Lifted by the Great Nothing: A Novel by Karim Dimechkie Page B

disliked what he’d made. So much so that he took on the project of erasing it all by coloring the back wall black. He exhausted a dozen markers, getting pleasantly woozy off the chemicals. In the small rectangle of light from the window, the black turned an oil-spill blue. He gazed into that oil spill, replaying the stories of Kip and his Man-Dog of a brother, or the enormous man in the tiny tree, or even the mother sitting in the bathtub. He joined all the characters up, having them plod across the oil together (Kip had uprooted the tree and carried it around with the enormous man swaying up top) as they searched for something in a vaguely urgent way.
    Other times the tree house was a coffin. The dimness, mildew, and his echoed breathing created an escalating panic in him. He withstood the feeling of being buried alive for as long as possible. At the edge of hyperventilation, when his hands and feet tingled and his heart raged against his chest, he climbed down and pulled himself across the yard to go back home, rest, and learn more about the world’s atrocities.

    That evening Rasheed brought home a bag of empty cans from the soda that he and coworkers at the depot had drunk all day. He decided Max would love stomping on them in the kitchen, and took photos of him grinding his teeth, his heel about to come down on the can. He clapped when Max squashed one in line with its butt.
    Kelly stepped into the bathroom. When Max heard her turn on the shower, he crushed a Fanta and then casually asked, “How come we don’t know any other Lebanese people?”
    “Bravo!” He clicked the camera. “Why should we?”
    “I don’t know. Just seems like maybe we’d know at least one.”
    Rasheed set up another can. “You know, Maxie, these Lebanese, they don’t know about being adaptable. They are stuck in the past always. They think they are part of the modern world because they wear shiny watches and perfumes, but they are a strange mixing of corrupt show-offs and very traditional and religious.” He looked away from Max. “Also, I don’t find interest in talking about who hates who in that country anymore.”
    “That’s all they want to talk about?”
    “No. Sometimes. Anyway, I don’t like when they talk about this. It’s not good to remember how they are crazy over there. And if I’m with Lebanese, it’s like I have to think and talk like them, like a crazy person.”
    Max stood among a population of twenty-plus cans, some flattened and others bent in half, all shining their different aluminum colors. Thanks to the documentary he’d seen with Kelly, it was easy for him to imagine a country of crazy people. He remembered an old man, coated in soot and concrete dust, screaming Arabic into the camera as he dashed by. But how did those crazy people behave when not fighting? Or were they constantly fighting?
    He asked, “The civil war is over, right?”
    “The big one is over, sure, but there are always more wars going on, or about to go on. There is still so much hate. So much baggage and so many outside countries wanting to make a mess of everything all over again.” He set up two cans for Max and told him to stomp down on them at the same time. Before Max leaped up in the air, Rasheed leaned in closer and whispered, “This is why culture is stupid, Maxie.” He let his camera hang from his neck. “People think it unites people, but the truth is, it separates even more. We have a good life.We don’t need culture or religion or things like this. We don’t need to swear to some kind of group or talk about past things so much. We are individuals, so why come together under a flag or something and say that because we like the same food or soccer team or politics or time of prayer that we are all the same?”
    Surely Rasheed had the right to have social and cultural preferences; to distance himself from traditions and mores and a history he felt didn’t correspond with him anymore. “People still hate each other