I, The Divine

by Rabih Alameddine

  Dina delivered her speech impassively, not removing her gaze from the waters until the end. Her face is heavily made up, even the purple eye shadow applied with thought to match the outfit. Whatever is troubling her is not apparent to the inexperienced eye. She seems serene, content with her life. Yet Sarah’s face shows a concern for her friend that eases slightly only when Dina smiles.

  Let us find out more.

  Sarah walks over to the stone bench and sits down. She seems slightly more at ease, but not much. She takes off the cap, scratches her head, and puts the cap back on. “I should have been there,” she says. “You should have let me come.”

  “No. I was fine. It wouldn’t have mattered.”

  “It would have. I should’ve been there for you.”

  “Oh, come on,” Dina says, still somewhat impassively. “My mother would have had a conniption. She would’ve been on me the whole time. If you wanted to help me, your not coming was a great help.”

  “Hey, thanks.”

  “You know what I mean. My mother still thinks you turned me into a lesbian. She hates your guts. You ruined me, admit it. You led me down this road of sin and left me there. It’s your fault I’m a fallen woman.”

  “If only I could talk to your mother. Listen, can’t I just talk to her? Next time I’m in Beirut, I can just go over and talk to her.”

  Dina sits down next to her friend. “Get real,” she says seriously. “Do you think you’d be able to get through to her? Do you think you can say anything I haven’t? She remembers what you were like. We slept together in the same bed many times. Ergo, you’re the lesbian and you converted me. It’s simple.”

  “Your mother’s fucked up.”

  Dina smacks the back of Sarah’s head playfully. “Earth to Sarah. What do you think I’ve been saying all these years?”

  “I should’ve been there. For you.”

  “It was almost as if you were there. Your whole family showed up. All of them. That was so wonderful. Even your ex-husband was there with your son. I was so grateful. I think we should plan on getting you two remarried.”

  “And his wife?”

  “Details, details. We can easily get rid of that little ninny.”

  “Kidnap her and force her to wear something other than Armani. That’ll kill her on the spot, don’t you think?”

  “He still loves you dearly.”

  “I know. And I love him. It just didn’t work out, that’s all. We still talk three or four times a week. Sometimes I wonder what could have been, but it never would have worked out. We always wanted different things. In a way, we’re closer now than we’ve ever been. We have no need to change each other.”

  “We still should get rid of that little ninny.”

  “And get him a better haircut.”

  “And make him stop smoking.”

  “And get him out of politics.”

  Sarah and Dina have their arms entangled again. Sitting on the bench, Sarah looks quizzically at her friend, still wonders if Dina remains troubled. A questioning expression keeps reappearing on Sarah’s face.

  “Your father was there. I was surprised. He offered me his condolences. Surprised the hell out of me.”

  “It shouldn’t have. He’s a stickler for rituals. He was just doing his duty.”

  “He still hates my guts.”

  “Yours hated mine.”

  “Your mother was wonderful.”

  “My stepmother?”

  “Yes. She’s extraordinary. I love that woman.”

  “She always loved you. From the beginning.”

  “She took me out to lunch a couple of times. It seems every time I see her, I gain more respect for her. Do you realize she’s the only one who asks how Margot is doing? For everyone else the relationship doesn’t exist. Twenty years together and my mother doesn’t want to know anything, but your mother cares enough to ask. Maybe she should adopt me.”

  “If she did, you’d be set financially.”

  “Yeah, and who would’ve believed that?”

  The women have been sitting silent for a while. Sarah wants to interrupt the interlude, but is unsure how to proceed. She is examining Dina’s face in an attempt to read the secrets hidden there. She finally breaks in: “Why are we here?”

  “I wanted to be out of Boston,” Dina answers.

  “Yes, but why here? Why didn’t you just visit me in San Francisco?”

  “I didn’t want to be that far out of Boston!”

  “Why not New York?”

  “I like it here. Always have. I can think here. It’s so beautiful.”

  We can see Sarah is not fully satisfied with the answers. She hesitates, trying to figure out the best way in. “Are you worried about work?”

  “Work? No. I took a leave of absence from the firm. I can come back whenever I feel ready. They’ve been quite supportive. Speaking of work, I designed a cabin in the woods about two miles north of here. We should go up and visit. You can see what my early work looks like.”

  Sarah shakes her head. “I know what your early work looks like. I know all your work. Remember?”

  “I meant in person. We can see the cabin for real instead of blueprints. Self-exposure in the woods instead of on paper.” Dina grins seductively at her friend, which only causes Sarah to shake her head even more.

  “Where’s Margot?” Sarah asks pointedly.

  “She’s at home.”

  “Did you have a fight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Big one?”

  “Yes. Big one.”

  “Really big one?”

  “Biggest one we’ve ever had.” Dina disentangles herself, stands up, and moves closer to the railing. She absentmindedly runs her gloved hand over the metal, removing the snow from the guardrail.

  “I see. And you left?” Sarah shuffles her feet, stares intently at her friend.

  “Packed a small bag.”

  “Does she know?”

  “She’ll find out tonight.”

  “Just like that?”

  “She told me to go to hell.”

  “And here you are.”

  “This isn’t hell,” Dina exclaims. She turns around smiling, her arms gesturing to encompass everything around her. “Look. This is beautiful. This is closer to heaven. My kind of heaven at least.”

  “This is hell. Did you notice all the churches?”

  “There’s a great vintage clothing shop.”

  “Used clothing. Used, not vintage.”

  “No, no. Vintage. Believe me, what they have in that store should be in a museum. It’s vintage.”

  “Are you going to call her?”

  “No.”

  “You’re going to let her suffer not knowing where the fuck you are?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aren’t you being childish?”

  “Sarah Nour el-Din. Let’s not talk about being childish, shall we?”

  “I’m just repeating what you say to me.”

  “I know.”

  “Call her.”

  “Fuck no.”

  “Call her.”

  “No way. She called me a baby.”

  “You’re acting like one.”

  “I’m not calling.”

  “I will if you won’t.”

  “You die if you do.”

  “This is so unlike you. I can’t believe you will stay here when she’ll be worried sick when she gets home tonight.”

  “Tough.”

  “No, no. Hold on a second.” Sarah looks energized, as if finally comprehending. “I know you, Dina Ballout. Margot knows you’re here.”

  “Nope, she doesn’t. I just packed and left. Didn’t tell her anything.”

  “She’s been here. She knows about this forsaken place. She must know about this place. She probably knows exactly where to find you.”

  “She has been here.” Dina says this, pretending nonchalance.

  “You’ve been here together.”

  “We come here every year
.”

  “This is where you met?”

  “Right here.”

  Dina stands staring at the water. She cries softly. Sarah comes over and hugs her. “She’ll be here,” Sarah says.

  “Well, she’d better drive over tonight or I’ll break her fucking legs.”

  “I know her. She’ll be here. She’ll figure it out.”

  “Well, I packed my thermal underwear so she knows I didn’t go to Florida!”

  “That’s a good clue.” They both giggle.

  “Hey, no one can accuse me of not planning ahead. And I packed the espresso maker. She knows the swill they serve for coffee here.”

  “Great idea. Let’s get some coffee. I’m freezing.”

  We see them walk up the embankment, arm in arm. And this is as good a place to end our first chapter as any.

  I sat down in front of the television with my first quart of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (the first, Chunky Monkey; the second, Cherry Garcia). I was confused, slightly blue. I flipped channels as I stuffed my face. Ice cream worked better for me than any antidepressant or mood enhancer.

  I was having trouble writing my memoir, not being able to figure out how to attack it. I had tried different methods, but the memoir parried back expertly. When I was a little girl, I used to watch a cartoon called Touché Turtle, the name of a fencing turtle musketeer whose sidekick was a talking dog called Dum-Dum. Every time I tried something new with my memoir, I felt the memoir become Touché Turtle, fighting me all the way. “Touché,” the turtle would say every time it stabbed me, which was fairly often. At the end of each frustrating writing session, I would hear the damn turtle’s farewell call, “Touché away,” complete with closing credit music. I sat in front of my television devouring ice cream, healing my saber wounds before I attempted to enter the fray again.

  I settled on a PBS nature documentary about lions in Africa. There was Red, the dominant male of the pride, getting older and barely holding on to his position within the pride. Juna was the best hunter, and the pride began to follow her lead while hunting. It was exquisite to see the pride on a hunt, the interminable wait, the coordinated movements, as if they were one organism, such murderous poetry in motion.

  A lioness called Pinky delivered three delightful cubs, Bucka, Monk, and Ginny. Ginny turned out to be the cutest cub of them all, playful and cuddly.

  Time passed. One of the younger males, Lewis, matured and decided to leave the pride and make his own way. Bucka, Monk, and Ginny were about four months old. It was a joy to watch and I was lost in a whole new world. I loved the interactions and relationships. I enjoyed the friendship between Pinky and Lisa, who seemed inseparable. I loved the communal rearing of the young.

  A new lion appeared on the horizon, Corey, in his prime, beautiful, strong, and obviously up to no good. He stood on a hill and roared. Old Red, now alert, roared back. But even from the roars, you could tell the fight was over before it even began. Old Red was done for. I felt sad for him, but hey, that was life. The old had to go at some point. Old Red left the pride after a token fight. Corey was the new leader, but then that son of a bitch did something that shocked me.

  Corey walked over to where my babies, Bucka, Monk, and Ginny, lay shivering with fright and began to kill them one by one. He started with Bucka, while Monk and Ginny cowered at his feet. He lifted Bucka by his neck, shook his head ferociously until the cub’s neck snapped, and flipped the corpse away. He then picked up Monk while Ginny stayed where she was, waiting her turn for annihilation. By the time he killed Ginny, I no longer recognized myself. The announcers were pedantically explaining the logic of Corey’s behavior, while I sat open-mouthed, shocked, unable to hear anything. I sweated, felt porous, like my body was made of clay not yet fired. I was afraid if I moved even an inch, one of my limbs would fall off.

  On the screen, the pride was adjusting to life with Corey. Slowly, I began to grapple with what had happened. Individuals came and went, but the pride was what survived. Always. I had identified with each lion or lioness as a separate entity. I had thought I knew about lions because I saw Ginny as a cute and cuddly cub.

  If I wanted to know about lion, I had to look at the entire pride. I had to look at it not as a single organism per se, but as a new unit much larger than the sum of its parts. Red was lion; Lewis, the lion who left the pride, was lion; Lisa was lion; Corey was lion; and my baby, Ginny, whose life was snuffed out to ensure Corey’s new lineage, was lion. I could not begin to fathom what being a lion was if I only looked at each lion individually, or even at the relationships between the lions. All of them together, not all of them individually summed up, but all of them as a dynamic organism, were the species; all were the word lion.

  I had tried to write my memoir by telling an imaginary reader to listen to my story. Come learn about me, I said. I have a great story to tell you because I have led an interesting life. Come meet me. But how can I expect readers to know who I am if I do not tell them about my family, my friends, the relationships in my life? Who am I if not where I fit in the world, where I fit in the lives of the people dear to me? I have to explain how the individual participated in the larger organism, to show how I fit into this larger whole. So instead of telling the reader, Come meet me, I have to say something else.

  Come meet my family.

  Come meet my friends.

  Come here, I say.

  Come meet my pride

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I used many books as reference or inspiration: Lebanon: Death of a Country by Sandra Mackey; Pity the Nation by Robert Fisk; The Druze Faith by Sami Makarem; Civil War in Lebanon, 1975–92 by Edgar O’Ballance; Crucial Bonds: Marriage Among the Lebanese Druze by Nura Alamuddin and Paul Starr; The Divine Sarah by Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale; The House Gun by Nadine Gordimer; and, of course, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino.

  Raya Alameddine offered her impeccable French. Asa DeMatteo, despite his skewed priorities, offered his convoluted English. The writer Suleiman Alamuddin generously offered many historical tidbits, chief among them the story of the Druze Sarah. Nicole Aragi remains God’s gift to writers. I owe a debt of gratitude to Barbara Dimmick, Hana Alamuddin, Karim Heneine, Debra Meadows, Michael Denneny, Ashraf Othman, and my editor, Alane Salierno Mason.

  I wish to thank the staff of the MacDowell Colony.

  I am blessed to have the endless support, guidance, generosity, and patience of my family. I thank them.

  More praise for I, the Divine

  “It happens so seldom, but when it does it is a thing to be marveled at: a man writing in a woman’s voice—and getting it right. . . . Everything about this book is inventive and wholly original. . . . Sarah’s life becomes an irresistible mystery for the reader to stay with and unravel. . . . [A] fully realized portrait of a complex and fascinating woman, one as real as the book in which she reveals herself.”

  —Seattle Times

  “I, the Divine is divine. . . . Sarah is wonderful, irresistibly unique, funny, and amazing. . . . And the structure is literary genius, humorously naughty in its satire, and perfect to the notion of someone reinventing and revising herself—a thoroughly American concept.”

  —Amy Tan, author of The Bonesetter’s Daughter

  “Alameddine’s new novel unfolds like a secret, guarded too long, which is at last pushing toward the light. . . . It grows by bits and pieces, each one as thrilling, as restrained and mystifying as the other, creating a tale that is fluid and spare. . . . Alameddine tells Sarah’s story in language that is honest and ironic and never tainted with self-pity.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Rabih Alameddine is one of our most daring writers. . . . In this delightful novel, he takes his greatest risks yet, and succeeds brilliantly, in a work that while marked by radical formal innovation, manages to be warm, sad, funny, and moving.”

  —Michael Chabon,

  author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

  “[A]n experim
ental novel that is gloriously and unashamedly melodramatic. . . . In a dazzling mosaic, each poignant moment has its own sparkle, producing a brilliant over-all effect. . . . I, the Divine will be valued as much for its seductive, often outrageous content as for its formal daring.”

  —The New Statesman (UK)

  “I, the Divine is a novel that will teach you about how memory works, how it is forever shifting, changing and moving forward. This witty and gripping book, written in first chapters, gives insight into the increasingly complicated question of homeland. From Beirut to San Francisco, Sarah Nour El-Din begins again and again to tell us her powerful story of longing, of belonging, of love and of true family.”

  —Michelle Berry, author of Blur and What We All Want

  “Like her narrative, [Sarah’s] life is broken and fragmented. The bright, strange, often startling pieces refuse to fit happily together. But scattered and patched they are moving and memorable.”

  —Boston Globe

  “Alameddine is having wicked fun with structure in this inventive novel. . . . Sarah is perpetually reinventing herself, the culmination of which creates a history far more rich and telling than a straightforward linear narrative. What is life, suggests the author, if not an untidy series of stops and starts?”

  —Entertainment Weekly

  “A profound, brilliant novel, filled with deep insight into the many different stories that make up one life. Alameddine illuminates the emotional lives of his characters without losing the realities of the world in which they live. An original, transformative achievement.”