Free White Masks by Elias Khoury Page A

but it must have been because it was the truth - the truth is quick to convince, apparently. “You’re a real friend,” he said, patting me on the shoulder. I offered him a drink and he asked for a whiskey. I got up and opened the living-room door, and my wife brought us two tumblers of whiskey on ice. We drank under her questioning gaze, and as soon as he’d downed his drink, he got to his feet and announced he was leaving. I tried to keep him but he insisted on going. After shutting the front door, my wife asked why he had come.
    â€œNothing in particular . . . He just wanted to find out about the new house.”
    â€œYou’re lying! I heard Nadia’s name being mentioned, what did he say about her?”
    â€œNothing.” And I picked up the paper and pretended to start reading.
    â€œI heard everything! About you and Nadia,” she said, bursting out laughing. Sitting down beside me, she added, “Poor guy! I know what’s going on, Nadia tells me everything!”
    No, it wasn’t Nadia that caused the tension in our relationship, nor the car accident.
    â€œI know everything, Nadia tells me everything,” she repeated. “She’s told me that her husband can’t ... he can’t . . . do it! You know what I mean . . . I mean . . . get it up . . . !”

    Nadia had apparently been over one morning and, in a flood of tears, told my wife that Musa was impotent. “It’s been like this from the night of our wedding,” she had said. “He married me even though he knew he couldn’t do it and was taking all sorts of medicines and potions. He said he couldn’t help himself, he was haunted by the idea that I was going to cheat on him with every man I saw! Imagine that, me only twenty years old, still studying for my Baccalaureate, with my newlywed husband sitting on the edge of the bed, his back turned to me, puffing angrily on a cigarette, what was I supposed to do? I put on my nightgown and went to sleep-I was tired and went out like a light. In the morning, he told me he hadn’t slept all night, and that tonight he would do it. But he never did . . . I spent the day in tears . . . and now he wants me to stop going to the worksite, telling me it’s a woman’s duty to stay home! All I feel like doing is crying, but I can’t leave him: I was already divorced once and went back to school ... It’s all my parents’ fault, they married me off to the first one when I was only sixteen and if I divorce the second one now, people will say I’m a whore . . . No, I won’t leave him, I can’t, but I want what everyone else wants, just like you.”
    I told my wife that I didn’t understand how Musa, broad as he was tall, and in good health, couldn’t do it. And that’s when all the trouble started.
    My wife and I never had any disagreements until the car accident. It was horrible: that car accident frightened me more than all of the insane shelling that brings down entire buildings. I was driving home from work one day, not far from the UNESCO roundabout. It was dark and the rain was really coming down. Just as I put on my windshield wipers, a car appeared out of nowhere, cut in front of me and came to a screeching stop. Several gunmen-I don’t remember how many exactly - spilled out, pistols and
machine guns drawn. I don’t remember what they looked like, but I do recall one of them had a gold tooth that glinted in the dark. He came over and banged on my window with a pistol aimed at my face, so I rolled the window down.
    â€œSwitch off your lights,” he barked. I did as he said. “Get out, get out of the car!”
    I was gripping the steering wheel hard, and even though I didn’t really want to stay in the car I found myself clinging on, unable to release my grip. Their guns still pointed, one of the gunmen hopped into the front seat, and another one climbed in the back. The barrel of