I, the Divine (26 page)

My father had black, expressive eyes that wore a look of reproach as if I had committed an inexpiable sin, accusing me, not of something, but of everything. When I was younger, they were magical eyes, frightening, brimming with both promise and menace, both anxiety and wonder. They shone with an intoxicating, mesmerizing energy that both repelled and attracted me.

In the cheerless hospital room, as he watched
Texas Ranger
, I saw his distracted eyes, still beautiful, no longer threatening, neither dangerous, nor auspicious.

8.

“Pizza Hut delivers,” my half-sister, Majida, said. “Or we can have Chinese. I’m up for anything.”

“Why don’t you girls go home?” Saniya stood up and stretched. “We’re doing fine here.” She took my father’s gray-blue food tray and placed it outside the room. On the tall nightstand beside my father’s bed were two oranges, a red apple, an off-white phone, a box of tissues, a plastic bottle, and a half-full glass of water.

“I want to see the end of the show,” Majida said.

My father’s breathing was flabby and shallow, with a slight gurgling sound like the soft hookah aspiration of a young boy. “At least until the fight,” he said.
Walker
always ended with Chuck Norris and his black sidekick beating up on the bad guys, followed by commercials, and then the final joke, where the regulars of the show convened to shoot the breeze. My father watched the fight, but turned the television off before the joke, which he never found funny.

“Why don’t you go home?” I said, looking at Saniya. “I’ll spend the night. You take a break.” Both my parents looked at me quizzically, as if I had spoken in Latin. “I’m serious. I’d like to stay here for the night. You go home and rest.”

“He’s being discharged tomorrow,” Saniya said. “We can all sleep in our own beds then. You go home and see your son.”

“Be quiet, both of you,” my father snapped. He turned the volume up with the remote control; his hand had a slight tremor. Chuck and chum punched, kicked, and karate-chopped six bad guys, cowboy hats burst in every direction.

9.

Saniya, in blue sweats and tennis shoes, pushed her arms against the wall outside the room, curved her back and stretched her calves. She looked like a Sunday jogger getting ready for a run.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked, softly.

“It’ll give us time to talk.”

“He’s going to sleep soon. I don’t see how you can talk much. You’ll be able to see him as often as you wish when he’s back home.”

In the room across from us, Pavarotti sang on television with Ricky Martin and Mariah Carey, a pre-Millennium concert.

“I rarely spend time alone with him,” I said. “I’d like to tonight. Even if he’s sleeping.”

“Come, walk with me. I need the exercise.” We walked slowly down the corridor, arms entwined, looking discreetly into each room, evaluating each family’s story. “Where’s your son?”

“He called me from McDonald’s half an hour ago. He’s going out dancing tonight. I won’t see him till tomorrow morning.” She was cozy, warm, and comforting.

“You should talk to him about eating too much junk food.”

She stopped when we got to the waiting room, looked outside at a giant green laser dueling the dark sky.

“That’s Beirut 2000,” she said. “CNN says Beirut is the third best place to be for the Millennium, after Paris and Cairo. Everybody has been celebrating for days and it’ll go on afterward too. James Brown is coming.”

“I guess I’ll have to miss that.”

She smiled, cleared her throat. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

“It’ll be fine,” I assured her. “There’s nothing specific I want to talk to him about. I won’t upset him. I just want to be with him.”

“I’ll get my stuff.”

10.

While I was visiting Beirut years ago, my son, my father, my ex-husband, and I went to see
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
. The war had recently ended, a few old movie theaters had reopened, running on large generators.

“It’s been years since I’ve seen a movie in a theater,” Omar said. Once the film began he worried, considered it inappropriate for Kamal, who slept between opening and closing credits while his father fretted. I sat confused, unable to understand the film, yet enraptured by Daniel Day Lewis and Juliet Binoche.

“Well,” my father said, walking out of the theater, “at least they got the unbearable part right.”

11.

“Close the door,” my father said as he leaned across to the nightstand and withdrew a cigarette and a box of matches from the drawer.

“What are you doing?” I asked and moved quickly toward him after closing the door. “You can’t smoke in here. Give that to me. You’re not even supposed to be smoking.”

I put out my hand, he crossed his arms, hid the offending cigarette behind his underarm.

“Give it to me,” I said.

He shook his head. “Let a dying man smoke in peace.”

“I’ll call the nurse.”

“Who do you think gave this to me?”

I sat on the bed, perplexed. He smiled, realized he had won, and lit up. He took a short drag, his wrinkled, quivering hand covering his mouth.

“When did you start again?”

“I never stopped,” he said, smiling sheepishly. “Don’t worry. I’ll smoke only half.”

Blue smoke curled from the tip, spiraled outward, rising toward the fluorescent lights. He looked at the chair next to his bed, Saniya’s usual seat.

“I’m surprised she lets you smoke.”

“She doesn’t know. No one knows.”

“She knows.”

“I don’t smoke in front of anyone. They all nag too much.” He grinned impishly, arched his left eyebrow. He took a last drag and extinguished the cigarette in the half-empty glass on the nightstand.

“Here,” he said, handing me the glass. “Get rid of the evidence.”

I went into the bathroom, heard him say, “I’m the great deceiver.”

Mark Twain said there are five kinds of actresses: bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses—and then there is Sarah Bernhardt. To paraphrase him slightly, there are five kinds of stories: bad stories, fair stories, good stories, great stories—and then there are Sarah Bernhardt stories.

I was brought up on all kinds of stories, but my favorites were the ones about Sarah Bernhardt. Those stories shaped and molded me. When I examine my life, I am amazed at how much they penetrate every aspect of it.

My grandfather named me for the great Sarah Bernhardt. Like so many men before him, the aforementioned Mark Twain, D. H. Lawrence, Marcel Proust, Henry James, Victor Hugo, and none other than Sigmund Freud (to name only a few), my grandfather was immoderately smitten by The Divine Sarah.

After having already named two girls, my parents had not prepared a name for a third. My father had a name for a boy. He was not to use it. I was born with a little tuft of red hair, direct from my American mother. When my grandfather saw me for the first time, noting the red wisp, he greeted me with, “Welcome to the world, my little Sarah.”

My destiny was written.

I have begun to see my grandfather again, in the most inappropriate places. He has been gone for over twenty-five years, but now I feel him more clearly than ever. I see him with his white hair, the slight comma across his forehead, the black-framed, Clark Kent glasses, the dark tie and pressed white shirt—short sleeves in warm or hot weather, but still a dark tie. I see him in my living room when I am alone, usually sitting across from me, smiling, happy, a smile which, if worn by someone else, I would have considered patronizing and condescending. For lately when I am with him, I am not the anxious, strange, and morbid adult, not my habitual self, but the child he taught to love the world.

I was running from my nemesis, my sister Lamia, across the hallway in our apartment in Beirut. Lamia, a heavy sleeper, had been napping on her bed, deathlike, looking solemn. I talked to her but she would not wake. I breathed on her face but she would not wake. I lit a candle, waited anxious seconds, tilted it, and allowed a tear of wax to drop onto her forehead. She woke. She screamed. I screamed. She lunged at me. I eluded her and ran across the hallway, screaming and laughing, she, screaming and threatening.

My stepmother came out of the kitchen to see what the racket was. I had reached the foyer when the door opened. My grandfather came in and scooped me up in one motion—he lived in a cavernous apartment two buildings down from ours and never knocked or rang the bell when he dropped in. He lifted me up in the air. I yelled with joy. Lamia stopped in her tracks, her eyes boring viciously into us.

“What’s my little troublemaker been up to?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I didn’t do anything.”

My stepmother, pregnant, about to deliver her first child, stepped into the foyer. She moved slowly, purposefully. She looked at my sister Lamia standing rigid, tiny fists balled up, eyebrows bunched together, nitroglycerine about to explode. “What happened, Lamia?” my stepmother asked.

Lamia kept staring at me. Her fiery eyes should have burned me to cinders. She rarely responded quickly or rashly, always deliberately. “Nothing,” she said loudly. “Nothing happened.” She turned around and stormed off to her room. If there was one person she despised more than me, it was my stepmother, the usurper. She could not complain to my grandfather. She hated him because he loved me. She could not even complain to our father, whom she blamed for making our mother vanish into thin air.

“I’ll take care of this rambunctious little scamp,” my grandfather said, carrying me into the living room.

“Please, don’t fill her head with wicked stories.” My stepmother’s requests fell on inattentive ears. She walked back to the kitchen, looking as if she had already lost a major battle.

My grandfather sat in his dark ultramarine chair—even though he had a home of his own, he had an armchair (with its own taboret) in our house, which no one was allowed to sit on. I sat on his lap and played with his white hair, sparse, smooth to the touch. He jiggled, adjusted himself to a comfortable position.

“The great Sarah Bernhardt was just like you. She was a troublemaker, always a scamp. Even when she grew up, she was known for her winsome, sweet, playful ways. But when she was a little girl like you, she caused a lot of trouble. Just like you. At school, oh boy. She was a firecracker. She drove the nuns crazy. Big troublemaker. She could curse with the best of them, make the nuns blush every time she came up with a doozie.”

“I bet I can curse better than her. Your mother’s vagina is plugged with a thousand donkey dicks.”

My grandfather roared, his head jerking back, his glasses almost falling off the tip of his nose. “That’s a good one.”

“Yes. My dad says I have a tongue like a sailor on leave.”

“And your dad’s right.”

“The nuns liked Sarah, right? They all liked her because she was special.”

“You bet. Even though she was a troublemaker and was hysterical most of the time, they knew she was a good girl. She was a star. Everybody could tell that. And stars are quite passionate. She had uncontrollable passions. At school with the nuns, she also became devout because she was extremely passionate. She wanted to be a nun.”

“But she didn’t, right?”

“Right. Because she grew up and she was smart. Remember, Jesus is only for children and people who never get smart. And anyway, she became passionate about the theater. She had her first play with the nuns at Grandchamp. How old was she?”

“She was thirteen.”

“That’s right. She was thirteen. At first, the stupid nuns didn’t put her in the play. They didn’t think she could do it. This big archbishop was coming to the school.”

“The guy in a dress.”

“Yes. The fat guy in a dress came to the school and they staged a play for him. But Sarah was not in the play. She watched and watched all the rehearsals. She didn’t want just any role. She wanted the lead role. She knew she could be the star. Then when the guy in the dress came and he sat down to watch the play . . .”

“He lifted his dress to sit.”

“That’s right. He lifted his dress to sit. The girl who was supposed to be the star got scared. She started crying. Stupid girl. The girl said she was too scared to go on stage in front of people. She was shaking and crying. The nuns didn’t know what to do.”

“So Sarah said she’d do it.”

“Yes. She came out of nowhere and said she could do it. Sarah said she knew the role. She had memorized it. So the nuns didn’t have a choice. They let Sarah be the star.”

“And she was great.”

“Always. She was the Divine Sarah. She came on stage and the guy in the dress cried and cried like a little girl because Sarah was so good. Now, people from all over the world, from Brazil, from China, from Africa, they all go to Grandchamp just to see the school where the great Sarah went on stage for the first time. Nobody remembers the stupid nuns or the guy in the dress. They just want to see where the Great One began. It’s a pilgrimage. You know what a pilgrimage is?”

“Yes. Like Mecca.”

“Yes. Like the silly Muslims who go to Mecca and walk in white dresses.”

I still hear him to this day. I hear his sonorous tones when
I take walks. I hear his silly laugh when a crow caws. I hear his collusive whispers in the passing breeze.
Don’t tell your stepmother. She can’t know about this.
He had a heavy Druze accent, stressing his
Q
s. Whenever I hear a mountain Druze speak, I am reminded of him.

“Tell me about the time she fell in the fire.”

We were at his house, in the family room, a room covered with books and bookshelves, and the little wall space not covered was painted a striking yellow-green. I sat on his lap as usual.

“Her mother sent her to live with a nurse in Brittany, in the northwest of France. Her mother was a bad woman. She didn’t want Sarah around when she was seeing all those men. So she kept sending Sarah away to live with other people. Her mother hated Sarah because she knew Sarah was a star of the greatest magnitude and her mother was envious because when Sarah was around, nobody looked at Sarah’s mother. Poor Sarah. All her life she tried and tried to make her mother love her, but she couldn’t. Her mother couldn’t love her because she loved all those men. Sarah liked Brittany because she stayed on a farm and she played all day with a lot of animals and the animals loved her. Why did the animals love her?”

“Because she was the great Sarah and everybody loved her.”

“That’s right. And when she grew up she had lots of animals she loved and they loved her back. What kind of animals did she have?”

“She had lots of dogs and cats and a cheetah.”

“That’s right. And more too.”

“An alligator from America. Ali Gaga. Not Ali Baba. And a parrot. His name is Bizibouzou. And a monkey called Darwin.”

“That’s right. So one day, while her nurse was in the garden gathering potatoes, and the nurse’s husband was drunk in bed, sleeping, baby Sarah was sitting in her highchair watching the beautiful fire in the hearth. She unfastened the little tray in front of the chair and now there was nothing in front of her. All of a sudden . . .”

“Baby Sarah fell into the fire.”

“When she screamed, the nurse’s husband was quick. He ran and snatched Sarah up and he dunked her in a pail of milk and then he covered her with butter. All the peasants came from all over Brittany to give Sarah butter to heal her burns. Then a week later, her mother came with her man and she brought doctors too. And then Sarah’s aunts, the bad women, they came too with their men. They kept saying, ‘Poor Sarah. Poor little Sarah,’ but then they got bored and left and didn’t take poor Sarah with them even though she begged her mother to take her. And she cried and cried and poor Sarah was all alone without her mother.”

“Poor little Sarah.”

One time, my stepmother, Saniya, came into the kitchen and found me naked, having covered my whole body in butter, both salted and unsalted.

These days, I also hear my mother cursing him, calling him all kinds of names. She has been dead for some years now, but I hear her curse the son of a bitch—her favorite name for my grandfather—for the things he put her through. “He worked and worked until your father was forced to divorce me.” My mother cursed him till the day she died. “He was evil, evil incarnate. Everybody thought he was the nicest man, but the things he did, the things he said.”

On the terrace of my grandfather’s summer house in the mountains sat my grandfather, my grandmother, my father, stepmother, uncles and aunts. Under the grape arbor, which provided shade all the way from the terrace to the driveway, protecting the cars from the despotic sun. I stared at the grapes, my mouth watering. They were still sour, a ways from being ripe, what we called
hosrom
. These were my favorites—eating the sour grapes with salt was a veritable taste explosion. While the adults were chatting, I climbed the pergola until I reached the vines and began moving slowly across the arbor, suspended high in the air, hanging on with one hand at a time.

“Oh, my god.” My stepmother jumped up, ran and stood right underneath me with her hands held up to catch me. “Sarah Nour el-Din. Get down here this instant.”

“I want to get some grapes.”

“What are you doing up there, Sarah?” My father asked me this while I hung ten feet from the ground. I noticed he still sat in his seat. My grandfather was chuckling.

“Let go, Sarah,” my stepmother said. “I’ll catch you.”

“I want to get some grapes.”

“I’ll get you some. We get them by using a ladder, not by climbing the vines. I don’t want you to hurt yourself. Now, just let go.”

“You look like a little monkey, my little Sarah,” my grandfather said.

I let go and dropped into my stepmother’s arms. “Don’t you ever do that again,” my stepmother chided. “You can get killed. Girls don’t climb trees.”

“Are you going to get me some grapes?”

She shook her head in despair, still unsure what to do with me. “Okay. I’ll get some for everybody.”