Elias Khoury - White Masks

“But. . brother, you don’t understand. We’re the ones in charge around here, and we know what’s best. And anyhow, what do you mean ‘no abductions’? If you can do it, so can we!”

“Abu Saïd, you’d better stop your little game. This place is surrounded, and it’ll be my pleasure to start the bonfire!”

So Abu Saïd gets up cursing and goes to the bathroom to fetch the two men. Then, as the tall young man picks up the machine gun from the table, Sami al-Kurdi steps forward.

“Sorry, brother, but that’s ours. It’s war booty.”

The tall young man pays no attention to him. He takes the machine gun and walks out of the arcade with the two captives. He leads the old man by the arm, with the son following behind, both of them still blindfolded.

“Get in the car, Sir.”

“They’re going to kill us!” the young man cries, falling to his knees.

“Come on, get in, Sir.”

“It is the will of God,” the old man says, his voice breaking. Still on his knees, the son is pleading, I beg you, spare us!

“Don’t worry, you’re going to be alright,” the tall young man says, helping the son to his feet as the father gets in the car. “We’re releasing you.”

“They’re bluffing, Father. They’re going to kill us and throw us in the sea.”

“Almighty God, spare me this ignominious end,” the old man exclaims. “May the Lord protect you and reward your mercy!”

Then, the engine started and the vehicle disappeared.

Inside the arcade, everyone was fuming.

“What business is it of theirs?”

“They said they weren’t going to kill them, but I bet they will!”

We all thought they would. Sami al-Kurdi chuckled.

“Some chief you are, Abu Saïd!” he said. “In fact you’re nothing of the sort, you’re just fooling around! You didn’t even try standing up to them. They did as they pleased. Where’s all that muscle and might of yours, huh?”

“Shut up, you dog!”

“Me? A dog!. . No Sir! More like you’re the dog. . and the son of one too… and a coward, to boot!”

Abu Saïd drew his gun and fired, hitting Sami al-Kurdi in the belly. “Come on, Chief, can’t you take a joke!” he cried, falling to the ground. “See what you’ve done?. . Stop shooting, will you, you’re killing me!”

And the boys picked him up and took him to the hospital.

Abu Saïd stayed in the arcade with me. He sat there, drinking, smoking, and cursing. He was furious. And me, I thought he was right. Yeah, what was it to do with them? Why was it off limits only for him? Because his boys loot? Who doesn’t? No, it’s just because he’s the neighborhood boss and he’s a local. They’re just thugs! But now he’s done for, and so are we. . I think the business is going to go down the drain. . all because of this shitty war. . if it weren’t for this damned war, we wouldn’t be where we are. . I won’t be able to carry on the same as before, I can’t anymore…

Nadeem rambled on like that, and I think I fell asleep while he was still talking. Anyway, there was nothing I could do — he was my husband after all. It was best to keep quiet and put up with him. And that’s exactly what I did, until Ahmad died.

Oh, how could he, how could such a fine young man like Ahmad go and die, just like that! Why did he have to join up? The war has nothing to do with us but we ’re the ones who die! I told him, I told him he would die! At night, I would dream that he was dead. And he died! And then Nadeem expects me not to cry over my own brother. . He’s my brother, how could I not cry! How could he shout in front of all those people like that, how dare he!

Ahmad was my little brother, he and I used to sleep in the same bed. I would tell him stories and he loved listening to them. We’d lie in bed and pull the covers up over our heads, and he’d ask for the story about the Russian priest, and I would tell it, over and over again, until he fell asleep.

“Listen up, Ahmad,” I’d say. “There was once a Russian priest who had a cat he loved very, very much. One day the cat stole his piece of meat, so he beat her and killed her and then he buried her. And on the gravestone, he wrote: There was once a Russian priest who had a cat he loved very, very much. One day the cat stole his piece of meat, so he beat her and killed her and then he buried her. And on the gravestone, he wrote: There was once a Russian priest. .” And Ahmad would be asleep.

Why it seems like it was just yesterday. . even though he’d become a boxing champion, and I was married… he would come and sit beside me and ask me to tell him the story of the Russian priest.

I can’t remember who told us the story, but we used to sing it as a ditty at school, and the nun would get so mad at us, saying that it was wicked, and would chase us across the playground in her white and brown habit. She was pretty, that nun. I told my mother that I wanted to be a nun when I grew up, but when I draped a white towel over my head and walked around the house rattling off French words, Ahmad on my heels, it upset her.

She told my father about it, and he hit me. I nearly died he hit me so hard. The following year, he moved me from the convent to the local government school. But I liked the nuns’ school better.

I haven’t become a nun, and whenever I think about him now, I can’t help picturing Ahmad as a skinny little boy, brown as a nut, with a mass of curly hair, dripping with molasses! My mother is screaming at him in the kitchen for pouring a jar of molasses all over himself, and I run and scoop him up into my arms and whisk him off to the bathroom, where I undress him and splash water over his head and back and neck, and feel like licking the molasses off his eyes and face! And him holding his fists out in front of him like a boxer, running around the bathroom to make me chase after him and my mother yelling. His head dripping wet, his lips blue with cold, and my clothes soaked from washing and scrubbing his skinny little body, and still the molasses won’t come out of his hair. So I get the scissors and snip this way and that, and his thick dark curls cascade to the ground, and there is water everywhere, and then Ahmad slips. I finally take him to my bed to get him to go to sleep. He asks for the story of the Russian priest but I want to tell him about Jebina who’s lost in the forest and is attacked by wild animals, and how the wolf chases her so that he can ravish her.

“But that’s a scary story,” protests Ahmad. “I don’t like stories that make me cry.”

I begin the story, and he immediately starts to cry.

“But in the end everything’s alright,” I tell him. “Jebina gets married and the wolf doesn’t get her.”

He won’t stop crying, so I switch to the story of the Russian priest, and then he laughs and laughs and finally he falls asleep.

Hey, brother! That’s how he would call me. I don’t know why, but even as a grown man, he’d always say, “hey, brother.” He was the only one who truly loved me in the family: my father loved Su’ad, my sister, because she’s fair-skinned, but he hated me.

“Little soot-face,” he’d say, “we found you in a sack of charcoal!”

But he always spoiled Su’ad because she is fair, even though she never lifted a finger for him! When Father was ill that time, she came down from Tripoli just for two days and then went back home. The roads aren’t safe, she told Mother.

Whereas I stayed day and night — even though he wouldn’t talk to me, and Mother said I should go home. “Your husband will be upset, girl,” she’d say. But it wasn’t that… she doesn’t like me either, because I’m dark. I think dark is nice. Everyone says I’m prettier than my sister, except for my mother… All she ever wants is news of my sister. . She treats me like a servant. Yes, a servant. . ever since I was little…. First, I was a servant to them at home and now I’m a servant to Nadeem.