The Dog (14 page)

“You see?” he said to me. “This is the quality of these men.”

“Unbelievable. Wow,” I said. There seemed no point in raising the issue of compensation for the owner of the goat.

A short while later, the chef arrived with a serving dish. “The liver,” Georges said. “Fresh, fresh.” He cut a piece off the red mass, squeezed lemon juice over it, and began to eat. “Fantastic,” he said. “Take some. There is nothing healthier.” I accepted a piece, against my will. I did not want to put a part of the goat inside me.

Georges said, “This idea you have, to have a foundation, this is a good idea.”

It took a second or two to figure out what he was talking about.

“Tell me,” Georges said. He was very fastidious with his white napkin and was taking a long time to clean his mouth and wipe his hands. His huge helping of raw liver was suddenly gone, as if by prestidigitation. “Who do you think we should help?”

“Whoever you want to help,” I said. “It’s your money.” I added, for some stupid reason, “You have the honor of deciding.”

“Honor?” He laughed. “This is not my area of expertise. I would like you to decide.”

“Uh, I’m no expert, either,” I said. “It was just a suggestion. I just thought it might be a good idea. From the Batros standpoint. I mean, it’s my impression that you get a lot of requests for help.”

“This is very true,” Georges said. “A lot of people ask us for money.” He pointed at my chest. “Tigers. Maybe we should help the tigers. They are very noble. I remember seeing them in Las Vegas. Poor Mr. Roy, that was the tragedy of tragedies. Or was it Mr. Siegfried? My question is, do you think we can save the tigers? How would we do it? How much money would it take? The problem is the Chinese,” he said. “They eat tigers. I believe they will eat anything. Dogs, of course. They love the meat of the dog. It is not just the Chinese. The Indonesians, too. Let me tell you a story. I was in Indonesia once, in Sumatra. A savage place. I had to go up into the hills to speak to a big man. On the way up there, my driver is looking, looking, like this.” Georges gripped an invisible steering wheel and peered from side to side. “Then”—he turned the wheel—“
boum
. We hit something. The driver gets out. He goes into the street. He picks up the dead dog by the legs and throws it in the back of the truck, like this. He says to me, We will give the dog to the big man. And this is what happened. The big man cooked the dog, and we ate it. Eating dogs isn’t so stupid, in my opinion. In Switzerland they eat dog sausages, and I cannot say the Swiss are stupid. Cold, yes. Avaricious, yes. Stupid, no. But eating tigers for medicine? Very stupid. Maybe this should be our focus, the fight against stupidity. It’s a very serious problem. There is a lot of stupidity in the world. It does much harm. You must understand this very well, coming from the United States.”

“I—yes,” I said. I was more taken aback by his comment on the Swiss, which on one view amounted to a comment on my mother.

“The people of China work very hard, but still they are stupid,” Georges Batros said. “Our problem is, they are”—he searched for the English word—
“nombreux.”

“Numerous.” I was wondering why he’d decided to have the conversation in English. In Beirut, we’d spoken in French.

“Exactly. They are numerous. There are more than one billion Chinese,
si je ne me trompe pas
. Also one billion Indians, and many of them are stupid, and again the tiger suffers. I am not sure where to begin. What do you suggest?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps you could—”

“What are your arrangements?” Georges said.

I didn’t know what he meant.

Georges said, “What arrangements have you made to help others? That would be very good to know. I could follow your example.”

“I’m not sure that would be instructive,” I said. I smiled humbly. “Our situations are not comparable,” I said. “Unfortunately, I’m not in a position—”

“Yes, yes, yes—I understand. But you make good money. Eddie has taken care of you. You are in a position to help others, even if only a little. It would be a guide, an inspiration, to hear about your personal efforts.”

He was trying to push me around. I declined the top-up an attendant was offering me. To Georges, I said, “My arrangements are my business, with respect.” (I had no arrangements at that time. I had only recently arrived in Dubai. I had not yet put in place my automatic transfers to HRF and HRW.)

“But what I give to charity, what I do with my money—that’s your business?”

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding, Mr. Batros. I don’t have an opinion about this. I was just trying to be useful as the family officer.”

“I like you,” Georges stated. “You’re Eddie’s old friend. And Sandro trusts you. This is a point in your favor, because my sons can’t agree about anything. So let me explain something to you. You have one function. You know what this function is? It is to make sure nobody steals. This is your function.”

Various ripostes came to mind ex post facto, but at that moment I said, “Absolutely. Understood.” If Georges wanted to flex his biceps, put me in my place, show me who was boss,
ream me out—whatever, sticks and stones. Fundamentally, spiritually, he had no standing. All I was interested in was keeping my job and getting the fuck off the yacht.

So it came about. Somebody took away my glass, somebody gave me my bag, somebody ushered me to the dinghy. Georges was at the top of the boarding ladder, waving. “Please give my regards to Mr. Trompe,” he called out. I was quickly transported to the nearest coastal village. I made a deal with a villager and was driven to Antalya. The
autobus
was long gone. I flew back commercial, via Istanbul. A week later, I was informed that the Batros Foundation had been incorporated in Dubai and that the board of directors had appointed me to the (pro bono and essentially honorary) office of Treasurer.

The Batros family endowed the Foundation with forty million USD. I signed the GEA authorization myself—an unforgettable, vertiginous moment. Almost four years later, the Foundation (through sub-charities and in cooperation with partner donors) supports medical clinics in Abidjan, Libreville, Tunis, and Kinshasa. These projects are going very well, judging from the brochures and the websites, which feature photographs of very happy-looking Africans. I have no involvement in the operational side, which is carried on by a mainly Lebanese team based in International Humanitarian City, over by Business Bay. The team reports directly to Georges but copies me in on about fifteen e-mails a day, few of which I am in position to make much sense of. I do, as Treasurer, have power to authorize payments from the Foundation accounts, which in theory I oversee. This power enables me to ensure that the Foundation makes miscellaneous donations authorized by the Batros directors. To date I’ve received authorizations from Alice Batros, in support of CARI (working for Irish victims of childhood sexual abuse), and from Sandro, in support of Operation Smile (surgical repair of facial deformities in children) and the Heritage Foundation (development and dissemination of right-wing ideas). I have given the relevant instructions to
the Batros Foundation employees and followed up personally. The donors can be sure that their benefaction has been effective.

It has never been explained to me by what process Georges Batros decided to green-light the Foundation. I believe I played an instigative role, even if this has never been recognized by any Batros. When I question the worth of my life, it comforts me to think that, but for my instrumentality in this matter, a significant number of humans would likely be living less healthy, less happy, less worthwhile lives. One might say that this unforeseen good contains nothing less than the hidden meaning of my move to Dubai.

My dealings with the Batros family are confidential, and I’m not one to toot my own horn, so there was no question of sharing any of this with Mrs. Ted Wilson at Al Nassma—if, that is, she showed up. I drank a cappuccino; I drank a second. As I watched one person after another who wasn’t Mrs. Wilson walk into the café, I passed into an awareness of another person—the one waiting for the arrival of Mrs. Ted Wilson. What was he doing? Who did he think he was? Was it really his plan to inform Mrs. Ted Wilson of an unverified rumor that there was a second Mrs. Ted Wilson? As if she hadn’t heard it already? As if he had some kind of standing in the matter? As if he was an Extraordinary Gentleman? As if she was really going to meet up for a coffee with an unstable lentil thrower who didn’t even know her husband? And then what—take a romantic stroll in the mall? Fall, for no reason, for a supererogatory weirdo? LOL.

I rolled up my
Philanthropy
and went to the office.

SPEAKING OF WHICH
, who should drop by today but Sandro. He enters unannounced and catches me and his son working on a Green Belt Sudoku problem.

“What’s this?” he says, picking up the puzzle book. Before anyone can reply, he lets go of the book and advances to my side of the new partition and with a great sigh takes a seat in my chair. Sandro must have the mistaken idea that the partition creates an acoustic barrier, because he says loudly, “We need to talk.”

I pause him with a raised hand, which I suspect irritates him. I go to the kid. “Why don’t you sit at Ali’s desk for a while.” The kid picks up his chair and follows me out. Ali gets up and offers the kid his own chair, behind the desk. I veto that. Ali must sit in his chair and the kid must sit in his chair.

Sandro is fiddling with my mouse and looking aggrieved. He tells me, “I’m not happy with my doctors.”

“Which ones?” I say. Sandro’s healthcare profile is complex. There’s an orthopedist in Lausanne for his bad knees, a pulmonologist in London for his bad breathing, and a cardiologist in New York for his bad heart. In Dubai, he retains physicians who provide 24/7/365 concierge medical services to a very small clientele. (The Batros family has its own in-house emergency room in both the Dubai and Beirut compounds. Each has an X-ray machine, CT scanner, blood-analysis facilities, ultrasound equipment, etc. The
Giselle
has an ER cabin, albeit a relatively rudimentary one. (Sandro’s yacht, the
Mireille
, has no special cabin, but does have a defibrillator. (Eddie has no yacht.)))

“Lieberman,” Sandro says. Lieberman is the Park Avenue cardiologist. “He’s got me wearing this for the next couple of weeks.” To my dismay Sandro lifts his Notre Dame T-shirt (Notre Dame is his alma mater, though he never graduated). Even as I avert my eyes, I see that wiring has been taped to his breast tissue. “It’s a monitor. This way they can follow my heartbeat second to second.”

“OK, that makes sense,” I say. Sandro suffers from cardiac dysrhythmia.

“Yeah, but get this,” he says. “The results show up in India. There’s a computer in India watched by Indian guys. They see something, they call New York. I mean, what the WTF? Indian guys? I’m putting my life in the hands of Indian guys in India?”

“I’m sure they’re highly qualified.”

“Yeah? I’m sure they’re highly fucking minimum wage.”

I make a big show of getting out a piece of paper and taking a note.

Sandro sighs and heavily swivels. “So …?” He bobs his head toward the door, in the direction of his son. “How’s it going?”

“OK, I guess,” I say. I decide to try my luck, carefully. “I have to tell you, Sandro, I’m not sure this is the most productive setup. And this thing with weighing him …”

Sandro says, “Tell me this: you got kids?” Another swivel, a big roomy one that surely puts my chair under huge strain. “I didn’t think so. However … Point taken. We’ve got to make this work. I think the answer is, you should take him under your wing.”

I am very, very silent. I am William the Silent and Harpo Marx and Justice Thomas.

He is saying, “You’re telling me it’s not super-productive. OK—so make it productive. You’re a smart guy—teach him something. He’s got a bunch of summer homework he needs to do. Help him with that. His mother isn’t exactly the professor of brain surgery type.”

I’m not going to get sidetracked into a consideration of Mireille Batros, an exceedingly complicated person. “Sandro—”

“You’re going to teach him some values,” Sandro says. “What’s right and what’s wrong. This is going to be your top priority.”

“Sandro, there’s no way I—”

He begins to weep. “I can’t do this by myself anymore.”

Here we go again.
Krokodilstränen. Les larmes de crocodile
. The human tear, once a great currency, is now worthless everywhere.

He says, “You know our ATM machine?”

I do know. At Fort Batros, the family has an HSBC ATM for its exclusive use.

Sandro tells me that Alain underhandedly borrowed his ATM card, somehow figured out the PIN, and attempted to withdraw money. They caught him red-handed, the numbskull, because he couldn’t quickly work out which way to insert the card.

“Oh dear,” I say. “That’s unfortunate.”

Sandro relates that he and Mireille cross-examined their son for an hour, made various threats, inflicted various penalties, and still he refused to say how he’d got hold of the card or the PIN, or how much he was planning to withdraw and for what purpose. Mireille’s participation in this questioning is ironic, because Mireille’s own debit and credit cards have been taken away from her on account of her alleged inability to control her spending.

“We got nothing out of him,” Sandro says. “Not a word.”

I’m impressed with the kid. He didn’t crack.

“I want you to find out what’s going on,” Sandro says.

“How am I supposed to do that?”

Sandro points a thumb at himself. “Bad cop.” He points an index finger at me. “Good cop. Make friends with him. Make him feel like it’s safe to talk to you.”

The demand is so absurd and unenforceable that it doesn’t occur to me to object.

“You’ll make it work,” Sandro says. He somehow raises himself out of my chair. “We all set with Bryan Adams?”

“You mean Bryan Ferry,” I say. “Yes, we—”

“I mean Bryan Adams. What am I going to do with Bryan Ferry? Mireille loves Bryan Adams.”

“You asked me to book Bryan Ferry. You didn’t ask me to book Bryan Adams.”