Yalo by Elias Khoury Read Free Book Online Page B

engine without daring to turn on the headlights.
    â€œBut I . . . but not in the forest,” said Yalo. “I did not rape her.”
    What did Shirin tell her fiancé, Emile?
    He sat here in the interrogation room, beside her, nodding as if he knew everything, but he did not know anything.
    Had she told him the truth, or lied to him?
    Had she told him that she went to Ballouna with her doctor lover, wherethey had sex in the car? Or did she say that she had gone with him on an innocent drive, when they had been attacked by a wild beast in a long black coat, that raped her?
    Why did the fiancé agree to play this role? Did he think he was gallant? Had he been gallant, things would have ended differently, thought Yalo. Why had he not called him and settled the matter with him man to man? He could have invited Yalo to the café and spoken with him, told him that he loved her too. He could have proposed that one of them give in to the other as befitted a noble-minded man, as Cohno Ephraim had done with the tailor Elias al-Shami when he learned that his daughter had gone back to her original lover.
    Cohno Ephraim had told the story to his grandson, and at the time Yalo understood nothing, but now he understood everything.
    At the time, his grandfather ended the affair gallantly, and told his grandson the story to teach him the meaning of gallantry. “Life is a word of honor that you say, and that remains etched into the earth.”
    When Gaby found out, she went crazy. She went to her father and started cursing him, and dragged him out of his room. The cohno was wearing white pajamas with blue stripes when his daughter dragged him by his arms, staggering as if pleading with her as she ordered him to leave the house. He spoke unintelligibly, swallowing his words, and swore by all the saints that his intentions were honorable and that he had wanted to explain to his grandson the importance of telling the truth. Then suddenly the cohno dropped to his knees and stretched out his arms crucifixion-style, and his tears flowed.
    The story had disappeared into the depths of Yalo’s memory and resurfaced now before this white interrogator with his snub nose and deep-set eyes.
    The interrogator raised his finger as if he wanted to say something,or perhaps he did say something, but Yalo was not listening to him. Yalo couldn’t stop asking himself the question posed before him as if it were up on a blackboard.
    Why had Emile not done as Ephraim had?
    Ephraim had demonstrated courage; he told his grandson that he had castrated his rival. “He came like a puffed-up rooster and left crowned with shame, he went in a rooster and left a hen. I didn’t do a thing. I just brandished the weapon of speech before him. Humans are weak when faced with speech, my boy, and that is why God the Father called his son Word. What is meant by the Word of God? It means his mystery and his truth. Your son is your word, and you are my word, my boy. Be my word, just as the Son was the word of the Father.”
    Ephraim sent for Elias al-Shami. The tailor thought that the cohno wanted him to sew a white robe for an imminent elevation to the head of the priesthood, as he told all the cohno ’s congregation: “Someday, in a year or two or three, you’ll call me, sir.” And the years passed and the cohno waited, as since the death of his wife after that journey to Homs to seek healing from St. Elian, he had told everyone that it was the will of God. He did not shed a single tear at his wife’s funeral. He stood and accepted the people’s condolences, but instead of saying the traditional words like “May God compensate you” or “Live on,” he only uttered, “Christ is risen,” and waited for the mourners to respond, “Truly, he is risen.” The cohno said that God had yearned for his servant, meaning his poor wife who had died of cancer, because there was wisdom that we mortals could