The Exile Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page B

against the black wall, and the man squatted beside me and studied me for a moment. He had a stern, lean face dominated by a huge hooked nose. His skin was lined and weathered, and it was difficult for me to guess his age. He wore a long shirt and he had a keffiya on his head, but it wasn't bound with a black rope akal, merely twisted around with its ends stuffed in somehow. In the dancing shadows he looked like a murderous savage. Matters weren't made any better when he asked me a few questions in the same dialect Noora had used. I think one of them had to do with where I'd come from. All I could do was tell him about the city. He may have then asked me where the city was, but I couldn't be sure that's what he said.
"I hurt," I croaked.
He nodded and opened his leather bag. I was sur-prised when he pulled out an old-fashioned disposable syringe and a vial of some fluid. He loaded the needle and jammed it into my hip. I gasped in pain, and he patted my wrist. He clucked something, and even ignorant of his dialect I could tell it was "There, there."
He stood up and regarded me thoughtfully for a while longer. Then he signaled to Noora and they left me alone. In a few minutes, the injection had taken effect. My ex-pertise in these matters told me that I'd been given a healthy dose of Sonneine; the injectable variety was much more effective than the tabs I bought in the Budayeen. I. was tearfully grateful. If that rough-skinned man had come back into the tent just then, I would have given him anything he asked.
I surrendered myself to the powerful drug and floated, knowing all the while that the relief from pain would soon end. In the illusory moments of well-being, I tried to do some serious thinking. I knew that something was terribly wrong, and that as soon as I was better I'd need to set things right again. The Sonneine let me believe that noth-ing was beyond my power.
My drug-deluded mind told me that I was in a state of grace. Everything was fine. I'd achieved a separate peace with the world and with every individual in it. I felt as if I had immense stores of physical and intellectual energy to draw upon. There were problems, yes, but they were emi-nently solvable. The future looked like one golden vista of victory after another: Heaven on Earth.
It was while I was congratulating myself on my good fortune that the hawk-faced man returned, this time with-out Noora. I was sort of sad about that. Anyway, the man squatted down beside me, resting his haunches on his heels. I could never get the hang of sitting like that for very long; I've always been a city boy.
This time when he spoke to me, I could understand him perfectly. "Who are you, O Shaykh?" he asked.
"Ma—" I began. My throat tightened up. I pointed to my lips. The man understood me and passed me a goat-skin bag filled with brackish water. The bag stunk and the water was the most foul-tasting I'd ever encountered. "Bismillah," I murmured: in the name of God. Then I drank that horrible water greedily until he put a hand on my arm and stopped me.
"Marid," I said, answering his question.
He took back the water bag. "I am Hassanein. Your beard is red. I've never seen a red beard before."
"Common," I said, able to speak a little better now that I'd had some water. "In Mauretania."
"Mauretania?" He shook his head.
"Used to be Algeria. In the Maghreb." Again he shook his head. I wondered how far I'd wandered, that I'd met an Arab who had never heard of the Maghreb, the name given to the western Muslim lands of North Africa.
"What race are you?" Hassanein asked.
I looked at him in surprise. "An Arab," I said.
"No," he said, "I am an Arab. You are something else." He was firm in his statement, although I could tell that it was made without malice. He was truly curious about me.
Calling myself an Arab was inaccurate, because I am half Berber, half French, or so my mother always told me. In
my adopted city, anyone born in the Muslim world and who spoke the Arabic language was