Yalo (36 page)

I saw tears in the archbishop's eyes as he was trying to sit down. Ata held him by his arm and helped him back to the sofa. The archbishop said that he felt dizzy, so M. Michel offered him some orange-blossom water, but His Eminence refused with a twitch of his narrow eyebrows, and asked Michel and Ata to sit by his side.

I was sitting alone in the corner, seeing them without their seeing me, and the idea came to me that His Eminence plucked his eyebrows like women do, and I nearly burst out laughing, but the archbishop's voice froze the blood in my veins. I heard a broad, deep voice, which seemed to rise from his chest, say: “The Father, the Father, I see the Father. Look, Michel, look, my sons, the Father seated in the middle of the icon is moving, he is carrying the goblet and bringing it to his lips. No one has seen the Father without dying. The Father calls us to his kingdom and brings news of the second coming of the Lord.” He said that the Father raised his goblet a second time and the icon was erased. “The icon is erased,” he announced in his resounding voice, before falling to the ground.

I thought the archbishop was going to die. He flopped off the sofa and fell in a sitting position on the Persian carpet covering the floor, then walked toward the icon and knelt down, placing his forehead against the floor. Michel and Ata knelt on the floor, and I found myself kneeling and gazing at the icon without seeing any change in it. I don't know how long I knelt but I felt that it would never end. We knelt in silence, hearing nothing but the breathing of the old archbishop, which sounded like snoring, then he began to breathe calmly. I thought that we would remain kneeling like that forever, and my knees were aching, and my eyes began to hurt, so I closed them, and after a long while, I heard Ata's voice saying that dinner was served. It seemed that he had left us kneeling and went to set the table.
I opened my eyes and saw that they had arisen, and I followed them to the dining room. The table was set, there were five place settings, five goblets, a bottle of wine, a bowl of salad, and a steaming platter giving off the fragrance of mutton. After the archbishop pronounced a blessing over the table, he turned to the empty chair and asked M. Michel whether we needed to wait for another dinner guest before starting. M. Michel glanced toward Ata, who explained that the extra place was left for the living St. Elias. The archbishop said that this was a Jewish custom, and asked that the place be removed. But Ata resisted, saying that the plate had appeared to him in a vision. He said that he had heard the voice of St. Elias asking him to leave him a place at the table. Then Ata's voice started rising until it sounded like a little girl's, begging the archbishop for permission for the prophet Elijah to sit with us. Annoyance showed plainly on the archbishop's face as he devoured the mutton but said nothing. Silence fell and His Eminence took only one swallow from his goblet, so no one else drank.

When Ata and I cleared the table I saw M. Michel bend over to kiss the archbishop's hand, and I also saw him slip something into his hand. The archbishop took the thing and said, “May God always bless this house.” I wanted to say to M. Michel and to the archbishop that Ata was a fraud and had nothing to do with faith, but I wasn't sure that my voice would make it out of my throat. I was afraid my voice would come out sounding like Ata's did, thin and like a little girl's, so I said nothing.

In the kitchen, while we were washing the dishes, Ata gulped down all the glasses of wine, saying that it was the finest wine in the world, then he drained the bottle and smacked his thin lips. He then handed me some money without daring to look me in the face.

Yalo did not attend the following oil sessions, which were held three times a week in this Parisian residence. He guessed that Ata had decided to exclude him from them, and thanked God for that, because he was sure that
had he been summoned to a second session he would have burst out laughing and exposed the whole trick. But the trick was eventually exposed at the villa. Ghada told me how the deacon Issam succeeded in exposing it.

Ata exploited M. Michel's faith and milked him. Yes, milked him. Ata was a fraud, and thank God it was not I who exposed him. I saw how he left the villa in the February cold. He was naked from the waist up as if he were walking on his knees. I thought he was kneeling, and guessed that he had moved his miracles from the living room to the garden, but I was mistaken. Ata stood under the illuminated balcony for shelter from the rain. I called out to him and he looked back, and when he saw me his teeth flashed from his rain-wet face before he ran into the darkness and was swallowed by it.

Ghada told me how the deacon Issam exposed him. As usual the ceremony took place in the dark, by candlelight. The oil began to leak out of Ata's extended palms. The deacon leaped up and grabbed him from behind and called for the lights to be turned on. Before Issam joined the clergy he had been a gym teacher in an evangelical college. Once he caught Ata, his poor victim could not move. The lights came on and the deacon asked Ata to take his shirt off, but Ata resisted. But the deacon rendered him unable to budge, and tore his shirt to pull out from under his armpits two tiny plastic bottles filled with oil. Then he turned to M. Michel and said: “This imposture must stop!”

Ghada laughed at her father's credulity and said that Ata was a crook, that he must have gotten a lot of money out of her father before he took off. I didn't tell her what I knew, afraid that she would tell her father and that he might think I was an accomplice. All I knew of Ata was that he was a Jehovah's Witness and that he had nothing to do with me. It is true that he winked at me and gave me some money to buy my silence, but I would never have said anything anyway. My relationship with him consisted of no more than my having seen him, as dozens of others had seen him at
M. Michel's residence in Paris, just as Archbishop Mikhail Sawaya had seen God the Father, which of course was impossible. I know from my grandfather that no one can see God the Father; even Moses did not see him in Sinai. Only Christ saw him. No one saw the Father but the Bro, for Christ is the true Son.

That is all that happened in Paris. I know that you asked me for the Paris story because you suspect that my relationship with the explosives gang began there. But I swear to God this is everything. And Monsieur Michel had nothing to do with it.

Yalo wrote in his previous confessions about his meeting with Haykal. The truth is that the explosives story started with that meeting, which probably took place in Achrafieh when Yalo was in front of the building where the offices of the Araissi Advertising Company were located, waiting for Shirin.

At first Yalo ignored Haykal, but the gang leader approached him. After a forced greeting and embrace, a conversation started. Haykal began to browbeat and threaten Yalo because of the money taken from the Georges Aramouni Barracks. Yalo didn't pay much attention to the man because he was waiting for Shirin. He wanted to protect her, so he agreed to everything. He made an appointment to meet Haykal at the Badaro Inn. He said they would meet there tomorrow afternoon, shook hands, and left. Yalo claimed that he left the area, but he settled in behind the Empire Cinema to wait for Haykal to disappear. Yalo went back to where he had been waiting and stood under the acacia tree that shaded the sidewalk. Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned around to find Haykal, and knew he had been caught. Haykal asked him for his address, and Yalo found no way out of giving him the address of the villa. Haykal said that he preferred to meet with him in Ballouna and so cancelled their meeting in Badaro Street and went away. Yalo was sure, however, that he would hide himself somewhere
to watch him. So he too decided to leave. He looked at his watch and muttered as if he were waiting for someone who didn't show up, then left.

Yalo went into the café next door to the Empire Cinema, drank a cold beer, and then went back to the building to wait. But Shirin didn't appear. She must have left while he was away. Again he looked at his watch, muttered, and shook his head before leaving.

This, sir, is how Yalo got entangled with the gang. I am not saying that Shirin was the cause, but I will say that this was fate. Yalo got entangled with fate and was forced to store explosives in his cottage, but he did not take part in the bombings because he was preoccupied. Yalo was a lover, sir, and that's all.

I
made you a promise and I've kept it, but I cannot resolve the subject of the explosives better than this, or answer your question – the one that cost Yalo so many kinds of torture and beatings – “Where did you hide the explosives?”

After Yalo confessed to the explosives because of your insistence, you searched his cottage, turned the villa inside out, and dug up the garden, but you found nothing. I cannot guide you to their location, not only because I don't know, but also because my imagination does not permit me to play this game. What you require of me is truth, not imagination. I have said what I can on the subject of the gang, but I cannot imagine more. Now I am remembering and not imagining, and there is a great distance between the two. Remembering is imagination too, as memories come back to me like fantasies and bring me into a long night, but I cannot lead you to the location of the explosives because I am not writing a story but the truth. I know that if I point you to any specific place, you will go there and search, and if you do not find anything, and of course you will not find anything, my punishment will be disastrous.

I swear to God, I can imagine anything you want, but I cannot lead you to the location of the explosives because this spot does not exist. Even the story of Haykal's meeting with Yalo in front of the building where Shirin
worked I would not have been able to concoct, had something similar not happened to me when I met Najib Mansurati.

I was standing under the acacia tree waiting for Shirin to leave work when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I spun around and saw a smiling face that I didn't recognize. He said he was Najib, but I did not remember who this Najib was. I thought he was one of the dozens of modern beggars proliferating in the streets of Beirut. One of them would approach and address you politely; you think he is going to ask you something, but instead he launches into a long tale about the illness of his mother, wife, or son, the point being that he wants a U.S. dollar from you. This phenomenon of the dollar bewildered me, why did they not beg in Lebanese currency? Even beggars, sir, had lost faith in the national currency! I thought he was one of those, so I felt annoyed again. But then he said my name – he called me Mr. Yalo. Now, my name has never been used with the title Mister. I am just plain Yalo or just plain Daniel. Where did this guy come up with this Mister to tack in front of my name? I turned to him and he said that he was Najib Mansurati, the brother of Said the singer. He brought his face close to mine to give me a kiss. Then he asked me whether I knew anything about his brother's fate. I understood from him that Said decided to become a professional, so when the war ended he went to Al-Qamishli to work as a musician in the Khabur Hotel, which was owned by a Kurd named Muhammad al-Haytah, and that Said then disappeared. Najib said that they'd looked for him everywhere, that his mother had gone to Syria and visited all the prisons but found no trace of him.

He asked me what I thought and I said I didn't know. I mean, a guy who'd been one of the Billy Goats, and then goes to Syria to be a singer? Wow – what a jackass!

“Maybe they sent him,” I said.

“What?” asked Najib.

“Nothing, nothing, I was just remembering the song ‘I would have eaten and feasted.' Do you remember how your brother used to sing it?”

“In Achrafieh, the day I was there, and came to her

I surrendered my life to your lips
. . .”

The brother began to sing the song and I almost joined in with him, but I remembered we were standing in Tabaris Square in the middle of Achrafieh, and people would think we were crazy.

I wanted to tell him it was probably all over for Said, but I said I didn't know anything. He invited me to visit them at home. He stood beside me and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pants pocket and offered me a cigarette, I told him no thanks. He lit his cigarette and smoked it quietly. He was waiting for me to ask him how he was, so he could ask me, but I didn't say a word. I wanted him to go away so my relationship with Shirin would not get mixed up with my past life. Shirin had to be the beginning of a new life unconnected to memories of the war. But Najib remained standing there in his carefully pressed dark green pants. Through his pants I could see his white, hairless thighs. In my memory I saw him as he was when he visited his brother in the barracks, wearing shorts, and Alexei's winks and comments about boys and the incomparable pleasures of life. He finished his cigarette and I finished ogling his thighs, but he kept standing there. Then I decided to leave. I looked at my watch and muttered. He asked me if I was waiting for someone, and I told him I had to get out of there. He threw himself on me to kiss me, and a crazy rage ran through me; I could have bitten him instead of kissing him, and the voices raged in my head, but I kissed him with lips trembling with anger. I hurried away and went into the café near the Empire Cinema, where I soothed my nerves with a cold glass of beer, then went back to the sidewalk to wait, but she
did not appear, which meant that she had left while I had been sitting in the café.

This is the true story, sir. I never did anything with young Mansurati in the barracks because I know that it's not just a sin but a crime as well. Even with the
malfono
Halim I never did. Others maybe. I don't know and I don't want to make accusations, but me, no.