Below us, a uniformed Arab porter waved and called out, “Salamualaikum—peace be to you,” and I felt an instant melancholy as I thought of my gentle father and his newspaper. Then things began to happen and I thought of Mama and lead soldiers.
A small Arab Airways DC-3 broke out into great shocks of flame while taxiing out for takeoff, and that must have been the cue for the airport fire crew because they came romping out of a hanger in a Gay-Nineties fire truck, which was good, but then they turned a monster hose on the plane, which was bad: the truck’s water tank was empty!
The Lebanese firemen didn’t panic, though; they just chugged back to the hangar, hooked the truck’s feedhose to a hydrant, filled their tank with water and then belched out towards the burning aircraft, which was pretty cool thinking except that they had forgotten to disconnect the truck’s hose from the hydrant! Eventually, though, they remembered. They remembered one glorious, jerking stop later, but by that time they had ripped the hydrant out of the ground. It was Blatty and the “rich kids across the street” all over again. Only now I was the rich kid.
“It’s all right,” I babbled to myself as we entered the airport building, “it’s all going to be all right, really, it is. It’s going to be all right!” Then as we approached the customs and passport-processing line, we were greeted by Jeremiah Web, the forty-and-familied Kansan who was then director of NERSC. He wanted my passport. At that point he could have asked for my jugular vein, and there’s a good chance I’d have given it to him.
“Lemme have it,” he said softly. “I’ve got diplomatic status—that’ll get us through the line in a hurry.”
iii
The following two and a half hours, which represented the slowest hurry I had yet to experience in my lifetime, presented me with an unlooked for and unwanted opportunity to examine closely the khaki-clad Lebanese customs police. A swarthy but handsome, lot, they were tanned and moody-featured, and their uniformly large, dark eyes seemed to be perpetually brooding upon some indeterminate point in Mecca. Imperturbable, they sipped Turkish coffee from tiny, fragile cups, now and then pressing a rubber stamp onto a visa, now and then unhurriedly brushing a tsetse fly from their coffee cups. They were the Mysterious East in uniform.
One of them offered me a cup of coffee, which I accepted, and as I stared into its impenetrable murk, I seemed to remember a line from Hamlet: “Gertrude—do not drink!” But I drank. And the customs men drank with me. And then they burped and stared at me, expectantly. I merely stood there, thinking of Brooklyn Prep and my old eating problems and that private table I used to have.
The customs men smiled at me, and still smiling, one of them turned to the others and commented in Arabic: “What a barbarian. Doesn’t even have the courtesy to belch.” It was a nightmare, really, a goddam, technicolor nightmare.
A knotted string of cabs cordoned us in as we checked out of customs and into the street. You couldn’t tell the cabs by their markings because they had no markings, but the drivers were all the advertising necessary. Fare-avid, they pounced upon us from every direction. We sorted one out.
“Beirut?” asked the driver in English, and he thumbed in the direction of a cab that, like all the others in sight, was American-made, shiny and new, and suddenly I was inspired by a reckless determination to “fit in.” My parents were Lebanese and these were Lebanese and by God, I wasn’t going to be a foreigner here! I was going to be useful. I was going to win one for the old Embassy team!
“How much?” I asked the driver.
“Maybe you’d better let me handle it,” Web interrupted. “I’ve got—”
“I know—you’ve got diplomatic status.”
He fixed me with a look of enormous hurt. “Okay,” he said quietly. “You’re an Arab. Go ahead.”
“How much?” I repeated.
“Three leera,” said the cabby, and “Two,” the ancestral blood in me replied although I hadn’t the vaguest clue as to what a leera represented.
“For you, two leera, seventy-five piastres,” the cabby came back.
“Two-fifty.”
The cabby placed one hand on a luggage strap, the other over his heart, cocked his head sideways at a pathetic angle and groaned, “Why do you do this to me?” I didn’t know. But inside the cab, Web told me that the standard fare was only two leera, and it was suddenly rammed home to me that now I really was in a bind. Despite my mother’s upbringing, I apparently wasn’t as much of an Arab expert as I’d thought!… There was trouble ahead. Big trouble.
iv
And more trouble in the cab. Web had made reservations for us at the Stafhouse Hotel, in the center of town, and we roared like a lion out of the airport driveway, following the coast road into Beirut. We surged past cabanas and blue waters, and within minutes it was apparent to us all, with the possible exception of Web, that either “Wreck-A-Million” Schultz or his cousin Brazenose was at the wheel. He assimilated blind curves at seventy, passed and even double-passed streetcars on narrow streets in the brutish face of oncoming traffic, and slowed down for neither man nor camel, scattering all before him with a doomsday blast of his horn!
It looked like sayonara for the Beasley Twins, and Peggy, in an effort to divert the children’s attention, hauled out her pocket guidebook and began reading aloud, squirting false jolity and interest into her voice: “The modern-age Lebanese,” she began, “are descendants of the ancient Phoenicians, a seafaring people who developed the rudimentary form of our Western alphabet and.… MARY JO, DONT LOOK OUT THE WINDOW! PAY ATTENTION TO MOMMY!… This tiny republic’s population of a million and a half is split evenly between Christian and Moslem. Its valleys and beaches are dotted with archaeological ruins, including…” and her voice rose to a crescendo as the tires screeched like galaxies in collision on a tight turn—“CRUSADER FORTRESSES, GREEK AND EGYPTIAN TEMPLES, STONE AGE BURIAL SITES AND, MOST SPLENDID OF ALL, BAALBEK, THE MOST MAGNIFICENT ROMAN RUIN IN THE WORLD. ONLY A FEW MILES SOUTH,” she boomed, in a voice reminiscent of my mother’s, “IS THE FABLED PORT CITY OF SIDON, SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF DIDO AND AENEAS.” Peggy halted her reading and attempted to make an audience participation thing out of it. “Sidon—that’s where Aeneas said something real famous when he arrived and saw Dido. Daddy, tell the children what he said.”
“This is the place!” I quoted, and Web, who had been calm throughout our wild ride, now stared sidewise at me in alarm.
Mercifully, then, we hit a traffic snarl, and at last I dared look out the window. What I saw confirmed my suspicions about Hollywood. Beirut, it appeared, was not at all a desert waste dotted with stray nomadic bands of sunburned brutes who, under the influence of some exotic mass compulsion, seemed daily to forget to remove the bedsheets when they awakened in the morning. Rather—and in spite of Hans Christian De Mille’s celluloid tales to the contrary—it looked like a moderately mechanized and civilized city. True, it was a city of contrast—in fact, more contrast than a moose haunch rampant on a field of Botticellis: men in fezzes and baggy pants, women in veils and ankle-length black gowns were walking the streets unselfconsciously alongside solid citizens in Dior dresses and Harris and Frank tweeds. An occasional man on a jackass went clattering down modern thoroughfares, competing for space with a chrome-shiny Buick, Cadillac or Mercedes-Benz. Trams were ubiquitous. And all clattered, chugged or raced in the shadow of hulking, modern apartment or office buildings from out of which a now-and-then white, spiraling minaret poked its head up shyly. Now and again a camel would appear mysteriously in the middle of the business district. Crazy, dad.
The cab pulled up in front of the Stafhouse, and the driver interrupted my reverie by reaching into the glove compartment and pulling out a jar filled with a murky, agonizingly familiar rust-colored substance which he held up in front of me:
“You wan’ buy quince jelly? Lebanese quince jelly. Is delicious!”
They say the welt on my shin is where I bumped it while they were carrying me out of the cab.
9.
The Eyes of Araby Are Upon You!
MISS LENORA BOREALIS, the Ambassador’s secretary, put aside her paperback edition of Peyton Piazza, a new Italian novel ghost-written by Zsa Zsa Gabor, and looked up at me with eyes that had arctic lights in them. “I’d like to see the Ambassador,” I said, zipping up my parka. It was the day after arrival, and according to the Washington protocol officer I was supposed to call on the Ambassador and leave my card in a special dish in his office.
“What’s it about?” asked Miss Borealis.
“I want to leave my card.”
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You selling air conditioners?”
“Huh?”
“What sort of card is it?”
“A printed card,” I intoned hollowly, groping for the right answer. There might have been a password that I was supposed to get in Washington, but I certainly couldn’t remember any.
“What’s your name?” demanded Miss Borealis severely.
“Blatty,” I said, relieved to get a filler question. “Bill Blatty.”
“Oh—the new boy.”
“Yes—the new boy.”
“What is it you want to see the Ambassador about?”
I felt like screaming hysterically, but it probably would have looked bad on my first day, so, “I’d like to meet him,” I bleated. “I just thought it would be nice.”
She gave me a long, searching look. “I’ll tell him.” She stood up and was about to open the door to the Ambassador’s office when abruptly it opened from the inside. A short man in tennis shorts and polo shirt appeared. “Mr. Ambassador,” said Lenora Borealis softly, “there’s a gentleman here to see you, Mr. Blatty, the new man at NERSC.” The Ambassador stared at her. “What does he want to see me about?” he whispered.
“Says he wants to leave a card.”
“A card?” The Ambassador threw a sudden, baffled look at me. Then he looked back at Miss Borealis. “Bring me his file, wait ten minutes and then show him in.” He ducked into his office.
ii
And while I waited, I ducked a hand into my inside jacket pocket and withdrew a still unopened letter from Mama that had arrived that morning at the Stafhouse. The faint but unmistakable essence of Brooklyn Heights pulsed upwards from it, and as I ripped open the envelope in one swell foop, out tumbled a four-leaf clover, a recipe for stuffed mongoose, and a half page of pure, unadulterated Mama as dictated to Mr. Etmekdjian, he of the Great Sock Switch. The letter, which I would not withhold from you for all the grits in Dixie, read as follows:
Will-yam, my Baybee Jesus:
You Mama wanna tell you sometin. Dawn buy nyatin from datta crazy Greek he sell da vegtable on Rue Abdoolazeezz. You knaw warr he do, datta crazy ting? Tairry-five year ago I buy from him da quinzis and after I go hawm I fin out he put in da shoppin bag tomattis. How il hell I wanna make quinze jely wit i tomattis! Datta dumbell guy! I loin you buy sometin from him, Will-yam, you fin out what gonna happen to you. Keep awai from dat Greeky ting! I knaw all aboud him!
You Mama
(write by Etmekdjian)
Pssst: How you like Libnan?
Well, I didn’t know how I liked Libnan, but the Ambassador was about to give me a clue. Miss Borealis beckoned me into his office, and as I approached his massive mahogany desk, I had the giddy feeling that the Ambassador was actually a Hollywood agent, although this was nonsense, for he looked more like Bill Tilden. In his right hand he gripped a tennis racket. “Sit down,” he said, waving the racket chairward. I sat.
The Ambassador’s twinkling brown eyes were topped by thick eyebrows and a full, distinguished mane of white hair that gave him the appearance of a benevolent, aging lion who had long since renounced the mercy-killing of gazelles. “Welcome to Beirut,” he said jovially. “Glad to have you aboard. Glad you came by, in fact. Want to talk to you.” He glanced down at some papers on his desk. “First of all, what’s on your mind? Miss Borealis said something about a—card?”
It was beginning to sound like one of my dreams. “I—I thought it was the custom,” I said. “I mean—leaving my card.”
He looked up at me expressionlessly. “Custom?” A career man, the Ambassador had spent most of his service thousands of miles from Washington and its protocol piosities. “Custom,” he repeated softly, as a vague realization of something past, something forgotten, seemed to steal up on him with a card instead of a knife between its teeth. “Oh—that,” he murmured. “Yes—thank you, Blatty. Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” I said, but he let it pass.
“So your parents are Lebanese,” he remarked thoughtfully, staring through a window to the palm tree-studded Embassy garden where secretaries scurried to and fro, bearing messages.
“Yes, my parents are Lebanese,” I echoed. The Ambassador looked sidewise at me. “It was merely a rhetorical statement, Blatty.” Then he turned to the window again. “Just a few words of caution,” he began. “I’m not the only ambassador here, Blatty. We’re all ambassadors. We must all work at winning over these people. We all share the responsibility, all the way down to the lowest ranking employee.” He paused to swat at a fly with his tennis racket, and then resumed: “But you must bear a special responsibility, Blatty. You’re second generation. And the Lebanese will be watching you with far greater interest than any of the rest of us. ‘What has American culture done for one of our own?’ That’s the question they’ll be asking themselves. And it’s up to you to make sure that they get the right answers—in terms of your behavior.”
“Yes, sir,” I said meekly.
“I’m sure you’ve been told that you’re a test case,” he continued, “and your Agency is counting on you. But no doubt you’re also aware of the problems we once had with second generation personnel—particularly lack of understanding.” He tasted his words and found them good. “Yes. Lack of understanding.” He brushed a thick, stray lock of hair from his brow and turned to look me in the eye. “Don’t you fall into that trap, Blatty. You must be above reproach. Otherwise I shall have to send in a negative report on further use of second-generation personnel. I want you to understand that clearly.” I understood it so clearly that I was beginning to feel faint. And what I understood was this: I had to prove my worthiness as an American by being an Arab. In other words, I had to be Biblical. But if I were Biblical, then how could I be “The Type”? I mean—where did I go to register?
Mind you, I didn’t say any of this to the Ambassador. I merely scrounged up a weak smile and said, “Yes, sir.”
“That’s the spirit, Blatty!” barked the Ambassador with a savage cheerfulness. “And good luck to you.”
I stood up to leave and immediately began casting my eyes about feverishly. I was looking for the dish, the calling-card dish, but I couldn’t find it, and in a final desperation, I dropped my card into the Ambassador’s ash tray, and, nodding farewell, bolted frantically from the room.
“Blatty!” boomed the Ambassador as I got to the door and I turned around to face him. “Remember,” he said gravely, pointing his tennis racket at me: “The eyes of Araby are upon you!”
I couldn’t help wishing he hadn’t said that.
10. Waterproof, Shockproof, Anti-Magnetic and Wrong!
I’D ORIGINALLY planned to devote this chapter to the Arab Time Sense, and actually that’s what I’m going to do. Because that’s what started my troubles with the Ambassador.
Two days after checking in at the Stafhouse Hotel, I packed a knapsack with some bananas fried in camel fat, and bussing my wife and children, set forth in search of permanent quarters, but not before each had knelt and kissed my sandaled foot in a very simple but moving ceremony. I confined my apartment hunt to Ras Beirut, the coast-hugging, elevated section of town that quartered most of the European and American colony. Its narrow streets were a confused medley of shops, four- and five-story apartment buildings, and occasional minaret-spouting mosques. As for the haven that was to become graven on my nervous system, it was a five-story brownstone
building on Rue Sidani, four blocks west of the American University of Beirut. I was led to it by a baker’s boy delivering bread to some unknown destination, and that probably sounds a little mysterious to you, but that’s all right because life should have a little mystery in it.
The bread, piled high in stacks of round, flat and unleavened loaves, was resting on a wooden board balanced precariously on the boy’s head, and the warm brown, ovenly aroma had hooked me irresistibly to his doughty spoor. Name of a name, how I coveted a loaf! But then I saw the building. It was ultra-modern in the Italian style, with broad, spacious balconies on every floor. It was still partly under construction and I entered and pried out the landlord.
Mr. Yusef Bikhazi, a hopeful-eyed dumpling in a business suit, gave me an enthusiastic tour of his building, and I flipped over the penthouse. It was a tract home in Xanadu: a functional American-modern interior glorified by a commanding view of the Mediterranean and the mountains that completely surrounded the city. My salary as an editor, FSS-6, was not exactly cause for covetousness, or even encephalitis, but the penthouse rented for less than any other apartment in the building. Strange, eh?
“How come?” I asked Bikhazi.
“Too much to climb,” he said.
“But you’re going to have an elevator,” I rebutted, nodding in the direction of the as yet empty elevator shaft.
Bikhazi looked deep into my eyes. “Maybe it won’t work,” he intoned expressionlessly. It might have been a veiled threat, but I wasn’t sure, and to be perfectly honest with you, Bruce, I didn’t know what to make of it. So, “When will it be completed?” I asked numbly, reaching into my knapsack for a fried banana.
“Bukra,” said Bikhazi.
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll take it,” I snapped, and thrusting the banana into his mouth, left him munching heavily at the top of the stairs.
Which Way to Mecca, Jack? Page 7