Lifted by the Great Nothing: A Novel

by Karim Dimechkie

  Awake, he saw the first light on Rasheed’s face. It was blue and gray and cold and dead, his skin a hardened paste. The glass of water lay between them, soaking the bed. Next to the glass was the emptied bottle of sleeping pills. Rasheed had taken them all. Max began rocking him in his arms. No, no, no. Nadine knocked on the door. His reflex was to get up and lock it. He wouldn’t let her in, telling her they needed to be alone and that he promised to get Rasheed to eat today. He felt her standing out there a few minutes before leaving. After he heard her drive away, he opened the window and popped off the screens so the birds could leave. He didn’t have a thought in his head or a feeling in his body. All movement was senseless and mechanical. He disconnected the IV from Rasheed and carried him to the bath. He undressed and washed his slight body. After drying him off, he brought him back into the bedroom, laid him on the floor, with a pillow under his head, between small trees and flowers and fat leaves. He threw away the sheets and clothes that had been messed, and then went to the bathroom to get the razor and scissors. Propping Rasheed’s back up against the wall, Max cut his ear and nose hairs, then brought in a bowl of hot water to shave him. He trimmed his mustache into a trapezoid, clipped his nails, and brushed his hair. He dressed his father in his nicest shirt, his yellow one, and his khaki slacks and brown shoes. The canaries flew out the window.

  Locking the doors, even the chain lock, he turned off all the lights and shut the windows and blinds before lying down too. Rocket whined and scratched at the bedroom door. Dragging himself across the floor, pushing plants aside, he let her in. Some of the Yangs’ flowers and plants had already begun to sag. They’d been neglected for a couple of days. Rocket licked Rasheed’s face and then began to yowl. Max could hear Rasheed’s voice, saying what a pretty girl she was.

  Not much time passed before Rasheed had an odor. Max went to the cologne collection in the other room and sprinkled a generous amount on him. Within a couple hours Rasheed’s smell beat the perfume, even after Max had dumped all he had left on him. Soaked his neck and shirt. It was the stench of a dirty city river. Max retched on the floor sometime after that, his stomach already empty, so it was mostly dry heaves. There was a knocking at the front door. At first, a questioning knock, and a few hours later came the louder knocks. He’d locked them all out. They would separate him from Rasheed, and it wasn’t time for that yet.

  After the knocking stopped, he picked Rasheed up and brought him into the other bedroom. He sought more darkness. He closed the curtain on the tiny window and lay on the bed next to him. Once in this darker space, his senses awakened and panicked, dilating and receiving so much stimulation that they exhausted themselves into complete numbness. Then a new spike of overwhelming stimulation shredded through the numbness. He squeezed his head between his hands in an attempt to freeze time. A stomach-aching cry came and then left him gulping for oxygen. A rush of air finally cleared him for a few minutes, nestling him back into a daze. His senses stabbed and overloaded again, his entire nervous system inflamed, and then broke back down into the heavy numbness, enveloping him in deafening sorrow. This was the cycle: everything at once and then great nothingness. All of life, and then all of death. Back and forth. Max interlaced their fingers. In his mind they weren’t lying in Rasheed’s dark bedroom but inside the tree house, safely holding hands inside that cool box.

  Sometime later Nadine shouted into the house, through the opening of the front door made by the chain lock, “Max? What’s going on? Max, if you don’t answer, I’m going to break this door down. You know I will. Max, let me in.”

  He lay there, dying of thirst, his head a growing wildfire, his hand as cold as Rasheed’s, as he fell in and out of the numbness. He passed out and dreamed about Kip and his Man-Dog brother. They walked around some suburban streets. Mailmen and Girl Scouts and people watering their lawns waved, delighted to see them.

  He woke to the sound of banging on the door. He heard the chain lock getting clipped. When the firemen came in, they lit Max and Rasheed with their flashlights and brought their hands up to their noses. Max was more dead than alive, sitting inside himself, watching everyone panic around him through the holes he peered out of as they carried him from the house on a gurney.

  Later that night, in the hospital, he was excruciatingly alive again.

  PART FOUR: TEN YEARS LATER

  TWENTY-ONE

  Max is twenty-six years old. He stands in line at the grocery store, overhearing a little girl in front of him tell her parents that she has a bad headache. Her mother moans in sympathy and then asks, “Why?” as if the girl might know. The father, emptying the cart, volunteers a reason—“It’s because you didn’t get enough sleep last night, honey.” The checkout clerk chimes in. “It might be this sudden change in weather, sometimes the different air pressure messes with people’s inner balance.” A woman behind Max suggests that it could be that bug that’s been going around.

  Then they all settle on hunger. It was the mother’s idea. The girl simply needs a snack. The mother, father, checkout clerk, and woman in line nod in satisfaction at the final diagnosis. They’ve gained command of the headache by identifying its origin. Sense has been made out of what—deep down—they know they cannot make sense of. And why question their conclusion? Why challenge the victory of having resolved the girl’s pain? There’s hardly a fiction in the world that’s more comforting than having a clear explanation for pain. The truth is not always what’s most important.

  For years there was a single explanation for Max’s depression: the death of Rasheed. Anytime he felt like hiding for a couple of days, not wanting to interact directly with the world outside, not answering his phone, he could later see his teachers or the Yangs or Tim thinking, Of course you need to crawl inside sometimes. We understand. He knew they thought this by the way they touched his shoulder and bowed their heads in a moment of silence, as if they were all still at the funeral, even months and then years later.

  This explanation made a lot of sense because it was true. He was absolutely submerged in the wreckage of his grief. But despite his best efforts to cling to the hurt, the numbness thinned, and holes stretched in the gloom that had once blanketed everything. And then one day, after waking up with a familiar depression, he sat on the toilet and had the world’s most alleviating bowel movement. The sensation thrilled him to tears. It was an important moment because he allowed himself to see his self-loathing as unconnected to Rasheed. This relief had nothing to do with Rasheed. It had to do with the green pepper and onion pizza he’d eaten at three in the morning before bed. His body was sick with junk food, full of literal waste he needed to expel. Until then, Rasheed had been the sole mascot of hard times, the center of his son’s world. Max had reflexively associated all pain with missing him. But on this special morning, he could attribute his crawling in his own skin to something else. Green pepper and onion pizza.

  He let himself believe his depression on subsequent mornings was triggered by things other than Rasheed too. Maybe the BBC news radio he woke up to contributed to his feeling low: fourteen dead in a car bombing today in a market in Islamabad. Or maybe it was that he didn’t have any friends his age. Maybe it was because he didn’t exercise. Maybe he was sad about something he was only subliminally in touch with, some subconscious taste of his insignificance in the universe. Or maybe his body was fighting off a seasonal flu.

  With this new flood of possibilities, he rediscovered that ancient practice of human beings everywhere: making up reasons for why we feel the way we do. It emancipated him from having one origin for his misery. Always Rasheed. I killed my dad. He is still dead. I miss him. I miss him so much I hate the sound of my own breathing. But now, he had reclaimed the wonderful ridiculousness of all free, confused people, and joyously swam in the infinite mess of reasons to be unhappy. Reasons that could be followed by reactions: go to the bathroom, turn off the radio, meet people, jog, draw a picture, write a poem.

  Max remembers how Nadine and Robby stayed cl
asped to each other for the entirety of Rasheed’s burial ceremony. Tim and Téta stood on either side of a wheelchaired Jiddo, and Max’s old art teacher, Mr. Virgine, had come with a couple other colleagues. Some of the more religious neighbors who they’d never really interacted with stood with them too. A few Arabs materialized, people Max had never met. When they saw he didn’t speak Arabic, they gave their condolences in English, saying what a wonderful man Rasheed was. Other things were said over the coffin, but it all sounded like it came out of a kazoo. Dull vibrations jammed together.

  But when his mother’s voice came through the telephone later that day, it was clear and distinct enough to nearly knock him to the floor. He’d felt so deadened only seconds earlier. “Hakeem. Rasheed was a truly good man. Like you cannot find elsewhere. You are fortunate to have had him for as long as you did.”

  He used all his strength to not come apart. “I know,” he said.

  She told him about how kind and funny Rasheed had been, and what a phenomenal liar too. He’d spent a lot of his life hiding things from people. He lied about finishing his degree in economics at AUB—his grades were abysmal, and he never actually received a diploma; he lied about his sexuality—it was his idea to stage a fake marriage with Samira; and he was so good at shaping his political views around whatever his current company wanted to hear. It was always convincing.

  Max said, “Did you ever wear a pot on your head?”

  “What?”

  “When I was a baby, during the war, did you stay with me in the bathtub with a pot on your head?”

  “This is something Rasheed told you?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, this never happened. I do remember, however, that Rasheed had a nanny named Noor who used to play with him for hours, and they would wear pots on their heads. It was Rasheed’s favorite game. I also remember that he would often go to lie in the bathtub when there was a lot of mortar fire during the war. He held you in there for days, unwilling to come out. Hakeem, you know, if you are interested in visiting Beirut for a while, you are welcome here. Is that something that interests you?”

  “No—it’s not—not right now. Thank you.”

  They didn’t stay on the phone much longer, and his mother more or less said to contact her when he felt like it. He didn’t count on ever seeing her again.

  But he did. A month before, he’d flown back to Beirut for the first time, taking a cab directly to her place. She was staying inside the refugee camp, under a corrugated tin roof, on a cot over a dirt floor.

  She’s someone who is certain of how she wants to live. She doesn’t doubt or dream, isn’t searching for anything at all. Her drive to give everything away—food, money, medical supplies, clothes, books; English, Arabic, math, and history lessons—keeps her alive. Her compulsive generosity and obsession with moral responsibility is her way of self-preservation. She cares for the kids with such a lack of sentimentality that it borders on coldness. They are sometimes intimidated but will feel admiration for her in retrospect. She is a mother with a hundred children swinging on her neck and remains stoic as an oak tree. What once felt like a devastating underreaction to Max that first time he’d met her, he now realizes was a great expression of emotion.

  The camp community has a high regard for Samira’s commitment to the school, her past as a fighter, and her insistence on living in the camp. And at around the age of twelve, when Palestinian kids begin to understand that life isn’t the same for everyone in Lebanon, they find a solace in people like Samira, who wouldn’t know how to abandon them if she had to. Her sense of duty is contagious. The community protects her when she needs no protection, brings her food even after she’s already eaten, and insists on friendship, though she is someone who could live with or without it. She is still, in so many ways, a fictional character.

  There’s no telling how Max’s budding relationship with his mother is affected by what happened to Rasheed. There will never be the sense of an even trade-off, or anything resembling fairness. No, the part about losing Rasheed continues to feel like an amputation. But now, at least, the amputation has stopped blackening other gains. It can be lived with.

  Max has already died once, his grief having been potent enough to bring him part way to the other side with Rasheed. In a way, this straddling of life and death, at the height of his grief, was the most alive he’s ever been.

  In Max’s last year of high school, he and Nadine continued to talk about novels and music when she wasn’t at work, and he got a job at a gourmet market. They also went to movies, parks, museums, and made sobbing love to each other, like a real couple. It wasn’t until Rocket passed away that they started talking about Rasheed with nostalgia and not just anguish. How Rasheed used to carry Rocket like a baby when she lost interest in their walks. Or how she used to curl her body around his feet while he brushed his teeth, trapping him at the bathroom sink. How Rasheed always said, “Bless you, my lady,” when she sneezed or farted. And how he asked her what she thought they should watch on TV tonight.

  People whispered about Max––about Rasheed and Coach Tim, about his relationship with a woman fourteen years his senior. And black. He didn’t listen much to what they said. The less he listened, the closer they approached, observing him like some fascinating but potentially dangerous animal, daring themselves to get as near as they could.

  Nadine broke Max’s heart in his first year of college. She told him she would always be in his life, that her home was his home, but that the physical aspect had to end. Her resolve to keep their relationship platonic has endured seven years, during which time she had a bright-eyed daughter named Elise with a good man she didn’t stay with. There was nothing particularly sad about Nadine and Elise’s father not staying together. Nadine was sure she wanted a child, but less concerned with whether she and the child’s father would have a lifelong romantic partnership. They live happily apart now, and he takes Elise on alternating weekends.

  Max has tried to not let their separation be a source of hope. But he can’t help it. As of late, he is convinced that Nadine’s resistance to his romantic bids have lightened. She recently accepted his invitation to a formal dinner that she laughingly refuses to call a date. He knows it is flirtation when they argue over this point on the phone. He knows it, and remains openly and insistently in love with her.

  Now Max is home from the grocery store, where the little girl’s headache was explained. He bends down at his doorstep and picks up a package from Nadine. The package contains two videos. They document the opening of Mr. Yang’s camukra flowers: one fourteen years ago, the day Max choked on that taffy, and the second of Mr. Yang’s latest camukra, blossoming successfully, an event Max attended yesterday.

  The first video is from the perspective of the tripoded camera from that summer of 1996. The camera stays on the flower until it falls. Then the shot is of a window that faces Max and Rasheed’s house. Though it’s out of focus, you can make out where the Yangs’ property meets the Boulos’s yard, and a slice of their brick chimney.

  You can hear the cries get more dramatic, and hear Rasheed shouting for Max to calm it down, please, calm it down. Finally there are the aftereffects of Coach Tim slugging Max in the solar plexus. The guests applaud as Rasheed bawls and Max sucks for air.

  For the past fourteen years Mr. Yang’s been cultivating another camukra flower. This second recording is from the perspective of Nadine. She stands a couple steps up on the staircase that leads down into the Yangs’ kitchen and scans the heads of all the neighbors and friends. Leslie and other members of the church are there. Tim, who’s gotten into photography, is firing away with a sleek-looking camera that looks a lot like a rifle. Robby, now in his early thirties, wears a suit that is too small. An old Asian man is talking to him, using a lot more hand gestures than is probably natural. Robby is bored. His mouth dangles open as if he’s snoring.

  Nadine focuses in on Max, and he smiles at her before returning his attention to the flower. The Yangs look
exactly as they do in the first video, except that all of their hair is paper-white. The whiteness makes their faces appear smoother and more radiant. The guests are hypnotized by the small potted flower, moments away from opening. Nadine zeros in on the closed petals, then back out again. She finds Robby, who is now standing next to Max. When Robby sees he’s being filmed, he tries to hide the pleasure it obviously brings him. Both excited and embarrassed by the idea, he fixates on the camera with timid liking.

  Nadine says, “Say hi, Robby!”

  Robby says, “Hi, Robby!” Nadine laughs, and he opens his mouth to say something more, but changes his mind. He giggles at Max before turning to face the flower with him. Nadine keeps filming the back of his head, saying, “Too good for the camera, huh?”

  Someone in the crowd cries out, “Wasai!” And it has begun.

  Nadine zooms in through Robby and Max’s shoulders and gets a good shot of the flower. It unsticks its petals in little jolts of separation before growing on smoothly. It yawns so widely that it looks like it’s about to turn inside out, but then stops and begins closing, curling inward, dying. The people watch like mesmerized infants, witnessing what could only be magic. The glistening red and purple and white and brown drain from the petals. Its center dehydrates and grays with extraordinary speed. It bends down as if politely running out of breath, and finally drops limply. Hanging by its tired stem, it reaches for the ground. The weight tugs the roots and pulls up on the soil. Everyone claps and cheers. They exclaim how gorgeous it was, how unforgettable. Wow, just wow.