As for the woman, she goes into the toilet, washes herself, and returns shyly to the room. Finishes her cleaning, and leaves.
Her footsteps ring out on the tiled floor of the kitchen, accompanied after a while by the hum of gas, spreading its sonic layer around the house.
Once she has made her lunch, she comes to eat it in the room, straight out of the pan.
She is soft and serene.
After the first mouthful, she suddenly says, “I feel sorry for that boy! But that isn’t why I let him in… Anyway, I hurt his feelings today, and almost drove the poor thing away! I got the giggles, and he thought I was laughing at him… which of course I was, in a way… But it was my fiendish aunt’s fault! She said something awful last night. I’d been telling her about this stammering boy, and how he comes so quickly. And…” She laughs, a very private, silent laugh. “And she said I should tell him…” The laugh, noisy this time, interrupts her again. “… Tell him to fuck with his tongue and talk with his dick!” She guffaws, wiping away tears. “It was terrible of me to think of that right then… but what could I do? As soon as he started stammering, my aunt’s words flashed into my mind. And I laughed! He panicked… I tried to control myself… but I couldn’t. It just got worse… but luckily,” she pauses, “or unluckily, my thoughts suddenly took a different turn…” She pauses again. “I thought of you… and suddenly stopped laughing. Otherwise it could have been a disaster… one mustn’t hurt young men… mustn’t take the piss out of their thing… They associate their virility with a long, hard dick, with how long they can hold back, but…” She bypasses that thought. Her cheeks are all red. She takes a deep breath. “Anyway, it’s over… but that was a narrow escape… again.”
She finishes her lunch.
After taking her pan back to the kitchen, she returns and stretches out on the mattress. Hides her eyes in the crook of her arm and lets a long, thoughtful moment of silence go by before confessing some more: “So yes, that boy made me think of you again. And once again I can confirm that he’s just as clumsy as you. Except that he’s a beginner, and a quick learner! Whereas you never changed. At least with him I can tell him what to do and how to do it. If I’d asked all that of you… my God! I’d have gotten a broken nose! And yet it’s not difficult… you just have to listen to your body. But you never listened to it. You guys listen to your souls, and nothing else.” She sits up and shouts fiercely at the green curtain: “And look where your soul has got you! You’re a living corpse!” She moves closer to the hiding place: “It’s your blasted soul that’s pinning you to the ground, my sang-e saboor!” She takes a deep breath: “And it’s not your stupid soul that’s protecting me now, that’s for sure. It’s not your soul that’s feeding the kids.” She pulls the curtain aside. “Do you know the state of your soul right now? Where it is? It’s right there, hanging above you.” She gestures at the drip bag. “Yes, it’s there, in that sugar-salt solution, and nowhere else.” She puffs out her chest: “My soul feeds my honor; my honor protects my soul. Bullshit! Look, your honor has been screwed by a sixteen-year-old kid! Your honor is screwing your soul!” She grabs his hand, lifts it up. “Now, it’s your body’s turn to judge you,” she says. “It is judging your soul. That’s why you’re not in physical pain. Because it’s your soul that’s suffering. That suspended soul, which sees everything, and hears everything, and cannot react at all, because it no longer controls your body.” She lets go of the hand and it falls back onto the mattress with a thud. A stifled laugh pushes her toward the wall. She doesn’t move. “Your honor is nothing more than a piece of meat now! You used to use that word yourself. When you wanted me to cover up, you’d shout, Hide your meat! I was a piece of meat, into which you could stuff your dirty dick. Just to rip it apart, to make it bleed!” She falls silent, out of breath.
Then suddenly she stands up. Leaves the room. She can be heard pacing up and down the passage, saying, “What’s the matter with me now? What am I saying? Why? Why? It’s not normal, not normal at all…” She comes back in. “This isn’t me. No, it isn’t me talking… it’s someone else, talking through me… with my tongue. Someone has entered my body… I am possessed. I really do have a demon inside me. It’s she who’s speaking. She who makes love with that boy… she who takes his trembling hand and puts it on my breasts, on my belly, between my thighs… all of that is her! Not me! I need to get rid of her! I should go and seek counsel from the hakim, or the mullah, and tell them everything. So they can drive away this demon lurking inside me!… My father was right. That cat has come to haunt me. It was the cat that made me open the door to the quail’s cage. I am possessed, and have been for years!” She flings herself into the man’s hiding place, sobbing. “This is not me talking!… I am under the demon’s spell… this isn’t me… where is the Koran?” Panicked. “The demon has even stolen the Koran! The demon did it!… And the damned feather… she took that too.”
She rummages around under the mattresses. Finds the black prayer beads. “Allah, you’re the only one who can banish this demon, Al-Mu’akhkhir, Al-Mu’akhkhir…” She tells the prayer beads, “Al-Mu’akhkhir…,” picks up her veil, “Al-Mu’akhkhir…,” leaves the room, “Al-Mu’akhkhir…,” leaves the house, “Al-Mu’akhkhir…”
She can no longer be heard.
She does not return.
As twilight falls, somebody walks into the courtyard and knocks on the door to the passage. No one replies; no one opens. But, this time, the intruder seems to stay in the garden. The sound of cracking wood, and of stones being bashed together, floods through the walls of the house. He must be taking something. Or destroying. Or building. The woman will find out tomorrow, when she returns along with the first rays of sunlight shining through the holes in the yellow and blue sky of the curtains.
Night falls.
The garden goes dark. The intruder goes off.
Day breaks. The woman returns.
Very pale, she opens the door to the room and pauses a moment to check for the slightest sign of a visit. Nothing. Distraught, she walks into the room and up to the green curtain. Pulls it slowly aside. The man is still there. Eyes open. The same rhythm to his breathing. The drip bag is half empty. The drops are falling, as before, to the rhythm of the breath, or of the black prayer beads passing through the woman’s fingers.
She lets herself fall onto the mattress. “Did somebody repair the door onto the street?” She is asking the walls. In vain. As always.
She picks herself up, walks out of the room, and, still bewildered, checks the other rooms, and the cellar. She comes back up the stairs. Into the room. Confounded. “But no one has been here!” She collapses onto the mattress, in the grip of a growing weariness.
No more words.
No more movement, except the telling of the prayer beads. Three cycles. Two hundred and ninety-seven beads. Two hundred and ninety-seven breaths. No mention of any of the names of God.
Before embarking on a fourth cycle, she suddenly starts talking. “This morning, my father came to see me again… but this time to accuse me of having stolen the peacock feather he used as a bookmark in his Koran. I was horrified. He was furious. I was scared.” The fear is still visible in her gaze as it seeks shelter in the corners of the room. “But that was a long time ago…” Her body sways. Her voice becomes definite: “It was a long time ago that I stole it.” She stands up suddenly. “I’m raving!” she murmurs to herself, calmly at first, then fast, nervously. “I’m raving. I’ve got to calm down. Got to stop talking.” She can’t stay in one place. Keeps moving around, chewing on her thumb. Her eyes dart around frenetically. “Yes, that fucking business with the feather… that’s what it is. That’s what is driving me crazy. That bloody peacock feather! It was only a dream, to start with. Yes, a dream, but such a strange one. That dream haunted me every night when I was pregnant with my first child… I had the same nightmare every night. I saw myself giving birth to a boy, a boy who had teeth and could already speak… He looked just like my grandfather… That dream terrorized me, it tortured me… The child used to tell me that he knew one of my biggest secrets.” She stops moving. “Yes, one of my biggest secrets! And if I didn’t give him what he wanted, he would tell that secret to everyone. The first night, he asked for my breasts. I didn’t want to give them to him because of his teeth… so he started screaming.” She covers her ears with trembling hands. “I can still hear his screams today. And he began to tell the start of my secret. I ended up capitulating. I gave him my breasts. He was sucking, and biting on them with his teeth… I was crying out… I was sobbing in my sleep…”