Elias Khoury - Yalo

Sir, I am sure she is tormented now. Shirin and I committed a grave offense against love, and I want her to know that I am ready to correct it. I am ready to turn over a new, clean leaf with her, and if she wants marriage, I have no objection. I want Shirin to know that I am ready to marry her whenever she wants, and she’ll know I am saying this because I love her.

I did not sleep with her only in Ballouna, when I surprised her in the car with that worthless doctor; her fiancé was not with her, as she claimed, but I don’t want you to interrogate her because I know how fragile she is. Her delicate body could not bear torture. But I slept with her several times after that in a hotel in Jounieh. I beg you to forgive her for lying and saying she was in the forest with her fiancé, Emile, — a despicable coward, that guy — he shook with fear during my interrogation, even though I was the one who was being tortured, not him.

And concerning the explosives, I am prepared to go along with my confession about Haykal and al-Naddaf, if you judge it necessary. That would be my sacrifice for the sake of civil peace in Lebanon.

I hope, sir, that this new information will be useful, and helpful toward closing my case and proving my innocence. I rely on you, sir, for I am an orphaned young man. I do not know my father, my grandfather is not my father, and my mother is not my sister.

Finally, sir, I would like to thank you, to thank the interrogator and all of his assistants who permitted me during this period in captivity to make peace with myself and discover things that had never come into my mind.

Yalo closed his eyes and spat on Satan. He was sitting in the interrogation room, his insides churning. The interrogator’s face reached him through the glow of the dim fluorescent bulbs fixed in the ceiling. Yalo stood under the light and looked around. The interrogator’s gray hair had a yellow tinge to it, his small face seemed planted on the table, he turned the pages and looked at the tall specter under the fluorescent light.

Yalo closed his eyes and saw with his third eye. He felt a tremor move through the muscles of his arms and legs, and spat on Satan. In prison Yalo had learned how to spit in his heart, he no longer puckered his lips to eject a clot of phlegm onto the ground. Now it was enough to say “I spit on Satan” and promise himself that the day he was free of this nightmare, he would spit on all the devils he had been forced to deal with. He said “I spit on Satan” to stop the tremor in his heart and muscles, but the trembling spread in gentle waves through the body of the tall specter from his head to his toes. And before the interrogator had spoken a single word, Yalo understood that he had fallen into a trap.

“What’s this — you’re the king of sex?” said the interrogator, spacing out his words to suggest that his words implied a variety of threats.

Yalo was not afraid, or so he convinced himself; after all this what could he fear? What could be more terrifying than the sack, than the feeling of being castrated, than being rolled like a ball under boots? So why should he be afraid? He put his hands firmly on his thighs in an attempt to stop the tremor in his body, but in leaning over he heard a cracking in his neck. How had the interrogator gotten behind him so fast to slap him? Yalo straightened up again and saw the short interrogator standing behind him, waving the pages.

“You’re screwing with us, huh, king of sex?” the interrogator said, circling the tall, bewildered man, who didn’t know where to look to acknowledge the words of the interrogator. Yalo spat on Satan and closed his eyes. He thought of suggesting that the fat-thighed, round-faced interrogator stand on a chair to face him so that they could communicate. But before Yalo could open his mouth, the interrogator punched him in the stomach so that the air was cut off from his lungs and he doubled over, his mouth wide open as if begging for some air to breathe before closing his eyes to die.

Yalo would say that he felt death coming on. When he was in the sack, under the whip, in the leg braces for a beating, or in the pool of water, he had not felt final death. Perhaps he died without knowing it, but he was certain that he would make it, but now, faced with the circling interrogator holding the pages, punching him in the stomach and kicking his buttocks, Yalo entered the labyrinth of death, despising himself for being unable to draw a breath.

The interrogator went back to his chair behind the table and his head reentered the fluorescent white. Yalo found himself trying to reconnect the words coming from the interrogator’s mouth so that he could grasp their meaning.

Yalo heard the names Michel Salloum and Randa several times and gathered that the interrogator was asking him about the few pages he had added to his confessions. However, he did not understand the question sufficiently to answer it. He heard the names splintering between the interrogator’s thin lips.

“Why aren’t you answering me, you dog?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“You don’t know? So who does know?”

“Sir, I wrote that I would start my life over, give me a chance. I swear to God, it’s over.”

The interrogator said that he understood the game, and that Daniel was going to taste whatever torture would force him to tell the truth.

“You think you’re pretty smart, huh? You think that you can screw with us, you dog? We gave you paper so that you could write the truth, not so you could make up stories, make accusations against honest people and destoy their families. Do you dare tell me, bastard, that you slept with Madame Randa? Go ahead, say it! What are you afraid of?”

Yalo said nothing, but he felt the urge to dance, for the interrogator sputtered his sentences as if he were singing along to discontinuous music from his throat. A smile formed on the lips of the thin specter.

“Are you laughing, you son of a bitch?” he asked, signaling with his hand.

Three giants appeared. Yalo had not been unaware of their presence in the room. The fluorescent light gave a yellowing glow to the inspector’s mass of gray hair falling into his round face. Yalo gazed for a long time at this face and suddenly a shudder of fear ran through him. It was as if this face, the crack in whose lower half emitted words, was not a real face at all. Yalo had never before seen a face like this one: a soft nose that blocked the lips, as round as a ball. His activities in the forest had made him an expert when it came to faces. He could tell a good face from a wicked face with no trouble: a big nose meant fear, thin lips meant wickedness, a fat face meant surrender, and so on. . He would judge them by their faces, which he’d read in the light before deciding how to proceed. Should he use violence? In that case, he’d frown with his eyebrows and rap against the window with the muzzle of his rifle. Or should he be polite, lowering the rifle and signaling with his head? Or perhaps be apathetic, lowering both his rifle and his head? Yalo knew all the faces, but this face. . Before, he hadn’t looked at the interrogator’s face; he had been the prey and the prey does not see the hunter’s face. But that day, after Yalo had written his story so many times, he shivered with fear when he saw the interrogator’s face: a soft nose that disappeared in the fleshy, round face, lips like two lines drawn in green, oval eyes that didn’t appear to have pupils, and a voice coming from some mysterious slit in this ball resting on the table.

When Yalo finished writing the story of his life, he felt sure that his journey through torture had ended. He wanted the story to end so that he could go back to the life he had left behind. Yalo discovered, when he sat behind the table, broken by physical and spiritual pain, that his life had been unreal. The life he had written down came to him like dismembered, incomplete stories. He saw himself in these stories as someone else, and so Yalo hated writing and hated himself. “Shit!” He closed his eyes and said, “Shit! This Yalo whose story I am writing will go from these pages to the hangman’s rope, will stand under the noose, will dangle from the end of the rope like an unreal specter.” This is how he saw himself, as if in a nightmare, and now he was coming out of his sleep and standing before the interrogator. He would say that he had written down everything and that he had nothing new to add, so there was no need for torture.