The Angel of History

by Rabih Alameddine

  I was inside our apartment in less than a minute, up the stairs without having wiped my shoes on the doormat, which always irritated Odette, and she came out of her room to greet me, but before she could say anything about the muddy prints I had left in my wake, I held up the kitten. Whenever she was anxious or excited, her tongue worried a dark beauty mole just above the right side of her lip, and as soon as she saw the kitten, the aforementioned tongue went into overdrive, she oohed so sweetly. He was the first pet to enter our apartment, the lease is still in your name, Doc, it had a no-pet policy that we had to adhere to, so we didn’t think we were keeping him at first, not till the kitten insisted. Odette had me rush to the pet store two blocks away for food and litter before it closed, and was the kitten grateful? Hell no. Odette had opened a can of tuna and he’d scarfed it down, so when I returned with the cat food, he sniffed at it, raised his black tail, and turned around in utter disdain, a pattern we would repeat over and over, Doc. But he was my baby, mine.

  The next day Odette and I took him to the vet, who suggested that the kitten must have been abandoned by its owners, this was no street urchin, we called around, we searched online, no one had lost a black kitten with luminous golden eyes and a barely visible trace of a silver line across his spine, the boy wasn’t just cute, he was stunning, a prince of darkness, and you know, Doc, his eyes were spectacular and they were not the same, the insane right eye, more greenish gold, seemed to emit sparkles as if it were sprinkled with tiny emeralds, and his left, a calm yellowish gold, seemed to pull you in, looked like an ancient Egyptian artifact, a pharaoh’s jewel, and like all beauties, he double-whammied you with a go-away-a-little-closer look. It was Odette who sweet-talked the landladies, remember them, the older lesbian couple—well, they were old when we moved in and they’re astonishingly old now, and they allowed us to keep the kitten.

  We tried calling him Othello, but the name wouldn’t stick, he was more Iago in any case, his diva nature was apparent from the moment his paws walked our hardwood, but at first we just laughed it off, until the infamous oyster incident, and then, then we understood, we understood that he was no mere diva, he was Satan’s spawn.

  Two weeks after he laid claim to our household and its belongings—broke one wineglass, chewed one sweater, made three pairs of crew socks disappear—a miracle occurred: Odette met Sue, whose spike heels and explosively frizzed hair rang all her bells, Sue, who even in rainy weather wore halter tops devised from impressively inadequate swatches of cloth. They met at a bar and Odette decided to pull out all the stops by cooking a sumptuous dinner for their first official date, I was to disappear, go to a movie, read in the library, she didn’t care as long as I was out of the apartment until after midnight, at which time they would surely be making whoopee in Odette’s room, surely, Odette said, because she was hors-d’oeuvring the guaranteed panties dropper, two dozen fresh aphrodisiac oysters she had brought back from work. Half an hour before Sue was to arrive, Odette shucked all twenty-four; on a large salver covered in crushed ice she organized them in three concentric circles around a small crucible of mignonette, and left all on the kitchen counter. We were not able to discern whether Behemoth loved the taste of oysters or not, because he ate only three of them, but he approved of the brine, having licked all the shells clean; he disliked the mignonette, which he simply spilled, but he must have adored the texture of the mollusks, which he sank his claws into and flung all over the kitchen, all while Odette ran to her room to change into her most seductive outfit. The next day, when I heard about it, I decided the kitten needed a devilish name, Iblis was my first thought, of course, but that seemed wrong, the kitten was naughty, but he was no Satan, he had upset Odette’s plans but she still scored, and the evening ended up better than she could have hoped, so we couldn’t name him Mephistopheles, or Mammon, or Moloch, or Belial, or Woland either.

  A few evenings after the oysterpalooza, when I was alone at home, the kitten attacked the remnant of a stick of butter left on the kitchen table, I saw him lift his head, his whiskers gilded yellow, and I knew his name, the most mischievous Behemoth from Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, the greatest cat in literature. Behemoth, I said, and he meowed back, pleased with himself. It was his name.

  And sometimes, when you call Satan’s cat, his master answers. A single moonbeam seeping through the dusty, perennially unwashed window shone sparsely upon him as he sat at the kitchen table, bright red hair, light blue eyes, different from each other, the right alive and bright, more incubus, a murderous glint in the left that collared you, more succubus, and above those eyes, just beneath the hairline, were barely discolored disks, only a little lighter than the rest of his face, because his horns grew inward, not outward, into his skull, which is why he suffered so often from headaches. He wore an impeccably tailored white summer suit with genuine mother-of-pearl buttons, linen shirt, and an ivory cane topped with the head of a black cat, of course. At first, he just grinned all the time, as if he had something stuck in his teeth, and he snickered when I was lonely. Here I am, he said.

  The Whorehouse

  High above, in the great altitude of dense Sana’a, you could hardly breathe, but I found it more open than the open spaces of the rest of the country, a city boy I was, like most faggots before me. Even as a child I knew I did not fit in beautiful, bucolic Yemen, its mountains or plains, its desert or beaches. Sana’a, on the other hand, may have been charmingly beautiful with its contiguous historic houses sitting in lambent sienna tiers, but it was a city, a nonpretender, bitter and onerous, oppressive, so of course it felt more natural to me. It was old as well as ancient, the Imamate had kept modernity at bay for generations. We did not stay long, but I believe I would have survived there, could have.

  We arrived in a rickety van covered in dust and sand and soot, whose driver, a weather-wrinkled young man sporting a proud mustache dyed with henna, was forced to jam a screwdriver between the glass and its rubber molding to keep the window ajar. We disembarked in the city with few possessions, the clothes on our backs, a most colorful satchel, and my mother’s well-functioning vagina. A question here, a whisper there, a lowering of shy eyes, a gasp of surprise, one of delight, a nod in a general direction, a pointed finger, and within minutes of setting our tattered flat-heeled slippers on the city’s soil, she was knocking on a pinkish-brown door. I remember every detail of that door, with rows of pomegranates carved into its hardwood, its central jamb studded with tarnished bronze pins that needed a good rub with lemon and coarse sea salt to regain their luster, a knocker through which you could hang a dish towel. I remember every aspect of the house and its eccentric decor: the windows framed by white arches, the indoor fresh fountain, the cupolas above the corridors, all inlaid with small black stones, held together with a cement made from white lime. I don’t remember much about its inhabitants, a number of Egyptians, army men, engineers, politicians and advisers, evangelists in their recent beliefs, new converts to socialism, pan-Arabism, and buying sex on the cheap. Of course, what may have been a tiny amount of money to the men was abundance to my mother. She offered her charms earnestly and diligently, and luckily for us, another woman visiting the house took a quick fancy to her, and to me.

  Auntie Badeea did not much care for Sana’a or anything it had to offer, for a militant Cairene, every other city paled, and the Yemeni capital felt to her like nothing more than an oversize hamlet, she did not wish to spend a second more than she had to outside her beloved Cairo. She had come to work with two other women, and she intended to leave Sana’a, the troops, and the two women behind as soon as she made enough money. Three weeks after we arrived, three weeks after my mother had rediscovered her popularity, Auntie Badeea offered her the opportunity of a lifetime, Come with me to Cairo, work in our house, become acclaimed by real gentlemen for a change, and you don’t have to veil your face outdoors, you can wear whatever you wish, it is most modern, in Cairo, God wipes the tears off His children’s faces. We hardly had time to unpack the
one colorful satchel before we were crossing the Red Sea in a rickety boat covered in dust and salt and engine soot, off to the great modern city we went, to Auntie Badeea’s house.

  Faulkner once said that the best job ever offered to him was in a brothel, that it was the best milieu for an artist to work in, Baudelaire agreed of course, and I learned about poetry in the whorehouse. My mother, with me in tow, was welcomed probably for the first time in her life. Being pretty, kind, generous, she was well liked by both the establishment and its customers; being delusional, slightly unhinged, an indiscreet romantic, she fit right in with the rest of my aunties, she finally found a home. If you ask me, those were the happiest days of my life, hard to believe, I know. We lived in a house with other women who came in all colors and cultures and, like the brothel’s furniture, came in all shapes and sizes, my lovely aunties, short and tall aunties, white and black, voluptuous and boyish, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Uzbek, Indian, Yemeni. Most of them, my mother included, sat around in a daze under the hanging lamps, spent half their time in hope and half in waiting, waiting for a miracle that never visited, waiting for something or someone to fly them out of their adopted life. For my mother, that someone was my father, someday her emir would come, and he didn’t, of course, and she forever forgave him, or I think she did.

  Auntie Badeea, on the other hand, didn’t wait for a miracle, she loved her life, and she loved me, older than my mother though not by much, she took me under her wing, more precisely under her skirt, no, not sexual, Doc, I was much too young and she didn’t have that much sex in any case, that’s why she had the time to look after me. She was dark, darker than me, and overweight, which at one point was popular with clients, primarily Egyptians and other Arabs, but as Russians and Europeans began to frequent the house, she was less desired, she lay beyond their longings. Though she went through the prescribed motions every evening, it was merely gesture, a performance for performance’s sake, the motions including painting her face while the men were already in the room, she was the only one who did that. About one hour after evening prayers, she descended the unbanistered stairs into the salon, splayed herself on a duchesse brisée whose bright canary-yellow color clashed with every single thing in the room except for the caged pale-orange canary that rarely sang if there were more than two people around. Once completely comfortable, her heft proportionally distributed about the unusual chaise longue, a Rubenesque odalisque, Auntie Badeea languidly applied her makeup, none of which was store-bought, all natural, organic even, crushed fruits and berries were the lipstick, in a small wooden bowl she mixed galena and other powders for the kohl before her rapt audience, outlined her eyes with a pencil-shaped stick of ivory. European men, Eastern and Western, weren’t the only ones dazzled by the theater, Americans soon joined them, and I too stood mouth open, eyes wide, nostrils flaring, enraptured by beauty and ignored by the men.

  I mention your countrymen, Doc, not to make you feel terrible, but for whatever reason they visited us in disproportionately large numbers, and truly, pleasing them became the main thrust of our establishment, they always overpaid, and because of their lumpen tastes, they weren’t difficult to please. Your people and the Europeans loved watching Auntie Badeea, were mightily entertained, made sure to arrive early whenever they were bringing a newbie so he could witness her great art, but when it came time to withdraw into the private rooms, they redirected their buzzard eyes, they chose to fuck my mother, they sure did. She was younger, prettier, drank Pepsi and 7UP, blushed easily, covered her mouth when giggling, and had just the right touch of nonthreatening exoticness, just a tad. Isn’t that also why you liked me, Doc, my tad of exoticness?

  Since my mother was busy most of the time, Auntie Badeea took care of me. You would think that at some point a younger model would have replaced her, someone who would have been able to provide the house with a steadier and plumper income, but you’d be wrong. Irreplaceable she was, Auntie Badeea spoke passable pimp in a few languages including English. Idiosyncratic she was, those American men loved being around her, found her amusing if not fuckable. An outstanding cook, whenever she approached a stove, God’s stomach would begin to rumble. That was not all, she had a wonderful sense of humor, a lightness of heart, an infectious love of a good joke that I’ve never seen replicated anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, whenever she told a joke, mountains craned their necks and leaned in not wishing to miss a punch line, when she laughed, men wanted to eat her up, but no one wanted to eat her pussy. You Americans are so fucked up, Doc, so fucked up, you have no clue how cruel you are, clueless cruelty.

  Soon after Auntie Badeea finished painting her lady face, she’d joke with the customers, ruckus and raillery and merriment in broken English, goad the undecided into choosing the right girl for his next orgasm, and sit me on her lap, well, on her thigh since she was usually odalisquing. Blow on my face, my sweet Ya’qub, the powder has to dry, sing for me, she’d say, recite Abu Nuwas, I love his poetry but not as much as I love you. When the audience thinned out, she carried me to the kitchen, fed me, made me read aloud to her while I stuffed my mouth with her cooking, poetry, light puerile rhymes first, quite more adult as I grew up, but always rhymes, Arabic poetry always rhymed. She put me in her bed and I slept long before my mother finished satisfying for the night.

  Auntie Badeea usually woke to find me inventing the most elaborate games while sitting on the floor outside my mother’s door, serving tea to Sultan Ahmad, who entertained King George of Britannica, the latter so enthralled by my tea-serving prowess that he wished to steal me from my master, while I demurred and blushed and covered my mouth and giggled. After my fairly ritualized morning ablutions, brush my teeth, wash my face, under my arms, I was forced to read and write in the kitchen while Auntie Badeea sang and hovered around pots heating atop the woodstove like a mother hen with her chicks. Old Egyptian recipes she cooked, flavored with old Egyptian folk songs, she even sang Yemeni folk songs that she learned during her short stay, lovely songs, not like Ofra Haza, remember her, the Israeli singer you used to like to dance to, whom I couldn’t stand, and you insisted she was singing Yemeni songs that she heard while growing up in Tel Aviv, because that’s what the album cover said in clear lettering, yet I hadn’t heard any of those songs before, and you accused me of being insensitive and racist even, and you made me listen to her over and over and over so I couldn’t get the songs out of my head even though I hated them and I hated her, until she died of AIDS, just like all of us, she was just like us, and I felt so guilty for hating her, and I forgave her sins, but I couldn’t forgive mine. Ofra’s songs did not compare well with those of Auntie Badeea, couldn’t measure up, because Auntie’s voice was gravelly like sea pebbles on the beach, ideal for those old melodies. Auntie Badeea’s singsong melodies bore me across the grooves of childhood.

  I sat at the kitchen table with my book or papers, waiting, on the wall an old-fashioned ticking clock, the only visible one since the brothel had Vegas rules, no customer should be able to see the time. I waited, time aged at a chelonian pace when I was a child, I stared at the black hands of the clock, willing them to move, to no avail, I would count to agonizing infinity and back and look up and barely a minute had passed. I remember that clock, round, the size of a salad dish, Arabic numbers on a subdued light gray, an oyster-colored background, I remember the pages in front of me, writing the alphabet slowly, the alef, the standing line, trying to make it fit within the predetermined boundaries, and glancing up at the clock once more and again, understanding that my mother had not woken up. My aunties would stir awake one by one, come down for the late lunch, and my mother would always be the last, always the last. She would be happy to see me, ruffle my most unrufflable hair, but she wasn’t a day person and it would take her a few hours to regain full cheerfulness. Her jellabiya was puce, I still see it so clearly, Doc, so clearly, puce is the French word for flea, it’s the color of bloodstains, and was Marie Antoinette’s favorite because if you squashed a flea on it, you co
uldn’t see the stain, but even though the whorehouse certainly had its share of fleas, I doubt my mother ever considered the connection. She rarely considered much else than what was directly in front of her, which was where I tried to be. I buzzed around her like a hummingbird around its zinnia, Look at me, look at me, her head was usually down, hair covered her face, she would grunt, hum, ah-huh, and yes to everything I said, until she stabbed my heart with an Enough now, or a Can’t you see I’m tired, and I would slouch and begin my second phase of waiting, waiting until she recovered and bloomed.

  Slowly she perked up and began to smile, and as soon as she was able to pay me some mind, the muezzin’s call would echo from the masjid four streets away, time for evening prayers, the only ones that the entire house observed, the prayer rugs unrolled, Auntie Badeea owned the most intricate and my favorite, fine wool woven to depict a white mosque, its blue minaret topped by a delicate golden crescent, my mother’s barely a step up from a straw mat, the women all lined up facing toward Mecca, their foreheads and noses pressed the rugs thrice, while I remained still behind the murmuring hive so as not to distract their humming hearts promising devotion, I waited impatiently for the ritual to finish, hoping for a few seconds of attention, since the end of prayer was the time to get ready for work and the cycle.

  The eternal return, the men returned, my aunties preened, evening in full bloom, Auntie Badeea descended the stairs, the laughter, the merriment, my mother left with a man, other couples paired up in rooms, and Auntie Badeea showered me with adoration, What poem shall you recite for me this evening, she would ask, take care of your Auntie Badeea who loves you most of all. She loved me and she showed it, I loved her right back, but not enough, not enough, because even then, when the Austrian or Australian finished fucking my mother, when the Englishman had left a deposit in one illicit container or another, when the Russian returned to the lounge to wait for friends, to settle up his bill or gather his wits, then the American noticed me, I was there with Auntie Badeea. Such a cute boy, the German, the Swede would say, so adorable. The man looked slightly less kempt than when he walked in, more sated, he exuded confidence and I-fucked-your-mother from every pore, he smiled at me, a smile stronger than destiny, such a cute kid, such a sweet boy. I loved Auntie Badeea, I loved my mother, but I worshipped the man, I made him my religion.