Dionysus

         Uncle Khalfan was a particularly happy man – the life of the party, smiling and laughing, seemingly without a care in the world. Dionysus hurling his madness around with the promise of satisfying disaster. That’s why it was a surprise to everybody that he was now a vegetable. Rania’s uncle was a vegetable. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He was sick, but he wasn’t. She would feel guilty for not wanting him around sometimes but couldn’t help feeling disturbed by his flat expressions and vacant brown eyes – she kept thinking his soul had shrunk so small that he had no control of his limbs and lips. He was nice enough when he was lucid – taught her to ride horses and fix a flat tire. She missed him, but more as a man she knew from mutual friends rather than family. She missed seeing him in passing and his blatant disregard of niceties – an astonishing feat if you were a respected fifty-two-year old married man in an Arab community. They had a very superficial friendship, and Rania had a feeling he was only playing a dutiful role – often glancing around for some type of response from an audience.

         Uncle Khalfan was loved by everybody. He would always say the right thing, told funny jokes, never failed to embarrass the annoying, stuck up a cousin with the prestigious cupcake business during family gatherings. Everybody liked him – until the moment he dropped in an epileptic seizure in the middle of dinner. He was about to get to the point of his joke about milking camels and an Imam until his eyes rolled into his head and started flailing. Rania had never seen someone convulse like that. Being in an Arab household, there was plenty of shouting and wailing before anyone called an ambulance.

         He was around a lot, though. His third wife, Aisha, always wheeled him around, like he would somehow jump out of his black, sagging wheelchair, ready to ridicule an unfortunate cousin and butcher some Nancy Ajram songs. He was just a reminder, though. A decent man now reduced to a shell. A more insensitive person would call him a downer. Rania was often that sort of person, but she would not say it out loud.

         Rania’s mother wept for days. She was an ugly crier; snot would fall to the shelf of her upper lip and her mouth would concave into a scowl that was almost unnatural. The rest of the family seemed to play their roles appropriately. Rania could tell they were grieving, but nothing that would indicate that he was a close member of the family – except for Aisha. Uncle Khalfan didn’t have any children – unheard of for a fifty-two-year-old married man in Oman. A fifty-two-year old married man would have children in Oman. “My brother already has a son,” he had said once. “Why waste money on a child when the Farsi name is already passed down?”

         Dionysus. Yes, Rania always thought he was a lot like the Greek God Dionysus. A god renowned by those interested in the classics as the ultimate party animal. The god of wine, madness, and theatre was almost a mirror to Khalfan’s wild and impetuous nature. He was a performer and believed in his performances. He was a madman in very subtle ways that Rania and the rest of the Omani community could describe as mad. He was indulgent, though not a drunkard – that would be borderline intolerable to the Farsis and Khalfan knew that. It wouldn’t be difficult for Rania to picture him giving into impulses and indulgences that would definitely be a problem for his wife, the Imam, and the entire Farsi family reputation. Despite all this, his charm was his eccentricity.

         One other thing that was interesting about Uncle Khalfan was that he was a charlatan. He would often come up with his own puff pieces, stories about his life, and experiences that made no sense at times. He said unbelievable things, believable things, astounding things, funny things, controversial things, mainstream things – he just said things. Rania always thought that his life and reputation was built on these words. He’s just lazy, Rania had always thought. He had said he had a master's degree; he was a key figure in a successful in Petrol Development Oman, a licensed American Red Cross first responder, and a ‘pioneer’ in Oman’s tuna fishing industry. But then again, he also said he knew how to ride a horse.

         Couple of years ago, he took Rania to a horse-riding club, told her he wanted to teach her to ride a horse. She remembered walking into the reception area with depressing beige walls, a single table placed on the other side of the room with a small painting of a horse behind it. The receptionist wore a navy hijab, knotted at the end, hanging over her shoulder to show that she’s ‘not like other girls’. She looked up at them, briefly glanced at Rania, then smiled at Rania’s uncle politely. Rania remembered being shoed away to look at the horses with one of the stablemen as her uncle leaned against the desk, turning on that famous Uncle Khalfan charm that won him three wives. Apparently, they liked his knobby elbows and teeth that suggested that he was long overdue for a trip to the dentist. Real men take care of their own teeth, he had said, after Rania’s mother told harangued him about it and told him they looked like ripe rows of corn. Rania could almost imagine the Dionysiac wreath of ivy encircling the bald patch of his shiny, sweaty head.

“Pick whichever horse you’d like from this row,” the stableman pointed to a section of stalls to his right. The horses slouched more than the rest. Probably older. “They’re pretty tame for beginners.” He seemed nice enough. Good teeth. Nice arms. Though, she remembered looking around, confused.

“My uncle said he has a few horses he kept here,” She had said nervously, looking up.

The stableman’s eyebrows knit in confusion. He’d had nice hazel eyes, too. Uncommon for this region. His family was probably Bedouin originally, or from the mountains.

“We don’t do that here,” he’d said, rubbing the back of his head. “We take care of our own horses.”

         Rania remembered feeling embarrassed and telling him that she’d just wait for her uncle. Shed remembered her warm cheeks and her sweat making her bra straps fall down her shoulders after waiting for fifteen minutes in the warm stables. She wondered why a man would act like that to begin with. What’s the point of telling her he owned horses? What kind of lie was that? She was annoyed with her uncle, but she’d brushed off as a misunderstanding. Maybe Rania had heard him wrong. Maybe he was Dionysus being Dionysus, his bacchanalian nature performing once again without needing a reason to.

         A few moments later, her uncle walked in, grinning with his dull rows of corn and all his glory. “So, Roro,” he said looking around and placed his hands on his hips as if he was admiring his own work. “Did you pick one yet?”

“Nah, I was waiting for you.”

         Rania didn’t think he had heard what she said because he just walked off midsentence, heading towards the horses that definitely did not look tired, “come on, then. I’ll pick a good one for you.”

         She tried to tell him about the horses the stableman told her to pick from, but all he said was “Come on, I will find you one with a good back”. What does that even mean?

         It’s hard to imagine him as that man again, feigning confidence with a big yellow smile and abnormal knobby elbows. He probably needs to see an orthopedic specialist, Rania thought. The memory of him that way sunk in a bit now. She was not going to see him embarrass himself or her ever again. Rania didn’t think she particularly liked him the more she tried remembering him, but still felt weighed down by the memory of a person she will never see the same way again. His wreath of ivy hung somewhere on a hook, tunic and sandals tucked away in some closet out of sight, and his Nectar filled drinking cup was set aside in a kitchen cupboard never to be used again.

         She remembered picking a horse with him that he thought “had the best back” then ending up being thrown around like she was in a Texas rodeo. That was when she found out he wasn’t particularly good at riding horses. In fact, it didn’t seem like he knew what he was doing, to begin with.

         He had struggled with mounting the horse, calling a stableman over to lift him up. It was an absurd sight. A man uncle Khalfan’s age body slamming an already pissed off young Arabian horse. Rania had found it rather funny at the time and laughed. She definitely did not forget being on the other end of a glare that said don’t embarrass me or I’ll smite you with wine and theatre drama. Rania imagined that: she embarrassing him. Rania liked that particular last bit of memory.

         She remembered that day, sitting directly across of him, Chicken Machboos being the only thing blocking the view of his drooling mouth. It was about seven in the evening. It was dark enough that Rania’s mother wanted to warm the mood with candles set on the dining table rather than decent lighting. The dark corners of the room hung over them like a blanket, making her uncle seem a lot closer than he really was. The intimate atmosphere made Rania uncomfortable at best. The candlelight made the crevices of his wrinkles deeper, his prominent cheekbones cast shadows down his face that made him look much older that he really was. His glazed, blank eyes stared right through her like she was every bit of invisible as he was. If she had ever thought he was a god, she was sure of it now.

         Amongst the chatter of baking, Kardashians, and other countries’ politics, Uncle Khalfan was a sobering sight. Aisha would put an arm over him and wipe his drool every now and then. A maid would come by and adjust his scarf and blanket. Rania imagined the obligation Aisha felt toward him. Did she plan on leaving him? No, her gentle nature seemed too nice for that. What could she possibly be feeling right now? Rania remembered an episode of Elementary about the Angel of Death. Holmes and Watson were trying to figure out who was killing terminal patients before they were supposed to die. They discovered it was the janitor poisoning them with Epinephrine, under the impression he was freeing the patients of their pain and dragged out deaths. Rania didn’t know why that came to mind.

         Rania tried to distract herself with good thoughts. What was one good memory she had of him? Something that didn’t end with annoyance or begin and end in embarrassment. Nothing really of that particular nature came to mind. However, Rania did remember a trip to Masirah they’d taken once. Pretty place. Clean beach. Nice people. Not the most enjoyable seven-hour car ride.

         Of course, it was uncle Khalfan’s idea. “I know this country,” he had said when he refused to use the GPS. “I live here, you think I don’t know where I live?” he’d bellowed, laughing off all of our complaints. Not everybody had the energy to talk him out of his own way. Imagine that: four SUVs filled with four loud, obnoxiously loud Omani families – many of whom have very bad cases of car sickness (Rania’s grandmother always complained it was because of their Persian ancestors. “Our people are horse people,” she’d always said).

         Rania remembered the entire trip just getting worse and worse from the car ride to the ferry to the sudden high tide that trapped them on the stretch of land for several days – oh, and she definitely did not forget about the goat incident. A lot of people were upset about the goat.

         They left Muscat at about midday due to the regular unpreparedness of the Farsi families. An army of cousins, aunt, and uncles were piled into the cars carrying Dallahs filled with different types of teas and coffees. Iraqi dolma was rationed for each car – there was always never enough dolma – and carried by those low enough in the family hierarchy that were forced to sit in the tight spots of the back seats, meant to pass those molasses stuffed vegetables around whenever required. The unnecessary amount of luggage stuffed in the trunks piled over into most of the back seats, forcing some passengers to slouch over for the entire ride.

         It wasn’t all bad, Rania thought. She remembered singing Soulja Boy songs with her cousins, watching Shrek about a hundred and fifty times. Grandmother Zahra telling stories about how her father snuck into a British warship when he was about fifteen, then adopted by a captain. Surprisingly, she wasn’t lying. There were records, photos, and half siblings in four countries she didn’t want to talk about (she let slip of great uncle George, though. Poor, shunned great uncle George). It really had its moments, but she remembered it all going downhill when they got to a rest stop and Uncle Khalfan wanted to drive. The problem was… the car he wanted to drive was the lead car. The car with the GPS. The car that dictated the word of God in motion.

         So… got rid of the GPS, he did. “I Live here,” he had said. And off we went through shortcuts he said he knew, stopping at farms for fruits no one ate, and to stores that definitely had the worst Nutella parathas Rania had ever tasted. Rania thought she shouldn’t judge him too harshly, though. He did seem like he was trying to get them to enjoy the trip. They did tell him it was okay to make stops – though that was out of nieces’ and nephews’ politeness. He wasn’t too bad. Maybe her mind just painted a worse picture of him than what really was, Rania wondered. Though in Euripides’s play “the Bacchae”, Dionysus did form a cult of women he had collected from all over Asia, took them to Thebes, let himself get captured by the Theban king, then burned the king’s palace to the ground in earthquake and fire just to get back at the king for refusing to let his people to take part in Dionysus’s divinely caused, insanity inducing, frenzied cult practices. So maybe he was a psycho and she had painted him just right.

         She remembered them getting lost and the situation was made worse by having to stop every fifteen minutes so one or two of the kids sitting in the back could throw up – not a great idea because the Farsi families were also inclined to sympathetically vomit. However, they did manage to make it to the ferry. They did manage to get to the island. However, no one expected to be trapped there for three days because of high tide. Aren’t high tides the best times to be on a ferry? Rania thought.

         God save the Farsi’s from the chaos ensued by the realization of the missing goat. It was about the tensest moments to happen on a trip. Rania imagined the siege of the Greeks on Troy, the Wrath of the Fire Nation during the siege of Ba Sing Se (Rania loved the Nickelodeon animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender and never fails to stress the beauty of Fire Nation’s Prince Zuko’s character development). She thought about Leonidas at the battle of Thermopylae, knowing certain death was upon him at the hands of the Persians. From what Rania could remember, the realization that they’d forgot the most tender, spiced, underground smoked goat topped them all.

         They had just unpacked after renting a villa on the coast. Everything was fine. The kids were laughing and unsafely setting fire to lines of Aerosol fake snow with lighters. The aunties were beating the uncles at cards for the millionth time. The parents were parking the car. It was all fine until a one nine-year-old cousin emerged from the scramble of the kids, pouting underneath a mane of messy black hair with eyes as big as saucers called out, “Mama, I’m hungry. Where’s the goat?”

“Where’s the goat?”

Aunties and uncles looked around, called for the older cousins smoking from tobacco pipes by the beach.

“Where’s the goat?”

Aunties and uncles looked for those in charge of packing the food.

“Where’s the goat?”

Aunties and uncles locate the uncle in charge of preparing and packing the goat.

“Where’s the goat?”

         Ripe corn peeked behind a nervous smile. A little timid chuckle erupted from Uncle Khalfan’s mouth. He tried to play it off, but that didn’t work. He twirled one of the grey locks of hair that framed the bald top of his head, looking like a schoolgirl rather than a fifty-year-old man.

“I forgot the goat.”

Chaos ensued. Never forget the goat.

         A non-Arab person would not understand this rage. The rug pulled from underneath. The hopes crushed for the day to redeem itself. The defeat of the day. The fade of the spicy, pink, tender flesh from their tongues. Rania didn’t think anyone that never tasted Shuwa to understand the ambrosia of the gods.

         A person that had never had Shuwa would think it was on overreaction. a person who had never had Shuwa would think, it isn't that big a deal. A person who has had Shuwa and heard a non-Shuwa person say these things would kindly ask them to leave their house. It was only done on special occasions and rare at that.

         It was an intense three days. Passive aggressive comments were exchanged, halfhearted card games, and they had run out of mangoes. Poor uncle Khalfan took the brunt of the blame for that too. He tried to lighten the mood, though. He tried shouting out jokes, was nice to the cupcake cousin, and performed in his typical rhetoric manner. Some aunties were forgiving, the uncles pushed him around for a bit, but couldn’t really stay mad at him. The cousins could win gold medals if stamina for grudges were part of the Olympics, though. Rania would wrong them once and five years later they would be like “Remember the time you (insert wrongdoing here)? I can’t trust you”. Petty little things, Rania thought – not that she felt any differently about her uncle. All she felt toward him then was contempt.

         Rania had read once that Hera, wife of the god Zeus, had been jealous that her husband had fathered Dionysus, so she had the Titans try and kill him. To hide, Dionysus disguised himself as a goat but then still ended up getting ripped to pieces. His heart was eventually recovered, and his body was resurrected by his father. That’s why Dionysus was called the Dying and Rising God in some stories. Khalfan seemed kind of like that to Rania – socially killing himself but then bouncing back to good graces like a Super Ball.

         Rania gave Uncle Khalfan a second look from across the dining table. Eyes, still blank. Nose, dripping a little. she felt a weight on her chest like cold, wet towels hanging over her bones and lungs and skull. She set down her knife and fork. She felt a mix of emotions: mild self-loathing for jumping to judgements, regret for not trying to understand her uncle, ashamed because she somehow felt like everyone knew what she was thinking. Could they tell what she thought of him? Did it show? Did her face give her away? God knows she could not keep a neutral face to save her life.

         She was overwhelmed with shame. She was nauseous. Maybe it was her narcissistic nature that made the situation, in her mind, all about her. How she was feeling. How he contributed to her universe. But was she narcissistic? Should she go over there and wipe his nose? Loosen the scarf Aisha tied around his neck too tightly? Would he register that as an apology? Probably wouldn’t register it at all. People would just look at her weirdly. Standing up at a dinner with four Farsi families would warrant awkward stares and side eyes as if Rania had just killed three people.

         The candlelight twisted Khalfan’s face differently now. It reflected and curled around his dark irises, giving it menacing life. His round, happy face was still elongated. His features and expression, puppets to the candlelight. He didn’t look like Uncle Khalfan to Rania.
It was distressing. There sitting was a man in no control over his body. Blood pumping in his veins, beats in his heart, blood moving to a mouth, a nose, ears, fingers, and toes. Yet he couldn’t move nor speak nor think nor tell dad jokes nor sing nor laugh. What must that be like? Could he see Rania? Could he feel Aisha’s hand on his arm or the warmth from the candle on his face? It was God’s will. God says everyone has a soul, so where has his gone? Asleep? Or did it shrink enough in his body that he lost all motor function, watching the world move on while he sat on a sagged, used wheelchair? He’s the Twice-Born god, so where was he now?

         Rania was spiraling. It was a normal thing. She didn’t like to distract herself with talking or texting or magazines. She didn’t like baking or cooking or origami. she didn’t like horse-riding or travelling or talking. She liked to think. she was obsessed with the parallels of ancient Greek and Roman mythologies. Ancient Egyptian beasts and Gods and the Norse’s Yggdrasil. The Slavic Striga and the Scottish Kelpie. Geomancy and elemental divinations. One thing that tied all these mythologies, in her mind, was death, and somehow her mind travelled to all these possibilities. Khalfan wasn’t dead, but, to her, he looked like he was death’s cousin, the Lord of Vegetables.

         Did Rania ask about him? How he was doing? She made a note to ask her mother. Her head hurt now. How would she redeem herself in her eyes?

         “Rania pass me the okra stew,” Her cousin poked her, snapping Rania out of the staring contest with her uncle. Cold fingers nudged her bare arm, urging her to complete a task incongruous with her mental storm. Her inclination for dramaticism didn’t like the interruption of her play.
She suddenly felt burdened and embarrassed all at once. She was still nauseous and was sure her chubby cheeks matched Auntie Amna’s red scarf and absurdly pigmented blush. Auntie Amna really needed to take her daughters’ advice and take it easy on the kohl.

         Rania passed the stew and the night went on. There was dancing. An uncle and auntie performed a flamenco they’d learned on their trip to Barcelona a few months back with surprising grace and skill – not that Rania knew anything about the flamenco, but liked to think she was cultured enough to know what the flamenco looked like.
She’d joined some older cousins in the backyard, happy to be out of the critical eyes of Uncle Khalfan. She never joined them. She never had a reason to go out and include herself in their young adult conversations of college and their studies, but she didn’t want to be in the house anymore. She’d begun to think her uncle was developing a life of his own in the corner of the candlelit room, watching the parades of dances, jokes, and proclamatory speeches. He’d begun to take shape of something eerie and all knowing she didn’t enjoy to be around – a darker version of a god in his darker, mortal days.

         She smoked one or two puffs from the tobacco pipe they were passing around, coughed a little, then listened in on conversations she wasn’t allowed to join in on. The sexual exploits of the boys and girls she once knew and looked up to turned into a disturbing realization that they were very unlike the gods she’d made of them in her mind. They were things of a different reality she couldn’t relate to anymore. They talked about sex, bragged about experimenting with drugs during their studies abroad, and how they were relieved they didn’t have to hear Uncle Khalfan’s jokes about camels and Imams.

         Rania felt as if she were out of her own skin, exploring different realities and different parallel universes. Shed imagined their masks slipped off a long time ago, right after they left the backdoor of the house. Maysa was always nice and kind, snuck her extra rice pudding when she was younger, never failed to compliment the color of Rania’s freshly painted nails nor failed to console her after a bad haircut was now bragging about how she cheated on her boyfriend while high on ecstasy in Cardiff. Amran, the oldest cousin and ‘the man of the house’ went on about his adventures in the red-light district in Amsterdam after one too many drinks at a club. Even cupcake cousin had some few choice words to say about the women in Brighton. Maybe they’ve always been like this and she was too hasty in assigning the cast of her Farsi family play.

         Some part of her was comforted, though. She wasn’t it. she wasn’t the worst of them. In Rania’s head, hearing the way they talked about friends they didn’t like, auntie Amna’s make-up, and uncle Khalfan’s state made her feel somewhat normal. As if she was okay to dislike him the way she had before. Maybe her regret was unwarranted, and people were naturally cruel.

Yes, maybe that, Rania thought.

         She stayed in the backyard long enough to get one last puff in before she went back inside, listening to cupcake cousin go on about how all the girls in Brighton came over for his strawberry shortcakes all the time. Rania didn’t want to hear the end of that story. They were still dancing and eating mango mousse inside. Some kids had fallen asleep on the couches and the older women gossiped in the corner while uncle Khalfan was sitting in the crossfire of news of cheating wives and loud neighbors.

         Khalfan looked sad to Rania now. The corners of his mouth tipped down a little, not content. Maybe it was because auntie Aisha had left him to dance or the mango mousse that he loved so much was almost finished, and he’d had none. Maybe he had a joke he couldn’t shout out or a speech about the annoyances of the liberal usage of niceties he couldn’t blare over a crowd. Maybe.

         Rania walked over to him and sat next to his wheelchair amongst the chattering of housewife gossip and complaints and adjusted the blanket on his lap. She was still ashamed, but she felt closer to him now, as if he were a good friend she’d known personally for a long time. She talked and talked and talked to him, careful not to let any aunties hear what she was saying. She told him stories of Odin and Njord, the sad tales of Antigone and Calypso, the intricacies of mapping ley lines, and how sad it was that the Egyptian gods Geb and Nut were always apart. He didn’t respond, of course, but Rania had unreasonably felt like he would’ve appreciated it. She knew the old Khalfan wouldn’t have cared about stories and maps, but maybe that weak, unmovable soul that had crawled around in his body had changed. Or maybe, if he was listening at all, he liked the attention at least.