"It's a dream," he says.
"All right, we'll see. Tonight I will bring you to Sidi Lachmi. We'll throw ourselves on his mercy. Perhaps something will come of that."
T
hey arrange to meet by the cemetery of Ouled-Ahmed. She waits for hours, but Slimen does not appear. She rides out to find him and then hurries back, afraid he will come when she is gone and think she has given him up. Finally he arrives long after midnight, swaying on his horse. He has been smoking kif and guzzling absinthe. His face looks terrible, and he shakes like a man who's been condemned.
Inside the monastery Sidi Lachmi looks at them. He is impassive. Suddenly Slimen begins to weep.
"What is this, Si Mahmoud? You bring me a man who cries like a child."
She begs to explain, to tell her saga of troubles. Sidi Lachmi shows no emotion as she speaks. His eyes betray nothing, and when she rambles on about her love for Slimen, he seems implacable, like a mountain of rock.
Finally, when she's finished, he asks what she wants him to do. She is silent.
"Is it money?"
She nods.
"Money means nothing," he says, reaching into his purse, bringing out several pieces of gold. "This will help, and God will pay the rest."
Slimen, his nerves strained beyond control, breaks into laughter. While Isabelle comforts his shaking body, she and Sidi Lachmi exchange a lengthy glance.
"Tomorrow I am riding to Nefta," he says. "I will need you to accompany me, and take notes."
She kisses his hand.
T
his last night she and Slimen decide to ride out to the sand, gallop and roam from garden to garden revisiting all the places they love. Sentiment soon draws them to Bir R'arby where they nestle among the palms and laugh over the strange way they met.
"Do you remember," he asks, "how I was going to show you how one boy horse could enter another boy horse from behind?"
"How," she laughs, "could I ever forget that?"
It is too cold to take off their clothes. They make a little fire of foraged twigs and dung, wrap themselves in their cloaks.
"Believe me," she says, "now that Sidi Lachmi has given us gold, things are going to change."
But he is too tired to speak, prefers to rest in her arms, and soon falls off. She holds him for many hours, but is unable to sleep herself. She listens to his breathing, regular and strong, and stares at the stars. Then a sweet sadness descends upon her, a mood of longing and sorrow that brings back the memory of an October evening long ago in Meyrin. She feels the same melancholy that pressed upon her the night Augustin left home. Then, with a smile, she remembers how she spent that night sleeping in his sheets.
She wakes Slimen before dawn, brings him his horse and stands quietly while he wraps his things. When he is mounted she goes to his side.
"I will come to Batna as soon as I return. I must go now to Nefta with Sidi Lachmiâyou understand."
He bends to touch her lips, they each touch their hands to their hearts, and he rides off alone.
When he is gone from sight she mounts Souf and rides to the Kadrya monastery. The morning light is dazzling, the air still. She finds Sidi Lachmi preparing to leave with a small retinue of aides. They begin the ride to Nefta.
They stop for food at Behima, a small oasis on the road to the Tunisian frontier. Sidi Lachmi is greeted by an enthusiastic delegation, and they are taken to the house of a man named Si Brahim Ben Larbi where they are served a sumptuous tagine of camel meat and dates. There is much talk of desert politics at the meal, and Isabelle, fascinated by the intrigues, forgets her sorrows for a while.
After the feast the sheik retires with a few men to another room, to smoke and continue discussions which she is not trusted to hear. She waits in the banquet room with the local notables while a curious crowd mills about outside. Then, when the muezzin calls for the afternoon prayer, she kneels with the rest.
Afterward the host introduces her to a merchant who begs her to translate a commercial telegram from Algiers. She is bent over, trying hard to make out the faded words, when she hears a sound and glances up.
Something dark is rushing at her out of a doorway filled with sun. She cannot make it out, then sees a flash of metal, hears something cleave the air.
Instinctively she raises her arm and turns her head aside. Suddenly she is stunned by an enormous blow that falls upon her shoulder and knocks her to the floor.
Writhing there she sees a man with wild eyes slashing a saber down from above his head.
She cries out and rolls, then is cut again. This time it is her elbow, and watching it gush out blood, she begins to murmur frantic prayers.
Loud sounds now. Frantic curses. A struggle.
The man with the saber is being held by one of Sidi Lachmi's bodyguards, while another chops at his arms until he drops the knife.
Screams from the crowd outside. Shrieks. Cries she cannot understand.
A terrible dizziness comes to her. She rolls her head from side to side, sees her assailant break loose and start toward her on the floor. She thrashes frantically with her good arm, searching for a weapon, a stick, anything to defend herself. But the wild man halts and she catches a glimpse of bloodshot eyes.
"I'll get a rifle and finish you off!" he screams, spittle shooting from his mouth. Then he rushes into the mob that throngs against the door.
Sidi Lachmi runs into the room. Chaos now as people push forward through the door, and others come from all corners of the house, attracted by the screams and noise. Isabelle, trying to stand, slips, falls, slides back into a warm thick liquid she knows is blood.
"There is no God but God..."
She gasps, turns imploring eyes upon the sheik who kneels beside her, fondling the instrument that has split her shoulder, sliced her arm.
"The pain," she whimpers. Her head falls back to the bloody floor. She repeats the Kadrya prayer.
"'Who did this? Where is he?" Sidi Lachmi, furious, bellows at his aides.
"Abdullah ben Mohammed ben Lakhdar!"
"Yes. It was Abdullah!"
Others, crowded against the windows, repeat the name.
"Find this man! Bring him here!" Sidi Lachmi turns to the caid of Behima, but the old bearded man shakes his head.
"Abdullah is a sherif," he says. "We cannot touch him."
"I am a great sherif, idiot! He's a Tidjani dog. And so are you!"
The caid is silent. Isabelle, from the floor, sees Sidi Lachmi's face turn threatening.
"If you don't want a religious war, bring him to me fast. I'll denounce you to the French. If Si Mahmoud dies, you are the accomplice!"
Isabelle is fascinated by the struggle of wills, at the same time aware of her enormous pain.
For a moment it looks as though the caid will stare Sidi Lachmi down. But there is sweat on his forehead and his hands tremble. Suddenly he leaves the room. The sheik returns to Isabelle.
"I feel weak," she tells him.
"You will live, my daughter," he whispers in French. "Lie back. Rest. Your wounds are not serious, but the pain will soon be great. Pay no attention to the blood." And then to the others: "Stand back. Let Si Mahmoud breathe. Bring him water. Bring a pillow and a blanket..."
This time she closes her eyes. She feels no fear; rather, a great confidence she will survive. She cannot understand why her body has begun to shake.
She dozes for a few minutes, calm, courageous in the face of mounting pain. Passionate men crowd around, try to make her comfortable and mop the blood from her cheeks. She wakes to a chorus of exclamations as the man who attacked her is brought into the room, tied to an iron bed. He twists against his bonds, speaks nonsense, rolls his eyes.
Someone cries: "You are faking, Abdullah!"
"He is pretending to be a madman," says the caid, "but we know him well. He was never like this before. Yesterday he sent his wife and children back to his father's house. He knew what he was going to do."
"You do not fool us, Abdullah!"
Others agree his exhibition is a fake. Abdullah listens, then lies still. When he speaks again his voice is normal.
"It was God who told me to do this," he raves. "I am not responsible."
Isabelle looks at him. The bed has been set down near her. Their faces are but a meter apart.
"Do I know you?" she asks, searching her memory. And then, wincing with pain: "I can't remember seeing you before."
"You have not," he says, "nor have I seen you." Abdullah meets her gaze.
"Why did you try to kill me?"
"God instructed me."
"No!"
"If they untie me, I will try to kill you again."
"Why? Tell me why? What have I ever done to you?"
"I have nothing against you," he says, struggling against the ropes. "You have never done anything to me. I don't know you at all. But I know I must kill you and that is true."
Helpless, weak, she looks around.
"Si Mahmoud is Moslem. Do you know that?" Sidi Lachmi has crouched between them. Others press forward to listen. Isabelle feels the strangeness of the sceneâthey talk as though discussing a rational event. Calmly, methodically, they search for a motive, and in the meantime she bleeds to death.
"Yes, I know."
"God would not tell you to kill a Moslem."
Silence.
"Si Mahmoud is a Kadrya. You know that, too."
Abdullah turns his face.
"He is Tidjani!" Sidi Lachmi shakes his head. "And he is lying about everything. This man is a political assassin. He attacked you because I was not in the room. He could not know you would come here, but yesterday, when he moved his family, everyone in Behima knew I would be here today!" Then to Abdullah, lying submissive in his bonds, face clear of all feeling, all sense of remorse: "Tell the truth, my son. You wanted to kill me. Tell us who paid you to do this."
"It was God's will."
Again he turns away, and though they ask him the question many times, he refuses to reply.
For a long while Isabelle stares at his mute profile.
"I pity you, Abdullah," she whispers finally in Arabic. "May God forgive you for your crime."
She faints.
H
ours later French officers arrive. A lieutenant takes depositions from witnesses, orders Abdullah taken off in chains. A doctor examines Isabelle, sets her shoulder, cleans the wound on her elbow, comforts her as he warns of greater pain to come.
"You are lucky," he tells her. "The saber hit a beam on the first slash. That slowed it enough to save your life."
She turns to the ceiling, sees a portion of woodwork deeply gouged.
"Yes," says the doctor. "If it weren't for that piece of wood you would now be split in two."
She smiles. She knows it was God, not the beam, that deflected the blade. Already she has heard murmurs in the room. People are saying she has
barraka
âholy luck, a sign she is blessed. Someone is telling the French lieutenant that when Abdullah attacked, a fog surrounded her, a sparkling haze that confounded him, shielded her from sight.
T
hat night she cannot be moved, is too weak, has lost too much blood. In the front room of the house of Si Brahim Ben Larbi, on the same iron bed where Abdullah was tied, she drifts in and out of sleep, awakened often by new stabs of pain.
In the morning she is loaded onto a stretcher, drawn by mule cart to the military hospital at El Oued. Here, in a narrow white room, she is placed on a high bed and left alone. Souf, at her request, is tied outside the window. He stares at her sadly from the shade. She hears nothing for hours but the interminable silence of the desert, and then, late in the afternoon, the steps of soldiers, a perfect mechanical beat, the thud of rifle butts against the earth, a cold command. The guards at the gates are being changed. And then againâsilence.
She needs Slimen desperately. If she is to dieâand the thought obsesses herâthen she must see him now, must be allowed to die in his arms. To die alone in this cold narrow room, attended by medics who look upon her as a freak, to die without loveâthe thought makes her shiver with fear.
All night she is torn by pain, and, at dawn, hurting even more, she asks herself what this awful wounding means. She wants, more than anything, to find purpose in the event. Impossible for her to accept Abdullah's crime as a gratuitous act. For if there is no reason, if she can be struck suddenly by a man without cause, then existence is pointless, pain and death hold no grandeur, and the value of her life is diminished.
D
ays pass, boring days, broken only by the sound of the changing guards, the sorrowful stares of Souf, an occasional visit by a nurse. The nights are filled with fever, unexpected pain, fear that she will move too suddenly in her sleep and reopen the stitching that binds her up. Often she thinks of Abdullah, his somber declaration that his hand was guided by God.
Why?
She is tormented by the question. She broods and ponders, becomes flushed as new, strange motives flow into her brain.