Yalo (9 page)

“You must not turn your back on the sea, boy. Does anyone turn his back on the Sacred Spirit?”

When the three reached the beach, the mother opened her bag and took out a large white towel to dry Yalo's body after making him take off his pants and giving him fresh ones. The boy was blue with cold, fear, and the taste of salt permeating his tongue and insides.

“The water became sweet and pure,” pronounced the
cohno
.

“Amen,” said the mother.

“Amen,” said Yalo, waiting for a piece of nougat, to put its fine sugar against his rough salty tongue.

Gaby stood in her father's arms undoing her
kokina
. She pulled the clips from her hair and placed them on the woolen blanket she'd laid out on the sand. She told Yalo to sit on the blanket, and she waited.

The
cohno
went to the water and filled his cupped hands with seawater, sprinkled it on his daughter's hair, then began to comb it. Her long hair dropped down to her shoulders, then extended down her back to her waist before reaching her ankles.

The night of the baptism, on the feast day of the Baptism of Christ the Redeemer, Gabrielle would let her hair down and spread it out in the light of night so that it might, by miracle, change color. Her long hair, full of ringlets, flowing under the
cohno
's comb, turned to gold.

Yalo said that his mother's hair turned to gold, glinting and shining, melting in the water and under the comb. The
cohno
made his grandson stay and keep his eyes open so that he could see how his mother's hair turned to gold.

“Look at this wonder, my boy,” the
cohno
said.

Yalo watched the miracle and felt the taste of briny sugar under his tongue, and saw the colors emitted by the
cohno
's lips, surrounded by his great white beard. The
cohno
moved the comb tremulously as the faint light that penetrated the shore's night traced a spot on his hands and eyes, and the comb rose and fell without pause. The young Yalo sat on the woolen
blanket, shivering with cold, and entered into the miracle of the water and the golden hair.

Should he tell the interrogator that he was looking for a miracle?

After they were home, his mother said that she had found the miracle. Shirin, on the other hand, said nothing, because she understood nothing.

The
cohno
finished his combing and the mother began gathering up her golden hair from around her legs, back, and shoulders. She gathered it into rolls that she fastened up with the clips that Yalo handed her. Gaby stood with her back to her son, looking into the distance, out to sea, the
cohno
by her side.

Yalo did not ask his mother why she turned her back to him and looked out to sea, for he knew that his mother was in a contest with the sea. Once a year the sea became a miraculous mirror and the boy saw his mother, and saw her hair that reached the water, which reached to the end of the sky.

That is what the
cohno
told them.

He said that the sea ended at the sky. “The sky is the extent of the sea, my son, and the sea is the mirror of the world.” For Ephraim, despite his belief that the world was round, and all the scientific discoveries that Yalo studied at the St. Severus School in Beirut, insisted upon a special connection between the sea and heaven. “Otherwise, how can you explain the story of the prophet Jonah, who spent three days in the belly of the whale before returning safely to the shore?”

Ephraim said that the story of the prophet Jonah was simply a symbol of Christ's death and resurrection. But even the symbol would not have been possible without the special connection between God and the sea.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness covered the deep, and the spirit of God moved over the waters.”

The
cohno
went to the sea with his small family for the sake of the spirit that hovered over the waters, believing that the miracle could occur only on that date in January, when the spirit met the salt water and became sweeter than honey.

However, Yalo had not seen at his neighbors' or friends' the anointing of this Spirit that radiated through his house the next morning as his mother prepared cakes with milk and fried doughnuts. It was only in that little house in whose garden seven acacia trees were planted, shading the place and clinging to a huge China tree that stood like a sentinel at the entrance, that the miracle took place and the shadow of Christ's hand anointed their heads with honey and gold.

Yalo remembered nothing of the return from the beach to the house, as he returned asleep, wrapped in the woolen blanket. He got up in the morning and smelled the fragrance of oil and sweets, and saw the
cohno
sitting chewing incense before going to the church.

Yalo did not see the anointing of the Spirit on his comrades, nor did he ask them about their trip to the beach; whether they too had gone and drunk the salt water that became fresh water. When his grandfather cupped his hands and gathered the seawater, and raised it to his mouth, he said, “It's like honey.” Yalo drank, trembling in anticipation of the piece of sugary nougat, which he ate sitting on the woolen blanket covered with the clips removed from his mother's
kokina
.

Was this a tradition common in Beirut, or just a private family tradition the
cohno
had brought with him from his faraway village?

Yalo didn't know the answer, and it did not occur to him to ask his grandfather. He relived the scene now, in the silence of prison, where voices reached him like vague murmurs without words while he tried to write, to end this story that had lasted too long.

He saw the scene on the beach, where dozens of women stood on the
white sand, spreading their hair out over their backs. Behind each woman stood a middle-aged man with a comb, and with each stroke of the comb the locks of hair turned golden. The combs slid downward, dozens of combs glistening gold, and the spirit of God hovered over them all.

Yalo felt a cold that crept into his bones and heard the
cohno
's voice preaching and telling him that the reason he always felt cold was because he was tall and skinny. “You have no meat on your bones to protect you from the wind.”

Yalo felt the wind blow through him, as if his body were full of holes. He shivered and clung to the woolen blanket, and the hair clips bored into him from every side.

Dozens of women were being combed golden, were drinking seawater, then carrying their sons and daughters home in woolen blankets to prepare cakes with milk and doughnuts to celebrate Christ's baptism in the Jordan.

“Follow me in half an hour and don't be late for mass!” his grandfather told him in the morning before going to church. “And you better not put a thing in your mouth, my boy. It's forbidden to eat and then take the sacrament, it's a sin. I know everything, and God knows everything.”

But Yalo stole the cake from the pantry and ate it, then brushed his teeth to get rid of the scent before accompanying his mother to church, where he fell into a deep sleep. Yalo had never once gone to church on his own; the moment he entered the church, his eyes got dry from the incense and he would doze off on the pew beside his mother, and wake up only to stand before the altar with the others, to receive the bread and wine, and feel the taste of blood on his tongue.

In the war, when he was up to his knees in blood, he experienced the same taste, the taste of salt mixed with sugary nougat, and the smell of the sea full of white mist, which intoxicated him and put him to sleep.

When he returned home, his mother would kiss him and hold her nose, saying that he stank of blood.

“I hate the smell of blood, and look at you, you're drenched in it!”

He replied that blood tasted like honey.

“Why are you afraid of blood? Your father filled a cup with blood every Sunday, and drank it, and offered it to others at mass.”

“Shut up. May God forgive you for talking like that. That was not blood, my boy, that was a symbol.”

“And this isn't blood either, Mother, it's a symbol.”

“God forgive us both, my son.”

“I'm like my grandfather, Mother, I fight with symbols.”

“You don't know anything about your grandfather, about symbols, or about life. You think this world's a joke, you and your friends. May God protect us from all of you.”

Yalo did not think this world was a joke as his mother said, but in this city called Beirut, which was sinking toward its death, he could smell an aroma of the sea, salt, and incense. The image of his grandfather appeared to him always, chewing incense and drinking salt water. But he did not tell Gaby about this image, because he was worried about her. He was afraid she would think her son was going to die. For Gaby had learned from her father that whoever saw death would die. The
cohno
's mother had died after seeing the ghost of her aunt calling to her, and on the night of his death he had dreamed that he had returned to Ain Ward, where he saw his mother winding her bloodstained hair up in a red
kokina
.

“My mother's hair was wound into a red
kokina
, she was laughing. Maybe she did not die. Maybe she was kidnapped by the Kurd,” Ephraim said before closing his eyes against eternal darkness.

Gaby told her son not to talk about blood. “What do you know about blood? Me, I know, my father told me about it. There was blood in Ain
Ward. The blood gushed from the spring after the massacre, and seeped out of the walls of the church.”

Yalo used to sleep at church, sitting beside his mother, his eyes closed, rapt with the Sultan of Sleep.

When his grandfather said “the Sultan” had abandoned him, Yalo understood, at the age of ten, that the
cohno
was going to die.

“My grandfather is going to die,” he told his mother.

“Shut up, boy. That's God's business, not yours.”

“The Sultan abandoned him,” he whispered to his mother.

Night became a torment for the
cohno
and to all the members of the small family. He spent the night roaming through the house. He would go to bed at ten o'clock, but then get up within two hours to recite his prayers and rattle around the house. He'd burn incense to drive out evil spirits, and cough and cough.

“My grandfather kept coughing until he died, because the Sultan abandoned him, but me, the Sultan is still with me,” he told Shirin.

“Come to the beach with me so I can introduce you to the Sultan.”

Shirin didn't understand this insistence on going to the beach at night. She grew accustomed to Yalo's daily phone calls and his constant harping on meeting her. She was determined that their rendezvous be in the afternoon, at the Bistrot in Achrafieh. He would arrive enveloped in his long black overcoat, on tiptoe, peeping to the right and left like a frightened man, before locating his table in the upper corner of the café. He sat down, relaxed, and ordered a beer from the waiter.

“You're so tall, why don't you play basketball?”

That is what she asked him before sitting down.

“Well, here I am, tell me what you want,” she said.

“Nothing. I just wanted to see you.”

“Okay, you've seen me. And?”

“And, let's go.”

“May I go?”

“How about you have dinner with me at my place?”

“Where?”

“In Ballouna.”

“Ballouna! God help me!
Jamais
!” she laughed.

Yalo told her unending stories, and made one up about his cousin that he killed in the war.

“You killed her?”

“Of course I did.”

“You killed your own cousin?” she asked, shocked.

“I killed her – shot her.”

“Why?”

“Because she wanted to marry a Kurd.”

“And that was a reason to kill her?”

“It wasn't just that. He slept with her, and she was pregnant, so I had to defend the family honor.”

“Family honor!”

“Of course. My uncle couldn't even see straight, he was shamed and felt that he couldn't show his face in public. But he was a coward, he wanted me to help him.”

“And you killed her?”

“Like drinking water. I put the gun to her head, one bullet and it was over.”

“Over!”

“Of course, over.”

“And that's how you saved your family's honor?”

“Honor is the main thing,” he said.

“Good grief – honor!” she said.

He told her the story in order to see admiration in her eyes, but instead of admiration, he saw her little eyes fill with terror.

He told her about the tailor who raped his mother.

“Raped her?”

“She was young, she was seventeen, and worked for him. And he raped her.”

“Did you kill him too?”