Yalo (18 page)

Why did Nina come back from the old people's shelter in Atchaneh cursing the Syriacs? Sister Blajiah knew that her son was a Syriac, like all these youths, and that her family came from the Mardin region. Where had Nina come up with the story of the grandfather who had been an officer in the White Army?

The nun decided that the woman was crazy, and gave orders that she should be given strong sedatives that put her into a hallucinatory lethargy, which may have been the cause of her vision of the Devil that led to her death.

Yalo remembered nothing that happened in the cemetery, he had erased the scene from his eyes, and the woman was wrapped in what seemed like fog. He went back to his house and decided to leave his buddies, the war, and everything.

At first, Yalo saw himself as a hero, the war had come to teach him the secrets of life. That was what he felt in the training camp where he had become a Goat. He and his comrades, poor kids from the Syriac Quarter, became the masters of the streets. Yalo understood little of the complications and convolutions of the war that made talk of it seem so useless. He believed that he was fighting for the existence of a people who had disappeared into the darkness of history, as the
cohno
had described the continued migrations that had brought him from Ain Ward to Beirut. “We came from the darkness of history, and we will stay in the darkness, until the sun of justice rises.” When Yalo asked him about the “sun of justice,” the
cohno
replied that it was the Messiah. “My boy, we are awaiting the Kingdom of the Messiah, and He said that His kingdom was not of this world.”

Yalo did not understand Lebanese politics or the language of war. He
played along as if he were acting in a movie, and when he took part in a battle he felt as though he were a hero. But his feelings of heroism disappeared with time. He felt sad when he heard his mother, quoting the
cohno
, saying that war was useless. “We have to be yeast. We do not fight, my boy. The yeast does not fight the dough, but becomes part of it and leavens it so that it becomes bread. Leave the war and go to school. You should become a
cohno
like your grandfather.”

Yalo was frightened by the image of himself he saw in his mother's eyes, for it had become a miniature version of his grandfather with his immense white beard. But what he feared above all else was the emptiness, not the sight of the bones covered with shredded clothes, but the profound emptiness of this war, which had become monotonous. The idea of war was seductive and gave you a feeling of heroism, but the war itself was tedious and repugnant.

Said al-Mansurati dreamed of becoming a singer. What a shame how he had vanished, no one ever discovered even his bones. And so Yalo agreed to go away to Paris. He saw his own apparition walking around in Paris before he became an apparition in the night of Ballouna, under the pine trees, among the sighs of lovers. When he found himself in prison, with the sheets of white paper before him, it seemed ridiculous. He had always hated writing, and hated being forced to write in school. But now he had to write a long story of his own life!

At the St. Severus School Yalo had not been a special student. He had been average at everything. He studied, managed to move from one grade to the next, but he did not possess the spark of faith that his grandfather the
cohno
had. He did excel at Arabic because of the books his mother had but did not read, and that was all. But Yalo did not hate school. His head rose above those of the other students in his class, because he was the tallest.
He sat in a chair at the back, and Malfono Halim told him that he was as beautiful as a pretty girl.

“I'm like a girl, Malfono? What?” Yalo asked in the office of the principal, who was always summoning him to give him books to read. The
malfono
stroked his pupil's wide eyes and told him that his lips were like cherries.

At that time, Yalo did not understand the meaning of sex, yet he saw something burning in the eyes of the
malfono
who taught them Arabic and mathematics. No, it was not true, what Said al-Mansurati told him: “We all dropped by Halim's – he couldn't get enough.” Yalo remembered only the
malfono
's hands on his eyes and lips. But his friends spoke of something else, they spoke of the
malfono
's deftness, and drew with their fingers circles around their buttocks.

“Halim, oh man, Halim!” Tony said, after pouring himself a glass of arak. “I swear, there is no one in the world with fingers as light as his.” He put his hand on his member and made as if to encompass it. “I swear – no one.” The strange thing was that unanimity regarding the
malfono
, that he had been with all of them.

Yalo's memory said otherwise. It had not gone that far, in his view. The circumstances were innocent. The
malfono
would sit behind his desk and ask his pupil to come close in order to see his errors, and when he neared the desk the
malfono
had him squeeze in on his own side of the desk. The
malfono
would reach out and put his hand on the pupil's bottom.

“I swear, there's no one like him” exclaimed Tony. “Where are you, Halim, where have you gone!”

“Don't say Halim,” said Said al-Mansurati. “We used to call him Malfono Halib because he was as delicious as milk. Good lord, what ever felt so good? His hand was wonderful, how he played. In all my life, I've never felt anything like it.”

“What did you feel?” asked Yalo.

“Ha! Look, he's pretending he doesn't know. Of course he played with you the same way he played with all of us,” Said laughed.

Yalo remembered nothing.

“You were the girl,” said Said. “He used to say you were prettier than any girl. And once, I swear, once when he was fondling me, he started talking about you and how beautiful you were, and that might have been the most aroused I ever got.”

“Over me?” asked Yalo.

“Yes, you. Halim did it with all of us. He said that was the philosophical way to discover life. It's what Plato did with Aristotle and Ahmad Shawqi with Abd al-Wahab, all the geniuses did it.”

The
malfono
Halim used to place his fingers on the haunches of the boy to allow him to experience the bliss inside him. “
Malfono
the magician” is what they called him “because he made pleasure appear with a touch of the hand,” Tony said.

But Yalo remembered nothing, though he remembered that he was more beautiful than a girl, and he attributed that to his mother.

Yalo experienced minor adventures with girls, adventures more like moments where he stole some bliss. It was true that he was able to find a link between stealing bliss during the war and the robberies in Ballouna, because in both cases he felt that he was picking a flower that had bloomed between his thighs. He felt around his flower preparing for that taste drawn by Malfono Halim's fingers on his lips, neck, and haunches.

Why now?

Why did the apparition of the
malfono
come as if to awaken him from his death and restore him to the life that Shirin had stolen from him and crushed under her feet?

It was the same feeling, the feeling of blossoming and bending like a bow.
A feeling that began with Elvira and continued with all the women. Even his randifying was part of that bow that bent him toward what seemed like death. When he felt the flower blooming between his thighs, he remembered Maron and saw the pain shining from his eyes, bending over Elvira and discovering the pain written on her white thighs.

“War erases names,” he would tell the interrogator. No, he had not said that, he said that in war, you didn't ask anyone's name.

“And in the forest?” asked the interrogator.

“No, sir, never there, never once did I ask for names.”

“What about Shirin?”

“Shirin was different.”

“Didn't you make her kneel and threaten her with the rifle, and ask her for her name before you raped her?”

“Me?”

“You, you, who else?”

“Me!”

Yalo did not know where the interrogator got that story. He wanted to tell him that when he was with Shirin he forgot the pain, but he didn't dare. How could he talk about the pain that permeated his insides? Or about his flower that wilted under torture? How could he talk about his grandfather, the
cohno
Ephraim, who had sat facing him opening the Gospels and reading from the Apostle Paul: “A thorn in my flesh.” He closed the book and said, “Watch out, my son, the thorn is sin, and sin hurts. Watch out for your thorn.”

Yalo did not know how a man could watch out for his thorn, when it moved between his thighs every day.

“Maron got it moving,” Yalo told Tony when they both had night guard duty at the Georges Aramouni Barracks and were talking about women. Tony was boasting about his adventures, and lying and believing himself.

He told Tony about Maron. He said, after chewing on his cigarette and taking a long draw on it that reached the depths of his lungs, that Maron, the son of Salma the cook, had guided him to his thorn. Yalo was ten years old when he accompanied Maron to the chicken coop in the backyard of the cook's house. Maron sat on a stone, pulled out his member, seized it, and began to repeat the name Marie. “For Marie, come on, pull it out and follow me.” Yalo was taken aback by the size of Maron's penis, which was long, thin, and uncircumcised. Maron, who was fourteen, held his long thorn while a look of bliss spread over his face. He took it in the palm of his hand and shook it, shouting the name of their neighbor, the widow Marie. Maron stopped and looked contemptuously at Yalo: “What's wrong with you, afraid? Show me your dick.” Yalo unzipped his pants and brought out his thing, which was small, thick, and erect. Maron looked at it and said, “It's still small. Don't worry, soon it will grow. Come on, follow me, for Marie.” Yalo followed along with him, sitting on a rock facing him, holding his member and shaking it, and the pain came. Perhaps the pain came from the chickens, for Yalo felt nauseated at the sight of the black chickens standing frightened in a corner of the coop. But Maron didn't stop. He called out Marie's name and moaned and his shoulders shook, then the name came faster and with it his hand motions, and then Maron let up. His hand was full of the sticky white, and he shouted encouragement to his friend. To Maron's shouts, repeating the name of the black widow, the pain burst in Yalo's hand. “Get her,” shouted Maron, and “Get her!” said Yalo, his hand motions accelerating, then unexpectedly something came from within him and his hand began to tremble at the convulsions of his member, but the trembling was met with a thick wall that prevented it, it hurled forward and then died out. The white liquid did not come out.

Maron laughed and began to chant: “
Qadishat Aloho, qadishat hayltono, qadishat lo yo moto
.” He told Yalo not to worry, he was still young, and when
he grew up we would sow the bellies of women with the liquid that carries life in it. “Man starts to tremble because his soul is here, deep in the white,” Maron said.

Yalo waited for his soul, which finally arrived. The wait was the reason for the pain that would accompany Yalo in his relationship with his inner soul. For that thorn became a flower, though its thorniness returned when the white liquid began to spurt, and he was bedeviled with pain.

“My thorn hurts,” Yalo said, as he stood alone before the mirror in the bathroom. He saw Marie, swathed in black and carrying her son to the house of Edward the taxi driver; he grasped his thorn and shouted in pain. The woman did not shed her black dress after the death of her young husband, who had worked in the electrical extension project and died suddenly of heart failure, which deeply affected the Syriac community in Mseitbeh. He was in his forties and his wife, Marie, was nineteen. They had their first child, Najib, six months before he died.

“Heart failure,” the
cohno
told his grandson.

“How does a heart fail?” Yalo asked.

“It stops talking,” said his grandfather.

“It stops talking!”

“A heart talks by beating, it keeps beating and doesn't sleep, and when the heart falls asleep it means the person has died,” the
cohno
said.

Yalo felt his heart pounding in his neck and asked his grandfather if he was afraid of dying.

“There is no death,” his grandfather said. “We call death slumber. The dead sleep, they shed their bodies and sleep, and later on they awaken with Abu Isa.”

“Who is Abu Isa?” Yalo asked.

“Abu Isa is God, my boy. He's the father of Jesus, of Isa, that's why we call God Abu Isa.”

Edmond's heart fell asleep, leaving his young wife behind, dressed in black and carrying their baby, Najib, in her arms.

Finding herself alone without a provider, she turned to working at the Régie factory rolling cigarettes, they said. She became the lover of Edward the taxi driver, who told extraordinary stories.

She knocked at the door and Edward opened it. He had prepared a table full of every delightful and delicious thing, especially a bottle of country arak and small fried whitebait. She drank, ate, and danced. She wore an oriental dancer's costume and danced to the beat of Umm Kalthoum's singing, and Edward kneeled at her feet and sang.