Koolaids (7 page)

The four horsemen approach.

The rider on the red horse says, “This good and faithful servant is ready. He knoweth war.”

The rider on the black horse says, “This good and faithful servant is ready. He knoweth plague.”

The rider on the pale horse says, “This good and faithful servant is ready. He knoweth death.”

The rider on the white horse says, “This good and faithful servant killed his best friend. Let him suffer.”

The testy rider on the white horse leads the other three lemmings away.

My eyes hurt. They hurt from the inside. A constant throbbing.

…

March 17th, 1987

Dear Diary,

Americans make fun of us. They mock us. My son told me they even had a comedy skit about us on
Saturday Night Live.
I am not sure what that is. I think it is a program on television which mocks things. They make fun of us all the time, it seems. They think we are all crazy, maybe even degenerate. The only way they make our suffering palatable is by envisioning us as less than human. We are human. What happened to us could happen to anyone. They refuse to see it. They think all of us just go around killing each other. My son said they had a film showing all the bullets flying over at night and the announcer says in a serious voice, “Come visit us in Beirut, where it is Fourth of July every night.” I don't think that's funny.

…

The woman comes up to me. I notice the museum director stiffen. I guess she must be a trustee.

“Mr. Momad, I wonder if you can answer a question for me.” Her voice is nasal, irritating. “It's Mohammad, Mrs. Winters,” the director says. “It's his first name.”

I look at her. I see no need to reply. The director is nervous, but is unsure what his role is in such situations. She keeps going.

“You are a gay artist, aren't you?” Pause. Wait for a response. None coming. She continues, “I was wondering what you think of Keith Haring's work.”

“He's dead,” I say.

The director chuckles and tries to say something, but she keeps going.

“Yes, I know that. I would like to know what you think of his work.”

“It's okay,” I say.

The director is trying to figure where this conversation is going. He fidgets.

“That's what I think too,” she adds. “I don't know what the big deal about his work is. It's not bad, but really, what is the big deal? How come he became such a big name all of a sudden? Unlike your paintings, which are truly magnificent, by the way, I find his work to be more decorative, more illustrative. Don't you agree? What was the seminal work that catapulted him? Where is his tour de force? Which painting is his chef d'oeuvre? Now tell me, what do you think is his one work which you can honestly say made him into a superstar artist?”

“The AIDS diagnosis?”

The director drops his champagne glass.

The museum goes silent.

…

Once upon a time there was an island visited by ruin and inhabited by strange peccant creatures.

“It's a sad place,” I say, “and too much like my own life.”

He nods. “You mean, the losing struggle against inscrutable blind forces, young dreams brought to ruin.”

“Yes,” I tell Coover, “my young dreams are gone. I lost the struggle a long, long time ago.”

…

During the war, rumors were rampant suggesting downtown Beirut was not being rebuilt because they found archeological treasures when the buildings were razed, a romantic notion and much more pleasant than the truth. Like most rumors, it was based partially on truth. They did find archeological treasures, from Phoenician urns and pottery to remnants of the Roman law school, the pride of Roman Berytus, from Macedonian spears to Islamic tiles. They found the remains of five thousand years of successive civilizations. According to
The New York Times,
the finds confirmed the fact that Beirut was founded as early as 3000
b.c
., before Jerusalem, Athens, Damascus, or any other current capital. Only Jbeil, once known as Byblos, another Lebanese city north of Beirut, is older. The latter is the oldest city in the world, continuously inhabited for seven thousand years.

The archeologists had little time to dig through what was found. When the war stopped, the government, run by some of the richest men in the world, which included the militia leaders, wanted to make their money developing downtown Beirut. They had no time for old crap.

A girl led one of the expeditions. She looked to be no more than fourteen or fifteen, but she was actually nearing thirty, not typical for a Lebanese. Whatever her age, she was an experienced archeologist, a Harvard Ph.D., and a veteran of many archeological digs. She realized her government did not care. She attempted to involve the press, but that proved futile. After the war, the press was the government. She attempted to involve her peers at Harvard. They became interested at first. They reneged as it became obvious which American corporations were involved in rebuilding downtown Beirut and where the money was coming from.

She would try to salvage whatever she could before they brought in the bulldozers. She was working in a belowground site when she uncovered a death mask. She showed it to the rest of her team. At the moment she held it up, a government employee screamed they had ten seconds to get out. A sewer was opened intentionally to drive them out. They smelled the water before it hit them. The force of the shitty water pulled the death mask away. Within a minute, the team was floating among excrement. They could not save anything. The bulldozers had come.

…

“Habibi?”

“I'm here, dear.” It was frightening. His face was hideous. The most beautiful boy in the world was gone, the swan into the ugly duckling. The KS was feeding on Scott's face. Omophagia.

He looked at his face in the mirror. Purple splotches everywhere.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” he said. “I always wondered what it felt like to be a blueberry muffin.”

…

FROM: BOURMA@ESTE. ON.NET

DATE: FRI, 22 MAR 1996 00:50:47 GMT

SUBJECT:TO MY FELLOW CHRISTIANS

There have been many things said about who are the true Lebanese on this service. Most of you have an opinion as to what makes a Lebanese and whether we are Arabs. I want to clear up some misconceptions. I am writing this letter to all our Maronite friends in hopes of ending the confusion about our history. Hopefully after reading this, we will be able to stand up for who we are. I will show you why we are the true Lebanese.

We are the true Lebanese because we are the only descendants of the Phoenicians, the only indigenous people of Lebanon. Every body else came after that. We were in Lebanon for as long as anybody can remember, at least seven thousand years because that is when the Phoenicians established the city of Byblos. We established all the cities in Lebanon-Beirut, Sidon, Tyre, and Tripoli. We gave the world the alphabet. We gave the world the color purple. The Phoenicians were the most well respected people in their time.

Lebanon was conquered by most of the great empires of antiquity. We were under the Persian empire in the sixth century
b.c
., and the Hellenistic Seleucid kingdom (which Alexander the Great conquered) in the fourth century
b.c
. That was followed by the Roman empire. We were baptized as Christians in the second century when we fell under the Byzantine empire. Then we were under Islam in the seventh century, but try as they might, the Muslims were never able to conquer the mountains because of the rough terrain and because the Christians fought valiantly. Most of the Muslims settled in the coastal cities and the Beka'a valley. In the eleventh century, the Druze came to Lebanon, and the Christians allowed them to settle in some villages in the mountains.

Since 623, Lebanon has been an unwilling part of various Islamic empires up until 1918, when we were liberated by the French. The exception was during the Crusades between 1098 and 1291, when we were under Frankish rule. As you all know, we gained full independence in 1943.

We are called Maronites because in the fifth century we had our own saint, a monk called Marun. He led his followers against various groups that tried to persecute them. The Phoenicians were Semitic and they spoke a Semitic language. With all the conquests, the Phoenicians, now Maronites, began to speak Syriac. All our church rites and liturgy were in Syriac.

In summation, Maronites are NOT Arabs, never were, never will be. We are Syrio-Aramaic. We are Phoenicians. We need to be proud of our heritage and revive it. We need to throw away the Arab shackles that everybody tries to bind us with. We are not Arabs. We are Lebanese. Lebanon is the homeland of Christians. We shall refuse to live under occupation. We will always be Christian, always Lebanese.

Just like our Lord Jesus Christ, we will rise again. We shall overcome this tragedy and conquer. We will rise again, purer and stronger, to throw out the current aggressors from OUR land. We refuse to wear the labels they give us. We will revive the Syriac language. No Christian should speak the language of our oppressors. I have not spoken Arabic since 1978. We are not Arabs. We are the true people of Lebanon.

With the true love of our Lord Jesus Christ, I bless you all.

Roger Dabbas

…

Rewriting history is a passion for most Lebanese. Lebanon is a mixture of races from all over Europe and the Middle East, yet everyone tries to lay claim to being the true descendants of the Phoenicians. In reality, any Palestinian, Syrian, and Jordanian may be a descendant as well. Most of the indigenous people of Lebanon actually changed religions and alliances under each occupier. The reason is simple. It saved on taxes. The empires of the area always taxed religious minorities at a higher rate.

The name of their monk should be written as Maroun, not Marun. The stress is on the second syllable. But obviously the writer is demented. I sent him a note saying my spell checker could not recognize the word
Marun.
It came up with
manure
as an alternative, which I felt was appropriate. I received death threats. If you need further proof the writer is demented, look at when he introduces Christianity into the Roman empire. Heck, any idiot knows that Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius were still killing Christians and Jews in the second century. Those were the days.

…

Scott was handsome. Surprisingly, since he was relatively shy on the BBS. We enjoyed ourselves. We laughed during the movie when Scott pretended to faint as Deneuve made her first appearance. We went for beers and talked. We had a good time on our first date. We had a better time on our second date and ended up in my bed. He only mentioned Mo on our third date.

I have to admit I am easily impressed by celebrity. It is a weakness. I don't go crazy, I never ask for autographs, or anything silly like that. I am just impressed. I think that's human. Our culture is a celebrity-driven culture, and I am never that bad. Deep down, I'm still the boy from Bethlehem, PA, easily impressed.

The idea that Scott was Mo's best friend, but never mentioned it till that moment, was bewildering. If he were my best friend, I would surely mention it often—discreetly, I would hope, but you get the idea. I guess that's why Mo was Scott's friend and not mine. Mo was the enfant terrible of the art world, but his reputation went beyond the art world. He was in every sense of the word a celebrity. I had met him at a couple of occasions, but never really made any contact with him. I did not understand art all that well, but I knew what I liked. I liked his realistic paintings, but never his abstract ones. I heard if an exhibit of his abstract paintings does really well, his next one is sure to be very realistic. I wanted to meet him. I pretended it was not important. I tried to find out what their relationship was. Scott assured me they were best friends. They had been living together for a while.

I finally met him. It was uneventful. He was polite. I should say he was not rude.
Polite
would be stretching it. He practically ignored me most of the time. Every time I went into his studio to talk to Scott, he would stop painting. He would not start again until I left. After a while, the novelty wore off. I stopped caring whether I saw Scott at my place or his.

I realized I loved Scott. We also realized we were not in love. About two months into our relationship we mutually decided that we liked each other too much to have sex. We became what in the “business” is called sisters.

He was coming up the stairs to my flat when he got his first attack. He had been looking haggard the past week, but nothing was seriously wrong. I can't recall exactly what happened. He was coming up the stairs. He had to stop midway because he ran out of breath. I was at the top of the stairs waiting for him to come up. I asked if he was okay. He assured me he was fine, but needed to catch his breath. He then fainted and fell down the steps.

I don't know what came over me. Instead of calling 911, I picked him up and carried him the two blocks to Davies Medical.

I had to call Mo, but I did not have his number. I could call Scott's number, but I doubted he would pick up. I could not try information since I never knew what his last name was. I don't know if anybody did. He never divulged it, to my knowledge. It finally occurred to me to call Heller, where I knew he showed his work. I left a message with them for him to call me at the pay phone.

“Kurt?” he screams into the phone.

“Hi, Mo,” I say soothingly. “Calm down. He's going to be all right. He fainted coming up the steps. They're checking him now.”

“I'll be right over,” he says.

…

August 5th, 1996

Dear Diary,

My grandson was circumcised today. I was surprised how easily my son-in-law accepted his son's circumcision. He is Christian, Greek Orthodox. I think it is a good thing it happened. During the war, they were exchanging corpses of dead fighters on both sides. The Christians found out they had eighteen unidentified corpses. They weren't sure whether to send them to West Beirut or keep them. Bashir Gemayel told them to undress the corpses. If they were circumcised, send them to West Beirut. If they happened to be circumcised Christians, they deserved to be buried with Muslims.