Yasmina Khadra: The Long Night Of A Penitent

His wife is moved. She tries to calm him down.

“Don’t touch me!” He pushes her away in disgust. “You’ve got nothing to say to me. Someone who hasn’t fought a war can’t possibly understand what I’m talking about.”

He goes back to the bathroom. He spits, and the faucet lets out a long whistling sound. Suddenly, a reddish streak streams down from it; effervescent blood floods the sink and starts cascading onto the tiles with an unbearable hissing sound.

Abou Seif takes a few steps backwards. He’s incredulous. Blood flows in all directions, splatters all over the walls, squirts with increasing volume, and even reaches the ceiling… Terrified, Abou Seif holds his head in his hands and starts screaming, shrieking…

“I’m here, dear. Abou Seif, Abou Seif, wake up. It’s just a dream.”

Abou Seif wakes up. He’s in bed. In a state of shock. A wrinkled blanket is wrapped around his waist, dripping with sweat. His entire body is shivering and his teeth chatter uncontrollably with a strange intensity. He climbs out of bed, determined to put an end to all of this, rushes towards the bathroom but stops in his tracks, stunned by the immaculate whiteness of the walls.

He rubs his eyes, vigorously, furiously.

His wife is right behind him and takes him by the shoulders. He recoils in horror, as though he has just been electrocuted.

“Darling, it’s only me.”

“You scared me.”

Abou Seif is at the end of his rope when he finally weakens and bursts into tears. His wife takes his head and rests it tenderly against her shoulder.

“I can’t take it anymore…”

“It’ll be okay, dear.”

“What the hell do you know?” he screams, pushing her away from him.

The rest of his cries are choked by a gurgling sound. His wife’s physiognomy has changed. The woman who is holding him in her arms is somebody else: an old Bedouin woman. She is small and haggard. Her face is decorated with sinister tattoos.

“Who are you?”

The stranger tries using her hands to tell him that she is unable to speak.

“Where do you come from, you…?”

She raises her chin all of a sudden: Her throat has been slit from one end to the other.

Abou Seif cries out, and retreats behind his hands. As he reopens his eyes, his wife is lying on the floor. The stranger has vanished. The only sound comes from some clear and bizarrely troubling water streaming from the faucet.

“This is not happening. Nora, this is absurd… absurd…”

His uncertain fingers sift carefully through the sleeper’s red hair, touch her forehead, and stop dead in their tracks. Immobilized. Nora is ice cold. Abou Seif falls over. The walls disappear. He’s on a street.

“What’s this carnival all about? I’m really losing it.”

The streetlamps twinkle. A voluminous moon emerges from the opaqueness, as white as a punctured eyeball. Anarchistic noises invade the silence; the grumbling intensifies and spreads throughout the night; Duhv! duhv! duhv! … the ground is vibrating. At the end of the street, first in little groups, then in large regiments, hundreds of mutilated, bloodied kids come forward, in tatters, then women and old men, emaciated shepherds with their flocks, with faces so pallid that they seem almost phosphorescent…

Abou Seif gets up and starts running through the fields as though he were possessed by a demon: “No, no, noooo…”

“Abou Seif… Abou Seif…”

He’s on all fours. At the foot of his bed. His wife looks down on him, tries to grab on to him so she can lift him up.

“I tried to restrain you,” she explains, “but you’re too heavy. You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?”

“I’m not completely awake, am I? It’s those damned dreams again. They’re making a jackass out of me…”

“What bad dreams?”

“Don’t get near me, will you. I want to know whether I’m awake or if this nightmare is still going on.”

“You’re awake, my dear.”

“Prove it.”

“I’m telling you, you’re awake.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Come on, you must be kidding. You had a violent dream and fell out of bed.”

Since he refuses to take her word for it, she finds a small carafe and starts to sprinkle him with ice-cold water. “Do you believe me now?”

Abou Seif lets the water trickle down his face, down to his waist, down his pajama pants. He is attuned to its coldness, its flow… With his fingertips, he feels his wet skin, gives himself a pinch, is distinctly aware of his nails biting into his chest… there’s no doubt about it: He’s awake.

“What time is it?” he asks.

“Five o’clock.”

“When is that damned sun going to come up?

“Go back to sleep, love. We have a long trip this morning. You’ll need all your energy.”

Abou Seif remembers. This stimulates him.

“I’ll take you wherever you want to go, but I have no intention of going back to sleep. Sleep is untenable for me right now.”

He staggers into the living room, falls into an armchair, and turns the radio on. He is slightly comforted by Cheb Mami’s crystal voice. Unable to remain still, he goes towards the kitchen, finds some cheese in the fridge, and bites into it voraciously. He goes back to the bathroom. For a split second, he’s afraid of getting near the sink. He gets ahold of himself, and, with a firm grip, turns the faucet on, gets undressed, jumps in the shower, hums a little tune. Soon, a bubbly soap rises from his hairy chest. He’s thinking of the road trip that awaits him, of all the shortcuts he needs to negotiate; he smiles as he thinks of that good old mother whom he misses and whom he can’t wait to see again.

He quickly puts his bathrobe on and returns to the living room. The radio is sizzling. The bathroom door slams shut behind him. Someone has turned the shower on. Torrents of water inundate the hallway.

“Nora…”

He opens the door, and stops dead in his tracks: Nora is lying on the floor with her arms crossed and her guts flying. Duhv! duhv! duhv! The floor shakes. A quiet crowd has gathered in the staircase. In one fell swoop, a ragtag mob begins to swarm excitedly all over the foyer. The walls disappear again.

“Have you bloody well finished!” Abou Seif roars. “You no longer exist. You’re dead and buried.”

A blistering hand scorches his shoulder.

“Let go of me,” Abou Seif demands as he tries to wrench himself free. “Let go of me.”

“It’s just me,” Nora tells him as she shakes him by the shoulder.

Abou Seif finds himself back in bed, with his wife watching over him benevolently. “No,” he nods as he pushes Nora’s hand away and leaps out of his covers. He is pale; his hair is disheveled; his knees are rubbery. “You’re not going to get me this time, you old witch.”

“But what on earth are you talking about?”

“Don’t even get near me!”

In a complete frenzy, he looks all around and finds the candelabrum.

“It’s me, Nora.”

“You’re not Nora. And I’m not fully awake. I’ve had it up to here and I’m going to squash you all, you bunch of scum, you.”

Caught in a tenebrous spiral, he throws himself onto his wife and starts to bang, bang, bang…

Outside their window, the sun rises and turns a deaf ear to Nora’s cries. Slowly, the city awakes. A truck growls somewhere. The early birds are making a groggy but steady ruckus. Abou Seif stares at the bloodstained candleholder now punctured with bone fragments. The phone rings, seven times in fact. Abou Seif continues to stare at the candleholder.

“I know it’s that wretched dream,” he says, crouching over his wife’s inert body. “I’m not going to let them do it to me again. I’m going to just wait here until I wake up once and for all.”