Sixteen Sixteen The best stories always begin with the appearance of a woman. The story of the family corporation does, and the woman in question is, of course, my mother. What did my father tell Hovik that day? How did he win my mother?
He saw her for the first time while she was walking with a friend on Bliss Street. He was twenty, working as a clerk in an import-export company on Bliss, and my mother was eighteen, attending the American University. He’d been hearing about the two girls, the blonde and the brunette, from his co-workers, who wouldn’t stop blathering about the pair of pretty university girls. The brunette was lovely, but the blonde was so lusciously sexy. My father had to endure his co-workers’ descriptions, in full, striking detail and with gestures, of what they’d like to do to the blonde. He heard how the rascally wind had blown her blouse open to reveal a spectacular cleavage. The brunette was pretty, really pretty, but the blonde showed mind-bending curves.
My father saw my mother, the brunette, and was smitten.
But wait. This is not that kind of fairy tale. He was smitten. Of that, there could be no doubt, but was it love at first sight? Was it love at all? Cynics dismiss love at first sight, saying that one person cannot possibly know another in an instant.
My father knew a number of things when he saw my mother. He knew she was a classic Lebanese beauty. That was obvious. He knew she was from an upper-class family—the way she dressed and carried herself was a giveaway. He knew that if he married her he would gain access to a world he could only dream about. He also knew that she would never give him a second look, not unless he became someone else, someone better, someone important.
My father also understood that my mother was smarter than all his co-workers combined. He instinctively knew that she wasn’t a woman who relied on accident or luck. Her choice of companion was well thought out. She and her blonde friend would certainly attract attention, and a lot of it. One of my father’s co-workers actually felt sorry for my mother because her beauty couldn’t match the blonde’s. He was terribly stupid.
The blonde’s beauty made you want to bed her. My mother’s beauty made you want to introduce her to your mother. That was precisely the contrast that my mother intended. The blonde distracted the riffraff and took them out of my mother’s way.
Years later, in 1992, one of the major newspapers ran various historical pictures of Beirut in hopes of inspiring readers to remember how good things were before the war. One picture was of the blonde and the brunette, wide smiles on their young faces, eyes brimming with dreams and curiosity, buns high atop their heads, stepping in unison. The caption said: “Madame Layla al-Kharrat (nee Khoury) in 1950 with unidentified woman.”
Upon seeing my mother that first time, my father became intoxicated.
The poet Saadi, my mother’s favorite, once told a charming personal tale of love and intoxication.
When Saadi was young, he cast his eyes on a beautiful girl who appeared briefly on a balcony as he was walking down her street. The day was torrid, dried the mouth, boiled the marrow in the bone. Unable to withstand the sun’s harsh rays, Saadi took shelter in the shade of a wall. Suddenly, from the portico of her house, the girl appeared. No tongue could describe her loveliness: an impossibility, like the dawn rising in the obscurity of deep night. In her hand she held a cup of snow water sprinkled with sugar and mixed with the juice of a grape. Saadi caught the scent of roses but was unsure whether she had infused the drink with the blossoms of the flower or those of her cheeks. He received the cup from her comely hand, drank from it, and was restored to healthy life. Yet the thirst of the poet’s soul was not such that it could be allayed with a cup of water—the streams of whole rivers would not satisfy it.
He who is intoxicated with wine
Will be sober again in the course of the night; But he who is intoxicated by the cupbearer
Will not recover his senses till the Day of Judgment.
Alas for poor Saadi, the winsome cupbearer was not destined to be his wife. Fate would never permit happiness to a man of such talent—a content poet is a mediocre one, a happy poet insufferable. Saadi married a Xanthippe, one who would make the original blush in shame for falling so short in shrewishness. And Saadi was forced to lay down the most exquisite poems bemoaning his matrimonial misfortunes and compose even greater lines insulting his wife.
The humble King al-Zaher Baybars entered his first diwan to the cheers of the adoring nobles and wise men of the land. He listened attentively to news of his kingdom and began to bestow titles and responsibilities upon his people. Aydmur became a prince and the leader of the kingdom’s army; Sergeant Lou’ai, the emir of the lands of the Levant. Baybars called on the Turks, the Kurds, the Turkomans, the Circassians, the Arabs, the Persians, and all the other nationalities to present heroes who were worthy of leading them, and he made these men the emirs of their tribes. The Uzbeks and the African warriors became his official companions and bodyguards. And all rejoiced—all except for Othman, who sat glum and morose. Baybars asked his friend why he was not in a happy mood, and Othman replied, “You gave all these men new robes and bestowed titles upon friends and strangers, yet you forgot your own brother.”
A shamefaced Baybars declared before the world that Othman was now an emir, and a smile crept over the new emir’s face. Othman returned home to Layla, who greeted him with “Welcome, my emir. I am glad it is only a minor title, because I would not want to deal with your big head had he given you a title of note.”
Othman said, “Emir is a title of great worth.”
“Of course it is, dear. How many men were made emirs today? And how many emirs were there before today? These are the lands of Islam. Kings, sultans, and caliphs are as common as camels. Emirs? There are as many emirs as there are males in these parts.”
The following day, Othman was even more glum and morose in the diwan, and King Baybars asked, “Why are you unhappy, my brother?”
“Because I am a trite emir.”
And what of Ma
rouf? Have you forgotten him? Ma’arouf, who had been searching for weeks and months and years for his son all over the Mediterranean?
The nun—the nun raised the infant Taboush for two years in the palace of Thessaly. While carrying a large gift for Taboush’s second birthday, she slipped in descending the stairs, and her soul ascended to the Garden. “Oh well,” said King Kinyar. “I must assign someone to raise the boy now that the nun has betrayed us.” He picked one of his men at random. “You will be the boy’s guardian. Raise him and care for him. Teach him to be a man. If you fail, you and your descendants will be tortured to death.” The guardian raised Taboush and cared for him. Every day he took the boy for walks outside the palace, to the lovely hills and meadows of Thessaly.
One day, Marouf came across Taboush along the road, and the father’s heart fluttered and raced. Marouf greeted Taboush’s guardian and asked if the boy was his son, and the guardian informed him that the boy was the king’s son. And Marouf looked into the boy’s eyes and saw his father’s eyes and his grandfather’s eyes, and he said to himself, “This is my son. I know him as I know myself.” Marouf began to show up on the same road every day so he could play with Taboush. He brought him gifts and sweets, and Taboush began to love him. Marouf had a plan to take the boy with him off the island, back to Maria, and was waiting for the right opportunity. Marouf would whisper into his boy’s ears, “You are honor descended from honor. You are my son and the light of my eyes.”
The guardian grew suspicious and informed the king about the man who was befriending his son. The king ordered the guardian not to take the boy on his walk the following day and instead sent a full squadron of a hundred men. The soldiers attacked Marouf, beat him, and brought him to the king, who shackled Marouf and jailed him in an isolated cell of iron. “You thought you could take my son away from me,” the king said, “but I will take your liberty and pride. You will live here, beneath our royal feet, until you rot and decay. Meditate upon your folly, for you now have the time.” And when he was left alone, Marouf wondered what was to become of him, the chief of forts and battlements, without son, without wife, without honor.
To say that there was a class difference between my mother’s family and my father’s would be like saying that a Rolls-Royce is a slightly better car than a Lada. Even my grandmother’s family, the Arisseddines, sheikhs though they might be, were no match for the Khourys. Luckily for my father, she was from a small branch of the family that was not closely related to the first president of the republic. Still, a sensible man wouldn’t have undertaken to woo a woman who had the same last name as the man who was running the entire country.
Aunt Samia considered my mother’s family cursed. “It’s not your mother’s fault,” she’d say. “She never had a chance to understand family. The curse began long before your poor mother was born.” My mother’s father was an only child—probably the biggest curse, according to my aunt. He was both orphaned and widowed. My maternal grandmother died when my mother was only three, and my grandfather remarried a Belgian. “Could you have worse luck?”
My mother had two half-siblings. “But they don’t really count, do they?” my aunt would ask. “They visit the ruins of the Roman temples during a trip to Lebanon, and that makes them Lebanese? That’s not family.”
My grandfather was intelligent, educated, and successful, but if you pointed out to my aunt that he couldn’t have been cursed, what with having all those qualities and being an ambassador to boot, she replied, “True, but we’re talking an ambassador to Belgium.”
My mother grew up in Belgium, where her father emigrated. When she was fourteen, a cousin suggested that my mother should return with her to Beirut. My grandfather and his Belgian family stayed in Brussels, and my mother went with the cousin—my grandfather in essence admitting that his daughter would have a better chance of finding a suitable husband in Lebanon. My mother’s separation from her immediate family was fortunate. My father would have to persuade her to marry him—a ridiculous task to be sure, but not as impossible as persuading the rest of her family as well.
However, my grandfather the hakawati always said that my father and mother were fated to be married, and, of course, there was a story, one concerning an improbable nocturnal meeting between an Arisseddine and a Khoury in late June 1838 during the Battle of Wadi Baka.
In 1831, Ibrahim Pasha, the ruler of Egypt, temporarily liberated Greater Syria, including Lebanon, from the yoke of the Ottomans. At first the populace was happy to be rid of the corrupt and unjust Ottomans. But Ibrahim Pasha proved no better, and in 1838 the Druze revolted. At Hawran, site of the first battle, fewer than fifteen hundred Druze fighters defeated some fifteen thousand Egyptians. The Egyptians kept replenishing their forces, however, and the Druze couldn’t. What was left of the rebels retreated down to Wadi al-Taym, until only four hundred bunkered in Wadi Baka. Ibrahim Pasha himself led his army of thousands against those four hundred.
With the help of Emir Bashir of Lebanon, Ibrahim Pasha had forced Maronite fighters to help him against the Druze. Most refused the call and hid in the mountains. Those unable to disappear joined the battle but never took their swords out of their scabbards. One was a Khoury, my mother’s great-great-grandfather.
When the Druze rebels realized they could hold out no longer, they decided to wait for nightfall and attack. They would kill as many as they could before dying, and perhaps a few of them would be able to escape. One was an Arisseddine, my father’s great-great-grandfather.
The Druze attacked at night. Almost all of them were killed. Khoury saw a couple of riderless stallions trotting away from the battle and caught up to them and took their reins. Beneath the belly of one of the horses, a badly injured Arisseddine was holding on for dear life. Khoury unsheathed his sword for the first time, handed it to the rebel, and sent him on his way.
Their descendants were married one hundred and eighteen years later.
One day, a man walked into the diwan saying, “I have been victimized, O Prince of believers. I have been violated. Redeem my honor, my lord, I beg of you.” Baybars asked the man to tell him the story. “I am a merchant from Syria, and every year I travel to Egypt to trade. Usually, I avoid al-Areesh, because King Franjeel demands high toll taxes, as if the roads belonged to him and his foreign friends. This year, I was carrying perishables and had to travel the shortest route. I set money aside for the unfair toll, but when my caravan passed by al-Areesh, the king’s army confiscated my entire merchandise, including my camels, my horses, and my voluptuous Kazak slave, whom I had just bought only two days earlier. It is not fair.”
The story angered Baybars, who said, “I am not happy with these alien kings who do not respect treaties that they themselves forced upon us. Al-Areesh is Egypt. It is time we reclaimed our city. Prepare the armies.”
“No, no, no, no,” cried Emir Othman, and Layla said, “Of course I am coming.”
In the Crusader fort of al-Areesh, King Franjeel berated Arbusto. “Were it not for your holy robes, I would cut off your head right now. This is your fault. You tempted me with riches, and now Baybars the barbarian is coming for me.”
The unperturbed Arbusto replied, “Do not fret. You know this fort is impenetrable. Shut the gates and I will take care of the rest. I will call on the other coastal kings for help. I will speak first to the king of Askalan. Hold the fort and the slave army will be defeated.”
“I will come with you,” announced the cowardly king. “I will leave the commander of the fort in charge. Shut the gates.”
“There,” said Aydmur, pointing to the offending edifice a short distance away. “The fort of al-Areesh is secure and sturdy. Unless we get into the fort, we will lose many men. So far, no general has discovered a way of breaking into the fort of al-Areesh.”
“I am tired of this endless equestrian journey,” announced Layla. “Let us rest. When night falls, I will open the gates.” She dismounted from her mare and rubbed her sore behind. “I will give you a signal with my torch when it is accomplished. I have been talking to my people on the inside. It will not be difficult.”
“People on the inside?” Othman glared at his wife. “You will not be going. I will not allow it. No wife of mine opens gates. I will open them.”
That evening, with the help of his wife, Othman dressed in a priest’s robe, combed his hair in Arbusto’s manner, held a jingling censer in his hand, and walked to the gates. The guards, believing he was Arbusto, rushed to let him in. They bowed before him. Othman extended his hand and waited until each man had kissed it. “I am grateful for such a courteous reception,” he said. “In return, I offer my blessings.” He lit the incense—myrrh mixed with opium—and said, “Inhale my blessings, deeper and deeper.” Soon the guards were traveling on a different plane. Othman opened the gate and signaled the slave army. The fort of al-Areesh was vanquished before its defenders realized they were being attacked.
“Well done,” Layla told Othman, and Harhash said, “You inspire him to new heights.”
“The coward Franjeel is not here,” huffed Baybars, “and neither is Arbusto.”
“They left for Askalan,” Layla said. “They meant to raise an army to assail us while we laid siege to al-Areesh.”
“Their plan was foiled,” said Aydmur, “and the next will fail.”
“While you raze this fort,” said Layla, “I will ride ahead and uncover their next plan.”
“No, no, no, no, no.” Othman stomped his foot.
My mother’s first admirer was her second cousin Karim—his father and her deceased mother were first cousins. She was fifteen and enrolled at a Carmelite boarding school when he decided that she would make him a suitable wife. Karim had everything going for him, or at least he seemed to think so. He was twenty-three, the eldest son of a prosperous man, and had surprised everyone, himself most of all, by passing the baccalaureate. And since he graduated high school, his father began to groom him for a career in Lebanese politics.
He met my mother at a family gathering. My mother swore she didn’t say a word to him and he never noticed. She was busy eating while he regaled her with his stories and future plans. Since she proved to be a first-rate listener, Karim began to woo her in earnest by sending a single red rose and a box of Harlequin chocolates stuffed with almonds to her school every Wednesday. She didn’t care for him one way or the other, but her girlfriends loved the chocolates.
He wrote to her father in Brussels, who in turn wrote to my mother wondering what was going on. My mother put his mind at ease by saying she had no intention of marrying before getting a university degree. The young man courted my mother for four and a half months, during which she barely had to utter a single syllable. He visited her once and brought her a potted succulent, an asclepiad that had impressed him mightily. It was after his remarkable second visit that he received a call from Brussels telling him that my mother never wanted to see his face again, under any circumstances. It wasn’t the asclepiad.
He had arrived for the second visit, their third meeting, in his best gabardine suit, his mustache soldered with wax, his face flushed with pride. He showed my mother off to the woman accompanying him, a lady in her thirties, whom he introduced as his father’s first cousin’s young wife, a new aunt. “Isn’t she pretty?” he said of my mother. “And she’s smart, too. She’ll finish school.” My mother was about to tell him that she didn’t wish to be anyone’s exhibit, to be shown off like some antique carpet or fine embroidery, when she suddenly realized that she was the one he was trying to impress. The gloating smile, the studied placement of the hand around his aunt’s waist, and the forced coziness were meant to convey to the young beloved that her suitor was a man of the world, a man who had mistresses, a man who was desired. He wasn’t just anybody. He wanted to impart the idea that she, too, could aspire to be special because someone special wanted her.
My mother called her father. Karim stopped sending her Harlequin chocolates stuffed with almonds. Her girlfriends were miffed, and one actually wondered aloud why my mother couldn’t have waited till the end of term to break her suitor’s heart.
“I would have preferred to stay and watch the fort being pulverized,” Harhash said. “It is not as if one can witness total destruction every day.”
“Be quiet,” Othman said. “A friend would not complain. A good friend would support a man whose wife keeps shaming him in public. A good man would not concern himself with a fort when it is his friend’s honor that is being pulverized.”
“Will one of you wake me when this tired diatribe is over?” Layla said. “My husband is beginning to sound like a muezzin, repeating the same words five times a day. Shame, if you ask me. Whereas the blind muezzins are uniformly dull, my husband was once interesting, but he has been reduced to a single-whine conversationalist.”
After twilight, Layla knocked on the gate of Askalan. “Who’s there?” asked a voice.
“A luscious dove,” answered Layla.
The gatekeeper slid open the peek hole, and his mouselike face appeared in the aperture. “The luscious doves have repented and retired. Everyone knows that.”
“Do I look retired to your ugly eyes?”
“I have never seen a luscious dove before. Why should I believe you? Why would a luscious dove come to this city? I think—”
Quicker than the strike of an asp, Layla’s hand slipped through the viewer. Her fingers poked the gatekeeper’s eyes, squeezed his nose, and jerked his face forward, slamming it into the gate. She held on to the gatekeeper’s nose, and he screeched, “Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. I believe you. I will open the face—I mean the gate. I will open the gate. I swear.”
The three travelers entered the city. Layla spoke to the gatekeeper. “These two men are my personal physicians. Inform the working women of the city that I have arrived, and that I expect them to pay their respects in the morning.” The gatekeeper’s eyes were filled with lust and desire. She used only her third-best smile on him. “We need a place to sleep. Lead the way, and make sure my mare is fed and groomed tonight.”
Baybars and his slave army raised the kingdom’s flags outside Askalan. One of the African warriors asked permission to assume the duties of crier. “Hear me, foreigners,” the African bellowed. “The king of kings has arrived, and he demands your capitulation. Inform Brigitte, the usurper king of this city, that he is to abdicate. Surrender all and we will allow you to return to your countries. Resist and we will drop these walls upon your heads. Give up your arms or this fort will become a mausoleum interring your bodies for all time.”
“Well said,” Baybars cheered, and Aydmur added, “I am in awe.”
“I am dying, Egypt, dying of boredom,” cried Layla from the city’s parapet. “Will you not come in and conquer already?” As the gigantic metal gate slowly lifted, Othman appeared at the entrance, gesturing for the mighty army to invade. Baybars’s army entered Askalan, whose soldiers were surprised to find themselves fighting within the city walls. Swords hit their marks, and maces descended upon the heads of infidels, and Askalan fell quickly.
Baybars asked Othman where Arbusto and the kings were, and Othman said, “We are late. Arbusto decided to travel to King Diafil of Jaffa and ask for his assistance. King Franjeel of al-Areesh told King Brigitte about the size of our army, and both decided to join Arbusto in Jaffa.”
The victorious King Baybars said, “After razing this fort, we will head to Jaffa, the den of sin.” And Othman asked his wife, “Does that mean we ride ahead?”
The beautiful city of Jaffa had three glorious lighthouses, three anxious kings—Franjeel, Brigitte, and Diafil—three lust-stricken guards at the eastern gate swearing unwavering fealty to the luscious dove, but no Arbusto, who had left by sea, allegedly to fetch reinforcements from Europe. As the three kings prepared for a siege of their city, Layla prepared the three porters at the gate. “No, no, no,” she said. “Touch without permission and you lose the offending hand. I will come back one evening soon, and when I do, you will open the gate when I tell you. You will do whatever it is I tell you. Is that understood?”
King Baybars destroyed Askalan, and to this day, the city by the sea remains in ruins. He crushed the walls and led his army to Jaffa, where he received a missive from Othman. “The lettering is delicate,” said the king, “and the parchment is sweetly perfumed. He says the three kings are inside the city and advises us to approach the gate at nightfall and knock.”
“What kind of silly names are those?” asked Lou’ai. “Franjeel, Brigitte, and Diafil?”
When the sun had set in the Mediterranean, the king of Islam stood outside Jaffa’s gate with his hushed army, and knocked, and the gate opened to let him in. In the morning, Diafil’s soldiers woke to find Jaffa overwhelmed, swords upon their necks, and the city restored to its rightful ruler, King Baybars, who liberated the lands from foreigners.
Two days after my father noticed my mother and decided she was the woman he wanted to marry, she fell in love. Yes, it was love at first sight. His name was Khoury as well, Nicholas Khoury, though he wasn’t from the same family, not even Maronite, but Greek Orthodox. My mother was pleased that she wouldn’t have to change her name. They saw each other at a political youth meeting at the university, she a freshman, he a medical student. He dominated the gathering. He wanted to change the world. He wanted the new republic to be a beacon of liberty and justice to the rest of the Arabs. He wanted to spread literacy throughout Lebanon and the Middle East. He considered improving the plight of women the most important undertaking for a Lebanese man, and in keeping with that credo, he would specialize as a gynecologist.
My mother was impressed with his dedication, his earnest moral stance, and his height. In her, he saw an audience, a fan, and a pretty one at that. He was pleased to be the first man, other than her father, whom she looked up to. He believed she would be his perfect partner; she would help him soar. They began dating in earnest three weeks after they met. Within four months, he had formally proposed and she’d accepted. He wrote to her father for his blessing and introduced her to his family, and in the summer they flew to Europe together and visited her family in Brussels. They agreed on a long engagement, three years at least, until both graduated.
He couldn’t suffer being away from her, and involved her in all his social and civic activities. She attended political lectures, activist meetings, and long-winded café discussions. She volunteered once for a Palestinian relief organization but gave it up after about ten minutes and made him promise to stop working with organizations that dealt with suffering hands-on.
My poor father was crushed. Even though he had never spoken to my mother and she had yet to notice him, he firmly believed that she was to be his wife. He had already claimed her. But here was this other man who never left her side, who breathed her air, invaded her intimate space, and clamored for her attention. Although my father wouldn’t see her alone for a few years, he didn’t surrender. He formulated bigger plans.
Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Fate, is better than a thousand months. It is said that the Holy Koran was sent down on the Night of Fate and was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad over a period of twenty-three years. During the Night of Fate, God listens to sincere supplicants, grants prayers, and forgives sins. The Night falls during Ramadan, the holiest of months, but God has not revealed its exact date, because He wants believers to worship Him during the entire month. Some say it falls on the night when the moon’s horns refill the circle, yet it is also said that the Prophet hinted that believers should seek it on the odd nights of the last ten days of Ramadan.
On an evening in 1953, Jalal Arisseddine had a dinner party—casual, forty guests or so. A few politicians were invited, some writers, friends. Nicholas Khoury had been begging a common acquaintance to introduce him to my well-known great-uncle and had finagled an invitation. And of course my great-uncle invited his brother Maan and his two nephews. Few of the guests were Muslim, and those that were wouldn’t have been considered observant. It was an evening in Ramadan, and none of the guests had been fasting or celebrating or praying. Still, considering the events that sprouted, we can safely assume it was an odd night.
It was undoubtedly the Night of Fate, because God heard my father’s pleas.
That evening, my mother met the man who would sweep her off her feet, dazzle her, bewitch and charm her. She met the man who would love her and adore her, who would become her steadfast partner. A man whose wit and light would dim her fiancé’s star, stub and extinguish it by the time dessert was served. Love at first barb. That night, my mother met Uncle Jihad.
A Swiss man with a ponytail who claimed to be Jean-Paul Sartre’s good friend offended almost everyone at the dinner party. The ponytail alone was shocking enough, but because of Sartre-said-this, Sartre-would-have-done-that, the party broke up into smaller groups to avoid him. Uncle Jihad inched slowly from group to group until he sat next to the bewitching girl who had been pretending not to notice his advance. Looking at the Swiss, whose audience had been systematically reduced to her earnest fiancé, she leaned toward my uncle and whispered, “I wonder why that braggart has to wear his hair like that.”
“So they can pull his head out of Sartre’s ass,” Uncle Jihad said.
My mother had found her soulmate.
He had no idea she was my father’s infatuation, and, surprisingly, they hadn’t met before, although they attended the same university, were in the same department, and were the same age. They had similar interests but took classes at different times. Uncle Jihad didn’t mix in her social circle. He wouldn’t have had the time in any case, since he still managed both his and Ali’s pigeon coops. My mother and uncle talked and talked, and grew so engrossed that my father’s heart filled with hope and her fiancé’s filled with panic. Nick sidled to my mother, put his arm around her. My mother closed her eyes for a moment so as not to show her frustration. When she opened them, she noticed Uncle Jihad’s face momentarily and impolitically express shock.
“This is my fiancé,” my mother said.
“I figured,” Uncle Jihad replied.
My mother, knowing that his smile belied his disapproval, shuddered. She tried to banish the color of embarrassment from her cheeks.
That was one story my mother loved to tell, but her version of the events of the evening was slightly different from Uncle Jihad’s. According to Uncle Jihad, my mother fell in love with him, but he knew instantly that she would be a wonderful wife for his brother. My mother would smile and shake her head when the story was told in her presence. She said that she adored him that evening but she wasn’t in love. She didn’t believe in love at first sight.
The last time the subject came up, I was with my mother during a healthy respite about six months before she died. She lay propped against her pillows, and I was sitting on her bed. She had been quite ill for a week, but suddenly she looked rejuvenated. Gauntness and pallor had temporarily departed, and the wrinkles of strain had been filled with new flesh. Hope, the great deceiver, seduced her that morning. “I remember that evening as if it were yesterday,” she said. “The candles, the guests, the foreigner with a horrible ponytail. Can you imagine how appalling that was in those days? How insufferable that man was, and how embarrassing that the only one who fell for his asinine chatter was poor Nick. That evening, I was horrified that I didn’t know who this man I was supposed to marry was. The scrim that had been hanging before my eyes was raised. The look on Jihad’s face when he realized that I was with Nick rattled me. He probably would’ve been less surprised had I told him I was engaged to the water closet. He disapproved of my choice, and I realized I did as well. What was even more terrifying was that I didn’t have the courage to admit my mistake. I knew that night that I’d never go through with the marriage, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit it to anyone, not even poor Nick. But my epiphany had nothing to do with being in love. Do you think for a moment that Jihad fell in love with me or I fell in love with him? Please. No matter what Farid and Jihad might have ardently wished to believe, no one was ever fooled. I recognized—oh, what shall we call it?—his special ability to be best friends with women, the instant I saw his impish grin from across the room. My God, how could I not, given the way he crossed his legs or what he did with his hands? No one would talk about it, but that didn’t mean anyone was fooled.”
Nick wouldn’t leave my mother’s side for the rest of the evening, and the Swiss was forced to follow his remaining audience across the room. The two men’s discussion bored my mother and uncle until the Swiss asked a question: “Will there ever be an Arab Sartre?” My mother rolled her eyes, and Uncle Jihad tried to control his chuckling. Nick commenced a monologue explaining the impossibility of such a phenomenon: the subordination of content to the aesthetics of language in Arabic literature, the dominance of panegyrics and eulogies as an art form, etc. “All you have to look at,” said Nick, “is the deification of a loser like al-Mutanabbi. Writers try to emulate him, penning pretty little verses that mean nothing and affect nothing. He sold his services to the highest bidder, and his poems ended up being paeans to corrupt rulers. Things haven’t changed much. Until the day arrives when we’re no longer dazzled by glitter, we’re stuck with the banal beauty of al-Mutanabbi.”
My mother’s groan startled her fiancé. Confounded, he stared at her, mouth agape.
“Beauty is never banal,” my mother said.
“Al-Mutanabbi is one of my heroes,” Uncle Jihad said. “Such a romantic fool.”
“Romantic?” my mother said. “Are you sure you’re not thinking of Antar? I’ve never heard of a love story associated with al-Mutanabbi.”
“No, no. It isn’t a love story. It’s a death story. A glorious death story.”
“Do tell,” my mother exhorted.
“You want me to tell you the story? Here? Now? I’m not sure I can.” My mother arched her eyebrows. “You must ask again.” My uncle cracked a grin. “Please, make me feel important.”
My mother’s hand went to her chest. She batted her eyelashes. “Please, sahib. Tell me a story and enliven my evening.” She smiled. “How was that?”
“Just the right touch,” Uncle Jihad said. “Let’s see. In the glorious days when poets were heroes and men were valiant, when the sun shone brighter and lies were never spoken, there lived, and died, the greatest of all poets. I’ll leave the stories of his tragic life for another sitting, for tonight I’ll relay the story of his death. Al-Mutanabbi died on his way to Baghdad, but he didn’t die alone. He wasn’t what one would call a well-adjusted individual. He knew he was a genius and was obsessed with his immortality. Few put anything down on paper in those days. All poems were memorized, all stories, even the Koran. Well, al-Mutanabbi would have none of that. He wasn’t going to rely on others’ memories when it came to his work. He wrote everything down, every single word, leaving nothing to chance. We’re talking papyrus, large rolls of papyrus. He rode to Baghdad with his son, two slaves, and eight camels loaded with his life’s work. Of course, you cross the desert with laden camels and you’ll attract the attention of brigands. Thieves attacked the convoy thinking they were about to strike the mother lode and would soon be in possession of treasures. The poet died defending his work, and with his last breath begged his killers not to destroy it. The only one who escaped was the poet’s son. He saw his father expire and rode away, but he didn’t get far. Guilt over abandoning his father’s poetry overpowered him, and he returned to the scene to fight. But the robbers were enraged at finding nothing of value, and they tortured the son and killed him.”
“Ah,” my mother sighed. “To die for banal beauty. What happened to the manuscripts?”
“Funny you should ask. Al-Mutanabbi was of course a penniless poet.”
“Is there any other kind?” My mother clapped her hands once and laughed.
“They unloaded the camels and discarded the valueless poetry, but, as it happened, one of the nasty brigands had an unexplored sensitive nature.”
“And he just happened to be able to read?”
“Of course. He read and was entranced and bewitched. He repacked the poems and kept them for years, had them copied and distributed. One would hope he was able to repack all the poems without losing any to the harsh desert winds.”
“But what if he wasn’t able to,” my mother said, “and some of the papyrus flew away?”
“Imagine. Poetry still hovering over the skies of Baghdad.”
“Or buried under the desert sands,” my mother said. “Someone drills a well in Iraq, and out gushes poetry instead of oil.”
“But will the discoverers understand Arabic or appreciate poetry, for that matter?”
“Al-Mutanabbi’s basic problem to begin with.”
Nick shook his head. “I know that sounds romantic, but what was the point of al-Mutanabbi’s death? Has his poetry saved a single life?”
My mother sank into a chair, closed her eyes, and sighed softly.
“Let me introduce you to my brother,” Uncle Jihad said.
So what happened to Nick, and how did my mother end up not marrying him if she was unable to say no? My sister, who had met Nicholas Khoury, believed that he and my mother didn’t marry because a voice inside her must have been issuing warnings, if not outright curses, the whole time. Lina couldn’t imagine my mother ever caring for anything political. That my mother would have committed herself to a man who believed that opposing Zionism was not just a worthy goal but a way of life, a prerequisite for being human, was unthinkable to Lina. My mother, who had transformed being apolitical into an art form, could never have completely submerged who she was for the sake of a man. “I know that a discussion about art and poetry was the puff that brought down the house of cards,” Lina once told me, “but how could the house have stood for so long, given his views? This was a man who believed in didactic art, for heaven’s sake. Novels should uplift the people and guide them to a better understanding of how persecuted they were. He saw Trotsky, Sartre, Lenin, Orwell, and Huxley as models to emulate and wasn’t bright enough to perceive a contradiction. Mother was getting a degree in liberal arts while she was with him. This was a woman who wore mourning black for forty days when Calvino died. Everyone kept asking her which member of the family had passed away. She went to her deathbed sincerely believing Anna Karenina was mankind’s greatest achievement. That idiot told her that Tolstoy was the epitome of the spoiled bourgeoisie. He told her not to listen to violin concertos because the best violinists were Jews and therefore probably supporters of the terrible policies of Israel. Told that to my mother? She mentioned it to me in passing, and I practically fainted. She may have agreed to marry him, but even if he hadn’t spun right into disaster head-on, she wouldn’t have. She knew he was a tragedy.”
The disaster occurred on the day of Nick’s commencement. My mother attended his ceremony, sat in the audience with his family. Nick’s mother couldn’t contain her pride. His father had desperately wanted to see his son’s graduation but was unable to leave his sickbed. At the end of the ceremony, my mother faked a headache and left the happy party to be on her own. She didn’t want to discuss the future.
Nick, wearing his cap and gown, returned home to check on his father, who felt such pride that he volunteered to be Nick’s first patient. Nick’s father had been complaining that day of dizziness, lethargy, and digestive problems. Nick treated him by setting up a glucose intravenous tube. His father died before he had a chance to sneeze, a tragedy and a scandal. Nick locked himself in his room for two weeks after the funeral. His entire family grieved.
The human soul is resilient; Nick did recover emotionally and psychologically.
Human societies are less resilient; the dishonor would not be easily forgotten.
Two months after he had killed his first patient, Nick understood that he wouldn’t be able to work in Beirut. No one would consent to be his second patient. He would have to go far away, to a place where no one had heard of his misdeed. Nick asked my mother to go with him to Kirkuk. She refused, of course. And my father began his wooing in earnest.
My father set out to make himself someone else, someone better, someone important. He persuaded his brother to give up his pigeons so they could set up a business. To do that, they needed money. Following their mother’s footsteps of long ago, my father and Uncle Jihad walked the same hill to the mansion of the bey, who was always claiming to be our family’s benefactor. The bey greeted my father and uncle warmly and called for coffee to be served, but he also called his servant, my grandfather. What insidious thought could have been going through the bey’s head no one knew, and this was one story that neither my grandfather nor my uncle nor my father wished to provide theories for or elaborate on.
Before his own father, my father had to ask the bey for financial help. The bey said, “Isn’t that too grand a project for you? You don’t know the first thing about automobiles. How can you sell cars when you don’t even have one of your own?”
Dispirited, my father returned to a rainy Beirut, and for the first time it was Uncle Jihad who had to remind him of the dream. “You’ll see,” Uncle Jihad said. “In every story, when things are at their most dire, an angel comes and helps the hero.”
“But this is no story,” replied my father.
“Of course it isn’t. This is life. In real life you get more than one angel. You get two or three. Hell, you get an army of angels.”
My grandfather quit that day. He was so embarrassed for his sons he told the bey he could no longer work for him. The bey asked how he would survive without his entertainment, and my grandfather said, “All you have to do is ask, my lord, and I will come running to entertain you. Yet I’ve worked for you for so long that my stories have become aged and corroded. I cannot in good faith take your money and pretend I’m offering anything in return.”
That night, my grandmother berated her husband. How would they be able to support themselves? They still had an unmarried daughter. The bey gave my grandfather two days of rest before calling him to the mansion. “Tell me a story,” the bey commanded, and my grandfather did. “You have served my family well,” the bey said, and resumed paying him his weekly salary. And my grandfather remained at his master’s beck and call until the day he died—my grandfather, that is, not the bey, for when the master dies his son takes over his possessions.
The al-Kharrat Corporation was birthed officially in 1955. Like most newborns, it began life small and odd-looking. My father had asked his old Iraqi school friend Khaled Mathaher, an up-and-coming businessman—or, as Uncle Jihad used to call himself when he started out, a businessboy—for advice. The reply had come in a letter from Baghdad that became a family keepsake. “Automobiles!” it shouted. “Sell automobiles. Cars are the future.” The Mathaher family had a Renault dealership in Baghdad, and Khaled would help my father obtain one for Lebanon. And the story began.
Listening to the advice of my grandmother and not my grandfather, my father registered the corporation as a family business, with the four brothers, Wajih, Halim, Farid, and Jihad, as partners. The fact that my father listened to his mother and not his father wasn’t surprising—my father didn’t get along with his father, was embarrassed by him, and rarely if ever listened to him. He should have on this occasion, because my grandfather’s counsel proved to be prescient. My grandfather told my father that his two older brothers shouldn’t be part of the corporation. My father could hire them or help them, but if they were partners, he and Uncle Jihad would have to work around their incompetence for years to follow. My father not only ignored the advice, he convinced Uncle Jihad that Uncle Wajih should be president of the company, since he was the eldest. My grandmother brimmed with joy as she saw her family reunite.
My great-uncle Maan offered his two charges a final gift, two small plots of land in Beirut. One would become the family workplace, the first dealership, and the other the family home, the building that would be erected not long after as one of the pledges my father made my mother if she married him. The army of angels, friends of my father and Uncle Jihad, provided loans—with no interest, of course. The dealership building was one shoddily built room that barely had space for six clean desks. In its lot, the company opened its doors with three cars, which were sold the first day. “A bang,” Uncle Jihad used to say. “We opened with a bang.”
Within a year, they added the Fiat dealership, and then the exclusive Arab-world Toyota and Datsun dealership a few years later. On the day the Japanese contracts were signed, my father and Uncle Jihad bought their first custom-made Brioni suits, and my mother received a diamond necklace whose price no one talked about publicly.
My father did accept my grandfather’s advice on one thing, the poetic choice. Yes, my mother was seduced with poetry. My mother was a romantic but not a fool. In the two years during which my father pursued her, after he had declared his intentions to Uncle Jihad and her, she had made a point of objectively gauging whether he would make her a good husband. She studied him, found out almost everything there was to know about him: where his career was going, how he treated his family, his level of education or lack thereof, his womanizing. She claimed to have kept a notebook of checks and balances. She tested him. She misbehaved in public to observe his reaction. She made him wait when he picked her up. She interviewed him endlessly.
For his part, my father interviewed Uncle Jihad. What would she like? He never bought flowers that weren’t approved by my uncle. My mother kept no secrets from Uncle Jihad, and she soon found out that he kept none from my father. My mother would point out a wonderful dress to Uncle Jihad, and the next day a package would arrive at her house. My father knew who her favorite singers were, what her favorite food was, and of course, who her favorite poets were. My father sent her poems, and my mother adored that. He sent her poetry she knew well. Whether it was Rilke, Dickinson, or Barrett Browning, she knew the Westerners. She loved the old Arabs, al-Mutanabbi or the Muallaqat—Amru al-Qais and Zuhair in particular. My father worked hard.
One day, my grandmother asked him when he intended to marry, and he told her about my mother even though she hadn’t consented to marry him yet. He confessed his entire seduction scheme. And my grandfather, in his usual obstreperous manner, interrupted, “But you’re no poet.” When no one understood what he meant, he elaborated. “Only a poet can sing a familiar poem and make it sound as if it has never been uttered before. Only a hakawati can bewitch with a tale twice-told. You have to dazzle her with something she doesn’t know, a poet like Saadi. Lovers flock to lesser poets, but few are better than him.”
When my grandfather recited some lines from Saadi, my father wasn’t impressed, but later, when my mother sat him down to talk, he could come up with nothing else.
“I know you could make me happy,” she said. “I know you would take care of me, but we’re such different people. That could be hell for the both of us.”
And my father replied, “It is better to burn with you in hell than to be in paradise with another. The scent of onions from a beautiful mouth is more fragrant than that of a rose held by an ugly hand.” Stunned, my mother searched for a translation of Saadi seemingly forever. He became one of her favorites. Even on her deathbed, she quoted him to the nurses.
My mother agreed to marry my father if he pledged three things: to become more successful, to buy her a better home, and to stop his womanizing. Two out of three.
Back in Cairo, Othman lay on the sofa and admired his wife as she undressed. By the light of a dozen candles, she rubbed a concoction of olive oil and verbena onto her arms. Othman said, “I am pleased that bedtime modesty is not something you insist upon.”
She raised her gaze slowly, looked into his eyes to gauge his meaning, but he lowered his quickly in embarrassment. Though she returned to applying the lotion, pretending nonchalance, they knew each other too well. He saw her ears were pricked. “I have been thinking,” he said.
In the glow of candles, she massaged the lotion onto the two expansive worlds of her breasts. She discreetly made sure he had the appropriate reaction before moving to her neck. He blinked rapidly. “I have been thinking that we cannot go on like this. A pre-emptive strike is needed.” He tried to clear his retinas of the delicious impression, tried to clean up his mind so he could complete a lucid thought. “I have been remiss, my wife. I have not been myself lately. Arbusto has been allowed to roam free, creating trouble, for much too long. He is my enemy, and I have not dealt with him. It is time.”
“Yes, he is a rogue worthy of your time.”
“I will capture him and drag him on his knees before the king.”
“A most noble goal, to be sure.”
“Will you help me?”
She did not look up from the task at hand, but it was of no avail. He had seen surprise and delight flush her face. “You never have to ask, my husband.”
“I want to hunt the villain, who must be causing trouble somewhere in the coastal cities. We will not return to Cairo without Arbusto enchained and on a leash.”
“We?”
“I need your help.” He smiled at his wife. “You do have so many leashes.”
“You and I?”
“Partners.”
“And my husband’s enemies will rue the day they were born.”
Naked, she climbed atop Othman, and kissed him. “Say it.”
“We leave tomorrow,” he said, laughing.
She kissed him again. “Say it.”
“We should start packing.” His eyes sparkled like diamonds along a riverbed.
She kissed him once more. “Say it.”
“You are my wife.” He took a deep breath and returned her kiss. “I would rather live for eternity as your slave than spend a single moment without you.”