Koolaids (21 page)

Marwa and her mother were back in Beirut when school started again in the fall. She did not reply to Sarah's letter until she showed it one day to my sister, her best friend. The girls had cowritten a French essay a couple of months earlier, about the tragedy of growing up in war-torn Beirut. They had used overblown metaphors, preposterous tales of woe, and exaggerated sufferings. The essay was published in the Lebanese newspaper
L'Orient—Le ]our,
and was then actually picked up by
Le Figaro.
The girls translated the essay into English and sent it to Sarah. The return address was Marwa's post office box.

The next letter from Sarah brought fits of hysterical laughter from the girls. In the letter, Sarah exclaimed shock at what Marwa had had to go through. It included a thin piece of fruit cake, to ease the pain, Sarah said. The girls did not reply. That was followed a couple of months later by a letter which included a get-well card—Sarah said she could not find a more appropriate card since there was none that said anything about dealing with a war—signed by all her classmates. Sarah had read Marwa's letter to her class and they all wanted to help.

The girls never replied to Sarah. They had written only that one letter. Sarah kept sending letters, at least one every six months. In those letters she would empathize with the suffering of her “friend” and elaborate on what was happening in her life. Every letter included a little present to help Marwa through her suffering—a No. 2 pencil, a Mickey Mouse eraser, a hair net, a cookie, and so on.

The girls grew up. Both passed the Baccalaureate at the top of their class. They read how Sarah lost her virginity to John. They both studied overseas, Nawal at Columbia and Stanford, Marwa at Penn and Georgetown. They continued receiving letters from Sarah at the post office box.

I heard about Sarah only recently. My sister had just returned from Beirut. She was talking to Marwa on the phone, when I heard snippets about Sarah. I asked my sister about her. She gave me a brief synopsis, then showed me the latest letter Marwa was supposed to have received.

I opened the envelope and read the letter. Sarah was now considering marrying her college sweetheart. She was still in Des Moines. She was asking Marwa whether she should marry now or wait to make sure John was the right man. She asked about Marwa's well-being, hoping the constant war trauma was not affecting her adversely. She was including a little present to help ease her great suffering. I shook the envelope to see what kind of present. A single packet of blue lemonade Kool-Aid fell out.

…

She attended the funeral of Mr. Suleiman, at the Greek Catholic Church of Peter and Paul in West Beirut. Another funeral, another wasted life. Her husband sat next to her. She stood, she sat, obedient to the rites. It was a large funeral. She felt eyes on her. She discreetly turned around. He was watching her.

“Hello?”

“Hello beautiful.”

“How could you show up? Why did you?”

“For a chance to see you in church.”

“What if someone recognized you? Is it worth the risk?”

“Yes.”

“You're crazy. If you wanted to see me in a church, all you had to do was say so. I would go to a church in Ashrafieh or Jounieh.”

“Good. This Sunday then. We'll go together.”

“Okay, but don't have any ideas about converting me.”

“I'm going to kill him.”

“No, you're not.”

“Yes.”

“No. You can't. I don't want to orphan my boys.”

“I can take care of them.”

“No. He's their father.”

“They never see him.”

“That's not true.”

“I have been ordered, Samia. It's as good as done.”

“No. No. You can't do it. Can't you tell them no?”

“It's from the top. He's gunrunning again.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“It'll be good for you.”

“Is there any chance you can get them to change their minds?”

“No.”

“I could tell him, you know. I could tell him that a friend told me your people are planning to kill him.”

“It wouldn't make a difference. I would just have to go through more people to get to him.”

“No. You can't do it yourself. You have to get somebody else.”

“I want to do it myself. I have a hundred guys who could do it, but this one is mine.”

“He has a bodyguard.”

“I know.”

“Don't hurt him, please. He is good-hearted.”

“Okay. I promise I won't hurt him.”

“Good. I like him. Don't let him see you. I would like to have him work for me.”

“What about the driver?”

“Kill him.”

…

Maria became our cook and housekeeper about a month after Scott moved in. She loved Scott and hated me. An obdurate Guatemalan, one of the few humans who refused to bow down to my temper. She was insolent and malapert with me, and the model of love and kindness with Scott. As he was dying, she sent her kids to her sister and moved in to be with him. When he died, I thought she would leave me. She did not. She remained as rude as ever.

One day, a year after he had died, I sat in the dark, crying. I heard Maria come into the room. She kissed the top of my head.

“It's okay,” she said. “You have to forgive yourself. You did the right thing. It was what he wanted.”

She left me there. She never mentioned it again.

…

In the cosmic circularity of the doctrine of the eternal return, Nietzsche forces together time and eternity. What is, has been, and will be innumerable times at immense intervals. Who gives a shit, I ask you?

…

I am in Beirut, sitting on my bed with Furball, Scott's Himalayan kitten. He is licking himself clean. My dad comes into the house with a female Great Dane. The dog comes over to look at the kitten, who is completely unperturbed. The dog bites the cat's head. I jump off the bed to get the dog to let go. I am not as fast as my father, who is already there, trying to open the dog's mouth. All I can see is the rest of the kitten's body, sticking out of the dog's mouth, a ball of fur. My father and I work together to free Furball. The dog, my father, and I move around in a circle. I notice my father is limping. He is the one wounded, not I. We finally are able to release Furball. He jumps back on the bed, and starts cleaning himself again, unharmed, unruffled. Every now and then, he looks at my father's bitch disapprovingly.

…

The explosion was heard in all of Beirut. The bomb was in Aishe Bakkar. Scores of people died, but that was not the intent. The Mufti, the religious head of our Sunni community, was killed in the explosion. His car was passing through the neighborhood.

That bomb killed my brother Hamid, his wife, and his three children, whom I had never met, on May 16, 1989. The building he lived in collapsed completely. I did not hear about his death till a year later. He was thirty-nine.

…

It took a while for me to realize I was in love with Mo. He is successful, intelligent, and unavailable emotionally. I always fell for that. It didn' t help that he is tall, dark, and handsome, in a scruffy sort of way. He knew I was attracted to him and made no big deal about it.

I was Scott's ex, and there were quite a few of us, but of the group, only James and I became his friends. He made few friends, if any. In reality, most of the people in his life got there through Scott. He was at times completely unapproachable.

I never knew what went on between him and his father, but the one time I heard him talk about his father, I thought he was talking about himself. He said his father's friendships started by avoiding intimacies and eventually eliminated speech altogether.

…

All charismatic energy is basically sexual. John Kennedy, Adolf Hitler, or Jesus, it always was sexual.

…

“Hello?”

“Hey Mo.”

“Hello, Kurt. How are you doing?”

“Not too well, but I think I'm feeling better today.”

“I'll be over in the afternoon.”

“Ha! That's what I am calling about. You had better not get out of the house today.”

“Why?”

“Mo, Mo, Mo. You have to listen to the radio or turn on the TV sometimes. Your picture is all over the news.”

“My picture?”

“Slight exaggeration. A composite drawing.”

“Oh. Did we blow up something again?”

“The federal building in Oklahoma City. Scores of people killed. They are saying two of your people did it. It's a good thing you shaved your beard, huh?”

“Okay. Let me turn on the TV. I'll see you later.”

“Bye, hon.”

It looked like Beirut. They still think we're different.

It turned out an American did it. A true-blue American. No one explained how the wires came up with descriptions of the suspects as two Middle Eastern–looking men. No apologies, no explanations.

…

Easter. My favorite holiday. A deeply philosophical time of the year when I ponder what on earth a bunny rabbit has to do with eggs and why, if they beat you, spit on you, and nail you to a cross, you'd want to call that particular Friday a Good Friday? If that happened to me, I'd call it The Worst Friday of My Life. But that's why Jesus is The Redeemer and I'm just another nobody.

Resurrection is so seductive.

…

He was tied to the bedposts, spread-eagled. She squeezed his testicles, hard. His eyes twinkled.

“Tell me again.”

“He begged me to spare him.”

She squeezed again, harder.

“Tell me how. What did he say? You beg. Like he did. Maybe I'll spare your life.”

He begged.

She kissed him.

…

Normality highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.

R. D. Laing, a British psychiatrist. Need I say more?

…

Backstreet was a bar on Makhoul Street. A tiny little place which was always packed, even on nights when shells were raining down. In any other part of the world, the place would have been closed for being a fire hazard. One entrance, the front, and three tiny windowless rooms on three levels, chock-full of people, a disaster waiting to happen. But who thinks of disasters in Beirut? There was nowhere to stand and it was difficult to move. Everybody was smoking. Jamal told him it was lucky they got in. He had to bribe the doorman. Samir cursed his luck.

Backstreet was owned by a man by the name of Philippe Duke. His claim to fame, and he was famous, everybody knew him it seemed, was he was Georgina Rizk's boyfriend when she became Miss Universe. When she was crowned Miss Universe before the war, it was the biggest source of pride for the entire nation. No one had ever watched the pageant before. The next day, after the great honor bestowed upon us, the whole country watched a tape delay of the Miss Universe pageant. Women wept with Georgina when the announcer said, “Miss Lebanon, you are the new Miss Universe,” even though they knew it was coming. Philippe Duke became the man.

The bar was stifling. He saw, at the far end of the room, a boy reveal the breast of a girl and kiss it. She laughed and pushed him away. A couple were necking at the table next to that. Jamal kept pushing his way forard. He followed. Someone pinched his butt. He turned around and saw a handsome man smiling at him. “Hello,” the man said. Samir pulled Jamal towards him and told him he was leaving. The cigarette smoke was too much for him.

He was not yet ready for his two worlds to meet.

…

FROM: [email protected] (MR JOSEPH TANYOS)

DATE: FRI, 2 AUG 1996 22:34:18, -0500

SUBJECT: PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

Lebanese Parliamentary Elections

Next week, the Lebanese government will hold its second Parliamentary elections since the “adoption” of the Taif Accord. The requirements of that accord have been waived by the current election law, which is undergoing a court challenge in Lebanon. Election was to be by
Mohafazat
with electors in each of the 6 electoral districts electing their delegates to the 128-seat Parliament. The districts are: North Lebanon, Mount Lebanon, Beirut, Beka'a, Sidon, and Nabatyiah.

This scheme, however, left Walid Jumblatt vulnerable in Mount Lebanon and unable to elect his party members since Mount Lebanon is overwhelmingly Christian and confessional voting is expected. It also left Nabih Berri vulnerable in the South since he lacks support in Tyre and other
cazas
of the Nabatyeh
Mohafazat.
Therefore, in order to insure that pro-Syrian Amal Party candidates can succeed, the two southern districts were combined, adding to Berri's voting strength. In Mount Lebanon, the election will be by
caza,
with the predominant Druze districts voting separately from the rest of Mount Lebanon, so as to assure pro-Syrian Jumblatt victories.

This is a tailor-made election. It seems highly improbable that the political forces in opposition to Syrian hegemony over Lebanon will have an opportunity to elect a significant voting bloc, regardless of the degree of participation by those Lebanese citizens who support such candidates. Due to the Sunni-Frangieh pro-Syrian alliance in the North, North Lebanon will elect proSyrian deputies. Due to Hizballah power in the Beka'a, Amal power in the South and Jumblatti power in the Shouf, all of these districts will likewise send pro-Syrian deputies to Parliament. Only in Beirut and the balance of Mount Lebanon is there an opportunity to send opposition deputies to Parliament; however, due to the lack of independent or international monitoring of the election process and the calculation of the results, Syrian intelligence forces will insure that no such opposition forces are elected in any significant numbers.

The 1992 boycott did work. The current parliament represents the will of only 13 percent of the Lebanese voters. As such, it has been rendered illegitimate and incapable of legislating sweeping change to the Lebanese constitution, though it has done its damage.