Elias Khoury - White Masks

“And who is the lady?” He was looking at her irately.

“My wife,” I replied. “She’s my wife.”

“Your ID, please.”

“It’s upstairs.”

“Go get it.”

To be honest, I was afraid for her at that moment. I told him she was my wife, that she was a little overwrought, because of the situation and all. . that she meant no harm.

He said nothing, maybe he believed me, I don’t know. Then he started talking, and telling me how they needed doctors, how they were fighting on behalf of the poor and the dispossessed, and how it was my duty as a doctor to collaborate with them. He was genuinely trying to convince me… imagine, me practically at death’s door and him rattling on about social justice!

I told him I was all for justice and for their cause. But I’m a doctor, I said, and it’s my humanitarian duty not to make any political distinctions and to attend to anyone in need.

Then he started telling me how their cause was similar to that of us Armenians. . and how this and how that. .

I told him it would be better for them to leave the house and set up their barricades elsewhere, as we had nowhere to go to. He nodded, as if he agreed, but when I tried to go back upstairs, he stopped me.

We stood around like this for about two hours. Then another gunman came and asked us to follow him, and they led us to a nearby building. When we went in, we heard all this screaming and commotion coming from the floor above. Then we saw a boy enter holding two men at gunpoint; he was limping. The men were shaking and they kept glancing back at us over their shoulders as they went, in a silent plea for help. They came to a halt at the end of the hall, and I heard the young militiaman with the sore foot asking:

“Which one of you is collaborating with them? ”

“Neither.”

“You,” he said, looking at the fat one who seemed the older of the two.

“No, really, we’ve nothing to do with it; I swear it’s nothing to do with us.”

The other man kept glancing over his shoulder, his mouth quivering with fear.

The gunman said that he was going to detain them both, as there were reports that someone from the Fakhoury family, living in Kantari, was collaborating with them. And he told them that if he wasn’t able to figure out which one of the two was the collaborator, then “over there,” at the party office, they surely would. And only the innocent one would be released.

The fat detainee asked the gunman if his foot hurt. Surprised by the question, the gunman says, “It’s OK. It’s just a sprain.”

That was when the woman appeared. Tall and dark, with a baby in her arms, she goes up to the three men and speaks to them in faltering Arabic, then sinks down to the ground and begins to weep. The gunman is visibly flummoxed. She tells him that she’s going wherever her husband does, that she has no one else in this world but him and that she won’t let him go alone. The gunman tries to talk her out of it but in fact has no idea what to say; his shoulders slump in discouragement.

I decided to intervene. I told the gunman that I was Dr. Harout Khatchadourian and that, as a local resident, I knew them both and could guarantee that they had nothing to do with politics whatsoever. He looked at me sympathetically.

“But I can’t let them go,” he answered me, “I just can’t. Those are my orders.” Resting the rifle on his lap, he squatted next to her as she wept and said, “Listen, sister, what can I do? I simply can’t… you must understand my position. Please stop crying and try to understand.”

But her weeping only redoubled. The two men looked at each other, at her, at us, and at some other people who had also been rounded up and brought in. In the end I saw the gunman leading them all away — the two men, the woman, and the child — and showing them out to the street. Before he left he turned to me:

“I swear I did it for you, Doctor.”

I thanked him and asked him to take us back home.

“Honestly, if it weren’t for that woman,” he went on… “She’s just a foreigner and has nothing to do with all this… poor woman, I had to release them. . don’t you think. .”

Then he left. He said he’d be back but I never saw him again during any of my frequent visits to the apartment. I couldn’t ever ask after him because I didn’t know his name.

As for this woman of mine, she’s going to be the death of me. Another man came that day and told us we would have to leave the neighborhood because the area was now a war zone. I believed him — the gunmen were ducking and weaving across the streets and running for cover; how could we continue to live here?

When I told the man that I agreed, and we would leave, she lunged at him, screaming. He stepped back, grabbed his rifle, and started shooting in the air. It was the first time I heard a machine gun at such close range — the sound of the Kalashnikov ripped through the air, blasting our ears, and the cartridges disgorged from the magazine and hit the concrete floor in a rapid, brassy yellow flash. All of a sudden, I had this urge to urinate. She froze and then fell to the ground.

And ever since, whenever I remember that incident, I feel thirsty and need to urinate. You should have seen those cartridges. . I didn’t realize that they were empty, I don’t know what I thought they were, but it never occurred to me they were just blanks.

Whenever we talk about the house in Kantari nowadays, I always say the machine gun was urinating. She smiles and says I’m good for nothing but passing water anymore! And I can hardly manage even that with my wretched prostate problem! Even though I’m a doctor, and a surgeon to boot, I’m frightened of going under the scalpel. I tell her I’m no longer a real man — if I were, I would have made sure she left quietly without all that hollering and screaming and carrying on. I feel an odd sort of tenderness for her, though, as if she were my sister, as if we’d been born together, and I fret that she might die. She’s obstinate, you know; she always made me go and check on the apartment, even though we were living with our daughter on Hamra Street by then, and we lacked for nothing. I used to go, hear the gunmen hurling insults at each other across the barricades, and come back. She only ever asked about the furniture, and I would make up some lie-I never went upstairs, they wouldn’t let me and I didn’t insist. .

And now here she is again, in this same house with a whole set of new furniture that she went out and bought so painstakingly — as though we were newlyweds — and I’m feeling frightened. . she’s bound to wake up and cause another to-do. .

The sound of their approaching footsteps grew louder. The door was opened quietly and he clamped his eyes shut. The woman stirred, awoke, and then started screaming. He would have liked to tell her to be quiet, he would have liked to say that he was the man and that she should therefore listen to him, but the hot liquid just burst forth from his entrails. He didn’t even hear the gunfire, all he felt was this sudden thirst tearing at him, he remembered that he hadn’t had any water to drink before going to bed, and now he was desperate for some water… he didn’t want to die of thirst like they do in the movies. It was only when he tried to get out of bed that he heard the gunfire.

Now tell me, how is it possible. . I read about it in the paper, as I did with poor Khalil Jaber. . how can they do such things? Three gunmen breaking into an apartment, murdering a doctor, raping his wife and killing her, then robbing the place and leaving! A nineteen-year-old raping a woman of sixty-five! How have we come to this pass, and what have we come to? That poor Khalil, God rest his soul, how they tortured and then finally killed him — at least that’s what they said in the papers. . I always used to see him wandering around, he was perfectly harmless, he wouldn’t hurt a fly — yes, he loitered about on the sidewalk, looking this way and that, but that’s hardly an offense warranting such a grisly death.