50 pages • 1-hour read
The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)
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Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section contains discussion of anti-gay bias, violence, death, sexual violence, sexual content, and abuse.
Chapter 3 Summary: “1960-1975: Pre-Civil War”
When Raja is five, his father throws him into the Mediterranean to teach him how to swim. Raja plummets into the water and then, looking up, spies his cousin Nahed. He mimics the motions she makes with her arms and legs and makes it first to the surface, and then over to the ladder. He encounters Nahed again at school when, on the first day, they are the only two students who do not speak French, the language of instruction. Raja also notices that they are the only two students who look unkempt in their uniforms. Farouk is mean to them both, and Raja burns with shame.
During that same time period, Raja tries to negotiate a deal with Nahed: She will give him one of her new Barbie dolls because she prefers active, outdoor play to dolls, and he will give her one of his birthday gifts when he receives them. Their parents seem to discover their plan because the doll, which he hides in his closet, disappears almost immediately. His father gives him a set of Matchbox cars, but becomes enraged when Raja organizes a tea party among the cars. His father explains to him that cars are supposed to be driven around and to crash, not be used for make-believe tea parties.
On June 5th, 1967, chaos erupts in Beirut. Zalfa picks up Raja, Farouk, and Nahed from school, explaining that the Israelis have invaded. She claims that everyone is going to be fine, but her obvious terror fills Raja with fear. At home, Raja’s father seems more annoyed than afraid and testily asks Zalfa to get him a beer.
Several years later, Raja wants to take piano lessons but is told by his father that it is not a “masculine” enough hobby. He’s crushed and becomes even more upset when everyone in the family tries to get him to wrestle. Nahed, his first opponent, beats him within seconds. Later, he will refuse to wrestle Nahed again at a family party, insisting that he was not strong, not a grown man, and that Nahed was more “tank” than girl. Raja’s father explodes with laughter, one of the few times in Raja’s childhood that he can recall not being the target of his father’s anger.
Raja will feel at odds with his sibling, cousin, and peers for much of his childhood. He forms a bond with one of their neighbors, a Japanese woman who introduces him to design and the Japanese language. As an adult, she is not a suitable friend for him, and she returns to Japan when the war begins.
Chapter 4 Summary: “1975: Civil War”
Micheline, the most beautiful girl in Raja’s class, asks him to be her partner in the school’s upcoming talent show. Raja knows that he doesn’t have a chance to date a girl like Micheline because he isn’t one of the popular guys, but she has deemed him a worthy dance partner. Raja doesn’t know how she intuited that he would be the one boy in their class who is both capable of ballroom dancing and would be able to complete the entire dance without staring at her breasts.
Micheline and Raja execute the dance flawlessly, and afterward, Raja ends up with a new frenemy: Micheline’s boyfriend Joe. Joe’s father is a parliamentarian with a penchant for spoiling his son, and because Raja can supply Joe and his friend Yves with hash, the three begin to spend time together. Joe and Yves are not kind to Raja, but Raja feels that refusing to drive around and smoke hash with Joe and Yves would result in some serious bullying.
On one of their drives, they get into an accident. Out of the other vehicle, four masked men with Kalashnikovs appear. One of them shoots Yves in the head, and another shoots Joe. Raja realizes he knows one of the men, Boodie, and Boodie spares his life. Raja learns that this was to be a kidnapping for ransom plot: Joe’s father would surely have paid a hefty sum for his son’s return, but now that he is dead, the plot has been foiled. Raja also learns, much to his shock and chagrin, that Boodie wants Raja to teach him to dance.
Raja wakes the next morning in some kind of dark apartment. Boodie soon returns, and Raja learns that the other two masked men were also classmates and that he is only alive because Boodie begged for his life. He is now Boodie’s prisoner, in a set of rooms meant to imprison Joe during the failed kidnapping.
Raja pleads with Boodie to let him go, but Boodie will not relent. Boodie brings Raja food, and they continue to argue. Raja points out that his family is surely worried, but Boodie counters that his family should have shown up to see him dance in the talent show, so they probably aren’t as caring as Raja thinks.
They begin their dance lessons, although Raja explains that he only knows one dance and is not a natural dancer. Boodie doesn’t care: He wants to learn the dance Raja and Micheline performed so that he can dance with Micheline and then hopefully have sex with her. In between lessons, Boodie leaves Raja in the room, which is often completely dark. One night Raja is sure he feels a cockroach run across him. The next morning, he hears explosions. He is furious, frustrated, and terrified.
Boodie refuses to let Raja go, but he does bring Raja a kitten. Initially, the kitten is terrified, but it does eat the food Raja offers it. Raja names the tiny creature “Mr. Cat.” Raja and Mr. Cat get to know each other as Raja feeds Mr. Cat a bizarre diet of odds and ends from what Boodie brings. Mr. Cat often hides under the sofa, but begins to venture out more and more as he gets more comfortable.
Boodie comes and goes without warning, and Raja realizes that for the first time in his life, he is lonely and that, perhaps, he does need human company from time to time. When Boodie does visit, Raja gives him dance lessons. They go poorly, both because Raja is a bad teacher and Boodie is a clumsy dancer. Boodie suggests that his problem is that he cannot see Raja as a girl, and he brings some dresses for Raja to wear during their lessons.
During their first dance with Raja in a dress, Boodie becomes aroused. Reluctantly, Raja agrees to oral sex. Afterwards, when Bodie has left, Raja feels a mixture of shame, joy, and something else he cannot name. He has always known that he was not attracted to women, but this was a confusing first sexual experience. When Boodie returns, he again instructs Raja to wear a dress, and they go even further. Raja is now in a coercive sexual relationship with his captor, and he does not know what to think about it. He is attracted to Boodie, but he also knows that something about these encounters is deeply off. Boodie brings him books, and when he leaves, Raja tries to lose himself in War and Peace and other classics.
They fall into a routine. When Boodie returns, Raja cooks, and then they have sex. Boodie attempts to win over Mr. Cat, but the creature detests Boodie and hides when he is home. Raja still cannot tell how he feels about Boodie and does not understand what is going on between them. As time passes, Boodie seems to develop genuine feelings for Raja. Raja begins to anticipate Boodie’s visits with more than just an eagerness for company, wanting to spend time with Boodie in particular.
He is crushed one day when Boodie returns and excitedly announces that he had sex with Micheline. Raja is angry and hurt, pointing out how unethical it was for Boodie to have comforted Micheline over the loss of her boyfriend, whom he himself had killed, and then slept with her. He flies into a rage, yelling at Boodie that he wants to kill him and that Boodie should go. Boodie seems genuinely shocked and apologizes for hurting Raja.
When Boodie next returns, he is injured. Raja helps him clean his wound and does his laundry. They return to their pre-Micheline routine. One day, Boodie brings Raja a gun. He explains that the other fighters who were in the car with him when they killed Joe and Yves want Raja dead because he witnessed the killings. Also, Raja’s mother has been looking for him and is wandering all over the city, screaming about her missing son. Command wants to kill Raja, both to ensure he never reports on Joe and Yves’ killings and to silence Zalfa. Boodie tells Raja that hiding him is saving his life and that outside, he would be in danger, but Raja isn’t sure what to think. Having been held captive for so much time, he is unsure what is happening outside. He can hear the war raging, but Boodie is his only source of information about it.
Raja has been in captivity for months now, he’s sure. His food supplies dwindle, and one day, there is an explosion that is louder than any he has heard so far. He hears voices at the door. Several men seem to be trying the doorknob. They speak to him through the door, asking who he belongs to. He responds hesitantly that he is just a man, that he has no affiliation. Suddenly, there is the sound of gunfire, and the men fall silent. Days pass. A terrible odor suffuses the room. When Raja is nearly out of food, he notices a set of keys on the floor by the door. Someone must have pushed them underneath it.
He unlocks the door, takes Mr. Cat, and flees. Beirut is a pile of rubble, and he cannot get his bearings. He heads toward the sea so that he can navigate his way home. He realizes that he is wearing a dress, but there is nothing that he can do about it. He passes snipers and checkpoints, somehow managing to avoid being shot.
He finds his way to a hospital and asks a nurse if he can call his mother. Zalfa is overjoyed to hear from him and arrives at the hospital minutes later. Since so many people saw him wandering the streets of Beirut in a dress, clutching a kitten, Raja becomes the subject of some hateful gossip. His father and Farouk are livid, and both refuse to speak to him initially. Both men also detest Mr. Cat and insist that he be put back out on the streets, but Zalfa sticks up for Raja. Mr. Cat remains in the family home.
Chapters 3-4 Analysis
This pair of chapters begins with a series of anecdotes from Raja’s childhood that underscore both The Complexity of Familial Relationships and Navigating Queer Identity Against Familial and Societal Judgment. Raja’s father is not a supportive figure and openly favors his firstborn son, Farouk, over Raja. This favoritism is the result not only of the privileged position that male heirs hold in Lebanese society, but also because of Raja’s failure to conform to normative standards of masculinity, even as a young boy.
Raja’s father exhibits his refusal to accept Raja’s queer identity by treating him harshly in his attempts to make Raja a more traditionally masculine son. He “teaches” Raja to swim by throwing him into the Mediterranean primarily because he wants to counteract what he regards as Raja’s “effeminate” behavior. In his estimation, childhood for boys should focus on learning confidence, masculinity, assertiveness, and even arrogance. Raja will experience his father’s parenting style as toxic, and the animosity he develops toward his father during these early years will become lifelong. From Raja’s relationship with his mother, he will learn forgiveness and the importance of reconciliation, but from his relationship with his father, he will learn that it can be morally permissible to go no-contact with an emotionally and verbally abusive parent.
Raja’s father wants to teach his son to become “a man,” but he also hopes to steer Raja away from queerness. Although Raja himself doesn’t realize he is gay until he reaches the cusp of adolescence, his family members can sense it much earlier. That Raja arranges for Nahed to give him one of her Barbie dolls and then organizes his Matchbox cars into an elaborate tea party helps the author to characterize Raja, even in childhood, as a boy not indebted to norms of traditional masculinity. His father becomes enraged by the car tea party, screaming: “Matchbox cars should have accidents, not tea” (104). His anger is rooted in both his desire for a tougher son and his fear that Raja is already displaying “signs” of queerness. It is against the backdrop of both this familial hostility and the social norms his father tries to enforce that Raja will have to come to terms with his queerness.
Zalfa’s conduct forms a contrast to Raja’s father’s, with her response to Raja’s kidnapping becoming the basis for their eventual reconciliation. She comes to pick up him from the hospital he walks to as soon as he calls her, does not judge him when he tells her the entire story of his captivity, and stands up to her husband and Farouk so that Raja can keep Mr. Cat. Zalfa demonstrates the beginnings of the agency and resilience that will characterize her later in life during these scenes, showing Raja that she does not actually prefer Farouk to him and that she accepts him for who he is.
This set of chapters also introduces Nahed, whose childhood becomes another point of engagement with the challenges of navigating queer identity. Although she bullies Raja and becomes another of the family members whom he will reject, she is, unbeknownst to Raja, fighting her own battle. Nahed is as masculine as Raja is feminine: She dislikes dolls, enjoys roving the neighborhood and roughhousing, and is an accomplished wrestler even as a young girl. Raja does not realize that Nahed’s antagonistic behavior is rooted in her own attempt to come to terms with her difference.
This set of chapters also contains a lengthy description of Raja’s kidnapping and captivity at the hands of Boodie, reflecting The Impact of History on Individuals and Communities. Ordinary civilians, even boys young enough to be high school students, become fighters in a complex, multi-sided conflict as Lebanon descends into civil war. Although Raja spends much of the conflict isolated and unsure of what is happening, the sounds of shooting and bombing reflect the atmosphere of violence and governmental collapse raging through Lebanon at this time.
Boodie victimizes Raja during this portion of the novel, not only holding him captive but also subjecting him to a coercive sexual relationship that initially confuses Raja, but that he will later come to characterize as abuse. Raja has had very little opportunity to explore his sexuality when he meets Boodie. He mistakes Boodie’s small acts of kindness for caring and comes to feel that he has feelings for his captor. He is uncertain and conflicted over Boodie’s narrative that his captivity is necessary to keep him alive, and falls into what resembles a domestic routine with Boodie. Raja demonstrates something akin to Stockholm syndrome during his time with Boodie, but he will ultimately come to see Boodie as an abuser.
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