Elias Khoury - Yalo

Yalo went into the café next door to the Empire Cinema, drank a cold beer, and then went back to the building to wait. But Shirin didn’t appear. She must have left while he was away. Again he looked at his watch, muttered, and shook his head before leaving.

This, sir, is how Yalo got entangled with the gang. I am not saying that Shirin was the cause, but I will say that this was fate. Yalo got entangled with fate and was forced to store explosives in his cottage, but he did not take part in the bombings because he was preoccupied. Yalo was a lover, sir, and that’s all.

I made you a promise and I’ve kept it, but I cannot resolve the subject of the explosives better than this, or answer your question — the one that cost Yalo so many kinds of torture and beatings — “Where did you hide the explosives?”

After Yalo confessed to the explosives because of your insistence, you searched his cottage, turned the villa inside out, and dug up the garden, but you found nothing. I cannot guide you to their location, not only because I don’t know, but also because my imagination does not permit me to play this game. What you require of me is truth, not imagination. I have said what I can on the subject of the gang, but I cannot imagine more. Now I am remembering and not imagining, and there is a great distance between the two. Remembering is imagination too, as memories come back to me like fantasies and bring me into a long night, but I cannot lead you to the location of the explosives because I am not writing a story but the truth. I know that if I point you to any specific place, you will go there and search, and if you do not find anything, and of course you will not find anything, my punishment will be disastrous.

I swear to God, I can imagine anything you want, but I cannot lead you to the location of the explosives because this spot does not exist. Even the story of Haykal’s meeting with Yalo in front of the building where Shirin worked I would not have been able to concoct, had something similar not happened to me when I met Najib Mansurati.

I was standing under the acacia tree waiting for Shirin to leave work when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I spun around and saw a smiling face that I didn’t recognize. He said he was Najib, but I did not remember who this Najib was. I thought he was one of the dozens of modern beggars proliferating in the streets of Beirut. One of them would approach and address you politely; you think he is going to ask you something, but instead he launches into a long tale about the illness of his mother, wife, or son, the point being that he wants a U.S. dollar from you. This phenomenon of the dollar bewildered me, why did they not beg in Lebanese currency? Even beggars, sir, had lost faith in the national currency! I thought he was one of those, so I felt annoyed again. But then he said my name — he called me Mr. Yalo. Now, my name has never been used with the title Mister. I am just plain Yalo or just plain Daniel. Where did this guy come up with this Mister to tack in front of my name? I turned to him and he said that he was Najib Mansurati, the brother of Said the singer. He brought his face close to mine to give me a kiss. Then he asked me whether I knew anything about his brother’s fate. I understood from him that Said decided to become a professional, so when the war ended he went to Al-Qamishli to work as a musician in the Khabur Hotel, which was owned by a Kurd named Muhammad al-Haytah, and that Said then disappeared. Najib said that they’d looked for him everywhere, that his mother had gone to Syria and visited all the prisons but found no trace of him.

He asked me what I thought and I said I didn’t know. I mean, a guy who’d been one of the Billy Goats, and then goes to Syria to be a singer? Wow — what a jackass!

“Maybe they sent him,” I said.

“What?” asked Najib.

“Nothing, nothing, I was just remembering the song ‘I would have eaten and feasted.’ Do you remember how your brother used to sing it?”

“In Achrafieh, the day I was there, and came to her

I surrendered my life to your lips . .”

The brother began to sing the song and I almost joined in with him, but I remembered we were standing in Tabaris Square in the middle of Achrafieh, and people would think we were crazy.

I wanted to tell him it was probably all over for Said, but I said I didn’t know anything. He invited me to visit them at home. He stood beside me and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket and offered me a cigarette, I told him no thanks. He lit his cigarette and smoked it quietly. He was waiting for me to ask him how he was, so he could ask me, but I didn’t say a word. I wanted him to go away so my relationship with Shirin would not get mixed up with my past life. Shirin had to be the beginning of a new life unconnected to memories of the war. But Najib remained standing there in his carefully pressed dark green pants. Through his pants I could see his white, hairless thighs. In my memory I saw him as he was when he visited his brother in the barracks, wearing shorts, and Alexei’s winks and comments about boys and the incomparable pleasures of life. He finished his cigarette and I finished ogling his thighs, but he kept standing there. Then I decided to leave. I looked at my watch and muttered. He asked me if I was waiting for someone, and I told him I had to get out of there. He threw himself on me to kiss me, and a crazy rage ran through me; I could have bitten him instead of kissing him, and the voices raged in my head, but I kissed him with lips trembling with anger. I hurried away and went into the café near the Empire Cinema, where I soothed my nerves with a cold glass of beer, then went back to the sidewalk to wait, but she did not appear, which meant that she had left while I had been sitting in the café.

This is the true story, sir. I never did anything with young Mansurati in the barracks because I know that it’s not just a sin but a crime as well. Even with the malfono Halim I never did. Others maybe. I don’t know and I don’t want to make accusations, but me, no.

Therefore I suggest that the subject of the explosives be closed at the point we reached before, that is, when Yalo met Haykal near the Araissi Building in Achrafieh, in Tabaris Square. I believe this confession should be seen as clear and sufficient evidence by the court. The judge can use it against me, or can find mitigating circumstances. Let’s suppose that Yalo was blackmailed by his former comrades, that he wanted to protect his relationship with Shirin, and got mixed up with that, but he was not directly involved in either the planning or the execution of the operations. Plus, his relations, or the relations of M. Michel, with one Ata Ata do not go beyond the business of the miracle. Poor M. Michel — he’s the last one to blame, that decent man who saved my life and made me human again after my misfortunes in Paris had turned me into the lowest kind of animal. It was enough that he was made a laughingstock, and his visits to Lebanon after the scandal of Ata in the villa became rare. I think the Ata incident ruined his influence in his home. Just think, sir, his daughter, Ghada, who had looked up to him like a god, started to ridicule him. If that was how his daughter acted, just imagine what his wife had to say — Madame Randa, who had always mocked his infatuation with Byzantine icons and the little flask he sprayed the icons with to keep them clean and bright. It is certain that the lady came to despise him and that she chose me as the right address for expressing her contempt for him. I was just a tool, sir, and this realization helped me to recover from that love. I am Randa’s tool and she was a tool for her husband, who was Ata’s tool, and Ata was a tool for I don’t know whom. Or I am my grandfather’s tool, and he was my mother’s tool, and she was Elias al-Shami’s tool, and he was his wife’s, and she was her illness’s, and I do not know. Or Shirin was Yalo’s tool and he was M. Michel’s, who was a tool of arms smuggling or of the war, and the war was the tool of I do not know. .