The Wrong End of the Telescope

by Rabih Alameddine

  More rain was coming. The bits of insanely blue sky seemed to be shrinking like an encircled army already defeated, turning paler and more vulnerable, the sun less convincing. On the pavement outside the squat airport building, a man in some kind of uniform sprinkled seeds, pigeons forming a wreath around him. Into a plastic bag his hand would dip, returning with more seeds to be flung. The circle of pigeons expanded and contracted like a pumping heart.

  Mazen had his back to me as he contemplated the eternal mystery of the luggage carousel. I did my inflatable air man wave, but he was picking up his bag and didn’t notice me. The bored, seated guard wouldn’t let me through, asking me to wait behind the yellow line next to him. Mazen, rolling his bag, passed me, looked left and right. I came up from behind and hugged him, my hands snaking under his elbows and around his torso. My ever-trusting brother didn’t even flinch. Why would he be surprised? Didn’t everybody receive unexpected hugs at airports? When we were kids I liked to jump on him, particularly when he had his back turned to me. I’d end up holding on to his neck, my legs around his waist. We were both too old to repeat that these days. We were the same height, though, the same weight. We spooned perfectly together.

  “Good morning, madam,” he said in the softest of voices. He held my arms but did not turn around yet. “May I interest you in our newest fund, which I believe has the right risk-to-reward ratio that someone like you would appreciate!”

  We both chuckled. The childish joke was in reference to an earlier conversation when he asked me what he would do in Lesbos, how he could help the refugees. He’d said that the only thing he was remotely good at was selling stocks, if that. He was a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch in Beirut. He didn’t think he could meet the boats with the latest investment portfolios. Pardon me, ma’am, would you like me to explain how a family savings plan works?

  A memory came back to me. He was eight, I seven. In our bedroom, on the floor, we sat side by side, touching at the hips, as if we were two trees, bough grazing bough, our roots, our legs, intertwined. This image—this memory had not crossed my mind in decades. Mazen held a housefly in his loosely closed fist. He repeated the gesture that our father performed each time it was his turn at backgammon. Mazen shook his hand roughly as if it contained a pair of dice, made me blow on it for good luck, and with great panache threw the dazed insect onto the floor. We watched the flummoxed fly try to regain its bearings. Below us, the insect dragged itself and its confusion in small circles, unable to lift itself into the air for a while. We did this every time we caught a fly.

  Mazen, my Mazen.

  He and I had a blood pact, literally. I was eight, he nine. He had heard that if two people shook bleeding hands, they would become blood brothers. We would do it. We didn’t consider that we were already siblings. We thought the ritual would make us as close as two people could get. We would stand side by side even if attacked by sword-wielding monsters or fire-breathing dragons. With a pin from a thistle flower, we pricked our forefingers and shook hands, sealing our contract.

  When the familial umbilical cord was scorched, I was so furious with my mother and with my father who always took her side that I felt I could live with that break. I may even have convinced myself that having nothing more to do with them would be a welcome relief. But Mazen cutting me off? That—that I could not abide. I directed my disproportionate rage at him first. I decided I would not speak to him ever again, even if he came begging forgiveness. If he crossed a desert on his knees to atone for his sin, I would not relent. No, I was certain that I’d never forgive his betrayal. I encased my heart in iron and chugged along, a clean break.

  But then breaks are never ever clean, no such thing.

  In 1987, a few years after the rupture, I received an envelope from Beirut, from Mazen, containing nothing but a black-and-white photograph. Standing before the cadre of mailboxes in the dark lobby of my building, I tore open the envelope and tried to figure out why Mazen would send me a picture of himself and his bride. No note, not one word, just a cliché of a wedding portrait: the couple coming out of the church, a young Mazen, plump and fleshy, beginning to follow in his father’s footsteps, dark suit and tie, a beaming smile on his face, grains of rice stuck to his meticulously gelled hair. Clearly besotted, he was gazing at his bride, while she, coiffed hair streaked with highlights and gardenias, looked seductively at the camera, her leer proclaiming: I’ll give him the wedding night, and then all bets are off.

  Had we been speaking, I would have warned poor Mazen. They were divorced after ten hellish years. She left him for some sleazy millionaire with whom she’d been having an affair.

  At the time I didn’t understand what he was trying to do. If he wanted to make contact, why send me a picture? Why not a letter, a phone call? Did he think this inanity would make me forgive his duplicity? We had a pact. He was my closest friend, my only friend. Cosigners of a covenant, we shared a bed till I was ten, pressed together against the same sheets of cotton. When I had a nightmare, I would sidle closer and hug him fiercely. He poured comfort into my ears. The nightmare was not real, he would tell me. And then he abandoned me. Did he think my fortified heart would be easily pierced?

  I hesitated, not sure what to do. I wished to hurt him. Damn him. I decided I would treat him the same way. I sent my reply, a photograph of Francine and me and my budding breasts. She and I were young and in love then, and the picture reflected it. We were atop each other in Cambridge Common, haloed by glorious sunlight and a furious cloud of gnats.

  Mazen sneaked back into my life, slipped into the water with a silent paddle. We sent photographs back and forth for years, but no words were exchanged; our relationship was reduced to a visual correspondence. It was only later, when he came to visit for the first time, that I learned he’d sworn an oath to my mother: he would chop off his tongue if he uttered a word to me; he’d saw off a finger if he wrote a single letter to the family freak. At the time, though, I wanted him to say something, anything. I wanted him to send me more than a photograph, but I refused to ask. Instead, he’d send me a picture of himself on a Beirut beach, and I’d return one of myself walking the Lakefront Trail. I received a snapshot of his son and returned a photograph of my cats. I refused to break. I was the strong one.

  When I began my first job, the hospital’s newsletter published a grainy photo of the chief of surgery and me in pristine white lab coats, the obligatory stethoscopes around our necks. How Mazen found that newsletter I do not know. I received a picture of him hugging his daughter as she sat on his lap, his left hand holding the newsletter, my new name stationed where his heart was supposed to be.

  He broke first. In 1997, I received a four-by-six portrait of his son with a slightly bleeding nose, taken hastily, badly lit, likely by a bathroom bulb. On the ten-year-old face, a thread of blood trickled from nose to upper lip, curved an ogee around the corner of the mouth and down the chin. The boy was in no pain; he looked inquisitively at the camera, probably wondering why his father had had the urge to bring it out.

  I held my breath for a beat or two or three when I saw the image. On the back of the photograph Mazen had written, “I keep seeing you.”

  Iron is iron until it is rust.

  When I was ten, a bullyboy at school pushed me into a wall. My nose bled. Mazen, eleven at the time, took me to the lavatory and helped me clean my face. We missed two classes, hiding and holding each other in the bathroom. The boy’s face in the photograph was a replica of the one I saw in the mirror that day. Mazen’s son looked more like me than like his father.

  My response didn’t include a picture. Like him, I began with only one sentence, the incipit of all further conversation. In the middle of a white sheet I wrote, “I have never stopped missing you.”

  Avoid Getting Liver Cancer if You Can

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor between the family’s two cots, Sammy was the first to notice me. He graced me with a weak dimpled
grin. He began to stand up as manners required, but both Mazen and I gestured simultaneously that there was no need: right hand, palm down, slowly moving downward, then up to the heart. Rasheed, who accompanied us inside, performed a similar gesture. Sumaiya lay on the cot to her husband’s left, and three women sat on the one to his right. All three greeted us with soldierly handshakes. A gray shopping bag filled with the family’s belongings nestled next to Sammy like a loving pet. Sumaiya looked awful, more jaundiced, more wan, and when she glanced my way, I noted something off-kilter with her eyes. Dust motes wandered aimlessly through the air as if on a mild narcotic. Introductions were made: my brother Mazen; the women, two of whom were journalists and the third their interpreter; and Rasheed, who wanted only to meet the family before he started his shift. Both journalists were strikingly blond with safari outfits and matching ponytails that gave the impression of having been deftly pulled into position years ago and remaining like that ever since. They wanted to write stories—personal and poignant stories, they made sure to explain—detailing the suffering of Syrian refugees before and after the great crossing. I couldn’t tell whether they worked for a magazine or were freelancing. One was English, the other Belgian. Their Dutch translator spoke classical Arabic fluently, a PhD student in a green woolen sweater and khaki pants. I complimented her on her language skills, and she told me that her Arabic argot was improving on a daily basis since she’d landed on the island.

  “All they do is talk,” Sumaiya said a little too loudly.

  She said it to me, but it sounded as if she were announcing it to the entire group. Sammy reached out and squeezed her shoulder. He seemed frightened, even horrified. The translator straightened her shoulders. I could see she was about to say something, but she held back. The two blonds were oblivious, perfunctory smiles glued on their faces.

  Rasheed chuckled. “They all do, and we have to suffer them,” he told Sumaiya in Arabic. He didn’t elaborate on who they were. “And on this lovely note, I beg you to excuse me, for I have to get to work.” He promised to return later to check in on her and asked me to walk him out. I noticed Mazen sit on the edge of Sumaiya’s cot, close to Sammy and the three women. The rusty hinges moaned as we opened the barracks door to exit. Rasheed halted right outside. Under a suddenness of sun, his eyes blinked concern, his head moved jerkily, checking that no one could hear.

  “She should be in a hospital,” he whispered. “If she can’t be checked in to the one in Mytilene, there are a couple of medical tents. She shouldn’t be in the barracks. I assume I don’t have to tell you that. She’s not doing well at all.”

  I told him that we’d get her examined today, once Emma arrived. I explained Sumaiya’s concerns, that she did not want any help until she reached her final destination.

  “Her final destination is probably this island,” he said. “She has late-stage liver cancer, unresectable, not that she could get any surgery anytime soon. You knew that, right?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ve seen it a few times before. Tell her husband not to squeeze her shoulder the way he did. She bruises easily. If she doesn’t now, she will soon. Her stool might be acholic already. She’s going to get weaker and weaker, anemic as well. Watch for that. I doubt she’ll be able to travel.”

  “I know,” I said.

  On our right, a middle-aged man with an eggplant-shaped physique lectured a lump of young volunteers who regarded him with the silent skepticism of cattle. Berate, berate, chide, chide, in a raspy voice, the man wanted the yellow vests to treat the refugees differently than he was treating them.

  “The Swedish NGO has good doctors,” Rasheed said, “but I can help if you need me. The hospital in Mytilene is not well equipped. No MRI, not much. I doubt she’ll be able to get the medical care she needs on Lesbos, and I’m not sure we can get her transferred to Athens anytime soon.”

  I found him endearing. He looked like one of those drunk monks in Renaissance paintings or one of Bacchus’s companions—cherubic and amused, in spite of the miserable surroundings. Actually, he looked a lot like my brother and reminded me of him, which was probably why I’d liked him at first sight. Mazen would whine about his whole life falling apart with a sneaky grin on his face or would witness the atrocities of the Lebanese civil war with eyes that refused to give up on joy.

  “I’m thinking how much I appreciate your being here,” I said. “Thank you.”

  He beamed liked a Boy Scout receiving an extra badge. “I’ll be back soon to check in,” he said. “WhatsApp me if you need anything. Oh, and get some Benadryl or hydroxyzine. She might develop hyperbilirubinemia and get quite itchy. They won’t help much, but they’re definitely better than nothing.”

  Butt Sniffing in the West

  Emma and her people would not get to Moria for another half hour or so. The barracks were less crowded than the evening before. All the refugee families were out, working on getting their papers. The tonsured man was still there on his cot a few feet away, still reading, and I still couldn’t see what book it was. I would find out later that his daughters had befriended Sumaiya’s and were somewhere out in the camp with his wife, leaving him alone with his treasured book.

  I settled down on Sumaiya’s cot and listened to the journalists’ questions.

  No, he was not an Islamist, Sammy said. He wasn’t sure what the word meant. Yes, of course he was a Muslim. I realized that the translator wasn’t nearly as good as I first thought. Her English was impeccable, her classical Arabic proficient but lacking any of the nuance of the spoken language, let alone any understanding of the Syrian dialect. The creaky conversation confused Sammy. No, he did not practice his religion. He was a Muslim. He did not need to pursue Islam; he was born a Muslim. Of course he prayed the requisite amount. He was apologetic, asking what that had to do with practicing.

  I did not butt in. I should have, but I was too intrigued. I watched how the women sat, upright and matronly, how they approved of what was being said with an easy glance between them. I was a primatologist observing a strange species in its natural environment. The various forms of asking “Are you an Islamist” were the human equivalent of dogs sniffing butts.

  But then Mazen intervened. He told Sammy not to worry about the questions, that the journalists were trying to get to know him, but they were not extremely bright. It wasn’t his fault. The Dutch interpreter did not translate that.

  Sammy said the family didn’t have much of a problem when Daesh began to control the area, particularly early on. The Daesh men—worshipful, callow boys mostly, all peach fuzz and pistols—allowed him a lot of leeway in the beginning because he was well known in the area for being antiregime. He was able to drive his beat-up truck to work without slowing down for either checkpoints or potholes. He did not understand how horrible Daesh was at the time. His village was too small to matter, so everyone went about their business without much ado. For him, anything was more acceptable than the capriciousness of the regime. Why? He was arrested once, a long time ago, long before he met Sumaiya, when he was a teenager.

  “He’s my hero,” Sumaiya told me, almost yelling. She nudged my thigh with her elbow. “He asks me to tell him he’s my hero whenever we get romantic.” Sammy turned his head toward us, his eyes as wide as porcelain plates, mortified, but she simply went on, her voice avid and light. “In between kisses, he keeps saying, ‘I’m your hero, isn’t that right?’ He’s quite sweet, you know.”

  Mazen cracked up. “Who doesn’t love a romantic hero?” he said to Sumaiya.

  I smiled at her, but I was perturbed. Was this hepatic encephalopathy? Her behavior was not normal, yet I could not be sure if that was because she was confused or if it was simply a general change of attitude. I needed help. She needed help.

  The journalists wanted to know why Sammy was arrested. They listened to his story without moving, sitting on the cots with their backs firm and erect, like well-mixed concrete; you
could pull out all the supporting steel rods and they would still be straight.

  He was young, Sammy said. He talked too much, not knowing when to hold his tongue. He had criticized the regime to a friend, saying something innocuous, like you could only get a job in Syria if you knew someone important. Nothing significant or subversive. Then he said that if you knew the ruling family, you could steal money, and no one would say a word. Well, that friend told someone who told someone who informed on him. He ended up being arrested and tortured. He was in jail for six months.

  Tortured?

  Sammy lifted his shirt, showing pale scars, three long, off-color lines on his back, and one on his chest that began a little below his right nipple and ran all the way across toward his spleen. The security services whipped and cut him without interrogating him. They didn’t need information from him, although he would have willingly offered anything they wanted. They hung him by his wrists from a pipe in the ceiling for days for no reason. They sliced into him as he spun like shawarma.

  “That’s funny,” Sumaiya said. “I think I’ve heard that before. He repeats a limited number of jokes, but they still make me laugh. You know, a prison guard taught him barjees because he needed someone to play with. He didn’t do a good job, though, because I beat my husband every time.”

  The translator seemed unsure whether to translate Sumaiya’s running commentary. She looked toward her masters, the journalists, and they ignored Sumaiya. She followed suit.

  Daesh did the same things as the regime, Sammy said, as did other Islamic groups like Ahrar al-Sham or Jabhat al-Nusra. Friends informed on friends, family on family. Daesh also set up a system to provide social services, and they cleared out the various criminal gangs in the area. Sammy didn’t pay attention to what was going on for the first few months, grateful that he and his family were safe and that the regime’s security services were no longer anywhere near their village.