The Wrong End of the Telescope Read online

  “That’s because he’s a man,” Sumaiya told me. The Dutch woman glanced up at her but still did not translate. “I knew the situation was going to be bad before they arrived, so did every woman in the village. Our lives would become unbearable. No school for my daughter, I would not be allowed to leave my house without being accompanied by my husband. I did not need to wait until the killings started to know they were repulsive human beings.”

  I whispered in her ear, asking if she was in pain. She said of course but no more than usual, and the pills from Emma were helping. I asked because I wondered if her loquaciousness was drug induced. I brought a few more pills, I told her.

  “Why are they talking only to him?” she said. “Why don’t they ask me what happened to my family? Is my story not good enough fodder for them?”

  Sammy began to guess at the danger they were in when he first heard of the murders. Anyone who disagreed with Daesh was killable. Christians, Muslims, it didn’t matter, Sammy said. If they didn’t like you, you were either an infidel or an apostate. They executed many and sent severed heads back to the families. Sumaiya and he understood that they should leave the area, go anywhere else—Turkey, Lebanon—but they were worried about their families. His parents had passed away a long time ago, but he had four brothers and two sisters. Sumaiya’s mother was still alive. She lived about an hour away, which meant they were seeing her less and less. Still, they couldn’t take her grandchildren away from her. They stayed—suffered and stayed until they were left with no choice.

  “I was willing to leave,” Sumaiya told me, loudly enough to interrupt her husband. “And he was listening to me. We would have left much earlier, but then I became sick. It wasn’t awful in the beginning, but I had pains in my stomach and I was nauseated. I felt that I should wait to feel a little better before beginning a trek. I wanted to take my daughters away, but I didn’t know I was not going to get better. By the time I knew, it was too painful, too late.”

  Still the translator said nothing. Sammy began to squirm. He adjusted his seating position and reached out to his wife. She had openly admitted what she made him swear never to reveal. He looked toward me, pleading.

  “We’re going to the hospital as soon as Emma shows up,” I said.

  I noticed a swatch of pink sticking out below her left hip. I reached down to find out what it was, and she momentarily flinched. She turned curious as I pulled a child’s sock out from under her. She took it from me, squeezed it in her hand. I covered hers with mine. She didn’t seem to mind. I tried to smooth out the rucked up sheet next to her shoulder. I was about to say something, but she beat me to it.

  “I like your hair,” she said, “and I like that you leave it natural, like God intended. All the gray makes you look older, but that’s how it’s supposed to be. And I like that you don’t cover it.”

  “You don’t have to either,” I said.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Your hair looks good uncovered. Not mine, definitely not mine.”

  How to Trans in Raqqa

  In an early essay, you wrote that one of the more remarkable Syrian refugees you interviewed in Beirut was Hiyam, a trans woman who had arrived from Raqqa with her mother. By the time you met her, she had been in Lebanon for a couple of years. She worked as a receptionist and grant writer for one of the queer rights organizations in the capital. You said that you had not realized how firm some of your preconceptions were, marble hard, and as you talked to her, as each minute passed, fissures and cracks appeared in the stone.

  A transgender person from Raqqa?

  Well, yes.

  How did she get access to hormones?

  Pregnancy pills, she said. One makes do.

  A trans woman wearing a hijab?

  She wore one as soon as she could.

  Still wearing one in Beirut?

  Well, yes, as you can obviously see.

  A million and a half Syrian refugees in the country, and yet she, who barely finished eighth grade, found a stable job writing grants?

  Well, she was one of a kind, she sure was.

  When she first reached Beirut, she was a sex worker. She had to survive and she had to take care of her mother, who couldn’t work. Yes, she wore her hijab in public and took it off when in the bedroom with a client. You asked questions that were much too personal, but she didn’t mind, she said. She was a free woman, an open chest of drawers, nothing hidden.

  A Lebanese trans woman explained to Hiyam that she could get assistance from gay rights organizations, everything from housing to classes to stipends. If she was a queer refugee, she qualified, and she most certainly was. She received aid, and in gratitude she began to volunteer at the organization. She sat at the reception desk and welcomed the gay refugees. If someone was desperate enough to claim that they were gay, then they needed help. She admitted that she tended to believe any refugee who maintained that they were queer. It wasn’t as if Hiyam was going to ask when was the last time a boy gave a blowjob. She wasn’t as curious or as inquisitive as you. The Dutch government and various gay organizations in Europe were offering grants. The NGOs were mostly based in Holland, a few in Scandinavia, one or two in Germany, but of course not a single one in the United States. She started helping with grant writing, with research at first, presenting cases, but as her language skills improved, she wrote a bit. She was hired full time. She prided herself on being able to get many boys and girls off the shady streets.

  What was her life like before all this? How did she manage being trans in Raqqa? Very well, thank you. Most people left her alone, her mother was loving, Hiyam had a job, and yes, she had a boyfriend who loved her. They had been together for two years. Her troubles began when the first so-called Islamic militia overran the town. Don’t you nod your head as if you know, she chided. You know nothing. The militiamen did not have a problem with her. They did not bother her much. It seemed they did not believe trans women to be apostates. They did have a problem with her boyfriend. Whether it was because they considered him gay or an adulterer, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was they beheaded him. She left with her mother as soon as she heard. She could not bear living in that hell.

  Yes, she was dating a man in Beirut. It had only been a month or so. But no, he was not her boyfriend. She was still mourning.

  Marriage Does Not Become a Ten-Year-Old

  The journalists wanted to know what Sammy meant by being left with no choice except leaving. What had happened? What changed?

  There was a certain man who wore his religion garishly. He rose up the ranks in the newly assembled army because of his ability to quote wide swaths of text from the holy book and, more important, because he was artful in belittling those unable to recall the Qur’an as well as he. Rumors were that he murdered both his parents and slit his two brothers’ throats for not being assiduously devout. Every Daesh fighter called himself Abu this and Abu that, but he called himself Abu el-Nabi.

  “Father of the Prophet,” the translator explained.

  “May God forgive him,” Sammy said.

  “May God blind him,” Sumaiya said, “and burn his religion. May God never forgive him!”

  Abu el-Nabi was a graduate of the infamous Tadmor Prison in Palmyra. It was said that before he was arrested, he considered religion an afterthought, that he’d never fully contemplated the role of Islam in his life. But the electrocutions he suffered, the beatings with thick PVC pipes, the torturers whispering into his ears that they were going to turn him into art, bringing forth many different colors on his skin, all that transformed him into a believer. The villagers over whom he and his cohort ruled mocked him behind his back, suggesting that he was once a tall man, but the security apparatus broke enough bones that he graduated from prison a ridiculously short one.

  In a Baath Syria he would have been a nobody, a puny homunculus of a man, but in the Islamic state he was a giant. He had two wives and he wanted a t
hird.

  And one day, not too long ago, five Daesh men, well scrubbed and in their best clothes, knocked on Sammy and Sumaiya’s door. The emaciated dog of the neighborhood understood everything and he barked and barked, trying to warn Sammy not to open the door. Abu el-Nabi looked comical in all-over sea blue, that whitebait of a man drowned in a shalwar kameez. The men were invited in, offered tea and welcoming conversation. It was half an hour into the unscheduled visit when one of the men stated the reason they were there. They had come to ask Sammy for his daughter’s hand in marriage. They had heard only great things about ten-year-old Asma, and they were there to vouch for Abu el-Nabi’s incredible qualifications as a husband. He was brave and courageous in battle, his men had the utmost respect for him, as did his wives, and most important, he followed the correct path. He was nothing if not devout.

  “He was nothing if not a son of a bitch,” Sumaiya said, “a most despicable man. May God never grant him health. And short too. Asma was already taller than him. Everybody was.”

  The men said they would have preferred, for propriety’s sake as well as tradition, to have had their women with them at this most glorious occasion, but there was a war going on and the situation was difficult. Sammy announced that he would of course give permission, how could he not? Granted, his daughter Asma was young and had her whole life ahead of her, but she wouldn’t be able to find a more worthy husband than Abu el-Nabi. The family would be honored to have such a man as one of their own. What family wouldn’t? Truly, a blessing had descended upon the house. Sammy explained that Sumaiya was rather ill and they would need a little time to prepare Asma for her future life. The men should return in a couple of days or one week. Yes, they should have the marriage contract signed the following week with a feast to end all feasts in celebration.

  “He thought one week would give us enough time to sort everything and leave,” Sumaiya said, “but I had had enough of those sons of whores.”

  They packed as much as they could as soon as the men left. They woke their children, and everyone squeezed into the family’s thirty-year-old pickup truck. They drove to Sumaiya’s brother’s house, where they stayed for two nights before continuing to the Turkish border.

  “We drove as if we were being followed by jinn that first night,” Sumaiya said, “so fast that I threw up twice before we reached my brother, had to put my head out the pickup window and regurgitate into the dark night.” She paused and took a short, labored breath. Her husband offered her a look full of concern and utter devotion. “There was no light anywhere,” she said. “We had to drive the whole way with the headlights off because we were afraid of snipers. We were used to the sound of low-flying planes, of artillery and rocket launchers. Everything appeared gloomy and purple, yet I was able to see olive groves as we drove along, cucumber fields and bushes of sumac. Will I ever see their like again?”

  Sammy wrung his right hand with his left as if squeezing water from a cloth.

  Who Is Us and Who Is Them?

  “Tell him he’s a hero,” the Belgian journalist with earnest blue eyes said to the interpreter.

  “Me?” Sammy replied. The slow movements of his hands and arms as he spoke seemed jerky because of the immobility of the women interviewing him. My brother watched him intently, and the subtle arcs his hands made seemed to replicate Sammy’s.

  “Yes, yes,” the Englishwoman declared with schoolmarmish intensity. “You’re a hero.” She nodded as if she needed to emphasize her words to herself.

  “He’s my hero,” Sumaiya said. Only her husband, Mazen, and I paid attention to her. She was no more than elevator music to the three women. “He’s my hero, not theirs.”

  “And you’re mine,” Sammy told her. “I belong to no one but you.”

  “See?” Sumaiya said. “I told you he’s the sweetest man.” Then to my brother, “You should be sweet to the doctor here. She deserves the best.”

  “Yes, you should,” I said to Mazen. “You definitely should.”

  I wanted to call Francine and tell her she was my hero, that I belonged to no one but her.

  Emma entered our universe. She didn’t look our way at first, only at her two companions, neither of whom was Rodrigo. She seemed generous with her accessories this morning, superfluously so. Her jangling bracelets rang a higher note than her laugh. She spoke Swedish, and I couldn’t figure out what she was saying to the couple with her. All three wore orange neon vests, but hers clashed with everything else she wore. Unlike the attire of the other man and woman, her pants, sweater, and jacket were not neutral—nothing about her was ever neutral.

  The journalists kept repeating that Sammy was a hero. He shook his head. He wasn’t one, he insisted. He did what any man would do for his family, what any husband and father would do. There was nothing special about him. The journalists asked the interpreter to explain that he must accept that what he did was exceptional and that he should be lauded for it.

  I was glad Emma had arrived. Sumaiya kept asking why the women were hero-worshipping her husband and why they wouldn’t leave him alone.

  “Well, what you did was remarkable,” the Belgian said. “You’re an unusual man.”

  Mazen couldn’t sit quiet anymore. “Why do you think he’s atypical?” he asked in English, probably more gruffly than he had intended.

  “He saved his family,” the English journalist said.

  “You consider that unusual?” he asked. “Most of the people in this camp are here because they wanted to save their families. They’re all heroes.”

  “No,” she said. “Not all. This man wanted to save his daughter. He endured much hardship because he loves his daughter.”

  “Of course,” Mazen said. “What father doesn’t?”

  “Well, they don’t really love their daughters. Not all of them.”

  “What?” I asked as calmly as I could.

  “What?” Mazen screamed. Loudest I’d ever heard him.

  Sumaiya was nudging me, asking what they were saying. I was relieved that the translator hadn’t translated.

  “What do you mean?” Mazen demanded, losing the last shred of civility. Rage added a rosy tint to his cheeks and brow. “Who is this ‘they’ you speak of? Who are they who don’t love their daughters? Why don’t you tell us?”

  All three women sat unmoving, faces blanched and terror stricken. I was about to stand up and move to them, face-to-face, when out of seemingly nowhere Emma’s hand locked on to my left shoulder.

  But Mazen—Mazen did not have a hand holding him back. “Fuck you,” he yelled. “Fuck you and fuck your stupid ignorance.” He sounded American when he swore, though his rage was pure Lebanese. “Why don’t you tell me to my face that I don’t love my daughter? Just say it. I dare you, you fuckwits, I dare you. Say it, and it had better be loud and clear. Say it!”

  “I think it’s best you left,” Emma said to the women, walking into the middle between the two beds with a gesture that included her companions, my brother, and me. “We have to process this family.”

  The women rushed out, shuffling as they tried to make sure they hadn’t left anything behind. My brother, adrift in his own seas, kept yelling: “Fuck your blasphemous stupidity.”

  Emma, grinning ear to ear, said, “Hi, Mazen. Welcome to Lesbos!”

  How to Process Rage: An Instruction . . . Maybe an Example . . . Oh, Never Mind

  Mazen apologized to Sumaiya for exhibiting such rage. He assured all of us—Sammy, Emma, the Swedish doctors—that he was quite all right or would be as soon as he went outside for a moment to inhale some fresh air and expunge the negative energy. He gently picked up a confused Sumaiya’s hand and kissed it. “I’ll be completely sweet from now on,” he told her. “I promise you.”

  “But what is going on?” Sumaiya asked me. “What happened?”

  What I wanted to do was walk the barracks from one end to the other, alo
ng the corridor between the serried cots, at a fast pace to slow my own anger, but I could not do so without worrying or frightening Sumaiya. I had trained myself to set aside my feelings for a time while I continued doing what had to be done—or at least not to exhibit these feelings around people. I settled on briefly telling Sumaiya about the exchange and apologized for the screaming. She didn’t understand my anger or my brother’s. How could one not love one’s daughter, she said dismissively. The women were stupid.

  There was a time when rage was my intimate, in my late teens and twenties. I was shy and confused as a youngster, to the point of being taciturn, afraid of saying the wrong thing, of behaving inappropriately. I spent my youth terrified of being seen and desperately wanting to be. I held secrets within secrets within secrets, wrapped myself tight in dissimulation. By the time I arrived in the United States, I couldn’t hold anything in any longer. Like the can my mother stored in her pantry for so long, I exploded, and what spewed out of me was venom. My mother cut me off before I changed my biological sex. She declared me dead because of my wrath. I was unable to speak to her without screaming across international phone lines. Such fury, such indignation.

  Luckily, I did not remain wrathful for too long. Time away from my youth and its triggers softened the edges of my anger, ameliorated its harshness. I could get furious every now and then, but my temper was no longer as easily lost, and I grew adept at regaining my composure when that happened.

  Mazen, on the other hand, never got angry.