Koolaids by Alameddine Rabih Read Free Book Online Page B

painting.”
    â€œBete Aber Auch Dabei.”
    â€œI am sorry, Mo. I didn’t understand that.”
    â€œMy German is awful. That was the name of the song which just finished. Please play it again.”
    â€œSure thing.”
    â€œDo you know what she is singing?” I ask.
    â€œIt’s a mass of some sort.”
    â€œIt’s a prayer:
    â€˜Yet pray, even while
    in the midst of keeping watch!
    In thy great guilt
    beg the Judge for patience,
    and He shall free thee from sin
    and make thee cleansed.’ “
    The violins come back again.
    I went to a couple of Catholic churches when I found out I was positive. I wanted confession. The truth was I wanted absolution. I talked to a priest and asked him what the procedure was for confessing. He asked if I was a Catholic. I told him I was a Muslim. He looked at me funny. He said I could not get absolution if I were a Muslim.
    The voice comes back again. It is divine. She is talking directly to God.
    â€œJames?”
    â€œI’m here,” James replies softly. He takes my hand.
    â€œI want to die.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€¦
    Ox sat. I bet you don’t know what ox sat is.
    Oxygen saturation. That’s what it is. There is a new language we use these days. I mean, who knew what a T cell was ten years ago? Now it’s in common use. Ten years from now, when everybody is having trouble breathing from PCP or CMV in their lungs, ox sat will be in common use too.
    I bet you don’t know what a picc line is.
    â€¦
    July 4th, 1967
    Dear Diary,
    This is without a doubt the worst day of my life. It looks like we have to go back to Beirut. My husband can’t take it here in Washington anymore. The head of the department at Georgetown insulted him. He called him a camel jockey. I would assume an educated man would know there are no camels in Lebanon. The worst thing was our neighbor called me names today. Cele­brating their independence by insulting the foreigner. They have such bad manners over here.
    I guess it is a good thing we are leaving. They fight a war over there, but it brings out the bad sides of people over here. I still can’t believe Walter Cronkite. Jerusalem is liberated. “Jerusalem is liberated,” he kept repeating. It was as if he or his family were leading the way. Liberated from whom? Arabs have lived in Jerusalem for as long as Jerusalem existed. Liberated? They keep treating us as if we are barbarians. Jews or Christians, these Europeans come occupy our lands and then they have the gall to say they are liberating Jerusalem.
    It’s a good thing we are leaving. Beirut is a much better place to raise the kids.
    â€¦
    Picasso used to say that at twelve years old he was able to draw like Raphael, but it took years of hard work and dedication to train himself to draw like a child. As usual, with that lovable son of a bitch, he was lying. Lies, lies, lies. He never drew like Raphael, not at twelve, sixteen, twenty-one, forty, or sixty. He was a damn good draftsman, but he was never a Raphael. I love him.
    On the other hand, when I was twelve I could draw better than Picasso. I always wished I could have met him to tell him that. The day he died, I was thirteen.
    Like most children I was drawing at an early age. I was definitely a prodigy. By the age of four, I was able to draw anything I saw, realistically. By the age of six, I was copying drawings of the masters.
    My mother was always proud. My father considered art to be nothing more than a pleasant hobby. He kept suggesting I attempt a more masculine hobby. I was never effeminate, but I definitely was not masculine enough for my father. In his mind, any intellectual pursuit, let alone an intuitive pursuit like drawing, was effeminate. It is no wonder none of my four older brothers went beyond a few years of college.
    I was seven when my father decided to do his fatherly thing. He asked me to show him my drawings. I was nervous as I showed him