Into the Abyss (29 page)

As head of the Alberta Housing and Mortgage Corporation, Dad was besieged with requests from developers pleading for financial relief, pestering him to either postpone their loan payments or grant them permission to forgo them altogether. Two local banks had folded, and Dad seemed constantly on the defensive.

He had told his staff never to lead people down the garden path. One of the first questions he or his executive assistants would ask when people came to them for help was: “
What do you think I can do to solve this problem?”

Lately, however, it seemed there was little he or anyone else could do to make a positive difference in people’s lives. Perhaps that was the reason Paul was especially welcome.

“You’re invited to the wedding,” Paul told him during that first visit.

Dad promised Paul that no matter when or where it was, he and Mom would be there.

Alberta’s tough economic times weren’t the only thing troubling my father. Big changes were afoot in his government. That June, Premier Peter Lougheed, the man who’d inspired Dad to pursue a political career, announced he would not be seeking re-election, stepping down after eighteen years in public office. Principled and passionate, Lougheed began his political rise to power in 1965, winning the leadership of Alberta’s small “c” Conservative Party. By 1967 he’d managed to wrestle six seats from the Social Credit Party, which had
enjoyed an uninterrupted majority for thirty-six years. Wielding a law degree from the University of Alberta and an MBA from Harvard, Lougheed swept into office in 1971, capturing forty-nine of seventy-five seats.

Dad had joined the Conservatives in the early 1970s, attracted by the party’s youth, energy and inclusiveness—qualities embodied by its new leader. “He was wise,” Dad said of his political mentor. “He recognized that the face of Alberta was changing through immigration and through the multicultural nature of our province, and that
in order to be an effective government, he needed to include people.”

When my father was elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly in 1975, he was one of sixty-nine Conservatives forming Alberta’s new government. Incredibly, the premier chose him to respond to the speech from the throne, the address given by the lieutenant governor to open the legislative session and set the agenda for the new government. “It was a recognition of his potential,” Lougheed said when asked why he’d singled out a newcomer for the honour.

Dad clearly remembered that day. He brought his Koran from the top shelf of a bookcase at home for the swearing-in ceremony. Few noticed when the Bible was quietly exchanged for the Muslim holy book just before my dad stepped forward to take the oath of public office. For the son of uneducated Lebanese immigrants, it was a life-changing moment.

Alberta found its voice under Lougheed’s leadership. The charismatic new premier fought for stronger provincial input into national decision making and for the province to control its natural resources, particularly oil. He took on Canada’s centrist government, led by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, over the National Energy
Program, a controversial initiative that increased revenues to the federal government from Alberta’s resource-rich oil and gas industry. To many western Canadians, the program was akin to colonial exploitation, giving politicians 3,000 kilometres to the east control over Alberta’s energy resources. Lougheed retaliated by putting new oil developments on hold and ordering cutbacks in production. The eventual result of the political hardball was a revenue-sharing agreement that many believe marked the beginning of western Canada’s emergence as a true partner in Canadian confederation.

My father also found his voice in government, and after one term as a rookie backbencher, was appointed to Cabinet. Lougheed would later reflect: “Larry had an ability to grasp complex issues. He had a sense of both rural and urban Alberta, and added to that, a talent for communicating to a broad cross-section of the public.
You put those together and you get an exceptional minister.”

But power didn’t come without compromise. Quietly proud of his ethnic and religious heritage, my dad walked a fine line when it came to his public persona. Though his position had made him the highest-profile Muslim politician in Canada’s history, he was circumspect about his faith and Arab identity, both of which had been misunderstood and maligned in North America. Feeling that he had to work twice as hard to gain credibility and respect, my father downplayed his ethnicity and religion. When Middle East politics ignited in the early 1980s following Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, the pressure on him from Arab and Muslim communities to use his political influence had been high. Even I had urged him to speak out. Dad refused, telling me he could accomplish more through thoughtful and discreet conversations with his colleagues. I didn’t understand. Instead I judged him as either afraid or unwilling to jeopardize his position by wading into the contentious realm of Muslim and Middle Eastern politics.

Looking back, I now realize now that my dad wasn’t in politics for power and position, but because he wanted to make a difference. Like Lougheed, he wanted to help create a country where there was room for everyone regardless of ethnicity or religion, and under Lougheed’s leadership, Dad believed his government could make it happen. But with the premier stepping down, my father became less certain about what the political future would hold. Still, he felt he owed a debt to his country, and perhaps to God, for the inexplicable gift of his continued existence. So as 1985 drew to a close, he decided to run for another term in office and began the arduous task of campaigning for his fourth election, slated for the following spring.

It was past midnight on a bitter winter evening when Paul looked in on Sue’s children to make sure they were still fast asleep. In the past year he had grown attached to them. Though things between Sue and him had been rocky at times, he’d been overjoyed when she’d agreed to marry him and couldn’t imagine his life without her. Tiptoeing out of the bedroom, Paul grabbed the keys to the old Mustang he’d recently bought and headed for the door. The air was biting and the snow seemed luminescent under a bright moon. The door of his car creaked as Paul opened it and lowered himself into the bucket seat, stiff with cold. The engine groaned several times before finally starting and Paul sat for a few minutes waiting for the car to warm up. He cranked the fan and a blast of frigid air made him shiver. Eventually, two domes of cleared glass began to appear on the frosted windshield. Paul had had a few beers, but his mind felt clear and sharp with purpose.

Over the past few months rumours had begun to surface among the staff at Corona Pizza that Sue and Scott Thorne were having an affair. Though no one spoke about it openly when Paul was around, he knew
the rumours the same as anyone else. Jealousy consumed him as he recalled a recent argument during which he’d confronted Sue about how she openly flirted with Thorne and a few of the other regulars.

“
I got to make tips,” she’d told him.

Recently, Paul had taken to dropping in at night, but that hadn’t gone over well. The last time he’d showed up unannounced at the lounge, he’d found Sue chatting with a customer and had lost his temper. After that incident, she told Paul to stay away from the lounge when she was working.

Tonight, Paul had tried to keep his mind on other things, but it had kept swinging back to Sue and Thorne the way a compass needle points north. He drove west down the deserted city streets and pulled up to the curb near the restaurant. His heart was pounding as he approached the front door and pulled it open. Inside the small foyer, a set of stairs led down to the lounge. Paul could hear music playing loudly and the raucous jangle of voices. He shoved his hands deeply into the pockets of his jeans and started down, his eyes trained toward the long bar at the back of the room.

Scott Thorne’s back was the first thing that came into view. Sue was laughing at something Thorne was saying, her face inches from his. Paul felt his heart constrict. Sue glanced up then to see Paul standing there, a look of anguish on his face. She laid a hand on Thorne’s arm to silence him and whispered something in his ear.

If the man standing so close to Sue hadn’t been a cop, Paul would have beaten the shit out of him. But if there was one thing Paul hated more than another guy messing with his lady, it was jail time. If Paul so much as touched Thorne, the cop would make sure Paul was locked up. So he turned on his heel and bounded back up the stairs, angry, hurt and betrayed. All the time Paul had been with Sue, he’d secretly feared he wasn’t good enough, that she had her sights set on greener pastures.

By the time he reached his car, he could hardly breathe and tears stung the back of his eyes. He raced across the city, fish-tailing around icy corners as he hurtled toward home. Once inside he grabbed his duffle bag and started throwing clothes into it. He wasn’t thinking, only reacting the way he had always done when life turned against him: by hitting the road.

Paul shot out of town, speeding west on the dark, snow-slick highway. He drove fast. Recklessly. He was headed for the only sanctuary he knew: his uncle’s home in Prince George. Paul never made it. Somewhere along a lonely stretch of asphalt past Dawson Creek, his car smashed into a bridge abutment and careened off the highway.

The next day Sue got a phone call from the Dawson Creek Hospital with the news that Paul was in serious condition. She booked the night off work, arranged care for her kids, and hopped in her station wagon. When she walked into Paul’s hospital room two hours later, her jaw dropped. He looked like a broken puppet. Above his bed was a thick grey metal frame with a series of ropes and pulleys leading to a brace that held Paul’s leg suspended in mid-air. Stainless steel rods protruded from his bloodied skin, passing through clamps attached to the frame. Sue felt sick as she stared at the hardware piercing his battered flesh. One of his arms was immobilized in an L-shaped plaster cast with only his fingers visible, and his face was swollen and bruised.

The doctors told Sue that it would be at least a month before Paul could leave the hospital. Though numbed by painkillers, he was still lucid enough to kick up a fuss.

“
He wanted to come home,” Sue remembers, “but the hospital didn’t want to release him.”

Paul persisted and eventually the doctors agreed to transfer him to Grande Prairie. Still, Paul didn’t make it easy.

“He refused to go in an ambulance,” Sue said. “He wanted to come back with me.”

In the end, given the choice between staying in Dawson Creek or being transferred by ambulance to Grande Prairie, Paul finally gave in to an ambulance ride.

While relieved to be back in a city with people he knew, Paul’s troubles were just beginning. In the days and weeks that followed, he hounded the doctors for medication to ease his pain. They gave him Demerol, but unlike the Edmonton hospital after the plane crash where doctors had quickly cut him off, the Grande Prairie medical staff was more obliging. With each shot Paul found himself feeling blissfully happy, his suffering and his troubles far away.

He’d been in the hospital three weeks when Sue began to notice that he was asking for painkillers all the time.

“What are they giving you?”

When he told her it was Demerol, she got mad. She’d seen how Paul had struggled to get a handle on his addictions before the plane crash and it was awful to see him revert to his old ways.

A week later, when the doctors finally sent Paul home, he left with a prescription for strong painkillers. Still unable to work, he lay around the house. On occasion, he’d hobble into the restaurant to say hello. Elpeda remembers Paul showing up one afternoon in a cast blackened with dirt. He’d wrapped it in a plastic bag, and when he removed it, his foot was filthy, his toenails overgrown and in need of trimming.

Each night when Sue returned from work, she found Paul high on pills, which were disappearing from the bottle at an alarming rate. She hid the bottle and started to hand them out instead of letting Paul take them himself.

But one day she came home to find that Paul had discovered the stash and taken the whole thing. Another night it was Paul who arrived home late. Convinced that Thorne was inside the house, Paul smashed his fist through a window. Sue rushed outside to find him badly cut, his hand bleeding profusely.

By the spring, Paul was able to return to his job at Corona Pizza, but his addictions had also returned, and they were powerful. In addition to drinking and taking pills, he’d started snorting cocaine.

In the months he’d been off work, the slump in the oil and gas industry had begun taking a toll on Corona Pizza and the Bougiridises’ other commercial interests. Teddy, who had long supported his family in Greece, found himself unable to provide the financial assistance they had come to rely on. As a result, his relationship with his family deteriorated; eventually they would disown him. Teddy’s health began declining in tandem with his fortunes.

Paul thought the world of Teddy and Donna. The couple had not only hired him when he was down on his luck; they had trusted him and looked out for him like parents keeping an accident-prone son away from the knife drawer. Now, with their energies diverted, and Sue’s affections seemingly elsewhere, Paul found himself sliding toward a dangerous precipice.

The incident that pushed him over the edge happened during the summer of 1986. Sue had been growing increasingly uneasy with Paul’s drug use, and the two frequently fought bitterly, sometimes even violently. Though she drank, Sue didn’t use drugs and didn’t want them around her kids. In the past she had always trusted Paul, but now she began to worry about going to work in the evenings.

As Sue made her way home from the restaurant one night, her mind was already racing ahead to the state she’d find Paul in when she arrived. The house was quiet as she let herself in. She called his name softly, but he didn’t answer. She let her eyes adjust to the dim light, and then tiptoed down the hallway to check on her kids. Both were fast asleep. Breathing a sigh of relief, she returned to the living room. With a start she noticed Paul sitting on the couch, his head flopped back against the cushion, eyes closed. On the
coffee table in front of him were a syringe, a spoon and other heroin paraphernalia.