My great-uncle Ma
an offered his two charges a final gift, two small plots of land in Beirut. One would become the family workplace, the first dealership, and the other the family home, the building that would be erected not long after as one of the pledges my father made my mother if she married him. The army of angels, friends of my father and Uncle Jihad, provided loans — with no interest, of course. The dealership building was one shoddily built room that barely had space for six clean desks. In its lot, the company opened its doors with three cars, which were sold the first day. “A bang,” Uncle Jihad used to say. “We opened with a bang.”
Within a year, they added the Fiat dealership, and then the exclusive Arab-world Toyota and Datsun dealership a few years later. On the day the Japanese contracts were signed, my father and Uncle Jihad bought their first custom-made Brioni suits, and my mother received a diamond necklace whose price no one talked about publicly.
My father did accept my grandfather’s advice on one thing, the poetic choice. Yes, my mother was seduced with poetry. My mother was a romantic but not a fool. In the two years during which my father pursued her, after he had declared his intentions to Uncle Jihad and her, she had made a point of objectively gauging whether he would make her a good husband. She studied him, found out almost everything there was to know about him: where his career was going, how he treated his family, his level of education or lack thereof, his womanizing. She claimed to have kept a notebook of checks and balances. She tested him. She misbehaved in public to observe his reaction. She made him wait when he picked her up. She interviewed him endlessly.
For his part, my father interviewed Uncle Jihad. What would she like? He never bought flowers that weren’t approved by my uncle. My mother kept no secrets from Uncle Jihad, and she soon found out that he kept none from my father. My mother would point out a wonderful dress to Uncle Jihad, and the next day a package would arrive at her house. My father knew who her favorite singers were, what her favorite food was, and of course, who her favorite poets were. My father sent her poems, and my mother adored that. He sent her poetry she knew well. Whether it was Rilke, Dickinson, or Barrett Browning, she knew the Westerners. She loved the old Arabs, al-Mutanabbi or the Muallaqat—Amru al-Qais and Zuhair in particular. My father worked hard.
One day, my grandmother asked him when he intended to marry, and he told her about my mother even though she hadn’t consented to marry him yet. He confessed his entire seduction scheme. And my grandfather, in his usual obstreperous manner, interrupted, “But you’re no poet.” When no one understood what he meant, he elaborated. “Only a poet can sing a familiar poem and make it sound as if it has never been uttered before. Only a hakawati can bewitch with a tale twice-told. You have to dazzle her with something she doesn’t know, a poet like Saadi. Lovers flock to lesser poets, but few are better than him.”
When my grandfather recited some lines from Saadi, my father wasn’t impressed, but later, when my mother sat him down to talk, he could come up with nothing else.
“I know you could make me happy,” she said. “I know you would take care of me, but we’re such different people. That could be hell for the both of us.”
And my father replied, “It is better to burn with you in hell than to be in paradise with another. The scent of onions from a beautiful mouth is more fragrant than that of a rose held by an ugly hand.” Stunned, my mother searched for a translation of Saadi seemingly forever. He became one of her favorites. Even on her deathbed, she quoted him to the nurses.
My mother agreed to marry my father if he pledged three things: to become more successful, to buy her a better home, and to stop his womanizing. Two out of three.
Back in Cairo, Othman lay on the sofa and admired his wife as she undressed. By the light of a dozen candles, she rubbed a concoction of olive oil and verbena onto her arms. Othman said, “I am pleased that bedtime modesty is not something you insist upon.”
She raised her gaze slowly, looked into his eyes to gauge his meaning, but he lowered his quickly in embarrassment. Though she returned to applying the lotion, pretending nonchalance, they knew each other too well. He saw her ears were pricked. “I have been thinking,” he said.
In the glow of candles, she massaged the lotion onto the two expansive worlds of her breasts. She discreetly made sure he had the appropriate reaction before moving to her neck. He blinked rapidly. “I have been thinking that we cannot go on like this. A pre-emptive strike is needed.” He tried to clear his retinas of the delicious impression, tried to clean up his mind so he could complete a lucid thought. “I have been remiss, my wife. I have not been myself lately. Arbusto has been allowed to roam free, creating trouble, for much too long. He is my enemy, and I have not dealt with him. It is time.”
“Yes, he is a rogue worthy of your time.”
“I will capture him and drag him on his knees before the king.”
“A most noble goal, to be sure.”
“Will you help me?”
She did not look up from the task at hand, but it was of no avail. He had seen surprise and delight flush her face. “You never have to ask, my husband.”
“I want to hunt the villain, who must be causing trouble somewhere in the coastal cities. We will not return to Cairo without Arbusto enchained and on a leash.”
“We?”
“I need your help.” He smiled at his wife. “You do have so many leashes.”
“You and I?”
“Partners.”
“And my husband’s enemies will rue the day they were born.”
Naked, she climbed atop Othman, and kissed him. “Say it.”
“We leave tomorrow,” he said, laughing.
She kissed him again. “Say it.”
“We should start packing.” His eyes sparkled like diamonds along a riverbed.
She kissed him once more. “Say it.”
“You are my wife.” He took a deep breath and returned her kiss. “I would rather live for eternity as your slave than spend a single moment without you.”
Seventeen
The first bullet bored through the passenger door of one of the dealership’s cars, a blue Toyota, in April 1976. The war — or “skirmishes,” as everyone called it then — had begun a year earlier, but the company still hadn’t been severely affected, since its customers, like the rest of the Lebanese, foolishly assumed that the trouble wouldn’t last long, the Palestinians and the militias involved were simply letting off steam. As a matter of fact, some in the family considered the war further proof of the blessed luck of the corporation and my father’s inspired business acumen. Hadn’t my worrywart father bought insurance coverage for almost every conceivable disaster, including war? Blind luck wasn’t responsible for this decision. My father had imagined that he would one day be so successful that the Israelis would blow up his company in a fit of pique. (They actually did, in 1982, but it wasn’t in a fit of pique.) Uncle Jihad drove the blue Toyota home as a keepsake. Insurance would pay for it.