After twenty-eight days, which I marked off on the workshop wall, she left her room. In a dress embroidered with flowers this time. That’s why, as I looked at her standing in the workshop, I found myself thinking about the flowers as she walked. The slant of the flowers on the dress caused her walk to lose much of its radiance. Usually, when a tailor sews a piece of clothing, he makes it so the flowers stand straight up, rather than lean over or point downward, so as not to have the young woman’s future imitate her upside-down or slanted flowers. She took a few steps toward me, hardly making a sound. Her dress rustled lightly. The flowers appeared in its folds and weren’t altered by how she walked. She hadn’t put perfume on, which would have let me know it was her before she entered. I don’t really like perfume.
I knew that she had emerged from the workshop without even seeing her or her flowers, especially since I had been waiting all this time, hoping to hear her footsteps, waiting for some sort of movement in the air that would tell me she was approaching, on her own. Without perfume or fragrance. Even without hearing her footsteps, I imagined her now looking from afar at the carvings I etched into the wood. My hand was proud of this small victory. The look on her face showed that she didn’t like my drawings too much. She wasn’t affected by them in the slightest. Whereas, just like I had been during the first week she stayed in my workshop, I was plotting to get her close to me. Nevertheless, Farah was still distant. During that first week, she barely left the spot where she was sitting. We ate and exchanged bits of conversation. We didn’t spend too much time on the topic of the lawyer who had blinded her, and who she had agreed, voluntarily, to let rob her—because of his occupation, his new clothes, his cologne, or his lying voice; or because of things I didn’t understand—but it was a story that subsequently made us laugh. She told it without bitterness, as if it had happened to another girl in another town. There were other stories similar to that of the lawyer, meaningless ones, which also made us laugh when we told them to one another. But she didn’t stray far from the workshop’s interior. This was her place, where she sat the first time she came in. Because of our previous experience, I rejected the idea of going down to the ocean to fish. My red drawings would attract her and draw her out of her isolation. This was also what I told myself. By the end of the first week, she began to move toward the decorated pieces of wood without actually getting close to them. I was amazed that the color red—Casablanca red, Father’s color—didn’t attract her as I had thought and hoped it would. Everybody likes red, except for Farah.
The dress was white with purple flowers. I had noticed it as soon as she stood in the door of her modest room. She stood there as if waiting for someone to show up. Her face was pale and it was difficult to recognize in a room with no windows. As if her real face were hidden underneath a temporary mask that was preparing to surprise me with its previous freshness. Farah’s current situation, like that of anyone who has been saved from a disaster, didn’t concern me. Barging into her room without permission didn’t concern me. I was encouraged by the child’s tapping on the wall. Un, deux, trois. I stood there unable to speak, as if the time we had spent apart had created a chasm that was difficult to jump over. How had she been saved from drowning? That was the only question that concerned me. I had spun all sorts of tales about her disappearance that night, each stranger than the other—a ship or fishing boat had pulled her out; she had spent a night, or many nights, clinging to a board that fate had placed in front of her at just the right moment; the tide had tossed her onto a distant beach after she’d spent the night lost, with no moon or stars or even the slightest light to guide her—as I pictured the extraordinary efforts she must have made as she struggled with the waves and the night and the sharks, using all of my mental faculties to avoid picturing her breathing her last breaths underwater. There was nothing more horrible than drowning, which I’d always imagined to be an accidental death. As if the drowned person had slipped or gotten distracted, and here she was now, stumbling over her mistake, thinking she could correct it, a simple mistake. After all, water is merciful and doesn’t kill. Making fun of herself, her mistake, and her foot that slipped. Until the final moment, the drowning person thinks she has made a simple mistake that she’ll be able to correct, until she sinks to the bottom, until the water brings her back up to the surface emptied of all meaning except for the meaning of being on the water’s surface where people don’t usually sleep. Death by drowning is always a humorous calamity. I was also thinking about how she arrived at this house, moving between the darkest of thoughts and even worse expectations, as if preparing myself for her fickle moods and strange disappearances. I stood in front of Farah in a room with no windows, without even the smallest peephole you could look through to see the world. Farah’s face was pale, drained, the face of a girl exhausted by lack of sleep, or hunger, or both. It was as if I had found her on a boat long lost at sea. Her eyes were filled with doubt and suspicion, at least for the first few minutes, as if she were taking her time to recognize me and what my intentions were. All I remember is that I pointed toward the door, as if inviting her to take a walk around the neighborhood. She responded as if she were saying that she was busy, unable to go with me right then. Maybe tomorrow, or the day after. What was bothering her? What was it that she had been doing before I had barged in on her isolation? What could a young woman possibly be doing in a small room six meters square? Not now. No, before now. Before I went in, this morning, yesterday, and all the time she had spent locked up in this suffocating room. If there had at least been a window, I would have said that she had been spending some of her time watching the girl move her stone from square to square, or watching the birds if her window looked out over the garden. The second time I burst into her room, she categorically refused to accompany me, even when I insisted (when I felt bold enough to dare). As if the room were my room. As if it were just a passing stubbornness that would neither listen to nor accept any advice. I was also a bit pleased with myself, even feeling a little cocky seeing her apologize, saying she was sorry, completely at my mercy. At my mercy, but refusing to take even two steps outside of her square. She was waiting for someone. He’d come today or tomorrow, so she had to wait. She couldn’t go anywhere. He could come anytime. Her life depended on him coming.
For days I sat in my workshop waiting for her to come. I was certain she would show up one day. As if she were sitting on the mosque’s wall and might come in at any moment. I was even picturing the way she walked and the dress she would be wearing. And she really did come to visit me, two times, then went back to her room. She came in hesitantly, as if setting foot in my workshop for the first time, standing close to the door like a stranger, watching me draw on the wood (or at least pretending to). What could I have been drawing? Circles. Then more circles. Each one less complete than the one before. After Father fell, work ended. Lines, circles, and muqarnases with their bright colors all came to an end. The red that he was so proud of was done. For the most part, I was pretending so as to give her the chance to become reacquainted with me and the place. But she didn’t leave her spot by the door. She didn’t say a word. She just stood there watching what I was doing, and I wasn’t doing anything of any use. I wasn’t going to make any move that might drive her away. Like you do when a dove lands close to you and you think your heartbeats would be enough to scare it off. Even when I heard her voice saying hello to me from behind, I returned the greeting without turning around, or rather, I turned as much as necessary to assure her that I was returning the greeting in my own way. Then, after twenty-eight days, she handed over the keys and left her room for good, and she agreed to stay in the workshop temporarily. I think it was because the old woman was no longer able to feed her. I also think that she came to stay.