50 pages • 1-hour read
The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)
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Chapters 6-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section contains discussion of anti-gay bias, violence, sexual violence, and abuse.
Chapter 6 Summary: “2021, Virginia”
Raja carefully re-reads his email from the American Excellence Foundation. They are offering him $9,000 for a three-month residency, during which he will not be required to produce any writing. To Raja, this deal seems too good to be true. His mother and Madame Taweel encourage him to go: Yasmine and Nahed have now been living with Raja and Zalfa for a year. Although they’ve long since gotten used to one another, Raja still occasionally longs for solitude. They argue that he deserves this recognition, and he shouldn’t question it.
Nahed, on the other hand, agrees with Raja: He does not have a recent publication, and the whole thing seems fishy. She researches the foundation and learns that its founder’s mother is from Lebanon. The offer now makes sense to Raja, and his mind is made up—he will accept the offer. Nahed does more research on the foundation and its founders and decides that she does not like them. She warns Raja that he should involve himself with the foundation’s leadership team as little as possible. Raja is touched that Nahed would demonstrate so much interest in his well-being.
The trip itself is a disaster. The flights are not all business-class, and he is hassled by Homeland Security. He misses his final flight and has to spend 24 hours in New York. His credit cards do not work, no doubt due to yet another issue with Lebanon’s corrupt and inept banking system. When he finally arrives at the horse farm on which he is to spend the next three months, he is exhausted.
He looks around his cottage and, to his horror, sees several photographs of none other than Boodie. Further research reveals that Boodie is, in fact, the president of the foundation’s board of directors. In a panic, he calls his mother. Zalfa is livid, but Madame Taweel takes the phone and takes over: She will arrange for one of her contacts to come and extricate Raja from what is now obvious as a set-up of some kind.
Madame Taweel sends Firas, a man whose wife was once one of Raja’s students. As he heads to meet Firas, Raja encounters Boodie along with Vicky, one of the foundation’s founders. Raja is enraged and begins screaming at Boodie. Boodie, to Raja’s surprise, declares his love for Raja. Raja realizes that Boodie has no concept of the damage that he did to Raja and doesn’t think that their “relationship” was abusive or coercive.
Vicky fiercely defends Boodie, and Raja recalls Nahed saying that rumors once swirled that Vicky and her late husband invited a young man to come live with them to “spice up” their marriage. That man must have been Boodie. Vicky begins screaming, defending Boodie’s character. She tries to prevent Raja from leaving, and Firas pulls a gun. With Boodie in tears, Raja makes his exit.
Back home in Beirut, Raja must first deal with loss: Yasmine dies. Then, he tries to make sense of what just happened. Nahed argues that Raja should forgive Boodie, but Raja is resistant to the idea. In addition to what Boodie put him through personally, Raja argues that Boodie was an angry and violent man, that he embraced war in a way that Raja never would have.
Chapter 7 Summary: “2023”
Zalfa dies in her sleep peacefully at 85, in spite of having just been told by her cardiologist that she was in excellent health. Madame Taweel and Nahed take over all the funeral-planning duties, but Raja does insist that Zalfa be honored in his apartment and not in a rented space. The apartment was her home, and it was where she was the most content.
Raja comes to regret his decision, however, when it becomes clear that many more people than he anticipated will be coming through his apartment. Almost every student he’s ever had, self-organized by class, shows up to pay their final respects. People he doesn’t recognize and people whom he knows but whom he would rather not bear witness to his grief see him break down. It is a difficult time.
Afterwards, Nahed moves back in with him even though he protests that he would rather live alone. He receives condolences, via email, from Boodie. He thanks Boodie and then blocks the account. Several weeks after Zalfa dies, Raja, Madame Taweel, and Nahed sit around telling stories about her. They recall how interested she was in Raja and Nahed’s sexuality and also that she stood up for them many times in the face of prejudice.
Chapters 6-7 Analysis
Madame Taweel plays an important role in these chapters, demonstrating both her strength of character and her role in Zalfa and Raja’s support network. When Raja accepts what turns out to be Boodie’s offer to host him at a writer’s retreat, it is Madame Taweel who comes to his rescue. Her network extends far beyond Lebanon’s borders, as she has contacts even in Virginia, where the retreat is located.
This anecdote, although it helps to characterize Madame Taweel as a skilled crime boss, also paints a subtle portrait of Lebanon’s vast diaspora and further illustrates The Impact of History on Individuals and Communities. Events like the civil war, the banking crisis, and the port explosion forced many Lebanese out of their homes and gave them the difficult choice of remaining in a chaotic country or moving to either a neighboring state or the West. The author himself is part of this Lebanese diaspora and lived for a portion of his youth in Jordan and Kuwait. Although he does not make the connection explicit, the implication is that Madame Taweel’s network is so large because of the sheer size of the Lebanese diaspora.
Boodie’s abusive character is further revealed through Boodie’s lack of remorse for what he subjected Raja to and in his gross mischaracterization of the kidnapping. Raja, during his months of captivity, was confused by the nature of their relationship. As a young man Navigating Queer Identity Against Familial and Societal Judgment, he’d had little opportunity to explore his sexuality. Boodie’s sexual interest in him felt, at the time, genuine, and because Raja had a kind of Stockholm syndrome, he initially experienced their time together as a relationship. Later, having had the chance to process, Raja realizes that Boodie kidnapped him, coerced him into sex, forced him into a prolonged “relationship” that was actually abusive, and refused to free him from the locked apartment in which Raja was held.
When Raja meets Boodie again, he is less confused. Boodie, by contrast, asserts his love for Raja and reveals his utter lack of reflection about the abusive nature of his behavior. Their relationship, under conditions of captivity and coercion, could not have been consensual, although he does not see it this way. Having the chance to confront and reject Boodie becomes another key moment of processing for Raja. The experience is difficult, but important for him, revealing how confident he has become in his identity and values.
Zalfa’s death becomes another key moment of processing and reflection for Raja, reflecting The Complexity of Familial Relationships. He is grief-stricken and allows much of the funeral planning to be handled by Madame Taweel and Nahed, but his insistence that mourners pay their respects in the apartment that he and Zalfa shared rather than in a rented hall speaks to his love and respect for her and illustrates the fact that he has come to see “his” space as “theirs.” That Zalfa is mourned by such a large number of people, including almost all of Raja’s students, speaks to the impact that she had not only on her family, but her community. In the wake of her husband’s death, Zalfa was truly able to become the societal force that she was always capable of being.
Madame Taweel, who dearly loved Zalfa, continues to demonstrate her commitment to Zalfa and her family in the way that she helps to organize the funeral and in how she cares for Raja. It is evident that she has not only an affinity for Zalfa, but for Raja too. Nahed also moves back in with Raja, arguing that he needs her support during this difficult time, and the fact that he agrees shows that Raja, too, has come to see Nahed as a crucial part of his broader support network. Nahed even tries to help Raja process both his kidnapping and his reunion with Boodie. Although the two do not quite agree on what Raja’s response should be, their conversation is fundamentally caring and respectful. They have repaired their fractured familial bond and have emerged from their difficult childhoods as individuals capable of forgiving, forgetting, and moving forward.
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