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--

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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'

LINKS

Chapter 3

It seems silly now, but when I was a small boy I believed that new sneakers made you jump further and that sins you weren't forgiven for made you slower on the run. 

                    I was also Catholic, so, when I went to Confession, I left nothing to chance.  Once, after confessing all of my normal sins, I asked the priest if it was a sin to wish you were an orphan. 

                    He asked me if it felt like a sin.  I said Yes it did, very much.

Sweden, 1982

My father had always been proud of his walk.  His step was always quick and light and sounded as snappy as a new typewriter.  He always held his shoulders way back and his head way up and his flawless little moustache way out, not at all like a soldier, more like an athlete or a dancer or the man who had just bought the Brooklyn Bridge. 

         I took him for a walk before dinner.  The cocky little strut he'd had all his life was now a hunchback shuffle.  His feet against the sidewalk sounded like an old woman sandpapering a chair.  I told myself that having to help my father lift his foot over the curb was as much a part of life's continuum as learning to walk.     

         Three teenage Swedish girls walked toward us.  My father, who had never used words cruder than Hell and Damn, mumbled, "What do those fucking cunts think they're doing?"  I hoped that the girls couldn't understand English.  A man approached, paying us no attention. My father said, "What in the fuck is he looking at?  Personally, I don't have an opinion one way or the other."  The man, blushing, did not look us in the face.

         "Rose," my father screamed. "Where the hell is Rose?"

My mother lives in the past as little as anyone I know so I was surprised when I came home from work and found her showing her childhood pictures to Sarah.  There were several photos of her sister and three brothers, three of her father and one of her mother.  Sarah picked up a photo of mom's father and smiled at it.  That photograph always made me wish that my grandfather had been alive long enough for me to know him.  In that wonderful, bizarre picture, he was in his late fifties, very handsome, very dignified, standing shirtless in a muscle pose.

         Sarah stared at the only photo of my grandmother, who looked like she was trying to intimidate the camera.  "What a face," Sarah said.  "I'm surprised that dad never painted her portrait."        

         "He wanted to," Mom said, "but she wouldn't let him."

         "Why not?"

         "Rose!" my father hollered from the next room.  "Do I have to kiss your ass to get a simple glass of water?"

         "Be right there, honey."  She raised her eyebrows in resignation and took another drag from her cigarette.

         Sarah fidgeted with her hair until she calmed down, then whispered to mom, "Do they have any idea what causes Alzheimer's?"

         "They give you no end of explanations," mom said, "but after you strip away the doubletalk, they have no idea." Mom looked at the photo of her mother, smiled and said, "She'd say it was his vanity."

          "Vanity?" Sarah echoed.

          "I swear to God," mom said, laughing bitterly, "she'd say that Jimmy looked in the mirror so much that his soul leaked out."  Mom started crying before she had stopped laughing.  Sarah reached across the table and held both of mom's hands.  Mom began talking about how, years ago, she finally managed the courage to see a psychiatrist and try to deal with the fact that her mother didn't love her very much.  "Two weeks later, she died," Mom said, crying and laughing.  "I swear to God, she did it to spite me.  If I ..."

         "ROSE!" my father shouted, "where's that fucking water?"

         Sarah went to my father's room.  "I don't care how sick you are," Sarah said, "if you ever talk to mom like that again, I swear to God, I'll kick you right in the balls."

        When Sarah came back, she and my mother held each other.

Ben called to see if I was alright.

         "I can't bear to see him like this, if that's what you mean."

         "I know how you feel.  Dying sucks."

         "It's not the dying.  It's the loss of dignity."

         "We don't look at it like that," Ben said.  "He made it impossible for you to love him the way he was before.  Now you feel sorry for him and want to hug him and cuddle him.  The girls and I like him better this way."

         "Now that he's a fucking buffoon?  Were you guys that afraid of him?  Did you hate him that much?"    

         "I'm sorry you feel like that," Ben said.

"What the hell are you just standing there for?  Can't you see I'm having trouble closing my...my..."

         "Trousers, honey," my mother said.

         "Goddam things, whatever you call them.  Fucking humidity in this place is shrinking all my..."

          "Trousers.  Maybe you just gained a few pounds, Jimmy."

         "Gained a few pounds, my ass.  The humidity in this fucking town is shrinking everything I own.  What's the name of this fucking town, anyhow?"

          "Sweden, honey.  It's the place where everybody commits suicide, remember?"

         "If you want my opinion on the matter, they don't commit suicide at all, their fucking trousers just shrink them to death."

         He turned to me.  "Are we going for our run now?" he said.  "We always go for a run together when we...when we...on visits."

         "I'm a little tired.  Maybe tomorrow?"

              "Whatever you like, Son, it's up to you.  One day's as good as another to me.  If I remember this fucking town correctly, it doesn't even have a Lebanese restaurant in it."  

         "There's one up on The Avenue.  We can go there if you like."  

         The owner—or whoever he was—opened the door for us and bowed and scraped us into his restaurant.  His puffy pink eyes looked like he'd been smoking too much hashish.

         My father said, "Keefek, umo."  As always, that greeting was accompanied by somebody's arm around someone's shoulder: my father, hunched and shuffling, put his arm up over the shoulder of the stranger.  They spoke half English, half Arabic.

         "What did Dad say?" I whispered at my mother.

         "'May you have a dozen sons and may they kill all of your enemies and pay all of your debts.'"

At dinner, dad almost seemed like his old self: he wondered why the bread was so soggy and if the meat was spoiled and what was the crap they put in the coffee.  Fortunately, he only pestered the family and didn't bother the overworked obsequious pinkeyed maitre'd/waiter/ chef/owner.

         Until it came to the chairs.

         "You'll see," my father said.  "He'll thank me for bringing it to his attention."

         When the red eyed sniffing man brought dessert, dad said, "Excuse me, Umo, but I thought you'd like to know that the legs of your chairs are too long.  They don't allow people's heels to rest firmly on the floor and it cuts off the circulation to the backs of their legs.  If I were you, Umo, I'd shorten the legs on all of these fucking chairs."

         The man pulled a chair from a nearby table, sat next to my father and started to cry.

         Dad put his arm around the man.  "They aren't that bad, Umo.  Probably no more than five-sixteenths of an inch.  If you have a saw I could do it for you."

         The man wept uncontrollably. 

         Dad put both arms around the man and tried to console him. "Maybe I was just sitting incorrectly.  Now that I've moved forward a little the chair is perfect."               

         Through his tears and mucous, the man said, "It is not the chairs, Umo.  Israel has invaded Lebanon."

         "Just what in the hell is that supposed to mean?"

         "The Army of Israel is in Lebanon, now!"

         My father gave a soft gruesome animal groan. 

         His eyes looked as if one more light had been turned off.  

         My mother asked, "Did they say why Israel invaded us in the first place?"

         "A Palestinian terrorist shot an Israeli ambassador," the guy said.  "May all those Palestinian bastards rot in hell!"

         Mom started to say something but dad interrupted: "Lebanon doesn't concern me.  It doesn't make one bit of difference to me what happens in that fucking lunatic asylum!"

I was washing the dishes when Sarah asked mom what she thought of Israel invading Lebanon.  "If you want the truth," mom said, "I don't think there'll be a Lebanon for long."

         My father, though he was in a very abstract mood, howled, "Who gives a damn!"

         "I give a damn," mom said.  "If our country dies, we die, too."             

         "I have news for you, sister," my father said.  "That fucking hellhole is already dead."

If dad had been one way I would have known what I had to deal with but he changed from day to day, sometimes from minute to minute. 

         The-second to-last day with us, he barely ate, he didn't say or do anything.  He just sat there.  I don't know if he knew who we were.  After dinner, mom wanted to watch the news on television, so we all went with her.  Dad sat very still.  His eyes seemed not to be focused on anything.  It gave me the creeps.      

         On the news, you could see soldiers storming a castle. 

         Dad didn't move.  He didn't seem angry or sad.  He didn't seem, anything?  I kept trying not to look at him.  I recognized Beaufort Castle from the photographs of my parents' trip.  Artillery and tanks and foot soldiers blew up buildings and people.

         "I can't watch any more of this," mom said.

         Dad didn't react at all, he seemed to have no idea, no, anything.  His parted lips looked something like a smile and his eyes didn't go anywhere.  With great difficulty, he stood, walked to the coat rack near the door and waited.                                

         "Sweetheart," my mother said.  "Is everything okay?"

         "Fine," he said.  "I thought I'd give Brother Joe a hand."          

         Sarah whispered my name and put me in her arms.           

         She squeezed me so tightly that I asked her if she way okay.

         "Am I okay?" she said. "Daniel, you're the one who's shaking."

In bed that night, Sarah asked me if I wanted to talk about it. 

         "Maybe I could take either my father dying or his country dying," I said, "but both of them at once...it seems so unfair." 

         Sarah said the obvious: "Life isn't fair."

         With too much energy and no brains, I said, "It is if you make it fair."

I tried to sneak out early for a calming morning run.  When I saw my father waiting for me in his shorts and sneakers, I felt like I was his hostage.  "Good morning, buddy," he said.  We kissed each other with great love although we needed to live in separate cities. "Your beard may be gray but you are still my little boy."  He kissed me again.  I missed him, I missed my father.

         "I wasn't going to run today," I lied. "Let's just walk."

         He jogged in place, saying let's go for our run like we always do.  His shorts— enormous baggy satiny monstrosities—billowed just above his knees, long and comical and self-deprecating.

         I looked at his eyes.  My father had always had smart eyes.  No matter how much you hated what he did to you, you looked at his eyes and you knew that a real brain fired those eyes.  Intelligence, energy, dignity -- all there in the fierce proud pierce of those eyes.     

         The eyes of the bouncing buffoon in the clownish shorts looked as soft and witless as poached eggs.  I told myself that the gutting of a man's mind was every bit as natural and as good as the day he learned his first lovesong, but I did not believe myself, not for one fucking second.  "If you want to run, we'll run," I said.

         He ran, I followed.  I tried to have the courage to let my father kill himself if he chose, but I was terrified.  He kept going faster, I kept asking if he was sure he wanted to go so fast, he would just shrug and smile.      

         "If I ever get like you are now, I'll be proud if I have the courage to end it like you."

         "End what?    

         "You know what I mean."

         "All I know is that I can't stop my feet."    

         "What's that mean?"

         "My feet, I can't stop them."  He looked embarrassed.  "It's the damnedest thing."

         I put my arms around him to stop him but his feet kept going and I could feel my father's heart beating against my own beating heart.  "Isn't this just the craziest thing you ever saw in your life?" he said.  He looked at me.  His brains were back in his eyes and he looked terrified.  I forced him to lie down.  He was sweating and breathing hard. His feet kept running even as he lay on the grass.  I thought there was a very good chance that my father would die.  "Dad?  Is there anything special you'd like me to do?"

         "You could do two things, if you're so inclined."

         "Like?"

         "Like helping me off this goddam grass before I catch a cold in my shoulder.  What in the hell could have possessed you to knock me down on this damp grass?  I don't mean to be critical, Son, but you don't give sufficient thought to things before you do them."

         "How have you managed to live this long without someone murdering you?  I love you, man, but you are the biggest pain in the ass I've ever seen in my life."

         My father slapped me across the face.

         "I can see by your eyes that you want to hit me back," he said, "so why don't you?"

         "Because you're my goddamned father!"  The lunatic kissed me on the lips.  "What is the other favor you want from me?"

         "I'm ashamed of my own country."

         "I'm sorry," I said. 

         "I don't want to be ashamed of my country."

         "I understand, dad," I said, "but what can I do about it?"   

         "Don't ask me, son.  You're the one who claims you can do anything you want." He looked tired. "If you're ready to face reality and admit that you're as helpless as I am...?" 

         I almost said, Of course I am, but I stopped.  It seemed like every month for twenty years I'd jettisoned something that was important to me in the interest of maturity or reality or practicality until there wasn't a hell of a lot left.  I was tired of shrinking. 

              "Whatever you want, dad, " I said.  "I'll do my best." 

         "I want you to make it mean something to be Lebanese."

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PART TWO

Ì

The

Autobiography

of

Muriel Sharon