2. Before

Tomorrow, I’m cutting it off. Do you hear me, Zahira? I’m going to do it. It’s happening. God commands it. Not me. Do you still support me? Do you think I’m right? Tomorrow, I’m cutting it off completely. It will be erased. Disintegrated. I will not suffer. I will be asleep. In its place, I’ll have something else.

An opening.

Dr. Johansson will do the operation. I trust him. He’s not French. He’s Swedish, from Stockholm. He told me himself. He’s blond, of course. And handsome, very handsome, of course. Since starting the three-year-long procedure, I’ve fantasized about him, about what’s under there when he lifts his little bright white doctor’s smock. I don’t know his first name. His last name is enough for me. Since the beginning of this week, every night I’ve repeated his name to fall asleep: Dr. Johansson. Dr. Johansson. Dr. Johansson. Dr. Johansson. Dr. Johansson. Come. Come. Come and cut it off of me. Oh, yes! Please! Please, Doctor!

I’m cutting it off. Do you hear me, Zahira? I don’t want it anymore. What a relief! What joy! To finally leave this cursed realm of men! Exit. Leave. Change. Finally reveal myself. Whether they like it or not. I will be other. Myself.

I’M CUTTING IT OFF.

No cock. No penis. No dick. No tumescence. No sperm. No balls. No useless thing between my legs that’s ruined my life ever since I was born.

Do you understand? Do you find it funny? Laugh, then! Go on and laugh, Zahira! Forget your sadness! Forget your poor broke Parisian clients and laugh! What’s wrong? Did you lower your prices yet again? Yes? Is that it? Poor thing! Poor thing! You’re making me lose hope, truly . . . Pay attention, please! Don’t distract me. In any event, your own problems will always be there. Let’s stay focused on my big day.

Tomorrow, I’ll be like you. Tomorrow, I’ll have my revenge. Tomorrow, I’ll screw them all. I won’t abandon my hatred for them. Absolutely not. I will hold on to it. That’s what allows me to survive still and always in this world of enraged dogs, assholes who are always thirsty. I will pamper it, my hatred. I will make a small mausoleum for it in my apartment. Just for my hatred. Are you still with me, Zahira? I’m right, aren’t I? Hatred isn’t a driving force for you, I know. It is for me. It has been forever and ever. If I could, I would kill them all. One after another. I would line them up against the wall. I would look them straight in the eyes. I would withdraw a bit, just a bit. And then I would give the signal to my army. My enemies would be shot in two, three seconds. I would witness their deaths, slow or rapid. Satisfied. True bliss, at last.

Ah, what a life, what sweet vengeance!

I’ve really earned it, my revenge. I paid for it. I gave everything. My skin. My cock. My ass. All the fantasies those clients had in their poor repressed heads, I made them come true. You know it, Zahira. You saw it firsthand. I broke my back from leaning over every night, hunched for hours, in the glacial cold of Porte Dauphine. Subjected to their mockery, their stupidity. Their cowardice.

My apartment, behind the Blanche metro stop, is mine. I worked like a tigress, a real she-devil, to have it. I slogged nonstop. I’m not like you. When the Yemeni sorcerer from Porte Saint-Denis offered me stronger, diabolical spells to attract more clients, I didn’t hesitate. I said yes. I jumped at the chance. I didn’t act pure, like you. Hesitant. Like someone who still has a heart, values. No. It would have been useless. They have to pay, all those men, those frustrated men, those men starving for dick, those assholes. I want all their money. All of it. The maximum amount of dough. I don’t like them, in any event. Not in Algiers, where I was raped free of charge for years, and not here in this shithole that people still dare to call the most beautiful city in the world.

My ass! My shithole, too, sure, but not the most beautiful city in the world!

My apartment is magnificent. Jean-Jacques and Pierre decorated it well, and for free. I won’t forget. But on the other hand, I did countless favors for those two Parisians over the years. I cooked them heaps of couscous and tagines. I brought them to the Barbès hammam numerous times and took perfect care of their bodies. Exfoliation. Massage. Regularly, at least twice a week, I satisfied their overflowing libidos. A quickie with one. A blow job for the other. Two fingers in Jean-Jacques’s ass. Just one, the thumb, in Pierre’s. That was the only way they could come. And they say they’re not passive . . . Yeah right! And I’m masculinity incarnate! You know them, too, Zahira. You know what I’m talking about. They call you up from time to time, for other services. I found out. There’s no point in denying it. It doesn’t bother me. That’s between you and them. You know, that oh-so-Parisian French couple, who have completely forgotten the backcountry of the Vosges where they came from, are only still together because of me. I told you they’re opposed to my operation. They’ve tried everything to dissuade me. They say that I’ll regret it. That it’s irreversible. That I’m not considering all the terrible consequences I’ll have to deal with afterwards.

But what business is it of theirs?!

They act like intellectuals, those two queers. It’s time for them to come back down to earth. Mr. Jean-Paul Sartre and la señora Simone de Beauvoir, it’s over. It has been for a long time. Since even before the end of the last century. Do they realize it, you think? Do you speak with your clients about such things?

Sorry. I wasn’t trying to make fun of you . . . All of France knows you specialize in humanitarian rescue. You only offer yourself to dirty, broke immigrants. Don’t be so shocked, then, that you’re still living in a 195-square-foot cage in Barbès. When I knew you, you were living in 97 square feet. Seventeen years later, you’ve doubled it! Bravo, Zahira! Bravo, Moroccan girl! Your compatriots must be ashamed of you. You’re forty-five years old now, is that right?

Okay, okay, I’ll stop acting like an idiot. But even so, I would like to know why you go to your Berber sorcerer from Gadir? And the Jew in Les Halles, do you still see him? Does he cast the spells that you really need? Don’t you find that you’re stagnating, that you’re out of the loop and never stop to question yourself?

Answer me! Answer me!

Come on, come on, don’t get angry. You know how much I love you. I just want what’s best for you . . . All right . . . All right . . . Back to me. I’ll talk about myself. It’s better. It’s more fun. Lighter. More festive. No? I’m the one who puts on a ton of makeup every night. Not you. I’m the one who wears miniskirts. Not you. I’m the one who wears wigs. Not you. And I’m the one who has more clients. Not you.

You’re not saying anything. I’ve hurt you. You came to have tea with me and I turned our reunion into a trial. I’m sorry! It’s just that I’m afraid for you, for your future. Everything passes, dies, so quickly. Money is the only thing that’s real and eternal . . .

You’re still not saying anything. I’m annoying you, is that it? Have some pastries. They’re really good, don’t you think? I bought them at La Bague de Kenza, as always. Take some home with you when you go . . .

Do you still see Hamdi the Egyptian? He’s the one who gave me your news when you disappeared. He comes to see me regularly. Are you listening to me? Regularly. Another gay Arab man incapable of accepting himself. Honestly, what are they so afraid of? Do you know? It’s just some ass. Two cocks meet, touch, come together, return to childhood together. It’s easy to admit, to understand, no? We all want to fuck. Well, not everyone. I aspire to something else. But they, the others, the ones who take the metro, slave away the whole year for next to nothing, pay their taxes and the VAT, who believe they’re freer than you and me, really, what are they so afraid of? That people call them fags because they come to see me? And? That people call them cocksuckers? Pedophiles? So what?

They disgust me. All of them. No. Not all of them. I have to be honest. Not all of them. Some of them are romantics, they just want to talk a little, laugh a little, share a tender kiss.

Others have pockets filled with money. We are here to take it from them. That’s how it works. Some of them have houses in the countryside or near the sea. Where they send madame and the children. And they rush over to see me. I am ready. Prêt. Prête. Always. And nice and clean. Always. Even when I end up working the streets deep in Clichy, I never go out without my baby wipes. After each session, I clean myself properly, as one should, of their filth, of their perpetually denied frustrations. During the day, they revel in overblown language to describe the freedom they enjoy. And at night they come and hide with me and my Brazilian girlfriends. Do you understand it? You don’t have anything to say about it? This market isn’t your specialty. I know. What good does it do them, having all these laws, if it doesn’t stop them from reproducing the same world, beautiful on the outside, and in reality so repressed. I would like to believe that their Joan of Arc really fought for freedom, and that their ancestors invented the rights of man. In 1789. But at the end of the day, what do we find here, in Paris, at the heart of the heart of France? The extremely inhibited bourgeoisie, too proud of their culture and always quite satisfied with themselves. Little tribes here, there, everywhere, that remind me of some of the people I knew in Algeria. The two sides, same difference. They think they’re living in real freedom when they’re only submitting to stronger forces, smarter minds.

Do you want the names of those French tribes? Louis Vuitton. Hermès. Dior. Chanel. The Louvre. The École normale supérieure, where those idiots Jean-Jacques and Pierre teach. The Panthéon, where they love to go bow down before their Greats. And then they dare to tell us that they’re against slavery, that God doesn’t exist, or whatever other bullshit.

Fine. I’ll stop there. I’m acting like them. I’m overanalyzing. I’m citing names. References. I’m starting to get theoretical. That’s not me, all of that. Let’s get back to my cock. That’s better.

Zahira. Zahira. I want a first name like yours. It sounds so good, Zahira. You are a zahra, my dear. A little flower. You are a zhira. A little breeze that smells like zhar. The orange blossom. You are the heart. Madness. Blood. That which brings happiness. And I know what I’m talking about. I know them all, here, your colleagues. Your sisters, as you call them sometimes. But only sometimes. You’re not like them. The other girls gave up. You, in the end, didn’t. You still believe that something will happen soon. Your eyes have turned sad. But your soul still awaits a miracle.

You will be saved, Zahira. I always tell you that. I know you only half believe me. You’re wrong.

The three-year procedure is over. I followed all of Dr. Johansson’s instructions. I answered all the questions from the psychologists, psychiatrists, and gynecologists. I followed all their instructions to the letter.

Tomorrow, I’m cutting off my cock. And in the operating room, right before I surrender to the hands of the anesthetist, I will think only of you. I will not think of my mother. Nor of my father. Nor of those three men whom I loved purely. I will conjure you up before my eyes. I will renounce my manhood, my masculinity, using you as inspiration. Your body and its curves. Your scent that sets senses on fire. Your way of walking as if you were very slowly climbing a staircase. Your eyes that you never lower. Ever. You are not afraid. You fight. But you are always polite. Classy. I want to wake up as a woman with the same look I see in your eyes. Fixed. Sometimes hard, sometimes insolent. Always elegant. Where did you learn to use your eyes like that? Was it passed down to you by your father? By your big brother?

No, it’s just you, that sad look, which somehow doesn’t bring others down.

I want the same. The same. Is that okay with you? I know it’s okay, my friend. My sister, possessed like me.

You have to pick me out a first name like yours. With a Z. And an h. And an a. The music that I hear in “Zahira,” I want something like that.

What do you think? ZouZou, like the actress Soad Hosny in the Egyptian film Watch Out for ZouZou? Zineb, like your father’s sister who disappeared somewhere a long time ago and who so fascinates me? Zahia, like your aunt who is alive and well? Zohra? Zhira? Zahra? Zannouba?

You have seven names to choose from. Which one suits me best? Which one will help me be more like you? Tell me. Tell me. The last one? Tell me . . .”

“Zannouba. I like that name for you. Zannouba. Zannouba . . .”

“Why that one? It’s missing an h. Answer me!”

“By becoming a woman tomorrow, you will be a bit more like me. But you will not be me. It’s pointless to delude yourself. I don’t want for you to catch even a little bit of my curse.”

“You, Zahira, cursed?”

“Yes, that’s what I am. That’s what I see.”

“You’re wrong. A thousand times wrong. And you should change your mind-set. Maybe the others, the blind and unjust world, fling their insipid, nasty curses at you. Maybe. Trust me, none of it reaches you. You are far above them. Above everything.”

“You see me with too much love, Zannouba.”

“Zannouba! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for already calling me by this new name. Real at last. Real through you, thanks to you. That’s how I see it: a miracle and a curse at the same time. Okay, okay. In any event, I don’t care. I want to be you, Zahira. I will be Zannouba through you. I already am. You have just confirmed it for me. You have baptized me. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart. Thank you for us all. Don’t say anything. Don’t answer anything. There is nothing more to say. Let me touch you. Take my head. Blow on my head. Shall we close our eyes? Go on! Go on! Did you do it? I did. I see nothing. I’ll take some of your baraka . . . Open your eyes now, Zahira. Have some more tea and a small cake . . . Listen, Zahira, listen to me talk. I am Zannouba. This is the beginning of it all. Of all the stories of my life. The night that can never end. Words to invent. Identities to unveil . . . Are you still with me? Listen . . . Listen to me speak like Scheherazade. I’m turning back time. I’m going back to the beginning. Listen . . . Listen closely, Zahira . . .”

the temptation of the lipstick

They were all over me. A little eight-year-old boy. Happy. Seven sisters, all for me. They loved me. Took care of me. From head to toe. Several hands touched me. Cleaned me. Pampered me. Massaged me. Coated me with oils and cheap perfumes. I let them do as they pleased every time, without ever closing my eyes. Hands, overexcited and joyous, mixed, mingled, fought over my little body.

It happened quietly in the beginning. Nothing heavy. We were preparing the event. We were concentrating. We were on the green rug, in the guest room.

Winter or summer, it was always the same ritual. My sisters seemed to obey inaudible orders they alone could understand.

They had to sacrifice me. They knew what to do. How to transform me. All enter into me, become me, turn me into the link with the heavens.

We hid for the ceremony. We locked the front door to the house. We made sure our mother was off to the souk. There was no one. Only my sisters and me.

I was happy without shame: a dream. I am the only boy on earth. I am the only girl on earth.

That’s what happened: the Event. Transform. Be reborn. Return to the source. I didn’t question it.

7 girls + 1 boy = 8 girls.

1 brother + 7 sisters = 8 sisters.

The rule of numbers. It’s logic.

I witnessed my own transformation. It wasn’t magic. It was real.

My sisters supplied everything. Our mother’s green caftan. Our aunt Batoule’s yellow scarf. The blue babouches belonging to Saâdia, our eldest sister.

Three colors: green for the body, yellow around the head, and feet in blue.

Radiant, that little army prepared to carry out the large-scale operation.

The face. Very simple. Three hardly noticeable touches. Kohl on the eyes. Deep red lipstick on the lips. And a bit of powder on the cheeks.

The sisters stepped back. At a bit of a distance, seated, they formed a complete circle around the light.

They were waiting.

It was my turn.

I stood up.

I offered myself up to the gaze of one sister after another. I greeted them softly, lovingly. Recognizing myself in each of them.

7. Magic number. Odd. I am the 8 that completes it. And extends it towards the 9. I am at the same time the 8 and the 9.

Incubated by the free and benevolent gazes of my sisters, I fly, I surpass the limits of this world. And I extend my arm. One after another, they plant a kiss on my hand.

I was a little boy. Now I am a little girl. King and queen.

I come back down to earth.

One of my sisters lets out a youyou. Then a second. And a third. It heightens our joy. Our shining eyes will shatter with happiness.

My transformation continues. I start to sing.

My sisters sing, too. Our voices mix together marvelously.

I dance. As a girl.

I dance. As a boy.

Our happiness is enormous. No one can take it from us. Our union is eternal. My sisters are mine, they will never marry. Laws aren’t made for us. Unanimously, we stop recognizing them. President Boumediene is no longer our president. I am the Master. The Mistress. The little god. I am convinced of it.

When I was born they named me Aziz. “Dear one.” I am. With them. With their blessing, I become Aziza.

Aziz. Aziza. I think both. As I continue to sing and dance, I mingle them.

And I fall. Without hurting myself. I am a body on earth, in ecstasy. My sisters approach me. They devour me with kisses.

I still hear them, those noisy kisses.

They stopped when I was about thirteen years old.

Suddenly I had to remain Aziz and only Aziz.

My unhappiness began in that moment, when they told me that childhood had finished and it was time to wear the mask of a man. It wasn’t advice. It was an order repeated every day and every night.

Very soon after, the sisters left one after another. They were married off. They were given to strange men who lived elsewhere, far, very far away.

I didn’t see them again, my sisters.

I didn’t forget them. Every morning and every night, I said their names.

Saâdia. Hakima. Saïda. Fathia. Halima. Maryam. Nadia.

I remained alone.

I am alone. No joy. No magic. No innocence.

They had shown me the path. The world destroyed it all. Brutal men stole, kidnapped my sisters. They rape them, I know, over and over. My sisters can’t say anything.

Now my sisters have children. But I don’t want to know them. I don’t want to know anything about them anymore, about their new lives.

The shock of our separation destroyed me. I could no longer speak, eat, relish life. Without the bodies of my sisters around me, meaning was lost, the light gone out forever.

One night, I made the decision: to no longer exist. I would no longer be an Algerian. Nor an Arab. Nor a Muslim. Nor an African. None of it.

I turned hard. A monster. A degenerate. No purpose, no battle to fight.

It was obvious that I was receding from the world, but no one extended their hand to me.

Later, many years later, I realized the true weight of my tragedy, understood what they had taken from me, into what cold hell they had forced me. I remember that day very clearly.

It was the day the temptation to wear red lipstick came back.

I was with a client, the last one, at the end of the night. Porte Dauphine. The routine. Beyond exhaustion. The man was doing his business in my behind. I felt nothing. I was trying to think of a song by Warda. “Khalik Hena.” “Stay Here.”

The client’s pelvic thrusts sped up. I was losing hope. I couldn’t recall that song. But I continued to search in that bygone time, back in Algeria.

And it came. Came back. Just a small part:

Stay here, stay.

What’s the point of leaving on a trip.

You say: Only two days!

And you leave for a year.

What’s the point of leaving on a trip.

I’m afraid of tomorrow

And of what will happen

As soon as you leave.

You will leave us for an entire year.

And you will leave behind a wounded love.

As I’m very softly humming those two last words, “wounded love,” habib mjrouh, suddenly the buried past came back to the surface. It spurted up through a specific desire: the temptation to wear red on my lips. A fake Chanel lipstick, probably made in China. I needed that one and no other. I had to find it quickly, it was like a life-threatening emergency, my childhood, the joy among my sisters, me as a glorious child, through the magic of the cheap lipstick my sisters had used.

I had just arrived in Paris. I prostituted myself dressed as a moderately savage Arab boy from over there, Algeria. The clients liked that, liked for me to smell like my home country, the savagery of the village, as they liked to say.

The client was going to come in my ass soon. I arched my back slightly. That excited him even more. I looked at the sky searching for the sign that would appear, I was sure of it.

The client ejaculated noisily in me. My favorite moment, one of the reasons I was in the profession. It was hot, sweet, nourishing. I felt this regular client’s sperm burrow through me, wind its way in, leave its mark everywhere.

Thus sustained and rekindled, I had the strength, the power, to read the sign showing me where to go to buy my sisters’ lipstick, Chanel, fake and cheap.

Tati.

That’s where I went the very next day, Tati in Barbès. Our version of Printemps, our Galeries Lafayette, isn’t that right, Zahira?

Isn’t that right?

Zahira! Zahira! Zahira! Did you fall asleep? Are you really sleeping?

Why should I continue with my story, then?

Sleep. You’re missing the most important part: that moment when, after I had found the lipstick, I understood that I had to return to the past, pick up where the story had left off, in Algeria, when I was thirteen.

Leave behind my cock, my gender, men, be a woman. Be one of my sisters. With them. Far from them. Cut off all that is masculine in me to become them. Reconcile myself with the glorious little child I had once been. Listen to him. Realize his dream. His true nature. Love him again, at last.

Tomorrow, at the end of the day, I will go to the Hôpital Saint-Louis. They will take me into the operating room at 7:30 p.m. At nine o’clock Dr. Johansson will begin the operation.

They will cut it off of me.

You will be with your nightly clients, Zahira.

You will think of me. Right? You will think of me. You have to. Because I will no longer have access to anything, neither to myself nor to my body. Nor my hopes.

Think of me. Pray for me, in your own way.

You’re all I have left, Zahira.