She rests her head back on the man’s chest, and continues. “Yes, I thought that maybe I felt relieved because I had finally been able to desert you… to leave you to die… to rid myself of you!” She huddles into the man’s motionless body, as if cold. “Yes, rid myself of you… because yesterday, all of a sudden, I started thinking that you were still conscious, quite well in mind and body but determined to make me talk, to find out my secrets and possess me completely. So I was scared.” She kisses his chest. “Can you forgive me?” She looks at him tenderly. “I left the house, hidden beneath my chador, and wandered the streets of this deaf, blind city in tears. Like a madwoman! When I went back to my aunt’s house in the evening, everyone thought I was ill. I went straight to my room to collapse into my distress, my guilt. I didn’t sleep all night. I was sure I was a monster, a proper demon! I was terrorized. Had I lost my mind, become a criminal?” She pulls away from her man’s body. “Like you, like your cronies… like the men who beheaded the neighbor’s whole family! Yes, I belonged to your camp. Coming to that conclusion was terrifying. I cried all night long.” She moves closer to him. “Then, in the morning, at dawn, just before it started raining, the wind opened the window… I was cold… and afraid. I snuggled up to my girls… I felt a presence behind me. I didn’t dare look. I felt a hand stroking me. I couldn’t move. I heard my father’s voice. I gathered every ounce of strength, and turned around. He was there. With his white beard. His little eyes blinking in the darkness. The worn-out shape of him. In his hands he was carrying the quail I had given to the cat. He claimed that everything I told you yesterday had brought his quail back to life! Then he embraced me. I stood up. He wasn’t there. Gone, taken by the wind. The rain. Was it a dream? No… it was so real! His breath on my neck, his calloused palm against my skin…” She rests her chin on her hand, to keep her head upright. “I was thrilled by his visit, lit up. I finally realized that the cause of my relief was not my attempt to abandon you to death.” She stretches. “Do you under stand what I’m saying?… The thing that was actually releasing me was having talked about that business of the quail. The fact of having confessed it. Confessed all of it, to you. And then I realized that since you’ve been ill, since I’ve been talking to you, getting angry with you, insulting you, telling you everything that I’ve kept hidden in my heart, and you not being able to reply, or do anything at all… all of this has been soothing and comforting to me.” She grasps the man by the shoulders. “So, if I feel relieved, set free-in spite of the terrible things that keep happening to us-it is thanks to my secrets, and to you. I am not a demon!” She lets go of his shoulders, and strokes his beard. “Because now your body is mine, and my secrets are yours. You are here for me. I don’t know whether you can see or not, but one thing I am absolutely sure of is that you can hear me, that you can understand what I’m saying. And that is why you’re still alive. Yes, you are alive for my sake, for the sake of my secrets.” She shakes him. “You’ll see. Just as my secrets were able to resuscitate my father’s quail, they will bring you back to life! Look, it’s been three weeks now that you’ve been living with a bullet in your neck. That’s totally unheard of! No one can believe it, no one! You don’t eat, you don’t drink, and yet you’re still here! It’s a miracle. A miracle for me, and thanks to me. Your breath hangs on the telling of my secrets.” She gets to her feet with ease and then stands over him, full of grace, as if to say: “Don’t worry, there is no end to my secrets.” Her words can be heard through the door. “I no longer want to lose you!”
She returns to refill the drip bag. “Now I finally understand what your father was saying about that sacred stone. It was near the end of his life. You were away, you’d gone off to war again. It was a few months ago, just before you were hit by this bullet, your father was ill, and I was the only one looking after him. He was obsessed by a magic stone. A black stone. He talked about it the whole time… What did he call that stone?” She tries to think of the word. “He asked every friend who visited to bring him this stone… a precious, black stone…” She inserts the tube into the man’s throat. “You know, that stone you put in front of you… and tell all your problems to, all your struggles, all your pain, all your woes… to which you confess everything in your heart, everything you don’t dare tell anyone…” She checks the drip. “You talk to it, and talk to it. And the stone listens, absorbing all your words, all your secrets, until one fine day it explodes. Shatters into tiny pieces.” She cleans and moistens the man’s eyes. “And on that day you are set free from all your pain, all your suffering… What’s that stone called?” She rearranges the sheet. “The day before he died, your father called for me, he wanted to see me alone. He was dying. He whispered to me, Daughter, the angel of death has appeared to me, accompanied by the angel Gabriel, who revealed a secret that I am entrusting to you. I now know where this stone is to be found. It is in the Ka’bah, in Mecca! In the house of God! You know, that Black Stone around which millions of pilgrims circle during the big Eid celebrations. Well, that’s the very stone I was telling you about… In heaven, this stone served as a throne for Adam… but after God banished Adam and Eve to earth, he sent it down too, so that Adam’s children could tell it of their problems and sufferings… And it is this same stone that the angel Gabriel gave to Hagar and her son Ismael to use as a pillow when Abraham had banished the servant and her son into the desert… yes, it is a stone for all the world’s unfortunates. Go there! Tell it your secrets until it bursts… until you are set free from your torments.” Her lips turn ash-gray with sadness. She sits a moment in the silence of mourning.
Her voice husky, she continues. “Pilgrims have been going to Mecca for centuries and centuries to circle around that stone, praying; so how come it hasn’t exploded yet?” A sardonic laugh makes her voice ring out, and her lips regain their color. “It will explode one day, and that day will be the end of the world. Perhaps that’s the nature of the Apocalypse.”
Someone is walking through the courtyard. She falls silent. The steps move further away. She carries on. “Do you know what?… I think I have found that magic stone… my own magic stone.” The voices emanating from the ruins of the neighboring house prevent her once more from pursuing her thoughts. She stands up nervously and goes to the window. Opens the curtains. She is petrified by what she sees. Her hand goes to her mouth. She doesn’t make a sound. She closes the curtains and watches the scene through the holes in the yellow and blue sky. “They are burying the dead in their own garden,” she exclaims. “Where is the old lady?” She stands quite still for a long moment. Overwhelmed, she turns back to her man. Lies down on the mattress, her head against his. Hides her eyes in the crook of her arm, breathing deeply and silently, as before. To the same rhythm as the man.
The voice of the mullah reciting burial verses from the Koran is drowned out by the rain. The mullah raises his voice and speeds up the prayer, to get it over with as quickly as possible.
The noise and whispering disperse across the sodden ruins.
Someone is walking toward the house. Now he is behind the door. Knocking. The woman doesn’t move. More knocking. “Is anyone there? It’s me, the mullah,” he shouts impatiently. The woman, deaf to his cry, still doesn’t move. The mullah mutters a few words and leaves. She sits back up and leans against the wall, keeping quite still until the mullah’s wet footsteps have disappeared down the street.