www.rondavid.net  (© Ron David)

ARABSONG: Celebrations of Life

A journal of truth, humor and occasional beauty dedicated to the principle that every

human life --black, white, arab, jew, american, non-american-- is equally valuable.

"The Autobiography of Muriel Sharon"

--a novel by Ron David--

o  HOME

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MURIEL SHARON

-- a novel

BOOK ONE

Chapter 1

'The Paris of the East'

Chapter 2

'The Eyebrows of My Enemy's Wife'

("Isolde & the Duke" is the last half of Chapter 2)

Chapter 3

'My Father's Walk'

BOOK TWO

Chapter 4

'My Father's Hands'

Chapter 5

'Jordan Almonds'

Chapter 6 

'Life with the Smallest Possible 'L'

Chapter 7 

'Never Again'

Chapter 8

'Someone to Sing to Me'

Chapter 9

'Where Are the Birds?'

Chapter 10 

'...Surely They Can't Be Jews'

Chapter 11

'Not Exactly John Wayne'

Chapter 12

'Whores and Dead Chickens'

Chapter 13

'The Wall'

Chapter 14

'The Body Count'

Chapter 15

'Beautiful Eyes'

Chapter 16

'Lebanese Book of the Dead'

The

Autobiography

of

Muriel Sharon

<

"I will write songs against you,

enemies of my people..."

Charles Reznikoff

<

(..for the Duke..)

I swear on everything I believe in -- on my father's grave and my mother's laugh, on Caruso's voice and Malamud's "Jewbird" and Magic's no-look pass -- that with the single "liberty" of turning Ariel Sharon into a cross dresser, every fact, figure and brutal allegation is, to the best of my knowledge, the truth. I'll provide references, I'll take a polygraph test --anything.  It's the truth.   

Ron David

PART ONE

I remember the year my parents visited Lebanon, not because I  gave a honk about Lebanon, but because it was the year of my divorce, the year I turned 30, and the year I left Detroit.  In those days I had all the answers: What’s an Arab?  That’s easy— an Arab is half Black, half Jewish ...

Detroit, 1973

Vern's Pub, on the campus of Wayne State University, had sawdust on the floor, served served dark beer, had the best arguments in Detroit and had a huge TV on which my friend Lewis could watch his mopey-assed baseball games.  Normally, Lewis was so smart he got on your nerves but when he watched baseball, he was as dumb as the rest of us.  Lewis taught Comparative Literature at Wayne State.  Six years ago I took one of his classes and we haven't stopped arguing since.  (I didn’t even notice the gorgeous freckle-legged redhead sizing me up from the next table.  If I had more character, I might have been insulted—she didn’t want me, she didn’t even know me, she wanted my type: dark enough to be a little exotic without quite being black.) 

         “Slide, you lethargic klutz!"  Lewis screamed at the TV.

         Without taking my eyes off the redhead, I said, "I wonder if I could get away with not telling my parents I'm getting a divorce?"

         "If you thought with your brain instead of your gonads, you’d skip the divorce.   Jump, you emaciated bastard!  Another beer?”

         “I can’t.  I promised dad I’d drive him to his retirement party.” I couldn’t resist needling Lewis a little—”I’m sure he’d love it if you came along.”

         "I truly appreciate the invitation,” Lewis said, “but I would rather spend the evening in leg-irons than with your father."

         He wasn’t the only one.  “Tomorrow night at nine, Green Leaf Grille.”

         “No way,” Lewis said.  “If you have a death wish, then you can go to Linwood Avenue, but I’m not dumb enough to go with you.”

         “Right.  I’ll see you tomorrow.”  

My father had worked at Ford's for 35 years and hated every minute of it.  He had started in the foundry, worked his way into the payroll office and, eventually, used his talent and chutzpah to become an automotive sculptor.  My father had some admirable qualities, but frankly, whenever I wanted to decide what to do in any situation, I imagined what he would do and I did the opposite.  I loved him but, as far as I was concerned, he was a creature from another planet.

         I saw my mom through the side window—she was in the kitchen cooking.  I gave a little knock on the back door and walked in.  Even before I saw her kneading the raw beef and bulghar wheat, I knew by the spicy smell that she was making kibbe.  It wasn’t one of my favorite foods but I loved the smell of it.

         "Rose," my father grouched from the next room, "what did you press these damned trousers with, one of your sanitary napkins, they have lint all over them."  Mom stopped kneading the kibbe just long enough to raise one sticky hand and give my father’s voice the Finger.  I laughed, hugged her hello, lit us both a cigarette.  We laughed and talked while her hands (which looked like they could make the kibbe without her) finished kneading the kibbe, shaped it into an oblong loaf, and carefully put it onto an oval platter.  My mother made the Sign of the Cross, then, with the heel of her fingerbit hand, she pressed a cross into the kibbe exactly as my grandmother had and as her grandmother had and as every Lebanese Christian since the sad, dusty time of Christ had.

         I looked away from her hands at the books stacked in two neat piles of exactly the same height (obviously Dad's work) on the kitchen table.  There was a letter jutting from one of the books.  Mom saw me crooking my neck at the letter.  "It's from your uncle Joe," she said.  Her hands were sticky so she nipped the letter with her teeth and gave it to me.  "It's in Arabic so we had to take it to Nick Namour to see what it said."

         "How is uncle Joe?"  I opened the letter.  Uncle Joe, the oldest of dad’s brothers, was the only one born in Lebanon.  He had lived in Detroit until he retired from the Post Office and went back to Lebanon.  He looked like Yogi Berra, right down to the dazed look.

         "His entire village is preparing an elaborate reception for us."  She offered me kibbe.  I pretended to vomit at the thought of it and I lit us both a cigarette.

         "Five kids and not one of you is interested in our heritage."

         "All nationalism does is give people an excuse to kill each other."

         "You're always defending black nationalism and Jewish nationalism!  It's okay for them, but not for us?  Besides, I'm not talking about nationalism, I'm talking about ethnic pride."  She rinsed her hands.  "Do other families argue all the time or is it just us?"

         “It’s just us. We’re a little bit nuts. There's something I wanted to tell you."

         "What's that, sweetheart?"

         I thought my divorce was going to come out, but it didn’t—“I’m moving to New York."

         "New York?  Do you have a job there?"

              "Freelance, nothing permanent, but that's the way I want it.  I've been at Chrysler for four years doing the same work dad does at Fords.  In a few months I’ll be thirty years old.  If I don't get serious and do something with my life, I’m liable to end up like him."

         “Good for you.”  She got this spacey look and started to recite: "'For I know that it is within you to bring forth the power that God hath bestowed upon me, to be embodied in great words and deeds, even as the sun brings to life the fragrant flowers of the field.'"

         "Kahlil Gibran?"

         "Who else could write like that?" 

         "The Lebanese sure have a tendency to overcook things, don't they?"

         "Don't we."

         "We?  We are so American it's ridiculous.  Not only have I never been to Lebanon but neither have you or dad.  Now you're going to visit the place for a few weeks and all you do is cook Lebanese food and quote that flake Gibran."  She winced. I apologized and bent the truth: “I love seeing you and dad so enthusiastic.  Even Lewis is excited for you."

         "What's that big bullshitter up to these days?  I keep telling Mrs. Dabish how nice Lewis is but when she sees his car out front she hides in back of her house."

         "I’m sure that has nothing to do with the fact that she's from Jordan and he's Jewish"

         "She's not from Jordan, she's from Palestine."

         "There's no such place as Palestine."

         "You really hurt her feelings when you told her that."

          "Anyone who likes Yasir Arafat should..."

         "I think rebirth is a beautiful concept.  Do you believe in rebirth?"

         "Do you intentionally change the subject,” I asked, then added with a grin too broad to be bitchy, “or is that part of the inscrutable workings of the Arab mind?”

         "I'm not dumb enough to get you started on Arafat."  Then, patting herself on the ass, she added, “And you can kiss my inscrutable Arab mind.”

         I was still laughing at mom’s inscrutable Arab mind when my father came out in his pajama bottoms, smelling of Old Spice aftershave, grinning like the happiest troll in the universe.  "I thought I heard my buddy's voice.  How's my buddy doing?  I missed you, son."  My father gave me that hug of his and that kiss he gave you, so total and unrestrained that it was like being kissed by a wild animal.  "Twenty seconds," the Duke said, "that's all I'll be."  He went into the living room and turned on the TV.  On the wall behind the TV were dad's paintings of his sister and six brothers.  The brothers were all in World War II Army uniforms.  Even in his uniform, uncle Joe looked like Yogi Berra. 

         Dad said, "If you want to expedite matters, you could give your mother a hand putting a coat of polish on my shoes."  He winked and walked toward the bathroom.  The bottoms of his pajamas, as always, were tucked neatly into his socks.  From the bathroom, he said, "It'd only take a second for me to give that raggedy beard of yours a trim."   I laughed and said No Thanks.  It was the night of his retirement party.  I couldn't ruin it for him by bringing up my divorce.

... we were little kids—six, seven, eight—my brother and I loved to tease our baby sister.  She screeched.  It was Saturday morning.  Our father was sleeping from the job he hated and worked only for us because his irresponsible father had never worked for him and we had waked him with our noisy play.

                  I could hear his rage from the next room. 

                  I hid under my baby sister's crib, only too happy to let her and my brother take the rap if I could get away with it.  From under the crib I could see his feet and legs.  Enraged as he was, he had stopped to put on his house-slippers before he came to beat us.  Slippers, socks, pajamas tucked into the socks, like a sleeping baseball player. 

                  He found me and beat me hardest because I was oldest.

My father, who drank no more than once or twice a year, had a few quick drinks.  He was so excited about his upcoming trip to Lebanon—he kept calling it "the Paris of the East"—that it was all he talked about.  I had the feeling that he wanted me to stay near him, so I did.  An hour or so into the party, four husky musicians who looked like they could have been my uncles, half-walked, half-danced into the room playing slow, undulating Arabic music.  After a few minutes, the music turned speedy and a chubby little belly dancer came out and began twirling her huge boobs around my father's nose.  Dad, loose as a dimestore snake from all that booze, took off his suit coat and sidled up to the dancing lady.  If there was anything the Duke was famous for, outside his temper, it was his dancing.  He began swooping and gliding in slow rhythmic circles and, without missing a beat, he removed his necktie, jump-roped it over the dancer's head, and pulled the tie taut around her whirling ass.  Before you could say, Jumpin Jack Flash is a Gas Gas Gas, the old lecher had a mighty assertive erection smoking up his pants.  He was having the time of his life until he looked over and saw his grinning son.  I went for a long walk.

          After I returned to the party, it took dad a few beats to realize that I was back at his side, then, in front of his friends, as if there were no other people in the world, he put his arms around me and kissed me with great energy.  "Come with us to Lebanon, son," he said.  "Don't wait until you're my age before you see your own country."  I hugged him but I didn't say anything.  "Lebanon will be beautiful beyond our wildest dreams," he said with too much passion.  "I know it will.  I just know it will."  I had a feeling that I'd never had before: I wanted to protect him.  I stayed at his side for the rest of the night.

If there was one place in Detroit that I’d miss, it was Linwood Avenue. The people, the energy, the life-affirming spirituality resonate with something inside me.  If I had to give it a name, I would call it a sense of ecstasy.   It is a feeling of such power and beauty that you want to share it.  I don’t trust gods, churches, priests, countries, politicians, philosophies, ideologies—I trust my sense of ecstasy.  It guides me, I follow it...but sometimes I can’t hear what it’s trying to tell me. 

           So I pop on over to Linwood Avenue: Soul music spews from a record store with a huge mural, two tiny boys and one bony all-elbows corn rowed girl dance above their streetlit shadows, horns honk, drivers curse and an enormous muscular young brotherman the color of a new basketball washes grocery windows above chapped apples and wilted celery while a businesslike nurse smells a melon's rectum and checks out the window washer's ass through the corner of her sneaky turquoise eye shadow.  It was one of those warm October nights that made you want to kiss the sidewalk but I knew it couldn't last.  Detroit and I were getting on each other's nerves.

         I walked over to the Green Leaf Grille to meet Lewis.  I sat at the counter near an old man with a wool cap and an itchy wool shirt buttoned so tight to the neck that it looked like it was strangling the skinny little guy.  He kept looking at me.  I said Hi.  He said, "Fine, how bout you?"  I asked him how he could stand that flannel shirt and wool hat in this heat.  He said, “You’re not black and you sure ain’t white.  What exactly are you?”

         “Lebanese.”
         “Oh,” he chuckled, “you’re one of them Lesbians.”  After he finished having a good laugh over his lame joke, he proceeded to tell me about my ancestors, the Phoenicians.  He knew a lot more about them than I did.  (He cared a lot more about them, too.)  I saw Lewis outside the door so I thanked the old guy for caring about my ancestors (I never did see the waitress) and led Lewis into the alley behind “the Leaf.”  For months, Lewis and I had been trying to meet with the leaders of a black revolutionary group but they kept putting us off.  They promised to meet us tonight out in back of the Green Leaf Grille.  They thought they were testing us by having us meet them in a place that was considered so dangerous.  They didn’t know that I grew up here.  When I was a teenager, we'd sit behind “the Leaf” for hours, arguing about jazz, playing with the miraculous bodies of young girls and trying to figure out how to become heroes (in those days, no one wanted to be rich—we wanted to be heroes).  I didn't remember it being this dark.  No street lights, no store lights, not even a moon.  It’s too dark to trust your eyes, so you listen: the loud sounds from the street evaporate because they don't threaten.  Your ears magnify the soft sounds, a cat's bitchy hiss, the soft thick cough of somebody wearing a chain, the scrape and scratch of rats.  Something moves or clicks and I feel my breath drop (Pay attention, asshole! ) like an elevator on a sudden stop. I force my eyes to look harder: I see abandoned cars, gutted and overrun with dead and living garbage and dark ugly doorways—something moves and my heart stomps so hard I can feel it in my shoes.  (I can pretend to be fearless...there’s no one here to call me a liar...but the truth is, for me, courage is an act of will: I was scared shitless.)  If these suckers were going to murder me I wished they'd do it quickly before I chickened out of my last gasp of post-adolescent heroism.         

         Murder us. I was so scared that I'd forgotten about Lewis.  I know Lewis: When he's alone, he's as chickenhearted as I am but when he's with me, Lewis is fearless.  I'm the same.  I  could be scared or Lewis could be scared but together we were damn near John Wayne.  We were so cool in the saddle that we resumed yesterday’s argument about whether Dos Passos had become so political that his novels suffered or not.  We were arguing about Dos Passos’s use of bios in his novels when six perfectly normal men —no guns, no ski masks— walked up and asked us what we wanted.

         "We’d like to help you," I said.

         “Help us what?”

         "We want to join the People's Army," I said.

         "You holding your own weapons?"

         "We don't use weapons,” I said.  “We’d like to help you in any way that doesn't require us to hurt people."

         “The revolution is not in need of accountants,” the guy said, “...brain dead mutherfuckers wasting my valuable revolutionary time."

         “I got your brain dead mutherfuckers,” I said, grabbing my crotch for emphasis as they walked away. 

         Lewis started to bitch me out, but before he could administer one decent curse, one of the walkers stopped abruptly, turned, and shouted “BOOO!”  I jumped, my heart jumped, my dick jumped—my dead old Phoenician ancestors probably jumped clean out of their graves.  The revolutionaries who didn’t need any accountants walked away laughing.

         Lewis got halfway through saying, "I told you it wouldn’t work,” then he started laughing.  I tried to tell him to Fuck Off but I started laughing.  Then, still laughing, he said, “If you're going to leave town, we'd better go have an argument magnificent enough to last us until we see each other again."  After a few seconds, he added, “Booo!”

Instead of the monumental argument we had planned, Lewis and I sat in Vern’s Pub without speaking.  Lewis was so low-energy that he watched the ball game without cursing at the TV.  He ordered us two more beers and walked, with great effort, to the Men's Room. I hadn’t even left yet and I already missed him.  It wasn't just that he was the best friend I had (although he was), nor was he anything like my role model.  He was eight years older than I and he'd read a few million more books but I wasn't the kind of person who needed a role model.  In my own ecstacy driven way I could see things that Lewis, the master and the slave of his own rationality, could never see and he knew it.  I didn't need his mind any more than he needed mine.  But the harder I looked the less certain I was where Lewis ended and I started.  Together we became another person who was better and braver and smarter than either of us—then I saw the redhead from the other night and I forgot all that fancy shit.  I am sexually attracted to smart women, and those freckled legs of hers were looking positively brilliant.  She had six or seven books stacked in front of her.  I tilted my head sideways and pretended to read the book titles.

         I was writing her phone number on my Driver’s License when Lewis came back from the Men's Room zipping his fly.  He started to lecture me (he barely had the word “womanizer” out of his mouth) but a news bulletin interrupted the ball game: Syria and Egypt had attacked Israel.   Lewis rushed behind the bar and tried the other channels.

         My first feelings were immense and brutal.  Nowadays people fake a little sweetness toward the Arabs—it’s politically incorrect to wish for the evaporation of an entire ethnic group—but in those days, nobody bothered faking it.  To me and to all of the humanists I knew, Israel wasn’t a place, it was a sacred cause.  In those days, virtually every Jew and every humane Gentile, including American Arabs like me, were furious when we heard that Syria and Egypt had attacked Israel.  The more non-violent we were, the more it infuriated us.  I was damn near a pacifist.  I believed with enough conviction to put my life on the line that every human life was precious and irreplaceable.  But in 1973 when Egypt and Syria attacked Israel, I—like every “sensitive” person I knew—had a clear, simple reaction: If Israel weren't there you could drop a bomb on the entire Middle East with no great loss to humanity.  I left Vern’s Pub without saying a word to Lewis or the redhead.

I stormed into my parents' house (fucking Arabs!), gave my mother half of a kiss and said with no preamble, "Anna and I are getting a divorce."  The look on her face could not have been more stricken if every one of her children had been murdered.  She crossed her arms over her ribs, rocked back and forth and made small groans like a dog being shoved off the couch.  "Mom, nobody died here, it's only a divorce.  Could you for once try not to be so Lebanese.  Please cool it just a little?"

       "There’s never been a divorce in our family," she went limp, groaned, started quivering.

         "I swear to God, setting foot in this house is like stepping into an Italian opera.  Besides, Uncle Tony got a divorce when I was still in high school."

         "Your Uncle Tony was a gambler," she said.

         "Well that certainly explains it."  I started laughing.

         "You sarcastic little shit."  She started laughing.

         I lit us both a cigarette.  She said, "I suppose I'd better tell your father."    

         I turned the TV on looking for news about Israel, I heard my father howl, "WHAT?"  He came running into the room like a maniac.  "HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?" he screamed.  "WHAT DID I DO TO GOD TO DESERVE A SON LIKE THIS?" 

         "I knew I could count on you to keep your composure."

         "I'LL SHOW YOU COMPOSURE!"  He took a swing at me.  For some reason, that made me grin.  He lunged at me and I stepped behind the couch, grinning.  I couldn't seem to stop grinning.  He was so enraged that he vaulted clean over the couch. 

         "Holy fuck!" I said.  "That was amazing!"

         "WHAT KIND OF LANGUAGE IS THAT?  THE FILTHIEST WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND YOU USE IT IN FRONT OF YOUR MOTHER!"

         "Dad, my language is not the issue.  I'm getting a divorce."

         "LIKE HELL YOU ARE!"

         "Mom?  Is there any way you could quiet him down?"

         "Jimmy, sweetheart, take it easy.  Don't get all sweaty right after your shower."

         "How can you not be sweaty with a son like that," he grumbled, then, amazingly, he quieted.  "I'm alright, I just had to get it out of my system.”  He walked mom and me to the couch and sat between us with his arms around us.  “A family has to stick together in times of crisis.  There is no problem that can't be worked out if you love each other."      

         "I appreciate your concern, dad, but it’s all over."  I kissed him on his bald head and lit a cigarette.       

         "You really should stop smoking, son," he waved the smoke out of his face.  "I'm surprised to hear you give up, Danny.  I would never give up your mother—NEVER."

         She laughed.  "He'd kill me first." 

         I heard something about Israel on the TV, so I rushed over and turned up the volume.  Whatever it was, I had missed it.  My father said, "What the hell is going on here?"

         "You know your son, Jimmy," mom said, "he's concerned about Israel."

         "I'm concerned about the price of toilet paper in China but I'm not ignorant enough to interrupt important family discussions because of it.  ARE YOU LOSING YOUR MIND, DANNY?  YOU WERE THINKING OF GETTING A DIVORCE, REMEMBER?"

         "On any rational scale of values, Israel is a lot more important than my divorce."

         "I GIVE UP! IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO CARRY ON AN INTELLIGENT CONVERSATION WITH THIS IGNORANT SON OF A BITCH!"

         "Let me explain something to you, man..."

         "'MAN'?  WHO IS THIS LUNATIC CALLING 'MAN'?  MAY GOD STRIKE ME DEAD IF I EVER THINK OF HAVING ANOTHER SON!"

         "Israel is existential proof that a country can be built on  the ideals of peace and humanity without becoming as brutal as the butchers who try to exterminate it!  If Israel dies, every person who believes in the sacred value of human life will die with it!"

         "WHAT DOES THIS LUNATIC WANT US TO DO, STAND UP AND APPLAUD?"  He stood on the couch and applauded.  "Just what the world needs, another speech by some immoral lunatic who runs out on his wife and pays lip‑service to the Jews without ever doing anything about it."

         "What exactly do you have against the Jews?" I said.

         "I don't have anything against the Jews.  For your information, I have one hell of a respect for the Jews and if I were a Jew I'd be the best damed Jew you ever saw but I'm not and neither are you."

         "If you had some imagination, you'd see that you could be anything you want to be."

          "Remember when your sister Gina put a dog collar around her neck and barked at passersby?"  I asked him what his point was.  "My point is, all that funnybusiness didn't make her a dog any more than yours is going to make you a Jew.  Your skin is dark just like mine, you have hair all over your body just like me—like it or not, I am the only father you will ever have and I am a Goddamned Lebanese and so are you.  You can put a pole up your ass all day long, son, but it doesn’t make you a flag."  I started laughing. 

         "What is this guy laughing at?” my father said.  "You know what I can’t understand —how can somebody as smart as you do such stupid things?  You want a perfect example of what I'm talking about—telling your wife that you slept with another woman.  Anyone can understand doing it but you'd have to be a goddamned idiot to admit it."

         "What do you mean, 'Anyone can understand doing it?'" my mother said.  "Just because you'd screw anything with a skirt on..."    

         "Just what the hell are you implying here, sister?"

         "Implying!  I know for a fact that you screwed Ellen—and every time you see that bitch Peggy Lee—”

         “SEE her?  The only place I see Peggy Lee is on television!”

         “And even then, she gives you a hardon, you degenerate old son of a bitch!”

         "Who's getting the divorce," I said, "me or you guys?"  They ignored me and kept arguing.  I was laughing, trying to calm them down when a news bulletin flashed across the TV screen: Israeli counterattacks fail...Egyptian soldiers, tanks and equipment continue to pour across Suez Canal...U.S. officials accuse Soviets of airlifting military equipment to Egypt and Syria...Syrians attack Golan Heights with 45,000 soldiers and 1,400 tanks.

         The beginning of The End.  No peace, no sanity.  No Israel, no Jews.

         Never again.  If I have learned anything from the Holocaust it is that gentleness can be molded into passivity and love of life can be twisted into cowardice and that, once that happens, pacifism is murder—worse than murder—because you watch the death of everything you love without lifting a hand.

=

=

The

Autobiography

of

Muriel Sharon