In the weeks that followed he often came to see her in the afternoons and they made love on the wooden bed, undisturbed by the headboard banging against the wall. Selim could think of nothing else, wanted nothing else. All he wanted was to do it again and again, for the world to disappear, for his afternoons to smell of her. He stopped sleeping, stopped eating, wandered around like a lost soul. At the club, his coach was concerned by his poor punctuality and weak performances and he told Selim he would have to pull himself together if he wanted to keep competing. Selim was like those snakes in Place Jemaa el-Fnaa, neck stiff, eyes wide, as if he’d seen a ghost. If someone had looked into Selim’s eyes during those weeks, if they had really looked, they would have seen Selma’s image engraved in the depths of his pupils.

  At school, at home, he stared in a daze at everything around him, incredulous at its normality. Selma was there, so close by, and he was almost sick with desire for her. At every hour of the day or night she would appear to him in flashes, like a succubus taking possession of his thoughts and dreams. She gave him no respite, becoming more painfully unforgettable with each passing day. He saw the dimple in her lower back, he saw her face when she turned to look at him as he penetrated her. An innocent, lustful face that said: “I want you.” Endlessly he breathed in the memory of her scent: her neck, her silky armpits. He remembered the coolness of her breath and the way she would put her hands on his buttocks and caress him. Stretched out, naked, facing each other, they would kiss for hours on end. They fell asleep together, their bodies pressed close, their legs intertwined, his mouth against the back of her neck, covered by that pale-yellow sheet impregnated with the smell of sex. Sometimes it was just after making love that they desired each other most intensely. As if, for them, it was not enough to feel satisfaction; they had to suck dry, to the very last drop, the vast promise contained in the other’s body.

  * * *

  All week Selma would wait for him, thinking constantly as she sat at the kitchen table about the way he would unfasten her dress, push her onto the bed, spread her legs, and slide his tongue inside her. She smoked and thought how differently he kissed her now: less clumsy and rushed than at the beginning. She wanted to talk dirty to him, to tell him she dreamed of being seized by him, being shoved against a wall and fucked until she disappeared, until she no longer existed. He learned how to make her yearn for him, to drive her into a rage. He bit her lip. He scratched her back. When she straddled him he would put his hands on her breasts and say: “Wait.” When he penetrated her, what she felt was not only pleasure but also a sweet, heady relief. Selim’s cock did not cleave her. Her lover was an extension of herself, he completed her, filling her emptiness, quenching her thirst. Sometimes she worried that she was taking too long to come. She was afraid he would grow weary of her, abandon her, but eventually she managed to stop thinking about this, to let the pleasure drown out all fears. And when she did finally come, she would burst out laughing.

  In that bedroom, she and Selim did not talk about their family. The names of Mathilde and Amine were never spoken, and they discovered that they had a life of their own, one that had nothing to do with the others and which they had never discussed before. They did not mention Mourad, and Selim asked none of the questions that welled up within him. He was too afraid of ruining these moments and it seemed to him that no love was more beautiful than that which remains unspoken.

  To begin with, they were amused by those Sunday lunches when they had to sit facing each other across Mathilde’s dining room table. Of course they feared being caught, feared that someone would notice a glance between them, a change in their behavior, and that their love would lurch into tragedy. But, at the same time, that fear excited them. Their hands brushed under the table. They made jokes that no one else could understand. They looked at each other, then lowered their eyes. And on Christmas Eve in 1968, when the whole family was gathered in the living room listening to Tino Rossi, they climbed up onto the roof to make love.

  They would stroll peacefully through town like a respectable family. They would wait for Sabah outside the school gates and she would throw herself unreservedly into her cousin’s arms. She felt sure that her schoolfriends were watching her, wild with jealousy at the idea that she was loved by this tall, blond swimming champion in his moccasins and his white pants. Together they would go to get ice creams. Selim talked about his own school, about his friend Moshe’s moped, about a party they wanted to go to that weekend. He was kind to her. A little distant, but kind. Sometimes they would spend the afternoon at the movies and in the darkness Sabah would lean her head against Selim’s shoulder while he stroked Selma’s thighs.

  Sabah was simultaneously an obstacle to their love and an indispensable alibi. In a small town like Meknes their walks together did not go unnoticed. Often, while out and about, Selim would see his schoolfriends smoking on café terraces or hanging around a motorbike in the hope of attracting girls. When Mathilde learned that Selim had been seen with his aunt, he told her that he enjoyed spending time with his cousin. They were only five years apart in age, after all, and they were friends. Not once did Sabah contradict him.

  But she did ask questions. She wanted to see more of her cousin. Sometimes, entering the apartment, she would say that she could smell chlorine and she felt certain that Selim had been there; her mother’s denials were never enough to convince her otherwise. When he came to see them she would cling to him so desperately that in the end he would find it annoying. She begged him to help her with homework or to teach her how to swim one day. Winter ended and anxiety began to gnaw at Selma. This situation struck her as absurd, perilous, unsustainable. She did not open up about this to Selim. How could an eighteen-year-old boy understand her fears? She was afraid of the concierge, a vulgar man with sun-sullied skin who spent his days watching the tenants’ comings and goings. One day he asked Selma who the tall blond man was who came to see her every afternoon. “He’s my nephew,” she answered nervously. The concierge raised his eyebrows, sniffed noisily, and said: “And what does your husband have to say about this nephew of yours coming to visit you?” Selma was afraid of the neighbors, the Jewish dressmaker, and fat Fanny who worked at the grocer’s where Selim would go to buy cigarettes. She was afraid of anyone who might in any way have noticed something off in this dangerous game they were playing. To her, this town, this neighborhood and its inhabitants, seemed smaller, narrower than ever, and she had the impression that the people here did nothing with their lives except spy on others. She hated the fact that she was never alone, never truly alone, invisible. She wished she could scratch a hole in the wall with her fingernails and slip through it to a place she had never even imagined before. For her too, she thought, there must be a promised land. Like those little girls she had seen in films, she wanted to pass through the looking glass, fly over the rainbow. Escape.

  When they made love now, she was no longer able to abandon herself to it completely. Occasionally she would tell him to be quiet or she would pull the sheet over his head. She would think she had heard the sound of a door being unbolted, or someone knocking, or Sabah’s heavy footsteps in the entrance hall. More and more often she would fly off the handle at her daughter who stood there moping stupidly, asking her for this or that, wanting to be fed, this girl whose mere presence prevented her from dreaming about her lover. Yes, Selim was only eighteen. By some strange irony, by some sort of time travel, she found herself once again in the arms of an eighteen-year-old boy. As if the years that separated her from her youth and the pilot Alain Crozières had never existed. Past and present intermingled, Selim became Alain, and sometimes she wasn’t even sure if what she was experiencing was real or just a memory.

  One Sunday in March 1969 she went to the farm with her husband and her daughter. The breeze was still quite cool but Mathilde had moved the table outside, by the edge of the pool. Selim was absent and Selma didn’t dare ask why. She waited for him, on edge, pale and half crazed, jumping at the slightest noise, incapable of following the conversation. Then Sabah asked where her cousin was. “Oh, who knows,” Mathilde sighed. “With friends, I suppose. Or a girlfriend. He never tells me anything about his life.” Sabah started crying and Mathilde, surprised into tenderness, kissed her forehead. “There’s no need to get upset. Perhaps he’ll drop by this afternoon. I’m sure he’ll want to play with you.” But Sabah kept whining and sniveling and Selma, unable to bear it anymore, yelled at her to shut up. “What the hell is wrong with you?” She grabbed her daughter by the arm and dragged her into the house. “Stay here. You’re punished.”

  Fear and remorse were not the only emotions that Selma felt. Sometimes the craziest thoughts would run through her head. She wondered if sex with Selim was so good because they were from the same family, because the same blood flowed through their veins. She thought about their names, so similar, the S’s, L’s and M’s swirling before her eyes until she saw the sickening confusion in which they had entangled themselves. In those moments, lying on her bed, she felt nauseated and the image of her own naked body writhing against her nephew’s inspired only disgust. Did she love him? Was that kind of love even possible for them? Of course she had tender feelings for this boy who never told her no and who looked at her with such passion that it scared her sometimes. But love? She didn’t know what that was.

  Nothing could be born from this unnatural coupling, this sin. No future together was possible. And because of that, she started to resent Selim for his youth, his freedom, his life without ties and responsibilities. It killed her, the idea that one day—because one day it would have to end—he would seek solace with other women, on other continents, and that she would have nothing to console her in her grief but this apartment full of memories of her lover and this kitchen that stank of cigarettes.

  More and more often they would argue. Sometimes Selim would ring the doorbell and hear it echo emptily inside the apartment. And the only reason she answered the door to him was her fear of scandal. Because if she didn’t he would shout her name and hammer his fists against the door. One day he told her about the revolver. He took it out of his schoolbag and placed it on the yellow sheet. Selma stared incredulously at the gun. A thousand pictures flashed through her mind. “What are you doing with that?” Selim assured her that he knew how to use it if necessary. Nothing would happen to them: he would defend her against Mourad, against Amine, he would find a solution and they would escape. Suddenly Selma thought: He’s stupid. There was a big difference between carrying an unloaded weapon around in a schoolbag and aiming it at a man. As for escaping . . . Where could they go? She decided to pretend not to have heard him.

  One day, standing naked in front of the full-length mirror on the wardrobe door, she swore to put an end to the whole sad story. She would not give in. She would not open the door to him even if he begged her. She found herself talking to God, even though she never set foot in a mosque. Alone in her bedroom, she asked Him for advice, begged His forgiveness, and in that moment Allah blurred with the image of her elderly mother. If Mouilala found out the truth, she thought, if my mother knew. She bought incense, which she burned in a terra-cotta brazier, and the scent flooded the apartment. She explained to Sabah that she wanted to get rid of the demons that had invaded their home and were tormenting her.

  * * *

  • • •

  She often wondered whether Mourad suspected something. She always took a shower after Selim left, and yet she worried that his odor clung to her. Her sin was tattooed on her skin, it was visible in every movement she made, and it seemed only a matter of time before her husband caught her. But Mourad said nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing. Ever since their wedding he had slept on a bench in the living room and he had never had occasion to sniff the yellow sheet on her bed. There were times when she would have preferred him to beat her, imprison her, drag her by the hair along the floor and scream insults at her. Anything seemed better than this cold, heavy, heart-crushing silence.

  In early April 1969 Amine decided to have a well dug on one of the plots of land he had bought. He imagined hiring a local well-digger, but Mourad dissuaded him. There was no need to spend his money and allow a stranger onto his land. Mourad could do it himself with the aid of two or three laborers. “It’s not complicated.” The foreman chose two people: a young boy who could go down into the hole and a giant of a man, his eyes too far apart, whom everyone called Zizoun the Mute because he had never spoken a single word. They armed themselves with shovels, pickaxes, and two wheelbarrows with squeaking wheels. They used three logs to build a hoist and began to dig. The boy cried because he was scared of going down into the hole, one foot inside the bucket tied to a rope. He kept saying “I don’t want to” and repeating the name of his mother, a peasant woman from the douar who had not had any other children. The giant lifted and dug in silence, frowning with concentration. He pulled on the rope to bring up buckets filled with earth and rocks. To start with, Amine came to the site quite often and was pleased with the progress they were making. Each time, Mourad would say, “We’ll find water soon,” and Amine would believe him.

  One day Zizoun ran to the farm. He knocked at the door and when Amine opened it the giant began making a series of wild gestures. He banged his head with his huge hands and beckoned the boss to follow him. At first Amine thought something must have happened to the boy, and as he drove the pickup truck along the dirt path, the mute beside him, he cursed himself for ever having listened to Mourad. He swore it would be the last time, that in the future he would stand up to his foreman and reject his harebrained ideas. But when he got there, the boy was sitting on the dry, cracked earth. He said to Amine: “I called out but he’s not answering. The rocks fell on him. He wanted me to go down there. He got angry with me. And now he’s not answering.” Amine leaned over the hole and shouted the foreman’s name. He kept shouting even though he knew it would do no good. The walls of the well had collapsed and Mourad was lying at the bottom, his body smashed by rocks.

  The police were called. The officer, looking suspicious, asked Amine if he had any reason to believe that it had not been an accident. Arms dangling, mouth tight with nerves, Amine stammered a response. Of course it was an accident! What was the policeman insinuating? That someone might have wanted to kill Mourad? The policeman paced around the hole. He did things by the book. He asked to see their papers. Did they have authorization to dig in this location? Who exactly was this dead foreman? He made it clear that he would have to carry out an investigation, to interrogate the farmworkers; it would be a long, unpleasant process, but it was his job and there was nothing they could do about it. Amine led the policeman to his office. He served tea, which the policeman drank slowly, eyes fixed on the portrait of Hassan II which hung on the wall. Amine asked if they could come to an arrangement and the policeman smiled. It was just a simple accident. This kind of thing happened all the time. It was the downside to employing illiterate peasants: those imbeciles always thought they knew more than they actually did. Amine was a gentleman, that was obvious, and the policeman had no intention of stopping him from doing his work. How well did he know this foreman? Did he have any family? Because that was the problem with people like that. The family would come knocking, they would weep and complain, they would claim compensation from the boss. Those ingrates would drag their kids along and tell them to whine just to make you ill at ease, and then for months—no, for years—they would harass you with their poverty and their grief. “The only problem,” the policeman repeated, “is the family.” Amine nodded. He opened an envelope, put some cash in it, and handed it to the policeman. “Don’t worry about the family. I’ll deal with that.”

  “You’re a generous man, that’s obvious. I’m sure you can make them see reason. What’s the point of nosing around, of wasting all our time? It is what God wanted, after all. And nobody can defy the will of God.”

  Did God answer evil prayers? Had Allah done this for her? These were the thoughts that ran through Selma’s head when Amine told her that Mourad was dead. And even though he didn’t look her in the eyes, she knew that her brother was thinking exactly the same thing. Amine promised to continue taking care of her and Sabah. “I owe him that.”

  The night after the accident, Amine wandered alone on the quince tree hill. He could not believe that Mourad was dead, his corpse rotting under rocks a few miles from the house, in the middle of nowhere. He was sure that his aide-de-camp would reappear one day, just as he had reappeared years earlier one rainy night in his baggy, ragged clothes. Mourad would come toward him and call him “my commander” with that mixture of tenderness and submission that Amine had never understood. Amine saw once again his imploring, disturbed eyes, behind which flickered occasionally the shadow of a nightmare. How strange it was, Amine thought, to know beyond any possible doubt that someone was ready to die for you. Until the end, Mourad had remained a soldier. Submissive and brave. Obedient and violent. He had never returned to civilian life. He had never left the world of war, orders, massacres. He had continued to live in a reality that no longer existed, a soldier without a country, without a uniform, without medals. His hands dripped blood. His guts still bore traces of the amoebic dysentery he had caught in Indochina, and Amine remembered the way he used to eat, very slowly, chewing with difficulty. He had been raised to destroy and now he had been destroyed.

  They decided not to try removing his body from the well. Mathilde was offended by this; after all, Mourad had been her brother-in-law. “We can’t just leave him there. What will people think?” But Amine preferred it this way: in that deep grave, nobody could disturb Mourad’s rest. As a child he had heard the story of a military governor, hated by the population because he had collaborated with the French, whose body had been exhumed by the villagers and chopped into pieces. They had exposed his profaned corpse to the sun and sworn that they would do the same thing to the man who took his place.