I got down close to him and helped him to the floor, leaning his back against the bed. Then I sat beside him. I was trembling from fatigue and the shock of what had happened. It occurred to me to go to the door and start pounding and screaming until people arrived and saved him, but he took hold of me, begging me not to tell anyone because they would hurt us both. He pleaded for me to remain there with him until we found some solution. All of a sudden, he was drawing my hand toward him so that I could pull the pencils out of his belly, which I did. They were warm to the touch, anointed with blood.

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.”