She reached out to me. I moved to her side, took her offered hand. She directed me to her shoulders, and I massaged them. “The anesthesiologist said the drugs make him forget everything,” she told me. “I don’t think he’s really awake, do you? It’s probably better that way.”
The story of how my great-grandfather fell in love is relatively well known, so I won’t get into it here. Just think Tristan and Isolde on a train from Tripoli to Beirut, without the deaths or whale weights. There was singing, though, of a different kind.
Who am I kidding? I have to tell you the story, at least the highlights. I can’t help myself. Besides, you might be one of the few people who haven’t heard it.
The Ottoman sultan must have been trying to impress the bey, for the gift was notable, even though it went unappreciated by its recipient. My great-grandmother Mona was more than a maid, not simply a housekeeper. She was an entertainer; she played the oud, had a delightfully soft voice, and knew more than one hundred songs, including some folk melodies from her native Albania. Because she performed the songs of praise well, she was one of the sultan’s favorites, which was why she had remained a virgin in his harem.
I believe she lost her virginity on the train trip.
My great-grandfather must have cursed his luck and the bey’s entire family while he made the long and tiring journey to the northern city. But then he arrived at the sultan’s ship to claim her. He stopped cursing his luck when he saw her walk down the plank with her small oud and her belongings in a satchel. And he thanked God when, four hours later, she sang a story of love that night on the train, sweet chords, dulcet tones. As for my great-grandmother: she had never met a soul who looked at her so adoringly. Hope flowered in her heart, hope of being seen as someone different, someone better, hope of being seen.
“I can’t let you clean house for the bey,” he told her. “I just can’t.”
“I do what I must.”
“I’ll not have you sing for another man.”
At the village, my great-grandfather didn’t go directly to the bey’s mansion. He stopped at his parents’ house, dropped off the oud, and walked to the mansion, with my great-grandmother a step behind. He made the introductions and said, “I beg your indulgence, O Bey. This maid would be of great value to me. I live alone, with no one to take care of me. My room needs a woman’s touch. I can’t have guests since I don’t know how to brew coffee. If you can spare her, I’d love to own her.”
The bey laughed. “You think me a fool. She’ll be doing more than brewing coffee for you. She’s not much to look at, but she’ll do. I don’t need her. Take her. We can’t have the village’s future doctor remain inexperienced in the ways of the world.”
My great-grandparents walked out together with the bey’s blessing.
And my great-grandfather said, “I wish to spend my life with you.”
My great-grandmother said, “I will be your family and you will be my man.”
And my great-grandmother never played the oud for anyone else again.
Years earlier, when the bey married, twenty-one village women cooked for two whole weeks, and the wedding lasted six days. When Mahdallah’s brother married, his wedding lasted three days. My great-grandparents’ wedding lasted all of one hour.
Mahdallah had to state the Shahada and convert to Islam. His first conversion.
Mona brewed coffee for his guests in the small room. They were happy and content, took care of each other, and began to consider a family. Their first son, my great-uncle Aref, was born in Beirut before my great-grandfather returned to assume his rightful duties as the doctor of his home village.
But before I forget, I want to tell you why all Mahdallah’s sons, my great-uncles, have short names (Aref, Jalal, Ma
an).
On his first day of school, when my great-grandfather, a not very tall eight-year-old boy, met his teacher, she, in her prim, proper British manner, asked if he could speak English.
“Yes, madame. I can.”
She had her doubts, it seemed. She asked if he could read and write the language.
“Yes, madame. I can.”
In a firm, clipped voice, she demanded that he go up to the board and write his name.
He did:
MAHDALLAH ARISSEDDINE
“My dear young man,” the teacher said, “your name is longer than you are.”
And my great-grandfather was so shamed that he swore none of his descendants would ever endure such ignominy.
My niece was crying. My father had stopped responding to her. The technician nodded off next to the dialysis machine. The blood in the tubes looked more black than red, and it re-entered my father no redder. The ventilator inhaled and my father exhaled; he breathed in when it expired. Was that an inversely proportional relationship, or a direct relationship? My math failed me.
I wanted to pray but didn’t know to whom I should direct my pleading. There was no map to follow. My left hand caressed my father’s foot, came across moistureless crags. Lines forming unreal countries along his instep and sole. I walked to the nightstand and poured the verbena-scented lotion onto my hands. I massaged the moisturizer onto the arid skin of his foot. I loved the scent, my mother’s favorite. It made sense that he’d continue to use it. The miniature frame was still next to his bed. Her picture. She retained the same ageless look in every photograph, a regal amalgam of severity and benevolence. I wondered whether I was truly seeing the undersized photo or my memory was filling gaps where my eyesight failed.
Help me, Mother. He was your husband.
The technician opened his eyes. He looked dazed for a moment, stupefied. “Only a few minutes left,” he announced officially.
My niece and I could clearly see the time blinking two minutes, thirty-seven seconds, in big red digits. Thirty-six. Thirty-five.
Salwa gripped my father’s hand. “Everything will be all right, Grandfather.”
The machine beeped: a continuous high pitch that was surprisingly comforting. Pleased with himself, the technician restated the obvious: “It’s over.” He slid aside the single cotton sheet that was my father’s cover. He unhooked tubes from tubes, re-coiled the machine’s, opened a small trapdoor in the front, and put them in. He clamped shut the lonely tubes sprouting from the bloodstained, iodine-blotched skin of my father’s side. Medicinal smells.
“Are we going to remove the tubes?” I asked.
He stared back with confused and tarnished eyes. I wanted to relieve my father of some intrusion. If only I could pull out one tube — one single tube — we would all feel better.
The technician packed his machine more quickly. My niece watched everything in bafflement. We were strangers in a land where the natives spoke an incomprehensible language.
Mahdallah worked as a doctor for a year before he was approached by one of his old teachers. The Englishman made my great-grandfather a sweet offer. The Anglicans would send him to England to study further, to practice and learn in superior hospitals. The mission would pay for everything, for his entire family’s stay in England. The mission, however, could only make this offer to a member of its own congregation. To accept, Mahdallah had to be baptized.
My great-grandfather wasn’t religious. It was just that you didn’t change your religion. It wasn’t done. He may have become a Muslim, but he didn’t practice, didn’t take it seriously. He did it to get married. As a Druze, he couldn’t marry a Muslim or any non-Druze. All he did was state the Shahada, testify that there is no God but God and Muhammad is the Prophet of God. That was it. No big deal. Just a formality.