Lifted by the Great Nothing: A Novel

by Karim Dimechkie

  “She’s going to meet you here?”

  “No, it’s across the street and in this alley right near here.”

  “Well, what about getting across the street and finding—everything.”

  “No need to worry, my friend. I will find her.”

  “Alone?”

  “I will ask someone to get me across the street. And then the alley is right there. She will be waiting for me.”

  “You’re going to ask some stranger to get you there?”

  “Yes.”

  Max looked above, frowning at the bottom of the bridge, the Métro clacking over the tracks. “Yeah, yeah, I mean we’re here and everything, but—”

  “Great. Well, thank you so much, Max. It has been a major pleasure.”

  “Yeah. Okay then. Listen, good luck with everything.”

  When they unhooked arms, it took a little wind out of Max. Hanuman brought out a folded cane from his pocket and poked the ground with it. The stick eventually hit a bridge support, and Hanuman turned in a circle.

  Max watched until Hanuman started talking to another man. Max couldn’t stand it any longer. He got between the man and Hanuman and hooked arms again.

  “I’m just going to take you all the way,” he said.

  “Max?”

  “I was going this way anyway, and it’s so close. Let me take you there myself. I’d feel a lot better about it.”

  “All right. It is only that—”

  “What?”

  “I do not want you to get attached.”

  “Oh, come on. She’s yours—I get that.”

  “No, not to her.”

  “Then to who?”

  No answer. Hanuman shrugged, shifting from foot to foot.

  “Come on. Let’s go,” Max said. They crossed the street together. “You pretty excited to meet her?”

  “Sure. I suppose. I do this most days of the week, you know?”

  “You’re a lucky man, Hanuman. It must really be something.”

  They rounded a corner and came upon a row of prostitutes. Max only really saw one. The one. A much older version of the exact woman they’d described earlier: mole on her cheek, curly black hair, red lipstick. He couldn’t believe his eyes. He smiled bashfully at her, crinkled his nose, and made little near-curtsies.

  “Max?” Hanuman said.

  “Yes. Sorry. Well, here she is,” he said, walking him up to her. “Hello.”

  “Salut. C’est quarante pour une demi heure.”

  “Très bien,” Hanuman answered, unhooking his arm. “Well, thank you again, Max. Have a good one.”

  “Oh, yeah, I definitely will. Hey, I never actually told you what I was even doing in Paris. It’s a pretty crazy story. I’d be happy to just wait for you until you come back down, and then I’ll tell you all about why I’m here. It’s kind of a big deal.”

  “No, no, I would not feel comfortable with you waiting around for me.”

  “It’s really no trouble at all, it’d be my pleasure, honestly. It’s a lovely day, and I could just sit and think. And then I’d walk you home, and we could discuss how everything went and, you know, I could tell you about how I’m looking for my mother and everything.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Yeah!” Max said, feeling he’d piqued Hanuman’s interest.

  Hanuman put a hand on Max’s shoulder. “Hey. Look at me. No, look at me. You’ll be all right.”

  “I don’t like the idea of just leaving you like this.”

  “I found her, right? We made it. I will be fine, you will be fine, everything is fine. Now you go on and continue enjoying this marvelous day. Go on. You can do that, I know you can.”

  “How will you get back?”

  “I’ve been getting around cities for a long time.”

  “So, good-bye?”

  “Until chance reunites us. How about that?”

  Hanuman winked his beautiful discolored eye at him and walked off with the woman Max thought they had invented together.

  EIGHTEEN

  Max trekked most all of Paris after leaving Hanuman, simultaneously coming to terms with the fact that he’d meet his mother soon and trying his best to forget about it, pretending he was just a normal guy walking around a pretty city. At about eight in the evening, when he got back to the apartment, there was a lot of commotion. It sounded like a party of people in there, but it was only Jiddo shouting at the wicker chair about how hedge funds own shares of stock that pay dividends, and Téta in the study, yelling in a tired, rasping Arabic. Presumably into the phone. Jiddo didn’t lose any momentum on his financial sermon when Max strode by him and to the door of the study.

  Téta was not on the phone. She was on her knees. Her back facing Max, she rocked back and forth at another woman’s feet. Her shouting had transitioned to moaning and begging something of this woman. Max could see the crown of the woman’s head as she bent over Téta, trying to gently pull her up. She wore a navy-blue abaya, and her maple-brown hair was in a loose ponytail. He knew who she was but didn’t.

  The woman lifted her head and said, “Hakeem,” her voice smoky and low. Now Hakeem felt like it might be his real name.

  He let out the breath he’d been holding, a puff of something between laughter and getting socked in the stomach, Haah.

  “Ya Allah shu hilweh,” she said. Her face was that of an alcoholic who spends her days in the sun, squinting, grimacing, laughing, weeping. She was striking in a worn-out, hard sort of way, with lines and scars scored across her cheeks like the palm of a hand.

  “Hello,” said Max.

  Téta let herself be helped up, her face red and puffy. She said something accusatory to her daughter while pointing at Max.

  He and his mother stood ten feet apart. “You don’t speak Arabic,” she said.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You came alone?”

  Max glanced over his shoulder and then back at her.

  “Rasheed is coming?” she said.

  “No.”

  Téta attacked her with a few more Arabic words. His mother kept her eyes on him, looking defensive, suspicious of some kind of setup or trick. She said, “When did you arrive?”

  His heart slammed into his ribs, trying to break free. “Yeah—I got here this morning.”

  “Yes. You are happy to be here then?”

  “I’m so happy.” The tears had already begun welling over.

  “Good. So you are enjoying the city.”

  “It’s a really nice city.”

  “Very good.”

  He could only look at her for so long. His eyes dashed around the walls of the room, at the portraits of a young Jiddo welcoming or being welcomed by different men from all over the world: in suits, in kaffiyehs, gandouras, and dashikis; handshakes and smiles at dinner parties, and one on a landing strip in front of a fighter jet.

  He looked back at her, propelled to break the distance between them that was harder and harder to sustain. He took a step closer. Her shoulders tensed. He stopped. He could see she wanted him to stop. She wasn’t ready.

  “It’s really so nice here,” he said again.

  “How are you at school? Are you a good student at school?”

  “I am.”

  She looked at the floor. “I will not stay for long, Hakeem.”

  “Oh. No. Yeah, okay.”

  “You must stay for your son!” Téta said, and then came to his side and put her hand on his shoulder. It felt like a warm iron, heating his skin up to an itch. She said something biting to Samira again in Arabic, and wiped at her nose with a ball of Kleenex.

  His mother said to him, “I have too many obligations there. You understand, Hakeem?”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t travel like this usually. This is exceptional. Your Téta told me you were ill. I came because over the phone she said you were very ill. Now she has confessed this is not true.” Though her expression didn’t change, he could see her chest lifting and dropping underneat
h the abaya, her toughness failing her. “I am happy to find you are healthy.”

  “Yeah, I’m healthy.”

  When she spoke, it sounded like she was giving herself orders. “Now that I am here, it is my duty to tell you these things face-to-face.”

  “What things?”

  She answered with a question. “What is it you wanted? To see me? To talk like this? Something else?”

  “What I wanted?” He hadn’t thought of it in concrete terms. It hadn’t occurred to him that anyone, let alone her, would ask why he wanted to know his mother.

  “I mean to say, what did you hope for when you decided to look for me? What was your intention?”

  He suddenly felt ashamed of his tears. “I don’t know. Since they lied to you the way Rasheed lied to me, I thought maybe you’d want to know me.” As he said it out loud, it sunk in that he’d gotten it all wrong. She wouldn’t answer, and her gaze turned unfocused, as if daydreaming. Her stare stopped just short of him, and he felt a minuscule bottle pop inside his heart, followed by an immediate and profound need to sleep.

  Still in her daze, she said, “Of course it is a great chance to be able to see you. But it will cause more suffering, you understand? I sacrificed my right to be your mother many years ago. I have no right.”

  He felt his eyes grow heavy, like he really was falling asleep. “You knew I was alive. All this time.”

  Her nostrils flared.

  “You never once looked for me?” he asked, resting his eyes for a few seconds.

  “I had you, and then I left you, Hakeem, for too long. I have no delusions about that. I could not have done it differently. I was a bad mother even before we separated. I had no right to come back into your life.”

  In an oddly detached way, he said, “I would have given you the right.”

  She snapped out of her daydream and took in a big breath. It sounded like a sob perched at the edge of her throat, a little bird that she managed to vacuum back down just before it flew out of her mouth. This woke him up some. She said, “It would be wrong. Irresponsible. I chose another life.” She peeked around him and out the open door of the study. “You are sure Rasheed is not coming?”

  A neediness crept through him, a hunger to break their distance, to get another glimpse of her emotions. “I’m sure.”

  “I did not plan to see you again. I have long grieved you as my child.”

  Max’s body craved her more than ever.

  “But you are welcome to visit the school at the camp if you like, in Beirut.”

  His voice warbled. “You’re not in Jordan?”

  “No. I’m in Shatila, in Lebanon. You were told this so we would all meet here.” She glanced at Téta. “She wanted to unite us all here. She lies to get what she wants.”

  A prickle of heat started in Max’s lower back, and then another, and then a whole desert of them crawled up to his neck, crossing paths with cold droplets of sweat. His voice got shakier. “I thought you were—I mean—you knew I thought you were dead?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked at Téta again. Because it was easier to talk at her than to his mom. “And you all just decided that was best. Let me believe I had no mother.” Téta stared back at him with the alarm of a deer feeling an arrow stick in its side.

  His mother said, “You would have come looking for me, and then I would be getting in the way of you and Rasheed. He holds me responsible for the murder of his family. I could never force myself back into his life.”

  “What he told you is better than this truth,” insisted Téta to Max.

  “Which is what?” he said, even though it had been made perfectly clear.

  They didn’t speak for nearly a full minute. He focused on the grandfather clock to his mother’s left.

  At 8:09 she said, “The truth is, we are strangers to each other.”

  At 8:09 and ten seconds he responded, “Did you want me in the first place?”

  “I was happy when I found out I was pregnant. At that time I had the vision of both fighting and being a fully committed mother. But because I knew Rasheed would take care of you, I allowed myself to be away for long periods. He loved you better than anyone, much better than I did, or your real father. I took advantage of this and was gone often. I promised myself I’d make it up to you, that I’d be a good mother later.” She smoothed back some loose strands in her ponytail. “But I was failing you, and it extinguished something inside of me. Then Rasheed’s family was killed, and I had to hide. The SLA caught and imprisoned me. I learned that I am not so strong. They broke me. I told them everything I knew. Nine years of hell, only to give it all up. I could not go back to fighting with my brothers and sisters in the resistance because I had betrayed them, and also because I didn’t want to fight in that way anymore. My father would not have me in his family, and I could not come to you and Rasheed. His hate for me was too strong, and this hate would take you away from him. I found his address a few years ago and wrote him the letter that explained I was out but would not come bothering you two. I had already taken too much. We couldn’t share you. And by then I understood that one either is or is not a mother. There is no telling yourself, I will be a mother later.”

  “And now you work with children,” he said.

  “Yes. I did live in Jordan for a while, but years ago I received the message that it would be safe for me to come back to Beirut. I met philanthropists in Amman, and we raised some funds. The people I had betrayed were not so angry with me anymore, and they agreed to let me move into the refugee camp and build the school—”

  “Khalas,” Téta interrupted. “We need a break from this kind of depressing talk. I will make some tea now, and we can sit in the living room with Jiddo and tell some of the nice stories to Hakeem for a while. Samira, tell him about your kitten when you were a little girl.” She put on a grandmotherly smile and turned to Max. “It only had three legs! Very cute. Very cute story. Samira loved this kitten too much. Tell him, Samira. Tell him.”

  Before Téta could go to make tea, the front door of the apartment rang loudly, startling as an end-of-the-game buzzer. Someone from the street was asking to be let up.

  “Who is that?” Samira said.

  Téta stared her down for a beat and then went to answer. Max and his mother stayed glued to their respective stances in the study and listened to Téta open the door. They heard the surprise in her voice at who had come.

  Max couldn’t look at his mother straight on. She was too beautiful, and too horrible. Rasheed’s voice traveled through the apartment, and then Nadine’s followed. It was them. They were here. Nadine had told Rasheed, and now they had come to find him.

  His mother said, “You told me Rasheed was not coming.”

  “I didn’t know,” he said, on the verge of dropping to his knees and begging for her forgiveness, as if everything would have gone well had Rasheed not shown up.

  She came toward Max, and now he tensed up, as if she was about to strike him. But she hugged him. With all the might he felt in her arms, he could have let his legs go and she would have continued to hold him up without difficulty. Her hair smelled like warm bread, and her abaya like a new cardboard box. It was a wonderful blindness to be so close to her that he couldn’t see, only feel her. Their breaths harmonized, he relaxed, and her warmth crossed over into his body. It was exactly what he’d come for, and with Rasheed and Nadine’s footsteps approaching, he understood it would now be taken away.

  He hugged his mother tighter. She abruptly pushed him off and held him by the shoulders. “I promised myself I would not touch you,” she said, “and now look at me.”

  He heard Nadine, from the living room, ask, “Where’s Max?”

  “Who?” Téta said. “The boy?” It echoed like in a cathedral.

  His mother looked over his shoulder, and her eyes shot wide open at whoever lurked in the doorway. That was when she said, “Good-bye, Hakeem. Visit Shatila if you want. Anytime.”

  He turned and saw Ras
heed creeping into the room. This man who had pretended to be his father and scared away his mother. Samira took one large side step away from Max, the three of them in a triangle now. She kept her head down, transforming into an icon, a statue—no longer alive. Rasheed didn’t need to so much as glance at her to sap her life. His eyes never averted from Max’s face. He looked sick, yellowish, sweaty, and determined. He lugged himself closer. Samira spoke another soft good-bye as she walked out of the room.

  “Wait,” Max said, watching his mother’s back as Rasheed reached him.

  And then Nadine appeared in the doorway. Out of context, these people were appallingly dreamlike. Nadine got out of his mother’s way to let her pass.

  Rasheed was hugging him. His heart beat up against Max’s chest, banging on a wall. Behind Nadine, and into the living room, Max’s mother got a little bit smaller. Jiddo was still on the couch, scowling at his wristwatch. Téta stood behind him, washing her hands in the air while her daughter crossed the wood floor to leave.

  Max heard the locks unclick, the shrill of the hinges yawning open and then closing, but before it did, Jiddo blurted, “Samira!”

  She must have turned around. There was complete silence.

  Jiddo said, “Do not waste any more time with Ali. He is beneath you. Obey me and go to your room now.”

  Then came the clap of the door.

  Rasheed pushed down on the tops of Max’s shoulders and got so close it made for a fish-eye view of his great sad face. Max hadn’t gotten fifteen minutes with his mother before Rasheed scared her off all over again. He’d waited seventeen years for those fifteen minutes. Max imagined her riding the elevator to the ground floor. He pictured her stepping out onto the sidewalk, then walking toward the Métro. She was already on that plane. She’d landed in Beirut. She was in a cab toward the refugee camp. She was holding an orphan. Giving a class. Eating with people she cared about. She was in her own bed. And Max was standing here doing nothing, staring into this sick man’s face.

  Hanging off him, and out of breath, Rasheed said, “You should not leave home this way.”

  Max wanted to throw him. He had an overwhelming urge to throw him.