They named the baby Mark Antony after his two grandfathers, not intending any allusions to Roman history or Shakespearean drama. He grew up to be a nice chubby boy and when he began to go to school, Randa was able at last to proceed with her further education. She reentered the master’s programme again and put behind her the years of baby care, night feeding, diaper washing, tending to illnesses, and confinement to the house. She was determined not to have any more children and was bent on completing her studies, earning an MA, and building up her own career.
Gaby was by now a responsible manager at Dupont and was looking forward to moving to higher ranks in the company. He enjoyed his evenings at home with Mark Antony; they played and studied together. He read him a story at bedtime, put him to bed, then watched a television programme or two before going to bed himself. Randa would be alone in the study, reading or preparing her next day’s assignments, that is, if she was not late coming home from a night lecture, a drama presentation, or a social function at the university.
Gaby hoped that the couple of years before Randa finished her studies would pass quickly, and that they were worth enduring. For, truth be told, he was beginning to feel lonely, and his social life was becoming too limited. He gave Mark Antony much love, and the boy took it, but he could not give back all the love that Gaby needed; and they grew further apart as Mark Antony entered adolescence and his interests radiated away from home, not towards it.
Randa understood her husband’s needs, but she had her own too. She was gradually being overwhelmed by her studies, her university activities, and her social contact with classmates. She felt a little guilty because she really wanted to please Gaby and care for Mark Antony; she loved them both dearly and she tried her best, but always felt she fell short of even her own expectations.
Gaby gave her a big party when she got her master’s degree. Her professors and classmates were invited as well as some of his chosen friends and colleagues. Randa was elated and felt it was the second happiest day of her life after the birth of Mark Antony. Gaby thought that he was now set to enjoy the rest of his life. What more could he ask for? A beautiful loving wife, a handsome son, a promising career, a lovely home, more time to spend with his circle of friends, and a sizeable and growing balance at the bank!
But no. Randa had difficulty finding a teaching position. When she finally found one—thank God—Randa had school problems: the usual ones—with colleagues, with students, with her superiors. And these were the subject of evening conversations, if she was not marking papers or tests, or immersed in preparing her next day’s lessons. Gaby listened, sympathized, gave advice, tried to support and help. But whenever problems were solved, others arose. And he had to listen and sympathize and advise and help and support. But he knew his time and hers should also be given to parenting their son, who needed attention.
At school, Mark Antony—with thick, long hair, pitch-black eyes, handsome looks, and a lively personality—was the focus of the girls’ attention. He was doing well in his studies, but he needed moral and emotional guidance, and his parents seemed to him to be absorbed in their careers and in conversations about matters or persons he cared little for.
There was one particular schoolgirl he thought very highly of, and he wanted all conversation at home to be about her. She was called Alexa, and he liked her green eyes and shiny black hair. She was very smart in looks and dress—and in class—and she was very friendly to him.
He wanted to bring her home, to present her to his parents, but he did not think they cared or had the time for that. So he went to her home, met her parents, and heard her play the piano. She enjoyed his company and he took her out to the movies and they both had fun. Was she going to be his high-school lover as his mother had been to his father? Would she later become like his mother, absorbed in herself and her career? He wondered, “Is love worth the adventure?”
The situation was approaching a crisis. When Randa, at the end of her second year of teaching, told him she was going back to university to study for a PhD, he hit the roof.
“A PhD requires at least five years of study and research, perhaps more,” he thundered. “Do you think we need that?”
“I’ll be much happier with a PhD and with a better teaching position at a college,” she ventured.
“But our family, our son, our needs—these cannot be put on hold for so long, Randa.”
“They don’t need to be.”
“Do you think Mark Antony or I enjoyed being by ourselves when you were busy doing your MA? And do you think we’ve liked it when you’ve been busy teaching?”
“I’m telling you, Gaby, I’m going to do a PhD,” Randa said firmly.
Mark Antony listened, then went upstairs to his room to be alone with a picture of Alexa and his thoughts.
Gaby loved Randa no less, even when she was busy with her PhD studies. But he gradually withdrew from her life. He soon withdrew from his son’s life and stopped giving him those talks, which Mark Antony liked, about his own teenage experiences.
People began to notice that Gaby was seen less and less at social events, and was becoming a recluse. This affected his responsibilities at Dupont. He was eventually asked to resign, and received a severance package from the company after appearing before a medical board. Even when Randa invited some of his and her friends to celebrate his birthday or some other occasion, he would sit in silence like a zombie. The only word he would utter in response to any remark or question was “Alexandria!”
Randa asked him to seek psychiatric help, but he wouldn’t hear of it. One day, he disappeared and left a note saying he had returned to Alexandria, but he left no address. Randa’s efforts to locate him were in vain. There was no trace of him in Alexandria, and his parents, who had moved to Vancouver, knew nothing of his whereabouts. Mark Antony was disturbed. Was his mother responsible for his father’s condition? What was he to do? Should he keep up his relationship with Alexa? How and where could he look for his father? Should he give his mother more time and attention? He was confused.
He was only seventeen, and life seemed so complicated. There were urges within his body, thoughts in his mind, feelings in his heart. He could not think straight, and he could not understand how his mother was able to concentrate and pass her comprehensive doctoral examinations under the circumstances. Perhaps he should become like her, close himself off from the outside world and focus on his studies. But there were so many beautiful things in the outside world, things to do, things to see, things to enjoy. And there was Alexa.
Randa was determined to complete her PhD by writing her dissertation within one year of passing her doctoral examinations. She knew this was a tall order, but she also knew she could do it if she put her mind to it. Yes, she could, if only—if only Mark Antony would hold on and remain a good boy. Then she could start her teaching career at a college.
Little did she know that her progress would yet again be impeded in spite of her plans. At her annual medical check-up, her doctor told her she had breast cancer. She had suspected a little lump in her breast a couple of months earlier, but she was busy with her university examinations at the time and had waited for her scheduled medical check-up. Her doctor referred her to an oncologist, who confirmed the diagnosis and said the cancer was advanced and had to be operated on as soon as possible.
Then started the long days in hospital, with all kinds of tests, X-rays, drugs, injections, and finally the operation. More long days followed for recuperation and exercise, and more long days with chemotherapy. Randa was exhausted and just wanted to go home. Mark Antony and her aging parents visited her daily, and so did some of her friends. Her hospital room was full of flowers, her nurses and doctors were helpful, her visitors were all encouraging. But all she wanted was to go home and rest.
She finally did go home, only to return to hospital a few months later for further treatment. The cancer had metastasized, and it was doubtful that treatment could cure her, but she was determined to have
everything possible done.
Mark Antony could not hide his tears when he visited her. She hugged him and kissed him, saying, “Now, be strong, my boy. For my sake, be strong, and I will recover.”
On his next visit he was strong. But she was not. She had lost weight and was weak and pale. He put on a brave face and found soothing words to say to her. She smiled at him, caressed his cheek, then asked, “Have you read Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra?”
“No,” he said. “Macbeth was our prescribed text in school.”
“Well, Shakespeare’s tragedies were going to be the topic of my PhD dissertation, you know. I was going to study how in Shakespeare’s plays love and death give meaning to life.”
He noticed his mother said, “I was going to study.” Had she given up hope of recovering?
Randa continued, “Just before Cleopatra poisoned herself, she remembered the love of her beloved Antony and how badly she had treated him by letting him twist in the wind and face defeat by Caesar at Actium. Wanting to die as a queen, Cleopatra declared:
Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
Immortal longings in me. Now no more
The juice of Egypt’s grape shall moist this lip.
Yare, yare, good Iras; quick. Methinks I hear
Antony call; I see him rouse himself
To praise my noble act; I hear him mock
The luck of Caesar, which the gods give men
To excuse their after wrath. Husband, I come:
Now to that name my courage prove my title!
I am fire and air; my other elements
I give to baser life. So; have you done?
Come then, and take the last warmth of my lips.”
Her son listened and marvelled at how well versed in Shakespeare his mother was. But he wondered, Was she repentant? Did she feel she had let her husband twist in the wind? Was she now offering her son the last wisdom she could before departing this life? Was death by suicide a “noble act,” as Cleopatra said? What did she mean by saying, “I have immortal longings in me” and, “I am fire and air”?
During the funeral service a week later, Mark Antony could not concentrate on the prayers for his mother or on the eulogy given by one of her professors at the university. His head was teeming with images of his dying mother, of his absent father, of Alexa, and his mind was crowded with questions about the meaning of life, of love, of death. His aged grandparents stood by him to receive condolences after the burial, and he shook hands with dozens of people he knew, and with many more he did not know. It was a mechanical act, an automatic movement, a zombie-like exercise. Then Alexa shook his hand and he broke down into a paroxysm of sobs and tears.
The next thing he was conscious of was waking up, weeks later, in a mental hospital. He was served by gentle creatures in a quiet atmosphere of whiteness and sunshine, and surrounded by fragrant flowers brought by his schoolmates. He was visited every day by his grandfather Antony. Little conversation passed between them at first, but after a few weeks they became chummy, and one day the doctor said that Mark Antony could go home.
Home! What home? Whose home? And to do what?
He sat in the passenger seat next to his grandfather Antony, who was driving the car home through the city of Toronto. He was told he would live with his grandparents for a while until he finished high school the following year and made arrangements for going to university.
Mark Antony remained silent. His mind, however, was astir. There was love in the world still, he thought. Life was still good, still beautiful. But it was becoming narrower, smaller and denser, and more beautiful, greatly more beautiful, because it was converging with intensity on one pretty face with glowing eyes and a radiant smile. It was the face of his high school love, it was Alexa’s face, looming in front of him in the clear blue sky he saw through the car’s windscreen.
When the car stopped at a red light, Mark Antony quickly jumped out, ran to the entrance of a nearby five-storey building, rushed upstairs in leaps and bounds to the roof, to the sky, and flew off to kiss the face in heaven that had launched his love.
It all happened with such speed that the grandfather was at a loss. He pulled over, parked his car round the corner, and rushed to the front door of the building.
Mark Antony’s body was lying flat on the sidewalk, blood oozing from his mouth. A few passers-by had collected around him, their unbelieving eyes fixed on him as on a fallen Adonis.
“Vanity of vanities; all is vanity,” grandfather Antony whispered to himself as he knelt, weeping, over his grandson, while the siren of an ambulance shrieked was shrieking its way to the spot.
TRUE LOVE, MAD LOVE
She knew I was Jim’s best friend and that I knew of his deep affection for her. When the tragedy of his death came to be known and many thought she was responsible for his rash act, she did her best to justify herself and began to speak to everyone who knew both of them, to explain that she still loved Jim and missed him terribly, irremediably, and that she had done nothing to deserve blame for his suicide and the accusations currently prevalent among his friends. To me, she gave a copy of his last letter to her, and I was baffled on reading it. I could not make up my mind and decided to ask you, my friends and his, what you think.
So here is Jim’s last letter to Nadia, after which he apparently lived a normal life for more than a year, as all his San Francisco friends and acquaintances attest. Please read it and let me know what you think, and relieve me of my uncertainty.
San Francisco, 25 June, 2001
Dear Nadia
Let me for a while fantasize. I hope you have the time to read this letter. Suppose you did not send me your latest email message. I come to Boston to see you, knowing that you are now back home from Florida. I ring your doorbell. You open the door and unexpectedly see me standing there with a bouquet of flowers. What do you do?
I have a feeling you will not recognize me at first. But having seen me once for a few minutes at an Arab-American poetry reading in Washington DC a year ago and having later seen my picture, you will remember the hundreds of words we have exchanged since then in letters and on the telephone, then you will collect yourself and say, “Jimmeee! Come in, come in. You’re here from San Francisco. Shame on you! Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”
I will enter. Your apartment is in a mess. “Forgive this mess, Jim,” you will say. “I returned from Florida only yesterday and I’ve had no time yet to tidy up.”
I will say, “Nadia, I’ve come to see you, forget about the mess. How are you, my friend? How is your family in Florida?”
“I’m fine, they’re fine too,” you will say, still trying to collect a few things strewn all over, then you take the flowers from me and put them in a vase.
“Nadia, please come and sit down next to me.”
“Let me first turn the kettle on, and we can have coffee and more coffee. And we’ll talk and plan our day.”
You return from the kitchen and sit by me, smiling and looking me over.
“Here we are together at last, after a whole year,” you say.
I agree, “Here we are together at last. What shall we do together? I’m staying at the Hilton downtown, and I’m planning to stay two days. I’m on my way to New York, where I will lecture at Columbia. My friend Professor Meagan Nowell invited me to speak on Arab-American poets, and I jumped at the opportunity.”
“What an opportunity!” you remark. “What will you say?”
“I’ll say: Nadia Asaly is my favourite, but I have to say why. As you know, there are well-established poets like Etel Adnan, D.H. Melhem, Samuel Hazou, Naomi Shihab Nye, Elmaz Abi-Nader, Gregory Orfalea, Lisa Suhair Majaj, Nathalie Handal, Paul Nassar, Mohja Kahf, Khaled Mattawa, and a dozen others, who are accomplished and well-published poets, some of whom have earned prestigious awards in America. So I can’t just begin with Nadia Asaly. But I will build up my argument and will lead to you as one of the youngest and most innovative ... I me
an, one of the most creative poets and one with a most fertile imagination. Your poems are dreams, Nadia, unattached to everyday reason. Like dreams, they grow, scene after scene without logical links except for the powerful force of your vivid imagination pouring out one image after another so that, in the end, the cumulative picture coming out is itself a dream.
You listen. I stop talking. I look at you, admiringly. Your face shines. Your eyes sparkle. I smile and say, “Nadia, I haven’t come to lecture to you, my dear. I’ve come to see you, to speak to you, to listen to you, to do things with you, to be with you.”
You say, “Go on. I like your words and your warm voice, I like to hear you talk, to see your hands expressing your thoughts before your mouth utters the words, I like to watch your eyes as they twinkle at every thought. I can see through them into the deepest part of your soul, your beautiful soul that I admire so much because it evokes Arabian romances and their mysteries.”
The kettle whistles. “Oh, I have to get the coffee,” you say, rising. “I have some date-chip cookies that Mom made and gave me in Florida, following Grandma’s Palestinian recipe. Would you like to have some with your coffee?”
“Sure.”
You come back with coffee for two and your mother’s date-chip cookies.
“Listen,” you begin. “Let’s go out after coffee. We’ll walk and walk in the Back Bay area and along the bank of the Charles River for a while, then at noon we’ll go to a French restaurant I like and we’ll have lunch there with Bordeaux wine. How about that?”
“Fine.”
“In the evening,” you continue, “we’ll go to a play or a movie, and then we’ll have dinner at another French restaurant I like and more French wine. Then coffee and more coffee. I’m not suggesting one of the Arab restaurants because you have so many of them in San Francisco.”
“Fine, Nadia. What we need is to talk and talk all the time.”
True Arab Love Page 4