قرأت الياس خوري من قبل في رحلة غاندي الصغير . . واعجبت بأسلوبه . اعتقد أنّ من يكتب بالتزامن مع الاحداث يجيد اقتناص الحكاية وهي دافئة
وهذا ما حصل مع خوري في رواية الوجوه البيضاء . . تتراءى لنا بيروت وكأنها مدينة اشباح بل اكثر رعباً . . رائحة الموت تقتل رائحة الأمل . .
الحوارات التي كان يطعمها باللبنانية العامية جعلت الأجواء اكثر حقيقية . . الدراسة الدقيقة ونقل الصور التاريخية الينا
الحكاية لم تكن حكاية مقتل شخص أو اشخاص ، هي مقتل كل شيء وبدء الحياة من جديد . .

يقول في عرض الرواية :
انك تعودت على بيروت خلال الحرب ، والذي تعود على بيروت لا يستطيع ان يعيش في أية مدينة اخرى. لانه لا يستطيع ان يتخيل المدن دون حرب ، لانه يعرف ان كل هذه العلاقات والاحترامات سوف تنهار مع اول قذيفة . .

شيء ما في هذه الرواية اخذني لأجواء بلاد الاشياء الاخيرة لبول اوستر . .
احببتها واحببت الجانب الحقيقي فيها ،
لدي المزيد من الكتب لالياس خوري واظن انني لن اتردد في قراءتها لاحقاً . ( )

White Masks is a murder mystery told from the perspective of six different characters, and each account raises the possibility of one or more possible perpetrators. Statements by the narrator, a self-described disinterested party who is merely curious about this unusual murder, bookend the six versions. But this genre plot is merely a device for social commentary on the Lebanese Civil War and its effects on the ordinary people of Beirut.

Khalil Ahmad Jaber is a simple man, a minor civil servant in the post office, who derives a great deal of self-respect from the fame and then martyrdom of his son, Ahmed. Obsessed with his son’s death, Khalil gradually becomes benignly insane, wandering his neighborhood whitewashing the poster covered walls of the city. His death seems inexplicable. Who would want to torture and then murder this obsessed but harmless old man?

The narrator, a travel agent originally trained to be a journalist, becomes interested in the case and interviews the victim’s wife, a gossiping architect well-known in the neighborhood, the wife of the deceased caretaker of a local building, the garbage man who discovered the body, a young militiaman who witnessed the victim being brought in for questioning, and the deceased’s daughter. Also related is the story of the doctor who performed the autopsy. Each interview is not only another perspective on Khalil, but also the story of their life and, from their diverse experiences, a picture of life in an ordinary Beirut neighborhood is formed. Corruption, compromise, and crime form the backdrop against which these people try to survive.

I found it hard to put this book down, despite my usual avoidance of the murder mystery genre, and that is because the book is more about people caught in a vise of violence than it is about who killed Khalil. I was caught up in the lives of these people and in the theme Khoury weaves about the inanity and uselessness of war and violence in general. Parts of the book made for grim reading, but I was also inspired by the resilience and fortitude of these ordinary people. I would highly recommend White Masks as an introduction to the literature of Elias Khoury. ( )

[White Masks] by Elias Khoury is a really interestingly put together book. Written by a journalist trying to find answers to the death of an elderly man who was found naked and beaten on a street in Lebanon. What he did was to interview various people who had some form of contact with the man while he was alive, both when he was a sane and happy man, and then later when he seemed to have descended into his own private mental hell of insanity. With each interview, we receive not just a different look at the man, but also insights into these different people and their lives during Lebanon's wars. These stories are funny, sensitive, disturbing and touching ... and all seek somehow to explain the life of the murdered man.

Very well written as a translated work and worth the time to read it as well. ( )

Elias Khoury (1948-) was born to a Lebanese Christian family and lived for many years in Beirut, including the years of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), in which as many as 250,000 civilians were killed and over a million were injured, half with debilitating and lifelong injuries. The war involved multiple factions, including Palestinians displaced from their homeland after the creation of the state of Israel, Lebanese Christians, Syrians, Israeli and American military forces, and smaller groups and militias. The conflict was notable for shifting alliances and betrayals, and nonaligned civilians often found themselves accused by one faction of abetting another one, based on family ties and old friendships. Corruption was rampant, and traditional roles and social customs were ignored, as those who had guns and money ruled over besieged communities.

This novel was originally published in 1981 in Arabic, translated into English by Maia Taber, and released by Archipelago Books last month.

In White Masks, Khoury uses the murder of Khalil Ahmad Jaber, an ordinary civilian with no known enemies or suspicious alliances, as a vehicle to describe the lives of those affected by the Lebanese civil war in 1980. Several family members, neighbors, and others who have come into contact with him are interviewed to learn more about this senseless killing, and we come to learn about the hardships, despair and frustrations that plague civilians caught between the shifting factions. The following excerpt effectively characterizes the views of the average person:

What is happening to us is very strange...One wonders if it is the result of unexplained mental disorders...No one is able to control all the crime...It's grown into an epidemic, a plague devouring us from within...I suppose that is what is meant by social fragmentation in civil conflicts—I've read about it, but somehow this seems different...you'd think they positively savored murder, like a sip of Coke. Poor Khalil Jaber! But it's not just him...he, at least, has found his rest...what about the rest of us, the Lord only knows how we will die...

Khoury effectively uses several metaphors throughout the book, to describe the decay and breakdown in Lebanese society, and the accounts of the characters provide vivid descriptions of the effects of the war on those who survive the daily carnage. White Masks is a stunning and essential literary achievement, which nearly reaches the brilliance of his later novel Gate of the Sun. ( )

In White Masks a journalist—who may be Khoury, himself, we are never sure—sets out to discover who committed the seemingly senseless murder of Khalil Ahmad Jaber. He tells us in the preface that he won't solve the murder. In fact, he tells us that the murder isn't even very interesting: "So I'm setting out to tell this story, which is really not a story, as the discriminating reader might observe, and which I know might well be of absolutely no interest to anyone." And so it goes, for, truthfully, the story of the murder isn't a story and it isn't particularly engaging.

But, it serves as a vehicle. Tied to it are threads arising out of the lives of five people connected with the victim. Their stories intertwine around the murder, leading the reader from one to the next, and their sum is a portrait of Beirut in the summer of 1980. Like a tree, these five main limbs branch out into a myriad of small stories, drawing in other characters that have no connection with Jaber for their piece of the picture: having to abandon a wounded comrade during a battle, dealing with the predatory extortion gangs, a garbage collector facing the simple impossibility of collecting garbage properly. These are interesting...in fact, they are engrossing.

The picture they paint is of a country tired of war, but almost unable to imagine any other state. There is no sense that Khoury is taking sides in this conflict, only that he is recording the pain, disillusionment, and despair that are the reality of war regardless of causes or ideologies. The pull of these stories causes the reader to forget utterly about the murder, except when forcibly reminded by the narrator, to focus on the everyday lives affected by an interminable and meaningless conflict. The passion in this translation...and surely in the original...is impossible to ignore. ( )