“I’ll take care of things now. Don’t worry.”
“You won’t tell my father?”
He mimed running a needle and thread through his lips. He covered my knee with a Band-Aid and began to examine my elbow.
“What’ll I tell them when they see me like this?” I asked.
“Tell them you fell.”
“You’re telling me to lie to my parents?” I stared at him.
“I’d never do such a thing,” Uncle Jihad replied in mock seriousness. “Never, ever lie to anyone, let alone your parents; lying is bad. But being discreet is good. You fell, right? Maybe they pushed you, but still, you fell. That’s what we’ll say. We’re not going to tell your parents everything, for their own good. We don’t want them to worry unnecessarily.” I flinched as he dabbed hydrogen peroxide on my elbow. “Wait here,” he said. “I think we’ve earned some fruit juice.” He went to his kitchen and returned with two tall half-filled glasses of pomegranate juice.
“Are you going to tell me what happened to you that day?” I asked.
“I was watching the village boys. It was cold but clear, so all the boys that weren’t working were sledding down the hill. Snow had fallen for three straight days, so it was perfect. They didn’t really have sleds, of course, only broken wooden boxes. I saw Farid with his friends, but before I could reach them, four or five big boys jumped me. They were Wajih’s friends, so they couldn’t have been less than fifteen or so. They lifted me up and put me in a box and pushed it downhill. They were amusing themselves. I was too frightened to scream and had no idea what to do. My feet and hands were inside the box. The sled picked up speed. Even the laughter of the other boys stopped. I finally heard Farid screaming for me to use my hands to slow the box. I tried but couldn’t. Farid was running down the hill, but I was sliding too fast and toward a cliff. It was a small cliff, mind you, but a huge drop to fly over in a wooden box. Everyone, including me, thought I was a goner. And I was. I hit the edge and flew with my box, higher and higher, until a large pine tree bent its hand and picked me up out of the sky.”
“The hand of a pine tree?”
“Imagination, my boy. Cum grano salo. The branch of a pine tree, it was. It felt like a hand because the tree caught me while I was flying. The hand of God came down and took the form of a pine branch. By my coat it caught me, while the box kept soaring higher and shattered when it hit the ground. I was saved.”
“How did you get down from the tree?”
“It took forever.”
The Chinese magnolia trees were covered with divine pink-and-white blossoms, practically the only beautiful sight anywhere near my classes. Unlike the rest of the university, the science campus was unsightly, mostly built in the ugly sixties: large cubes of concrete whose windows opened upward, as if the buildings were sticking their collective tongues out at the world and saying, “We’re ugly and we don’t care.”
A voice shouted, “Hey, champ.” I walked over to a table occupied by my fellow Lebanese. Four of the six were playing cards, and one was eating a hamburger even though it was still morning. No matter what time of day you arrived at the Bombshelter, the burger bar in the Court of Sciences, you were almost guaranteed to find at least one of the Lebanese students there. A card game was sure to sprout as soon as there were two. I was probably the only Lebanese at UCLA who didn’t care for cards.
“Where’ve you been?” cried Sharbel. He was by far the oldest and biggest guy in the group, towering over everyone. He was in three of my classes.
“Where is it?” he asked. He was trying to sound jovial, but his voice betrayed his anxiety.
I handed him my folder, and he immediately began copying the math assignment into his own notebook. He was so large he took up almost half the table by himself, and the other boys had to adjust their card game to accommodate.
“How can you live in the dorms?” Iyad asked. “Isn’t it too crowded?”
“You have to live with strangers,” Joseph said. He was in two of my classes. All the Lebanese students at UCLA were in engineering school, no exceptions. The only variation was which discipline within engineering; mine was computers.
“I’m not living with strangers,” I objected. “I have my own room.”
“Well,” Sharbel said, “it’s not like you’re living with a friend. That makes a difference.”
Iyad banged his hand on the table and yelled triumphantly. All the Americans stared at our table with disapproving eyes. I turned my back, moved my chair slightly, hoping that anyone who looked our way would think I wasn’t part of the group.
Two Americans, engineering students, nodded at Iyad as they passed by. He completely ignored them. When he was with the group, which was more often than not, he showed disdain toward all non-Lebanese. He had once called his American girlfriend his sperm depository while she was sitting in his lap as he played cards. The group spoke Lebanese, even or maybe especially around people who didn’t understand the language. They would have been speaking English or French had they been in Lebanon, but in America, they spoke Arabic. We were all misfits.
The morning after God, the miraculous tree, saved her youngest, my grandmother put on two black sweaters and covered her head and torso with a diaphanous mandeel that dropped almost to the ground in back. In Druze white and black, she left her house and trudged up the hill through the snow to the bey’s mansion. It was official visiting hours. Petitioners and supplicants were going in and out of the main entrance, so my grandmother went in from the side. She greeted everyone in the women’s hall, sat down, and inquired whether she could have an audience with the bey. Yes, the bey himself, not his wonderful wife. She knew he was busy, very busy, but if he could spare a few minutes, she would be grateful. No, she would not mind waiting. She had all day. She drank coffee with the other visitors, chatted with the women. She had the chance to have a second cup of coffee. “I know he will see you,” the bey’s wife said. “Forgive him, but he’s very busy, what with the world preparing for its next big war.”
“His generosity knows no bounds,” my grandmother replied.
Finally, one of the attendants whispered that the bey would see my grandmother. She and the bey’s wife went to a smaller room, where the bey was deep in discussion with another man. The bey used my grandmother as an excuse to terminate the conversation. “A delicate matter,” he told the man. “I’m afraid it can’t wait.”
Alone with the bey and his wife, my grandmother had to ask after the children, the grandchildren, the cousins, the house, the meals, the vacations, before the bey inquired what she wanted. “You’ve been very generous to our family,” she said. “May God keep you above us to guide us, protect us, and be the shining example for us to follow. Your father educated my father and uncles, and your kindness extended to my brothers. We are ever in your debt.”
“You are most kind,” the bey’s wife said, and the bey added, “You are most eloquent.”
“Our family is thriving because of your liberality, and I am embarrassed to bring this up. As you probably know, my two youngest sons are going to the local school. They are doing very well, too well. I’m not sure the school is providing them with enough opportunities.”
The bey’s wife coughed. “Are you saying the school isn’t good enough for your boys?”
“No, of course not. It’s a good school. My other boys went there, but the young ones are special. My youngest loves to read, and there aren’t any books at the school.”
“Have you talked to your husband about this?” The bey leaned back in his chair, no longer feeling the need to listen. “You want them in a better school?”