Read Online Yalo by Elias Khoury - Free Book Online

stole their money and disappeared from the hotel in Montparnasse where they were staying. Yalo found himself to be like a lone sheep. He did not speak the language and had no money. Suddenly he was a beggar and a mute, how could he not be a sheep? His grandfather had told him that animals were brutes, that was why the Arabs called those who did not speak their languages brutes, or mutes.
    In that faraway country Yalo felt as mute as a brute animal and was no longer able to spit out words as he’d learned during the war, and even after M. Michel Salloum took him home to Lebanon and gave him a job as guard of his villa in Ballouna, Yalo remained practically unable to speak. Words came to him only with the help of a flashlight that would light up his night with desire.
    Yalo saw his mother, Gabrielle, only here in prison. She came to visit him after he had been detained for two years, but instead of bringing him cigarettes and food as the other prisoners’ families did, she stood on the other side of the iron bars and wept, then told him about the room she hadrented, and her poverty and fear of hunger. She extracted a little mirror from her handbag and told him, “Look at what’s left of me, I can’t see myself in the mirror anymore, is that possible? The mirror has begun to consume my image and suck out its essence – can you believe that, son? Look in the mirror and tell me what you see.”
    When Gaby opened her little handbag, Yalo thought she’d take out a packet of cigarettes, and his mouth watered at the thought that he would get to smoke like the other prisoners instead of waiting for one of them to offer him half a cigarette, or for one of the cigarettes of the lame beggar who specialized in collecting the cigarette butts and sifting them only to reroll them into small cigarettes, which he called recycled cigarettes.
    Gaby did not pull out a pack of American cigarettes from her handbag; instead she extracted a small white mirror and began to talk in a way that made Yalo want to escape.
    Yalo tried to explain to the interrogator that he had gone to France to escape his mother, but the interrogator didn’t seem to understand.
    He said that he went to France because he had become afraid, so the interrogator thought that the suspect had fled Lebanon from fear of prison. Many such youths had left after the end of the war; Yalo was only one of them. More likely than not, thought the interrogator, he had been implicated in some crime.
    The interrogator asked him who he was afraid of, but Yalo did not reply, since he could not think of any way to tell him about his fear of the mirror. Should he talk about that? And what would he say?
    It was nighttime and the power was cut. The woman lit the house with three candles. How old was she? How old is my mother? Yalo never asked himself this question because mothers are ageless. When his grandfather spoke of his mother, and of the red eyes spread through her hair whereblood had frozen, he became like a little boy; his shoulders reared up just as children straighten their shoulders when they try to appear taller than they actually are. Now, when Yalo remembered his mother, he squared his shoulders and saw a woman full of life, carrying a candle in her hand, approaching the room of her only son. She was wearing a long blue nightdress, her hair down to her shoulders. Yalo opened his eyes and saw the long chestnut hair, curly and shoulder-length, and asked her about her chignon.
    â€œWhere is your kokina , Mother?”
    It was as if Gaby did not hear. She murmured a few nervous words from which he gathered she wanted him to get out of bed.
    â€œWhat’s going on, Gaby?”
    â€œFollow me, for God’s sake.”
    Yalo got up and followed her to the bathroom, where she stood in front of the mirror and put the candle close to her face. She asked him what he saw.
    â€œHow do I know?” he answered. “Tell me what’s going