“I wonder if the speeches are done,” his friend said as they stood up.
“Can you imagine what would happen if we win a war?”
“We almost won. Maybe next time we will.”
I didn’t think they believed. I resumed playing.
• • •
On Saturday, I played “Here Comes the Sun” for Lina. She was impressed, though not as surprised as I thought she’d be. “Aren’t you going to sing?” she asked. I told her that would require more practice, since I had never sung before. She didn’t seem to mind.
That afternoon, we left home sans guitar. Lina wore wild makeup and her mauve shorts. She looked like she’d fit better on Carnaby Street than in Beirut. We rode the bus four stops, and ended up at a coterie of buildings similar to ours, but much more upscale, seven buildings of nothing but marble and glass. She led me into one whose lobby was enclosed, air-conditioned, and stark. In the elevator she suggested that I not talk too much.
A girl my sister’s age opened the door. She had two pigtails that began at the top of her head and descended ungracefully to her shoulders. “You brought your little brother?” The left corner of her mouth crunched up to meet her eye. “Yes,” my sister replied and walked by her into the apartment. I hurriedly followed. I didn’t need to be told that Pigtail Girl was the reason I had to play the guitar, that she had done something to offend Lina.
A dozen boys and girls milled about the large glass-enclosed balcony, chatting noisily and ignoring the rock music. “Try this,” Lina said, pointing to an orange beanbag, and she joined two other girls.
All the teenagers ignored me. They seemed preoccupied with looking modern, cool, and Western. I concentrated on the music, helped myself to a bottle of Pepsi. My sister kept throwing glances at a tall blond boy across the room from her. He seemed too sure of himself, used to being the center of attention, and welcomed it with a modicum of disdain. With Lina, there was no modicum; her disdain was unequivocal and unfettered. Her glances grew less subtle and more hateful. I wondered where he fit in the unfolding drama. I didn’t wonder for long.
Pigtail Girl walked into the room with a guitar. The instant the blond guy saw her, he lifted his arms as if warding off evil. “You have to play for us,” she said, turning the music off.
“No, no,” he said. “I don’t want to ruin the mood.”
“Please,” the girl insisted. “For me.”
My sister struck as quickly as a famished cobra. She snatched the guitar out of Pigtail’s hand. “He doesn’t have to,” she said, as she walked toward me. “The little shrimp here can play. He’s not bad.” She handed me the instrument and plopped herself next to me on the beanbag. “Play,” she ordered, nudging me with her elbow.
I played. My sister began to sing. Her two girlfriends joined in after the second verse. I didn’t look up from the guitar, too nervous. The singing wasn’t very good, but by the last verse, half the company had unleashed their voices.
“That was great,” one of the girls said. “Let’s do it again.”
My sister wouldn’t have been able to contain her glee had she cared to. She looked as if she’d eaten a whole jar of fresh honey. She wasn’t the only one; her two friends were laughing.
“Let’s not,” Pigtail said. “Let’s go back to real music now.”
“Let’s have your boyfriend try to play,” Lina said.
“No,” he snapped.
“Play another song,” one of Lina’s friends shouted to me. “You’re good.”
“I’m learning how to play,” I said quietly. “I don’t know many songs.”
“Another song, please.”
“It’s okay,” my sister said. “One song is enough for now.”
“I can play another song if you can sing it,” I told her. She looked puzzled. I opened “Something.” Her eyes grew wide and their whites glimmered. She began to sing, too loudly, too happily.
I stopped my oud lessons.
Eight
And they all believed in fate. Do you think my grandmother would have married my grandfather were it not for fate? Do you not wonder how he won her?
It was destined. The tale was already told. Everything had been written.
He first saw her at the end of the Great War, in 1918, during the plagues, the lean times, when the infantilizing French occupation replaced the malicious Ottoman one. My grandmother was walking to school with a cousin. Najla wore a mandeel, but she didn’t cover her features. She draped it upon her delicate shoulders. There was a lot of talk at the time about mandeels, sheer or opaque, and whether women should wear them, but I don’t think she was making a statement. She enjoyed showing her face, her luxuriant hair, and my grandfather was lucky enough to catch sight of her. He was besotted. She was a mere fourteen. He was eighteen. He had seen pretty girls before. Yet she was beautiful and ever so graceful. He asked himself how he could make her remember him, and he thought, English. She was walking to the missionary school in the village. He said, in English, mind you, “Hello, my beautiful princess.”
She laughed and said she was a sheikha, not a princess, and the cheeky boy should have known that. She left him standing bewildered on the hilly path. She had said “cheeky” in English, and he had no idea what it meant. He didn’t know whom to ask. Because of his father, the doctor, he could speak some English, but because of the doctor’s wife, he couldn’t read that cursed language. He considered asking the bey, but my grandfather couldn’t risk embarrassing him if he didn’t know. He had to find an Englishman.
There were two of them trying to convert the village. My grandfather hung around the missionary school for two hours before he saw a foreigner exiting a building. My grandfather was polite but insistent. He said, “Pardon me, sir,” over and over, but the man paid no attention; the English never listened. Finally, he shouted, and the missionary stopped. My grandfather asked him what the word meant, and the missionary shooed him away.
Waiting for Najla the next morning, my grandfather sat on a rise above the street, for he did not wish to appear improper. When she approached, he confessed, in Lebanese Druze dialect, “I don’t know what the word ‘cheeky’ means. I don’t think my English is very good.”
My grandmother’s cousin kept pulling at her sleeve, trying to get her to move along. My grandmother replied, looking at her feet, “I don’t speak it well, either. I don’t know what that word means. Last week, they taught us a story about the problem of cheeky boys talking to nice girls in the city of London.”
And he knew she was the one for him.
You’d think there was no way. You might say, granted, this man was the bey’s hakawati, and the bey loved him, but he had no family. The story of his origins was murky. People knew that he was born in some village in the Matn, but no one had heard of the Kharrats. The discovery that the Kharrats didn’t exist wouldn’t happen till much later. How would my grandfather be able to marry a nice Druze girl — a sheikha, no less? Why would a respected family consent to such a marriage?
Well, my grandmother was not as nice as she appeared. Her family had issues.
You know that my father’s paternal grandfather was an English doctor, a missionary, and his paternal grandmother was the missionary’s Armenian servant. My father’s maternal grandparents were almost a carbon copy. My great-grandfather was a Druze doctor who many believed had become an English missionary, and my great-grandmother was his Albanian servant. Yes, it’s true.
Settle down. There are differences, and that’s what makes for a good story.