Elias Khoury - Yalo

“War erases names,” he would tell the interrogator. No, he had not said that, he said that in war, you didn’t ask anyone’s name.

“And in the forest?” asked the interrogator.

“No, sir, never there, never once did I ask for names.”

“What about Shirin?”

“Shirin was different.”

“Didn’t you make her kneel and threaten her with the rifle, and ask her for her name before you raped her?”

“Me?”

“You, you, who else?”

“Me!”

Yalo did not know where the interrogator got that story. He wanted to tell him that when he was with Shirin he forgot the pain, but he didn’t dare. How could he talk about the pain that permeated his insides? Or about his flower that wilted under torture? How could he talk about his grandfather, the cohno Ephraim, who had sat facing him opening the Gospels and reading from the Apostle Paul: “A thorn in my flesh.” He closed the book and said, “Watch out, my son, the thorn is sin, and sin hurts. Watch out for your thorn.”

Yalo did not know how a man could watch out for his thorn, when it moved between his thighs every day.

“Maron got it moving,” Yalo told Tony when they both had night guard duty at the Georges Aramouni Barracks and were talking about women. Tony was boasting about his adventures, and lying and believing himself.

He told Tony about Maron. He said, after chewing on his cigarette and taking a long draw on it that reached the depths of his lungs, that Maron, the son of Salma the cook, had guided him to his thorn. Yalo was ten years old when he accompanied Maron to the chicken coop in the backyard of the cook’s house. Maron sat on a stone, pulled out his member, seized it, and began to repeat the name Marie. “For Marie, come on, pull it out and follow me.” Yalo was taken aback by the size of Maron’s penis, which was long, thin, and uncircumcised. Maron, who was fourteen, held his long thorn while a look of bliss spread over his face. He took it in the palm of his hand and shook it, shouting the name of their neighbor, the widow Marie. Maron stopped and looked contemptuously at Yalo: “What’s wrong with you, afraid? Show me your dick.” Yalo unzipped his pants and brought out his thing, which was small, thick, and erect. Maron looked at it and said, “It’s still small. Don’t worry, soon it will grow. Come on, follow me, for Marie.” Yalo followed along with him, sitting on a rock facing him, holding his member and shaking it, and the pain came. Perhaps the pain came from the chickens, for Yalo felt nauseated at the sight of the black chickens standing frightened in a corner of the coop. But Maron didn’t stop. He called out Marie’s name and moaned and his shoulders shook, then the name came faster and with it his hand motions, and then Maron let up. His hand was full of the sticky white, and he shouted encouragement to his friend. To Maron’s shouts, repeating the name of the black widow, the pain burst in Yalo’s hand. “Get her,” shouted Maron, and “Get her!” said Yalo, his hand motions accelerating, then unexpectedly something came from within him and his hand began to tremble at the convulsions of his member, but the trembling was met with a thick wall that prevented it, it hurled forward and then died out. The white liquid did not come out.

Maron laughed and began to chant: “ Qadishat Aloho, qadishat hayltono, qadishat lo yo moto .” He told Yalo not to worry, he was still young, and when he grew up we would sow the bellies of women with the liquid that carries life in it. “Man starts to tremble because his soul is here, deep in the white,” Maron said.

Yalo waited for his soul, which finally arrived. The wait was the reason for the pain that would accompany Yalo in his relationship with his inner soul. For that thorn became a flower, though its thorniness returned when the white liquid began to spurt, and he was bedeviled with pain.

“My thorn hurts,” Yalo said, as he stood alone before the mirror in the bathroom. He saw Marie, swathed in black and carrying her son to the house of Edward the taxi driver; he grasped his thorn and shouted in pain. The woman did not shed her black dress after the death of her young husband, who had worked in the electrical extension project and died suddenly of heart failure, which deeply affected the Syriac community in Mseitbeh. He was in his forties and his wife, Marie, was nineteen. They had their first child, Najib, six months before he died.

“Heart failure,” the cohno told his grandson.

“How does a heart fail?” Yalo asked.

“It stops talking,” said his grandfather.

“It stops talking!”

“A heart talks by beating, it keeps beating and doesn’t sleep, and when the heart falls asleep it means the person has died,” the cohno said.

Yalo felt his heart pounding in his neck and asked his grandfather if he was afraid of dying.

“There is no death,” his grandfather said. “We call death slumber. The dead sleep, they shed their bodies and sleep, and later on they awaken with Abu Isa.”

“Who is Abu Isa?” Yalo asked.

“Abu Isa is God, my boy. He’s the father of Jesus, of Isa, that’s why we call God Abu Isa.”

Edmond’s heart fell asleep, leaving his young wife behind, dressed in black and carrying their baby, Najib, in her arms.

Finding herself alone without a provider, she turned to working at the Régie factory rolling cigarettes, they said. She became the lover of Edward the taxi driver, who told extraordinary stories.

She knocked at the door and Edward opened it. He had prepared a table full of every delightful and delicious thing, especially a bottle of country arak and small fried whitebait. She drank, ate, and danced. She wore an oriental dancer’s costume and danced to the beat of Umm Kalthoum’s singing, and Edward kneeled at her feet and sang.

Marie’s image was seared into the memories of the young men of the neighborhood as an oriental dancer swaying like a cobra to a musician’s melodies without ever tiring. This went back to what Edward used to talk about in front of Abboudi’s shop when he was drinking beer with the guys and talking about horse races.

She came carrying her son in her arms, and before she ate or drank, she put a little arak on her finger and let the baby suck on it. When he fell asleep, she put him in the bedroom. She started to drink and her body shone. Edward recounted everything. He said that in the beginning she refused to take off her mourning dress and he would sleep with her in her clothes. Then, little by little, she became less modest, “and finally when she took it all off, heavens, what a beauty, how white she was! She was wearing a red bodice and red panties, and she said that she was allergic to the color black. Some red and some white and bring on the dance! My God, how beautiful she was, as white as milk, white filtered through white, white on white that made me melt. Then it was over and believe me, I was sorry. I told her from the start that I couldn’t. The fact is I was afraid. I had decided to remain a bachelor, but then I don’t know what came over me, I said to myself, Why not? I’ll marry her. But then later, no, I couldn’t, it was surely she who killed her husband. Who could handle a filly like that? I never saw anything like it. You just got near her and you felt the water coming out of her — a well, I swear to God, she had a bottomless well in her. Oh God, what could be better? But I was afraid. She told me that people were starting to talk, that is, I had to marry her. I told her I can’t. I was afraid she’d kill me like she’d killed her husband. I asked her a hundred times how he died and a hundred times she didn’t tell me. But no one saw the guy in the living room, my friends! They say he died in the living room after he asked for a drink of water and a cup of coffee. We ran over when we heard the noise and went in, and found ourselves in the bedroom, the deceased was in bed and covered with a white sheet. He was wearing a white shirt up top but no one noticed whether he was wearing anything below. Marie was standing beside the bed with her hair down. When the doctor got there he ordered us out of the room, and allowed only Marie to stay inside. After a minute the doctor appeared and said, ‘May he rest in peace, it was heart failure.’ He was almost smiling. What did that mean? It meant, this was not about a cup of coffee. I asked her a hundred times, and she smiled like the doctor, and didn’t answer. She sipped from the glass of arak and something like fire came out of her chest. What did it mean? It meant, right, he died because he couldn’t stand so much beauty, so do you want me to marry her and die too?”