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Authors: Rabih Alameddine

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BOOK: I, the Divine

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“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 experimental 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.”

—Sarah Schulman, author of
Girls, Visions and Everything

“With the beguiling, brainy, bi-national Sarah Nour El-Din, Rabih Alameddine has created a remarkably memorable character. . . . Alameddine creates a group portrait of startling originality and a journey not to be missed.”

—
Miami Herald

“Alameddine’s novel is an authentic testament to how we each struggle to make sense of our past to enhance our future. Like so many Americans with roots across the ocean, Sarah is trying desperately to define herself as an independent soul by separating from the old family, the old world. Her journey (at once heart-wrenching and heartwarming) reveals that the odyssey of identity requires that we must gather our families close in order to understand ourselves better.”

—Susanne Pari, author of
The Fortune Catcher

Printed in the United States of America

First published as a Norton paperback 2002

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
500
Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
10110

The text of this book is composed in Walbaum MT

Composition by Tom Ernst

Manufacturing by the Haddon Craftsmen, Inc.

Book design by Brooke Koven

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Alameddine, Rabih.

I, the divine : a novel in first chapters / Rabih Alameddine.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-393-
04209
-X

1
. Lebanese Americans—Fiction.
2
. Women artists—Fiction.
I. Title.

PS
3551
.L
215
I
3
2001

813’.54
—dc
21