I, The Divine

by Rabih Alameddine

  Amal was first, exactly nine months to the day from their wedding night. Everybody would have preferred a boy, but they were happy with Amal. She was healthy, a pretty baby, and there was time for boys later. Even her name meant hope in Arabic. They were disappointed with Lamia, but the marriage survived. When I arrived on the scene, it was too much. My grandparents convinced my father he needed a Druze wife who would provide him with a bushel of boys. Mustapha sent Janet back to New York.

  Before she was married, Janet had been a lively girl, gregarious even. She had always been strong. After the marriage she became quiet in deference to her new position in the community. She became a steady and reliable woman who never said much, a woman who stood bravely and lovingly by her husband for six years as he finished medical school. She withstood most things thrown at her, but she finally succumbed to her husband’s fizzled love.

  After the divorce, she was never strong again. The first time I saw her after she left, I was eighteen. She did not resemble the woman described in any of the stories I had heard about her. When I moved to New York with my first husband, Omar, we grew closer, but it was a constant strain to be in her presence for she never forgave. She had been wronged, and lived that wrong for the rest of her life.

  I did not forgive my father his treatment of my mother until I repeated the same story, taking on the roles of Mustapha and Janet simultaneously. Like Mustapha, I fell out of love with my husband, and like Janet, I am no longer with my child. I made mistakes.

  Like Janet and Mustapha, Omar and I met at the American University beach in 1980, while we were both engineering students. I saw him with a group of friends, diving from a rock into the sea. I had noticed him before. He was two years ahead of me and would be graduating in a couple of months. He dove, holding a knife in his hand, coming back up a few seconds later with a sea urchin. He got out of the water, cut the sea urchin in half, and fed it to a dog. It was not the same story I grew up with, but close enough. He noticed me watching him and sauntered over. We chatted about school and the engineering program. I remember his smile, sly, demure. He was somewhat shy, yet playful. Everything about him intrigued me, how his bushy eyebrows almost met, how they lined up from side to side since his face was so narrow. I loved his nasal voice, how he took a quick, short breath before every sentence, the seconds it took him to think before every response. Like my mother, I was smitten on that beach.

  We went out twice before we made love. I assume I shocked him. We had gone back to his house, his parents were out. We kissed and I did not stop him. Step by step, he thought he was seducing me, while I was fully ready. The lovemaking was a little dull, but I did not have much to compare it to. Although I was not a virgin, I was not experienced. I was frightened at times, mostly in the beginning, simply the fear of being touched by a man again, but I was determined, or, more accurately, committed. I went through with it and he fell in love. In the time we were together, our lovemaking never improved. Omar loved it, whereas I found it merely amusing. I never achieved an orgasm with him.

  We became an item. I knew better than to tell my parents, my father and his wife. Omar was Greek Orthodox, more acceptable than Maronite, but still Christian. Though interfaith marriages were fairly common, they simply were not acceptable in my family. My father did not want me to repeat his mistakes. I guess I would have hidden the relationship anyway, even if Omar were Druze. I don’t think my father could handle the fact that I was not a virgin. I confided in my eldest sister, Amal, who was married already. She thought Omar was a good match for me. He was intelligent, from a well-respected family, and was extremely rich. His parents, on the other hand, did not think I was a good match for their son. Yes, I was pretty. Yes, I came from a good family. They thought, however, I was after their money.

  His parents did not do much to oppose our courtship. They thought since Omar was going to New York in the summer to get his graduate degree from Columbia, he would forget about me. Little did they know. I packed two suitcases and left with him. We eloped, were married within a month. I found out I was pregnant.

  I loved Omar. There was never any doubt in my mind. Maybe not as much as he loved me, but I loved him. He treated me like a queen. The first year I was a housewife and took care of him as best I could. I was never a good housekeeper or cook, so he hired someone to do the menial jobs. While pregnant, I applied to Barnard and was accepted for the following year.

  I delivered a beautiful baby boy, Kamal, on May 19, 1981. The pregnancy was surprisingly easy, but the delivery was nothing short of hell. I was in labor for twenty-seven hours. How anyone could accuse me of not loving my boy is beyond me.

  I may not have been a good housekeeper, but I was a great mother. We lived on the Upper West Side, Eighty-third and Amsterdam. Most days during that summer before I enrolled at Barnard, when Omar went to the university, I would prepare Kamal and take him for a stroll all the way to Columbia’s library. I walked as exercise to lose all the weight I had gained during the pregnancy. I studied. Even though I was sure I would make it at Barnard, missing a year might have been a problem if I did not spend the time in the library. On the days I did not go to the library, I walked across the park, taking Kamal to Janet. Those days were hard. Even Kamal could not lift Janet’s moods. I believe I reminded my mother of her failures.

  I am unsure of exactly what happened in September. I started school and hired a nanny for Kamal. Omar objected to my going to school, suggesting I wait another year for Kamal’s sake. I did not think it wise, did not want to end up like Janet. My going to school was not the cause of our problems. Omar may have begun to nag at times, but his behavior changed little. My behavior did not change either, but my feelings did. He would still try to involve me in mischievous things, like the pillow fights we had had since we met, but I started seeing them as puerile. I began to hate the way he ate. I noticed in his interactions with other people that he was not just shy, he was a wimp. I do not know whether the change was sudden or gradual, but it was palpable. I hid it well, but I could not stand him anymore. My own fairy tale had ended.

  We never fought. Only on one occasion was I curt to him. He loved tickling me. No matter what I was doing, he would tickle me and I would drop everything and we would end up laughing. The last time he tried, I was studying for a final. I screamed at him to stop acting so childish. He was terribly hurt, like a little boy, and I had to apologize.

  He was the perfect father. He helped with Kamal whenever he was not in school, doting on him continuously. He thought we had a wonderful marriage, was still in love with me. His peace and happiness lasted till February, when he began talking about going back to Beirut in June as soon as he graduated. It took me completely by surprise. I needed another year to finish. He thought I could finish in Beirut, if I really wanted to. Beirut was a living hell in those days. The fighting was some of the worst of the war. The elections were coming up and no one knew what was going to happen. Most of the Lebanese were leaving Lebanon, not moving back. He was surprised at my stubbornness, as he called it. We were Lebanese, our place was in Lebanon. Kamal’s place was with his grandparents, both sets, and his family. I tried to bargain. We could wait another year until I finished, until we figured out what was going to happen in Beirut. Omar would not budge. He missed his family, his friends. He wanted his parents to help with raising Kamal.

  I made a mistake in underestimating Omar’s desire to move back to Lebanon. I did not understand his alienation in New York. I loved the city, he hated it. I felt at home while he felt like a foreigner. It was only later that I realized he never made any friends in the city. All of our friends were mine. He tagged along simply because I asked him. I was having a ball, while he was counting the days until we could go back.

  I also underestimated his sense of property. I belonged to him. I was his wife. Kamal belonged to him. If the man wanted to go back to Beirut, then we were all going. The more I objected, the more adamant he became. I do not think either of us realized the corners
we were painting ourselves into. We never raised our voices, but we dug our trenches. War or no war, he was moving back. I was not. Did I want a divorce? It would be for the best. He was taking Kamal back to Lebanon. I could not do anything about it. How was I going to live in New York without any money? I could keep the apartment till I graduated, and I would get fifteen hundred dollars a month for as long as I lived. How could I live without Kamal? I could come see him in Beirut anytime. I was Kamal’s mother. Omar would not stand in the way of my being with his son. That was it. In June, my husband and son left me.

  That year, until I graduated, was one of the lowest times in my life. I missed Kamal tremendously. My parents in Lebanon were upset with me when I got married, and were more upset when Omar left me. For them, I was always to blame. The war in Beirut intensified, with the Israeli invasion, the blowing up of the U.S. marines, and the massacres at Sabra and Chatila. I was worried about my family, my son, and everyone. I concentrated on my studies.

  I worried about the fact that when I graduated, I would not be able to stay in the United States legally. My student visa, an F1, would expire. I thought I could try getting an American passport since my mother was American.

  Luckily for me, another graduate engineering student became infatuated with me. We were going to graduate at the same time, he with a master’s degree and I with a bachelor’s. Joe was the spitting image of Omar, but without the shyness or funny speech patterns. He was from a rich family. This time his parents did not approve of me both because I was not Jewish and because they thought I was after his money. I had practice with minor obstacles by then.

  The last time I saw my mother was the day of my first and only New York opening, January 19, 1995. I went to visit her in her Upper East Side apartment. I had been dropping in on her the previous couple of days, trying to talk to her, not about my painting or the impending show and my nervousness about it, but about the problems I was having with David. I thought she would be able to help. All she could talk about were her memoirs. She saw herself as an artist, a painter, although she never really painted, having all the neuroses of an artist, but none of the talent. She had given up painting for the past year to concentrate on writing. “Write, write, write,” she said. “All I do is write. It’s so liberating.” I asked to see, but as usual, nothing was ready to be shown. “I’ve hired a professional editing firm to clean things up before I’m ready to publish,” she told me.

  That day she was radiant, wearing a green dress, long, to the ankles. She was in a good mood, almost manic, moving constantly, nervously flipping her red hair back every few seconds. “I’m so excited for you,” she said, “and I’m at a great place in my writing. It’s going well right now, so we have more than one thing to celebrate.” She would not elaborate. “You want to see something funny. I bought this voice recognition thing for my computer a couple of months ago. You speak into it and it types the silliest things. You know how awfully I type. I thought this would help, but it doesn’t work, and I still have to type. Anyway, it’s great fun. Come.”

  She led me to her office. The desk was impeccably clean, like the rest of her sparsely furnished apartment. I sat down at the computer and spoke into the attached microphone. “My name is Sarah Nour el-Din and I want to type something.” The sentence appeared on the screen as “A cane barter poor meeting no finance upward to bin.” It was hilarious. I spoke again and again. The words typed on the page had nothing at all to do with what I said. She laughed, called it contemporary poetry. I tried to type something, hit the keys repeatedly, but nothing showed up on the screen. I asked my mother if she knew why her keyboard was not working. She did not. It was obvious to me, a non-computer-geek, that the voice recognition software was interfering with the keyboard. For her to type on her computer, a technician would need to solve the compatibility problem. I did not mention it. We parted, kissing at the door, her hand surprisingly lingering on my face. I knew she would not show up at the reception, but I thought she would come up with some excuse the next day when I called her. I was wrong. That night she cut herself with a razor in the bathtub, not just her wrists, but all over, and bled to death.

  It was endless, that afternoon. The ocean was calm, limpid, vast as the sky. But the color was wrong. It was gray, not the blue-green I was looking for. I had moved from New York to San Francisco to see the sun set in water. But it was wrong. The sun disappeared into oblivion at strange angles and with the wrong colors. I drove to the beach that afternoon to think. I sat on the sand, wondering what to do. I felt I needed some drastic changes. Should I move back to Beirut?

  I wondered what percentage of the world’s population had never seen the sun set in the Mediterranean. I remembered another afternoon, on a real beach, under a real sun.

  We sneaked onto the beach, he and I. We were so young, both fourteen. It was our first summer together.

  It was a public beach, not where either one of us would usually hang out. We were sure no one there would recognize us. It was less than half a mile away from the private beach club where our families swam and socialized, yet a world away. The masses on the golden sand were dressed in everything from swimsuits to full dress. The smell of lamb kebabs wafted through the still air.

  The sand burned our feet through the sandals. “I know this place,” he told me. He led me running to the waterline, where the sand was wet and cool. We walked hand in hand, the first time in a week. We walked until we reached a small hill jutting into the sea. As we climbed across he said, “In Norway, they have steep hills that fall straight into the sea. The bays these hills create are called fjords.”

  “Who do you think you’re talking to, dummy? I know about fjords.”

  “We’ll go there someday,” he said, looking ahead, away from me. “I’ve seen pictures. It’s beautiful and very, very romantic. You’ll like it.”

  We jumped down on the other side, a secluded area. “Are you sure this will work?” I asked. “Some people might come and if someone walked on the top there, they’d see us. I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

  “We’ll hear them coming. Anyway, we’re not doing anything. We’re just kissing.”

  We kissed and caressed until we heard people climbing the hill. It was another couple, older. They were shocked to find us there. She smiled. He glowered. They jumped down and sat facing the water with their back toward us. They whispered. They were obviously engaged to be married. Finally, she had the courage to reach over and hold his hand.

  I reached over, slipped my hand under Fadi’s swimming trunks and encircled his penis. His face registered shock. “I want to do it,” he said.

  “Not till we’re married.”

  He kissed me and ejaculated silently.

  I grew up infatuated with Sarah Bernhardt, having been named after her by my grandfather. My stepmother considered this obsession, for that is what it was, to be dangerous. She objected to my grandfather filling my head with stories of the great actress, thinking they would lead me astray.

  I did not realize when I was younger how much anguish my being a tomboy caused my family. The first day I returned from school wearing makeup—I was fifteen—I was greeted with mouths agape and eyes wide, followed by effusive compliments. I ran into the bathroom and cleaned myself.

  My initiation into total femininity was conducted by Dina, my best friend. She took a wardrobe consisting of jeans and sweatshirts and converted it to fashionable dresses and eye-catching skirts. She took a face that had never had a dab of makeup and trained it to accept powdered and creamy intrusions. She took a girl who was notorious for being the best soccer player in school, better than the boys, and turned her into every schoolboy’s fantasy. In my stepmother’s eyes, Dina was a goddess.

  Dina’s arrival at school set a new standard of sexual tension among the boys. She was only the second girl in my class. I was one of the first five girls to enroll in the school when it was integrated. That first day, she was fully made up, wore a disturbingly short skirt and an eve
n tighter shirt, which accentuated her cusped breasts. By the first day of school, she had earned a nickname that would stick: Crotale, after the French missiles.

  It did not take long for us to become friends. She shattered my misconceptions about her within the first week. I had not known anyone who dressed like her. Because of the way she presented herself, I had mistakenly assumed she was dumb. Her grades displaced mine as the second highest. The highest belonged to my boyfriend at the time, Fadi, but his should not be considered because they were the product of a rare intelligence. I also thought she would be a tramp. She was not, of course, since she did not care for boys at all.

  Dina and I grew ever closer. I was transformed, both by her example and by her free-flowing advice. I had always associated concerns about personal appearance with frivolity, and I had no role models to speak of. Who would want to look like Indira Gandhi or Golda Meir? In reality, the only true model of a successful woman was the Divine Sarah. Dina came into my life, intelligent, ambitious, and beautiful in a dress. While she taught me how to apply makeup, we shared our dreams of engineering school, of having our own company, of building a true skyscraper, not that ugly crap the Holiday Inn was forcing on Beirut.