Yalo by Elias Khoury

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.
    â€œI hate the smell of blood, and look at you, you’re drenched in it!”
    He replied that blood tasted like honey.
    â€œWhy are you afraid of blood? Your father filled a cup with blood every Sunday, and drank it, and offered it to others at mass.”
    â€œShut up. May God forgive you for talking like that. That was not blood, my boy, that was a symbol.”
    â€œAnd this isn’t blood either, Mother, it’s a symbol.”
    â€œGod forgive us both, my son.”
    â€œI’m like my grandfather, Mother, I fight with symbols.”
    â€œYou 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 .
    â€œMy 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 AinWard. 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.
    â€œMy grandfather is going to die,” he told his mother.
    â€œShut up, boy. That’s God’s business, not yours.”
    â€œThe 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.
    â€œMy grandfather kept coughing until he died, because the Sultan abandoned him, but me, the Sultan is still with me,” he told Shirin.
    â€œCome 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.
    â€œYou’re so tall, why don’t you