Free Yalo by Elias Khoury Page A

and high waves, grasped his grandson’s hand with his right hand and his daughter’s hand with his left, and they proceeded into the sea. When the water reached the child’s waist, the cohno bent over, murmured a few strange words in a strange language, then filled his hands with water. He let the mother drink from his hands, then her son, and then finally drank himself. After each of them had drunk three times, they went back, walking backwards. When Yalo’s hand slipped from his grandfather’s and he ran back to the beach, shivering with cold, the cohno ran after him and led him back into the water, holding his hand tightly.
    â€œYou must not turn your back on the sea, boy. Does anyone turn his back on the Sacred Spirit?”
    When the three reached the beach, the mother opened her bag and took out a large white towel to dry Yalo’s body after making him take off his pants and giving him fresh ones. The boy was blue with cold, fear, and the taste of salt permeating his tongue and insides.
    â€œThe water became sweet and pure,” pronounced the cohno .
    â€œAmen,” said the mother.
    â€œAmen,” said Yalo, waiting for a piece of nougat, to put its fine sugar against his rough salty tongue.
    Gaby stood in her father’s arms undoing her kokina . She pulled the clips from her hair and placed them on the woolen blanket she’d laid out on the sand. She told Yalo to sit on the blanket, and she waited.
    The cohno went to the water and filled his cupped hands with seawater, sprinkled it on his daughter’s hair, then began to comb it. Her long hair dropped down to her shoulders, then extended down her back to her waist before reaching her ankles.
    The night of the baptism, on the feast day of the Baptism of Christ the Redeemer, Gabrielle would let her hair down and spread it out in the light of night so that it might, by miracle, change color. Her long hair, full of ringlets, flowing under the cohno ’s comb, turned to gold.
    Yalo said that his mother’s hair turned to gold, glinting and shining, melting in the water and under the comb. The cohno made his grandson stay and keep his eyes open so that he could see how his mother’s hair turned to gold.
    â€œLook at this wonder, my boy,” the cohno said.
    Yalo watched the miracle and felt the taste of briny sugar under his tongue, and saw the colors emitted by the cohno ’s lips, surrounded by his great white beard. The cohno moved the comb tremulously as the faint light that penetrated the shore’s night traced a spot on his hands and eyes, and the comb rose and fell without pause. The young Yalo sat on the woolenblanket, shivering with cold, and entered into the miracle of the water and the golden hair.
    Should he tell the interrogator that he was looking for a miracle?
    After they were home, his mother said that she had found the miracle. Shirin, on the other hand, said nothing, because she understood nothing.
    The cohno finished his combing and the mother began gathering up her golden hair from around her legs, back, and shoulders. She gathered it into rolls that she fastened up with the clips that Yalo handed her. Gaby stood with her back to her son, looking into the distance, out to sea, the cohno by her side.
    Yalo did not ask his mother why she turned her back to him and looked out to sea, for he knew that his mother was in a contest with the sea. Once a year the sea became a miraculous mirror and the boy saw his mother, and saw her hair that reached the water, which reached to the end of the sky.
    That is what the cohno told them.
    He said that the sea ended at the sky. “The sky is the extent of the sea, my son, and the sea is the mirror of the world.” For Ephraim, despite his belief that the world was round, and all the scientific discoveries that Yalo studied at the St. Severus School in Beirut, insisted upon a special connection between the sea and heaven. “Otherwise, how can you