The Angel of History Read Free

indignities, they were told to blame the poet, which I thought was delightful, and the receptionist laughed and laughed, a joyous sound, and earthy. I didn’t remember the act or the poem. It was an original, she said, and one of the residents thought it was strangely amusing if not terribly good, he copied it before the patch of wall was spackled and repainted, he handed it out to each visitor to the clinic as he or she was peeled and poked, but then the resident died, and everyone just assumed I was dead like all the rest of us.
    What was the poem? She could not remember exactly, it had been so long, but she remembered I was Egyptian, and she had thought of me when millions of my people gathered in Tahrir Square and toppled our dictator. I told her I wasn’t Egyptian, which confused her. Wasn’t I with my mother Catherine in Mount Lebanon, which was in the Sinai? I did not wish to explain once again that the Middle East was not one country, that Saint Catherine of Alexandria was only a metaphorical mother, I told the receptionist of course everything was in the Sinai, we were all there, the Middle East was one big jumble of odoriferous trash. My father was Lebanese, my mother Yemeni, I spent a few years of my childhood in Cairo, so you could say I was Egyptian, I was all Arabs, look how dark. We laughed and laughed, and I asked whether she was going to search and poke me with the procedure I had inaugurated, whether we should call it autoeroticism, and we laughed and laughed some more, and she said not her, but the big guy was going to, and on cue, the big guy arrived in the waiting room, looking like no one if not Lou Ferrigno, in an ill-fitting white T-shirt that highlighted every steroid-inflated bulge, a teal Lipitor logo emblazoned above his prominent nipple. Would I be able to take him home with me after I was done here, I asked, and all three of us laughed and laughed, and Ferrigno was much bigger than me, his hand could have wrapped twice around my biceps, but only once was needed as he led me into a room.
    Together alone Ferrigno’s eyes avoided me, I thought he wanted me naked but I felt bare already, as if I were skinless. I, Marsyas, you, hulky hunky Apollo. He would not look at me and that was all right. I closed my eyes, andyou know who was there in my head, sitting next to the examining table. Don’t worry, Doc, I’m not crazy, I knew Satan wasn’t there, I knew I was imagining the indefatigable Iblis as I saw him, I needed company, he was always there. His blazing, insanely blue eyes would not leave me as he said, Let’s get out of this goddamn place.

Jacob’s Journals
Restless Heart
    The beating of your heart kept me awake one night, for months after you died I saw you everywhere, heard you, your voice, sonorous, throaty, reverberating in my ear. I wasn’t crazy, I knew you were dead, I buried you after all—I mean, I burned you, cremated you. But I kept seeing you, doing dishes in the kitchen with your back to me, I’d call you as you stacked each plate in our plastic dish rack, but you didn’t look back and then you were gone in a flash and I was left with nothing, not even an afterimage. I didn’t mistake you for anybody, I never saw you in a crowd, thinking someone else was you, no, it was never like that. I saw you in the hallway, in our hallway, under the Turkish lamp you brought back from Istanbul when you were there so long ago, remember the trouble they gave you at customs for a twenty-dollar lamp, and when you emerged from theswinging doors you were furious, I kept telling you to calm down but you wouldn’t, you went on and on because you were angry and you were an American and you could ruffle feathers at airports. While I was alive I loved you while you were alive and I loved you still but I forgot for a while. Forgive me, I couldn’t obsess about you all the time, so you disappeared as if I’d bleached my memory, but you came back, you know, like a fungal infection—remember