Koolaids

by Rabih Alameddine

  …

  Nabokov told me in an unguarded moment, “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”

  I was born in Beirut, the fifth son of my parents. I was the youngest child for the longest time. Nawal was born when I was twelve. Even after five sons, my father blamed my mother for having a girl. He was part of a generation that was supposed to have been extinct. He believed in continuing the legacy of his forefathers. He should have joined them.

  My sister was a difficult birth. My mother did not recover easily. The doctors recommended an extended period of rest, which was patently impossible in our household. She continued to take care of the entire household for the next two years while she recuperated. I helped with my sister. For the first two years, I was my sister’s nanny, diaper changer, baby-sitter, teacher, and all around play toy.

  I left my family when I was fifteen, not knowing it was final. The war had started. I was sent to Los Angeles to be with my uncle and finish high school. I moved to San Francisco, attending the San Francisco Art Institute, in 1977. I could not afford to visit home during my college years. My father refused to help me financially to go to art school. I worked full time at various jobs to support myself, until my first show at Heller. After that show, I stopped having to worry about money or family. I gained financial independence and lost my roots.

  …

  My father came to visit me in Washington in the fall of 1983. I was nervous for three months prior to his arrival. I had to de-gay my apartment completely. It was not an arduous task, for I was not completely out of the closet then. Still, I worried endlessly. Cleaning out my books took the most time. I got a cardboard box to hide in my basement. In it, I placed Baldwin, Proust, Mishima, and Wilde. I even threw in Yourcenar’s books just in case. Two days before he arrived, I panicked. I sent Nabokov’s Pale Fire down as well. I did not wish to risk anything. Charles Kinbote could disinter me.

  He tried to treat me like a man and I did not feel like one. He was proud of me and I felt I shamed him. He wanted us to be friends and I wanted him in Beirut.

  I had never spent that much time alone with him. Hell, I do not think I had spent more than a couple of minutes alone with him my entire life.

  Washington was his town. This was where he graduated from college. It was where he taught. It was where they conceived me. It was where he betrayed me.

  I lived in a one bedroom. He asked me to disappear for a couple of hours. He wanted to recapture old times with an old flame. In my bed. Three times in the two weeks he spent with me. We were peers. I was a man now. I did not feel like one.

  I wanted to understand. It was a different culture. He was a good man. My mother loved him. He loved my mother. Who was I to judge?

  I judged.

  Five years later, I was able to watch his face when I told him about the virus. His face contorted in pain when he finally believed me. I wanted him to rage. I could handle rage. I did not know how to handle pain.

  I wanted him to rage, but I never did.

  I told him I was a man now. I told him I was not like him. He sat there and cried. I had expected everything but that. I wanted to be in Washington, in my own bed.

  I asked him once if he ever forgave me. He said there was nothing to forgive.

  I wonder if he ever forgave me.

  …

  My country is being torn apart by packs of wild dogs, and my countrymen are apathetic.

  …

  Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

  Jimmy Baldwin wrote me that in one of his endless letters. I love the man, but he wrote really long letters. I wrote back, “Baldy boy [that was what I always called him], I loved the fact you wrote mosques instead of churches. I feel you are finally seeing the light.”

  …

  Scott never wrote. He even hated writing letters. He was a reader. He enjoyed reading. It was his one true passion. He felt that if he ever wrote, he would lose the pleasure. He didn’t want to risk it. I understood. I rarely enjoyed looking at painting.

  …

  East Beirut is Christian. West Beirut is mostly Muslim, but still fairly pluralistic. They have killed and kidnapped a number of Christians in West Beirut, but its nature remained more accepting of its heterogeneous population. They forcibly evicted all nonChristians out of East Beirut. They sanitized it. East Beirut is cleaner, tidier, more orderly, and antiseptic. They have no slums or refugee camps. They razed them.

  If sterility is your cup of tea, then you would like East Beirut. It’s like a smaller Marin County.

  …

  March 13th, 1995

  Dear Diary,

  Lamia Ghaleb came by to visit today and relayed a disturbing rumor. She had heard about a man in Beirut who had sex with his Filipino maid and got AIDS. He then gave it to his wife. His son also had sex with the maid and he got AIDS. Only the daughter in that family is uninfected. What a disaster. I hope it is not true.

  …

  Amin Bagdady was a hairdresser, a homosexual. He was by far the best in Beirut. His sexuality was rarely an issue with his clientele. It actually was rarely an issue with anybody. There were the jokes and whispers, but few made a big deal out of it. His family pretended to ignore it.

  Being the best hairdresser, he was somewhat of a celebrity. His social life was pretty active because of that. The women who came to see him were the who’s who of Beirut.

  It was not until the Israeli siege of Beirut that he was truly loved. The Israelis had cut off the water and electricity. Most of his clients, but not all, had left the city. While the Israelis bombed the population, while everybody was terrified, wondering if they would be able to survive the onslaught, he kept his shop open. He had a small generator which provided power and he used cases of bottled water he had hoarded in preparation for just such an emergency. As the population of West Beirut ran thirsty, as they were walking around, unable to do laundry or shower, Amin’s clients remained well coifed and well dyed. You could tell one of his clients from a distance simply by her hair. He became a hero.

  Both he and his shop survived the Israeli bombing. He did not survive their withdrawal, however. He was murdered by Druze militiamen while visiting his relatives in his hometown, in one of the numerous massacres that occurred after the withdrawal.

  …

  Bashir Salaheddine

  P.O. Box 892

  Beirut, Lebanon

  Mr. Samir Bashar,

  920 29th Street NW

  Washington, DC 20007

  Dear Samir,

  I apologize for the delay in answering your letter. In my old age, I do not like writing letters as much as I used to. It took me a while to gather my thoughts and find the courage to write you back.

  I cannot tell you how happy I was to receive your note. Your mother brought it to me the day after she returned. Few members of the family are interested in our history. I have been patiently waiting for someone to ask me even a simple question. You were the first. So let me start by answering your questions before I delve into more personal matters.

  You are right. Our families, both your father’s and mother’s, are descendants of the Tanoukh family. Most Druze families are descendants from the Tanoukhis, who were originally Arab tribes that migrated to Lebanon during the Abassid Dynasty to defend the coastal cities from Byzantine armies. You are right, as well, that they did rule part of Mount Lebanon for four hundred years, but they also ruled Beirut as well during that same period. During that time, they fought the Crusaders and the Turkmans. I believe this should fill some of the blank
s in your research so far. Please do not hesitate to ask me any more questions. You do have to ask them quickly, though. Unlike our ancestor, Emir Salaheddine Amin bin Chazy Al-Tanoukhi, who lived for a hundred and twelve vital years, I do not believe I will reach my centennial.

  The questions you have raised in your note are justifiable. I am being presumptuous in telling you this, since, after all, you are the historian. However, I do feel having been educated in the United States may have distanced you from your actual subject. That could work to your advantage, as well as disadvantage. My education was in France (a long, long time ago!) which kept me in my environment for the most part. The reason you have found so many inaccuracies is easy for us to understand, although a little difficult for you. The manuscripts you are reading were written by narrators, not historians. Few people wrote about history in Lebanon. All of the writers who did were Christians, with a couple of exceptions. They were the only ones who were educated. In the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church helped the Christians open a school of theology in Rome. The monks of Lebanon studied there and returned to Lebanon to open schools in the mountains and teach theology. The Druze had no opportunity for education until the eighteenth century. From all the manuscripts you listed, all two hundred and thirty-two, only one was written by a Druze. There are others, of course, and I am attaching copies of everything I have to this letter. You do get the point, however. The Christian prejudice ran amok. They did some of the finest work in keeping records about Lebanon, but we need to be careful about considering them completely accurate.

  I have to tell you how proud I am of the work you are doing. It was such a joy to receive your note and the research you have accomplished so far. I thought nobody in the family cared one way or another about our history. To find that someone was willing to put such an effort to bring forth our history brought joy to my heart. That the effort came from you was a double pleasure.

  I do not have to tell you what uproar your last visit caused. Most of the family members have been unable to stop talking about it for the last couple of years. As you know, many refuse to have anything to do with you anymore. I was glad to find out at least your parents were somewhat understanding. I have received a number of calls chastising me for wanting to reply to your letter. For an old man like me, this has been a lot of fun, I can tell you!

  I realize this might be a painful subject for you. I hope not. I hope you have adjusted to the way things are. Most of the members of the family, even those who shun you, are decent people. They just have never had to face someone with your courage. I do think it was courageous of you. I assume you know you are not the first. Your uncle was that way too. Of course, he died a bitter man. It was sad watching him suffer so much. I have been wondering how to say this, but I guess you have figured out by now where this is going. I, too, am a homosexual. I have been for the ninety-three years of my life. I just have not done anything about it. Unlike your uncle, I am not a bitter man. I married a wonderful woman and had a good life. I loved my wife very much and I still do my children. I did regret at times not having shared my bed with a man even once, but after a while, even those feelings dimmed. You do realize this is the first time I have ever told anybody, other than my departed wife, of course. At my age, I no longer care what others think.

  I hope you can pardon the rambling of an old man. I needed to write what I did. As I said earlier, the fact that the request came from you, the one who is accused of ending the family line completely (You bad boy!), amuses me to no end.

  I realize you may be facing some hard times, but keep your head up. You are a prince. You are Emir Samir Basil Bashar. I know that titles do not mean much anymore these days. Nonetheless, they should mean something to you. You are still a prince. God gave you that title.

  I understand you are living with someone. I hope you two are happy together. I know it is practically impossible for you to bring him here when you next visit. I would have liked to meet him. Who knows? I am still in good health. Maybe I can arrange a trip to America at some point. It would be nice to visit you and meet your friend. I might be able to visit San Francisco. That has always been a dream of mine.

  Please write again soon. The mail does work here sometimes. I did enjoy hearing from you. I hope this letter finds you in good health.

  Sincerely,

  Your great-great-uncle!

  Bashir Salaheddine

  …

  I would have canceled the exhibit if I could. The gallery refused to even entertain the idea. Scott had just died, but the exhibit had been set for months. I flew to New York to set it up. I told the gallery I would be flying back the minute the exhibit was completely hung. I was not attending the opening reception.

  As usual, we finished hanging the exhibit barely on time. It was only hours before the opening reception. I went to the hotel to pack. I ended up in the bar drinking. I was drunk when I decided to attend the reception and insult a few people.

  I arrived while the reception was in full swing. I walked across the gallery to the open bar. I asked for a double Scotch on the rocks. The director, Jana, asked me if I hadn’t had enough. I waited till I swallowed the whole thing before saying no.

  I scanned the whole room. I saw my mother staring at me. I laughed at myself. My mother was never this young. That reproving look was my mother’s.

  “Hey you,” I scream across the room. “I painted you.”

  She walks towards me, sizing me up.

  “Look,” I tell Jana, pointing at one of the paintings. “I painted her. I paint her all the time.”

  “You’re drunk,” the girl says softly. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”

  I am so confused. I can’t reply. I haven’t spoken in Arabic in so long. I want to ask who she is. I know her. I know I know her. I can’t place her. I can’t think straight anymore. She takes my hand.

  “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go to my place. You can sleep it off.”

  I want to say something, but the language fails me. I struggle. The words come out in Arabic.

  “I killed him.”

  “Let’s go home.”

  My sister leads me out by the hand. I weep.

  …

  She picked up the phone.

  “Hello.”

  “I got your message.”

  “How did you get my number?”

  “Come on, Samia. It’s not that difficult to get what you want in Beirut.”

  She composed herself.

  “Don’t call me here, please,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Can I come see you?”

  “No. What is the matter with you? I don’t want to see you.”

  “But I do.” he said. Still jovial, even on the phone.

  “You are crazy. You know they would kill you if you cross.” “You think you would be able to hire someone?”

  “I wouldn’t have to. I found out who you are. There are a million people here who would love to get their hands on you.”

  “I love it,” he laughed heartily. “You care about me.”

  “You’re crazy. Absolutely nuts. I’m going to hang up now. Don’t call me again.”

  She hung up the phone.

  …

  Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him.

  The mild-mannered E. M. Forster said that. Eddy knew a thing or two.

  …

  There were only five of us who started the history doctoral program at Georgetown in 1983. By the second year, we were only four. We rarely hung out together socially. I was having a difficult time reintroducing myself to my countrymen. I left Washington when I was seven, came back when I was twenty-one. The change, in the city and in me, was palpable.

  There was one girl in the program who intrigued me. She had an intellect far superior to mine. Her family was Catholic, blue blood from New England. Of
course, she was loud, scruffy, obnoxious, and fun to be around. I probably was the only guy in the department she had not slept with. Her name was Wanda, but everybody called her Wicked.

  January, 1984, was a hell of a cold month. I was leaving class and going home, when I heard her call my name. I saw her running at me, wearing a camel’s hair coat, which made her seem twice her natural size. Her dark hair blowing in the brumal wind. She wore a long canary yellow scarf, Isadora Duncan–style, which was the only color I saw for miles around that bleak day.

  “Samir, darling.” She kissed my cheek. “How are you doing?” The voice of the charmer. She had never used it on me before. I figured she wanted something.

  “I’m doing okay, Wicked. The weather is somewhat depressing.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked me.

  “Home.”

  She put her arm in mine. It made me somewhat uncomfortable. I steadied myself. It was time I told the truth. It was time I put the sign above my head. I am a homosexual. “Would you mind if I walked with you a bit? I want to talk to you about something.”

  “Sure thing,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind the company.”

  It was cold. We walked huddled together.

  “I have a favor to ask you.”

  “What is it?” I prepared myself for what was coming. I am gay, I am gay, I practiced in my mind.

  “There is this real cute guy I am interested in.”

  “Oh.” I practiced nonchalance. I had not gotten used to a girl hitting on me.

  “He is a great guy. I think he likes me, but I think he is gay.”

  “Oh, really?” This was proving difficult.

  “Well, you know how it is. He treats me the same way you do. So I figured maybe you can help. I thought maybe if you met him, you would be able to tell for sure. You know, the gay thing. You can tell each other and so on.”