Rabih Alameddine - I, The Divine

I took it and left.

“Here I am, the wretched city, lying in ruins, my citizens dead. you who pass me bewail my fate, and shed a tear in honor of Berytus that is no more.”

— UNKNOWN SIXTH-CENTURY POET

1.

The Kent billboard says Evolve in six languages. Hardly recognizable, Beirut has changed much in the last seven months, billboards obscuring brisk construction of high-rises, bright-colored ads exhorting me to listen to avant-garde Lebanese radio stations, to switch cell phone services, to attend the absolute Millennium event. Beirut at the turn of the century. A relic remains, Bruce Willis announcing he is the last man standing, an ad for a film that had played in Beirut at least three years earlier. A short, pockmarked building flickers briefly on my right. A mosque’s crescent moon on a tall steeple glides by.

We speed along the new highway connecting the airport to the center of town. The trip now takes only ten minutes. My ex-husband sits next to me in the sumptuous backseat of the Mercedes. Black everywhere, his suit, my dress, the car’s leather.

“You don’t have to go directly to the hospital,” he says, holding my hand gently. “He’s no longer in any danger. Why don’t we unload the bags at home and you can unwind?”

“No, I’d rather go to the hospital.”

He has been reassuring me for the last twenty-four hours, his call at home, my call from Charles de Gaulle, but I know from experience he can easily lie to me over a phone if he wants to. Face to face, he cannot. I know his every nuance. He faces me with his easy smile, not the camera-ready smile, pencil thin, no teeth showing, heavy eyebrows crunching in the middle of his brow. He is relaxed, not performing; himself, not the politician.

Like most Lebanese, the driver considers the newly painted white lines a mere suggestion and drives in the middle of the road. I look out the window at the other cars, getting close to the city’s center, traffic slightly heavier. I remember being driven on this stretch of road by my father when I was younger, in his brown Oldsmobile, a happy drive because we would go to a supermarket-cum-department store the entire family loved. The building is still there, but it is abandoned, a malnourished edifice, the new highway no longer leading to it. In that department store, I rode my first escalator. I could not have been more than four or five. My sister Amal and I went up and down those escalators a thousand and one times while our parents shopped. Every now and then, we watched a yokel stare at the moving machinery, wondering fearfully how to get on. Amal and I would smile confidentially, cunning sophisticates in the land of greenhorns. All of a sudden, I hear the car’s siren go off, shocking me out of my languid reverie. The driver wants the other cars out of the way. My ex-husband is a member of parliament and he always has the right of way.

“My God, Sarah,” Omar says suddenly. “How do you keep in such good shape?” He openly ogles my crossed legs and short skirt.

2.

The afternoon light’s yellow dominates the fluorescent bulbs’ blue, warm shadows overpowering the cool, long prevailing over short shadows. A horde of people sit in the sterile waiting room of the cardiology unit, most of them family members I have not seen in ages. My stepmother, Saniya, entertains, chatting with everybody, further evidence my dad’s condition is not as serious as first feared. Her face brightens on seeing me. My sister Majida rushes up to me, giggling. “You’re here,” she says. “He’s okay. The diuretics finally worked. The water is out of his lungs.”

“I’m glad you came,” Saniya says, leading me arm in arm toward my father’s room. “I wanted to call and tell you he’s okay and you didn’t have to come, but you’d already left. He’s being discharged tomorrow.”

“It’s quite all right. Now the whole family can spend the New Year together for the first time in I don’t know how long.”

“The Millennium, not just the New Year,” she says, laughing.

My father sits propped up by many pillows on the angled hospital bed. Around him sit my sister Amal, my brother, Ramzi, and two men who introduce themselves as acquaintances of my father, there only because duty requires their appearance.

“Ah,” my father yells, “the princess is finally here.” His pleasure reflects more than my arrival. This has been his third brush with death in the past two years. “She’ll only show up if I’m dying.”

I bend over and kiss him, noticing how much he has aged. My father’s face has always been asymmetrical, but lately it is exaggerated. His left eye is lower than his right, and now his left cheek is slack. His face gaunt. The mustache, his ever-present trademark, is shaved. When he smiles, I see nothing of the man I know.

To the side, I notice Saniya’s foldup bed. My father can never sleep if she is not in the same room.

“I knew this was a hoax.” I sit down on a blue plastic chair facing him, feel my rear end sinking slowly. “You wanted me to come here because you didn’t know how to celebrate the Millennium without me, but were too embarrassed to ask directly. Do you think I’m naïve? Please come, Sarah. Your dad’s sick and wants to see you. My ass. You guys were bored stiff and needed some excitement. Well, here I am.”

“Well,” my father snaps, “when are you moving back?”

“Soon,” I lie.

3.

We stand outside, Amal and I, seeing Omar off. He lights another cigarette. “Here, before I forget,” he says, handing me a cell phone, smaller, more complicated than the one he gave me during my last visit. He pats his pockets, a tick he has had since I have known him, and raises his hand, signaling his driver, who drives down the hill toward us. “I do have to go. I’ll send you your car this evening.”

The car draws up at the curb. I kiss his cheek before he climbs into it. “Thank you.”

“Talk to your son, will you?”

“I’m not talking to him about his tattoo. He already told me about it and is trying to convince me to get one.” I smile.

“Not the tattoo,” he says. “I don’t care about that. It’s his bad taste in clothes. All these garish colors all of a sudden. He wore bright red pants last night and some awful green paisley shirt from the seventies. It’s embarrassing.”

Amal takes me by the arm as the car speeds away. “Let’s take a walk and grab some coffee.” I lay my head on her earth-tone angora sweater. She sure loves her angoras.

4.

When I was five, my father took Amal and me to see Mary Poppins at the Strand Cinema on Hamra Street. My sister Lamia preferred to stay in her room as usual. While Julie Andrews sang “With a Spoonful of Sugar” and luscious colors poured out of the medicine bottle, a spark ignited near the screen and the whole theater went dark, an impenetrable black. Someone screamed, “Fire!” Everyone panicked and rushed for the sole exit. My father spoke calmly, telling us to hold on to each other. He loudly admonished the stampeding crowd. “Be careful of the children.” Louder. “It’s only a short. Calm down, everyone.” Amal and I were suddenly separated from him. I heard him call our names, over and over, but his voice grew faint. He was being pushed toward the exit. Amal squeezed my hand. I held hers with both of mine, terrified. I felt myself being pushed behind. I pressed myself against her back, held onto each of her arms, onto the angora sleeves. I placed my head on the back of her sweater, relying on her to lead me out, to save me. “Don’t push me,” she yelled at someone. She kicked a man’s shin. “Let us through,” she screamed as she maneuvered us between anonymous thighs and hips. She stomped on toes. I thought the unkempt hair of her blue angora would be the first thing to catch fire as I buried my face deeper. Up the stairs and into the light, my father’s voice grew stronger. The crowd thinned after the bottlenecked stairs. Amal moved us confidently toward my father. Down on one knee, he hugged us.