Rabih Alameddine - I, The Divine

I have been blessed with many curses in my life, not the least of which was being born half Lebanese and half American. Throughout my life, these contradictory parts battled endlessly, clashed, never coming to a satisfactory conclusion. I shuffled ad nauseam between the need to assert my individuality and the need to belong to my clan, being terrified of loneliness and terrorized of losing myself in relationships. I was the black sheep of my family, yet an essential part of it.

In 1988, I cut out a story from the New York Times about members of a high school football team in Hoboken who ambushed a solitary runner and beat him senseless, leaving him in a decaying ditch, shoeless.

For in the prophet Habbakuk in the Christian Old Testament/the Neviim in the Jewish Holy Scripts it is written:

“For the violence done to Lebanon shall sweep over you, the havoc done to its beasts shall break your own spirit, because of bloodshed and violence done to the land, to the city and all its inhabitants.”

On rainy days in San Francisco everything seems mortal. Everyone stays home and the color of death is everywhere. The city was having an unusual autumn storm after a cold summer. I walked up to the counter and ordered my macchiato . I loved the café because of its outdoor seating, but the weather forced me inside. Muzak blared from the decrepit speakers, the sounds of scratchy Enya, or maybe it was Celine Dion’s Titanic song. I took my coffee back to my seat. The café was much too gloomy on a gray morning.

There were only four people including me, each sitting in a corner. I had chosen the west corner. Two preppie gay men faced each other diagonally across the room, giving each other les doux yeux . Most probably horny waiters. Across the room from me sat a pale, youngish woman, straight black hair and layers of black cloth. A Goth, she had piercings protruding from all over her face, wore black lipstick and heavy black eyeliner. I wondered if she used makeup to make herself so white. She had a tarot deck spread out on the table in front of her. I had seen her reading the cards a number of times before, but for some reason she gave me the creeps today. I slugged down my coffee and left.

No one else walked the street. Few cars. A four-wheel-drive Toyota stopped ten yards in front me. A red umbrella emerged from the Toyota, followed by a young man in jeans. Just as he closed the door, the sky was filled with a bright light and the sound of an explosion. The man shrieked a high C and ducked behind the Toyota, his umbrella lowered, rain dotting his beige suede jacket. San Franciscans were not used to thunderstorms. The lightning must have hit somewhere close. It rained harder. I looked up at the sky, saw more lightning. The thunder that followed was deafening. I felt myself getting dizzy, realized I was dropping slowly before I blacked out.

I woke up in a darkened, unfamiliar room. I recognized the light and panicked. The daylight seeped in from windows closed with louvered shutters. Only in Beirut. I did not dare move. I was lying on the floor sideways, my face resting on a pile of newspapers. Someone must have put me there. I stared at the unfamiliar water stains on the wall, one mushroom cloud and a map of Italy. Where was I? I had to do something. I sat up and looked around me trying to gauge the room. I was in an old Beiruti house.

The sound of a shot rang out, shaking me out of my stupor. My head moved at a dizzying speed. I had to take in everything, figure out if I was in danger. I have been through this before. Instinct took over.

The walls were sandstone, not effective at impeding bullets. What floor was I on? I should look out the window. I heard another shot. Then another. A staccato burst. The boys were building up. It was going to be fierce. The shots were intermittent, a funny rhythm, a five over four, not a disco beat. Dave Brubeck would have been proud. On the wall next to me stood a large bookcase. I did not want to be underneath it if the books fell. I stood up. The thunderstorm from hell erupted.

Machine gun fire from every direction. Cannons, rockets, missiles detonated at the same time, enough to wake the dead. I should concentrate. I used to be able to figure out who was fighting whom by differentiating the sounds of gunfire, used to be able to tell Belgian missiles from Russian rockets. Where was I? I must look outside.

I opened the door slightly and put my head out. An old staircase, light coming through broken windows. Another door, slightly ajar, facing me. And nothing above me. Through the door, in the other apartment, I could see a family huddled together, like a flock of frightened birds. Are you all right? I yelled. They paid me no notice. Where am I? I asked. No reply. I looked through the broken windows. I was on the second floor. I should move down. I began to step out. A bullet whizzed by. I shut the door in panic, ran to the corner and cowered, held my knees to my chest and waited. I will survive this, I said to myself. I have before and will again. Must distract my mind. How did I get here? Where was my family?

I looked at the bookshelf. The books were all in English, all American authors, all romance novels. I stared in awe when I realized the bookshelf contained every book Danielle Steel had written. In hardcover no less. At least I think it was every book she had written. I could not be sure, but at the same time, I was certain she could not have written more books than were available on that bookshelf.

Two hours went by. No sounds. The fighters were taking a break. The most dangerous time. I heard the sound of dripping water coming from another room. Chinese water torture. Drip. Drip. A couple more minutes to make sure and then I would stand up and check. I heard the high shrieking meows of a threatened cat coming from outside. I got up from my corner and walked slowly to the window. I opened the shutter slowly and peeked outside. I did not know whether I had been in the neighborhood before. I might have, but I did not recognize it in this state. All the shutters of every house were closed. Down in the street three dogs, looking like they had been starved for days, cornered an orange cat against a wall. Even from a distance, I saw the cat’s hairs standing up. The dogs moved slowly around the cat, snarling, waiting to attack. They got closer, pulled back, approached again from a different angle. The cat’s wail was terrifying. A shot rang out and one of the dogs fell down, his head exploded, panoply of red. Another shot and another. All three dogs lay dead. The cat had not moved yet. It looked around and then bolted. The fourth shot got the running cat.

“Good shot,” screamed a voice in Arabic, coming from way down on my right.

“Allah is great,” came the reply from way down on my left.

Would they start shooting at each other again now?

I slowly closed the shutter, but not slowly enough. A bullet came through, right next to where my arm was. My body recalled the heat of gunfire and reacted instantly. I stood still to avoid the ricochet. The bullet hit the floor, jumped up, went left, hit the wall, bounced back and lodged itself in one of the books in the bookshelf. Indoors, bullets never traveled in a straight line. I did not worry about a second bullet. The first was just a warning. If the sniper had wanted me dead, I would have been.

I looked at the bookshelf. I saw the Danielle Steel book that was shot. It began to bleed. Blood dripped from it slowly. Drip. Drip.

I fainted.

I woke up in a car. It took me a minute to realize it was my ex-husband’s second car, the blue Volvo he loaned me every time I visited Beirut. I was holding on to the steering wheel, but the engine was not running. I looked in the rearview mirror and noted that my cheek had ink on it, as if I had slept on a newspaper, yet there was no paper in the car. I could read the writing in the mirror, it flipped a text already flipped. In Arabic, the text said something about the son of a politician, asking is any offspring innocent in a guilty family.