Rabih Alameddine - I, The Divine

Love,

Your lovely daughter Lamia

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I only wanted to tell you that Sarah is in Beirut and I went to see her yesterday but Shes still the same and still arrogant and all about her and nose in the air like someone who smell kaka all the time and she believes the world should pay her a living and I don’t know what makes her think she is someone. Only to make her nose break a little I said to her in front of her old husband that I saw her first boyfriend, Fadi but realy I said I saw one of her boyfriends and Omar wanted to know who he was this Fadi so you see, good Sarah, smart Sarah, wonderful Sarah, never said to her husband about her boyfriend so okay, they are no married more but she never said to him about her affairs about her love about her sex before she met him her husband. The stupid fool thinks she was a maybe virgin when he first went to bed on her but she’s a sexmachine and that how she fished her men in the sea. But I told her Fadi he looked terribile because he had one eye and walked with a cover eye like Moshe Dayan, don’t you think? But she knew anything about that, Can you believe that? Because She loves this man at one time but then when she fished a more important fish like Omar she no longer cared with Fadi and she never cared to know out what happened to him her boyfriend because she doesn’t care and she all the time is insensitive. Only to make her feel bad I told her that at the beginning the early days of the war, he didn’t fight but he was a member of the communist party but he never fights so he was took by the Syrians and beat so hard he lost one eye and he can no more think right because he has no more shorterm memories and he forgets what he only said to you right away but he remembers what happened to him twenty years ago as if it was now happening and of course, he wasn’t to get married after that and he can’t have a job and he lived with his parents. He cannot understand a lot but he’s still in love with Sarah and he remembers her like she was all the time back then so I did say to him to forget her and I said to him she married twice and has many boyfriends but you see, he can’t remember no more now and all he knows is what happened then and his what happened that was my cruel sister.

She changes men like magic and I don’t know how she did it but I think I know how because she opens her legs to any man who will make her rich and better. I’am sorry to mean this about your daughter, but its the truth I swear on you and I know you saw her now and you know her and you know she is that way, don’t you think? Everybody here know about her sexmachine and thats how she fished herself with Omar but I don’t know why she let him leave and go without her and leave but he maybe found her with another man but if she worked hard she could have made him to forgive her because He was so in love with her. But he is better off now with better wife who take care of him all the time not like Sarah she swallows life out of her men. look at poor Fadi.

This is very depressive but I’am happy I can talk to you about this things because I dont talk to anybody and when I try to talk to Amal she attacks me because she thinks everybody is a good personne, and you know it is not true all the time at all but she likes Omar and I can know why because he is inviting her and her children all the time up to his chalet to ski and last year it was four times with him but he never invited me or my children, don’t you think my kids good enough?

I opened another bottle of wine and it was rance like sour vinaigre also like yesterday and why this is happening to me. Can I ask you a question which is do you still have the green woolend dress I always like and I know there is about thirty years but it was a nice dress and I thought you maybe still had it maybe I doubt you still wear it but maybe you saved it because a penny saved is a penny saved. If you did, can you save it for me? Don’t leave it to any of the other girls because I don’t think they loved it as much as I did and they don’t appreciate beautiful things, dont like pretty things, don’t know nice things, they don’t do they?

Love,

Your good daughter Lamia

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Dear Mommy,

I’de been thinking a lot about you this days and Sorry because I did not write to you but busy all the time because Ashraf my oldest boy been sick and got the grippe last month but he is over her now. You will be very proud of him if you saw him because he looks like you and your eyes but his father says his eyes not your eyes but are like him but you know my husband he is not intelligent and very fat also and he never met a food he does not say hello to all the time.

I took a long car to Suida because I was wanting to go there for a long long time like from here to eternity and I drive there at last and all by myself and it was so good and you will be proud of me. I woken up at four in the morning and took my car but I did not tell you I had a new car because Saniya bought a car only for me for my birthday and she thinks she can buy my love don’t you think. She thinks she is better than me because she has money and she buyed the car and gave it to me because she sknows I dont know how to say no because my old car was dying all the time slowly. But she picks the car and not me and she made the color choice and I hate that but it is a good car and I like it all the time and now I can go to Suida all the way.

I drive all the way to the Syrian border and the Syrians give to me a lot of trouble there and they ask me again and again why I was going to do in Suida. How can I tell them don’t you know? I’am not stupid. I couldn’t say to them I was going to find my children and say I’am sorry for killing there father because they would have put me in jail for sure right away don’t you think? I say to them I want to meet family in Suida and They asked me what was there name was and I said to them and they asked me how they were family and that is maybe how I got in trouble at the first because nor the family of my husband nor my family are family to my old family you see. So all the time at the end I said to the guy who was asking the questions to me that all Druze families are one family don’t you know? He at last believed me and let me go to Suida but I should said to him I was only a tourist in Syria and that is no problem but who goes tourist to Syria I don’t realy know and I know what you a’re thinking because I know you and I should had said to the man I was shopping but I thought about that only after they let me go and don’t you hate this when you think of something that would only have been perfect to say but it was only after it was time to say it like at the lip of your tongue because I always do that. Dommage realy.

it drive me a long long time to reach Suida because the roads are terribile and everything is so primitife and the village was just like I remembered déjà vu and nothing changes because it was old and dirty and very old at the same time but not dirty like dirty but there were cans of garbage all the time but no one had picked them up in long long time. Suida has many ajaweed and everyone wearing black and covered there heads with white with a silly hat or a foulard and it was like the fourteenth century but when I was there there was no electricity in the village but now here it is. Everyone I saw stared at me very much because I’am an outsider but I wasn’t of course but how do you tell that to stupid people don’t you know? I drove all the way up to my home and nothing changes there only for the terrace in the front and now it had pots of flowers, most of all hydreyngeas and some pensees but it was still the stone house and shutters of the wood was not changed also. The paint had gone bad and the color of green of the shutters was not there anymore at all almost because I was the last one to paint green paint on them there is fifty years ago. It did no longer look special like fifty years ago and not the best house in the village any more and look very smaller. I want to see under the pot of flowers next to the door to see my key but I don’t do that because it was long ago I left it there.