I felt an unexpected sadness wash over me like a fine rain. My tears broke free as the image of him alone as a child, an orphan, with no friends or family, flashed before my eyes. I felt I had treated him cruelly and unjustly to have made him as I did, only to demand that he behave as though he were something else, as though he were me, trapped within the bowels of my own intertwining, knotted thoughts, and not himself, straightforward as a stallion in his physique and his passions.

The blood was still gushing out and now covered his entire belly. I went to the bathroom and brought back a towel, which I balled up and pressed against his wound. Miss Zahra jumped into my head, and I saw how annoyed she would be to find the room in such a chaotic mess. Then I thought how stupid it was to be concerned with such a trivial thing, considering the enormity of the crime I had just committed.

“Is it you, come back to kill me? How long will this go on, N?”

“Until you stop pursuing me.”

“I’ve never come looking for you. It’s you who come to me.”

Yes, I’m the one who came to you, because you were still here, alive in the city I believed I had flooded under the rains. How are you still here when I killed you once with gas, and then with a flood? When I used to wander through the neighborhood of Bourj Hammoud, Luqman, I thought about its being the first area to be submerged by the flood coming out of the sea. A giant tsunami that would sweep away the rocks and people and voices and languages. A symphony of waves to rival the sky, advancing like united armies to destroy everything in their path: women, children, and elderly; livestock, horses, and dogs; trees, car frames, balconies, ugly curtains, and electrical poles and lines. Residents and foreigners, vendors, travelers, the disabled, the whores, the laborers, and the beggars. A divine, cosmic tsunami that would end the world in order to begin it again. No! To end it, without any mercy. A rough draft, full of mistakes, and then a cosmic eraser to make the page white again.

“Every time I get myself ready to die, N, you bring me back to life. Haven’t you had enough of me yet?”

This time, Luqman, you’ll certainly die. I will kill you this time for good and all, and you will die.

‌Epilogue

In his report to the police, Dr. Andrew related, in part:

Because she suffered a confusion of identity and other psychological afflictions, Mrs. N spent more than fifteen years in our institution, during which time not a single person came to visit her, despite her being a well-known writer of works that attracted great interest when they were published. She first came to us expressing a fear that murderous spirits were transforming her into a killer, and we received her and pursued her treatment, both psychological and medical, throughout all these years. (See attached report 1.)