I make my bow; I am already on the other side of things and living beings, there where no sacrilege is to be found, where no mistake or misunderstanding can make me believe that the love of a people is an unfailing oath that cannot be broken …
My soul is leaving my body.
I float above the dust, see the ambulance forcing its way through the mob to take me to who knows what horror show, see the rebels revelling in their ignoble ritual, others brandishing pieces of my bloody clothing; I see tyre marks on the tarmac, the breeches of weapons glinting in the sun, the rebel banners flapping in the wind, but I do not hear the din of their jubilation or the noise of the volleys as they fire into the air in exultation.
I see everything: the sweat on faces as tense as if they have cramp, the eyes rolling upwards, the thick foam at the corners of their mouths, the crowd congratulating itself non-stop, the voyeurs immortalising with their mobiles the moment of their spiralling descent, but I cannot hear anything, not even the cosmic breath that is breathing me in.
It is now that my mother summons me, from across all these mirages. Her voice reaches me from the depths of a Fezzan eaten away by the desert. I see her again, her head in her hands, angry at my wild, boyish mischievousness: You only listen with one ear, the one you willingly lend to your devils, while the other is deaf to all reason … And it is at that precise moment, just before I dissolve among the swirls of nothingness, that I understand why that diabolical van Gogh, with his mutilated ear, broke in on my nights and on my madness.
But it is too late.
About the Author
Yasmina Khadra is the pen name of award-winning Algerian author Mohammed Moulessehoul. His novels include The Swallows of Kabul, The Attack, and The Sirens of Baghdad. In 2011 Yasmina Khadra was awarded the prestigious Grand prix de la littérature Henri Gal by the Académie Française.
Julian Evans is a writer and translator from French and German. His most recent translations are Michel Déon’s The Foundling Boy and The Foundling’s War.