During the war I got to know a lot of guys, especially the Syriac guys who had come from Syria. They joined the war so they could get Lebanese citizenship. We fought, and a lot of us died, and we stole some, as everyone did who had fought, but we were afraid, especially the Syrian guys, because their dialect wasn’t Lebanese, and there was the danger that they’d get stuck at our checkpoints, and it was a lot of work for Mario, our company commander.
In late 1989 I was depressed about everything. It was Tony Atiq’s idea to move to France. Tony and I stole the money from the barracks and escaped to France. We went by sea from Jounieh to Cyprus, and from Cyprus we flew to Paris. That was the first time in my life I was on a plane. I enjoyed the plane a lot, but Tony drank a lot of whiskey and threw up, and embarrassed us. But flying in the plane was wonderful. In Paris, Tony left me in the hotel and took the money. He ran away and left me stranded. Didn’t have a single franc. He was the money man for the trip, and the money disappeared. I don’t speak French. I left the hotel and became a clochard. That’s what they call homeless people there. I became a clochard, and didn’t have the price of a bite of bread. That is, I became a beggar sleeping in the Métro tunnel at Montparnasse Station.
I met Monsieur Michel Salloum, may God honor him, in the Métro station. He took me to his house at 45, rue Victor Hugo, bathed me, dressed me in new clothes, and fed me. When he’d heard my story he offered me a job in Lebanon. He said he did not like young militia guys, but he saw in me someone different, from a good family, and that my grandfather the cohno had interceded with him for me. I went back to Cyprus by plane, and enjoyed it. I drank only one glass of whiskey, afraid that what happened with Tony on the plane would happen to me. In Larnaca I met M. Michel and we took the ferry together to Jounieh and from Jounieh to Ballouna, and I worked as a guard at his Villa Gardenia. I lived in a little house below the villa, and that’s where I began a life of crime.
Yes, crime, I say it and I feel bad, and I hope God will forgive me, and I pray for my grandfather the cohno to intercede with God on my behalf, because I fornicated with the women of other men. I sat and watched the cars of lovers who came to the pine forest to make love in their cars. My grandfather would tell me that I was turning out like my father and I’d become a thief like him. That is what happened. The truth is that my main goal was pleasure, and I didn’t want to rob anyone. I had a lot of fun watching those sexual exploits in cars. I’m ashamed now to write about those scenes that might offend a gentle reader’s eyes, and lead him into sin.
The Devil tempted me, and I got involved in crime. At first it was stealing. I would come up to the cars with my flashlight and M. Michel’s Kalashnikov, and when they saw me they’d be afraid of scandal or of dying, and they’d offer me anything they had just so I’d let them leave. I began to steal, then as things developed — and here I have to say it was not my fault alone, it was their fault too, because if they had resisted I would not have done the things I did, I would have retreated. Anyway, sir, the first time I raped a woman it happened by chance, without any premeditation or thought, but the man who was with her ran away, and she was standing there waiting. She was shaking with fear, and I approached her and made her sleep with me.
I am not lying. I promised the esteemed officer that I would write the truth, and the truth is that I misunderstood her shaking. I thought she was waiting for me to do it, so I slept with her, but I was mistaken. My feeling was wrong, because my situation was wrong. When I began to have sex with her she began to weep. She put the palms of her hands over her eyes and wept, but instead of stopping, I felt a strange pleasure. It was as if I were a beast. I swear to God, I don’t know what happened to me, and now, after I fell in love with Shirin, I understood that that feeling is disgraceful and it is called rape.
After the first time, it was easier. I began to combine robbery and rape. Sometimes, however, I would be content with just robbery and I felt gallant, especially when I saw how the woman would thank me with her shamed eyes because I had done nothing more than rob her. I felt gallant and noble, and that restored some of my dignity.
I’ll be content with the sentence the court will give me. Almighty God has already punished me for my atrocious deeds and I have been subjected to the torture I deserve, I now proclaim my penitence.
In Beirut I saw Haykal, who had been with us in the Georges Aramouni Barracks, and had tempted me with money. He gave me five hundred American dollars and said that it was from Abu Ahmad al-Naddaf, and he asked me to hide the stuff in my house or the cottage below the villa. I hid it. I didn’t know Abu Ahmad al-Naddaf and had never met him. But Haykal had taken a paratroopers course in Israel, and that’s where he came to know Naddaf. The stuff I hid in my house was ten kilos of gelignite, twenty detonators, and five hand grenades. Later on we got started.
Haykal came and said that the job was starting, and they began to take the explosives and went I don’t know where. I paid no attention to the business since my main concern was Shirin. I made appointments with her and followed her from place to place, and I loved her. Don’t ask me, sir, why I loved her, because love is from God. I loved her, and she became the light of my eyes and the warmth in my heart, and she loved me too, in her own way. I felt her love when she laughed with me, but she was also afraid of me, and now I know she was right, because my behavior, what can I say. . was not worthy of her. But for her to go and press charges, and ruin me, as she did, that I do not understand. It would have been enough for her, sir, to ask me, seriously, to break off our relationship, and I would have broken it off. Can one person force another person to love them? But she did not ask for that outright; I felt she was hesitant. That’s what made me continue with her. My goal was honorable. I wanted to marry her and put an end to the dog’s life I was living. When my grandfather would get mad at me, he’d call me a son of a dog to remind me of who had abandoned me in my mother’s belly and went I don’t know where. Monsieur Michel told me that he didn’t get a dog to help me guard the villa because Madame Randa was afraid of them. So he made me guard it alone. And I felt like a dog. I told myself, I work with al-Naddaf; I’ll save a little money, marry Shirin, and live with her in a small, beautiful house in Hazemiya. But in the meantime I have to save some money to open a shop to dovetail wood. When I was a boy, my grandfather sent me to learn woodworking at Mr. Rizq’s, that’s how I learned the basics of the trade.
Then I got arrested.
I confess now, before God and the court, and I ask mercy for my soul. I have decided to repent and follow the path of my grandfather — God rest his soul — to take care of my poor mother, and not marry. I decided not to marry, and to give up Shirin, and love, and everything. I have also decided to stop eating meat.
This is the whole story of my life, from the moment of my birth until now. I wrote it myself in prison in February 1992, and God is my witness that I have been truthful in everything I have written. I am prepared to repeat in court everything I have said.
Yalo reread what he had written and felt frustrated. He had spent more than ten days writing these pages. He wept and suffered and felt unable to write. The respite would end in twenty days. The officer had given him the sheets of paper and had said he had only a month. “I’ll give you one month, and you must write your whole life story. Write everything, and I wouldn’t forget anything if I were you.”