Elias Khoury - Yalo

Yalo stood before the interrogator to tell him that he wanted to become a real person again and leave the stupor where his memories and the story of his life had taken him. He had become a shadow like his grandfather Abel Ephraim Abyad. The grandfather, who had become a shadow of himself in his last days, used to talk about his life as if it were not his own, and Yalo would listen to him with only half an ear. Here in the cell, Yalo discovered that he had not been able to listen to him because the cohno was dying, and the living could not listen to the dead unless they died with them. But fragments of his grandfather’s voice came back to him in his solitude, and he heard in his cell the words that his ears had refused to hear, and lived with death, and his story became a shadow of his life. Yalo lived in the shadows and hated the color black that spread ink on the page, but then, all at once, he decided to come back to life.

He stood before the interrogator to speak, but the interrogator didn’t look like a real man. His head was on the table and he spoke in a soft, almost inaudible voice. Yalo felt that he was still ink on paper, and that his soul had not yet come back to him, so he closed his eyes.

The interrogator did not shout at him, telling him to open his eyes as he had done previous times, he left him in the dark. But the young man sensed the three large men standing directly behind him. He saw them with his third eye, which suddenly came back to him. Since his arrest, this eye had gone dark and no longer saw. In prison he tried to make it see the way it had seen in the forest when he’d felt like he was an elevated tower looking down on the world and seeing in every direction. Was it true that he really saw himself that way, or did the idea come to him there in the café in Achrafieh when he was trying to convince Shirin to believe in him and in his love for her. There he told her how this third eye of his had grown, and how he had tried to see through it after he’d heard the cohno tell his daughter that the boy had a third eye, and how he would close his eyes so he could see with this new eye. Shirin laughed, and her small eyes would widen. There Yalo had become a tower; with Shirin he had three eyes, and could see what he liked. He carried himself as if he were an elevated tower pouncing on its victims, and was full of visions that mingled with his desire to possess all the women in the world.

But here, before the interrogator, in this room whose fluorescent white was tinged in yellow, he saw with his third eye three men standing behind him, and could smell a beating coming and felt sure that he was still in the mousetrap. He saw his shadow break on the wall as he bent over to avoid the blows coming at him from behind.

“You dare say you slept with Mme Salloum?” said the interrogator.

“I. . said. . no. .”

The blows rained on the shadow that Yalo saw with his three eyes. The shadow squirmed with pain, and the pain spread from the wall to his third eye, which suddenly went dark.

“You?” said the interrogator. Then he got up, came out from behind the table, and approached Yalo. The interrogator stood up, and the blows stopped. Yalo listened to the interrogator read a letter that the accused had written asking that the judge pass it on to M. Michel Salloum.

I want to direct this message to the lawyer M. Michel. I feel gratitude toward this honorable man who saved my life and brought me back to my homeland, Lebanon, after the torment I endured in France. I want to apologize to him for everything. I abused his trust and bit the hand that was extended to me in kindness, I devoured the flesh of the man who fed me, gave me shelter in his home, and restored my dignity. Not only did I put the machine gun he gave me to dishonorable uses, I used the small Colt 7.5mm pistol he hid in his car in the assaults I committed. I hid the pistol in my room below the villa; it was under the fourth flagstone to the right of the entrance, wrapped in cloth and a sheet of plastic.

I would like to ask M. Michel, the attorney, to forgive me for my sins. I know that he has a good heart and that he will forgive me, but, here, I hesitated so much before deciding to confess. But this good, decent man must know the truth, that is my moral duty, I must tell him the truth, however difficult or cruel, so that he will know, and so that I will feel that I have repaid a small part of his favor. I slept with his wife, Mme Randa. She seduced me. I am not saying that it’s her fault and that I’m innocent, because I’m a sinner too, and I believe the Devil tempted us both. And I ask M. Michel to forgive both her and me.

I thought at first that it was Mme Randa who betrayed me, because I decided not to continue this shameful and immoral thing we were doing. She threatened me, humiliated me, and forbade me from speaking with her daughter, Ghada. My relationship with Ghada was limited, I would buy books for her. Ghada was an excellent and refined girl. I bought her Agatha Christie novels. And our relationship never went further than discussing detective novels. I don’t like detective novels because they scare me. To me they are exercises in scaring the reader, but Ghada found intellectual pleasure in them.

I ask M. Michel the attorney to forgive me, I ask him also to tend to his life and to the morals of his wife. This will ease my conscience for good, I am ready to receive the punishment I deserve, and I ask God to help M. Michel since his problem is greater than mine.

Yalo saw the face that was reading and felt a pang of sorrow. The truth he had not wanted to be revealed had been revealed. He did not know how his pen slipped and he wrote those things. He would tell the interrogator that he also repented what he had written and that he withdrew his confessions, but he was not prepared to write everything over again. He couldn’t. The beautiful two-story villa must by now have become a hell, and the staircase connecting the salons on the ground floor to the bedrooms upstairs must have been wrecked by the footsteps of M. Michel, who just found out that his whole life had been a delusion.

“Who do you think you are, you piece of shit? First we confirmed the presence of the pistol and M. Michel showed us the gun permit and that’s how he slipped out of the trap you had set for him. And then, you know what M. Michel did when he read these inept tales about Mme Randa? He burst out laughing and said, ‘What a shame, I knew something was wrong with that boy, but it’s my fault because I took pity on him. What ingratitude!’ And he laughed, and we all started laughing, and then he shouted, ‘Ah.’ He fell to the ground and turned red, muttering something incomprehensible. We took him to the hospital, and there they discovered that he had angina. But God saved him from your infamy, he had open-heart surgery and his condition is improving, thank God. He refuses to sue you because he never wants to hear your name again, and he begged us to close the file relating to him in this investigation. Are you happy now, you dog?”

“. .”

“Answer!”

Yalo heard a moan coming from his shadow on the wall. The interrogator began to read passages taken from an investigation with men who had reported crimes Yalo had committed in the forest, after the newspapers reported that the suspect had been arrested. Yalo heard the interrogator tell him to rewrite everything, putting in the details given by those people, and to give explicit details about about the explosives network.

“Listen, you dog, to how you must write!” The interrogator picked up some pages and began to read.

“‘My name is George bin As’ad Ghattas, my mother’s name is Angèle, born in 1961 in Ballouna and living on my father’s property, file number 20 Ballouna, Kesrouan. I hereby inform you that on May 16, 1991, at about ten thirty at night, I was driving in my car, a black Mercedes 220, license plate number 1713620, from the neighborhood of Christ the King in the direction of Ballouna. When I arrived at J’eita, I saw a young woman I did not know standing by the side of the road waiting for a car. I pulled up beside her and she got into the car with me, and she told me that her name was Georgette. I do not know her full name or where she lived. After a conversation I parked the car in a neighborhood in Ballouna near the Greek Orthodox Church, and we began to interact inside the car. Approximately five minutes after I had parked in the area I mentioned, a person I do not know approached me and tapped at the car window on my side, pointing a military rifle, a Kalashnikov, in my face. He ordered me to give him all my money and jewelry. Afraid that he would harm me in some way, I immediately gave him one hundred eighty American dollars and thirty thousand Lebanese pounds, which I had in my possession. He also took from the girl accompanying me a pair of diamond-studded gold earrings. He began to threaten us and curse. He also stole the girl’s watch, and when he saw that it wasn’t valuable, he threw it from the car and began to threaten to kill me. He ordered me to get into the trunk of the car. I refused and a discussion ensued with this armed man. He also had pulled the girl out of the car and asked her to strip. When she refused, he put the muzzle of the gun in my stomach and said that he would kill me if the girl did not strip. So she began to scream that she didn’t know me and didn’t know anyone. He then dragged me from the car and kicked me in the testicles. I fell to the ground in pain, and saw the girl undressing, then everything went black because I lost consciousness. When I came to, my head hurt terribly. I saw the empty car. The girl wasn’t in it and the armed man was no longer there, so I drove home, took two aspirin, and fell asleep. In the event I should see this person again, I would be able to recognize him. I may also inform you that he is tall, lean, about thirty years of age, and wearing a long black overcoat. When you showed me photographs of one Daniel Abel Abyad, I recognized the man who held me up.’