Koolaids

by Rabih Alameddine

They really had problems speaking to other Lebanese if those others were not like them, if they did not speak French fluently. Most Francophiles were Christians, but not exclusively. They even developed a relationship to America similar to what the Europeans have, an unhealthy fascination mixed with simultaneous disdain.

The worst thing was our neighbor called me names today. Celebrating their independence by insulting the foreigner. They have such bad manners over here.

Behold, I have two daughters who have not known man. This line always fascinated me for some reason. It isn’t simply because we have a father pimping his two virgin daughters. There is something poetic about it. Behold, I have two daughters who have not known man. It has a ring to it. I like this translation better than “Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man,” or “Lo, I pray you, I have two daughters, who have not known anyone.” Translation is so important. The new American translations of the Bible sound like a Judith Krantz novel. I would never believe the men of Sodom called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.” But the Bible readers today prefer simple fare. Behold, I have two daughters who have not known man.

Let’s get this straight, and I do mean straight. God tells us men fucking men is a terrible thing, but a father offering his two daughters, vestal virgins no less, to a horde of horny buggers is heroic. Now that’s straight.

My card says I am a Christian, a Maronite, to be exact. When I was ten, I asked Grandma Nabila what it meant to be Christian because I figured out she wasn’t. She looked at me and said, “Well, Makram, it means you can become president of this great country of ours.”

Oh, my heart, do not rise up to bear witness against me! This is an inscription from the Book of the Dead. It’s good, isn’t it?

Sex. In America an obsession. In other parts of the world a fact. Marlene Dietrich said that. She never used verbs because she was a cheap German.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made, nothing entirely straight can be carved.

My country is being torn apart by packs of wild dogs, and my countrymen are apathetic.

I am Mediterranean. I never got Kaposi’s sarcoma. All my friends did. I did contract toxoplasmosis and I fucking hate cats.

Easter. My favorite holiday. A deeply philosophical time of the year when I ponder what on earth a bunny rabbit has to do with eggs and why, if they beat you, spit on you, and nail you to a cross, you’d want to call that particular Friday a Good Friday? If that happened to me, I’d call it The Worst Friday of My Life. But that’s why Jesus is The Redeemer and I’m just another nobody.

If there is one statement I hate more than anything else in the world, it’s “They say Beirut used to be the Paris of the Middle East.” That is so fucking patronizing. I hate it. It is so fucking condescending. Beirut is probably the greatest city in the world. One of the oldest, if not the oldest, with more history in one of its neighborhoods than all the cities of the United States. It really irritates me. Of course, the corollary statement, “I hear Beirut used to be the Switzerland of the Middle East” is just as inane. There is no comparison. Paris is Paris and Beirut is Beirut. The people who say such idiotic statements have never been to Beirut, of course. If it weren’t for the war, they probably would never have heard of it. Just like people who say, “Some of my best friends are gay.” I hate that. I hate people who say that.

When the flight took off, I sat next to a loquacious man. My reading a long novel did not help. He kept chatting endlessly.