I lie on my side, head sunk in the pillow, waiting for first light, for the lift of the curtain, waiting for you, how your right hand used to entwine with my left in slow dance, how our bodies fit in bed, yet you didn’t show up, Behemoth cuddled beside my chest soaking up warmth, I scratched below his left ear, which twitched at the sound of the starlings waking up outside our window, and I adjusted the pillow, my cheek felt its new coolness. I knew I was not psychotic, surely not insane, though at times I had to consider that I might have been possessed, Satan had made a bed in my ear and slept in it, and Satan said, This is not possession, if it were, you would do what I tell you and not refuse my counsel, for I am no creature of mere light, I am of fire born, fire of fire, the blood in the veins of the world is lit up by my flame, I am life’s primal force, you are the child at the end of the diving board afraid to jump into the pool, a mere poet you are, a stiff and common poet who does not know the meaning of words.
But I do, Doc, I do know what possession means, I know Iblis stories too, Auntie Badeea told me a few when I belonged to her, in the evenings, while tucking me in bed, I would dream of the evil one while asleep so I could be wary when awake. Has the story of Iblis come to you, she began, and I held on to the turquoise charm pinned to the shabby sleeping gown I wore every night, for he might lead me astray if my fingers did not grip the apotropaic amulet while the story was being told, and she would tell me the tales of the Garden, of the Fall, of Iblis refusing to bow down before Adam, so the angels genuflected, all of them together, except Iblis, he refused to be with those who bowed down.
Bow no more, Satan said, you know, I was hissed at, never spoken to, of course no one asked me nicely, would you mind bowing down to this piece of stinky clay, it was always bow down, kiss my ring, kiss my ass, by the way, I prefer to be called the Cast-Out Angel, Fallen Angel is just wrong, I didn’t fall out of Heaven, it’s not as if I tripped or something, that would have been a big oopsie.
A Sufi story went like this, one day while Adam was at work Iblis came to visit Eve and with him was his son al-Khannas. He told Eve to watch his son and went on his way, when Adam returned from his job at the office, he recognized the son of Iblis, flew into a rage and killed the boy, chopped him into little pieces and hung each from a branch in a tree like fruit. Iblis returned and asked about his son, Eve explained what had happened, and Iblis called his son, who put himself back together and followed his father home. The next week, Iblis asked Eve to care for his son again, while he went off on errands. At first Eve refused but Iblis insisted and like a buzzing fly in her ear he went on and on until she relented. Adam berated Eve and yelled and burned al-Khannas and threw his ashes into the wind and into the river and spilled them into the estuary and into the loden-green sea. Iblis resurrected his son from the scattered ashes. The week after that, Iblis returned and this time Eve said no, no, no, but like a serpent, Iblis whispered into her ear and beguiled her with words of a poet and left his son with her. Adam killed al-Khannas and fried him with beer batter, and he ate half of the child and Eve ate the other half, and Iblis laughed because a part of him now resided in Adam and Eve. Within man’s breast was his eternal abode.
Were you already a vegetarian when Badeea told this story, Satan said. I was five, maybe six, when I stopped eating any kind of meat, a young boy at l’orphelinat de la Nativité, mealtime was more troublesome than Mass, the monitoring nuns arched their eyebrows every time they passed me, tsk-tsking as they noted how I ate around the meat. A plump, shortsighted, asthmatic boy always asked, Are you eating that, before fork-stabbing the chicken and transferring it to his plate, his face suffused with joy, happy to mock the only boy with lower status. After dinner, while some boys ran wild and others rushed to the secret smoking area, I hid behind the pines, under sky the color of wet ink, talked to its stars. You talked to me, Satan said, I was always there, the antidote to loneliness, you have always discounted what I meant to you, always pretended that I was a mere inconvenience, a nuisance. You have been the bane of my existence, I told Satan. That’s what I mean, Satan said, such an ingrate, without me you’re an insipid cog in an indifferent machine, that’s what you are, what I don’t understand is why you don’t unleash an unpunctuated scream, not just you, but all humans, howl at the moon and mourn your losses, those nights behind the pines you desperately wished to cry out to the sky, but no, you didn’t want to attract attention, and I told you then, All right, I said, you don’t want to disturb the peace, you’re too afraid of upsetting the system, go write some poems, and you did, I am your muse, always have been, no one but me.
He wasn’t the only one who considered himself my muse, Doc, a couple of months ago, during my monthly call to Auntie Badeea, she insisted that I tell her why I sounded so unhappy, and I did, a little bit at least, told her I was talking to Iblis in my head, her response shouldn’t have surprised me, for even though she raised me to believe that he was the great evil, she was ever the pragmatist. All poets have jinn as their muses, she said, it was always so, the greatest of them, Imru’ al-Qais, had a muse who went by the name of Lafiz bin Lahiz, the poet was seen walking the desert paths talking to his jinni and what glorious words poured out of his mouth, all muses were considered jinn once upon a time, and she couldn’t imagine me settling for anyone but Iblis, the lord of all the jinn. And Satan said, I wish you had explained to her that I’m not a jinni or a demon, that technically I’m an angel.
Behemoth stirred himself awake, I stroked his tummy, the air in the room felt thick and syrupy.
Well, I am the prince of air, Satan said, Badeea has changed her mind about me, you know that, she doesn’t consider me so evil anymore, I’m just someone who finally said no to an unreasonable demand, conform or be cast out, those were our options, sure, I’ve done a few naughty things here and there, who hasn’t, and unlike you, she can empathize, she finally said no too, her whole country did, she understands me, Badeea is poetic, not like you.
The light would not come, I could not turn around to note the time on the clock on the nightstand because I didn’t want to disturb Behemoth, my nights grew longer and darker, I wondered at times whether I would wake up and this would be just a bad dream, a nightmare that I could wish away, I had the same fantasy when you were sick, Doc, that I would one day wake up and you all would be healthy and alive. Do you understand me now, Satan said, when things go wrong I seem to be bad, I’m just a soul whose intentions are good, oh lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.
My cat turned over, craned his head and licked my lips good morning, and Satan said, All those who say no follow me.
How would I describe my life before Iblis made his latest uninvited appearance? I would say it was pleasant, which in and of itself is a wonderful thing, I mean, people worked awfully hard to arrive at pleasant, paid a lot of money to live in nice, a lovely meadow of spring flowers, of daisies and daffodils and pansies and pussy willows, okay, so maybe my career in the windowless room was not forsythia, and maybe my sexless life would not remind anyone of jasmine and roses, maybe it was a bit lonely, but it was calm, and I needed calm, Doc, I needed it so much. I blame Iblis for the mud and slush.
After you died, after Jim, the last of the apostles, died, I was dropped into a sea of turbulence without a boat, a dinghy, or a paddle, what was I to do, I was left with so many ashes. Greg wished me to disperse him all the way in Limerick, across the Atlantic, Lou wanted me to leave him somewhere pretty but far away from Oklahoma or Nebraska or wherever he was from, Jim had wanted his ashes mixed with Chris’s but then that became impossible after Chris’s family stole him, and you, you couldn’t care less, you said, you wished me to cast you into the wind. I did not do anything, lived among the ashes for a while, but Odette, who later moved into your room, convinced me that having so many ashes around was morbid, it was, and that I should execute my friends’ wishes. She helped me book a grisly vacation to the Emerald Isle, and to ease my panic, she decided to accompany me. But how do you pack ashes, would they show up in an X-ray, would I have a million American guns pointed at me as I attempted to board, how many people did you kill, murderer? Would the Irish customs agent try to open one of the cans and would Greg’s remains pop-goes-the-weasel onto his countryman’s face because the can might have shifted during the flight and expanded and he could no longer be contained?
Three nights before we flew to Dublin, where we had to connect to Shannon and then rent a car and drive to Limerick, I experienced an apposite panic attack, full quailing and shivering and everything, sleepless at two in the morning, I got dressed and walked to the twenty-four-hour drugstore and bought large containers of vitamin C, ibuprofen, coenzyme Q10, and echinacea, all of them capsules. Instead of mapping out my vacation or packing, I spent hours and hours and hours stuffing all your ashes into the capsules. First I uncapped every single one and dumped the contents into the toilet, only five capsules at a time before flushing because I was paranoid—I thought that someone, anyone, might be checking the color of my flushed toilet water, I was tormented by an image of a man with a weak chin and a tan windbreaker holding ampules of my toilet water, yelling, Eureka, we got him, the villainous weasel is hiding his friends’ remains in echinacea. The granules in five vitamin C capsules, flush, five ibuprofen, flush, coenzyme Q10, flush, and then putting you all in the capsules was by no means an easy task, and worse was deciding whether I should separate each of you into a different drug, should Greg be ibuprofen, should Pinto be vitamin C, but then, without Chris, there were five cremations of you, and I had bought only four humongous bottles, so I had to mix and match, and I decided that you were all going to share eternity together. Holding the two sides of each capsule, I would dip both sets of fingers into one can of you at a time, and twist it closed. All of your ashes had little bits of bones remaining, like tiny seashells in the sand. My hands were covered in a pallid film of my loves. I couldn’t fit all the ashes in, but I felt all right with that, I scattered what remained under Daphne the laurel and watered the ground so all of you would seep into her widespread roots that creep secretly underground and underfoot, seeking sustenance in shadows. I flew you guys in pill form to Ireland.
A pleasant vacation it was not. It rained nonstop for the entire week, Odette hardly left our room in the inn despite the beige shantung wallpaper, she visited used bookstores in Limerick, bought books of Irish poetry, Derek Mahon and Paul Durcan mostly, and ensconced herself on the divan, whereas I took long walks in the rain under a rickety umbrella that flipped inside out with each malicious gust of wind. I walked and walked and saw little of anything, if you asked me to describe Ireland, I’d say griseous and verdurous. Before each walk I’d fill my pockets with pills, but I found it difficult to dispose of them at first, did Greg want to be inside St. Mary’s Cathedral or on the grounds outside, I did both, sneakily, like a cat burglar who left things instead of taking them, I’d hold a number of capsules, make sure no one was watching, and relax my fingers a little, allow one or two to drop near a pew, on the grass. Even as I stood by the river pouring its tumbling songs toward the sea, I could not throw the capsules overhand or underhand, just in case someone unseen was spying on me and I would have to explain why I was tossing my friends into the Shannon, I went to the edge of the alluvial bank, pretended to gaze at a hawk or some bird in the far distance, like a sunflower, my hand bloomed, drooped and died and dropped its seeds, and I allowed you to tumble into the halcyon surface of the river.