Zizou's Voice

Abstract

Zizou's Voice Ghassan Zeineddine (bio) Zizou never thought he'd make a living off his voice or return to reading the Qur'an, but both things happened after he was fired from his job in the winter of 2003. He had been a night watchman at an assisted living facility on Ford Road in Dearborn, Michigan. The night hours had attracted him to the position; during his shift most residents were asleep, giving him the quiet and peace of mind to write his fantasy novel, "The Lands of Sarabia," at the front desk. Aside from his rounds of the hallways of each floor and the occasional glance at the CCTV monitors to make sure a resident hadn't left their room, he wrote his story on a legal pad, his inky scrawl wide across the page, to the distant whoosh of cars and trucks on the freeway. Once he finished a chapter, he would type it up at home on his desktop computer. The novel was set in an Arab fantasy world. There were no dragons or bearded wizards, no elves or slobbering goblins. Instead of Arthurian swords there were scimitars inscribed with Arabic calligraphy; instead of blonde maidens there were raven-haired princesses. And there were plenty of jinns, perhaps too many. Ten years after starting the book during his senior year of university, he wasn't anywhere near the end. The novel kept growing and spiraling in labyrinthine directions, leaving Zizou distressed and anguished. The more he worked on it the more he believed he had wasted his time, that he was a failed writer, a failed human. Even his breath, he thought, stank of defeat. One night, frustrated by his writing, Zizou put on his coat and left the front desk and stepped outside into the frigid cold to clear his mind. He walked down the gravel driveway to Ford Road, where he stood on the curb of the sidewalk, dangerously close to leaning into the freeway. When a pickup came speeding down the road, he was tempted to step in front of it. Stop being dramatic, he chastised himself. Or was drama the natural inclination of an artist? But was he an artist? He was thirty-two years old [End Page 20] with one publication to his name: a fantastical story that had appeared in his university's student literary journal about the misadventures of Abdelrahman Abu Fawaz, a melancholic Phoenician sailor who suffered from incurable insomnia. Zizou was stuck at a pivotal moment in his novel where the main characters, who hailed from distant lands in his imagined world of Sarabia, were about to cross paths. Only Zizou didn't know how to pull this all off. He stood back from the curb and paced up and down the sidewalk, his head bent, hands deep in his coat pockets. The icy wind lashed at him; his eyes watered. Not for the first time did he contemplate whether he should give up the pen. He couldn't rely anymore on the excuse of being young and exploring different career paths. According to his parents, at his age he was supposed to be married with children, own a decent-sized house with a finished basement, and drive a good car. Zizou was single, lived in a studio that overlooked a carwash, and drove a 1992 Chevrolet Corsica with a dented bumper. Zizou's younger brother, Fareed, was a real estate agent—one of the big sharks, Fareed often boasted—whose smiling face adorned a billboard on Ford Road. Every evening on his way to work, Zizou saw Fareed's slicked black hair and bright white teeth, lit up by spotlights. "When will I get to see your face on a billboard?" his mother often asked him. In Dearborn, the successful Arabs advertised their businesses on billboards all around town. Zizou imagined seeing his portrait on the back flap of his book. He didn't have Fareed's good looks or physique—Fareed wore tight-fitting suits to show off his muscles—and his hairline had started to recede. But what Zizou did have was an arresting, sonorous voice—a movie preview voice, his high school classmates...