Koolaids (9 page)

To be from Lebanon means you are from a place of refuge and tolerance. You share a country with people of many different backgrounds, cultural identities, and faiths. To make Lebanon like its Arabic neighbors is to deny her identity.

I agree with many of the writers that Lebanese are free to be Arabs if this is their cultural identity, and they are free to be Western if that is their cultural identity, or even Aramaic. This is the point. In Lebanon, one should be free to be different. This is the essence of being Lebanese and the essence of being
American.

Wayne Kasem

…

“Can't
we
all just get along?” asked the modern-day philosopher with puffed lips.

…

I sent a note to Mr. Kasem asking, if the South was a hotbed of refuge and tolerance, how
come
they have the highest rates of gaybashing in the world. He was not very amused. I received death threats.

…

My mother was baptized when she married my father. She had no choice. Either one of my parents had to take on the other's religion to get married. We have no civil marriage in Lebanon, only religious. Neither of them was very religious, nor were their families. I have two aunts and one uncle who had interfaith marriages. Even after my father died, and the city was divided, my mother adamantly refused to move to West Beirut, which was probably safer for her. We would have to cross to visit her parents twice a week. Grandma Salwa crossed with us on a number of occasions. For her, it was a pilgrimage, a rebellion against a state of affairs she had little control over.

My card says I am a Christian, a Maronite, to be
exact. When I was ten, I asked Grandma Nabila what it meant to be
Christian
because I figured out she wasn't. She looked at me and said, “Well, Makram, it means you can become president of this great country of ours.”

…

I never knew what attracted me to the piece. I was not into elephants. I found out from the saleslady the meditating elephant was the god of devotion. Well, devotion was not my cup of tea either. I ended up paying sixty dollars for that thing, which could not have been bigger than an inch.

I never knew why I carried that thing with me at all times. I am not much of an object person. I own nothing of value. I carried it on me at all times. I became devoted to it.

When I first found out about the virus, I was crestfallen. I never thought I would survive. I ran back to Arizona, my haven. I said, “Father, can you help me?”

Father asked me if I was sure I wanted help. I tried to convince him. Father suggested I consider a ritual, as in the old days, an offering to the gods.

I wondered what I could offer the gods. I was never very religious. I never believed in superstitious silliness.

I built a small altar in the middle of the desert. I placed my elephant on top. I prayed. I left.

The next day it stormed. I wanted my elephant back. Father said I made an offering, but if it was still there, I could take it back.

I found it. Miraculously, it was still there. Miracle of miracles.

I left Arizona for British Columbia. I stayed in a hotel room. I hid my elephant in a sock. It would have been too embarrassing to leave it in a safe deposit box. I lost it.

My health improved.

…

Addressing a virus, a war, or oneself:

“Why, with your infernal enchantments, have you torn from me the tranquillity of my early life. . . . The sun and the moon shone from me without artifice; I awoke with gentle thoughts, and at dawn I folded my leaves to say my prayers. I saw nothing evil, for I had no eyes; I heard nothing evil, for I had no ears; but I shall have my vengeance!”

From “Discourse of the Mandrake,” in
Elizabeth of Egypt
by Achim von Arnim. Since a plant can't really talk, I decided to appropriate it. Sorry, Achim.

…

Christians fought among themselves again in 1989. Like their Muslim counterparts, they were more vicious eradicating their own.

General Aoun, after naming himself prime minister, wrestled control of East Beirut from the Lebanese Forces. Bodies were everywhere.

The assassin of the Lebanese Forces, Nick Akra, was found naked, in bed with his paramour, Samia Marchi, legs entwined, lips still joined. Fifty-two bullets riddled their corpses. Coitus interruptus.

…

I am at the post office, opening my mailbox. An old man is next to me getting his mail. He makes a pass at me. I am appalled. I do not like older men who seduce boys.

He puts his hand inside my pants, and touches my anus. My mind gets all fogged up.

The man leaves the post office. I follow him in a daze. I want him. He looks back to make sure I follow. I am walking about ten steps behind him. A group of teenage girls, in school uniforms, start walking in between us. They are boisterous and walking slowly. I am afraid I will lose the man. I try to go through them, but they cut me off. I try to ask them to let me by, but they are not listening to me. They talk loudly to each other, completely oblivious of me. I am getting annoyed.

I try to push my way through. One girl turns around and punches me straight in my left eye. I am no longer drugged. The fog has lifted. I am clearheaded.

I am back in Beirut. In a stable, hiding. My father walks in. He asks me what I am doing. I tell him I killed him. He is lying on the ground, dead. We both look at his body.

…

September 13th, 1993

Dear Diary,

While reading the paper today, I noticed the published names of thieves who were arrested. Before the war, the names were always Ahmad, Omar, and Ali. Now it's Pierre, Georges, and Joseph. Crime is an equal opportunity employer these days.

…

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was Mohammad, peace be upon Him. For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. For Mohammad, peace be upon Him, said God was neither a son nor a father. 0 People of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion: Nor say of Allah aught but the truth. Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) an apostle of Allah, and His Word, which He bestowed on Mary, and a spirit proceeding from Him: so believe in Allah and His apostles. Say not “Trinity”: desist: it will be better for you: for Allah is one Allah. Glory be to Him: (far exalted is He) above having a son. To Him belong all things in the heavens and on earth. And enough is Allah as a Disposer of affairs. One will find in the Bhagavad Gita all that is contained in other scriptures, but the reader will also find things which are not to be found elsewhere. That is the specific standard of the Gita. It is the perfect theistic science because it is directly spoken by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Sri Krsna.

Dhrtarastra said: O Sanjaya, after my sons and the sons of Pandu assembled in the place of pilgrimage at Kuruksetra, desiring to fight, what did they do?

To this I replied: A man can receive only what is given him from heaven. You yourselves can testify that I said, “I am not the Christ but am sent ahead of him.”

To this the sons of Pandu replied: We do not believe you. You have AIDS dementia.

To this I replied: Those who reject Faith and keep off (men) from the way of Allah, have verily strayed far, far away from the Path.

Live with this, suckers, for I am the Word.

…

They were my girls, Marwa and Nawal. I called them the MN girls. I took care of them. They took care of me. I left them everything.

They were my girls. Like a doting parent, I took pride in every one of their accomplishments. They cowrote a number of published essays. I do not think either one of them ever wrote anything on her own. They collaborated on life.

They studied my paintings extensively. They would discuss them endlessly. They asked questions I could not answer. They wrote about my work. They became my historians, my chroniclers. They wrote essays for the catalogues of exhibits I had, including the retrospective.

They were my girls, staunch defenders against a country which wanted to obliterate me from its collective conscious. They arranged my first exhibit in Beirut, in 1995. I never thought I would see the day. The exhibit consisted solely of paintings from Lebanese collections, in Lebanon, France, and Canada. That fact alone left me dumbfounded.

They both talk about husbands. At twenty-five, they are bordering on spinsterhood by Lebanese standards. It is going to be difficult for either of them to get married, unless it is to a foreigner. In Lebanon, marriage is what I would call quasi-arranged. A boy decides he wants to get married. He tells his parents, who put the word out to the entire family. A search for the appropriate girl begins. The right family, the right background, the right culture are considered. When an appropriate girl is found, the boy and his family pay the girl and her family a visit. If the boy and girl like each other, they start dating for a couple of months, no sex, of course, only dinner and maybe a movie. They get married only if both approve of each other.

The girls have had a number of suitors. They have not had a single date with any of them, though. My sister's trick is to simply disappear when suitors arrive. If she has not managed to leave the house before they arrive, she simply jumps in the bathtub and dunks her hair. She then spends the next three hours fixing her hair to be presentable. Marwa is more straightforward. She simply comes out, meets the boy, looks straight at him, and asks him something like, “Do you think Kierkegaard meant we can only resolve the mind-body dichotomy through faith, and faith alone, which would mean Schopenhauer was wrong, or do you think he meant there is no resolution, or do you think he was ignorant to even ask the question, since Kant says there is no dichotomy, it is all an illusion?” The mother wraps her boy, even if he does have an erection, and takes him home.

The girls are part of the war generation. They left Lebanon and saw the world. Would they be able to make the adjustments or would the country accommodate them? They both dated while they were here, but neither would consider it serious. They were never able to completely shed their indigenous relationship with their culture.

They are a new breed, a new species. I remember Kurt asking them a couple of years ago whose suffering was greater—­Marwa's, whose family was shattered at an early age, or Nawal's, who experienced it later. They looked at Kurt as if he were completely nuts.

…

I just read the peace plan in Lebanon between Hizballah and Israel. It sounds like a tag team professional wrestling match with too many referees.

…

A paleographic document was unearthed from the ruins of downtown Beirut. Dr. Ullano Signori, an orthographer from Bari, was finally able to decipher it. The message read:

The truth is that we all live by leaving behind; no doubt we all profoundly know that we are immortal and that sooner or later every man will do all things and know everything.

That was followed by an indecipherable paragraph. It was written in a language unknown to man. Dr. Signori suggested that it was the author's intent to obfuscate the message.

The last paragraph read as follows:

What one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men. For that reason a disobedience done in a garden contaminates the human race; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew suffices to save it. Perhaps Schopenhauer is right: I am all others, any man is all men.

Dr. Signori was flabbergasted when he deciphered the title of the document. It was called
Ficciones.
He wondered what an Argentine was doing in Phoenicia.

…

The war started. No one was sure what was going to happen. My parents kept discussing whether I should leave and study abroad. Karim left for Washington, DC. That is where I was born. He enrolled at George Washington University. I missed him already.

I stayed in Beirut till I graduated from high school. The war made everything very difficult. I went to university in France. It was there I reestablished contact with Karim.

I was living in a flat with four other guys, all French. One day, he just appeared at my door. He was in Paris on the way to Beirut for Easter break. It was as if we had never parted. If we were close at one time, we were now even closer, for the age difference was no longer significant. He was still as handsome as ever. He was there for only a day, so we spent the whole time just catching up. That night, he spent it with me, in my own bed. We did not have sex, of course, as I was still too afraid to tell anybody. I was definitely terrified of telling him anything. That night, we got high again, in our underwear, and he played guitar just for me.

I went to visit him the following year. I spent a week with him. I stayed at his apartment, of course, and spent the nights in his bed. Even though it was my hometown, so to speak, he played the perfect host. He still had not graduated. I didn't think he really ever wanted to. He was having a wild time. He owned a motorcycle. He was very popular with the girls, and made sure to show me all his past conquests.

During that week, we took the shuttle to New York City. I had never been to New York. I wanted to see everything. He wanted to fuck a prostitute. He called a whorehouse he had heard of. We went there. He picked the sexiest hooker and I had to settle for one that was barely passable. An hour later he was bragging he came three times. I admitted I came only once. I did not admit I barely came once. There was a knock on the door when my hour had passed, and the prostitute asked me if I was sure I wanted to come. The poor thing must have had lockjaw. She had been sucking my dick for an hour and I did not come. I finally masturbated myself to orgasm.