To Die in the Time of Pestilence

During the first half of the pandemic, Rudaina would exert herself to climb the steps to our bedroom. At the top, she would sit on a chair in my office to catch her breath, and say with a faint smile, “Play me some music.” Then for an hour or so, the universe would shrink to the size of our room, with the two of us as the loneliest travelers. I would search YouTube and play for her a strange medley of classical music, including works she had introduced me to when we were dating, such as Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, or some of the Arabic songs we grew up listening to, particularly those of the great Syrian Egyptian diva Asmahan. Then I would switch to the blues, the mother of almost all American music, and play songs by Charley Patton and Muddy Waters, songs that I had forced on her and our children many years ago during long road trips. I’d end with bluegrass, the last genre of American music we both fell in love with. If the music was too melancholic, she would shake her head and say, “I am overflowing tragedy; please play something else.” We would reminisce, laugh, cry, sing, and hum along. Sometimes I would blast the volume way up, not caring about disturbing anyone, since we were gliding alone in a universe of rhythmic solitude.  

On those nights, I would think back to our beginnings in America. We both came to the United States as students. She came from Palestine at 16 to live with her uncle’s family; I came from Lebanon at 22 to join a rowdy bunch of compatriots in a shared house. I was mainly interested in discovering directly the continent I had been introduced to from afar through music and films, and in learning English. Our common American journey began when we met at Villanova University in 1972; in 1976, we got married and moved to Virginia so I could continue my graduate studies in the philosophy department at Georgetown University.

Rudaina and I were disillusioned with U.S. policies in the Middle East, but we were infatuated with American culture. In Virginia, she became an equestrian, and I began to develop what she would refer to as “my husband’s American passions”: music, mostly blues, jazz, and bluegrass; the Civil War; and horses, as I had adored them in the American Westerns I watched in Beirut. Only in our 50s did we achieve our dream of owning some of our own. We rode them off into the sunset, in my case with a Winchester rifle at my side to give color to the dream. With the passage of time, and with Arab lands collapsing and, in some cases, literally burning, our disillusionment in Arab politics and societies grew more pronounced while our Virginian roots grew deeper and our American identity became the dominant one. To many of our friends near our farm in Berryville, Virginia, we were Rudi and Richard, and my wife was a beloved hostess, as charming and popular as a fifth- or sixth-generation Virginian. The United States is our home; this is our last refuge. After all, you are home where you are free.

On a black night 10 years ago, I was awakened by the soft sobbing of my two children, Omar and Nadia, over my bed at the hospital, a few hours after I had been diagnosed with Stage 3 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Rudaina sheltered me, suffered with me, and helped me through my chemotherapy sessions. A few years later, I would take her to the same cancer facilities I had spent long days at, to be treated by some of the nurses and oncologists who had treated me. She left the house only for short chemo sessions, to see her doctors and the nurses who drained the malignant fluids around her heart and lungs.