I, The Divine

~ ~ ~

Mustapha usually woke Saniya up early every morning by repeatedly poking her side with his fingers. He no longer slept much, getting up much earlier, their age difference causing irreconcilable sleep patterns. His daily finger poking annoyed her, which was why he continued to do it. Annoying her, a pleasant diversion when they first married, had become his only entertainment in old age, teasing and ribbing his only merriment. In the beginning, the jokes at her expense were constant, but as the marriage matured, there emerged a zone of respect he rarely breached. However, in his old age, the marriage turned full circle. Her husband believed they had reached a time in their marriage where they were one, no respect needed when one is with oneself.

Mustapha did not poke her awake that morning because it was their anniversary. He lay close to her, face to face.

“Good morning, darling,” he said in his most romantic voice.

Saniya opened her eyes gently, noticing a strand of his white hair approaching her face. He surprised her by kissing her, a simple peck. She tried not to show her revulsion. She still loved him, yet she could not overcome her distaste of his smells. She realized he could do nothing about it. He bathed three times a day, which did nothing for his early morning aroma, musty, subtly tinged with putrefaction. A month earlier, she had opened the suitcase in which she had stored her wedding dress. Mustapha was on the bed. “That stinks,” he had said. The suitcase smelled exactly like he did in the morning, Saniya thought. She never mentioned anything, not then, not now, knowing fully well how preoccupied he was with age and the ensuing decay. They lay next to each other. His face was slightly asymmetrical, still handsome, not to him though. When he thought no one was looking, he would pull at his slack cheek muscles, staring in the mirror, trying to recapture a time when muscles behaved. His face close to her on the pillow, gravity skewing his cheek in an unnatural, slanting angle she found charming.

“Who would’ve believed?” he asked. The timbre of his voice still deep, attractive, unchanged from the day she met him.

“Happy anniversary, darling.”

He smiled. She smiled. He got close to her and burped, taking her by surprise. She crinkled her nose. He laughed.

She looked away, wishing the newly installed mosquito net was two singles as opposed to a double. He wanted a mosquito net even though there were no mosquitoes. He kept scratching imaginary bites until she relented. He had secretly hoped a mosquito net (such nets have all but disappeared long ago, even from mountain houses) would allow him to sleep like a little boy again.

He rolled over, his pajama bottoms drooping, exposing unnecessary flesh, and got out of bed, energized, headed toward the bathroom. She stayed in bed, staring at the daisy-patterned wallpaper, hazy at first, the net acting as a scrim, clearing as her eyes adjusted. Three inches from the bottom, a peel in the wallpaper was exacerbated by Kooky, who had turned an unnoticeable tear into something that required attention. I must call to have it fixed today, she thought, just as she had every morning for the past three years. I have the extra rolls of wallpaper. I’ll tell Tariq to take care of it this afternoon. She closed her eyes for a minute. I should tell Tariq to get someone to wash the windows as well. They need to be cleaned.

“I had another strange dream,” he said over the sound of the filling bathtub. He always shared his dreams in interminable detail. The sound of running water caused the inevitable pecking on the bedroom door. The pets had been banished from the bedroom when the mosquito net was installed. Alfie, the dog, and Trumpet, the cat, waited patiently for the door to open, but Kooky began pecking as soon as he heard her husband running the bath. She pressed the maid’s buzzer.

“You were in the dream,” he said, “only younger.”

Miki came in carrying a silver tray. One would think it was an extension of one of her limbs. The uniform looks good on her, Saniya thought. She should get two more in the same yellow color. Sri Lankan skin color is probably the only tone that could pull off that yellow. Kooky tried to trip Miki, biting at her big toe through the shoes. Alfie and Trumpet entered the room and waited patiently for Miki to lift the hateful mosquito net.

“Good morning, madam,” she said, placing the coffee cup on the nightstand, trying to ignore Kooky.

“Good morning, Miki. Is my son up?”

“Yes, madam,” as she put the other coffee cup on Mustapha’s nightstand and began to lift the net.

“Did you make him tea?”

“Yes, madam, and orange juice.”

Trumpet was on the bed the minute the net was off.

“You had green hair,” her husband said, “and I mean bright green hair, which doesn’t make sense because I think your hair is the best thing about you, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes, darling, I know,” usually enough of an answer to satisfy him.

Trumpet curled up next to her. Alfie waited until she had her first sip of coffee before placing his head on the bed to be petted. Kooky began climbing at the foot of the bed and made his ritualistic daily journey till he reached her chest and squawked.

“Tell your bird to keep it down,” her husband said from the bathroom. “It’s too early in the morning.” His standard response, every day.

“Shh!” Kooky and Saniya nuzzled.

“So what did you think of the dream?”

“It’s interesting.”

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?”

Ramzi appeared at the door. “Are you up?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, come in, come in.”

“I want to get my email,” he said.

“Sure. How did you sleep?”

“Got up at six, which is not as bad as usual. I should be over it by tomorrow if I take a nap this afternoon.”

“Do you have diarrhea yet? You always have diarrhea when you first arrive here.”

“I don’t know, Mother. I haven’t eaten anything yet. Don’t worry about it, okay, Mother?” He was at her computer, the modem dialing. It was only eight in the morning and he was dressed in pleated, tan, casual slacks, a pressed burgundy shirt, and brown loafers with what had become his signature, gold tassels.

“Is my son up?” Mustapha walked out of the bathroom stark naked but dry. Even his pubic hair was now white. “On the computer already, definitely your mother’s son.”

Ramzi stood up and kissed his father. Clothed facing naked.

“You should have woken me up when you got here,” Mustapha said as he began dressing.

“You looked too peaceful sleeping.”

“You,” Mustapha pointing at Saniya, who was still sipping her coffee, “you should have woken me up.”

“I will next time, dear.” Another sip.

He finished dressing in his customary ten minutes — as meticulous in his clothing selection as his dapper son. Still used garter belts to keep his socks up. Drank his coffee in two gulps. “Well, I’m off to work. I’ll see you at lunch, son. We can catch up then.”

Mustapha left the room. Ramzi waited till he heard the distant door to the apartment close before taking a compact disc from his pants pocket and turning on the stereo behind the computer.

“I just love the fact that you have everything you need in your bedroom, Mother.”

“It’ll be your bedroom when we’re gone. Do you ever listen to anybody other than Joan Sutherland, dear?”

“Sometimes.”

The first call of the morning was always at eight-thirty from Amal, her oldest stepdaughter. This morning was no different. The phone rang, in asynchronous stereo for Kooky always followed with an exact trill replica.

“Happy anniversary, Saniya.” Amal, always cheerful in the morning, was probably in the office already. “Is Father out already?”

“Yes, of course. It’s twelve minutes past eight-twenty. The schedule must be kept.”

By the time she finished her coffee, every family member would have called to wish her a happy anniversary and congratulate her on the safe arrival of her son. She was surprised to receive a phone call from her other stepdaughter, Sarah, from America. Sarah was not calling about Ramzi — it seemed those living abroad did not view international travel as an event worthy of a congratulatory call — she simply wanted to wish her a happy anniversary. Somewhat perturbed, Saniya asked if she needed money. Not at all, she was just calling because of the occasion.

She found herself considering what she should wear, how she should appear to her son on his first day back in over a year. What impression should she impart? What attitude did she want to reveal? In fall, on a rainy day like today, she always wore trousers, shirt, and a sweater, comfort and warmth over wide hips. She hesitated, contemplated a designer suit.

When Ramzi left for the United States, leaving her alone with her husband, a knell sounded. Her children had grown up, her husband was acting childishly, and she felt discombobulated and distraught. It was her expected retirement, but she was not prepared for it. It felt like a combination of stud farm and glue factory. She had to reinvent herself, change herself but not appearances. She adjusted to a new life without allowing the family to perceive threat. She picked the trousers, shirt, and a sweater. She would appear to be the kind of mother her son expected.

By ten o’clock, she was at the office, the Lebanese International Cable Company, LICC, her bastard baby. Although she was no longer needed for the day-to-day running of the company — Amal managed quite well on her own — she still managed to show up every weekday morning. People assumed it was Amal’s brainchild, and Saniya preferred it that way. She had thought of it when her husband bought a satellite dish.

When the war ended, everyone in Lebanon who could afford it installed a dish. The black and gray circles replaced the straight lines of antennas on Beirut’s rooftops. She wanted to “share” her good fortune with those not lucky enough to afford the price. Think of all the children who do not have the choice of good television because their parents are not hard working enough to be able to afford the five or ten thousand — dollar price, she told her husband. Don’t they deserve to see the same programs the rich children do? It won’t take too much of my time, she said. No, no, she said, I won’t be dealing with people. I’m not good with people. I’ll let Amal do that. I know, I know, I don’t have the technical understanding, but we have a satellite, and we have cables that run from it to our television, so it can’t be much harder to have cables running to other televisions. I’ll hire some engineer. Her husband finally relented, allowing her to dirty her hands, for the sake of the children. Although he did not know exactly how much she now made, since she was in charge of all finances, even his, her income the year before was ten times what he brought home.

When she looked back at how her business had started, Saniya was surprised by many things: the ease with which she made decisions, the decisiveness itself, the sheer audacity of her actions, her understanding of the logic of investment, and her lack of self-doubt. The company was set up easily. She opened an office, hired an engineer, and bought a huge dish from which they ran cables to any customer for only ten dollars a month. Her cables crisscrossed the city like dribbles in a Jackson Pollock painting. She had two hundred clients signed up within the first week. She recouped her investment in a little over six months. The problems arrived when men — it’s always men, men with money — began to copycat her idea. The solution arrived when she hired Tariq, the driver.

Tariq was a young Shi’ite from the south, a cousin of her husband’s driver. Her husband objected to him because of his connections to Hizballah, labeling him a fundamentalist because of his beard. Although Tariq was religious and had fought with Hizballah — could any teenager avoid the peer pressure of belonging to a murderous clan with a war raging on? — he was not the fanatic her husband assumed. If he looked with keener eyes, Mustapha would have noted the pitted skin. The short, unkempt beard was an attempt to cover up acne scars. Her husband saw a face that suggested the personality of a ruffian. Looking further, she saw the eyes of a boy desperate to please. She hired Tariq. He became her partner in crime.

When her competition began to take root — three different companies, owned by men with political connections — Saniya realized her only hope lay in dealing with them quickly and decisively utilizing the Lebanese Business Method. She asked Tariq and friends to hijack and destroy a truck carrying equipment belonging to one of her competitors. The owner of the company blamed the other two. The Lebanese cable war broke out. No one suspected her company or its principals — Amal, who was oblivious to what was going on, or her — for women knew nothing of “business” matters. Satellite dishes were riddled with bullets, generators blown to smithereens, cables cut. Her competitors left her alone for she had nothing to do with the battle. By the time the dust settled, the police got involved, and the newspapers ran their stories, her company was well entrenched. Other than the first blow, Saniya and Tariq remained uninvolved in the skirmishes with the exception of occasional tinkering with “independent” satellite dishes, impairing the reception, forcing their owners to subscribe to the only working cable company in Beirut, LICC.

She went into Amal’s office. Her stepdaughter was on the phone. Saniya sat down and waited for her to finish. She noted for the umpteenth time how sparsely the office was furnished. Functional, nothing decorative, no paintings, no pictures of children, no knickknacks or trinkets. Amal moved her arms in circles, suggesting the conversation was endless. Her fingers then returned to drumming on the desk.

Saniya had never seen her so happy. She wondered whether Amal’s flowering was due to finding out after all those years that she was a good businesswoman or that she was a desirable lover. It could have been a combination of both, but Saniya would have put money on the latter. After being in a dull marriage, Amal began to discover the pleasures of being desired. She assumed no one knew about the affairs. But she was not very discreet. So far, Saniya knew of at least three affairs, each with a successively more prominent man. Mustapha, Saniya’s husband, had indoctrinated his children to believe that passion was the antithesis of morality. Only when she discarded stifling morality did Amal find passion of any kind.

Amal, unlike her sister Sarah, was a conglomeration of contemporary ordinariness. Her average face was congenial, making every child she came across wish it had her for a mother. She kept her dark hair in a bun. The very angle of her ears suggested ordinary. Her eyes were unastonishing. An appearance which belied the fact that she was sleeping with one of the most powerful men in Lebanon.

“Ramzi called while you were coming over,” Amal said when she finished on the phone. “It seems Kooky now sings opera, so he had to kick him out of the room.” They both laughed. “Ramzi is so much like his father in many ways.”

She had found Kooky a long time ago. The year was 1979. The war seemed endless. Saniya was utterly broken down. Her eldest daughter had been dead a year, killed at the hand of a lunatic, a stalker. Saniya felt she was no longer part of life, living in an anteroom of grief while the rest of the world reveled in the large living room. She walked home. This was long before she bought a car, long before a driver. For great distances, her husband or his driver would take her. Otherwise she walked.

She noticed the parrot on the way home. At first, she spotted leaves dropping. One leaf, two, three, two at a time, a small branch. She looked up and saw him, did not trust her eyes on first glance. Kooky was on a mission. He wanted to make sure not a single leaf was left on the tree. He had thousands left, but he was intent. She trusted he would do the job.

“Hey,” she called up to him. “Hey, you.” The parrot stopped his destruction. He bobbed up and down, reminding her of the silly dog dolls in the back windows of cars, popular before the war.

“What are you doing up there?”

He emitted a funny noise, bobbed up and down some more. She raised her hand, her finger pointing to form a perch. Kooky played coy for a bit, before beginning a climb down. He bit her finger to make sure it would not move and climbed on it.

She brought him closer. He surprised her with a kiss, beak to mouth. “You must be a boy,” she said.

Saniya had never seen a live parrot before. She did not expect to come across a dull-colored one. Kooky was predominantly gray, an African gray parrot.

She considered trying to locate Kooky’s owners. Maybe he belonged to some child somewhere in Beirut. Before she went home, she stopped by the local veterinarian, who was infamous for killing more pets than treating them. She assumed he might know if this gray belonged to anyone. She was right.

The minute she rang the doorbell, Kooky started laughing. Short bursts of laughter. “Hehheh, hehheh, hehheh.” Bobbing frantically up and down on her finger. Intriguing behavior, she thought. He squawked loudly. A woman’s voice from behind the door screamed, “Take him away from here.”

Kooky yelled back at her, “Sharmoutah, intee sharmoutah.”

“I’m not a whore,” the woman replied to the parrot. “I’m not a whore, you son of a dog. Take that cursed parrot away from here. I’m not opening the door.”

“I only want to know if he’s owned by anybody,” Saniya said, terrifically amused.

“Satan. The damned parrot is owned by Satan.”

“You obviously know him,” Saniya said. “Who owns him?”

“No one. No one owns him. Take him away and burn the devil’s spawn. No one wants him. They left Kooky to die. He’s nothing but trouble. Burn him.”

“His name is Kooky?” Saniya asked her innocently.

“Kooky wants to fuck you,” the parrot yelled. “Kooky wants to fuck you.”

Saniya laughed. For the first time in over a year, she laughed.

“Farid,” the voice screamed. “Farid. That damn Kooky is outside. If you don’t do something, I’ll kill myself.”

Saniya walked home, Kooky nuzzling her cheek.

“You’re a bad boy,” she told him.

“Hehheh, hehheh, hehheh.”

Kooky became the lord of the manor. Her husband felt the competition, did not want him in his house, but Saniya put her foot down. Mustapha noticed her spirits lifting and relented. The children loved him. Kooky became Ramzi’s constant companion.

Kooky had a fascination with big toes. He attacked her big toe whenever she walked barefoot, which was all the time. When she wore shoes, he tried to bite through them to get to the toe.

The devil’s spawn had a large vocabulary, mostly obscene words, which he had learned to place in different combinations. He rarely used them on her, but whenever guests arrived, he rattled them off one after another. It made her husband furious, but amused her to no end. He even had a basic understanding of feminine and masculine words to use on visitors. When he made grammatical mistakes, he sounded like an Armenian.

Kooky’s relationship to Satan manifested itself clearly as the bombs fell. Ronnie, her husband’s dog, was the only other pet in the house at the time. Mustapha had wanted a hunting dog. Ronnie’s pedigree was impeccable, except he turned out to be more a chien de salon, terrified by the mere sound of gunfire. It was Ramzi who ruined him. When Ronnie arrived as a puppy, Ramzi began playing with him, dressing him in elaborate outfits, allowing the dog to sleep with him at night. Ronnie ended up not going on a single hunting trip.

Kooky and Ronnie were best friends. They slept together, ate out of the same bowl, and chased each other around the apartment. A slight difference in personality was the main problem. Kooky was afraid of nothing, and Ronnie was afraid of his own shadow. Whenever minor gunfire erupted, Ronnie cowered in a corner, and Kooky got excited. When the large guns erupted, and Saniya had to go down to the shelter, she spent at least fifteen minutes trying to convince Ronnie to come down with her, whereas Kooky would scream obscenities at the dog. He wanted action.

It was the missiles that turned Ronnie into a quivering mass of jelly. When the whistle began, he would quail, his four limbs a study in vibration. By the time the explosion happened, his bladder would be empty. Within a short period of time, Kooky had assessed the situation. In calm times, while the family was at the dining room table or watching television, and Ronnie was lying down nearby, Kooky would begin a missile whistle. The devil’s spawn had it down to a science, except for the explosion at the end, which he could not imitate. Ronnie would stand up, quiver, and pee in place, without even lifting a leg. Kooky would laugh.

For the following ten days, the duration of her son’s stay, the cook would make Ramzi’s favorite meals for lunch. The cook, who was from the same village as Mustapha, did not particularly like Saniya. He was devoted to her husband and simply worshiped Ramzi. For the next ten days, the meals would be impeccable.

The meal was gigot, leg of lamb. Amal and her husband were already coming, but Saniya knew that would not be the entire lunch crowd. She returned home at noon to find out that her daughter Majida and her husband had called the maid and told her they were coming for lunch. While she was getting into her housedress, her husband’s sister called. “What’s for lunch?” she asked. Saniya told her.

“Count me in. I’m coming.” Mustapha’s sister was seventy-six years old, lassitude incarnate, but when it came to good meals, she moved heaven and earth to be there.

Some time to herself before the crowd started arriving. She looked at herself in the mirror. Getting older. Thunder thighs. I must lose a little weight, she thought. At least there was still someone who found her sexually attractive. That was a blessing.

“How many people for lunch, madam?” Miki asked. She came into the bedroom to turn down the beds for the afternoon.

“Eight so far, but I think it’ll be ten.”

The phone rang on cue. Kooky, sleeping on his perch, imitated the sound until she picked up the phone, and then went back to sleep. “What’s for lunch?” No hello, no small talk. Her husband’s nephew was a busy man. He was coming. She knew there would be one more, the other nephew. She knew it would not be long.

The phone rang.

“I hope you won’t be late,” Saniya said. “I can’t believe you waited this long to call. Are they working you hard?”

“You know, business stuff. Have to keep up on all the news.”

“Gigot.”

“That’s all the news I need. I’ll be there. Is he making it with pine nuts?”

“Yes, I’m sure he is.”

“Chestnuts?”

“It’s not the season, silly. It’s only September.”

“Well, tell your son to come back during chestnut season.”

“I’ll make sure to mention that.”

Ramzi came home at one o’clock. Tariq had been driving him. At one-fifteen sharp, Mustapha walked through the door. She could set her watch by his schedule. As was his habit, he began undressing the minute he walked through the door, Saniya picking up after him. The jacket in the anteroom, the tie in the living room, the shoes in the corridor, the shirt on the floor in the bedroom, the pants on the bed, the underwear, the socks. Emerged seconds later in pajama bottoms and undershirt. Saniya followed him with warm socks. “Put these on. It’s cold.”

By one-twenty, everyone had arrived. By one-thirty, they were seated at the dining table, all ten of them. Timing was essential for Mustapha. By two they would be done.

The conversation at the table covered a lot of ground. Ramzi’s health, his work. Mustapha asked his son about clients. Ramzi practiced medicine in a part of San Francisco where clients were not all genteel and white, but a procession of multicolored flesh, a new cause of consternation for his father. Even Saniya was surprised at her son’s choices, not prejudice, but a seeming distortion of the immaculate image she had of him. Mustapha’s pointed questioning had its usual effect on Ramzi. He raised and lowered his eyelids slowly while his father spoke, a sure sign of his waning interest.

“How’s Sarah doing?” Saniya asked, coming to her son’s rescue. “She called today to wish us a happy anniversary. I was surprised she remembered.”

“Of course, she would remember,” Majida said. This was a conversation the whole family could participate in. “Ramzi must have told her before he left.”

“I did tell her. She’s doing fine, still as lost as ever.”

“I wish she’d move back here where she belongs,” Mustapha said. Always the same refrain.

“She never will, Father. You know that.”

“Is she still writing her book?” Amal asked.

“I’m not sure. She hasn’t mentioned it in a while.”

“That girl was just spit out by her mother. She behaves in exactly the same way.” Mustapha’s statement was the usual one, which ended any conversation about Sarah. Saniya could see the girls wanting to find out more, but they would wait until Mustapha had gone in for his afternoon nap. Amal would want to know whether her sister was still obsessed with the man who had dumped her. They could not talk about Sarah’s relationships while her father was present. They could not talk about Ramzi’s lover either. Relationships, the unmentionable topic.

“Can Tariq drive me this afternoon?” her son asked.

“No. I need him. Can you drive yourself?”

“Sure.” He turned toward his father. “Are the players coming this afternoon?” Mustapha simply nodded.

The lunch was over. Two o’clock. Mustapha stood up. “I guess we’ll see you all tomorrow.” Laughter all around.

“Bring the kids tomorrow. It’s Saturday.”

“Ramzi should visit more often.”

By two-fifteen, Mustapha and his wife were in bed for a brief siesta. At two forty-five, Miki came in with the coffee. By three the cardplayers began arriving. They had been playing quatorze every day since before Saniya was married. The same five people every single day, from three-thirty till eight. All of them worked half days, even though they were all professionals. Mustapha played quatorze on his wedding day — they did not have a honeymoon — on the day Rana was born, the day Majida was born, and even the day Ramzi was born.

She started dressing when they were four. She would greet the fifth and leave as was her habit. For the first ten years, she was there every day making sure all their needs were met. She finally began to train the maids to do her job. When the doorbell rang, she was the one to open the door.

“How’s the little business lady?”

“Fine. How are you today?”

“Going off to work?”

“Someone has to.” The last she said as the elevator door closed.

* * *

By four-thirty, Tariq was going down on her, his Hizballah beard proving to be functional after all.

Tariq lay with his arms around her, her back against his chest, their feet touching. He fell asleep nuzzling her neck, a hand holding her breast. She wept, silently, careful not to wake him. Tears dropping into her open mouth, she whimpered softly.