Giuseppe Catozzella - Don't Tell Me You're Afraid

As a result, he’d come up with the idea of the weights.

There were thirty-three-centiliter cans of Coca-Cola, half-liter bottles, one-and-a-half-liter bottles, and two-liter ones. All filled with sand from the beach.

For my legs he’d instead used four pieces of wood to build a kind of small scaffold on which he hung different weights, depending on the exercise I had to perform. He made me sit on a chair and put that contraption on my thigh, asking me to lift it. Or, with me standing, he placed it on my ankle, which I had to raise to my thigh. The weights were very heavy. My scrawny little legs had to make a tremendous effort. We went on like that until I begged for mercy and he, moved to compassion, let me stop.

That we did all this when we were thirteen years old seems incredible. Yet that’s what we did.

In spite of this, even though we were so close, on one of the worst days of my life I betrayed Alì.

I did it out of fear, but I still betrayed him.

That day Alì hadn’t kept time for me, because he’d had to go help his father at work. His brother Nassir, who usually went with Aabe Yassin, wasn’t around that day.

I stealthily slipped out and ran a little lap around the block. I was on my way back home, in a narrow street with three abandoned houses, when — right about halfway — I spotted a guy with his back against the wall, staring at the ground.

He wore dark glasses and one of those black shirts the extremists wear, but he was unarmed: no machine gun, no rifle.

I tried to act like it was nothing.

When I passed him, he called to me in a soft, almost alluring voice. Maybe I was tired of running, but that’s how that voice sounded to me.

“Samia.”

I turned around and looked at him. I didn’t know him.

How did he know my name? I turned around again and kept going.

“Samia, stop! Don’t worry, I’m a friend.”

Never trust anyone: Aabe had taught us that the very day we were born. I tried to continue, but the guy spoke again.

“Stop. I just need to ask you something.”

He was tall and thin, with broad shoulders. Dark skin. A mass of tangled black hair and the fundamentalists’ long beard covering his face.

He moved away from the wall and took a step toward me.

“Where’s your friend?” Now the tone was sharp, peremptory.

“What friend?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

“The one who’s always with you, day and night.”

I was scared. He’d picked that time and place because he knew that at that hour it was unlikely that anyone would come by; those who worked were at work, and the alley was deserted.

“I don’t have a friend. I’m always with my sister,” I replied after a slight hesitation.

“Don’t pull my leg. I know very well that Alì is your friend. I know everything. I just want to know where he is,” he said in a harsh voice as he moved toward me.

“I don’t know….”

“You’re an athlete, Samia, right? You like running, don’t you?” His tone had turned threatening. He was just a few steps away now. Up close he was even taller than he’d seemed before, his shoulders even broader and more powerful. The sun reflected off the dark glasses in two luminous points.

“Yes, I’m an athlete,” I replied in a trembling voice.

The guy stuck his right hand behind his back, under his belt, and suddenly pulled out a long knife.

I took a step back, ending up with my heels against the wall behind me. I glanced around but saw nobody; the doorways of the houses were deserted.

He reached out his arm, pointing the blade at my left leg, then came even closer. He was way too big for me to be able to do anything.

I was petrified. Even if I’d wanted to move, my limbs did not respond to my commands.

“And an athlete needs both legs to run, right?”

I was shaking, terrified; I didn’t know what to say. “Yes, both of them…” I stammered.

“So if you don’t want to lose one, tell me where Alì is. Don’t worry, I won’t hurt him. I just want to talk to him. I want to know where he is and have a little chat with him.”

“But I don’t know where Alì is.”

“And I think you do know.” He took another step forward until he was right in front of me. “Well…?” The blade of the knife was now in contact with my skin; I felt it red hot on my knee, sharp.

“I don’t know where Alì is….”

He pressed slightly and the blade scratched my skin; immediately a line of blood welled up above the kneecap. His other hand squeezed below my neck, pinning me against the wall, his face just inches from mine. I smelled the scent of his cologne and I saw my distorted face reflected in his lenses.

“You don’t know….” He kept increasing the pressure. “Then again, do you know what a blade does when it sinks deep into the flesh? First it cuts the tendon, then the muscle, and finally the bone.”

At that moment he jerked the blade away and with the same hand, not letting go of the knife, pulled off his glasses and placed them on his head.

I recognized him then. His bloodshot, dilated eyes, so close to mine. Green as emeralds. It had been three years since I’d seen him, and he had become a man. By now he must be twenty.

Ahmed. Him again; fate was playing nasty tricks on me. Just as on that night so many years ago when he had caught me and Alì by surprise, he’d reappeared out of nowhere, threatening to cut my leg.

The shadow that for all those years had lain between me and Alì, dimming my best friend’s smile, was now in front of me, transformed into flesh and blood.

Then he lowered the blade and pressed it against my leg again. I felt a sharp pain, and I was scared.

I tried as hard as I could to stop myself, but I burst into tears. Abruptly, like a fountain.

I didn’t want to lose my leg; with all my heart I didn’t want to. I would never in my life run again. It would be the end of my dreams, the end of my liberation, the end of everything.

“All you have to do is tell me where Alì is….”

“Ahmed…” I faltered.

“Come on, Samia, tell me….” He went on holding the blade pressed against my leg, keeping my neck clenched with his other hand, making it hard to breathe. I started coughing, but my throat was squeezed shut. Mucus started running from my nose. I was choking, and my leg felt like it was on fire.

“Go on, you can tell me… unless you want to say good-bye to your knee.” He thrust very hard and the blade sank a couple of millimeters into the flesh. I felt faint from the pain; it was as if someone had shoved a burning ember into the pit of my stomach. I just wanted it all to end. “Come on, Samia….”

He was an inch away from my face; I stared at him, eyes wide open, not breathing.

“You’ve turned into a really pretty girl, Samia, you know that?” he whispered in a hateful voice as he drove a knee between my legs.

I immediately pictured what was going through his head.

I gave in.

“At the market…” It slipped out almost against my will.

Ahmed bared his teeth in a nasty leer. “At the market where ? Which market? Bakara?”

“At the market with Yassin… his father… at Xamar Weyne…”

“Good girl, Samia. Good girl. I remembered that you were a smart girl. Smart and beautiful.”

Then, suddenly, he let go of me, and I collapsed on the ground like a sack of beans.

Just like that, Ahmed took off in a jiffy without saying another word.

I got up, still dazed, and ran straight home.

Without saying anything to anyone, I rinsed the scratch and sat on the ground against the wall of Alì’s room, waiting, praying that he would appear in the courtyard as soon as possible with his father, Yassin. That everything was normal, that what had happened to me was just a figment of my imagination.