Yalo Read Free Page B

but I was trapped with this bandit.”
    â€œDaniel, what do you have to say in response?” the interrogator asked.
    Yalo felt tongue-tied, he fell mute. The pebble came back. His mother used to put a small pebble under his tongue so that he could learn to speak without stuttering. Then he forgot the stutter when he saw the blood, that is what he would have written had he been able to see his life in the mirror of days, but he was standing here, feeling his mother’s pebble under his tongue, and found no words to speak.
    â€œWhy didn’t your fiancé report this incident immediately?” he would have said.
    â€œHow was he a man of fifty, who became a young man today?” he would have asked.
    â€œWhy did you run away and escape?” he would have asked.
    But he said nothing, and the interrogator did not press him for a response. He considered his silence to be a response, and a confession.
    â€œIs this the man who raped you, robbed you, and continues to stalk you?” asked the interrogator.
    Shirin nodded in reply.
    Emile looked at his watch and asked the interrogator if they might leave now.
    â€œOf course, of course,” said the interrogator, and escorted them to the door of the guard desk.
    But at the Albert Restaurant, no.
    He slapped her and she shut up. Then when he ordered rice pudding she smiled, and he told her that he loved her.
    â€œI’m engaged, Yalo,” she said.
    â€œI love you,” he said.
    â€œPlease,” she said.
    The waiter appeared with the bill, but Yalo asked him for another glass of arak. He took a sip and looked into the girl’s eyes before closing his eyes for a long time.
    â€œPlease don’t fall asleep,” she said.
    â€œShut up,” he said. “Leave me alone. I’m talking to God.”
    The girl began to talk, and Yalo listened to her with his eyes closed.
    â€œI respect your feelings, but as you can see, I’m engaged, so I can’t,” she said.
    â€œThat’s the shit who abandoned you in the forest and ran away?” he asked.
    â€œNo, no, I left him, my fiancé is someone else.”
    The girl talked, and Yalo listened.
    â€œIt’s like an Egyptian movie,” he said. “It’s like I’m sitting in a Ustaz Wahid movie.”
    She said that she would listen to Arab songs only to please him, and that she respected him. She said that she cherished him, and apologized and said that he was free to slap her because she had hurt his feelings when she had offered him money.
    â€œStop it!” shouted Yalo.
    He got up and mimed the scene in “Daughter of the Nile” where Farid Shawqi slaps Hind Rostom and how the actress falls to her knees and says, “I love you – you beast!” “That’s how you should be,” he said. “You have to love a real man, not these shits, one geezer your father’s age, the other one afraid of his mother.”
    â€œYou’re right,” Shirin said, “but what can I do? I love him. He was my classmate at the American University, and we slept together. I took birth control pills, but one day I forgot, I don’t know why, and when I told him I was pregnant and we had to get married, he ran away and said he was afraid of his mother. So I took care of myself. I had such a dépression and one of mygirlfriends took me to Dr. Said, who made me a courtage , and who loved me. He told me he loved me because I’d cried so much. I got to his place, to the clinic, and I started crying. I couldn’t speak. I sat on the chair and placed my head between my hands, and I started gasping, and the tears just ran from my eyes, and the doctor didn’t say anything. He let me cry and sat there watching me. He told me later that he sat and watched, and that he became infatuated with me ‘for my tears’ – that is exactly what he said, in Classical Arabic, ‘for your tears,’ then he took me in his