Elias Khoury - Yalo

“My grandfather kept coughing until he died, because the Sultan abandoned him, but me, the Sultan is still with me,” he told Shirin.

“Come to the beach with me so I can introduce you to the Sultan.”

Shirin didn’t understand this insistence on going to the beach at night. She grew accustomed to Yalo’s daily phone calls and his constant harping on meeting her. She was determined that their rendezvous be in the afternoon, at the Bistrot in Achrafieh. He would arrive enveloped in his long black overcoat, on tiptoe, peeping to the right and left like a frightened man, before locating his table in the upper corner of the café. He sat down, relaxed, and ordered a beer from the waiter.

“You’re so tall, why don’t you play basketball?”

That is what she asked him before sitting down.

“Well, here I am, tell me what you want,” she said.

“Nothing. I just wanted to see you.”

“Okay, you’ve seen me. And?”

“And, let’s go.”

“May I go?”

“How about you have dinner with me at my place?”

“Where?”

“In Ballouna.”

“Ballouna! God help me! Jamais !” she laughed.

Yalo told her unending stories, and made one up about his cousin that he killed in the war.

“You killed her?”

“Of course I did.”

“You killed your own cousin?” she asked, shocked.

“I killed her — shot her.”

“Why?”

“Because she wanted to marry a Kurd.”

“And that was a reason to kill her?”

“It wasn’t just that. He slept with her, and she was pregnant, so I had to defend the family honor.”

“Family honor!”

“Of course. My uncle couldn’t even see straight, he was shamed and felt that he couldn’t show his face in public. But he was a coward, he wanted me to help him.”

“And you killed her?”

“Like drinking water. I put the gun to her head, one bullet and it was over.”

“Over!”

“Of course, over.”

“And that’s how you saved your family’s honor?”

“Honor is the main thing,” he said.

“Good grief — honor!” she said.

He told her the story in order to see admiration in her eyes, but instead of admiration, he saw her little eyes fill with terror.

He told her about the tailor who raped his mother.

“Raped her?”

“She was young, she was seventeen, and worked for him. And he raped her.”

“Did you kill him too?”

Yalo smiled, flashing his big white teeth. “No — that one, my grandfather the cohno killed.”

“Your grandfather, the priest, killed a man?”

“Of course he killed him.”

“A priest who kills?”

“No, you’ve got me wrong, he didn’t kill him like you think, he didn’t use a gun or a knife, no, he killed him with talk. He talked with him, and the tailor couldn’t take it, and so he died.”

Shirin laughed. “Talk is all you’re good at.”

“Give me your hand,” he said, and offered her his hand above the table.

“Not here, please God.”

“Give me your hand — I’m telling you,” he said.

“Fine, but down there.”

Yalo brought his hand under the table and Shirin reached her small white hand out. He held it, and pulled it toward him and put it onto his hip, so that the girl felt a chill from the steel that tingled from her fingertips to her shoulders. She quickly withdrew her hand and asked, “What is that?”

“That’s my piece. You want me to take it out and put it on the table? For you I’m willing to do anything.”

Why did she say that when he met her at the Bistrot, he had put his gun on the plate in front of her?

He heard the interrogator reading about the gun and the plate and could not believe his ears.

“He placed the gun under the plate, then lifted up the plate and said, ‘Look.’ I almost died of fright, while he was laughing like mad.”

The interrogator read this sentence from the notebook in front of him, then asked Yalo what he had to say.

“How should I know?” asked Yalo.

“Is it true, you put the gun under the plate to frighten her?”

“. .”

“Is it true you told her you wanted to play the gun-in-the-plate game?”

“. .”

“What is this game? Tell me so I understand.”

“. .”

“Is it true you told her she had to get used to the plate?”

“. .”

“In front of everybody you pulled out your gun, as if there were no laws?”

“I only. . I mentioned the plate, but not like that.”

What did she say about that plate? Yalo had only said that he would put the gun on the plate in front of everyone, so that she would believe his love for her, and now she was saying that he put the gun on the plate to frighten her, that she begged him to stop, that he burst out into a tremendous belly laugh that rose above the murmuring conversations that mingled Arabic and French of all the diners seated nearby.

“. .”

“I forced her to speak Arabic with me?” marveled Yalo.

“. .”

“She said that she loved seeing me so she could speak Arabic, anyway, what do I have to do with Arabic? Arabic is not my language, sir — we have a dead language. When I speak, I feel something dead on my tongue.”

Yalo did not say this, and would not have even had he been able, in this difficult circumstance, to remember what his grandfather had said, for he was unable to formulate sentences in this way.

His grandfather, at the time the Sultan of Sleep deserted him, used to say that he felt his tongue dying in his mouth. He stood under the icon of the crucified Christ and spoke to Him:

“Your language is dead, O God, how can you let your language die this way? I feel the taste of death upon my tongue. Who after me will recite the Our Father in your language after my death?

“ Abun dbashmayo, netqadash shmokh, tite malkutokh, nehwe Sebiyonokh, aykano dbashmayo of ar’o, hablan laHmo dsunqonan yawmono, washbuq lan Hawbayn waHTohayn, aykano dof Hnan shbatayn lHayobayn. wlo ta’lan lnesyuno elo fasolan men bisho. meTul dilokh-i malkuto wHaylo wteshbuHto l’olam ‘olmin, amen.

“How can we pray, Yishou, when the words are dying? I can sense the worms emerging from them, as if my mouth has become a graveyard. Your language is dying, and You are doing nothing about it. With whom do You wish to speak upon Your second coming? There is no longer anyone in the world left but me who can understand You. And me, the Sultan has abandoned me, and death is approaching. Someday when Your servant Ephraim has died, what will You do?”

Yalo told Shirin that he wanted her to come with him to the beach at Ramlet al-Baida after Christmas. She said no. Yalo got mad, grabbed her by the arms, and made her feel the pistol on his hip. He said that he was prepared to put the gun on the plate, even in front of everyone, just so that she would believe his love for her.

“But no, no, sir,” Yalo said, “I did not force her to come to the beach.”

Yalo called Shirin more than ten times that day, and she repeated over and over that she did not want to go to the beach; she preferred to meet him at the café. In the end, however, he convinced her. He told her that he would show her a miracle, that he would speak to the fish in Syriac. She agreed to come, on the condition that their meeting be short, because she had to be somewhere for dinner. But their meeting lasted until late into the night, not because Yalo forced her to stay and drink wine, as she told the interrogator, but because the miracle indeed occurred.

They walked along the beach at Ramlet al-Baida, then he asked her to go into the water with him.

“It’s cold, please just cut it out.”

He left her standing there and plunged into the waves without taking his clothes off, then came back with salt water cupped in his hands and asked her to drink of it before they sat together on the cold damp sand. He pulled from the pocket of his overcoat a bottle of red wine and a loaf of bread. He drank from the bottle and had her drink from it, ate some bread and fed some to her.