I, the Divine (4 page)

What I recall from all the craziness of that day is the sound of the opening stanza of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” being massacred by Mazen, the boy living on the second floor. Funny what we remember. Setting my memory in time is easy. The first day of the war in Beirut, April 1975. I was fifteen. Shells and bombs fell all around us, but we must have had electricity since Mazen was playing his new electric guitar, had been for the last ten days since he had gotten it for his birthday, and no “political skirmish” was going to get him to stop. I distinctly remember wondering how he could play so badly. Every boy in Beirut played “Smoke on the Water” on his electric guitar, yet we had the misfortune to live above the one boy who was tone-deaf. He took his guitar out to the stairwell, while his parents desperately tried to shut him up. The giddy days.

My whole family was out of our apartment. The stairwell seemed the safest place, surrounded as it was on every side. My father sat sideways, with his back facing the wall, one knee close to his chest, crumpling his best brown suit. He looked so handsome in those days. His hair was still dark brown, his fierce eyes still indomitable. He smoked his cigarette, blowing smoke toward the upper floors. He spoke softly to us throughout, to keep us calm. “They can’t keep going on like this,” he said. “They’ll stop soon.” I noticed skin between his socks and the hem of his pants. His sock garters must have been loose. It was the first time I saw a flaw in his attire. My father’s name is Mustapha Hammoud Nour el-Din,
M.D.
Everyone called him Doctor, even his children sometimes. I called him
Docteur Baba
.

I smelled something peculiar in the air, what I discovered later to be cordite. The things we learn. In time, the smell of cordite, of garbage, urine, and decaying flesh, would become familiar to us, banal and clichéd.

Three loud explosions in a row rocked the building. Too close. Pallid-faced Ramzi, the youngest, screamed and burrowed deeper into his mother’s dress. My father winced. I assumed he was wondering if Ramzi was too young to be chided. Boys should never scream.

“They don’t seem to be letting up,” my stepmother, Saniya, said. She held her son close, caressing his hair. “Maybe we should move down and be with the neighbors.” She was rounded and soft, bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anna Magnani. She sat between her two daughters, Majida on her right, and Rana on her left, comforting them. She would look at us, her three stepdaughters, intermittently, wondering how she should comfort us. All three of us remained separate from her and the young ones.

Amal, my eldest sister, then nineteen, was about to get married. Gunfire could not dampen her mood. She leaned against the wall, resolute, wearing Jordache jeans and a lavender angora V-neck sweater, her face serene.

My other sister, Lamia, seemed unperturbed as well, but in a different mood. No amount of gunfire could transform the air of gloom around her. She sat, head bowed, not participating. She was almost eighteen. The dim light created shadowy havoc on her acne-scarred face. Her morose expression was only habit, through continual recurrence of an emotional display, the face reverted to it, habituated itself to it, even in repose. She did not seem to belong to our family, yet was an essential part of it.

I stared up at the water stains on the ceiling, at the peeling paint. I wondered whether the concierge would paint the stairwell if the building was damaged enough. Another shell fell close by.

“I’m sure it’ll be over soon,” I said. “They’ll get tired.” I smoothed my red dress. My hand curled a lock of my reddish brown hair.

My half-sister Rana wrote furiously in her diary. She wrote incessantly, considering the world nothing but material for her writing. My favorite sister was growing up to be a stunner, a heartbreaker in training.

“What are you writing?” I asked.

“I’m writing about this. Everything that’s happening. All the noise. Where it comes from, how unexpected. Why the stop, start, stop and start again. All the different sounds. Always coming from different places. I can’t tell where it’s coming from next.”

“No one can tell, my dear,” said Saniya. “No one’s sure who’s fighting whom. We just have to wait it out.”

“If I knew what to expect, it would be better,” Rana said. “I just don’t know what’s coming next.”

Something exploded not too far from us, making everyone jump. Ramzi screamed again. Rana reached out and patted his head. She seemed so adult. He began whimpering. I knelt down on the stairs below him and rubbed his tiny back. “It’s okay,
hayatee
. Everything will be okay. I promise.”

As if at my signal, the gunfire stopped. We heard men shouting, but we could not discern what was being said. “They seem to be on the roof of the building next door,” my father said. “That’s probably why the shells are dropping close.”

“Do you think they’ll go away?” Saniya asked.

“I hope so. Maybe I should go up and talk to them.”

“No. We don’t even know who they are. You can’t talk to them.”

“Maybe one of them is hurt,” Rana said. “Would they need our help?”

We sat silent, wondering if they would fight again. Whenever someone tried to say something, my father shushed them. After ten minutes of silence, the electric guitar was back at it again. Lamia stood up, leaned across the railing, and screamed down, “Stop making all that noise. We’re trying to think here.” She sat back down.

Il est des histoires qui ressemblent à un conte de fées. L’histoire de mon enfance, par exemple, semblait être tirée d’un conte de Grimm. Et pourtant, mon enfance racontée ne fut jamais une histoire à faire rêver.

L’on dit souvent que les contes de fées laissent libre cours à l’imagination de l’enfant. La mienne (mon imagination), stagnait à chaque fois qu’on me parlait de sorcières. Je ne me prenais jamais à imaginer diverses figures féminines au physique hideux et aux cheveux hirsutes. Les sorcières des histoires qui m’étaient narrées avaient un visage qui m’était douloureusement familier, des cheveux longs et lisses comme de la soie, une élégance recherchée, et surtout une jeunesse hantée et menacée par la mienne. Invariablement, dans mon esprit, toutes les sorcières se retrouvaient en une seule: ma belle-mère.

Elle débarqua un jour dans nos vies, belle, jeune et impitoyable. Elle me prit en grippe dès le début. Et je le lui rendais bien. Elle m’était détestable. A son arrivée, elle imposa un système de lois et d’interdits qui transforma notre maison en une institution hautement disciplinée. Mes deux soeurs se plièrent sagement à ses règles. Mais mon esprit rebelle se refusait de se soumettre à ce régime qui semblait doubler de sévérité à mon égard. Si elle était intransigeante avec mes soeurs, avec moi elle se transformait en un despote Nazi.

Mon père et mes oncles prenaient un malin plaisir à nous apprendre des gros mots. Et encore, au fur et à mesure que nous nous perfectionnions dans cet art, ils enrichissaient notre vocabulaire d’insultes à caractère pornographiques. Avant l’arrivée de ma belle-mère, nous passions nos soirées à nous lancer des insultes. Bien sûr les oreilles délicates de celle-ci furent choquées par notre vocabulaire qu’elle trouvait aberrant. C’est pourquoi mon père avait trouvé un compromis. Il nous permettait de laisser libre cours à nos injures durant les absences de ma belle-mère. Mes soeurs avaient tout de suite appris à éviter les dérapages compromettants en la présence de celle-ci. Quant à moi, je ne l’appris jamais. Et je dérapais souvent. Je me délectais dans mes dérapages qui faisaient surgir des expressions effarées autour de moi. En l’absence de ma marâtre, mes injures déclenchaient des fous rires. Quand elle était dans les parages, je recevais les piments. Mais je continuais à avoir ces lapsus quand même. J’en savourais la sonorité exquise.

I wanted my mother to see her grandson, but she refused. My son, Kamal, was born in New York. When he was a baby, I took him everyday across the park, from the Upper West Side to the Upper East Side, to visit Janet. Once he left New York, she did not want to see him again. Kamal lived in Beirut with his father, but he came every summer to visit me.

One day, in July of 1993, I forced the issue. I walked Kamal over to her building. I told Jonathan, the doorman, to tell my mother Kamal and I were coming up. I did not have to do that since Jonathan knew me well, but I thought it would be better if she was prepared for us. Janet told him she could not receive us because she was leaving. I said I would wait for her downstairs and see her on her way out. Janet entered the lobby twenty minutes later, still beautiful as ever. Like a well-behaved boy, Kamal stood up to greet his grandmother. She shook his hand.

“You’re a big boy now,” she said.

“He’s twelve, Mother.”

“Well, I can’t stay here and chat. I’m late for an appointment. We can do this some other time. Okay? Have fun you two.”

She turned around and walked out, not allowing us to say anything more.

“Your mother is crazy,” Kamal said.

“She’s your grandmother.”

“Sitto Saniya is my grandmother, not Janet.”

“Saniya is your step-grandmother. Janet is your grandmother. She’s your blood and you can’t forget that.”

“I’m hungry.”

I took him to a Greek restaurant across the street. We sat outdoors because I wanted to watch. He ordered pizza, the only thing he ate those days. Within five minutes of sitting down, we saw Janet walk back into the apartment building.

This, I learned from my father: “I don’t think any man ever loved a woman as much as I loved your mother. But it faded, eroded slowly. One day I woke up and I was not in love. There was nothing I could do. We did not have enough in common to have a comfortable life together, not like Saniya and I. Once the love was gone, your mother got on my nerves. With Saniya, I don’t love her as much as I loved your mother, but she makes me happy. Your mother made me crazy.” There you go. My father divorced my mother and sent her packing, not because she could not give him a son, not because she was a terrible mother to his girls, but because he fell out of love.

In my family, love, like religion and politics, was to be avoided, a passion that vanquished reason and caused endless pain and heartache. I grew up angry with my father because he destroyed the fairy tale. My parents, Mustapha and Janet, their glorious love had not ended up happily ever after; it withered and faded. Unlike Amal and Lamia, my older sisters, I never heard them tell their story lovingly, since I was two when my parents split up, never as the grand affair. I was told the story, but only as a didactic fable of the folly of youth, the craziness of passionate love.

Janet arrived in Beirut in 1955, an independent woman of twenty, wanting to explore the world, picking the American University of Beirut to finish her bachelor’s, which she never did. Fate intervened in the form of a medical student at the university, my father. My mother was a beauty and, according to her, had had a number of beaus after her in New York, but my father had an irresistible charm.

The story goes like this: On arriving in Beirut, Janet went to a Lebanese fortune-teller who read her coffee cup. The fortune-teller saw the man who was to be the love of Janet’s life. She told her the man was Lebanese, a healer who would save her from certain death, falling in love with her after curing her illness and then marrying her. They would live happily ever after.

Janet met Mustapha at the beach of the American University of Beirut (technically not a beach since there is no sand, only large rocks and cement walkways, making it a poor beach by Beirut standards). At the time, my father had a habit of walking around with a stethoscope, which identified him as a medical student and helped him talk to girls. Years later, he would apply the same principle when he put the stethoscope on his car’s sun visor, thereby avoiding serious trouble or minor inconveniences when stopped at the checkpoints during the war. Whether Syrian soldiers, Christian soldiers of the Lebanese Forces, or the Druze militiamen, when they saw the stethoscope they did not ask for his ID, opting instead for a diagnosis of their ailments.

My mother was swimming that day. She was trying to climb on one of the rocks to rest when a sea urchin’s spine inadvertently pricked her ankle. She screamed, but apparently had enough composure to swim back to the cement platform. People called to the man with the stethoscope to come look at the ankle. The stories differ here. My grandmother says the bleeding was so profuse, it took a heroic effort on my father’s part to halt it. My father says there was no blood at all, and the prick was barely noticeable. My father examined the ankle and told my mother the only way to
save
her foot was for him to suck the poison out of the most beautiful ankle in the world. He then lifted her ankle and kissed it.

Their love affair was torrid and scandalous. They embarrassed the university by kissing publicly. The Druze community felt it was losing one of its brightest men and my grandparents were horrified. They objected to everything about Janet. They did everything they could to break up the couple, threatening and cajoling, to no avail. From the beginning, Janet tried to appease her future in-laws. She dressed more conservatively, held her tongue, and made Mustapha the most important thing in her life. When she appeared at Mustapha’s uncle’s funeral, following the precise rituals of the Druze, wearing the traditional black, everyone understood it was a lost cause. Mustapha and Janet were to marry.

Janet became more Druze than any Druze woman, even though she could not actually become one. One could not convert to the religion, but had to be born into it. Since there were no civil marriages in Lebanon, Mustapha and Janet had to travel to Limassol, Cyprus—technically, that meant that all their children were bastards. They came back to an apartment in Beirut bought for them by my grandparents. While Mustapha completed his studies, Janet became a Druze housewife. She learned to cook; her dishes became the talk of the town. To this day, it is said that her kibbeh, a dish of raw meat and cracked wheat, is unequaled in all of Lebanon. She became an impeccable hostess, generous to a fault, her house the cleanest it could possibly be. She never missed a funeral or a wedding, was the first on congratulatory visits when a birth was announced and the first at hospitals when an acquaintance was ill. She began to speak Arabic, with a mountain Druze accent even, which made her Druze contemporaries giggle but pleased the elders. She tried hard to be perfect and most likely would have succeeded had it not been for the daughters.

Amal was first, exactly nine months to the day from their wedding night. Everybody would have preferred a boy, but they were happy with Amal. She was healthy, a pretty baby, and there was time for boys later. Even her name meant
hope
in Arabic. They were disappointed with Lamia, but the marriage survived. When I arrived on the scene, it was too much. My grandparents convinced my father he needed a Druze wife who would provide him with a bushel of boys. Mustapha sent Janet back to New York.

Before she was married, Janet had been a lively girl, gregarious even. She had always been strong. After the marriage she became quiet in deference to her new position in the community. She became a steady and reliable woman who never said much, a woman who stood bravely and lovingly by her husband for six years as he finished medical school. She withstood most things thrown at her, but she finally succumbed to her husband’s fizzled love.

After the divorce, she was never strong again. The first time I saw her after she left, I was eighteen. She did not resemble the woman described in any of the stories I had heard about her. When I moved to New York with my first husband, Omar, we grew closer, but it was a constant strain to be in her presence for she never forgave. She had been wronged, and lived that wrong for the rest of her life.

I did not forgive my father his treatment of my mother until I repeated the same story, taking on the roles of Mustapha and Janet simultaneously. Like Mustapha, I fell out of love with my husband, and like Janet, I am no longer with my child. I made mistakes.

Like Janet and Mustapha, Omar and I met at the American University beach in 1980, while we were both engineering students. I saw him with a group of friends, diving from a rock into the sea. I had noticed him before. He was two years ahead of me and would be graduating in a couple of months. He dove, holding a knife in his hand, coming back up a few seconds later with a sea urchin. He got out of the water, cut the sea urchin in half, and fed it to a dog. It was not the same story I grew up with, but close enough. He noticed me watching him and sauntered over. We chatted about school and the engineering program. I remember his smile, sly, demure. He was somewhat shy, yet playful. Everything about him intrigued me, how his bushy eyebrows almost met, how they lined up from side to side since his face was so narrow. I loved his nasal voice, how he took a quick, short breath before every sentence, the seconds it took him to think before every response. Like my mother, I was smitten on that beach.

We went out twice before we made love. I assume I shocked him. We had gone back to his house, his parents were out. We kissed and I did not stop him. Step by step, he thought he was seducing me, while I was fully ready. The lovemaking was a little dull, but I did not have much to compare it to. Although I was not a virgin, I was not experienced. I was frightened at times, mostly in the beginning, simply the fear of being touched by a man again, but I was determined, or, more accurately, committed. I went through with it and he fell in love. In the time we were together, our lovemaking never improved. Omar loved it, whereas I found it merely amusing. I never achieved an orgasm with him.

We became an item. I knew better than to tell my parents, my father and his wife. Omar was Greek Orthodox, more acceptable than Maronite, but still Christian. Though interfaith marriages were fairly common, they simply were not acceptable in my family. My father did not want me to repeat his mistakes. I guess I would have hidden the relationship anyway, even if Omar were Druze. I don’t think my father could handle the fact that I was not a virgin. I confided in my eldest sister, Amal, who was married already. She thought Omar was a good match for me. He was intelligent, from a well-respected family, and was extremely rich. His parents, on the other hand, did not think I was a good match for their son. Yes, I was pretty. Yes, I came from a good family. They thought, however, I was after their money.

His parents did not do much to oppose our courtship. They thought since Omar was going to New York in the summer to get his graduate degree from Columbia, he would forget about me. Little did they know. I packed two suitcases and left with him. We eloped, were married within a month. I found out I was pregnant.

I loved Omar. There was never any doubt in my mind. Maybe not as much as he loved me, but I loved him. He treated me like a queen. The first year I was a housewife and took care of him as best I could. I was never a good housekeeper or cook, so he hired someone to do the menial jobs. While pregnant, I applied to Barnard and was accepted for the following year.

I delivered a beautiful baby boy, Kamal, on May 19, 1981. The pregnancy was surprisingly easy, but the delivery was nothing short of hell. I was in labor for twenty-seven hours. How anyone could accuse me of not loving my boy is beyond me.

I may not have been a good housekeeper, but I was a great mother. We lived on the Upper West Side, Eighty-third and Amsterdam. Most days during that summer before I enrolled at Barnard, when Omar went to the university, I would prepare Kamal and take him for a stroll all the way to Columbia’s library. I walked as exercise to lose all the weight I had gained during the pregnancy. I studied. Even though I was sure I would make it at Barnard, missing a year might have been a problem if I did not spend the time in the library. On the days I did not go to the library, I walked across the park, taking Kamal to Janet. Those days were hard. Even Kamal could not lift Janet’s moods. I believe I reminded my mother of her failures.

I am unsure of exactly what happened in September. I started school and hired a nanny for Kamal. Omar objected to my going to school, suggesting I wait another year for Kamal’s sake. I did not think it wise, did not want to end up like Janet. My going to school was not the cause of our problems. Omar may have begun to nag at times, but his behavior changed little. My behavior did not change either, but my feelings did. He would still try to involve me in mischievous things, like the pillow fights we had had since we met, but I started seeing them as puerile. I began to hate the way he ate. I noticed in his interactions with other people that he was not just shy, he was a wimp. I do not know whether the change was sudden or gradual, but it was palpable. I hid it well, but I could not stand him anymore. My own fairy tale had ended.

We never fought. Only on one occasion was I curt to him. He loved tickling me. No matter what I was doing, he would tickle me and I would drop everything and we would end up laughing. The last time he tried, I was studying for a final. I screamed at him to stop acting so childish. He was terribly hurt, like a little boy, and I had to apologize.

He was the perfect father. He helped with Kamal whenever he was not in school, doting on him continuously. He thought we had a wonderful marriage, was still in love with me. His peace and happiness lasted till February, when he began talking about going back to Beirut in June as soon as he graduated. It took me completely by surprise. I needed another year to finish. He thought I could finish in Beirut,
if
I really wanted to. Beirut was a living hell in those days. The fighting was some of the worst of the war. The elections were coming up and no one knew what was going to happen. Most of the Lebanese were leaving Lebanon, not moving back. He was surprised at my stubbornness, as he called it. We were Lebanese, our place was in Lebanon. Kamal’s place was with his grandparents, both sets, and his family. I tried to bargain. We could wait another year until I finished, until we figured out what was going to happen in Beirut. Omar would not budge. He missed his family, his friends. He wanted his parents to help with raising Kamal.

I made a mistake in underestimating Omar’s desire to move back to Lebanon. I did not understand his alienation in New York. I loved the city, he hated it. I felt at home while he felt like a foreigner. It was only later that I realized he never made any friends in the city. All of our friends were mine. He tagged along simply because I asked him. I was having a ball, while he was counting the days until we could go back.