Accawi’s essay, first published on The Sun Magazine, 'The Telephone' shows Accawi’s reimagination of Magdaluna, a small Lebanese village where he grew up.
Time did not work as it does in our life there. The villagers told the time from the calendars of events instead. They referred to the ‘earthquakes and droughts and floods and locusts and pestilences’. Days, months, and years were uncalled into being.
Once Accawi asked his Grandma the age of Im Khalil, her friend. Grandma said Im Khalil was born ‘about the time we had the big earthquake that cracked the wall in the east room.’ Some died or got married after a flood or a big snow. Events were millstones.
One of the most unusual of these dates was when Antoinette the seamstress and Saeed the barber (and tooth puller) got married. That was the year of the whirlwind during which fish and oranges fell from the sky.
The young Accawi was excited in the year drought. The clearing by the spring teemed with kids and their mothers.The mothers queued for the precious water. The kids ran around and played hide-and-seek. Sweaty heat and the reek of dung cloaked the bulgy sway of femininity.
God, how I used to look forward to those fights. I remember the rush, the excitement, the sun dancing on the dust clouds as a dress ripped and a young white breast was revealed, then quickly hidden. In my calendar, that year of drought will always be one of the best years of my childhood, because it was then, in a dusty clearing by a trickling mountain spring, I got my first glimpses of the wonders, the mysteries, and the promises hidden beneath the folds of a woman’s dress. Fish and oranges from heaven . . . you can get over that.
The drought also marked the coming of the telephone. The telephone was installed chez Abu Raja, ready for use. Kameel, Accawi’s Catholic friend, didn’t believe it as Accawi told him about the installation, worrying his purgatory for lying.
The telephone changed how they gathered. Men used to converged at Im Kaleem’s threshold. She was the village shlikki, the village whore. Wives didn’t mind their husband visiting her house and her secret part. She loved who she slept with. They loved her as well. Im Kaleem asked for nothing in exchange. Her body connected the families. When young men yearned to unburden a confession deeper than sexual desire, they headed to Im Kaleem.
They now gathered at Abu Raja’s house, where the telephone sat. As the calls came, delivering news and fracture, they tore the villagers apart. Some immigrated to Australia, Brazil, and New Zealand. There also came a job opportunity for Accawi’s father.
Time and sex interest me most in the essay. Time is often intangible, perhaps it is not so only in the guise of age and illness. Im Kaleem sublimated sex, threading its web underneath intimacy, communication, and love.
Louis. 21 April 2026.
Ozick, Cythia. The Best American Essays 1998.