White Masks (35 page)

I told him I'd give it back to him but that he'd have to wait. The bastard
tried to slap me, and when I began screaming, he ran off . . . May he burn in hell!

And now? How are things now?
Al-hamdulillah,
I work for decent folk.

You know, people like yourself, Sir. We have just enough to eat, and my eldest, Mohammad, is an errand boy at our neighbor's shop. I said it before, and I'll say it again: praise be the Lord! Life is just one big game of chance, isn't it . . .

 

“You
are
pretty, Imm Mohammad,” I told her. I meant it too.

And why not give it a try? Life would certainly ease up for her, and, well . . . one way or another it was work - and very lucrative work at that! “You're a handsome woman,” I repeated, “and you could do it if you wanted to.”

“Even you, Sir! They told me you were a polite and courteous young man, and that's why I agreed to see you, even though you're a bachelor. Even you! No Sir, and the Lord is my witness!”

“Come on, Imm Mohammad, I was just joking! I didn't mean it! And I
am
a polite and courteous young man!”

“We're much obliged to honorable, decent folk like yourself, Sir,” she said.

I left her to her housework and went back to the airline office, and to my ticketing machine.

But, getting back to the problem . . .

You see, I was trying to “change the air” as we say in our part of the world, to . . . lighten up the atmosphere, to . . . to lift up our spirits ... and instead of fixing it, I broke it, as the sayings goes . . .

But I digress. Back to the problem once more. So, what is the problem?

Look, I'm a realistic man, and realistic people keep their eyes open and their ears to the ground. I've watched and I've listened, but I still can't figure it out. What you see is what I see: Khalil Ahmad Jaber was murdered, and by rights, we should be able to come up with a reason for his death. Isn't that what we were taught? That to each problem there is a solution, to each effect a cause, for each birth a death . . . That's what we were taught, and the lesson has stuck: what goes up must come down; whoever digs his brother's grave falls into it; the less said the better; kiss the hand you cannot break, and pray for it to be broken; whoever marries your mother call your stepfather; when the winds of change are blowing, keep your head down; the middle road is the best; let sleeping dogs lie; if speaking is of silver, then silence is of gold; secrets shared are secrets bared; who dares, wins, etcetera, etcetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cet era, et cet era, et cet era, etcetera, e t cetera ...

My well-meaning attempt to “lighten up” has failed, even though I was only trying to follow the dictum that says you can find a seed of mirth in every reversal of fortune. When I tried to be daring and “change the atmosphere,” the story got worse. So where's that seed of mirth?

OK, let's start over: let us now assume that Khalil Ahmad Jaber didn't die, let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that the newspapers fabricated the story and that the coroner is lying - just like the novelist writing this story. If we assume all of that, then our problem is solved.

Yesterday I was struck by a devilish idea: why shouldn't Khalil Ahmad Jaber have died just like the rest of us? That's it! After all, a human being can't die in anyway other than the way the rest of us die!

Suppose, for example, that he was sleeping in the hallway of a building,
and some burglars came along, armed with guns and knives, and went up to the sixth floor and robbed the apartment, taking all the valuables they could carry with them. Just as they're about to leave the building, they notice a man sleeping under the stairs, he seems restless and he's snoring - as though he were just pretending to be asleep. They think he might have noticed something, so they panic and kill him.

The thing is, however, that this kind of an ending isn't possible, because we're not supposed to write illogical endings. And it would be illogical given the one certainty we have: that Khalil Ahmad Jaber was tortured. His left ring finger was severed, and his one and only valuable, the wedding band he'd bought in the gold
souq
thirty years earlier, was stolen from him.

Now, the wife confirmed that the band had grown tight on his finger since, like most of his fellows around the Mediterranean, Khalil Ahmad Jaber had put on weight after marriage, and it had become increasingly difficult for him to slip his wedding band off. This almost led to a potentially serious situation, as Khalil's finger started to feel numb. When he told the doctor that he thought the circulation in his finger was being impaired, the doctor agreed, and suggested that a jeweler snip off the culprit band. But Khalil wouldn't hear of it. He was, after all, a conservative man, that is, a man of ingrained habit: he always slept in the same position and sat in the same place at the table. That's why he refused. The wedding band stayed on his finger, he seemed to get used to it being tight, and he never, ever, took it off.

Given that it is crystal clear that he
was
tortured and his ring finger
was
severed, the aforementioned hypothesis is obviously false.

So, what then?

What indeed?

The truth is, I don't know; and even if I did, it wouldn't change anything. Suppose we did know that X was the murderer, would that make things better? Would it enable us to try X in court? Would it make Khalil's wife happy? Surely not, it would only compound her misery.

Moreover, I am absolutely convinced that the whole thing isn't worth more than the effort required to read about it, and even that is a moot point. An astute reader will probably consider it a waste of time to read stories everyone knows about, while another kind of reader will think that there are better and more exciting stories than this one. And they'd both be right, and so would you, and so would each and every one of us . . . as likely as it could be your fault, it could be ours, it could be anyone's, or everyone's ... And truth is indivisible, they say!

This whole thing isn't worth any more than the effort required to read about it, and with all due respect, Khalil Ahmad Jaber was only one of millions of honorable citizens in this country who risk death on a daily basis. So, should
his
death be of any greater import?

Investigating his story, I have had no other aim than to “entertain, please, and pass the time,” to borrow a phrase from Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi, our revered storytelling master - the very same one who threw all his books into the river after burning them, such was his despair over the human condition, his disenchantment with the world, and his scorn for his epoch and its rulers.

However, what if we assume that Khalil Ahmad Jaber didn't die, that he is still alive now, trudging through the streets of Beirut, trying to erase and whitewash the walls? Well, what if we did?

Some might say there'd be no harm in that, why should anyone want to kill him for it? Others might say the exact opposite. And yet others might be baffled by the whole matter and feel unable to say anything.

There are then three possibilities. And the Lord alone knows.

Copyright © 2010 Elias Khoury English translation copyright © 2010 Maia Tabet

First Archipelago Books Edition, 2010
First published as
Al-Wujûb al-baydâ
by Dar al-Adab, Beirut, 1981

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted
in any form without prior written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Khuri, Ilyas.
[Wujuh al-bayda'. English]
White masks / by Elias Khoury ; translated from the Arabic by Maia Tabet.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-0-982-62469-2

I. Tabet, Maia. II. Title.
PJ7842.H823W8513 2010
892.7'36—dc22 2010004874

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This publication was made possible with support from Lannan
Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, and the
New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.