who experienced it later. They looked at Kurt as if he were completely nuts.

  …

  I just read the peace plan in Lebanon between Hizballah and Israel. It sounds like a tag team professional wrestling match with too many referees.

  …

  A paleographic document was unearthed from the ruins of downtown Beirut. Dr. Ullano Signori, an orthographer from Bari, was finally able to decipher it. The message read:

  The truth is that we all live by leaving behind; no doubt we all profoundly know that we are immortal and that sooner or later every man will do all things and know everything.

  That was followed by an indecipherable paragraph. It was written in a language unknown to man. Dr. Signori suggested that it was the author’s intent to obfuscate the message.

  The last paragraph read as follows:

  What one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men. For that reason a disobedience done in a garden contaminates the human race; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew suffices to save it. Perhaps Schopenhauer is right: I am all others, any man is all men.

  Dr. Signori was flabbergasted when he deciphered the title of the document. It was called Ficciones. He wondered what an Argentine was doing in Phoenicia.

  …

  The war started. No one was sure what was going to happen. My parents kept discussing whether I should leave and study abroad. Karim left for Washington, DC. That is where I was born. He enrolled at George Washington University. I missed him already.

  I stayed in Beirut till I graduated from high school. The war made everything very difficult. I went to university in France. It was there I reestablished contact with Karim.

  I was living in a flat with four other guys, all French. One day, he just appeared at my door. He was in Paris on the way to Beirut for Easter break. It was as if we had never parted. If we were close at one time, we were now even closer, for the age difference was no longer significant. He was still as handsome as ever. He was there for only a day, so we spent the whole time just catching up. That night, he spent it with me, in my own bed. We did not have sex, of course, as I was still too afraid to tell anybody. I was definitely terrified of telling him anything. That night, we got high again, in our underwear, and he played guitar just for me.

  I went to visit him the following year. I spent a week with him. I stayed at his apartment, of course, and spent the nights in his bed. Even though it was my hometown, so to speak, he played the perfect host. He still had not graduated. I didn’t think he really ever wanted to. He was having a wild time. He owned a motorcycle. He was very popular with the girls, and made sure to show me all his past conquests.

  During that week, we took the shuttle to New York City. I had never been to New York. I wanted to see everything. He wanted to fuck a prostitute. He called a whorehouse he had heard of. We went there. He picked the sexiest hooker and I had to settle for one that was barely passable. An hour later he was bragging he came three times. I admitted I came only once. I did not admit I barely came once. There was a knock on the door when my hour had passed, and the prostitute asked me if I was sure I wanted to come. The poor thing must have had lockjaw. She had been sucking my dick for an hour and I did not come. I finally masturbated myself to orgasm.

  On the way back to DC in the evening, the stewardess was infatuated with Karim. She told him he looked like Rex Reed, except his eyes were prettier. She slipped him her phone number.

  I did not see him again for another eighteen months. I went back to DC to check out Georgetown University. That was where I wanted to get my graduate degree. I stayed with him for another week. I was more in love with him than ever. He considered me his closest friend. We spent many a night in his bed. He did not want to have sex with his girlfriend at the time because she refused to have sex with both of us at the same time. He said we would move in together if I went to school there.

  One night still sticks in my memory. I woke up when I felt him hugging me. He had his arms around me, his chest snuggling to my back, and his erection plastered on my butt. Only our briefs stood in the way. He was sleeping soundly. I had the courage to actually put my hand between us and touch his erection. He rolled back over to his side of the bed. I took his hand and held it in mine. I loved him so much. He woke up. I pretended to be asleep.

  The next day, he asked me if I realized at one point during the night, I had held his hand. I told him I had not realized that. He dropped the subject.

  I was accepted at Georgetown. I called him to tell him I was coming over. I had decided to tell him everything. We were going to be living in the same town, most probably in the same apartment. I was going to tell him I was gay. I was going to tell him I was in love with him, had been since the day I met him. I felt more confident. I was coming out of the closet.

  He never returned my call.

  I got a call from my mother. She said she had some bad news. She said my friend Karim died in a motorcycle accident. He was so drunk he actually drove right into a wall.

  I was devastated.

  About a year later, I had a man in my apartment in DC. We were lying in bed together, after a fairly dull sexual assignation. He happened to look at my nightstand and notice a picture of Karim.

  “He was a handsome man,” he said. “Was he a lover?” I told him he was my best friend.

  “It was sad how he died, wasn’t it?”

  “Did you know him?” I asked incredulously.

  “Not really. He just hung around the Spike. He never went home with anybody. Nobody I know of ever had sex with him. He just hung around and got drunk.”

  “He hung around a gay bar?” My voice betrayed me.

  “Oh yeah. He got drunk at the Spike the night he died. We all saw him hit the wall.”

  …

  I pine for pine. That is a funny way of putting it, but I really do miss the smell of pine. There are various trees back home, each with its own charm, yet it is the pine trees I miss. Specifically, I miss the scent of pine trees. And, contrary to what most Americans assume, they do not smell like house-cleaning detergents. I do miss the olive trees, and I do miss the oaks. I also miss the cedars. However, it is the smell of pine that gets me. It calls me home.

  I pine for pine.

  …

  Oh, my heart, do not rise up to bear witness against me!

  This is an inscription from the Book of the Dead. It’s good, isn’t it?

  …

  An hour later. Arjuna and his charioteer, Krsna, on the battlefield. They are now joined by Eleanor Roosevelt, Krishnamurti, Julio Cortázar, and Tom Cruise, who looks a little lost.

  ARJUNA:Why me?

  KRSNA:What do you mean?

  ARJUNA:Why me? Why do all things have to happen to me?

  KRSNA:Oy vey

  KRISHNAMURTI:Is he still singing the sam
e tune?

  ELEANOR:He’s been like this for the last half hour.

  ARJUNA:Go ahead. Make fun of me. Go ahead. You all think you are so smart and know everything. I just want to understand.

  JULIO:What’s there to understand? I told you, understanding is an intellectual requirement, nothing more.

  ELEANOR:Go out and kill your cousins.

  KRSNA:Stop trying to make sense out of everything. Nothing makes sense.

  TOM:Why me?

  ELEANOR:Oh, shut up.

  ARJUNA:Why me, O God, why me?

  KRSNA:Because you are a soldier.

  …

  It was humid, a sweltering day. She was beginning to regret her decision. The taxi had moved barely a hundred meters in the last half hour. She was perspiring profusely. It was going to be an unusually bad summer. They would probably have to go up to the mountains sooner than they thought.

  She wondered if she should turn back. They would understand if she did not make it. She had only said she would try. “Why don’t you come over for lunch tomorrow?” Marie-Christine had said. “There will he so many people you haven’t seen in years. It would he like the good old days.”

  There were so many people crossing. She wondered who all these people were. Traffic was backed up in both directions. Some were obviously going to work, some were probably visiting friends. So many people.

  Crossing the infamous Green Line.

  She was born thirty years ago, on the other side, in Furn Ishibek. There were no sides then, of course. One city, her city, Beirut. She was a true Beiruti. Even though many people were born and raised in Beirut, they were not Beirutis. To be one, you had to be from a family who had always been one. One would be able to tell from the name where someone was from, which city or village, even if that person had never been to that village. That was where his family was from, that was where he was from. She was not married to a Beiruti though. He was from the South. In her blood, no matter what others say, she is still Beiruti.