Is anyone plucking that nasty hair from my mother’s birthmark underneath
her chin? It’s a white hair and it stings her. And there’s a black one too, that’s
thick and on the corner of her mouth. Is anyone cutting my father’s finger
and toenails? By now they would in need serious trimming. Is anyone help-
ing him shower? He is basically useless when he showers alone. He goes out,
I sometimes think, more dirty than he came in, because if hair isn’t washed
well, it tends to become greasier with shampoo.
Have I been replaced? Am I still needed? Will my nephew even remember
me? It hasn’t been a long time since I was gone, but will he remember?
Before I came on this trip, he was learning to put sounds together, my name
being so difficult to pronounce, from his beautiful mouth filled with uneven
milk teeth, he declared me “ta---ki”… I told his father, my brother back in
Lebanon, to give make him listen to my voice as I spoke to him. In return a
got a screeching scream, either that the tone of my voice reminded him of
something, or that he felt his father not paying attention to him.
His eyes change from clear green to deep navy blue, he got that from his
mother, he has his father’s chin, and I’d like to think it’s my small pointed
noise that’s inserted between those protruding cheeks. When he wears white,
his eyes go all navy and he’s nothing short of a vision of an angel all standing
there posing consciously for the camera. I still have to take a picture of him
while he is not looking defiantly at the lens: He learned how tame it as soon
as he was born. And I could snap a picture anytime with everyone else not
paying attention, except for him.
When I carry him around the house, trying to lull him into sleep, he starts
suckling on my shirt, and I would pretend I am biting his earlobe and start
making munching sounds, and he’d look at me knowing I haven’t harmed
him and amused I would think he might be duped in this.
In my awkward voice, I try to sing “La maman du petit homme” completely
off key. He is smart enough to recognize what I am talking about, it’s the lull-
aby that my mother sang to us as children and is not singing to him: It’s the
story of Gregoire, a very short man, who at sixteen is ridiculed by everyone,
including his mother who would tell him to go look for an internship in the
city. He then wanders off to meet the king of France persuading him to put
him in the army, and his majesty laughingly dismisses him telling him – just
like everyone else – “tu es trop petit mon ami, tu es trop petit, dame oui!”
(You’re so small my friend, you’re so small my friend, oh yes!)…

Undeterred, Gregoire eventually makes it to the army of a local warlord
when the war erupts. The bullets all went above his head, mocking him for
being short. Yet, one them, by mistake does hit his between the eyes leaving
a hole from which his souls goes to heaven. There, he is welcomed by St. Pe-
ter, who is furious that someone so small could be wasting his time: He needs
a big archangel, and Gregoire is just so not up to the task.
Having heard about what happened, Jesus get upset, opens up his pink cape
where Gregoire takes a hiding. “The truth, I tell you, has been revealed for
the small ones, oh yes!”
For a long time, I thought Gregoire was a real boy – being small in stature
– though not yet ridiculed at the time (This would come later though) I even
pinpointed where he lived in our village (A small one bedroom house after
the village’s “fountain” – which was actually just a vulgar water tank). A lot
of children get the shock of their life when they know that Santa Claus is not
real, I never believed in the bearded man anyway, but when I came to realize
that Gregoire was not for real – and I cannot put my finger on how it hap-
pened – it had been a sad day for me. Maybe my nephew will go on to think
of Gregoire as real, and right now I wish I was pacing through the house
holding this little lump suckling on my shirt as I pretend to nibble on its ear
and make munching sounds.