Elias Khoury - Yalo

The three men withdrew, leaving Yalo alone in the middle of the room. He felt something strange moving between his bare feet, but he did not understand the game until the officer came forward with a bamboo rod in his hand.

“Are you going to confess or do we begin?” asked the officer.

“I swear, I swear to God, I confessed everything, and I will do anything you want. I told you everything, but I’ll say anything you want, whatever you want.”

“Now you are still lying to us,” said the officer.

“I told the truth, I swear, I swear to God, I swear to God I’m not lying.”

The officer’s bamboo rod descended and landed on the canvas sack between Yalo’s feet, and the journey into torture began. The rod goaded on the thing inside the sack and the meowing and clawing started, along with his feeling of falling into the abyss. He goaded it one more time, so that the cat began to leap up and attack Yalo’s lower parts from the bottom of the sack. The cat trembled with savagery, springing and butting, climbing up Yalo’s member to bite and scratch it. And it had whiskers. Yalo could not see the whiskers, but he could see them nonetheless, gleaming in the dark. The cat’s eyes flashed in the darkness and its whiskers gleamed, and Yalo fell to the floor. At first his mind did not grasp what was happening, he heard the scratching and the yowling, but he didn’t understand until he heard the officer ordering the cat with his rod to leap up; then he understood that he was at the mercy of a wild cat.

“Kitty, kitty, kitty — jump up! Up!” said the officer.

Yalo fell to the floor. He bent over with the cat’s attacks and squatted, but then the animal grew fiercer. It leaped up to seize his testicles, at which point Yalo saw it and saw its whiskers and he felt that his testicles were exploding and that his member was trickling blood. He stood up wanting relief but the officer’s rod never stopped goading the sack as he said “Kitty, kitty, kitty!” The cat squirmed and jumped frantically and Yalo collapsed.

With the sack Yalo discovered how fear erased pain and how a valley opened in his belly that stretched to the belly of the earth.

The officer with the swinging rod in his hand, and Yalo with the sack jumping between his legs, the sack with the cat that bit, scratched, howled, and squalled. The meows of the cat were like the crying of a thousand infants, and Yalo was like a lone child who had lost the power to scream.

When Yalo raised his hands in the air and his tears streamed down, he confessed to everything.

“I’ll confess now,” he wanted to say, but he did not say it. His voice came out like a throaty meow and he collapsed, and saw himself in a jungle of savage cats tearing at his body. He was like someone swimming, he would say that he was swimming in cats, and called the sack a pool of cats. He saw himself swimming in blood, howling, and meows.

And he saw his tears.

For three days and three nights his tears flowed, bathing his eyes and face. He did not wipe them away, he let them flow and take their course and channels, then drop to his neck and cover his whole body.

Finally, the pool of cats baptized him with tears.

“The true baptism, my boy, is the baptism of tears,” his grandfather told him. “I am being baptized now. Leave me. No, I’m not upset with you, the tears come by themselves.”

Gaby ordered her son to go to his grandfather’s room to cheer him up. “Your grandfather the cohno , I don’t know what’s happening to him. Go to the Oilioto and talk to him so that he’ll cheer up. Go on, Bro, God bless you.”

“What am I supposed to talk to him about, Mother? He’ll start speaking Syriac and shame me.”

“Your grandfather is not well. Go in to him.”

Young Yalo went into the room where the black clothing was heaped in the corner which had come to be called the weeping corner. His grandfather was sitting on the floor as if he were a pile of clothes; now that his body had shrunk and his bones weakened, he sat crumpled in his corner with tears streaming from his eyes.

“ Shlomo ,” said Yalo.

“ Shlomo ,” replied the cohno .

“How are you?” asked Yalo.

“ Shsfir, tade le-morio ,” said his grandfather.

“What is it? What’s wrong, Grandfather?” asked Yalo, but his grandfather did not reply.

The boy approached his grandfather, sat beside him, and the cohno covered his face with his sweaty, black-spotted hands, and resumed his soft wailing as the tears crept through his fingers. The boy stood paralyzed, listening to the drone of the silence broken only by the sobs coming from the depths of the man sitting in his “weeping corner.” After a long while the grandfather brought his hands down from his face and told the boy not to be afraid of him, and told him about the tears of baptism.

“Do you want to know why I’m crying?” asked his grandfather.

The boy bowed his head.

“My boy, a man is baptized twice in life. The first time when he’s young he is baptized in water, and the second time when he’s old he is baptized in tears. I know that I’m being baptized before I go to join my mother.”

“May you live long, Grandfather.”

“I don’t want to go, but I will go, and that is the sign, the sign of Ishmael, my boy. Ishmael is the ancestor of the Arabs and of the Syriacs too. Only the Arabs don’t know a thing. Ishmael was the first human to be baptized. He was abandoned in the desert, with his mother, Hagar; he was baptized in tears, God sent water and did not let them die of thirst. You know why? Because he wept. The water came from tears, and water is life. ‘And we made from water every living thing,’ as it is written. I didn’t know these things, but a Maronite priest named Joachim told me. He used to like to visit me to talk to me in Suryoyo. He said that there was no one left in this country anymore who spoke the language of Christ, so he practiced with me. I listened to stories, my goodness, how many stories he knew. You know, I am originally a layer of tile, but I studied and completed theology, but he was different, he studied in Rome, and knew more stories about Christ than are written in the Gospels. He told me about the baptism of tears. He said the Muslims are baptized in the tears of Ishmael too, and that’s how he took me to the mullah, God bless him, and he said he wanted for me to return so that I could pass it on. Can blood be passed on? He wanted to bequeath me blood, only I refused. Later, Father Joachim reassured me, he told me that my father the mullah had also been baptized, that baptism is the way to forgiveness and that is how God forgave him.”

“Your father was a Muslim?”

“ Lo. Lo .”

“What was his name?”

“I was telling you about tears. Father Joachim said that baptism is not complete without tears. He was old, like your grandfather now, and when he spoke Syriac with me his tears would fall, and I had to hold my laughter back. Then one day I understood, and when you grow up you will discover the importance of the baptism of tears.”

The cohno , whose face had been invaded by an immense white beard, sank into his final baptism. Yalo did not understand, nor did he dare to approach that sacrament of which it is said that the greatest event in the life of a man is his death, and that the cohno had woven his shroud with his tears, and raved about the mullah that wanted to bequeath him blood. Father Joachim revealed to him that the common legacy of humankind was its tears.

He asked his mother about tears, but she hushed him. “Do not speak anymore of this. We shouldn’t be asking questions now. We should just be helping your grandfather.” Yalo told his mother that he did not understand. She told him, “Later. Someday when you’re grown up you’ll understand.” But he grew up and still did not understand.