White Masks Read Online Free PDF

sure that it’s receptive to the djinn. Some cats resist, you know - and that’s all very costly. Well . . . it’s as you wish, please yourself . . .”
    Sitt Khadijah got up as if to leave. I went to the cupboard, got a hundred lira, and gave it to her.

    â€œThe cat will be here tomorrow, by the grace of God.”
    The next evening, she brought me a little black kitten with shiny eyes and a coat like charcoal, so glossy and lush it practically glowed in the dark. She handed me the cat and left.
    I held the poor creature in my arms for a moment, but then it scurried off and hid under the sofa. After a while, I heard some mewing and saw the cat creeping out from its hiding place - and it scared me! It seemed to me that the cat was the djinn! Dear Lord, how was I to sleep that night? I gave him a bit of bread dipped in some leftover labneh , and he ate hungrily, stopping every now and then to look up at me, as though afraid the bread would vanish. Imagine that! The kitten was afraid, when it was me who felt petrified! Anyhow, I left him to eat by himself, and slipped off to Ahmad’s room and went to sleep. Ahmad’s room, with all the memories and grief it brought back, was preferable to me than being in the same room as the black cat.
    In the morning I looked for him and when I found him, he came to me; he was strangely docile, so I took him with me when I went in to do my husband’s room. I also took in a cardboard box with some sand in it, and a small carton of labneh . I thought to myself, Khalil would know it was for the cat.
    When Khalil came back from the bathroom and locked the door behind him, nothing indicated that he had noticed anything was different. I stood listening behind the door but I didn’t hear any unusual noises - just the cat mewing softly and the sound of Khalil’s footsteps padding across to him, and little murmurs of “puss, puss, here puss,” as if he were trying to beckon the cat. Then, nothing, just silence, and the rustle of paper ... nothing out of the ordinary. The next day, I left the bedroom door open while I cleaned
inside, and to my great surprise the cat didn’t want to leave the room. Thank God, I thought, soon you’ll be well, Abu Ahmad.
    But in fact nothing changed. Except that the room started to smell. I used to clean and change the litter every day, but the smell wouldn’t go away. And then it happened... I don’t know exactly what happened that day, but it was around four o’clock in the afternoon, and I was sitting in the living room by myself, knitting - my daughter Nada was expecting her second child, and it would be a boy with the grace of God. She said she’d call him Ahmad, so that once again I would have a little Ahmad to play with, just as I did with my own little one - so I was knitting, something out of blue wool, in anticipation of his arrival. That’s when I heard these strange noises coming from my husband’s room: things falling on the floor and the cat wailing. Then the mewing became frantic, I heard Khalil shouting and something crashing to the ground. When I put my ear to the door, I could hear him panting and jumping up and down on the bed, so I knocked and told him to open up; I was really frightened, and I fell to my knees, and begged him to open the door, for me, your wife, I told him. But there was no answer, just the sound of his panting and shouting and crashing objects. Dear God, preserve us from your wrath, I said, and then I heard this almighty racket. It must be the chair, I thought, he must have hurled it across the room, I’d better break into the room. I wanted to break down the door, but the noises coming from the room paralyzed me . . . He’s going to die, I thought . . . it’s the djinn, that’s what it is. And then, just like that, everything went still. There was dead silence, I knocked at the door once again, I heard him coughing, and I went back to the