The Wrong End of the Telescope

by Rabih Alameddine

  We had been driving in silence for a while when I received a video call from Mazen, who had landed in Athens. First thing he said was that I was too dark and he could only see me as an undulating shadow. What had the Greeks done to me, what? I missed him awfully. He was going to spend the night in a hotel near the airport and take the first morning flight to Mytilene. I had better pick him up, he said, because he had no idea where we were staying.

  I did not wish to spend time in the café-cum-pickup bar with Emma and her Rodrigo. I wanted to be alone, so I took a sandwich back to my room. In the dark corridor on a cheap aluminum chair, the cleaning woman sat, eyes closed, her scarfed head leaning on the wall right below a wooden crucifix that had misplaced its Christ. She stood up as soon as she heard me coming toward her. In Arabic, I told her she needn’t get up on my account; she should rest if she needed to. She sat back down, said she needed to catch her breath before she walked up the hill to her apartment. We exchanged pleasantries, and then she asked how long I was staying at the hotel. I realized I had no answer. I hadn’t made up my mind, I told her. I was thinking of going to a hotel nearer the camp. She suggested I leave the town. Going up and down that hill could cause me all kinds of anguish, and if I could avoid that, I should.

  She explained that she’d arrived on the island six months earlier from a small village near the Iraqi border. She’d traveled by herself; her husband had died in a government jail. Everyone who was on the boat with her had moved on: to Athens, to Cologne, to Malmö. She’d thought about it but decided she was too old, too set in her ways to keep changing. She was staying here. She had a good enough job, never slept hungry. She didn’t think she would get a better job in Germany, and she didn’t believe what some Syrians were saying, that you would be given a giant color television as soon as you crossed the border. She bade me goodnight; she needed to get home.

  I entered my room. Everything was quiet and ever so spare.

  Trans Tiresias and the Great Goddesses

  I woke before the quiet dawn for the second day in a row. No rain, no storms, Zeus must have decided to retire early. A strip of weak light leaked in under the door. I lay alone in bed on my one pillow. I’d had a night full of ephemeral dreams, of lounging goddesses, of Tiresias and snakes, and of Jennifer. Why was I having so many dreams? Much had crawled out from the dark reaches of my memory since I landed on Lesbos, as if the island air had a high concentration of Aricept. Everyone seemed part of the percolating lava, my mother, my father, my siblings, everyone.

  When I told you a year or so later that I dreamt of Tiresias while on Lesbos, you weren’t surprised. How could I not dream of a transgender Greek prophet while on a Greek island? Tiresias, a prophet of Apollo, came across two copulating snakes while walking and hit them with a stick, wounding them, and kapow, Hera transformed him into a woman for displeasing her. The great goddess made him in her image as punishment and ended up with a devout priestess. Seven years later, now a married woman who had borne children, Tiresias returned to the scene of the crime. She encountered the same snakes copulating, appreciated the miracle, and Hera turned her back into a man.

  Dreamt of a great goddess at night, so of course the great goddess, my wife, called in the morning. She had an uncanny sense of timing. One of the things I was grateful for in my life was that I woke up to her face every day, and on that morning I was also grateful for the technology that allowed me to see her as we talked.

  I told her I was thinking about going to a different hotel, one that was closer to the camp. She insisted I do. I was in Lesbos to help, not to hang out with Emma and her coterie of lifeguards. She said that had she been with me on the beach, it would have depressed her to not to be able to smuggle the Syrian family back to our home in Chicago. Even though she had strict boundaries when it came to work, she allowed herself more leeway in her personal life.

  Years ago, in the middle of one of the coldest nights in Chicago, we were walking to meet friends at a restaurant when a shivering woman and her teenage daughter stopped us. The mother asked for loose change, explaining to Francine that her husband had kicked them out of their apartment, and they had to raise enough money for a room somewhere. They didn’t look destitute, but they were certainly underdressed for the weather. Francine surprised the woman by giving her all the money in her wallet, some forty dollars. It didn’t end there. We joined our friends at the table, she opened the menu, but then she stood up, excused herself, and left the restaurant. She didn’t have to say anything. I knew she would go back to the woman. I explained to our friends. What I didn’t know was that she wouldn’t return, and that at home I would find the woman and her daughter taking hot showers in the guest bathroom and ours. The mother, Martha, stayed in our apartment for four days before she moved back to her family’s home in Indiana. Esther, her daughter, ended up staying for six months, until she finished her sophomore year. Francine thought it was a bad idea for her to switch to a high school in Indiana during a school year. Both of them still stay with us whenever they visit the city.

  You Almost Ran into Me, Mr. Crazypants

  I bade farewell to Skala Sikamineas and booked two rooms in the Mytilene hotel closer to Moria. I texted Emma to tell her I was leaving. She didn’t reply for a couple of hours. She wouldn’t be leaving her room anytime soon. Her exact words were: “My morning is looking up, up, up, and I’m not going to waste it.” She would meet me at Moria at 11:30 with some members of her team. I drove off, a cup of tepid bad coffee my only companion.

  There were few cars on the road in the early morning darkness; every now and then the headlights of one would flare and dim. Goats and herds of sheep grazed on the shadowy-green swards of the hillsides beside the road, shepherdless that early. Much like my early childhood home. Geography said Europe, but topography said Lebanon. I thought about Sumaiya, how I could convince her to allow us to examine her, get blood panels and some images. The hepatocellular carcinoma was quite advanced. No dipsomania. It was unlikely that the cancer developed from alcoholic cirrhosis since she didn’t drink. Probably hepatitis B or C, and if so, we should test all three of her girls.

  I worried about possibilities for the entire hour drive. Along the way, an old and beautiful oak momentarily distracted me; it was so remarkable I turned off the engine and took a few minutes to admire the aged tree. It was uncomfortably cold that early in the morning, so I basked in the tree’s glory from behind the windshield.

  It was not too long before Bugs Bunny announced that my destination was coming up on the left. Hills to my right, the sea to my left below, and the large sign announcing the hotel, Mytilana Village Hotel, changing vowels on me. Before turning into the driveway, I noticed a road shrine. Again, so much like our Lebanon. You wrote about them in one of your novels, the kooky commemoration of saints that popped up in the most obscure places, this one on the highway with only the hotel to keep it company. Someone must have had an accident here, probably turning into the driveway as I was about to do. I didn’t know as much as you did about saints, wondered if the shrine would be for Saint George. He was always on a horse, which was close enough to being in a car, right? And as I turned, I saw you in your rental Volkswagen driving out. You didn’t notice my car till the last minute; you swerved and barely avoided the saint’s shrine. You almost uprooted poor George and knocked him off his horse. Even with both of us in vehicles, I was still able to see your eyes and how distinctly they showed such anxiety. You were running away. I thought for sure you were taking the first available flight off the island. But you didn’t, did you?

  How Not to Treat Your Child After an Accident

  The island seemed to be casting remembrance spells. I was going in circles with my memories as if I were trying to unspool some curse. I recalled the shrine on the steep curve of Araya along the Beirut-to-Damascus road. My mother was driving. We might have been going to some town in the mountains. We were in the Peugeot, before it belonged to Firas, before its numerous
capricious deaths and resurrections. He was sitting in front next to my mother. I, the youngest, sat in the middle of the back seat, Mazen to my left and Aida to my right. I must have been eleven. My mother was upset about something. My father was on one of his hunting trips in Deir ez-Zor, staying with her family. She kept telling me to shut up, but I wasn’t saying anything, just laughing. Mazen was whispering, pouring pestilent puerile jokes into my left ear. Shut up, Ayman, my mother would yell. What did Batman ask Robin before they jumped into the Batmobile? A question and answer that only I heard, and I would laugh. I swear, my mother said, if you don’t shut your mouth, I’m going to slap you hard. What did the doctor say to the cookie? My mother demanded that my sister hit me. Aida smacked the back of my head. Mazen whispered another bad one. My mother reached back and slapped what she could reach, my knee. But then she had to make a hard turn, couldn’t retrieve her hand quickly enough to steer. Right next to the saintly road shrine, the car veered toward descending traffic. Firas was the first to scream. A car ran into us head-on. Luckily, both were moving slowly. No injuries. We were all momentarily stunned but only for a couple of seconds because my mother turned around in her seat, didn’t ask if we were okay. She simply began to scream at me. It was my fault, all my fault. I was always trouble, ever since I was born. She never meant to have me. I was an accident and a horrible one at that. Even when the driver of the other car walked over to see if we were okay, she did not relent. I was going to be the death of her. The other driver leaned over to check on us, but my mother ignored him. I thought I was smarter than everyone else she said, her eyes crinkling with malice, but I wasn’t. I was a monster. Mazen slid closer to me, away from the window.

  If You Can’t Find a Broom, Try a Jaguar

  In one of your novels, you wrote about an accident occurring on the same mountain curve. Have you any idea what it’s like to come across one’s own life while reading? Do you understand how glorious I felt while reading a book set in my city, on roads I drove on, among my people, how visceral my reaction? My world was being shared with the world. Do you understand why I love you so much, you fool? How can you hate yourself when I love you so?

  Granted, the narrator’s mother in your novel drove a Jaguar, not a Peugeot. Mrs. Peel, anyone? The accident was not the mother’s fault. You had her drive off the road to avoid a truck that lost control. You had her fly off into the air while the saints in the shrine watched enraptured. I saw myself as her, flying away in a wonderful Jaguar. That was me.

  A few years ago, I decided to make my fantasy a reality, to incarnate my dream. I knew that I was in the throes of a midlife crisis, but still, I wanted to buy a Jaguar. I may no longer have been able to fit comfortably in a slinky catsuit, but I certainly could in my fancy car. Francine said she would support me as long as we took some time to think about it. No need to speed through a decision.

  You know how she does things. Ever so gently, she caressed the doubts of my desire and nurtured them into bloom. Did I really want such a car in the city? It could go from zero to sixty in about four seconds, which would be great for getting onto Lake Shore Drive unless it was gridlocked. In other words, the Jag might be fun to drive between two and three in the morning. Was the attention a sports car garnered what I wanted? Was it the right image? Did I really want to be envied by every teenage boy watching my dream car idling in traffic?

  I didn’t buy a Jaguar. She and I haggled over what kind of car I should get, and I won. She tried to make me get a Volvo V60 station wagon, but I would have none of it. I ended up with a Volvo S60 sedan.

  That Boy Icarus

  You once wrote that Hagar, concubine of Abraham and mother of Ishmael, was the first emigrant, that the Arabic word for emigration was likely derived from her name. You would later tell me that you wrote this because it was metaphorically true, and her tale slid into its place in the book like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle. You were writing a novel dealing with Arab storytelling. Had it been about Western issues, you would have chosen Moses, or Jesus even, though they arrived on the mythical scene much later. It had to be Hagar and baby Ishmael, how as a poor, destitute exile in the desert she had to forage desperately for food and water for her teeny-tiny prophet. From hill to hill she ran, the same deserted two hills over and over, in case she missed something, a migrant’s desperation.

  But no, you would say later while visiting me in Chicago, if you were writing about migrants these days, you would consider Icarus the first, his father’s only boy. Daedalus, the artist, had built the infamous labyrinth for his king, Minos. In this impossible maze, the king imprisoned the Minotaur, a monster that had the body of a man, the head and tail of a bull, and happened to be his stepson in a way, the offspring of a salacious assignation between his wife, Pasiphaë, and a hefty bull. Like all rulers throughout time, Minos cared little for artists, ever persecuted, other than how they could serve him. He placed Daedalus under house arrest in a tall tower because the king did not wish the secret of the labyrinth to be known. But you could not keep an artist down, could you? From feathers and wax, Daedalus built two pairs of great wings, one for himself, and another for his beloved son, Icarus. Do not fly high, the father told his son, or low. If too high the savage sun will melt the pink wax, if too low sea foam will soak the feathers. Fly only in the silence of midair. Off into the lapis-haunted sky they flew, escaping oppression, seeking opportunities. Soon the boy, forgetting his father’s admonition, enjoyed flying higher and higher until the uncaring sun melted the wax holding the feathers together. Icarus fell out of the sky into the sea.

  The spot where his father’s beloved perished is now called the Icarian Sea, and the closest island is Icaria, not too far south of Lesbos.

  Many have drowned in that small stretch of the Mediterranean between Greece and Turkey, many lives unlived.

  Why Icarus, I asked you, of the many myths dealing with migrants, why him? You gave me a strange look, held my gaze for a while. You proceeded to prove to me that no matter how normal your appearance was, you were anything but. A strange, neurotic bird, that’s what you are. You lifted your butt off the seat, removed a folded sheet of white paper out of the right back pocket of your jeans. You unfolded a list you’d copied by hand off Wikipedia, a list of wheel-well stowaway deaths. Your list didn’t include deaths of people who tried to escape by hiding themselves in an aircraft’s cargo hold or its spare parts compartment, just those who stashed themselves in the landing gear bay. Your forefinger slid down the names and dates. You skipped those who had died by freezing when the temperature dropped at high altitudes. Your finger did not stop at those who died of being crushed by the wheels or by decompression sickness. You read aloud only those who fell from the skies, not in any particular order.

  In 1969, a man fell from the sky on a flight from Havana to Madrid.

  In 2001, London to New York, an unknown man fell from fifteen hundred feet on the jet’s approach to JFK.

  In 2004, Su Qing, all of thirteen years old, fell from the sky shortly after takeoff from Kumming.

  A year later an unknown boy of ten would fall from the sky in Western China.

  A boy of fifteen, Ilgar Ashumov, fell from the sky out of a Baku-to-Moscow flight.

  Qassim Siddique, Lahore to Dubai.

  In 2003, a man from Mali died on the way to Paris, falling from the sky not too far from his destination when the landing gear came down.

  In 2018, Marco Vinicio, seventeen, and Luis Manuel, sixteen, fell from a Boeing 767 after takeoff in Guayaquil. They were hoping to reach New York.

  And Carlito Vale, the young man from Mozambique who dropped out of the sky onto a nice suburb of London in 2015.

  More and more and more.

  “Who would keep a list like this?” I asked you.

  “Wikipedia,” you said.

  “No,” I said. “I meant who would keep a list like this on his person?”

  “Me?” you said. “
I mean, someone has to, don’t you think?”

  How to Rob an Armenian Jewelry Store

  The hotel was in deep hibernation. The pool looked dour without its water. The few chairs left outside looked miserable without their cushions; a few clung to each other, entwined, hugging and cuddling until spring. The umbrella stands without umbrellas, the deep holes in the round stones, felt the loneliest of all. All things gave off a faint smell of cider and firewood. Persephone was still wintering in the underworld.

  I waited for Rasheed and his Palestinian contingent in the hotel’s frayed dining room. The breakfast buffet was sparse and none too fresh. Only the white cheese called to me, so I had it with a couple of slices of bread. The paint on the walls was yellowed all the way up to the ceiling; a corner at the top showed cleavage. Across from my seat was an indentation, tabletop height, that looked like some powerful god had punched the wall by accident, or Bacchus had kicked it with his hoofed foot. As decaying as the hotel was, it was still an upgrade on the one in Skala Sikamineas: at the off-season rate of forty euros a night, my room with its sea view was costing more than twice what my previous one did.

  Two young boys tumbled into the room. They pushed the swinging doors roughly and fell as soon as they entered, as soon as their squeaky sneakers landed on the wall-to-wall carpet. They were back up and running before the rest of the family made their appearance. The dining room felt as if it had awoken from a deep sleep. The boys, drenched from being caught in the morning rainstorm, zipped past my table to check out the buffet. The family sat two tables away. The mother asked the boys to quiet down, to no avail. They were all chatter, me, mine, mine, mine, chatter, chatter. The accent screamed Damascus or not too far from there. The father acknowledged me with a nod. He had the kind of face that suggested he’d been punched in it a few times; everything about it seemed recessed save for the pop-out ears. The teenage daughter would not look up from her cell phone screen, her hand tweaking a gold necklace with a turquoise evil eye pendant that was meant to thwart the venomous intentions of any wicked onlooker.