I always wanted a sister.
I’m not sure why. Most of the time I was perfectly content as an only child, and if my parents had ever wanted to make me an older sister they hid it exceedingly well. A sister, even a twin, would have meant sharing my room, the family book collection, the dog, and possibly even my treasured and theoretically clandestine collection of Star Trek paperbacks. The status quo was just fine with me, my parents, and my multitudinous uncles (not to mention my aunt). Why would I ever want something different?
Part of the answer is the stigma of the selfish, spoiled, lonely only child. I first encountered this when a seatmate in middle school art class called my parents “selfish” when I informed her that I didn’t have any brothers or sisters (she had five). Me all but bursting into tears as I informed her that my mother nearly died having me and had was under doctor’s orders not to have another baby shut my interrogator up, let me tell you – and though attitudes toward onlies have softened somewhat, there are still a lot of people who give you the stink eye when you mention being a unique product of your parents’ love rather than part of a set.
Having a sister would have prevented such nastiness, of course. She also would have been company during our numerous moves; Dad’s job took us from Pittsburgh to Cleveland to Blacksburg back to Pittsburgh, and by the time we finally settled down for good in Pleasant Hills, I was sick unto death of having to make new friends every couple of years. Someone my age who wouldn’t be left behind with Mum’s rock garden would have been wonderful.
The major reason I wanted a sister, though, is the simplest and most obvious: my mother had a sister, they loved each other dearly, and I wanted that same sort of closeness with someone else. They shopped together, went to college together, talked every day on the phone, and could all but complete each other’s sentences. Mum so trusted Betty that I was having sleepovers with my beautiful, exciting aunt when I was only two or three years old, and there was nothing I liked more than listening to the two of them reminisce about all the fun they’d growing up.
That isn’t to say that Mum and my aunt Betty had a perfect relationship. Oh, no, not by any means. People who think only children are spoiled clearly have never met a woman who was the first girl after seven boys, and had had four blissful years to bat her baby blues and get her own way before her mother was inconsiderate enough to present her with a baby sister. For all that they became close as teenagers and then as adults, the first years after Mum’s birth were, shall we say, less than pleasant for the entire family.
The boys, who ranged in age from nineteen to eight when Betty realized that she was no longer Queen of the Queendom, were largely insulated from what soon became an epic battle for attention between the sisters. The oldest two were already working, the remaining four were in school, and my grandmother was busy running the household and the first acreage of what became the Farm while my grandfather slowly succumbed to crippling arthritis and an overfondness for bootleg beer. This meant that once Mum could toddle around on her own, Betty could pretty much do what she wanted with her baby sister.
Being Betty, she did.
The first hint of trouble must have surfaced early; there’s a family photograph taken sometime during the summer of 1929 that features Grandma, Mum balanced precariously on her hip, five of the boys, and Betty. The boys are in work clothes, Grandma wears a cotton wash dress, Mum is in an infant dress and diapers…and Betty, sporting the most unfortunate shingle bob in the history of hairdressing, is scowling at the photographer with the sort of murderous expression that could, and probably did, shatter the camera lens about five seconds later. She’s standing right next to Grandma and Mum, and one has the distinct impression that she finds her kid sister about as appealing as a worm in her Wheatena.
This was not far off. As the girls grew up, Betty had no problems at all with perpetrating the sort of mayhem that older siblings have inflicted upon younger ever since Cain threw a temper tantrum when Abel first toddled up to him for a hug. There were good times, too - Betty wasn't The Bad Seed, simply spoiled - and the sisters were close enough in age that by and large they got along. But enough happened that it's clear Betty would have been perfectly content to remain the only girl in the family.
Calling Mum "John" instead of Martha because she allegedly looked like a funny little man from the comics...forcing Mum to eat the hated green gum at the bottom of the sack of penny candy…colluding with their brother Charlie to make Mum squeal by popping a blood blister right in front of her…smacking her repeatedly on top of the head so she’d never be taller than Betty....
Betty did all this, and more. The worst prank she ever pulled, though, without question, was the Great "Make Your Sister Sick As A Dog Using Ex-Lax" Incident, aka "Betty slips a gullible child the chocolate-flavored laxative" trick.
I have no idea when this took place, but it was probably around 1935 or 1936, as Mum was still young enough that she couldn’t read very well. She thus did not realize the danger she was in when Betty handed her an entire package of something brown, chewy, and allegedly delicious, and bade her eat hearty even though dinner was only an hour or so away.
“It’s chocolate, Martha,” she burbled, in her charming, childish way. “I don’t want any, so you can have it all.”
Mum accepted the treat with delight and immediately began stuffing herself. She was just a little girl, after all, and this tasted so much better than the Fletcher’s Castoria Grandma used to inflict upon her that it never occurred to her that this might, just might, be yet another example of Betty’s ongoing quest to rid herself of this troublesome sibling. Soon she’d polished off the entire package, and was merrily skipping about after Timmy (or Tammy, or maybe Tommy) while Betty went inside and practiced the piano.
I think you can guess what happened shortly thereafter.
None of them would ever go into much detail about the next week (or possibly two), so I can neither confirm nor deny whether Betty did penance by cleaning up the mess(es), making her sister tea and toast, or doing the mounds of less than sanitary laundry that result when an undersized child eats enough laxatives to unblock a draft horse. Nor do I know whether Betty was paddled, grounded, or threatened with sale to migrant farmers on their way to California.
I do know that Betty was so unnerved by Mum’s ordeal that she largely ceased tormenting her, and the sisters finally were able to find common ground for good. By the time Betty moved to Pittsburgh to help the war effort a few years later, they were close enough that one of my uncle Lou’s letters from Tunisia asks how Mum is doing since she must be so lonely without her sister to keep her company. A few years after that Betty joined Mum at college despite being an adult in her 20's instead of a teenager, and when Mum married in 1955, she was pleased and proud to have Betty standing beside her as her maid of honor.
She was considerably less pleased two hours later when she and Dad arrived at their honeymoon hotel, went to the front desk to check in, and discovered the lovely parting gift Betty had tucked into Mum’s purse at the reception just before they'd departed:
Half a box of uncooked rice.
Sans the box.
Despite, or perhaps because, of all this, I still wanted a sister. This is one of the reasons I chose a women's college ("you'll meet girls there who'll be your friends for life!" someone said, and as my long-suffering buddy Beata can tell you, it's all too true), and why I've had a female roommate for most of the time since Wingding decided that he preferred the charming and much younger Secunda. I'll never have a sister of the blood unless someone inexplicably decides to clone me, but I have plenty of sisters of the heart. That's good enough for me.
The same cannot be said, alas, of the two books I bring you tonight. Both written (?) by famous politicians, one is about sisters of the blood, sisters of the heart, and a lot of unsisterly physical interactions between women in the Old West. The other, which may well have used the same method of authorship as Profiles in Courage, is a stunning look at Middle Eastern politics through the allegory of an old-style harem romance:
Sisters, by Lynne Cheney - Lynne Cheney is an intelligent woman. Born a few months before Pearl Harbor, she has a PhD in 19th century English literature, she's written over a dozen books on education, history, and politics, including a collective biography of famous American women and a child's book on Washington crossing the Delaware. She has strong and definite opinions on everything - her crusade against raunchy music lyrics, her attempts to impose her own taste on the country's arts community through her controversial term as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and her vendetta against nationwide history standards won her few friends - and execrable taste in men (she married Dick "Shoots Small Birds and Lawyers When He's Not Cursing at Democratic Senators" Cheney, need I say more?).
In short, Mrs. Former Vice President and Current Heart Transplant Patient Dick Cheney is a culture warrior down to her bones.
Given her strong and definite political opinions, it's something of a surprise to learn that her most recent book, a biography of James Madison, has gotten glowing reviews for its scholarship and writing. Kirkus Reviews says that the book veers perilously close to hero worship, but no less than the New York Times says it's probably the best single volume life of Dolley Madison's husband available. Even Michael Beschloss, presidential historian extraordinaire, termed Cheney's effort "compelling, elegant [and] original," and who am I to argue with him? Conservative she may be, but unlike pseudo-historian David Barton, Lynne Cheney isn't willing to sacrifice Clio on the altar of partisanship.
The same cannot be said of her own literary history, which is much, much less proper than her Wikipedia article might indicate. For it seems that the future Second Lady, culture warrior, and biographer of America's shortest president got her start not by writing a history, or a polemic, or even a mystery. Her first two published books were a thriller (Executive Privilege, a typical skulduggery-in-Washington-by-a-political-insider potboiler) and a racy, spicy, sexy novel about feminists, romantic friendships, and (probable) lesbianism on the American frontier.
My hand to God, I am not making this up.
Sisters, published in 1981 and strongly influenced by the pioneering work of Carroll Smith-Rosenberg and Linda Gordon on romantic friendship among American women, is the tale of magazine publisher/actress Sophie Dymond. Driven to her native Wyoming after her sister Helen dies in mysterious circumstances, Sophie finds herself drawn further and further into her seemingly respectable sister's hidden world of social activism and deep, deep, deep female friendship. Worse, she finds herself becoming more and more involved with her widowed brother-in-law, who may or may not have been responsible for Helen's death.
The novel then proceeds to mix Sophie's investigation into Helen's death (allegedly thanks to a fall that may have actually been a push), schoolteacher Amy Travers and her feminist/possibly lesbian friends as they try to build a better, more equal life for themselves and other marginalized groups, and the respectable, frequently brutal, male-dominated society of ranchers, cowboys, and landowners. Along the way Sophie learns that her soft-hearted sister was being used by the undeserving, promiscuous poor (is anyone surprised that Lynne got in a chop at liberal do-gooders?), is rescued by a giantess from a freak show after nearly being killed during a lynching, and breaks into Amy's house to find letters like the following:
Helen, my joy and my beloved,
Why do we stay? I have no reason beyond a few pupils who would miss me briefly, and your life would be infinitely better away from him. Let us go away together, away from the anger and imperatives of men. We shall find ourselves a secluded bower where they dare not venture. There will be only the two of us, and we shall linger through long afternoons of sweet retirement. In the evenings I shall read to you while you work your cross-stitch in the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl. . . .
This is pretty hot stuff for 1981, especially the more than discreet hints that Amy's affection for Helen might have been closer to something out of
The Well of Loneliness than, say,
Middlemarch. Add in that Amy has set up a
creepy lesbian shrine memorial to Helen that includes a hair wreath composed of strands of her own locks intermingled with Helen, and it's little wonder that the narrative falls back on the old "crazy menacing gay person" stereotype that's poisoned so much fiction over the past century:
"A picture, startlingly clear, came into Sophie's mind: she saw Miss Travers sitting on the tufted sofa, her lap full of varying shades of Helen's hair, and the plump, babylike fingers selected and twisted, moved in and out. Sophie shook her head, refused to go as far as her thoughts wanted to carry her. But it was wrong, all of it. The wreath, the picture, the trunk of memorabilia. Unmistakably wrong."
This isn't the first time that Amy is described in less than flattering terms. Early on, Sophie devotes an unusual amount of time to analyzing the other woman's anatomy:
They crossed the creek in silence, and Sophie found herself studying Amy Travers' hands. They were amazing really, especially considering that Miss Travers had spent most of her life in this country. They didn't look like the hands of a woman who could drive a buckboard, shoot a gun, kill a rattler. Except for their size, they looked almost like a child's hands, the nails neatly trimmed ovals, pink and pliable-looking; the knuckles not protruding, but instead making a slight dimpling in the soft flesh. The skin had a marble-like smoothness, but one knew the slightest touch would make an indentation in the pillowy softness. Sophie was reminded of a statue, "The Rape of the Sabines," she thought it was called. The ravisher is lifting his victim to carry her off, and his fingers sink into the yielding flesh of her thigh.
Can we say "stereotypes about women, especially competent ones," boys and girls? Can we?
This passage is scarcely the only place where Cheney simultaneously shows off both her ability to foreshadow, her erudition about women in the 19th century, and her bone-deep cultural conservatism. Behold a flashback to Sophie's childhood, where she shares a secret with her Native American grandmother:
Sophie remembered when her own flow had begun. She had felt obliged to tell her grandmother, had gone looking for her, not because she wanted to tell her but because she thought she should. Deer Woman had been sewing a pair of moccasins when Sophie found her. "The bleeding—it's begun for me," she blurted out.
Deer Woman put her work down. "My little Sophie—not so little now." She smiled a melancholy smile. "With my tribe you would go to the hunagen now."
Sophie felt herself tighten inside. Her grandmother meant well, but she was always talking about things that had nothing to do with Sophie's life. And she talked about them fondly, when to Sophie they sounded queer and awful. "I wouldn't go," she said.
"To the menstrual lodge? But—"
"They couldn't make me go. Why should I be sent away like that?"
For a moment her grandmother didn't say anything. Then gently: "It isn't punishment. It never was for me. It was something to look forward to. Often there were babies there, and always friends and talk and laughter..." Her voice trailed off as if she realized her words were useless. After a moment, she lifted her arms, waggling her fingers, and Sophie walked over to her and let herself be drawn into her grandmother's embrace. But inside she held herself rigid and aloof. The world Deer Woman spoke of seemed alien and unattractive, and she wanted no part of it.
Can we say "white middle class privilege" and "utter terror of non-whites and their icky, uncivilized ways," boys and girls? Can we?
The rest of the book continues in this vein, with Sophie having steamy albeit feminist sex with her brother-in-law (she brought some condoms with her from the East, you see, and uses them), the greedy, lazy prostitute Helen was trying to help getting her comeuppance, a whole lot of ancestral incest thanks to Sophie and Helen's Native American grandmother being wince wince wince less than chaste, and brother-in-law Jack defending his insistence upon exerting his marital rights whether Helen liked it or not (I guess "no" doesn't really mean "no" in Cheney's Wyoming).
Despite this, and her earlier fear that Jack killed her sister, Sophie ends up marrying him anyway because:
"He could be so stubborn, so fiercely stubborn in his opinions, even if it was clear to her he was wrong. He'd defended lynching, rule by vigilante—she knew that was wrong. But still... would she want him if she could sway him on every point? Probably not. It sounded dreadfully dull."
This may be the first (and please God,
only time in American letters where someone agrees to marry an apologist for rape, lynching, and taking the law into one's own hands because life would otherwise be so very, very boring. It doesn't augur well for the happy couple's long-term prospects, even if Jack does agree to Sophie's insistence that they split their days between Wyoming and the East so she can continue her work.
This strange blend of feminist research, frontier cliche, and bangin' sex for the ambiguously feminist heroine was not a best seller - Lynne Cheney later claimed it sold about 500 copies, which may be why used ones go for so much money on Ebay - and was all but forgotten for many years. Only eleven libraries in the country contain copies, and four of those are in Wyoming, so clearly Sisters could not be counted as anything more than a literary curiosity.
This situation changed a few years ago thanks to the former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities sticking her nose into yet another controversy. Cheney, culture warrior and protector of the innocent to the end, attacked soon to be Senator Jim Webb for the sexual content in his gritty novels of the Vietnam War, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee promptly fired back that she was a fine one to talk since she'd written a book with a lesbian relationship, rape, etc.
Uh-oh.
Sisters became something of a nine days' wonder, with plenty of discussion from pundits and scholars alike. The publisher attempted to re-issue the book, only to scrap their plans when Cheney objected on the grounds that Sisters wasn't her best work. She also denied, and continues to deny, that there were any lesbians in the book at all nope, not a one, these are not the dykes you're looking for, nosiree!, or that the rape, brothels, brutality, lynching, etc., had anything to do with her desire to keep Sisters away from eager readers.
Cheney also denied that a character in Executive Privilege dies thanks to a heart attack brought on by non-marital sex, but that is neither here nor there.
Fortunately for you, my luckiest of readers, Sisters is not entirely lost. Satirical site The White House: Officious Website of President George W. Bush has scanned the entire text into a PDF for your reading pleasure. Just click on the link above, and enjoy!
Isn't that a great way to spend a Saturday night?
Zabibah and the King, by "he who wrote it" (Saddam Hussein and a group of terrified ghostwriters) - alert readers will realize that I seldom, if ever, link to Amazon.com when I give you the opportunity to purchase the fine literature I discuss on Saturday nights. I don't like their labor practices, I think Jeff Bezos is a greedy megalomaniac, and I think the world would be a much better place if the company's executive staff were replaced by clever mutated axolotls named "Manny," "Moe," and "Jack." They're doing just swell without me linking to them in these diaries, which is why anyone foolish intrepid enough to click on a title will be sent either to Barnes & Noble, Powell's, or Goodreads.
Not this book. This novel is so rare, so precious, and so out of the ordinary, its link on Amazon.com so extraordinary, that I decided to break my usual rule and give you an opportunity to see what Amazon shoppers see. It's not because of the cover art (nonexistent, because the actual art used on physical copies was appropriated from an artist's web site and used without permission or royalties), or the plot (ludicrous), or the overall literary quality of the book (ha!). It's because of the author, or at least the person whose name is on the front cover:
Saddam Hussein.
Yes.
Really.
Not only that, but the Bush family's least favorite brutal dictator is credited with no fewer than three additional novels, one of which, Begone, Demons, was completed the day before the United States invaded Iraq on its neverending quest to make Captain America and Superman fling themselves facefirst into the nearest exploding star bring democracy and American values to the oppressed multitudes. These books, which also include a gem called The Fortified Castle and a roman a clef called Men and the City, all contain allegorical elements that characterize Iraq as embattled by enemies such as the United States, Iran, Zionists, Christians, and pretty much everyone else in the world.
That they're all written by actual, genuine professionals who were "inspired" by Saddam Hussein and probably threatened with death if they tried to make the plots less ridiculous cannot be confirmed at this point, but it's pretty much a given that no one, even a multitalented tyrant like Saddam Hussein, could possibly have time to fight a war, oppress his people, beat on the Kurds, train his offspring in the secrets of brutalizing one's enemies, build several gaudily vulgar palaces for the use of himself and his family, and write literature of this quality.
These books, only some of which have been translated into English, all have their merits, especially if you're a fan of the ridiculous and the overblown, but Zabibah and the King stands head and shoulders above the others. Not only is it horribly written, frequently incoherent, and full of colorful incidents of rape, war, death in battle, revenge, etc., it's a historical novel where each and every character is inspired either by a contemporary human being or political entity.
Don't believe me? Here are some of the colorful figures you'll meet within this fascinating story:
'Arab - our hero, the brave, noble, heroic heir to the throne of Babylon (which bears a striking resemblance to modern Iraq minus the technology, never mind that Iraq was a post-Great War creation of the colonial powers). He's burdened with inglorious basterds half-brothers, all of whom hate him, and has to deal with their machinations before he can return from exile, avenge his father, and woo, win, and lose our heroine. His story is startlingly similar to the biography of Saddam Hussein if one leaves out the beautiful girlfriend and the ancient wisdom.
Zabibah - our heroine, a modest, wise, beautiful girl with a name that unfortunately translates to "Raisin" but probably should be "Mary Sue." She is the personification of the Iraqi people, up to and including her love of her brave, wonderful dictator king.
Mr. Zabibah (aka Sir Never-Named-in-This-Book) - Zabibah's nasty, mean, rapacious (literally) husband, who ignores her wisdom, beauty, piety, faithful love for 'Arab, etc., and otherwise behaves just like the United States of America.
Hezkel - an equally nasty sort, Hezkel is a local emir who owns the luxurious palace next to Zabibah's drying rack, I mean come on, she's a raisin, she must have a dehydrator somewhere! shabby little hut. Greedy, mean, and bestest buds with Mr. Zabibah, he is the stunt double for Israel.
Shamil - another one of 'Arab's startlingly large number of enemies, all of whom seem oblivious to his wisdom, heroism, and kindly intentions, this finely drawn character seemingly represents capitalist merchants AND Jews, even though there's already Hezkel to stand for the evils of Zionism.
Nuri Chalabi - yet another Enemy of 'Arab, this feudal lord is pretty blatantly based on Ahmed Chalabi, the adventurer the Bushes tried to foist off on the Iraqi people at one point. Probably the most honestly written character in the whole mess.
These colorful thinly disguised allegories characters populate a ridiculous richly imagined version of ancient Iraq Babylon where 'Arab must avenge his father, fend off his multitudinous enemies, return from exile, and rule wisely and well. After he does all this, he meets Zabibah, who's dehydrating living in abject poverty near the walls of Hezel's palace.
The poor little oatmeal cookie component thing suffers greatly since she's married to a cruel man who hates her and treats her abominably, but she's still so wise, gentle, compassionate, fierce, beautiful, chaste, pious, etc., that 'Arab falls in love with her. They don't consummate their love since she's a) chaste, pious, wise, ad nauseam, and b) married to someone else, but Zabibah is still such a pearl among women that she inspires 'Arab to become a Muslim (yes, I know that Babylon rose and fell long before the rise of Islam, don't blame me, I'm only reporting this tripe, I didn't write this myself, good God I have some standards). They have long philosophical conversations, and Zabibah helps thwart yet more plots against 'Arab, who sure has a lot of enemies for a good guy.
Tragedy strikes when Mr. Zabibah, fed up with his wife talking about life, the universe, and everything with another man, exerts his marital rights in a less than consensual manner. Zabibah, realizing that this somehow ties into yet another plot against 'Arab by Hezkel and his buddies, promptly rushes off to warn 'Arab of impending disaster. 'Arab summons his army, Zabibah summons the common folk to defend their king, and the resulting battle ends with 'Arab defeating his enemies (at last!) and Mr. Zabibah et al. getting what they deserve.
Alas, the price of victory is high: poor Zabibah perishes defending 'Arab. The grieving king reveals that he had married Zabibah just before the battle even though she was already married to Mr. Zabibah, and orders her buried as a "martyr of the people" in a luxurious tomb. Mr. Zabibah is buried next to her, and 'Arab declares that henceforth the date of his beloved's death (January 17th, the date of the Gulf War, and isn't that a coincidence!) will be commemorated with appropriate solemnity: her tomb will be decked with flowers, and his gravestone will be decked with garbage and rocks.
And then, like the good, wise, pious, indomitable, etc., etc., king he is, 'Arab convenes a "people's council" to debate the future of the monarchy in accordance with Zabibah's last wish (????). This last section of the book seems to have been written by someone other than "he who wrote it," and is mainly a debate about the future of Iraq Babylon after Saddam Hussein 'Arab is gone.
Needless to say, this book was a smash hit. Iraqis snapped up over a million copies at the low, low price of only ع.د1500, or about $.50 in infidel dollars. Royalties from this windfall were to go to "the poor, the orphans, the miserable, the needy, and [other] charities" if the back cover could be trusted (ha!), and never mind that the glorious cover art and several interior illustrations were actually goddess paintings by Canadian artist Jonathon Earl Bowser. Bowser, who has yet to see a penny of profit from the unauthorized use of his art, seems more bemused than anything else, especially since Iraqi authorities said that the art theft was "impossible."
Glad they cleared that up.
Despite this misunderstanding, Zabibah and the King still holds pride of place as the best selling book in Iraqi history, even today. It was adapted for both a 20 part television miniseries and a hit musical, and if America hadn't been inconsiderate enough to make eagles weep bitter red-white-and-blue tears invade in 2003, it would probably be considered a classic of Middle Eastern kitsch literature by now. It nothing else, the book offers valuable clues into the life and thought of its author, his family, and his approach to governance.
This is probably why the CIA spent quite a bit of time analyzing the text after they got their hands on a copy....
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Have you ever read a book by a politician? Heard that Lynne Cheney and Saddam Hussein were novelists? Eaten a raisin? Owned a goddess painting? Been of a mind to fling yourself facefirst into an exploding star? Read a novel about lesbians romantic friendships in the Old West? Confession is good for the soul, they say, so confess to your heart's content....
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