I, The Divine

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My grandfather, Hammoud, named me for the great Sarah Bernhardt. He was infatuated with her. Since he chose my name, stamped me, I immediately became his favorite granddaughter.

As a child, I spent as much time at my grandfather’s house as I did at ours. My grandparents lived in a spacious apartment only two buildings away. Even though my father was educated, a physician, he viewed education only as a means of achieving a better professional position rather than as a process of satisfying intellectual curiosities. My grandfather, on the other hand, was a newspaperman. His mind was filled with information and trivia, which he shared with anyone who would listen, and I loved to listen.

I spent most of the time with my grandfather in the family room, a green-walled, well-lit room filled with books. I sat on his lap as he regaled me with stories. He told all kinds of tales, but his favorites were about the Divine Sarah, the goddess of the stage. These I came to know by heart.

“Her real name was Henriette-Rosine Bernard,” he told me, “but she’ll always be Sarah Bernhardt, the Divine Sarah, the greatest woman who ever lived. She broke every man’s heart. When she was up on stage, the earth moved, the planets collided, and the audience fell in love. I was a little boy when I met her, not much older than you, but I knew I was in the presence of the greatest actress in the world.”

“Her hair,” went another story, “her hair was red like fire, bright red, and her voice, oh my, her voice was the most beautiful in the world. When she spoke it was like singing. I was a young boy when I met her, and she an old woman, but I would have married her, if I could. I would have married her right there. But everybody wanted to marry her. Her red hair was almost like yours was when you were a baby. If we colored your hair now, you would look just like her. And she was a firecracker, just like you.”

I grew up believing I was the Divine Sarah. I could do anything I wanted. This gift from my grandfather was the greatest bestowed on me. Growing up female in Lebanon was not easy. No matter how much encouragement parents gave their daughters, pressures, subtle and not so subtle, led girls to hope for nothing more than a good marriage. Being the Divine Sarah, I was oblivious to such pressures, much to the consternation of many. As a child, I was a tomboy, unaware of how girls were supposed to behave. I became a good soccer player. I excelled at mathematics in school. I wore dungarees and tennis shoes.

His stories had little effect on anyone else. My sisters, Amal and Lamia, were unimpressed. My stepmother objected to my hearing stories of wayward women, but my grandfather persuaded her it was a harmless activity. Years later, she would blame my becoming a tramp, as she once called me, on those stories, which by the age of five I was able to repeat word for word. I wanted to be an actress. I would stand in front of the mirror in my room thanking my audience. I delivered incomprehensible monologues as Racine’s Phèdre without having any idea what the play was. Lamia, who was two years older, got so fed up with the performances, she slapped me across the face. I cried, ran to my father, complained about her, and when she came after me to defend herself, I stood behind my father, orating a new monologue just to annoy her. To this day, with all her problems, what with being institutionalized and all, she is my least favorite sister.

As I grew older, I began to ask more questions of my grandfather. How did he come to meet the Divine Sarah? He was with his father, a highly ranked, poorly paid diplomat of the decaying Ottoman Empire who was visiting Paris on a diplomatic mission. They saw a play and my grandfather was taken backstage to meet her. How old was he? Eleven, the year was 1912. The play? Edmond Rostand’s L’Aiglon. The hero of this play was Napoleon’s son, who was kept in semi-captivity after the fall of the empire. The Divine Sarah was a middle-aged woman playing a boy’s part. I was enthralled. Was she great as Napoleon’s son? She was incredible. She ran across the stage, jumping from place to place, delivering her lines with such intensity, such integrity, the audience forgot they were watching the Divine Sarah. They were watching Napoleon’s son walking the stage.

By the age of ten, I began to study the plays themselves. I loved L’Aiglon, but if the Divine Sarah was to do Rostand, why not be Cyrano de Bergerac with his panache? I asked my grandfather if he knew whether she had played Cyrano. No, he did not. She could have. The Divine Sarah could do anything. I wanted to know for certain, so I tried to find out. I went to the nuns at school. A kind nun, not typical of the Carmelites, took the time to show me how to use the Encyclopédie Larousse. I looked up the Divine Sarah.

I discovered the Divine Sarah performed L’Aiglon around 1900 or possibly even earlier, not 1912. The revelation shook me. As I was reading, I began to formulate excuses. My grandfather could have been four. No, no, he had not been born yet. She may have performed the play again in 1912. Just because it was performed twelve years earlier did not mean she could not have done it again. Then I read about the accident and tears ran down my face. In 1905, while performing in Rio de Janeiro, she suffered an injury to her right leg. By 1911, she was unable to walk unsupported, and in 1915, the leg was amputated. The Divine Sarah, my namesake, continued acting. When she could not walk, she used canes or was helped onstage by the other actors. After she was an amputee, she used an artificial leg. By 1912, she could not jump across the stage. She could not have done L’Aiglon.

I mentioned nothing to my grandfather, ever. He died unaware I knew. To this day, whenever I feel slightly depressed, I dye my hair red.