1. In the Clouds

I am a woman. I became a woman. It’s been two months now.

I’m talking to myself.

Without looking at myself in the mirror, I know, I am the changes that are taking place in me. And I am talking.

I see no one. I don’t want to see the monster I have become reflected in the eyes of others. Their fake comprehension. Their pity. Their unease. Their forced kindness. So I distance myself from everyone. I stay alone in this overly large apartment, decorated in an overly French style by my friends Jean-Jacques and Pierre. Even Zahira, I don’t want her to visit very often. Twice a week. No more. She buys groceries for me. Prepares my food for the next several days. Cleans what needs to be cleaned. Tidies what needs to be tidied. Gives me three kisses on each cheek before leaving. Calls me by my new name.

Zannouba.

“Zannouba” comes out of Zahira’s mouth as though it were obvious. A smile that comes from far away. Me in a past life. Once more in the reality of the world.

Apart from Zahira, the others can go to hell. I don’t need their solidarity, or their support. Let them keep their good wishes and their bullshit to themselves.

What I need is a gaze that is true, free, that doesn’t judge me, that sees me and nothing more.

Zahira. Always and forever her. Zahira is the only one capable of that. A hand on my forehead. A kiss on my hand. A word that makes me come to life again. Khti. My sister.

I believe her.

I’ve always believed her. Even when she makes fun of me, I stick with her through her outbursts and her sadness.

Zahira understands that I don’t want people to call me right now. There’s nothing to say. The operation happened. They changed my sex.

I should feel like a woman. Be happy. Joyous. Throw a party. Be light, as before. As in my dreams from before.

The opposite is happening to me.

I cry day and night. Night and day.

Below, between my legs, what was heavy, cumbersome, is gone.

They cut it off. In me, in its place, there is an opening. But I feel nothing.

Nothing.

Air enters. Passes. I should shiver. Tremble. But no. Nothing.

I don’t hear anything below.

Even when I piss, there aren’t those little delicate noises I was expecting. In its place, a strong stream of water. It comes out, strong. As before, strong. It’s not a woman pissing. No.

Great despair.

I go to the bathroom countless times per day. I try to solidify my idea of womanhood through that ordinary, repeated act. I try to summon up sonorous memories of my mother pissing freely, with no shame. Rediscover that particular sound.

TSSSSSTSSSSSTSSSSS.

Impossible! I never succeed.

The yellow water that flows from me is like a torrent. It’s pushed out and surges with a powerful energy that I know too well and in which I never recognized myself. Like a waterfall in the middle of a river.

I’m ashamed.

I stop pissing. I hold my head in my hands.

I’ve become a woman. On the outside. The cock and balls are gone, I buried them myself. Deep down, all the way down, there is still, and there will no doubt remain, a current of masculinity that was always more than foreign to me.

For years, as soon as I made a bit of money in Paris, I did everything I could to mask that intruding manliness. Creams. Makeup. Clothes. Waxing. Wigs. Shoes with incredibly high stiletto heels. Hormones. Injections.

That hid things, somewhat. Never completely. I don’t understand. I don’t understand.

What happens inside me escapes me.

I obeyed my deep nature, what I always felt inside my secret heart: I am not a boy, I am a girl.

I had to have the operation. This change that wasn’t one. Not to go from boy to girl. To become the girl I had always been, long before I came into the world.

Now that it’s happened, the obvious transformation, the more-than-necessary repair, I find myself unsatisfied again. Completely overwhelmed by the manly side that still runs through me, in my veins, that dominates my genes.

What am I going to do now?

I can’t go to the bathroom anymore. I don’t want to anymore. And to avoid needing to piss, I’ve decided to stop drinking water.

Little by little, I wither. Body. Heart. Spirit. I no longer know what to do nor how to do it.

Am I a woman, completely a woman?

No.

Am I still a man?

No.

Who am I, then?

I don’t regret anything that I’ve done. I wanted this operation. This disappearance, I’m the one who planned it, orchestrated it. Brought it to fruition. I thought of everything. But not of the essential: how to be a woman? I mean, beyond clothing and makeup, what is a woman?

Why, before the operation, did I know all the answers to these questions? And now: nothing?

Each day I lose the joy from before, this desire from before that gave me a reason for existing. Revealing my true identity. Making all the sacrifices for it to happen. Not a miracle but reality, just reality. The project of a life becoming concrete, true.

Was it a mistake?

In my huge bed, I no longer know how to calm myself down, reassure myself with dependable, definitive answers that will never come.

I’m in the void. I can’t manage to fill it.

Who to imitate? Who to model myself after? Where to find good advice, the word that makes things right, the gesture that reconciles, the look that loves without expecting anything in return? Where?

Who will guide me?

No one talks about what’s happening to me in this moment. No one has dared to describe this territory where one is no longer at all defined. Where one is outside of every category, yesterday’s and today’s.

What to do with myself now? I can’t stop turning the question over in my head, and now it has nothing to grab onto.

Why not go to a bookstore and look for a book that really addresses this subject, me in this moment, without a condescending voice, without too many empty theories?

That book doesn’t exist.

And films? There has to be one that addresses situations like mine. I’m sure of it. But which one? I should call Dr. Johansson. He’ll tell me. Except he must still be on vacation. What to do, then? Who to call for help? Zahira only knows and only likes Indian movies. She’s basically a specialist in the genre, she can always find something that sweeps her off her feet, makes her believe that other lives are possible elsewhere.

I think of the little Algerian boy who didn’t feel like a boy. Among girls, his sisters, he would open up, he would laugh, he would dance, he was in heaven.

I see now what he’s become. He’s in purgatory.

He. Her. Is it true?

“What if I called my sisters?”

“Yes, that’s it . . . That’s a good idea, Zannouba. Call them all, right away, tell them that you’ve become like them, exactly like them . . . Go on . . . Go on . . . Go ahead . . . Be brave! Embrace your new condition! Call them, they’ll be able to comfort you . . . Go ahead . . . Go ahead, for goodness’ sake!”

“You’re wrong, Aziz. Your sisters can’t do anything for you. You know what Algerian society has turned them into: veiled women, slaves to their cowardly husbands. The living dead.”

“Are you listening to what you’re saying, Zannouba? What do you know of their lives, of their day-to-day, of their problems? You really think that just because they’re veiled, they’ve automatically lost their liberty!”

“Yes, I do.”

“Don’t make me laugh! You’re talking like all those sanctimonious Westerners, now. To comfort themselves, prove to themselves that they’re the ones in the right, they seek examples in other places of people who, according to them, lack freedom . . . Arab women, for example.”

“But they’re right. Arab women lack freedom. That’s the reality.”

“Are you listening to what you’re saying? What’s going on with you?”

“That’s exactly the problem . . . I don’t know what’s going on with me.”

“You wanted to become a woman?”

“Yes.”

“You are one.”

“You think?”

“You are one, I’m telling you. You are an Arab woman . . .”

“You’re making fun of me!”

“Not at all. You’re right to think of your sisters in Algeria. In your memories of them, you will find salvation. The example to follow.”

“Veil myself like them?”

“Why not?”

“Are you serious?”

“Sérieuse, you mean. I’m you—have you forgotten? My wee-wee’s gone, just like yours.”

“You regret it, it seems.”

“Yes, a bit. I’ll admit it.”

“I don’t regret it at all. Not at all.”

“You’re lying. As usual, you’re lying. The truth is right in front of you and you refuse to see it. That’s so typical of you! Fleeing. Always fleeing. Now, you have to own it, poor thing. You wanted to become the woman you always believed you were deep down? Well, look at yourself in the mirror: you are, you’ve succeeded. You’re beautiful. You’re magnificent. Ravishing. The Parisians are going to adore you. Make you into an example of a liberated Arab, who’s not ashamed. Not like the others, those from the village, who’re still rotting in ignorance and submission. You’ve succeeded, my dear! Bravo! Bravo!”

“Enough! Enough!”

“I’m not afraid of you anymore.”

“Enough, I said!”

“Are you threatening me? You can’t do anything to me now . . . You’re a wreck . . . A lowlife, the lowest . . .”

“Enough!”

“You’re nothing . . . You’re the lowest of the low now . . . I’m not okay with what you’ve done to me . . .”

“I’ll kill you!”

“Go ahead. I’m waiting. I have nothing left to lose. You’re already hit rock bottom. I’m there with you, unfortunately for me. Might as well end it here, right now. You want to drag me with you through this life that you think is free, but I don’t want that. Come on, then. Kill me. Kill us. Come on. Come on. Are you scared?”

“I love you!”

“What? What did you say? You’ve gone insane, apparently.”

“I love you!”

“Bullshit! You’re killing me, you’re cutting me off, you’re erasing my existence, and you tell me that you love me . . . Yeah right, Zannouba! Yeah right!”

“It’s true, I love you. You’re just a little boy. It has nothing to do with you, this tragedy. It’s not your fault at all.”

“I don’t understand these mysterious words.”

“You know what I’m talking about. Don’t play games with me, Aziz . . . Please . . .”

“I’m not playing. I’m not Aziz anymore. You killed me. You removed me from you. From your body. I’m nothing. Where should I go now? I’m in a situation worse than yours. I no longer exist. You, at least, can play the depressed, crying diva. You exterminated me. You have no pity for me. You don’t think of anyone but yourself. Become a woman. Become a woman. Now that you are one, you should be elated. You should believe in Allah again. Do it. Do it. He is the one who allowed this to happen. But, of course, narcissistic as you’ve always been, you think only of your own trivial unhappiness, your small negligible scars, your lost rhythm. And me? ME, AZIZ? Do you still think of me? Of course not. You’re too busy becoming a madame. A madame like all those floozies hanging around this shitty city! Is that life, the future, emancipation? Becoming like the others around here? Is that it? Answer me! Say something. Look at me. Look at me and tell me you regret it . . . Say it . . . Say it . . .”

“No. I can’t say it.”

“You’re heartless. You’re letting me die. And you’re crying over yourself.”

“You don’t understand, Aziz.”

“Of course I don’t understand, since I’m dead. By your hand, dead. By your hand, executed. Do you still remember, the crime you committed just two months ago?”

“It wasn’t a crime. I had to find peace.”

“I’m happy for you, Zannouba. I see how much good this peace has done you.”

“Don’t joke . . . Don’t joke, please . . .”

“I’m not anything anymore. Not a little boy dancing happily with his sisters, nor a free soul still blissfully ignorant. You destroyed everything with your crazy desire to become a woman. You finished me. You ended all my opportunities, on earth and up above . . .”

“You will always be a part of me, Aziz.”

“You’re deluding yourself, Zannouba. Soon you will even have forgotten my name. Our name. Aziz. You’ll trample me, my heart, my cock. Now all you see is you: woman. The traces of us, little boy, man, are still here, in you. But rest assured, they will soon disappear. From where I am, from where I’m speaking to you, I see your future. I cursed you as a man. I cursed you as a woman. And, despite myself, I will continue to watch over you . . . Goodbye . . . Goodbye, Zannouba . . .”

“No, Aziz . . . No . . . Don’t go . . . Stay a little longer.”

“To do what? Let me go somewhere else, find another life to cohabit. Let me leave you. Don’t argue . . . Set me free . . .”

“Do you remember Isabelle Adjani?”

“Yes. As a little boy, I used to adore that actress.”

“Then you forgot about her.”

“What are you getting at, Zannouba?”

“Before leaving for good, before abandoning me, let me tell you the story of Isabelle Adjani.”

“Tell me what about her? I don’t understand.”

“Do you want to hear? . . . Do you, Aziz? . . .”

“Go on! Do your Scheherazade thing, Zannouba . . . I don’t have a lot of time but I’m listening.”

isabelle adjani

She is Algerian like you and me.

She appears. She disappears. She reappears. She is here. She is no longer here. We search for her. We thought we had forgotten her. But she is always somewhere. She hides. She sleeps. She forgets herself. She loves. She goes far. Very far. I think she frequently leaves this world, what we call the world: the round earth, the blue and black sky.

I’m convinced: Isabelle Adjani is not like the rest of us. She is not made of flesh and blood. There is only water in her body. This woman carries in her something we don’t know yet. The future? The future as it’s depicted in science fiction movies? Better. Much better than that. Man and woman reunited in another time. Not the present. Not the past. But what will come, that sublime explosion that never stops expanding and whose first echo we sometimes hear at night.

Isabelle Adjani was born then, in that moment. Precisely. I think we call it the Big Bang. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Booommm! Everything begins. Life. Not life as we know it today. No. Life in a mad rhythm, a hellish but completely bearable heat. A cosmic conscience. There are not yet human beings, other beings, other creatures, other intelligences. But Isabelle Adjani. So white. So black. So blue. Nude, of course. Carrying in her all the lives. Speaking all the languages. Mastering all the signs.

She is not a goddess. She is the spark. Her fire captured us. Humankind is forever attached to her. In fear. In ecstasy. We listen through her. We hear what happens in her. The voices of All the World. We exist to follow her, love her, adore her, venerate her. Wait for her.

Is she coming? Is she here? Not yet? Not yet.

In fact, she is already here. In us. In you. In me.

This world, today, doesn’t understand Isabelle Adjani. Doesn’t love her the way she deserves. Men see her only as a very talented and very temperamental actress. They’re wrong. Ten thousand times wrong. Isabelle Adjani, the actress, cannot be defined by the idea of a career. She is beyond that, that modern triviality. To say that she is making a career is an insult to someone like her. That woman invents and acts out things that are much more modern than we could imagine. Incarnations and interpretations that tell us everything. Absolutely everything.

Do you understand, Aziz? Are you following me? I know that you love Isabelle Adjani just as I do. Remember how the two of us were swept away by The Story of Adèle H? Do you remember that movie? We watched it one sad afternoon on Algerian television.

Do you remember what she says near the end?

“That unbelievable thing, for a young girl to walk on water, cross from the ancient to the new world to join her lover, that thing will I do.”

That’s what she said, isn’t it? She’s the one who said it, not the character.

It’s possible I’ve mixed up her words. It doesn’t matter. Those words convinced us that this woman was indeed from our home country, Algeria in shambles, and also from the other world. Her conviction and her fervor sent unforgettable shivers down our spines, gave us memories that would last forever.

You and I tried to learn by heart the sacred words she spoke in the film. We might have invented them, reinvented them.

The film entered, once and for all, into our eternal memory.

The face of Isabelle Adjani who loves. Who suffers. Who cries. Who yells. Who runs. Who jumps. Who falls. A haunted face, inhabited by all of us. One face and only one face. And nothing else.

We never grew tired of it, did we, that dear and tortured face, madly in love, courageous and alone, in writing, in clairvoyance, in the beyond.

Isabelle Adjani is also a clairvoyant. In the proper sense of the term. She sees. Here. Beyond. The man who made this film truly understood her. He placed Adjani in situations where the world ceases to be the world. The world ends. Adjani continues.

For weeks and weeks, every day we cried thinking about that film, that body in love, that wandering, that distress, that sadness, that absolute solitude, embraced.

And when we learned that this woman was Algerian, do you remember what we did, Aziz?

We went to the hammam.

You went to the hammam, Aziz, and you tenderly made love with three men at the same time. That was your way of being in love and in recognition. You understood then the reason for that mysterious and miraculous attachment to Isabelle Adjani.

She was better than Algerian. Within her flowed something that you too had, and that you recognized so clearly in her.

You weren’t wrong. No. No. Adjani was from another world. Yours. You saw in her your idea of possession: how one takes within oneself the entire universe, before and after, how one adorns oneself in it, how one dances and cries in it.

Isabelle Adjani was exactly that: the truth according to you. Beauty as seen through your eyes gazing at the world, and what they had captured, stolen.

You know why I wanted to come to Paris so badly? You know why Zahira is my only sister in France?

Like us, she worships Isabelle Adjani. Like us, she believes only in her.

Zahira said: “Isabelle Adjani is a saint.” I can’t help but agree with her. And you do, too, I know. Saints are neither pure nor chaste nor kind. They have needs. Zahira and I, we have honored Isabelle Adjani countless times. Several Lila. Several magical Nights.

An entire night to satisfy those who inhabit the body of that woman, those who inhabit us. Whether they be jinns, spirits, the living dead, the wounded lovers, fathers and mothers on another voyage.

We closed the windows to Zahira’s studio. We burned rare incense. We wore green caftans. And we started to watch a film. The Film. Possession. Isabelle Adjani speaks English in it. In cold, foreign places, far from us, but because she was in the very heart of these places, we accepted those images and we awaited the moment. The Moment. Something unique. Never before seen, in the cinema or elsewhere.

Adjani is in blue. Her skin is whiter than ever. Her lips are bloodied, incredibly red. She leaves the subway. The yellow train. She climbs the unending staircase. There is no one. The hallways of the subway station are no longer hallways. Zahira and I, we know what’s going to happen. But we forget every time that we are the ones who have organized this ceremony.

Adjani doesn’t act. That’s her great strength. She is incapable of acting. She is. She is. We know that. We understand it. We take her hand. We are with her. In her. The world will soon fall into a trance. The superseding of every limit.

Adjani has freed herself from every burden. She outdoes herself. She overflows. She yells. She shouts. She laughs. She falls. She drags herself along the ground. She flows. She flutters. Levitates. Kneels. Turns her head as quickly as possible and in every direction.

She frees herself. She comes back to the center.

She waves her hands. The visible. The invisible. She is no longer named Isabelle nor Adjani.

Some people, faced with these images, might be afraid. Others would make fun. And still others would analyze them too intellectually. Zahira and I, we don’t need to study what Adjani did. We are exactly like Isabelle Adjani, in the same state as her. We breathe in her gestures. We reenact her choreography.

We stop the film. We rewind. To the moment when she leaves the subway.

Play it again.

Zahira is standing in her studio. I’m next to her. Isabelle Adjani turns around. Towards us. She sees us. She welcomes us. We rush forward. We enter the screen. Our bodies are frantic. Already in recognition. We follow the path.

The fire is blue. Adjani, like the world, is its exact reflection. Through love, through submission, Zahira and I, we become blue. Us too. We fall under the eternal trance.

Do you remember all this, Aziz? No? Were you still with me then? Or had you already planned your voluntary departure, even before I made the appointment with Dr. Johansson?

No answer?

Where are you?

Don’t leave me alone, Aziz. I just arrived in this new world of women. Don’t leave, please. It’s too soon. You are my heart, my shadow, my secret soul. My past still flowing through my veins. Don’t leave.

Are you coming back, Aziz? Are you listening, Aziz? What am I going to do without you? Where do I go? What direction do I take? Zahira, again? Zahira, always? Come back . . . Come back . . . Aziz . . . Aziz . . . Aziz . . . Don’t leave . . . Don’t leave me. Paris has turned cold, unresponsive, sad, indifferent. Racist. Paris will kill me. I need you. The little hand of a carefree boy who dances and sings. I need your forever-free soul. I need it.

Come back. Come back. Come back.

Don’t die, my little brother. Come back. Paris is a black hole. Come back and save me. Come back and love me, wash me, carry me to my deepest desire, my last breath. Come back. I’m nothing without you.

Nothing.