Fadel_Blue_Bird

Benghazi

10 a.m.

THEN THERE’S THIS WOMAN WHO comes looking for her husband. I don’t see her at ﬁrst when she gets out. I am lying down in the room and I think: Today’s the day I go to the city to try my luck. The only thing on my mind is the horses that’ll run in the afternoon. I drink a cup of tea and leave my room. I ﬁnd a bus full of tourists. My uncle told them we don’t need tourists, most of them are spies. He’s in his ofﬁce, my uncle. Either they’re French or Italian or Indian. What do we do with them? They’ve come to marvel at the impenetrable walls and what’s left of the pasha’s tiles and his decorations in the catalogs they carry. They’re sweating a lot. It’s May. The tourists don’t understand what I say but the guide responds to their questions.

I say: “They’re spies and we don’t have any prisoners here, thank God.”

The guide doesn’t know how to explain so I say: “All this was left by tyrannical colonialism. As for now, thank God, the country enjoys freedom and happiness.”

And the guide: “The casbah’s closed because today’s Friday.”

And the tourists protest: “Today’s Sunday.”

And I yell: “Regardless, today’s a Friday in this region.

And the tourists scream: “We protest strongly.”

And me: “May God bless your parents, go. The journey’s over.”

My uncle’s in the ofﬁce. They’re trying to charge the door as I tell the guide to stop them from coming in if he wants to end his day safely. Tomorrow I’ll open the door for them because it’ll be their Friday. No races, no horses, no numbers. There’s no one left, nothing that the French and Americans will be able to accuse us of. God willing. For now, entering is forbidden and that’s it. My uncle knows half of them are spies who’ve brought their evil intentions and preconceptions and my uncle says they’ll sow evil words in newspapers, whether we open the door for them or not.

I say goodbye to the guide and his tourists at the door, and when the bus moves, it leaves the woman behind. Standing on the other side of the bus where it was stopped. The numbers are going round in my head. Dogs running and horses following them and sometimes running together in the same race. And the woman is standing under the sun. Dogs, horses, donkeys, and chickens. She looks up at the casbah walls in the morning light. She doesn’t look like the tourists who come to see us from time to time so we can show them our historical achievements. Her skirt’s long with white buttons, covering her from top to bottom. Her modest bag and her smile full of hope. Her bag is of black leather. Her tight held hair in a decorated bandana. Maybe she’s Shilha from Immouzer or Timhdit. And when she says she’s looking for her husband, Aziz, I know she isn’t Shilha. I know immediately. She says her husband’s name. I pretend I don’t know him. Why would I be responsible for knowing him? I don’t know anyone, ask my uncle. Or whoever’s above him. Or above us all. I pretend I like what she was saying because the casbah’s a place tourists from all over the world come to. Even from Japan. I ask her if Aziz is a Japanese tourist or a guide like me in the ministry of tourism. Because I’ve been a guide in this casbah for twenty years without seeing a colleague with that name. Aziz, you say? She’s looking at me, breathless, and wondering and hoping and disbelieving. Then sympathy ﬁlls my heart. We buried him only yesterday. If she’d come the day before or two days ago. But that’s another story, as they say. She says she spent the night on the bus because she was coming from Azrou. She’s not hungry or tired. She only wants to see her husband. A mature woman, her chest mature and full. I remember him in his hole in the middle of the courtyard where I left him last night under the ground, rotting in peace. I ask her about his work and why he disappeared and why she has kept looking for him all this time. Because a man doesn’t disappear unless he has a plan. I tell her about men I know who have disappeared because they had a plan. They wanted to change their lives completely.

She said her name was Zina. I didn’t feel like carrying on saying the same thing, while she looked at me with her teary eyes. And I, in my mind, saw her, instead of my wife, sitting at my house, waiting for the happy birth. I see her through new eyes. As she presses with her ﬁngers on her black leather bag and says: “The woman who showed me the place.”

I don’t hear what she says. So no one can say I heard. I tell her that standing here, near the casbah, or far from it, is forbidden. Do you know getting close isn’t permitted, even for tourists? Nonetheless, as my uncle says, they’re put on a list from the Ministry of the Interior so spies and enemies don’t sneak in.

Welcome to you in any case, if you want to visit. But I tell you now you won’t ﬁnd who you’re looking for. Not even half of him. All the wings of the casbah are empty, thank God. I tell her this when it becomes clear to me that moving away is better than standing here very close to him. And to the hole we threw him in. He might get up at any moment, as Baba Ali says. My uncle might be spying on us from his window and abduct her because he’ll think she came to drink whiskey with him. It’s not necessary for us to keep standing here. I don’t have a solution for her. As I told her, we don’t have any people for her to look for, except for the dead. And may God have mercy on the dead. Is it possible to say more than that? I told her: “This is a tourist place.” And tourists come here for the beautiful palms in the neighboring oases. From the casbah roof, they seem beautiful at dusk. Do you want to see dusk from the casbah roof and other things, as they call them? The tourists sit on the roof to drink Moroccan tea we make for them as they watch the red spread from the sun setting on our beautiful oases. Maybe there’s another place. With the same name and the same descriptions and with this man who . . . What’s his name? Aziz. I tell you men don’t disappear like that for nothing. You say twenty years? Really? That’s a lot. No one looks for someone for twenty years. He might have gotten married and had kids, and he’s now playing in the stadium of the Royal Federation of Soccer or studying medicine in Belgium or selling hashish in Rotterdam.

We move away then and I let the current lead me. God alone is able to ﬁnd a good solution. In the taxi, my elbow touches hers. The horses are running in my head, and time runs. I’ve got enough time to get to the bookie in the city. Two hours going and two hours coming back. And other things. Nothing’s turned up in its place. And my arm’s leaning on hers. Like two friends busy with the concerns of the world. And I speak with her about everything happening around us. My wife’s pregnant. That’s right, seven girls. The boy, I’ll call him Ismail. Imagine, triplets in a single night. If there is a boy. And I’ll buy a ram from the market this morning for us to slaughter in case there is. And she says she came this whole distance to see her husband. All night and by bus. Without eating or sleeping. And I say: “God will make it right. If God wants you to know where he is, you’ll know and if He wants you to see him, you’ll see him because God doesn’t waste these things and other things like them. God willing.”

My wife is in her ninth month. In her last day or the one right before the last. She leans against me when the taxi turns to the right and I lean against her when it leans to the left. I feel for her and I’m sympathetic to her. Her smile at this moment is closer to submission to the command of God and His decree. Her breasts are like pomegranates shaking under her dress. If he was alive, I’d tell her. Or I’d drop a hint so she’d know and calm down a bit. She stops twisting her ﬁngers. But he’s dead, and by God on high, I saw him with my own eyes and we buried him with my own hands and there’s no use going back to the past. Baba Ali alone saw him alive again, but he’s always talking nonsense. If the matter was in my hands, I’d have tossed the two of them into the same hole. And I’d have tossed in my sinning uncle, the commander, and the old dog and been ﬁnished with the whole thing.

As the taxi moved us away, I say: “A time will come when you’ll forget this illness whose name’s Aziz. There’s no illness human beings won’t heal from.”

If only she’d let me propose to her another life without Aziz and without a wife who gives birth to girls. Life’s beautiful without boys or girls. If she’d only let me sleep on her chest and hear the beating of life. We’ll start over. A new start. From the beginning. Without pits or bodies or my godless noisy uncle. And I see everything’s possible this time. With her, I’ll go back to the beginning.

We found Baba Ali lame. She stands, and so do I. His wide red eyes ﬁll with tears and a yellow ﬂuid comes out of them. What’s wrong with you, Baba Ali? He’s like someone who’s been stunned by something. He says he was always expecting the administration would send him on the hajj. What administration? We don’t have anything we call the administration. No papers and no register with our names so they can identify us. If Baba Ali’s a cook, he has to write to a ministry concerned with cooking, and if I’m a real guide, I have to go to the Ministry of Tourism. Baba Ali says they have to send us together on the hajj. “Why? Did you commit sins, Baba Ali?”

Since I ﬁrst saw her behind the bus, she hasn’t sat down. I ask her to sit. Does she think I’ll tell him something about her? That she came looking for her husband, who we buried yesterday? I tell him her name’s Zina. Her name comes off my tongue easily.

This catastrophe is happening to Baba Ali because he doesn’t remember God. How will he remember God if he’s not praying? He lives alone like a mouse after he left his children in Taza. My house is better than his. His house is a room ﬁve meters long, it’s two rooms in one. In addition to a kitchen and bathroom he shares with the neighbors. It’s as if God the Almighty told me: Here’s your chance if you want to change your life with a good woman. With her shyness and her way of lowering her eyes. And he’s here, extended before us, losing control over his right side. Before three o’clock, if I hurry, I can reach El Hajib and Midelt before three. I’ve got in my pocket the winning numbers. Twenty years she’s been waiting to come to the casbah gate to say she’s looking for her husband. And I say she’s not looking for her husband. A lost woman, she’s looking for someone to save her. And I, as if I were striving to save her. God put me on her path so I can grant her the life she’s looking for. Without asking her where she came from or how she spent the past twenty years. Ready to accept her as she is. With her sins and reckless deeds. Should I leave her with Baba Ali like someone waiting for her husband to come back from work? Should I go to El Hajib or Midelt to get rid of the numbers playing in my mind and go to the hammam and then to the barber? The woman is looking for stability. Food and a house to take refuge in. And then it was fated for her to settle down with me in Midelt or El Hajib. Or a distant city so we don’t see the casbah. Or the men buried in it. God will ﬁnd us a solution at the right time. Not before or after. And Baba Ali’s looking at us with his unparalyzed half. If he’d said In the Name of God the Compassionate the Merciful yesterday when he thought he saw the dead man moving, the matter would have ended and that would have been it. But God didn’t run this sentence on his tongue because He doesn’t love him. Baba Ali was as good as ﬁnished when he saw the dead man alive. Baba Ali has lost his direction. We buried the man she was looking for. And then Baba Ali ran out of the room in the middle of the night. Have you, Zina, forgotten to bury a dead man and found him the next day without a stomach and with his head covered in mud, without any eyes? Yes, this wonder happened to us. But it’s the past. And with the help of God, I’ll become someone else. Instead of the mouth, there was a hole full of dirt. What was left of the body was mangled from head to toe. I swear to God the Most Great. I’m very lucky because, at that moment, I said: I take refuge in God against Evil Satan. If not for that, I’d have been struck like Baba Ali. Bones sticking out like branches with the remains of pieces of ﬂesh hanging down from them and spots of blood darkened by soil sticking to them, God protect me from that. Baba Ali won’t ever say a word. Because when someone is right with himself and his family, these things don’t happen to him. I won’t leave her with him in case he says something. I’m not sure God ﬁnally tore out his tongue. Because if the left sides of human beings’ brains are paralyzed, you don’t know what’s going on in their right brains. As happened to Baba Ali, whose mouth ﬂed toward his ear and whose eye was red and hung down and widened, looking in another direction. His hand became lean and slept next to him, frozen, unmoving. And we, as if we’ve come to comfort him for half an hour, in a friendly visit. As long as he thinks we’re good friends and we haven’t abandoned him in these disasters. Afterward, we’ll go back to our house in Midelt or El Hajib. And I took a checkerboard from under his bed and told him: “Play, Baba Ali.” What would he play with since his ﬁngers were stiff? I told him: “Your left hand, Baba Ali, is still good and you can move checkers with it, and thank God it hasn’t become stiff like the right one.”

I put the board between us. Baba Ali glanced at the shut door. I asked him: “Should I lock the door, Baba Ali?”

I got up and locked it. It let out a strange sound. Like moaning. I opened the door again and sat on the couch next to Zina and she arranged the pieces on top of the squares. He kept looking at the wide-open door as if he was expecting the dead man to appear in front of him to ask him for the shroud. He kept indicating toward the door. No one was at the door. The sun was ablaze and I heard the chirping of the bugs and nothing else. I didn’t know exactly what Baba Ali wanted. Maybe he had no desire to play. “You don’t want to play, Baba Ali? Should I ask my uncle to pay for the pilgrimage to Mecca for you?”

This time, he yelled in his voice hitting the ground. I heard him say: “Do you think God will forgive us?”

If he doesn’t go on the hajj, everything he did will follow him to the hereafter. “They’re the reason. They’re the reason for everything that happens to us, Benghazi. The man who—”

I yelled in his face not to say his name. “What’s He forgiving us for, Baba Ali? Did we do something forbidden that our Lord will punish us for? Did we do something not mentioned in the Holy Book, Baba Ali?”

He returned to his senses and we went out and the woman didn’t ask what Baba Ali wanted to say. She got up and followed me. No one likes Baba Ali.

Are we the ones who brought them to the casbah?

I left her standing at the door and went back to Baba Ali. So I know I felt pity for him. That I was changed because of this new feeling. The new heart beating in my chest.

“I didn’t bring anyone here and we didn’t kill anyone, Baba Ali. With the help of God, you’ll get up and resume your life and it’s no use going back to the casbah because no one lives there anymore.”

I swear, he’ll talk to the others. Everyone will get what’s coming to them, northing more and nothing less. Are you comfortable now, Baba Ali, because I’ve explained it to you? His voice was only a whistle. I didn’t know Baba Ali had a voice that whistled. What’s wrong with you, Baba Ali? Maybe he’s lost his mind. Should I put the board and the checkers back under the bed or should I leave them in front of him? Maybe they’ll help him regain his mind.

The house was as I left it ﬁfteen days ago or more. There was nothing to indicate that she’d given birth to what was in her belly. No trilling and no congratulations. No scent of sauce with chicken and saffron. And Zina was standing at the door. The house was hers. Until now, there has been no other house. Later, when we settle down in our new house, in El Hajib or Midelt or any house she chooses. . . . And for the ﬁrst time, I told her: “Zina, go in.” If my mind had been helping me, I’d have seen she was surprised as that name came off my tongue again. She was looking at me with her pleading eyes and looking at my pregnant wife on the mat, her forehead moistened with scraps of cloth. The television in the living room was telling its stories to my daughters Ruqiya and Fatiha. Other than them, there was no one. I said: “The house is empty this morning except for the noise of the girls.”

My two girls kissed my hand and said their sisters were at their grandmother’s. Then they said their mother was waiting for a boy. And my wife was in labor in the middle of the long room and sending her calm looks toward me. But I don’t trust the looks of women. She told me with her eyes that it would be a boy. But I don’t trust the looks of women. At that exact moment, I didn’t care. Because I heard the name in my ears a third and fourth time. Zina. Zina. I told my wife: “This is Zina. She’s looking for her husband.”

I said it because the name stayed in my mouth. Zina was still standing there, laughing with the girls near the door. And the actors on television were laughing. They were happy with the new arrival on the way, preparing for her a special place among them. When I went back to the living room, Zina came back with me and sat down. We carried on watching my wife from the window. As if we were looking at another woman far away. In some hospital. In some wing. With no connection to us. She and everything that’s in the room. As if she’d forgotten the reason she came.

I gave her a glass of tea and some sweets. She had no desire or appetite. She only came to look for him. She was not the ﬁrst woman to ﬁnd herself in this position, far away. Maybe the time had come for her to go back to Azrou, as they call it.

“God will make good things happen. But now it would be better for you to relax and change your mind about going back. This will be your place, as soon as I come back.”

She ate a piece and waited for my return, when God would enable us to be together. Instead of moving, Zina’s eyes kept watching the TV show. This was good too. I went out and closed the door behind me. Men and women passed before me, celebrating in their colorful clothes and their kohl-lined eyes and all the other things that happen in a marriage festival. Why didn’t we get married in the middle of the music, dancing, and beating drums? This was a unique occasion. She was on her way to forgetting. And the girls were crossing the alley, laughing. And groups of male and female singers headed to the square with red and white ﬂowers around their necks and ululations rising up from every direction. I don’t want either a boy or a girl anymore. God has put the marriage festival on our path as a sign.

I was sure she’d calmed down when I left. Maybe she wasn’t thinking about him anymore, but of all the goodness before us. Her presence in the house was a good idea. When I got back, she was standing and getting ready to go somewhere. It seemed to me there wasn’t anything between me and her anymore. I came down to her from the sky to solve the problem that a man left her without a protector for twenty years. Who would provide for her? Who would protect her from the cold nights and the summer heat? It was as if God had put me here at the right time and place.

This was something that hadn’t happened before. I couldn’t ﬁnd the girl who spent the night with my uncle to bring her back to her family. This was another job I had to do. Instead of her, I found big cars in front of the casbah gate. Tanks. Ambulances too. My uncle said a high-level American commission had come to get one of its citizens. And the commission said he was with the group of prisoners. His grandfather had traveled to America on a research trip and become intimate with an American woman and so he remained in their protection. Neither I nor my uncle understand the Americans. And you’d think the American commission would be made up of Americans, but they weren’t. The ones I saw in front of me were Moroccan. A group of ofﬁcers and important ofﬁcials, tall, with blond hair. In military uniforms and other things. As for the commission, as they call him, he was a short man, thin like a branch, whose face was covered with freckles like a sieve and whose thick glasses were like two jam jars. He wore khaki shorts and a khaki shirt as if he was going to hunt butterﬂies. It was a high-level American commission because the important Moroccan ofﬁcers were surrounding the short man and raising their heads at every word and laughing at every sign. Was this the commission that was asking for the American?

My uncle said: “Do you know where the short man came from? From Congress or Conogress. It’s the equivalent of our parliament.” So it’s not equivalent to anything. We don’t have an American or even half an American prisoner. We don’t jail Americans. And the man, the commission, was sitting behind my uncle’s desk and joking with the American ofﬁcers in American, and my uncle, who doesn’t understand American, was near the window moving his head as if he understood and was laughing and the American saw he didn’t understand so he spoke with him in Moroccan and this time my uncle moved his head as if he’d remembered he could understand. The ofﬁcers suggested they make a visit to the casbah so the American Congress could see our magniﬁcent heritage. I thought my role as guide had come. But the Congress apologized. It didn’t have any time to waste. My uncle came up to me and we went out to the roof.

We were alone now, and he asked me: “Where’s the notebook?

“What notebook, Uncle?”

“The commission’s been looking for it since they came.”

“What notebook, Uncle?”

“The notebook we’ve been registering the names of our prisoners in.”

“If my memory serves me, Uncle, we tore it up, so no trace remains of them.”

“Baba Ali was recording the names of the dead in a special notebook.”

“But Uncle, you tore it up. I’m a soldier. I don’t know how to write, I told you, Uncle. I agree with you. Since that day, we’ve been burying them, not writing them down. I never thought about them, dead or alive. Because since the ﬁrst day, you told us, Uncle, these cursed ones have come here to die. Without a notebook or anything else. I only understand that.”

I also understand my uncle doesn’t buy food for them with the money from the state. Sometimes I don’t understand him because he builds houses with this money. He builds complete neighborhoods in Meknès and doesn’t give us anything from the state’s money, even though we’re in the same boat. Of course it’s not the same boat when it’s about money. I don’t like to think a lot about these things. I only enjoy the memories that will come. This woman who came at the exactly the right time to change my life. I hope what I’m thinking about is good. She’ll need a house to shelter her. The money I’ll earn will be enough to ﬁnd an appropriate house in Midelt or El Hajib. And I’ll leave my uncle with the Americans and I hope they eat him alive. God willing, the Merciful and the Compassionate.

My uncle said: “Go bring them their American.” His face didn’t turn red or green, as I thought it would.

This wasn’t my uncle anymore, my uncle who didn’t open his casbah to the Minister of the Interior in its length and width because he only takes orders from the king and here he was opening it before a man who wasn’t more than a handspan high? Because he was an American and he came from Congress and he was wearing shorts? I didn’t tell him: There’s no trace of them, Uncle. I didn’t tell him they’re all dead. In the notebook or not. I went down to the courtyard to dig up the dirt. And that was how, for the ﬁrst time since yesterday, I remembered the ring. I knew God had put in my path everything I needed. I also remembered I couldn’t get it off the dead man’s ﬁnger because of the night and the dog and Baba Ali who ran off and all the other things. I could sell it. I saw that God was looking at me with the eye of compassion. And Zina was waiting. I also saw I wouldn’t disappoint her. She’d see she’d done a good thing by coming. There is no power and no strength save in God.

The hole and the lime and the clay were dug up. There was no trace of him in the courtyard. God doesn’t close a door without opening others. The man was dead yesterday but here he was no longer dead or alive. And the hole with its soil overturned, that was how I found it in the courtyard with no trace of the dog. In the name of God, the Merciful and the Compassionate. Did the earth swallow him? Or did he move to another hole?

In the corridor, I lit the lamp so I could see him returned from his hole. With his lime and soil. The door was open. And he was sitting, alive. With his wife waiting for him at my house. Only yesterday he was dead, as he should be. But the morning dawned and here he was alive because his wife came asking about him. May God be praised. He wasn’t spread out on the slab. He was sitting, turning toward me with his disgusting eyes. I didn’t like his eyes. I put out the lamp and his eyes still shone like someone who didn’t realize he’d died a few hours ago. And his eye wasn’t worth more than four thousand dirhams in the market. The right or the left. Four thousand dirhams for a single eye. That was the price in the market. She was watching the TV show and waiting for him. My anger increased. This wasn’t the time to think about eyes. I didn’t have a ring or money or an eye and they weren’t grieving. The man seemed in perfect health after twenty years of torture. As if he’d repaired all his parts in half a night and sat resting. My heart started pounding.

All the hatred of the previous night froze in my heart with its heat and sweat and curses. There is no power and no strength save in God. How would I get the ring I left on him? I felt my nerves tense up as morning wouldn’t dawn until we’d rid ourselves of him. If I’d sold his eyes, he wouldn’t have the chance to see me. Four thousand dirhams for a single eye. A thousand dirhams for Baba Ali so that his other half would be paralyzed. A thousand dirhams for my uncle so he’d know he didn’t think badly about me, like I thought about him. And two thousand dirhams for the woman who came from Azrou on the night bus. In addition to the price of the ring. The delicious things that would come with it. All this causes happiness.

Would Baba Ali give me a thousand dirhams if he was the one who sold the eye? I’m the one who always gives him thousands upon thousands without him thanking me even once. And there he was in his house, paralyzed. His mouth was drooping toward his ear. God struck him with paralysis in his mouth because he’s an inﬁdel. I won’t visit Baba Ali after today. He’ll die alone like a dog. Is he better than all the ones we, me and him, tossed into the pits in the courtyard?

Yesterday, I left him in his hole. And here he is with those eyes of his, full of impudence. I know this kind of person. My uncle told me not to trust them. I told him as I looked over the door: “The Americans are waiting for you.”

I opened the door completely. “Get up, Mr. Aziz.”

This time I addressed him politely so he’d understand there wasn’t any animosity between us. That we were brothers in religion and creed and lineage.

“Or do you want to die here in peace?” It would be better for him to die. It would be better for him to go to America or Brazil or to face some other calamity.

Then I remembered the ring. I saw it ﬂash on his ﬁnger. The ring I left in his pocket as I was digging the hole. I heard him say: “Take it. The ring’s not mine. I found it in the wall. May God be praised.”

Here was the man who yesterday gave me the ring, but I didn’t take it. And here he was back in his cell, waiting for me to come take the ring, and this was a miracle. So I prostrated myself twice to thank God for this, as they say. We were like the rest of His servants. We live to wait for death. And I was expecting anything from this cursed one. Even that he’d get up again and go back to his hole. These devils are capable of anything. I didn’t go in to take the ring, even though it ﬂashed on one of his ﬁngers. So I didn’t fall into his trap. Or the Americans’. Or someone else’s trap. This was also a blessing. My life was upright from this perspective. I couldn’t be blamed for anything. I perform my ﬁve prayers at the right times. And I fast during Ramadan. And a part of the month of Shaaban. I observe the traditions. And soon I’ll pray every Thursday and Friday. When we’re in El Hajib, me and Zina. In our new house. If God wants to say something, let it be and it is so.

The Americans came all the way here to look for him so why doesn’t he go with them? No doubt he left his hole to go with them. Who’d take him except the Americans? That’s what I told my uncle. When I took the ring, I went out running so he didn’t go back on his word. I saw the short, small commission with the thick glasses shake its head and say in American: “Good. Very good.” I told the American we’ve found him and he’s as well as can be. He was only waiting for the order to leave, which my uncle will sign off on when the time comes. And other things like that.

This time I forgot too. Did I lock the door or leave it open? I always have a problem with the door. I always leave and come back to see if I’ve locked it or left it open. It’s a problem, I swear. I’m in the taxi heading to Midelt. With the numbers in my pocket. And all the horses in my head with their names and weights. After four hours, everything’s changed. I won’t go back to the casbah. Let my uncle do with his casbah and his prisoners whatever he wants. Because we won’t ever ﬁnish with this story. They kept coming for twenty years and they’ll keep coming for a hundred more. I won’t bear their sins after today. The day when man opens his eyes and sees has arrived. This is a great day. My heart is beating to a special rhythm for the ﬁrst time. There’s no need to go to Mecca for God to pardon you. You say it with your heart and that’s it. In the upcoming long winter nights, Zina will be sitting with me and listening to my incredible, unbelievable stories. It’s not important anymore for my wife to give birth to a girl or boy. We’ve forgotten all this. I’ll tell her before I divorce her. Good men are for good women and wicked men for wicked women. For her to understand the meaning of producing something she doesn’t want from her womb. And afterward, I’ll go to the countryside because Zina loves the countryside. She likes the long winter nights in the countryside. There is no power and no strength save in God. In the taxi I remembered the door again. I can’t go back in any case because the Americans have come. And they’ll take their prisoner with them. And that’s it. And the lime we were tossing on them doesn’t have a role anymore. Because the last fear was carried out with the coming of the small American commission.

When I got out of the taxi. When I went into the barber’s and sat on the chair. Like that, without introductions, everything ended. In one fell swoop. Taf! The lights went out.