Elias Khoury - White Masks

I followed the story of Dr. Khatchadourian’s murder in the press, and found the confessions of the perpetrators after they were arrested truly mind-boggling. Imagine, three young men, Sameer as-Samad, Ahmad al-Husseini, and Assem Kallaj — respectively, nineteen and employed in a novelty store on Hamra Street; twenty and unemployed; and the third, a twenty-four-year-old card-carrying member of one of the political parties — committing a crime of that magnitude and then being uncovered because they fell out over a bracelet that belonged to the doctor’s wife. Could it get any more disgraceful! This Sameer fellow, in particular, made my blood boil. The way he recounted it was that they were all from the same neighborhood and that they plotted the crime after Assem had gone to check out the apartment under the pretext of seeing the doctor about an inflamed appendix. Then one night they went up to the apartment armed with pistols and knives. After breaking in through the front door, they began searching the living room for silver, but then they heard footsteps: it was the doctor shuffling to the kitchen in his slippers. When he switched on the light, the three of them looked at each other uncertainly. Assem Kallaj was the first to react: he leapt into the passage between the living room and the kitchen; there he watched the old man panting as he filled a bottle with water from the plastic gallon-jug on the kitchen floor. His bottle filled, the doctor poured himself a glass of water and drank; then, taking the bottle and the glass with him, he left the kitchen. He turned off the light and went toward the entrance hall, feeling along the wall with his left hand for the light switch. Unable to locate it, he lost his balance and the bottle of water fell to the ground and broke. Instinctively stepping back, he then dropped the water glass, and it too fell and shattered. So then he made his way back to the kitchen. There he switched the light on and found a pistol aimed at his face as Assem clamped a hand over his mouth, hissing “Shhh!” Absolutely terrified, the doctor shook from head to foot. He kind of sagged over the water jug, straightened up, and tried to make a run for it. Stumbling across the broken glass, he felt his way down the hallway once more, halted an instant, and then dashed for the door. Just as he got there, Assem fired a shot. Hit in the back, the doctor staggered and sank to the ground, into a pool of blood.

“He’s dead!” Assem cried. There was the sound of a stifled moan.

“Not quite.” Sameer came over and shot the doctor in the head at close range. “Now he’s dead. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“But we didn’t take anything.”

“Everything’s in the bedroom and the wife is in there. Let’s go!”

Ahmad went towards the room, they followed behind, and as he flicked the light on, his gun pointed straight ahead, the white-haired head of a woman rose from the pillow. “What is it? What’s going on? Why all this shooting? Out, do you hear me! Get out! Out of our house! This is our home!”

Ahmad, gun in hand, tells her to be quiet.

“Where’s the jewelry?” he asks.

“We don’t have anything left, you people have taken everything. There’s nothing here. Where’s Harout? Get out, get out of here!”

As Ahmad takes a step towards her, the woman tries to jump out of the bed. Just then Sameer enters the room and, as he makes his way towards her, he knocks over all the water bottles lined up along the side of the bed. The bottles break, both the empty ones and the full ones. The woman tries to get to her feet; Sameer sits on the edge of the bed removing the shards of glass caught in his trousers. Ahmad approaches the woman clinging to the comforter, and he clamps his hand over her mouth to silence her and immobilize her on the bed. Pushing the comforter off to free herself, the woman exposes her thighs, and at that instant Sameer throws himself on top of her to pin her down. Later, she is found murdered, with injuries from stabbing and gunshot wounds. According to the forensic pathologist’s report, she was raped before being killed.

The bodies were discovered two days later in the caretaker’s room, on account of the putrid smell in the building’s lobby.

The investigating magistrate was apparently flabbergasted by the way the three young men conducted themselves after they were arrested. Evidently, they exhibited no feelings of remorse and were not the slightest bit fearful of the investigation and the prospect of imprisonment. They responded to his questions in a calm and matter-of-fact way, and even told jokes, as he tried to establish the motives for the murders and the rape.

Assem’s account:

Sir, it’s quite simple really. Everyone else’s gotten rich in this war, and we were down and out, so when we discovered that the doctor owned some valuable jewelry, we thought we’d rob him. We had no intention of killing him. But he got up just as we were getting started, and when he turned on the light and tried to run, we got scared we’d be found out. So we killed him. Then we went into the bedroom, and before we had even taken anything worth mentioning, the woman started to wail and scream. She tried to get out of bed, so we did what we did and fled. You can’t trust anyone these days, it’s a disgrace! We told an old friend who works in a pharmacy what happened, and he’s the one who snitched.

And it’s only because we have no connections in high places that we’ve been arrested. That’s all there is to it.

Sameer is quiet and then recounts how he raped the woman.

“How could you rape a woman your mother’s age, if not your grandmother’s?” the magistrate asks.

Sameer says he hadn’t thought about it beforehand, it just happened, by accident.

“Ahmad had covered her mouth to stop her screaming, and I was sitting on the edge of the bed in case he needed help, and when I saw her trying to struggle out of the bed, I jumped on her. Holding her head down with one hand, I put my other hand on her thighs so she would stop her kicking, and when I felt her naked skin under my hand all of a sudden. . I don’t know exactly how it happened. . but I felt incredibly aroused, as if I had desired this woman for the longest time. I didn’t even take off my pants: I just pulled out my member and let it find its way. I didn’t have to undress her, either, I slid right in, and the strange thing is that she didn’t say anything or try to resist — well, yes, she pulled at my shirt and the buttons all ripped off, but she didn’t struggle — or maybe she couldn’t. Anyway, after I finished and got off her, I felt really sick. I was so disgusted with myself that I pulled out my knife and stabbed her. And then, seeing the rivulets of blood seeping into the room from the hallway and the kitchen, I took a step back and fired one shot at her. Then we ran. No, before that, I pulled off the gold bracelet glittering on her wrist covered with age spots.

“Don’t ask me why, but they tried to take the bracelet from me, and I wouldn’t let them. It’s mine, I told them, and mine alone. I was the one who did everything. Then they went and told that dog of a pharmacy boy… I’m gonna kill him.”

Ahmad interrupts and recounts how he was caught off guard, how he had his hand clamped over her mouth, and then all of a sudden, Sameer was on top of her and he began to take her while I looked on. I could hear him panting, or was it her. . no, it wasn’t her, she wasn’t panting, she was as stiff as a corpse. I couldn’t see her face — he was going at it like a billy goat. Naturally, I felt a little excited too, I’m only human, I’m not made of stone, but I was scared at the same time: I was afraid that someone would come and see what we were doing, so I yelled at him to finish so we could leave. But he didn’t hear me: he was writhing on top of her like a fish. Then he straightened up and stabbed her. The strange thing is she didn’t fight or even try to get out of the bed after Sameer was done with her. Then, when the blood gushed out, he shot her with the pistol, grabbed the bracelet, and we took off.