I know that my poor mother was no longer able to see her image in the mirror because she wanted to erase her secret. She thought that her life had been in vain because Mr. Elias had not proposed marriage to her. But when I asked her, she said that she had not wanted him. She said that she wished he had asked her to marry him so that she could have refused him, but he never asked. How strange, Gaby — is it possible that the sorrow of your life was that you were not given an opportunity for refusal?
Yalo did not pay much attention to his mother and her problems because he was seized with the idea of leaving Lebanon. We must understand him, he is a victim, sir, and a victim will become even fiercer than the torturer when he finally gets the chance. The war was Yalo’s chance. I agree with you, the civil war and the chaos are detestable, but imagine with me the situation of this kid whose father was his grandfather, and his mother his sister; imagine with me what the war could do to him. The war was his chance, but he lost it, and instead of straightening himself out as many others did, he dropped everything as it was and left for France.
I do not think that my mother’s tragedy was because of Elias al-Shami; Elias was the result. For the cause, we have to look to Cohno Ephraim, a maniac obsessed with delusions and the idea of death. Gaby lived with him after the death of his wife, and became his daughter, his wife, and his mother. Gaby knew Syriac but preferred to speak Arabic. She told me that Syriac was like a rosebud that blossomed and became the Arabic language. She would close her five fingers into a fist and then open them as she told her only son not to cry when his grandfather beat him for not remembering Syriac words.
Yalo fell in love with Shirin the day he met her on the mountain. I prefer to say that he met her because I do not like to use the word rape, which you have imposed on the poor guy. Yalo did not rape Shirin, because a man is not capable of loving a woman he has raped. Rape, sir, is an abominable thing. Ask me, because I know. Yalo knows the meaning of rape because he engaged in it. I did it and regretted it, but not with Shirin. I loved Shirin because she reordered my soul and my body.
Gaby did not believe her son when he informed her that he decided to quit his studies for good. She thought it was just a whim. But the lad stamped his feet nine months after the death of his grandfather, and said “That’s it!”
My mother lived like a lost soul in her new house, after the war forced her to move from West Beirut to East Beirut. And there, the outskirts of East Beirut, Yalo decided to join the war. He never returned home without smelling of blood. Gaby lived alone. She wended her way around the houses in her new neighborhood to revive her career as a seamstress. Elias al-Shami had vanished from existence; she didn’t look for him, but she asked around and was told that he had bought a house in Ballouna along with others from their old neighborhood who had all left Beirut.
Yalo’s story, sir, has a name — war.
How can I describe to you what happened to Yalo after M. Michel Salloum in Paris offered him a way back to Lebanon and a job as a guard at his villa in Ballouna? At the time, Yalo saw this village as a word written on the forehead of the middle-aged tailor. He saw the specter of Elias al-Shami that had occupied his youth with the smell of his false teeth, a smell like that of rotted mint, and he was afraid. Yalo wanted to refuse M. Michel’s offer, but he had no other option.
But the truth, sir, the truth that only God knows, is that my memory is distorted and I don’t know. Did Yalo hear from his mother that Elias al-Shami went to live in Ballouna, or did he hear the name of this Kesrouan village for the first time from M. Michel? But for some obscure reason, he associated that Kesrouan village with the tailor, that was the association in his head. His mother gave up the tailor when she fled West Beirut for the al-Mrayyeh neighborhood in Ain Rummaneh; she said that she thought that he had gone to Kesrouan, but it wasn’t certain she had actually named the village. So why had Yalo seen the name of the village written on the man’s forehead? Why had his feet led him to commit his first offense one month after starting his new job?
I should clarify things so that we understand what happened. When Yalo returned to Lebanon with Michel Salloum, and lived in his little cottage, he lived his life at night, because night was his cover. In daylight he felt naked, and his long black overcoat was not enough to hide him. He went out during the day only once, in order to get the equipment necessary to fix Mme Randa’s wooden chair. The mistake which was the beginning of all mistakes was the one he made in church. No, sir, the mistakes did not start with Shirin. All he did with Shirin was to be totally naked under the light of day, as if he were unaware of the dangers surrounding him. For love blinds and leaves on our faces tracks of foolishness. The mistake started in church. What made him go that Sunday morning, wearing his long black overcoat, to the Orthodox Church in Ballouna, to look for Elias al-Shami? Had he really wanted to kill him as he claimed when he told Shirin about his love of killing? Of course not. Yalo lied to Shirin all the time. He lied and believed his own lies. I swear to you that he lied, which is why there was no need for the torture party he endured when he was tied to a chair for three days without having the natural right all of God’s creatures have, from animals to humans, to discharge his need. That torture was useless. I lied to Shirin. I told her that I went into the church carrying a gun and a hand grenade because I wanted to shoot Elias al-Shami then throw the grenade at his corpse to blow it into pieces. Yalo was not carrying a pistol or a hand grenade when he went into the church and drew a few looks. Entering the church was his first mistake, then this mistake was linked to the confessions of Mr. George Ghattas, a resident of Ballouna, about a man wearing a long black overcoat whom he had previously seen in the church. He suspected him of being the same man who attacked him when he was in his car with a woman named Georgette. It never occurred to Yalo that a resident of Ballouna would fool around in the forest of the town where he lived. But what would bring someone like that to church? He fooled around, and then came with his wife to mass? What shamelessness! said Yalo, before receiving a barrage of slaps and kicks. Truly shameless, sir. What do you want with M. Ghattas? I am ready to confess to everything, because things no longer have any meaning.
The interrogation about the church was trivial, and forcing Yalo to confess that he intended to kill Elias al-Shami and blow up the church was meaningless. Yalo went to the church to see the man who might be his father, but he saw nothing. He went into the church when the priest was moving around with his censer among the worshippers, so all he saw was smoke. He began to cough and his eyes teared up before he made the sign of the cross and left.
Yalo lied to Shirin, because — how can I say it — because love makes a man talk. Love is a fountainhead of talk. Without talk love does not exist. In order to keep talking, Yalo had to make up stories. Shirin spoke only rarely, which forced Yalo to perform alone on the high wire of talk. He made up stories for her so that love would continue. For talk is the bed in which lovers sleep. That is the truth, and that’s the reason for the ambiguous situation in which the interrogation took place.
Yalo, up above, did not respond. His three eyes saw in all directions: north, south, east, and west, the past and the future. The future was clear to him: it was death, and Yalo needed no more than a small leap to get there, the Kingdom of Death. The past was a problem. The past frightened him and frightens me because events intermingled so strangely. He says yesterday and means twenty years ago, and he says a long time ago and means a week ago. It’s this state of loss that I am experiencing and he is experiencing. Yalo’s loss did not begin on the throne where he sits now, his loss began when he was not covered by the night.