Yalo (35 page)

After the death of the rooster began the misery of the hens who turned
the garden of our house into a slaughterhouse. The slaughter started after the death of the rooster because the hens began getting dizzy, tottering around, and falling to the ground. Had anyone besides me seen a hen in love stumble in her walk, then spread her wings to regain her balance so that she would not fall? I began to fear my mother's return home in the evening because that meant that a hen would be slaughtered. My mother would go down to the garden, sleeves rolled up, grab a hen and break its neck, then finish it off with a knife and throw it down, shaking off the blood. My mother's pretext was that the hens were sick and would die of sorrow over the rooster, so they had to be slaughtered before they died and would be inedible as carrion.

For a whole month we ate nothing but hen, and my grandfather peered into the chicken broth and grumbled about the globules of fat spread over the surface. Now I have come to understand my grandfather's position, who abstained from eating meat, given the rancid smell of blood. The sole embodiment of my solidarity with my grandfather came directly after his death, when I stopped drinking wine for good, because wine reminded me of the smell of blood. Now I know that I was wrong, that abstaining from wine and drinking arak instead really damaged my stomach.

Shirin loved wine, but I forced her to drink arak, and that was a mistake. I made so many mistakes with Shirin, as if a beast had awakened inside me, and I interpreted things as I chose. I understood her fear of me as a lover's fear of commitment, and her refusal to eat as the contentment that comes along with passion. That's what happened with me when I was in love with Madame Randa. I do not deny that I loved her – that woman deprived me of my right mind, and all because of the calf of her leg which appeared and disappeared in the slit of her long cloak. I wanted her every day, night and day. I waited for her and I burned. I was literally burning when M. Michel came home from Paris. That was when she dealt me a card and began
ignoring me altogether, her voice grew flat and she started treating me like a servant. She'd put her nose in the air as if she smelled something bad while I stood before her like a dog.

My intention was not to steal, sir. I was searching for my self, which this woman had taken possession of. By coincidence I discovered lovers' cars, and there I found my entertainment and consolation. I am not a dog willing to accept that kind of treatment. Yes, I accepted the unacceptable when I was in the shadow of the tawny calf of her leg which was damp with the sweat of lust. With the car game in the forest, things began to change. My life changed in the forest, and gradually I began to move away from Madame. But, may Almighty God be praised, my lust for her ended only when I fell in love with Shirin.

I
know, sir, that you want three things from me: what I did in Paris, the women in the Ballouna forest, and the explosives gang I was connected to.

I will tell you Yalo's stories in detail. I want this story to be a warning for those who might need one. So when I sit in the chair before the table holding the fountain pen to write, I feel fright. For this ink which fills the pages is my soul. I want my soul to flow. I am not like the cuttlefish, which uses its ink to deceive fishermen and predatory fish. I don't want to deceive anyone. I know that in the end you will cook me in this ink, but I will go to my fate with perfect acceptance.

I do not fear death, sir, nor do I use my ink to deceive you. But I would be lying if I confessed to what you are demanding of me. Would you agree to my leaving some pages blank for you to write whatever you want there, with my acceptance of everything you write? Of course I will not do that because I do fear your anger.

After Yalo viewed the world from that steep height, it became unthinkable to take him down from his throne to torture him. I tried to mollify him. I told him not to be afraid, because I would write everything, and from now on would not allow him to taste physical torture.

I knelt before the window where he sat in exaltation and asked him to
help me a little. I cannot write these things by myself. Excavating a skull hurts, and makes you incapable of putting words in useful sentences.

The
cohno
knew that, so he took words just as they were and copied them. He copied the odes that Ephraim the Syriac had written, or the Syriac poems that Hanno al-Ainwardi wrote to eulogize the people led to the slaughter, and his blood became a long line stretching to the border of the heavens.

The
cohno
wrote a line of red blood in black ink, and said that when he copied odes and Syriac poems he became the author without any harm to the words or phrases. I wish I had before me a book telling Yalo's story so that I could copy it and be done with all this. I said to myself that my soul must remember, but every time it remembered, it forgot, and I discovered that I had to remember all over again, and that I was still far from the essence of what I had to write, that is, a frank confession of my crimes, a statement of readiness to accept responsibility for them, and acceptance of the just verdict that will be rendered against me.

The fact is, sir, that I did nothing in Paris. I spent three weeks there, which felt longer than an entire year. I learned about misery and hunger there. Had God not sent me the lawyer M. Michel Salloum, I would have died like a dog on a Métro station platform. I confess that my greatest crime was that I spat on the hand that reached out to help and comfort me. Instead of being the slave of that decent and honorable man who saved my life, I betrayed him. Yes, I betrayed him, and that is my worst crime. I'm not talking about my relationship with his wife, who was destined for me – I had no hand in it – for the betrayal happened long before that. I betrayed him in Paris, and it was a deed I will have to regret for as long as I live. I do not care if M. Michel made his fortune dealing in arms in Lebanon, Europe, and the Gulf. He can do as he likes and his money is his own business. We in Lebanon should be the last people in the world with any right to condemn
arms dealing. Had it not been for arms dealers, how would we have been able to fight? He is an arms dealer and we resorted to arms. What more can be said?

I stayed for a week at M. Michel's residence in Paris, 45, rue Victor Hugo, where I saw something unbelievable before being sent back to Lebanon to work as a guard at the Villa Gardenia in the village of Ballouna in Kesrouan.

M. Michel pulled me from the jaws of death. I was sitting in a tunnel in the Montparnasse Métro station holding a piece of cardboard upon which I had written my name. M. Michel stood in front of me for a long while before asking me to get up and follow him. I could not believe my ears. I had heard Arabic words, and I understood. O God, how sweet it was to understand. There in Paris, when they spoke to me in that language I did not understand, I felt as if they were beating me with words, and I'd involuntarily put my hands to my face to ward off the blows.

He asked me to get up and follow him. At first he asked me who I was, and the noise of the trains drowned out my voice. He ordered me to follow him and I remembered what Christ had told one of his disciples: “Take up your cross and follow me.” I said that I would follow that man to the ends of the earth and would never leave him, and would be his slave.

M. Michel stood in the Métro tunnel and asked the tall, thin young man why he was sitting there, like a beggar. Yalo tried to tell his story, but he did not know what to say. He sobbed. No, he didn't sob, but his voice was choked. The gentleman asked him whose son he was. He answered that he was the son of the priest Ephraim Abyad, and the gentleman exclaimed, “Son of a priest and lying around here?” Yalo said that the priest was his grandfather. “Come on, come on,” the man said. “What evil luck. Now your father or grandfather is weeping in his grave. Come on. Get up and follow me.” So Yalo followed him and found himself in an elegant house.
He bathed, put on clean clothes, and met Ata. M. Michel gave his guest no chance to ask questions. He ordered Ata to come forth and bless Daniel, son of the priest Ephraim Abyad. The short, big-bellied man with small hands approached and greeted Yalo. Then M. Michel asked him for oil. Ata hesitated a little before turning his back. He stood facing an icon of the Holy Trinity, which showed three figures with halos of sainthood around their heads sitting in a semicircle around a table bearing three goblets. Ata turned his back to Yalo and approached the icon, looking like he could have still been seated, his legs were so short and his posterior so wide. Ata extended his arms, and a few moments later, oil began to leak from his palms and Mr. Michel exclaimed, “Holy! Holy! Holy! Did you see the oil, my boy? Rise and receive the blessing. Make the sign of the cross and rise.” Yalo hesitated a little, but he followed M. Michel, who approached, his head bowed, and took a little of Ata's oil to touch it to his forehead and make the sign of the cross. Yalo imitated his new master and did as he had done, not believing his eyes. It was as if he were dreaming. When Ata turned around again, the oil stopped dripping from his hands. He looked at Yalo, and seeing the look of surprise on his face, winked. All Yalo could do was wink back.

This was how the betrayal started. Yalo didn't tell his master about the truth he knew, not because Ata had given him money, but because he was afraid. He was afraid he would say something that his master would not believe and he would find himself out on the street. This was the betrayal Yalo regretted having committed. Yalo had met Ata in the alleys of the war in Beirut. Ata Ata – that was his full name – had been active in a group of Jehovah's Witnesses, a religious group that had greatly expanded during the war before slowly disappearing. It was a group claiming to belong to the Protestant sect and whose members were forbidden from smoking or drinking alcohol. Their women were not allowed to adorn themselves or
use perfumes or cosmetics. Their main teaching was to prepare for the imminent end of the world. Ata carried around religious books and distributed them door-to-door. Yalo encountered him for the first time in his house in al-Mrayyeh as Gaby threw the swarthy-faced missionary out of the house, because, “God forbid, we were the followers of James the Saddler and the Syriac Saint Ephraim, and here these types came to preach to us the religion that was born in our own country and speaking our language? How shameful!” Then I encountered him a second time in the Karantina Prison, where it was said that he was imprisoned for stealing jewelry from a house he had entered to preach in. He was released only after he publicly repented and severed his relationship with the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Yalo answered Ata's wink with an involuntary wink of his own after witnessing the miracle of the oil, which reoccurred with the visit of Archbishop Mikhail Sawaya to Michel Salloum's residence in the rue Victor Hugo.

M. Michel was agitated that evening. Archbishop Mikhail would come to visit him in order to confirm the miracle of the oil that dripped from the hands of his servant Ata. A French chef had come that morning and prepared dinner, and a Filipino servant turned the apartment upside-down to clean it. In the evening His Eminence arrived with his staff, and no one was in the house but the three men.

I was sitting by myself in my little room when M. Michel opened the door and asked me to come out and greet His Eminence. I felt extremely ashamed. M. Michel must surely have told the bishop about my story, and now the Q and A would start and I did not feel like talking. I thought of slipping out of the house because I'd had enough of the phantoms of the priests, and now came this fraud performing miracles, with an archbishop presiding. Only where could I go? I understood, sir, that my grandfather was the reason I was saved from degradation in Paris. Had M. Michel not fallen under the spell of miracles, he would not have looked after me. When
he found out that my grandfather was a priest, he said, “Get up and follow me.” I got up and found myself sitting alone in a corner of the salon while Ata turned his back to his master and the archbishop sitting on the sofa facing the icon of the Holy Trinity. Suddenly the oil began leaking out of his small outstretched hands. M. Michel exclaimed, “Holy! Holy! Holy!” and the archbishop made the sign of the cross. Ata seemed to shrink while the shadows drawn by the candlelight on the walls created a strange ambience. The lights had been turned off on Ata's orders. The electric lights were turned off and candles were lit. The shadows fell onto the walls and the oil started. Ata's feet disappeared and Yalo trembled when Ata's feet disappeared, and he nearly believed the miracle. Then he noticed that the man was kneeling and the oil was gushing more freely. Ata stood there, not turning his back to the icon, and walked backwards, his face to the icon and his back to the archbishop. When he reached the archbishop he suddenly turned around and bowed before His Eminence and kissed his hand, but the archbishop took Ata's hands in his, then raised them to his beard and massaged it with the holy oil. At that point M. Michel fell off the sofa and knelt before Ata asking him to place his hands on his head. Ata placed his hands on his master's head and then raised them up, retreated two steps, and folded his arms.

The archbishop asked why the oil stopped, and M. Michel replied that the oil stopped when Ata turned his back to the miraculous icon.

The archbishop stood and approached the icon, bowed before it in such a way that the fingers of his right hand touched the floor, then he kissed the icon and exclaimed, “Holy, holy, holy,” and fell on his knees. M. Michel fell on his knees beside him, and I heard the archbishop say that the icon was leaking oil, and then his voice was raised in this prayer: “Now release your slave, Lord, according to your saying Peace, because my eyes have witnessed your redemption.” Then the archbishop stood and asked Michel
to turn on the lights. The living room chandelier lit up, and Yalo saw the three men shining under the effect of the oil.