Burned alive by Souad Page B

hoping to make myself bleed and put things right.

 

    The Last Meeting

    Evening has come. I am desperate for Faiez to arrive, alone or with his parents, but I know very well that he won’t. It’s too late for today. And the car isn’t parked in front of his house, the shutters have remained closed. This is dreadful for me. I spend the night awake, trying to make myself believe that he went to see his family somewhere; that if the shutters are closed it’s because of the heat.
    It is extraordinary how these few weeks of my life have stayed imprinted on my memory. I who have so much difficulty reconstructing my childhood, except for the images of cruelty, the absence of happiness and peace, I have never forgotten these moments of stolen freedom, of fear and hope. I can see myself so clearly that night under my sheepskin cover, my knees up under my chin, holding my stomach with my two hands, listening for the least sound in the dark. Tomorrow he’ll be there . . . Tomorrow he won’t be there . . . He’s going to rescue me, he’s going to abandon me . . . It was like music playing in my head that wouldn’t stop.
    The next morning, I see the car in front of the house. I say to myself: He’s alive! There is hope. I can’t go to watch for him to leave, but in the evening when he returns I’m out on the terrace. I signal for a meeting the next day before sunset. And at the end of the afternoon, just before sunset, I go to fetch hay for the sheep. I wait ten minutes, a quarter of an hour, hoping that perhaps he’s hidden a little farther off. The harvest is over but in certain places of the field I can collect some good sheaves, which I tie up with straw. I line them up near the path and knot them first. I work quickly but I am careful to leave three sheaves untied in case somebody passes by because I’m very visible in this spot. I’d only have to bend over my sheaves and look very busy at my work, which I’ve already finished. That gives me a quarter of an hour extra before I have to go back to the house. I told my mother I’d return with the hay in a half hour. At this time of day, the sheep have already been brought in, the goats and the cows, too, and I still have to milk them for the next day’s cheeses. I’ve employed almost every pretext for this rendezvous. I went to the well to draw water for the animals, which requires three short trips with a big bucket balanced on my head. The rabbits needed tender grass, the chickens needed grain that I went to collect. I wanted to see if the figs were beginning to ripen, I needed lemon for the cooking, I had to relight the fire in the bread oven.
    I must always be mistrustful of my parents, who are mistrustful of their daughter. A daughter may do many things. Is she going into the courtyard? What is she doing there? She hasn’t by chance arranged a tryst behind the bread oven? She’s going to the well? Did she take the bucket with her? Haven’t the animals already been watered? She’s going for hay? How many sheaves does she bring back?
    That evening, I drag my cloth sack from sheaf to sheaf. I fill it quickly and I wait, and wait. I know that my father is sitting as usual under the lamp in front of the house, smoking his pipe like a pasha and waiting with his belt for the daughter to return at the time she’s supposed to return. He’s counting the minutes. He has a watch. If I’ve said a half hour, that’s a half hour minus one minute if I don’t want to get a whipping with the belt.
    I have just three sheaves to tie up. The sky is turning gray, the yellow of the sun is growing paler. I don’t have a watch but I know I have only a few minutes left before night falls, which happens suddenly in my country. It’s as though the sun is so tired of giving us light that it falls like a stone, leaving us abruptly in the dark.
    I have lost hope. It’s over. He’s dropped me. I arrive home. His car isn’t there. I get up the next morning, his car is still not