Elias Khoury - White Masks

With a look of utter scorn, “Sir” got up and struck her. Fatimah wept and wailed, but “Sir” just slapped her face again. And then, they let her go.

They let me go, I didn’t say anything and I don’t know why, I swear to God I don’t. What I know, I told them. I told them everything I know. Ya akhi, it’s nothing to do with me, I’m not the one going around killing people; we’re not the ones doing the murdering, are we? They’re the ones killing us! We don’t kill people. Don’t you see how Mahmud died? And, to add insult to injury, they demanded that I repair the lobby of the building. Instead of feeling sorry for me, Sitt Elham told me her husband, Basheer al-Harati, had agreed to let me stay on in the building only if I paid for the repairs.

“But I have no money.”

“You have the bracelets, sell the bracelets.”

Even her! Poor Mahmud, you died like a thief! Everyone thought you stole the bracelets! But if you did, I’d like to know where they are!. .

Fatimah searched high and low but didn’t find anything. She went so far as to rip the tiles up from the floor of their room. Then she thought she’d ask Hussein to help her look for them. When she did, he stared at her witheringly, as if he suspected her. She asked him to go to the house in Kantari and look there.

“I can’t. Her children have taken over the apartment,” Hussein replied.

“Alright then, let’s phone Khawaja Fadee and tell him. Maybe he can help us evict them.”

“How would he do that?”

“Well, it’s his house, isn’t it? He’ll find a way. .”

“No, he can’t. It’s no longer his. He no longer owns anything here, don’t you realize? No, he can’t help us.”

Fatimah is sure that Hussein doesn’t believe her and that he is convinced she’s hiding the treasure. And now that he’s found out about her thing with Khalil Ahmad Jaber, he’s started to look at her in that strange way that he has — he doesn’t have to shout or lift a finger against her anymore, all he has to do is give her that look, and she hands over whatever money she has. Regardless of what she pulls out of the handkerchief tucked in her bosom, he asks for more.

Still, she had to find those bracelets… but how? She thought of getting Professor Nabeel to intervene on her behalf about the Kantari house, but he didn’t believe her either. He thought she was lying. Even him, her sole advocate, her benefactor. . So she decided to stop speaking. The best thing was to say nothing and do nothing. They were all going to die anyway, she thought, just like Mahmud, every single one of them.

As she sleeps, Fatimah dreams of Basheer al-Harati, dead; he’s coming toward her, a white stick in his right hand, and everything is white. The walls are white, his face is white, his hair, everything. Holding on to the white stick, he advances slowly, and when he reaches her house, he falls to the ground. He falls on his knees, then keels over to the left and rolls away further and further into the distance like a barrel rolling off into the void, and she hears crying and wailing, the very same sounds she hears when the shells rain down on the neighborhood.

Fatimah wakes up shaking with terror. She feels around for the children sleeping beside her, and tries to go back to sleep, but she can’t. It’s the first time it’s ever happened to her that she can’t fall asleep. Khalil used to tell her that he couldn’t sleep either.

“Why sleep? Half of life is wasted in sleep. Why do we have to sleep? I can’t sleep, and soon no one else will be able to either.”

But he did. She saw him, with her own eyes, asleep on the sidewalk at about eight o’clock one evening. She walked right by without him noticing her. Fearing him dead, she went up to him and, after looking around furtively, leaned down close: his chest was rising and falling and this smell — an incredible stench — emanated from him, it was like. . like what? She didn’t know how to describe it — it was unlike anything she had ever smelled before. . this smell of his, it remains in her nostrils to this day. Every time she wakes up at night and sits up in bed, the smell is there, as though he were asleep by her side — even though he died.

She gets up and washes her face, rinses out her nostrils and goes back to bed. But the smell won’t go away, it is stuck to her. And so she has come to loathe the man — that’s all she needed now, this man!

“I swear to God I don’t know him,” she told them, “I don’t know anything.”

Even though they didn’t believe her, they let her go.

Professor Nabeel told her it was a bad idea to get mixed up in that sort of thing. She tried to tell him she had nothing to do with it. He said he believed her, but that other people didn’t, and that there was talk of a relationship.

“God forbid, Sir! Not me! God is my witness.”

Professor Nabeel told her not to cry, and tried to comfort her.

As for this man, have any of you seen a frail man, with a navy coat glued to his body and his scrawny salt and pepper beard, shuffling up and down the streets like a sleepwalker, with a little bucket in his hand? Turning this way and that, tearing down what he’s pasted up on the walls, chewing the shreds of paper, then bursting out laughing? Standing all alone and chuckling loudly, he appears unseeing, as if he were the only person around. . people going and coming around him — children throwing stones at him, old men indifferent, young people tossing a few coins into the bucket, assuming he’s a beggar — and him, chewing away, his jaw moving up and down, up and down, then spitting something to the ground, and walking on. . He jumps across the garbage piles, throwing scraps at the cats, and leans against the wall, not speaking to anyone. . he doesn’t respond when spoken to and darts between the cars halted in traffic, not looking at the drivers or their passengers, just hurrying on, oblivious to the mocking comments directed at the pith helmet on his head.

He walks on and on, tirelessly. And when he halts before the wall, he looks right and then left, and, after making sure no one’s watching him, he starts tearing at the paper, slipping the shreds into his mouth and chewing. Every so often, he dips a tiny paintbrush into the bucket he carries around with him and tries to paint the wall white, leaving nothing but barely visible white squiggles. He stands back and looks at the wall, as though admiring his handiwork, and then goes on his way.

This is Khalil Ahmad Jaber. Has anyone seen him?

Fatimah says she has, but that she didn’t believe what he was saying.

Ali Kalakesh saw him, and so did Musa Kanj. Mahmud Fakhro didn’t see him, and neither did Sitt Huda, Khawaja Mitri, or Khawaja Fadee.

But he was here. Before he died, that is. Fatimah told them it could have been suicide.

“Maybe he killed himself,” she said.

The one in the dark shades slapped her, and then asked about the bracelets.

“Where are you hiding the bracelets?”

“I swear, I’m not hiding them, Sir. God is my witness! I don’t know where they are. I swear Mahmud didn’t steal them, that woman’s lying. . she killed him because he divorced her, Effendi. ” 2

He told her he wasn’t an effendi.

“As you wish, Sir. . But she’s the criminal.”

“And this Khalil Ahmad Jaber, what were you doing with him?”

“Nothing, I swear, we didn’t do anything. He didn’t even eat the food I made. I cooked him some warak ’inab — Mahmud, may he rest in peace, loved stuffed grape leaves, and so did this man — he said he wanted them with laban. So I made him some, but he never ate them.”

And although he wandered around looking petrified, as though he’d been terror-struck, he laughed at the same time-a frightened, laughing, wandering man, with bits of paper dropping out of his pockets! Not speaking to anyone, answering no one, and little pieces of colored paper cascading from his coat. . that was Khalil Ahmad Jaber! Everyone saw him, lying on the yellow paving stones, propped up against the wall, dreaming. No one knew for sure whether he dreamed, but he was there alright, lying back, asleep, with his head buried in his coat.