“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.”
He waits, waits, waits…
He’ll wait a long time.
The new day has now fully engulfed the room. Its light ricochets off the furniture. The children’s screams smash against the window. Nora is no longer bleeding. The brownish pool in which she cowers has now coagulated. Abou Seif releases the candelabrum, which falls to the floor, hits his ankle, and rolls under the bedside table. “This isn’t happening,” the penitent grouses belligerently. At last, he realizes exactly what is happening to him and he holds his head in his hands.
About the author
A former Algerian army officer living in exile in France, Mohammed Moulessehoul, aka Yasmina Khadra, has had five novels translated and published in the U.S., including The Sirens of Baghdad (Nan A. Talese ‘07), and The Attack (Nan A. Talese ‘06). Wolf Dreams (Toby ‘06) may be of interest to readers of this story, for it too deals with a participant in the Algerian Civil War.