Mr. N felt joy at the notion. It settled over his skin like a cold nightgown, then like a bath of warm water, and finally like a comfortable blanket. He felt the sap coursing through him again to nourish his arteries and veins. He looked at his watch. It was 10:25. Fantastic! He still had plenty of time. He took out a sheet of paper, a new pencil, and an eraser from the table’s drawer. From now on, he would try to keep his handwriting as legible as possible, and he would erase rather than cross out. Without mentioning a word about it, he would write what he wanted Miss Zahra to know, pleading to God that she would want to read more.

———

For days after I emerged from the grave, I kept feeling phlegm gather relentlessly in my lungs and work its way up my throat, yet without a single cough. Was it brought on by my long period of silence? Or all the dirt that got through the wrappings of my grave clothes and lodged in my mouth and lungs? For a time, I was afraid to open my lips. Then it became clear to me that what was gathering inside me and clogging my chest so cruelly wasn’t phlegm but rather congealed words. They rose until they started hurting my throat and interfering with my breathing. The words had gotten stuck, and evolved into little slugs, their spinal columns metamorphosing into sticky, clinging pseudopods that left viscous trails behind. One day, the nausea rose within me like a tidal wave, and bile came gushing out of my mouth. I vomited up everything in my guts, followed by everything in my soul, and then everything in my memory. I disgorged ink, paper, murderers, the corrupt, liars, hangmen, and … To be brief, I vomited up my spirit, and I sat there looking at it, writhing in its juices on the pavement, gasping like a fish out of water. It implored me to take it back inside. All the while, I kept looking at it like someone rejoicing over an enemy’s pain.

Back when I was still a writer, I liked the way words filled my imagination. They made no claims, played no tricks. They didn’t lie the way they do now. All they did was come out, one after the other, each leading the next, as though holding hands, trooping out of the dark, a train of words. Unless it was one of those days when they jumped and danced, unbound by gravity. But today, or yesterday, or tomorrow, now that I’ve given up writing because I can no longer bear it—despite my incredible power to endure everything—they are no longer so innocent; I feel their putrid souls rushing in, choking me with their yellow rot. I resist. I wake every dawn and flush from my holes whatever might have pushed its way in overnight to operate inside me without my permission. I dump it all into the toilet and flush it away. Nevertheless, the intruders keep coming, more and more every night. I’m no good at judging between them, at taking the measure of things. Just like everybody else, I suspect—unless, my God, I’m the only one?

Miss Zahra reassures me, saying that this putrescence in me is my truth, and that its source is not some flaw in me, but in the outside world. Meanwhile, she talks about the garbage crisis—about huge piles of trash that have nowhere to go and will eventually bury the country and all of us with it. She talks and talks and I don’t pay any attention because I’m too busy trying to keep the proper distance from life, trying to keep the equanimity that everyone is always recommending. I don’t know where I’m supposed to have acquired this sangfroid, let alone how I’m supposed to keep hold of it like everyone else claims to do. Yes, they carry it wherever they go and set it up as a barrier between themselves and the things of this world. I think it must be made of some very tough stuff, this distance, otherwise how could it offer any refuge, how could it be used for protection? And it must be pretty big, too, otherwise how would anyone hide under it? Or is it that nobody has really achieved that distance, that it’s entirely hypothetical, something people talk about in the hope that it will finally be granted to them, an invisible, impervious glass wall around their persons, or maybe some kind of freestanding force field off which heartbreak and sorrow would simply bounce, harmlessly, and disappear …

In any case, I have no such protection. It’s like I’m completely naked. No, it’s like I’m naked and missing my skin too, with my nerves exposed to the light. Yes, that’s me: an invisible, hypothetical creature that the wind blows right through. Protect yourself! they scream to me. Break free, man. Get away! And don’t look back …