The Patience Stone Part 4

As for the woman, she goes into the toilet, washes herself, and returns shyly to the room. Finishes her cleaning, and leaves.

Her footsteps ring out on the tiled floor of the kitchen, accompanied after a while by the hum of gas, spreading its sonic layer around the house.

Once she has made her lunch, she comes to eat it in the room, straight out of the pan.

She is soft and serene.

After the first mouthful, she suddenly says, "I feel sorry for that boy! But that isn't why I let him in ... Anyway, I hurt his feelings today, and almost drove the poor thing away! I got the giggles, and he thought I was laughing at him ... which of course I was, in a way ... But it was my fiendish aunt's fault! She said something awful last night. I'd been telling her about this stammering boy, and how he comes so quickly. And ..." She laughs, a very private, silent laugh. "And she said I should tell him ..." The laugh, noisy this time, interrupts her again. "... Tell him to f.u.c.k with his tongue and talk with his d.i.c.k!" She guffaws, wiping away tears. "It was terrible of me to think of that right then ... but what could I do? As soon as he started stammering, my aunt's words flashed into my mind. And I laughed! He panicked ... I tried to control myself ... but I couldn't. It just got worse ... but luckily," she pauses, "or unluckily, my thoughts suddenly took a different turn ..." She pauses again. "I thought of you ... and suddenly stopped laughing. Otherwise it could have been a disaster ... one mustn't hurt young men ... mustn't take the p.i.s.s out of their thing ... They a.s.sociate their virility with a long, hard d.i.c.k, with how long they can hold back, but ..." She bypa.s.ses that thought. Her cheeks are all red. She takes a deep breath. "Anyway, it's over ... but that was a narrow escape ... again."

She finishes her lunch.

After taking her pan back to the kitchen, she returns and stretches out on the mattress. Hides her eyes in the crook of her arm and lets a long, thoughtful moment of silence go by before confessing some more: "So yes, that boy made me think of you again. And once again I can confirm that he's just as clumsy as you. Except that he's a beginner, and a quick learner! Whereas you never changed. At least with him I can tell him what to do and how to do it. If I'd asked all that of you ... my G.o.d! I'd have gotten a broken nose! And yet it's not difficult ... you just have to listen to your body. But you never listened to it. You guys listen to your souls, and nothing else." She sits up and shouts fiercely at the green curtain: "And look where your soul has got you! You're a living corpse!" She moves closer to the hiding place: "It's your blasted soul that's pinning you to the ground, my sang-e saboor!" She takes a deep breath: "And it's not your stupid soul that's protecting me now, that's for sure. It's not your soul that's feeding the kids." She pulls the curtain aside. "Do you know the state of your soul right now? Where it is? It's right there, hanging above you." She gestures at the drip bag. "Yes, it's there, in that sugar-salt solution, and nowhere else." She puffs out her chest: "My soul feeds my honor; my honor protects my soul. Bulls.h.i.+t! Look, your honor has been screwed by a sixteen-year-old kid! Your honor is s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g your soul!" She grabs his hand, lifts it up. "Now, it's your body's turn to judge you," she says. "It is judging your soul. That's why you're not in physical pain. Because it's your soul that's suffering. That suspended soul, which sees everything, and hears everything, and cannot react at all, because it no longer controls your body." She lets go of the hand and it falls back onto the mattress with a thud. A stifled laugh pushes her toward the wall. She doesn't move. "Your honor is nothing more than a piece of meat now! You used to use that word yourself. When you wanted me to cover up, you'd shout, Hide your meat! I was a piece of meat, into which you could stuff your dirty d.i.c.k. Just to rip it apart, to make it bleed!" She falls silent, out of breath.

Then suddenly she stands up. Leaves the room. She can be heard pacing up and down the pa.s.sage, saying, "What's the matter with me now? What am I saying? Why? Why? It's not normal, not normal at all ..." She comes back in. "This isn't me. No, it isn't me talking ... it's someone else, talking through me ... with my tongue. Someone has entered my body ... I am possessed. I really do have a demon inside me. It's she who's speaking. She who makes love with that boy ... she who takes his trembling hand and puts it on my b.r.e.a.s.t.s, on my belly, between my thighs ... all of that is her! Not me! I need to get rid of her! I should go and seek counsel from the hakim, or the mullah, and tell them everything. So they can drive away this demon lurking inside me! ... My father was right. That cat has come to haunt me. It was the cat that made me open the door to the quail's cage. I am possessed, and have been for years!" She flings herself into the man's hiding place, sobbing. "This is not me talking! ... I am under the demon's spell ... this isn't me ... where is the Koran?" Panicked. "The demon has even stolen the Koran! The demon did it! ... And the d.a.m.ned feather ... she took that too."

She rummages around under the mattresses. Finds the black prayer beads. "Allah, you're the only one who can banish this demon, Al-Mu'akhkhir, Al-Mu'akhkhir ..." She tells the prayer beads, "Al-Mu'akhkhir ...," picks up her veil, "Al-Mu'akhkhir ...," leaves the room, "Al-Mu'akhkhir ...," leaves the house, "Al-Mu'akhkhir ..."

She can no longer be heard.

She does not return.

As twilight falls, somebody walks into the courtyard and knocks on the door to the pa.s.sage. No one replies; no one opens. But, this time, the intruder seems to stay in the garden. The sound of cracking wood, and of stones being bashed together, floods through the walls of the house. He must be taking something. Or destroying. Or building. The woman will find out tomorrow, when she returns along with the first rays of sunlight s.h.i.+ning through the holes in the yellow and blue sky of the curtains.

Night falls.

The garden goes dark. The intruder goes off.

Day breaks. The woman returns.

Very pale, she opens the door to the room and pauses a moment to check for the slightest sign of a visit. Nothing. Distraught, she walks into the room and up to the green curtain. Pulls it slowly aside. The man is still there. Eyes open. The same rhythm to his breathing. The drip bag is half empty. The drops are falling, as before, to the rhythm of the breath, or of the black prayer beads pa.s.sing through the woman's fingers.

She lets herself fall onto the mattress. "Did somebody repair the door onto the street?" She is asking the walls. In vain. As always.

She picks herself up, walks out of the room, and, still bewildered, checks the other rooms, and the cellar. She comes back up the stairs. Into the room. Confounded. "But no one has been here!" She collapses onto the mattress, in the grip of a growing weariness.

No more words.

No more movement, except the telling of the prayer beads. Three cycles. Two hundred and ninety-seven beads. Two hundred and ninety-seven breaths. No mention of any of the names of G.o.d.

Before embarking on a fourth cycle, she suddenly starts talking. "This morning, my father came to see me again ... but this time to accuse me of having stolen the peac.o.c.k feather he used as a bookmark in his Koran. I was horrified. He was furious. I was scared." The fear is still visible in her gaze as it seeks shelter in the corners of the room. "But that was a long time ago ..." Her body sways. Her voice becomes definite: "It was a long time ago that I stole it." She stands up suddenly. "I'm raving!" she murmurs to herself, calmly at first, then fast, nervously. "I'm raving. I've got to calm down. Got to stop talking." She can't stay in one place. Keeps moving around, chewing on her thumb. Her eyes dart around frenetically. "Yes, that f.u.c.king business with the feather ... that's what it is. That's what is driving me crazy. That b.l.o.o.d.y peac.o.c.k feather! It was only a dream, to start with. Yes, a dream, but such a strange one. That dream haunted me every night when I was pregnant with my first child ... I had the same nightmare every night. I saw myself giving birth to a boy, a boy who had teeth and could already speak ... He looked just like my grandfather ... That dream terrorized me, it tortured me ... The child used to tell me that he knew one of my biggest secrets." She stops moving. "Yes, one of my biggest secrets! And if I didn't give him what he wanted, he would tell that secret to everyone. The first night, he asked for my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. I didn't want to give them to him because of his teeth ... so he started screaming." She covers her ears with trembling hands. "I can still hear his screams today. And he began to tell the start of my secret. I ended up capitulating. I gave him my b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He was sucking, and biting on them with his teeth ... I was crying out ... I was sobbing in my sleep ..."

She stands by the window, with her back to her man. "You must remember. Because you kicked me out of bed that night too. I spent it in the kitchen." She sits at the foot of the curtains patterned with migrating birds. "Another night, I dreamt of the boy again ... This time, he was asking me to bring him my father's peac.o.c.k feather ... but ..." Someone knocks at the door. The woman emerges from her dreams, from her secrets, to lift up the curtain. It's the young boy again. "No, not today!" the woman says firmly. "I am ..." The boy interrupts her with his jerky words: "I ... m-m-mended th-the d-d-door." The woman's body relaxes. "Oh, so it was you! Thank you." The boy is waiting for her to invite him in. She doesn't say anything. "C-c-can ... c-c-can I ..." "I told you, not today ..." the woman says wearily. The boy comes closer. "N-n-not ... n-n-not to ..." The woman shakes her head and adds, "I'm waiting for someone else ..." The boy takes another step closer. "I ... I d-d-don't w-w-want ..." The woman cuts him off, impatient: "You're a sweet boy, but I've got to work, you know ..." The boy tries hard to speak quickly, but his stammer just gets worse: "N-n-not ... n-n-not ... w-w-wo ... rk!" He gives up. Moves away to sit at the foot of a wall, sulking like a hurt young child. Helpless, the woman leaves the room so that she can speak to him from the doorway at the end of the pa.s.sage. "Listen! Come this afternoon, or tomorrow ... but not now ..." Calmer now, the boy tries again: "I ... want t-t-to ... s-s-speak ... t-t-to you ..." In the end, the woman gives in.

They go inside and ensconce themselves in one of the rooms.

Their whispers are the only voices echoing through and underlining the gloomy atmosphere engulfing the house, the garden, the street, and even the city ...

At a certain point, the whispering stops and a long silence ensues. Then suddenly, the violent slamming of a door. And the boy's sobs departing down the pa.s.sage, across the courtyard, and finally fading into the street. Then the woman's furious footsteps as she marches into the room yelling, "Son of a b.i.t.c.h! b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" She stomps around the room several times before sitting down. Very pale. "To think that son of a b.i.t.c.h dared spit in my face when I told him I was a wh.o.r.e!" she continues with rage. She stands up. Voice and body stiff with contempt. Walks toward the green curtain. "You know that guy who came here the other day with that poor boy, and called me every name under the sun? Well, guess what he does himself?" She kneels down in front of the curtain. "He keeps that poor little boy for his own pleasure! He kidnapped him when he was still a small child. An orphan, left to cope on his own on the streets. Kidnapped him and put a Kalashnikov in his hands, and bells on his feet in the evenings. He makes him dance. Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" She withdraws to the foot of the wall. Takes a few deep breaths of this air heavy with the smell of gunpowder and smoke. "The boy's body is black and blue! He has burn scars all over--on his thighs, his b.u.t.tocks ... It's an outrage! That guy burns him with the barrel of his gun!" Her tears tumble onto her cheeks, flow down the lines that surround her lips when she cries, and stream over her chin, down her neck and onto her chest, the source of her howls. "The wretches! The scoundrels!"

She leaves.

Without saying anything.

Without looking at anything.

Without touching anything.

She doesn't come back until the next day.

Nothing new.

The man--her man--is still breathing.

She refreshes the drip.

Administers the eyedrops: one, two; one, two.

And that's all.

She sits down cross-legged on the mattress. Takes a piece of fabric, two small blouses, and a sewing kit out of a plastic bag. Rummages in the kit for a pair of scissors. Cuts up bits of fabric to patch the blouses.

From time to time, she glances surrept.i.tiously at the green curtain, but more often her eyes turn anxiously toward the curtains with the pattern of migrating birds, which have been pulled open a crack to make the courtyard visible. The slightest noise draws her attention. She looks up to check whether or not someone is arriving.

And no, n.o.body comes.

As every day at noon, the mullah makes the call to prayer. Today, he preaches the revelation: "Recite in the name of your Lord who created, created man from clots of blood. Recite! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful One, who by the pen taught man what he did not know. My brothers, these are the first verses of the Koran, the first revelation given to the Prophet by the angel Gabriel ..." The woman pauses and listens carefully to the rest: "... at the time Allah's messenger withdrew to meditate and pray in the cave of Learning, deep in the mountain of Light, our Prophet was unable to read or to write. But with the aid of these verses, he learned! Our Lord has this to say about his messenger: He has revealed to you the Book with the Truth, confirming the scriptures which preceded it; for He has already revealed the Torah and the Gospel for the guidance of mankind ..." The woman goes back to her sewing. The mullah continues: "Muhammad is no more than an apostle; other apostles have pa.s.sed away before him ..." Once again, the woman stops her patching and concentrates on the words of the Koran: "Muhammad, our prophet, says this, I have not the power to acquire benefits or to avert evil from myself, except by the will of G.o.d. Had I possessed knowledge of what is hidden, I would have availed myself of much that is good and no harm would have touched me..." The woman doesn't hear the rest. Her gaze wanders among the folds of the blouses. After a long moment, she lifts her head and says dreamily, "I have heard those words before, from your father. He always used to recite that pa.s.sage to me, it amused him hugely. His eyes would s.h.i.+ne with mischief. His beard would tremble. And his voice would flood that sweaty little room. He would tell me this: One day, after meditating, Muhammad, peace be upon him, leaves the mountain and goes to his wife Khadija to tell her, 'Khadija, I am about to lose my mind.' 'But why?' his wife asks. And he replies, 'Because I observe in myself the symptoms of the insane. When I walk down the street I hear voices emanating from every stone, every wall. And during the night, a ma.s.sive being appears to me. He is tall. So tall. He stands on the ground but his head touches the sky. I do not know him. And each time, he comes toward me as if to grab me.' Khadija comforts him, and asks him to tell her the next time the being appears. One day, in the house with Khadija, Muhammad cries, 'Khadija, the being has appeared. I can see him!' Khadija comes to him, sits down, clasps him to her breast and asks, 'Do you see him now?' Muhammad says, 'Yes, I see him still.' So Khadija uncovers her head and her hair and asks again, 'Do you see him now?' Muhammad replies, 'No, Khadija, I don't see him anymore.' And his wife tells him, 'Be happy, Muhammad, this is not a giant djinn, a diw, it's an angel. If it was a diw, it would not have shown the slightest respect for my hair and so would not have disappeared.' And to this, your father added that the story revealed Khadija's mission: to show Muhammad the meaning of his prophecy, to disenchant him, tear him from the illusion of devilish ghosts and shams ... She herself should have been the messenger, the Prophet."

She stops and sinks into a long, thoughtful silence, slowly resuming her patching of the little blouses.

She does not emerge from this silence until she p.r.i.c.ks her finger with the needle, and shrieks. She sucks the blood and goes back to her sewing. "This morning ... my father came into my room again. He was holding a Koran under his arm, my copy, the very same one I had here ... yes, it was he who took it ... and so he had come to ask me for the peac.o.c.k feather. Because it was no longer inside the Koran. He said it was that boy--the one I let come here, into my home--who stole the feather. And that if he comes I must make sure to ask him for it." She stands up, goes to the window. "I hope he does come."

She steps out of the house. Her footsteps cross the courtyard, stop behind the door that opens onto the road. No doubt she takes a quick look into the street outside. Nothing. Silence. No one, not even the shadow of a pa.s.serby. She turns away. Waits outside, in front of the window. Silhouetted against the background of migrating birds frozen mid-flight on the yellow and blue sky.

The sun is setting.

The woman must go back to her children.

Before leaving the house, she stops by the room to carry out her usual tasks.

Then leaves.

Tonight, they are not shooting.

Beneath the cold, dull light of the moon, the stray dogs are barking in every street of the city. Right through till dawn.

They are hungry.

There are no corpses tonight.

As day breaks, someone knocks on the door to the street, then opens it, and walks into the courtyard. Goes straight to the door into the pa.s.sage. Places something on the ground and leaves.

As the last drip of solution makes it into the dropper and flows down the tube into the man's veins, the woman returns.

She walks into the room, looking more exhausted than ever. Her eyes are guarded, somber. Her skin pale, muddy. Her lips less fleshy, less bright. She throws her veil into a corner and walks over, carrying a red-and-white bundle with an apple-blossom pattern. She checks the state of her man. Talks to him, as she always does. "Someone came by again, and left this bundle at the door." She opens it. A few grains of toasted wheat, two ripe pomegranates, two pieces of cheese, and, wrapped in paper, a gold chain. "It's him, it's the boy!" An ephemeral happiness flits across her sad face. "I should have rushed. I hope he comes back."

As she changes the man's sheet: "He will come back ... because before he dropped by here, he came to see me at my aunt's house ... while I was in bed. He came very gently, without a sound. He was dressed all in white. He seemed very pure. Innocent. He was no longer stammering. He had come to explain to me why that f.u.c.king peac.o.c.k feather was so important to my father. He told me it was from the peac.o.c.k that had been banished from Eden alongside Eve. Then he left. He didn't even give me a chance to ask him anything." She changes the drip bag, adjusts the timing of the drops, and sits down next to her man. "I hope you don't hate me for talking to you about him and entertaining him here in the house. I don't know what's going on, but he's very--how can I say?--very present for me. It's almost the same feeling I used to have about you, at the beginning of our marriage. I don't know why! Even though I know that he too could become awful, like you. I'm sure of it. The moment you possess a woman, you become monsters." She stretches out her legs. "If you ever come back to life, ever get back on your feet, will you still be the same monster you were?" A pause, as she follows her train of thought. "I don't think so. I convince myself that you will be changed by everything I'm telling you. You are hearing me, listening to me, thinking. Pondering ..." She moves closer to him. "Yes, you'd change, you'd love me. You'd make love to me as I want to be made love to. Because now you have learned lots of new things. About me, and about yourself. You know my secrets. From now on, those secrets are inside you." She kisses his neck. "You'd respect my secrets. As I shall respect your body." She slips her hand between the man's legs, and strokes his p.e.n.i.s. "I never touched it like this ... your ... your quail!" She laughs. "Can you ...?" She slips her hand inside the man's trousers. Her other hand drops between her own thighs. Her lips skim over the beard; they brush against the half-open mouth. Their breath merges, converges. "I used to dream of this ... always. As I touched myself, I would imagine your c.o.c.k in my hands." Little by little the gap between her breaths becomes shorter, their rhythm speeds up, overtakes the man's breathing. The hand between her legs strokes gently, then quickly, intensely ... Her breathing becomes more and more rough. Panting. Short. Heavy.

A cry.

Moans.

Once again, silence.

Once again, stillness.

Just breathing.

Slow.

And steady.

A few breaths later.

A stifled sigh suddenly interrupts this silence. The woman says "Sorry!" to the man, and s.h.i.+fts a little. Without looking at him, she pulls away and moves out of the hiding place to sit against the corner of the wall. Her eyes are still closed. Her lips are still trembling. She is moaning. Gradually, words begin to emerge: "What's gotten into me now?" Her head bangs against the wall. "I really am possessed ... Yes, I see the dead ... people who aren't there ... I am ..." She pulls the black prayer beads from her pocket. "Allah ... What are you doing to me?" Her body rocks back and forth, slowly and rhythmically. "Allah, help me to regain my faith! Release me! Rescue me from the illusion of these devilish ghosts and shams! As you did with Muhammad!" She stands up suddenly. Paces around the room. Into the pa.s.sage. Her voice fills the house. "Yes ... he was just one messenger among others ... There were more than a hundred thousand like him before he came along ... Whoever reveals something can be like him ... I am revealing myself ... I am one of them ..." Her words are lost in the murmur of water. She is was.h.i.+ng herself.

She comes back. Beautiful, in her crimson dress embroidered with a few discreet ears and flowers of wheat at the cuffs and hem.

She returns to her spot next to the hiding place. Calm and serene, she starts speaking: "I didn't go and seek counsel from the hakim, or the mullah. My aunt forbade me. She says I'm not insane, or possessed. I'm not under the spell of a demon. What I'm saying, what I'm doing, is dictated by the voice from on high, is guided by that voice. And the voice coming out of my throat is a voice buried for thousands of years."

She closes her eyes and, three breaths later, opens them again. Without moving her head, she glances all around the room, as if seeing it for the first time. "I'm waiting for my father to come. I need to tell all of you, once and for all, the story of the peac.o.c.k feather." Her voice loses some of its softness. "But first I need to get it back ... yes, it's with that feather than I'm going to write the story of all these voices that are gus.h.i.+ng up in me and revealing me!" She becomes agitated. "It's that f.u.c.king peac.o.c.k feather! And where is the boy? What do I b.l.o.o.d.y want with his pomegranates? Or his chain? The feather! I need the feather!" She stands up. Her eyes are s.h.i.+ning. Like a madwoman. She flees the room. Searches the house. Comes back. Her hair a mess. Covered in dust. She throws herself onto the mattress opposite the photo of her man. Picks up the black prayer beads and starts telling them again.

Suddenly, she screams, "I am Al-Jabbar!"

Murmurs, "I am Al-Rahim ..."

And falls silent.

Her eyes become lucid again. Her breath returns to the rhythm of the man's breathing. She lies down. Facing the wall.

Her voice gentle, she continues: "That peac.o.c.k feather is haunting me." She picks a few flakes of peeling paint from the wall with her nails. "It has haunted me from the beginning, from the first time I had that nightmare. That nightmare I told you about the other day, the child hara.s.sing me in my dream, telling me that he knew my biggest secret. That dream made me afraid to go to sleep. But the dream gradually wormed its way into my waking hours as well ... I used to hear the child's voice in my belly. All the time. Wherever I was. At the baths, in the kitchen, in the street ... The child would be talking to me. Hara.s.sing me. Demanding the feather ..." She licks the tip of her nail, turned blue by the remnants of paint. "In those moments all I cared about was making it cease. But how? I prayed for a miscarriage. So I could lose that b.l.o.o.d.y child once and for all! All of you thought I was simply suffering the same neuroses as most pregnant women. But no. What I am about to tell you is the truth ... what the child said was the truth ... what he knew was the truth. That child knew my secret. He was my secret. My secret truth! So I decided to strangle him between my legs, as I gave birth. That's why I wouldn't push. If they hadn't knocked me out with opium, the child would have suffocated in my belly. But the child was born. I was so relieved when I regained consciousness and saw that it wasn't a boy--as in my dream--but a girl! A girl would never betray me, I thought to myself. I know you must be dying to find out my secret." She turns around. Lifts her head to look at the green curtain and slithers toward the man like a snake. As she reaches his feet she tries to meet his vacant eyes. "Because that child was not yours!" She falls silent, impatient to see her man finally crack. As always, no reaction, none whatsoever. So she becomes bold enough to say, "Yes, my sang-e saboor, those two girls are not yours!" She sits up. "And do you know why? Because you were the infertile one. Not me!" She leans against the wall, at the corner to the hiding place, looking in the same direction as the man, toward the door. "Everyone thought it was me who was infertile. Your mother wanted you to take another wife. And what would have happened to me? I would have become like my aunt. And it was exactly then that I miraculously b.u.mped into her. She was sent by G.o.d to show me the way." Her eyes are closed. A smile full of secrets pulls at the corners of her mouth. "So I told your mother that there was a great hakim who worked miracles with this kind of problem. You know the story ... but not the truth! Anyway, she came with me to meet him and receive amulets from him. I remember it as if it were yesterday. All the things I had to hear from your mother's mouth on the way. She called me every name under the sun. She was yelling, telling me over and over that this was my last chance. She spent a lot of cash that day, I can tell you. And then I visited the hakim several times, until I fell pregnant. As if by magic! But you know what, that hakim was just my aunt's pimp. He mated me with a guy they had blindfolded. They locked us up together in the pitch dark. The man wasn't allowed to talk to me or touch me ... and in any case, we were never naked. We just pulled down our pants, that's all. He must have been young. Very young and strong. But seemingly short of experience. It was up to me to touch him, up to me to decide exactly when he should penetrate me. I had to teach him everything, him too! ... Power over another's body can be a lovely thing, but that first day it was horrible. Both of us were very anxious, terrified. I didn't want him to think I was a wh.o.r.e, so I was as stiff as a board. And the poor man was so intimidated and frightened that he couldn't get it up! Nothing happened. We kept far away from each other, all we could hear was our jerky breathing. I cracked. I screamed. They got me out of the room ... and I spent the whole day vomiting! I wanted to give up. But it was too late. The following sessions got better and better. And yet I still used to cry, after each one. I felt guilty ... I hated the whole world, and I cursed you--you and your family! And to top it all, at night I had to sleep with you! The funniest thing was that after I fell pregnant, your mother was endlessly going off to see the hakim, to get amulets for all her little problems." A dull laugh rumbles in her chest. "Oh, my sang-e saboor, when it's hard to be a woman, it becomes hard to be a man, too!" A long sigh struggles out of her body. She sinks back into her thoughts. Her dark eyes roll. Her ever-paler lips start moving, murmuring something like a prayer. Suddenly, she starts talking in a strangely solemn voice: "If all religion is to do with revelation, the revelation of a truth, then, my sang-e saboor, our story is a religion too! Our very own religion!" She starts pacing. "Yes, the body is our revelation." She stops. "Our own bodies, their secrets, their wounds, their pain, their pleasures ..." She rushes at the man, radiant, as if she holds the truth in her hands and is giving it to him. "Yes, my sang-e saboor ... do you know the ninety-ninth, which is to say the last name of G.o.d? It's Al-Sabur, the Patient! Look at you; you are G.o.d. You exist, and do not move. You hear, and do not speak. You see, and cannot be seen! Like G.o.d, you are patient, immobile. And I am your messenger! Your prophet! I am your voice! Your gaze! Your hands! I reveal you! Al-Sabur!" She draws the green curtain completely aside. And in a single movement turns around, flings her arms wide as if addressing an audience, and cries, "Behold the Revelation, Al-Sabur!" Her hand designates the man, her man with the vacant gaze, looking out into the void.

She is quite carried away by this revelation. Beside herself, she takes a step forward to continue her speech, but a hand, behind her, reaches out and grabs her wrist. She turns round. It's the man, her man, who has taken hold of her. She doesn't move. Thunderstruck. Mouth gaping. Words hanging. He stands up suddenly, stiff and dry, like a rock lifted in a single movement.

"It's ... it's a miracle! It's the Resurrection!" she says in a voice strangled by terror. "I knew my secrets would bring you back to life, back to me ... I knew it ..." The man pulls her toward him, grabs her hair, and dashes her head against the wall. She falls. She does not cry out, or weep. "It's happening ... you're exploding!" Her crazed eyes s.h.i.+ne through her wild hair. "My sang-e saboor is exploding!" she shouts with a bitter laugh. "Al-Sabur!" she cries, closing her eyes. "Thank you, Al-Sabur! I am finally released from my suffering," and embraces the man's feet.

The man, his face haggard and wan, grabs hold of the woman again, lifts her up, and throws her against the wall where the khanjar and the photo are hanging. He moves closer, grabs her again, heaves her up against the wall. The woman looks at him ecstatically. Her head is touching the khanjar. Her hand s.n.a.t.c.hes it. She screams and drives it into the man's heart. There is not a drop of blood.

The man, still stiff and cold, grabs the woman by the hair, drags her along the floor to the middle of the room. Again he bangs her head against the floor, and then, brusquely, wrings her neck.

The woman breathes out.

The man breathes in.

The woman closes her eyes.

The man's eyes remain wild.

Someone knocks at the door.

The man--with the khanjar deep in his heart--lies down on his mattress at the foot of the wall, facing his photo.

The woman is scarlet. Scarlet with her own blood.

Someone comes into the house.

The woman slowly opens her eyes.

The breeze rises, sending the migrating birds into flight over her body.

My thanks to.

Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens.

Christiane Thiollier.

Emmanuelle Dunoyer

Marianne Denicourt.

Laurent Marechaux.

Soraya Nouri