(The waiter brings the coffee. They completely ignore him.)
AMAL:That’s wonderful. Is he going to move back here or live in Boston?
SYLVIE:It’s here in Paris. It’s wonderful. I am sure he will have to fly to Boston every now and then.
AMAL:I am so happy for you. If he does fly to Boston, tell him to look up Murwan.
SYLVIE:Is he still at MIT?
AMAL:Yes. He should be done with his master’s in a couple of years.
SYLVIE:You must be so proud of him.
AMAL:I am. I am, darling. He is just so bright.
SYLVIE:So what is the latest?
AMAL:Not much. Things have been slow in Beirut.
SYLVIE:That is not always a bad thing.
AMAL:I know. Did you hear that Marie-Christine’s eldest son got married?
SYLVIE:Yes, of course. How was the wedding? I heard they spent a fortune.
AMAL:They sure did. Would you believe three million dollars?
SYLVIE:You have to be kidding.
AMAL:No. I swear.
SYLVIE:Are they that rich?
AMAL:My dear, where have you been? The Ballans are loaded. From Africa. Their main business is in Liberia. Pharmaceuticals, car dealerships, gas stations, rubber plants, you name it. They are very rich. They practically run that country. They were the first Lebanese there.
SYLVIE:I bet it was awful.
AMAL:Awful does not begin to describe it. A complete disaster. You should have seen the dress. It cost half a million dollars and it was the ugliest thing.
SYLVIE:Half a million? My God, who designed it?
AMAL:You’re not going to believe it. (Pause.) Some American designer.
SYLVIE:American?
(Amal nods her head. They are looking at each other, when they both start laughing. Not too loudly. It lasts for at least a minute. Sylvie tries to stop laughing. She places her hand on Amal’s hand, hoping to control herself. They stop for a second. Then they have another fit of giggling.)
SYLVIE:Why? My God, why would they do that?
AMAL:They wanted something different, they said. For that kind of money, they could have had a Montana.
SYLVIE:A Léger.
AMAL:A Versace.
SYLVIE:That poor girl.
AMAL:No, my dear. Poor Marie-Christine. Just imagine what she had to go through at that wedding.
SYLVIE:Oh, the poor dear.
AMAL:The Ballan girl is incredibly ugly. I can’t imagine what her son saw in her.
SYLVIE:As ugly as the Bandoura girl?
AMAL:No, my dear, that one is really ugly. This one is close, though.
SYLVIE:That one was so ugly. I couldn’t believe she found a husband.
AMAL:Money, dear, money. Daddy has money.
SYLVIE:All I have to say is Patrick better not bring me some ugly girl. I would have none of it.
AMAL:Is he seeing anybody?
SYLVIE:Not right now. He was seeing an English girl for a while. I put a stop to that.
AMAL:Good for you. You don’t want people to talk too much.
SYLVIE:I’ll find him a suitable girl when the time comes.
AMAL:So how is Manal?
SYLVIE:She gained all the weight she lost.
AMAL:I thought she was on a strict diet.
SYLVIE:Not anymore.
(Sylvie opens her purse and offers Amal a cigarette, and takes one herself. Amal uses her designer lighter to light both of them.)
SYLVIE:What else is going on?
AMAL:Not much. Amin Dabyan is getting married.
SYLVIE:He’s such a handsome boy. Who’s the fool?
AMAL:The same girl he’s been going out with for years.
SYLVIE:The Makarem girl? I would think her father would not approve.
AMAL:Oh, he doesn’t. There is not much he can do. She’s a headstrong girl.
SYLVIE:But she was married once before.
AMAL:Yes. It lasted six months.
SYLVIE:And her father still lets her do what she wants?
AMAL:They both are heavy cocaine users, so her father just doesn’t know what to do.
SYLVIE:She was always trouble. She was in Janine’s class. She was trouble then.
AMAL:Well, here’s a tidbit that will amuse you, dear. They are saying her first marriage was not consummated.
SYLVIE:What?
AMAL:That’s what the Dabyans are saying. Her first marriage was not consummated. She is still a virgin.
SYLVIE:What?
(Repeat the first laughing scene. Amal nods her head. They look at each other and start laughing. It goes on for a while as they try to compose themselves.)
SYLVIE:She’s still a virgin?
AMAL:That’s what they say.
SYLVIE:And the abortion she had before she got married the first time?
AMAL:It never happened.
SYLVIE:Will miracles never cease?
(More laughter. Amal takes out some tissues from her purse and gives one to Sylvie. They both wipe tears from their eyes delicately.)
SYLVIE:I guess her first child will proclaim himself to be the Lord, as well.
AMAL:No chance. After the abortion, something went wrong. She can’t have any more children.
SYLVIE:I didn’t know that. Why would the boy want to marry her then?
AMAL:Must be the money or the drugs. They have been doing the nasty for a couple of years.
SYLVIE:Yes, but she remains a virgin.
AMAL:Absolutely.
SYLVIE:You know that slut, and I do use the description judiciously, was not a virgin when she was in Janine’s class. She must have been fourteen or fifteen, and was sleeping around then.
AMAL:Speaking of sluts, you know the youngest Takla girl, Samira?
SYLVIE:Who is she sleeping with now?
AMAL:I don’t know his name, but he is seventeen.
SYLVIE:Oh, my God. How old is she? Twenty-four?
AMAL:Something like that.
SYLVIE:Tragic. Tragic. Anyway, I have some news. Do you know Fadia’s boy?
AMAL:The homosexual?
SYLVIE:You knew he was homosexual?
AMAL:Of course, dear. Well, suspected really. How old is he? Thirty? A bachelor living in California?
SYLVIE:That’s true. But I never wanted to say anything. Too embarrassing for Fadia. Anyway, he has AIDS.
AMAL:No?
SYLVIE:It’s true. It’s gotten to the point where he couldn’t hide it anymore.
AMAL:Poor Fadia. What is she going to do?
SYLVIE:She’s telling everybody he has leukemia.
AMAL:The poor thing. She’s probably going through hell. Everybody will start talking behind her back.
SYLVIE:I felt so sorry for her. I saw her last week. She pretended everything was okay, but you could tell.
AMAL:Poor Fadia.
SYLVIE:This topic is too distressing. What do you want to do? Do you want to go to the Faubourg and see what they have?
SYLVIE:Yes, that sounds lovely. Where’s our waiter?
AMAL:Probably resting. These French work so hard.
(Both giggle.)
SYLVIE:You’re coming with us to dinner, right?
AMAL:No, I can’t.
SYLVIE:You must. I won’t have it. You must come.
AMAL:Are you sure?
SYLVIE:I must insist.
AMAL:Okay. I’ll break my diet for tonight only.
SYLVIE:Good girl. Now, where’s that damn waiter?
I never wrote that play. I did not know how. I sat for days, trying to figure how to put words on paper, but to no avail.
…
The music co
mes back again. Voluptuous. The violins sing. A siren’s song. The dark is all enveloping. The time is near.
…
March 19th, 1996
Dear Diary,
I am unable to stop feeling guilty. Mark tells me it is normal. Bless him, he has been so helpful. I still am unable to stop these bad feelings. I feel I have been a bad mother.
What mother would wish her son dead? I wished Samir dead. I kept hoping it would be all over. I tried to suppress those feelings during his last month. They kept popping up. I could not control them.
I sometimes rationalize it by saying he was dying anyway. There was no hope. He was suffering and I prayed for his death to end his suffering. In reality, I wished for his death to end my suffering. I wanted to come back to Beirut. I hate to admit it, and I pray for God’s forgiveness, but he became an inconvenience. I wished it was over.
Mark says that is quite common. Even he felt that at times. But he was my son. I loved him so much. I know Mark loved him, but it is not the same thing. I just pray Samir never realized what I was thinking at the end.
I am weak. I have always been weak. What can I say? I hope he can forgive me.
…
The city was not completely divided yet when my cousin Neyla drove back from her job in a bank on the East side to her house on the West. There was heavy traffic. They must have installed a new checkpoint.
As her car got closer to the bottleneck, she saw the militiamen. She was terrified. As she got even closer, she realized this would be her last day. It was a scene from the Apocalypse. The militiamen would look at the ID card. They would then either let the car pass or ask it to park at the side. When the car was parked, more armed men would ask the passengers to get out of the car. They would ask them to move next to a dead pile. They would then shoot them, adding to the dead pile, men, women, and children. A couple of militiamen would then drive the cars to a parking lot, clearing space for new cars. But the pile kept growing. The victims followed orders.
The fear you experience when you are about to face a violent death is indescribable. You shake, uncontrollably. You sweat, profusely. You lose control of motor coordination. Your bowels fail you. You either are unable to speak or blabber continuously.
Neyla was the next car coming up. The car in front of her passed. It was her turn. The militiaman asked for her ID when she heard a young man’s voice say, “Let her pass. She used to be my neighbor.” Georges smiled at her and waved her through. She was weeping uncontrollably when she heard Georges tell another boy, “Her sister was the best fuck.”
…
“Let there be light!” said God, and there was light!
“Let there be blood!” says man, and there’s a sea!
Hail Lord Byron, an honest bisexual.
…
When the Israelis entered the mountains, they encountered the least resistance. It was not because the Druze were not fierce fighters. The Israelis simply sent in their own Druze contingents first. There were a few Druze battalions in the Israeli army. The part of Lebanon which had rarely been conquered through the ages was like a cakewalk for the invading Israeli Army. The two staunch defenders of the mountains, the Maronites and the Druze, were not fighting. The Maronites were the Israeli allies and the Druze could not fire on relatives from across the border.
Mrs. Talhouk lived in a house, on the edge of Ain Unoub, a small Druze town. Her house had miraculously escaped any damage throughout the war. When the Israelis were outside her village, they sent warning that they were going to bomb, because they knew terrorists were hiding in the village. They advised the villagers if their house had no terrorists, they should raise a visible white flag on top of the house. They would try not to shell whiteflagged houses. Mrs. Talhouk took out all her white bed sheets and towels, and hung them on the laundry lines on her roof. Every fifteen minutes she would run up to the roof, like a hysterical woman, and shake the sheets, hoping they would be seen by the Israelis. It became an obsession.
Mrs. Talhouk’s house survived the Israeli invasion. It did not survive New Jersey. When the Israelis withdrew, the massacres between the Druze and Maronites, which became known as the War of the Mountain, began. The Druze seemed to be winning, when the Americans got involved in the war, openly. They used the New Jersey battleship’s sixteen-inch guns to bomb Druze villages. All it took was one sixteen-inch shell to destroy her home. It was a two-hundred-year-old house.
America entered the Lebanese Civil War. It paid the price. Two hundred marines were killed by one Shiite. Reagan pulled the troops and avoided discussing Lebanon. Lebanon, like AIDS, was hardly ever mentioned by our president.
…
Borges said things lost their detail when people forgot them. A stone threshold lasted as long as it was visited by a beggar, and faded from sight on his death. Occasionally, a few birds have saved the ruins of an amphitheater.
Calvino said a book does not exist if it is not read.
Sandra Bernhard said without you, she’s nothing.
So kiss my ass, motherfuckers. Yippy kay yay.
…
I would like to show you an editorial from the Jerusalem Post. It explains the current political situation in Lebanon fairly well.
Lebanon First
Editorial
(August 13, 1996)—Syria’s rejection of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s proposal to resume peace talks based on the concept of “Lebanon first” should lay to rest any illusions in the West about President Hafez Assad’s desire for peace with Israel. By rejecting such an eminently reasonable and sensible overture, the Syrian dictator has demonstrated once again that he is in no particular rush to come to terms.
Netanyahu’s proposal is that Israel and Syria should resume talks in the U.S. in an effort to build trust and inspire mutual confidence between the two sides. The prime minister stated that Israel would he prepared to withdraw its troops from the security zone in southern Lebanon if three conditions are met: the disarming of Hizhallah, the deployment of the Lebanese army to the international border with Israel, and the granting of guarantees concerning the protection of Israel’s Christian allies in southern Lebanon.
As the prime minister noted in his address, the situation in Lebanon is truly Kafkaesque. Netanyahu stated, “Here is a situation where the Israeli prime minister announces that he wants to withdraw from the territory of an Arab state–Lebanon. But the Syrian government, together with the Lebanese, are opposing this withdrawal.”
Indeed, one cannot help but wonder whether Syria, its rhetoric notwithstanding, is truly interested in an Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. The presence of Israeli forces in Lebanon provides the Assad regime with a rallying cry, and enables Syria to justify the presence of its own occupation army, which controls two-thirds of Lebanese soil.
Were Israel to withdraw, international pressure would almost certainly mount on Syria to pull back its forces as well, something that Assad, who views Lebanon as part and parcel of Greater Syria, is not particularly inclined to do. Leaving Lebanon would also require Syria to give up on the profitable opium and hashish industry that it oversees and cultivates in the Beka’a Valley, which has proven to be an important source of revenue for senior Syrian officials.
Netanyahu’s proposal should also help remove doubts about his diplomatic skills. Less than two months into his administration, Netanyahu has shrewdly succeeded in maneuvering the Syrian leader firmly into a corner, forcing the latter to come across as the rejectionist in the eyes of the world. This is no small achievement, given Assad’s reputation for being a clever and calculating political operator. By placing the ball squarely in Assad’s court, and outfoxing him in the process, Netanyahu has demonstrated not only that he is interested in peace, but that he can also play the game of international diplomacy with the best of them.
Personally, I loved the word Kafkaesque. I am not sure the
situation in Lebanon is truly Kafkaesque. I don’t think Kafka could have possibly thought of a scenario like Lebanon, with the Israelis and Syrians.
I also loved that Netanyahu can play the game of international diplomacy. Now I can sleep better at night.
…
I was sitting, smoking a pipe by the fire, when Updike asked me, “What more fiendish proof of cosmic irresponsibility than a Nature which, having invented sex as a way to mix genes, then permits to arise, amid all its perfumed and hypnotic inducements to mate, a tireless tribe of spirochetes and viruses that torture and kill us for following orders?”
“You said a mouthful, John,” I replied. “How else would we become adults?”
John nodded approvingly. We had these conversations often, Updike and I. I provided him with an invaluable service.
…
I wanted to write a book once. It was to be a biography of Jean Genet as he died of AIDS complications. There were many biographies of him, so I never began the book.
I decided to write a roman à clef. It was to be the story of Ronald Reagan as he grew up in Lebanon. It was more a love story than a biography. Ronald meets Nancy Davis, a third-rate Lebanese actress who has been in a few Egyptian television series. They fall in love. She tells him to kill a few of his rivals while they are praying in church. He does and is elected president of Lebanon during its years of turmoil. I finished the first chapter of the book, but I could not go on because I was unable to find the published research.
I decided to write a meta-fiction book. I would have to write a book that included every quotation from page 244 till page 328 of The International Thesaurus of Quotations. The quotations do not have to appear in order. The only requirement is every quotation appears at least once as part of the story. I never started that book since I became more interested in writing a short story as an interview with Oscar Wilde, where he would have to answer all my questions with each of his famous quotes.
I saw a Website which listed the winners of the worst-analogies-ever-written-in-a-high-school-essay contest. I decided to write a novelette that included every one of the analogies listed. They were inspiring. I thought the novelette would be magnificent. I listed the analogies for inspiration:
He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
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