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  I asked him in. “Do you like white or brown sugar?” “White. Brown sugar has an aftertaste. Your coffee maker is interesting.” “It’s a gift from a friend. He invented it. The glass receptacle is hermetically sealed, and the coffee filter preserves the taste of the coffee after it’s ground.” “This is the grinder?” “Yes. I’ll program in a number of cups. Look, I’m pressing two, so, now, I turn this on, and the coffee is ground in its sealed chamber. It will come out slowly through this little funnel down here, and the hot water will fall onto it from above. Then it falls into the receptacle.” “Your friend designs electrical appliances?” “He’s an aeronautics engineer. This is for fun.”

  I set the table, putting the two cups, saucers, and then the sugar down. “Your friend makes planes?” “Motors. He’s very talented, people know him. He’s invented a new type of thrust system. A prototype.” “What’s new about it?” “There’s not enough time for me to explain it to you.” “You understand your engineer friend?”

  I poured the coffee into the cups. “I know a little about engineering.” “You didn’t tell me that.” “You didn’t ask me anything about it.” “An engineer, here, way out here, who eats vegetables picked from her garden and who reads? Knowing all that must be helpful somehow.” “My knowledge serves me well. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t translate, without it. What do you mean by ‘useful’?” “An engineer is someone who knows about things. That’s his job—knowing about things. But you say you write. So I can imagine that you write technical manuals. Do you know how a plane motor works?” “That’s for aeronautics engineers to know.” “Yes, but if you know motors, then you can wreck them.”

  I got up to shut off the music. “And you become a doctor to kill patients?” “What do I know? You know, there’s a lot of crazy people in the world. I have to get back. I’ve already spent too much time. They’ll ask me to come back. One last thing. Do you have children?” “What about your coffee?” “Any children?” “No.” “That’s not good. Not good at all. You don’t have any kids?” “No.” “Bye.” “Bye.”

  What could I do? Flee, flee again? But go back to whom? Where? Go back to where the “Muslim” is born. I set off for the desert. I walked there. I walked toward the men and their children. For them I wanted to stay. Forgetting that this desert had been repopulated by jackals.

  ACT V

  DESERT STORM

  IT’S WHAT BURNS that wants me now. I can’t live anymore. My jailers tell me, “You were ours.” They know I can’t go back. It’s them who labeled me. Either you’re one of us, or you die. I die. I don’t have a choice. I had dug a hole to live in. To live far from all of this and from that thing that I can’t name, which forces me to choose, whose body I can’t see, which represents the power of the world in motion, that thing that can’t stand to have me live. I don’t want to have anything to do with what they’re making me into. I don’t like what they’re making me into. I don’t want anything to do with it, but I can see quite clearly that I can’t escape it. Either with us or against us! I didn’t want anything. “Are you with us or against us?” the power of the world in motion asks again. “No, no, neither for you nor against you. I don’t want to hate you, but you’ve ruined my chances of finding any sort of peace. You asked me, ‘With or against me?’ I wanted to ignore you. But you won. You got me. Even though I’m condemned, I’ll tell you again. Your swagger and your masculine charms on full display, the monster that grows out of your always wanting us to be like you still makes me and will always make me sick to my stomach. I don’t like your words, or your actions, or the people hanging around you, or your food, or your voice, or your mouth that chomps up and down, that supple movement that hides a voracity worthy of the worst figures of mythology. You do know that the men in black that you’re chasing saw you come, right? They’re your closest allies. Like them, you want me to die. While you speak about justice and liberty, it’s my skin that you want. I was happy in the nothingness from which you forced me. It was enough for you to say I was evil. You’re nothing like the harmless sort that you pretend to be in front of your cameras—with each snap of your jaws you swallow another enemy soldier. You’re a carnivore that doesn’t care what he eats. You’re not about to fool the enemy. You pray every day to a figure with buffalo horns and a fetid body. Hell awaits you. The God with a human face has left behind your race. Your god, whom you invoke with every word, who speaks only in the hateful phrases of those bloodthirsty priests that surround you, whose existence you mask with tricks, I know his maleficent intentions. The lot of you wants to control the world. The son of the devil—that’s what you are. Because of you there’s evil afoot on the earth. I spit on you and your rat brothers, OK? You’ve involved us in your fight. It’s a fight of horns, and it reeks of hell. Having failed to find anyone like you, you felt pathetic. But as for devils, a devil doesn’t care if there are others like him. If he exists, he will give rise to others. You aren’t the first. I don’t know which of you was the first. I don’t know which of you came into this world first, and I don’t want to know. What I know is that your existence sows the seeds of its own hatred. What might you spawn? Hyenas, only hyenas. And now I know that your spells will cover the world. I’m nothing. A woman, a woman who never thought that the demon would remember her. That would never happen. I thought that it was the time of my own glory, that it was finally the time of my reign. My sisters left their holes one by one, daring to take in the air, to breathe without fear. Neither fish nor fowl. But from nowhere, anyhow. We went forward without any worldly inheritance and without anything to our name. We wanted to live in the world, not own it. Of those who inherited the earth, we saw how all they cared about were their narrow plots, which they tried to protect and expand, and how they used violence to do it. They wanted to impose upon us their ideals, their god, their riches, and their grandeur.

  “And now the moment has arrived when all those who inherited the earth are at war. At war with me, my group, my community, my Biblical, Islamical, Sunnical, evangelical, Baptistical, Methodistical land, in cursed fit after fit. All the freight of God has been loaded on this military quest. But what about us, those who have refused to participate, what will become of us? Where will we find food and water? Where can we live? Where can we flee? They defile the world. Where can we find food and water when the crops fail? We won’t know how to feed ourselves without them. We play a part in our own destruction. What’s a body with arms raised and a silent, parched mouth? Someone who no longer wants to stand. No longer will there be anything human about the streets, just the crowds pointing their enormous guns at us, overwhelming us. What’s one person in front of such a massive force? They stroll back and forth as a single body, confident they’re the world’s only army.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Me? Nobody.”

  “Who are you!”

  “I’m just here.”

  “What’re you doing in this hole?”

  “I’m waiting for it to end.”

  “Where’re you from?”

  “I sleep here. This is where I sleep.”

  “It’s a sand dune!”

  “It’s harmless.”

  “You speak our language?”

  “To children.”

  “You live in this hole?”

  “I don’t have a home.”

  “Where’re you from?”

  “From the west.”

  “Follow me.”

  “The children are waiting for me.”

  “Follow me.”

  “Where?”

  “We’ll let you go in a couple hours.”

  “Where I come from, there’s nothing left, not even a hole. Not even a hole. You’re everywhere. I only stopped to rest. I have to go on. They’re waiting for me.”

  “There won’t be a hole or anywhere for you to hide.”

  “They’re waiting for me!”

  “Put your arms up.”

  The soldier pats me down with his left hand. Then ano
ther arrives. It’s a woman. She steps behind me, then frisks me. “She’s clean,” she says. The other points his gun at me and tells me to move forward. Me, a prisoner. “Move,” the soldier says in his language. “Hands on your head. Hands on head.” I raise my arms. I slowly pass into the horizon, my body traces a line from left to right, I merge with the ground. I walk with my arms raised, walking north again. It takes all my energy. “Hands on your head, I said!”

  I follow his orders, and I walk. I walk where his gun points me. In the distance, I see a sea of humanity dressed in one color. I close my eyes.

  “Prisoner,” the soldier says. “Prisoner,” he says into a little microphone placed in front of his mouth. A prisoner. I’m not alone. Other women are being brought in. A soldier opens the iron gate. Two soldiers take my hands, put them behind my back, and secure them with plastic cuffs marked with an insignia. “She speaks our language,” the soldier tells them. I fall to my knees in the sand. They force me up and make me walk several meters to another iron gate. They open it and push me toward the other women prisoners. They leave me there. I fall to the ground among women on their knees. I’m not one of them, but now I’m with them.

  On the ground, on their knees, with their hands cuffed, they hold out their heads then turn them to the side to drink through a tube connected to a little pouch of water. I haven’t had any water for two days. I hid myself in that hole to escape the war of devils. Without a weapon, without a destination. I keep my eyes down. This is the extent of my freedom now.

  I collapse onto my right side and turn my face toward the ground. I breathe heavily. I’ve crossed a line. What was I looking for in this desert? Did I want to live? It was impossible. I knew it from the beginning, but I came anyway. There’s no place for me here, and yet I’m here.

  “If you await the real,” the soothsayer said, “it’s because it’s already shown you what it is.” I thought deeply about people. I hold open my eyes to inspect the sand. I watch it move grain by grain.

  AN UNARMED SOLDIER FORCES me to my feet and leads me to a building made of corrugated tin and wooden planks. At the gate two women soldiers are waiting. One uncuffs me, and the other disrobes me. I take off my shoes. She puts my clothes in a bag and hands me soap. She points to where I’m to clean myself. I step into the shower. I put my face beneath the water, and I drink and drink. I’m thirsty. I let the water cover my body. I wait. The water continues to run over me. One of the women holds out a towel. I dry myself. She coats me with a white powder. Now I’m a prisoner. An orange jumpsuit. The color of caution. Of danger to come. I’m given back to the soldier who brought me there. He recuffs me and orders me to follow him. I walk through the hot sand to the administrative office.

  “Your name?” I have books, tickets, but no pieces of identification. “Your name?” “Elohim,” I say. “That’s not a name from around here, is it?” “It’s my name.” “Your religion?” “None.” “Your religion?” “None.” “Where did you do your studies?” “In different countries.” “You speak our language?” “To children. I speak all languages to children.” “Where were you born?” “On the shores of a pent sea. But it has disappeared.” “Elohim, that means the wind?” “Elohim lives on high. It is both Him and Them. God’s advisor, or one for the angels, no one knows for sure.” “You believe in angels?” “Do you?” “Do your parents live here?” “I’m not in touch with them.” “Since when have you lived here?” “I don’t recall. I was walking from west to east.” “Elohim, is it?” The woman checks her computer. “Your name tells me nothing,” she says. “If you’re not from here, then what’re you doing here?” “You have imprisoned me.” “Don’t you think it odd that in this war-torn country we found you wandering on the open road?” “The war has spread everywhere. Sooner or later you would have found me.”

  The officer stops to consider my words. We can just hear the sound of vehicles. I look at all the stooped bodies. Nothing seems to bother them. The desert is powerful. The officer asks me where I learned their language. “Everywhere I’ve lived, it’s been there.” She asks my name. I answer her. “In which city were you born?” “I wasn’t born in this country.” “Do you have any friends in the camp?” “I’m alone.” “What were you doing on the road?” “Walking.” “You left town without a safe-passage slip? You were running away?” “I wasn’t in a city. I didn’t know there was a city nearby. I avoid cities.” “Where were you coming from?” “A sand dune. That’s where the soldiers captured me.” “How long have you lived there?” “I was passing by. I slept there. There was a large boulder that served as shelter during the cold nights. Your machines must have destroyed it by now.” “Where did you learn our language?” “Can you live anywhere without learning it? But I’m nothing like you. We’re not at all alike.” “I’m just doing my job,” she says to me. “We’re in charge of the female prisoners. Most go home.” “Why do you imprison women?” “The men can’t feed themselves without them. We’re at war.” “When you starve the men, you make them murderers. Their women won’t help you, and you hurt their children even worse.” “You mistake our intentions. We’re saving this country from itself.”

  I look out beyond the barbed wire. There’s another camp. One for men. They sit, their seething eyes turned toward the ground. Nothing about their look says that they’ve submitted to their situation. I’ve grown to understand this look, which is never directed at others, and which never betrays the slightest despair. There’s something so willful and strong about these people that no pity is possible. No, none. And the men there, the ones watching over them, they can’t get them to be what they’re not. Men from whom they would take everything. Even in the face of imminent death, these men won’t lose their willfulness. It’s all they have left. And even in the miserable conditions of this camp where they live on the ground like animals, they aren’t subhuman, they aren’t the dispossessed. They have nothing.

  Their modesty hides their dignity. It’s their pillar, their lifeblood. It’s their dignity that makes them unashamed. And in this place without walls, where anyone can see in, it’s their modesty that remains their loaded weapon. It preserves their privacy. It’s their power, their protest. And those who wish to defeat them will have to take from them this modesty about which they know nothing. And only those who know nothing about it would want to destroy it. It isn’t enough to strip them naked, against their will, because that only returns them to their modesty. That will never defeat them. There’s nothing that can corrupt that modesty. Not even this want of food. Not even when they know that they pay for this food with their dignity. What’s a body crying out in hunger? Is it possible to wish for the disappearance of these people? And if they all disappeared? But haven’t they already disappeared? Disappeared. Am I not one of the “disappeared”? I have a body. But alive or dead, aren’t I just the same? I don’t count. And who cares about them? Have they ever had a government worthy of that name? No one expects anything of them. It’s clear to me now that these people have had to learn how to overcome this lack. This speaks to the intelligence of people. Others are like them. The world will see, when they attack them later. They don’t count. Like others, they don’t count. I can tell this from their faces. It isn’t an absence of life that defines their expressions; no, it’s a refusal of caring. A refusal of caring made clear by their faces, made clear by the dignity of their faces. A stooped figure still has a face. It’s a black mass thrust on the ground that shows the face of man. But he doesn’t care. What should be done with such a man? Death means something. His death must mean something. His imprisonment must mean something. They would have to justify his death. And that justification would mean something. What would cause such a man to give up hope? Animals don’t harm the forest. And this man won’t harm the desert. “Yes, the desert is like his soul, hollow and dumb!” This is what the men running the camp tell one another. “You won’t find anything in this desert. Everything’s gone to hell. They didn’t even know how to cultivate th
eir land!” This is what the guards tell one another.

  The female officer has finished filling out the form. She hands it to me. “Did I spell your name right?” “Yes,” I say, without looking at it. “Do you know how to read our language?” “Yes.” “In that case, we’ll take your statement in it so we won’t have to translate.”

  She leaves the tent. I’m thirsty. I ask for water from a soldier posted in front of me. He holds out a pouch of water, whose nozzle he screws open, and then he squeezes the pouch. He holds it out in front of the small, low table at the height of my knees. Bent over, I drink, struggling for air. It’s warm, tasteless water. I fill my stomach with this water, emptying the pouch. Water pouches for prisoners with cuffed hands. The camp is littered with these empty pouches. And the wind, gust after gust, blows them about. If, in the decades to come, an archaeologist comes here, he’ll find something to excite his imagination. He’ll speak of an expedition during the horrible heat of a dry season and of the men of the past century who brought with them thousands of liters of water that they drank from a nozzle so as not to swallow the sand blown up by the storms that were so strong there. Desert Storm. Here, sand covers everything. Even the sins of man. No need for bulldozers, or backhoes, or steamrollers. Here, the desert swallows everything. Everything but man. If all the prisoners were released just before a storm, their bodies would disappear beneath the sand. And the archaeologist would speak of a horrible storm. Of a force that left no escape for men. Of a civilization buried. Buried beneath the sand. Absorbed by that which absorbs whatever it chooses and that makes landscapes that match its whims. Whoever makes light of the desert underestimates its power. There isn’t any better army than the desert. It reigns supreme over all military strategy and over every army. And those who try to conquer it will be conquered themselves for their pains. Not even an atomic bomb can defeat the desert. Nothing can. There’s no question of humans taming it. You can’t tame the desert. It tames you. If it moves, you move with it. Sand. It takes you with it everywhere. Desert Storm. What foolishness that the engines of war ignore the force they’re trying to mime. The sand is like an archangel. It’s the protector. How is it possible that those who know the desert never go mad? When you grow up in the desert, there’s a way of being in the world that makes you superior to all invaders. No one can play at being an invader here. Even if there were orchards, paved roads, police sirens, nursing homes, and beautiful swimming pools in the desert, even if the entire life of the north took root here, even if its appearance was completely different, nothing would come of it. The desert lies beneath it all, deep, too deep to be stanched. No power, no intelligence, can change the rules that govern this land. It’s the desert. It moves in the depths, not on the surface. Like the depths of the ocean that can’t be conquered. Like the winds that bring El Niño back to the plains, it’s a shapeshifting, only of earth. The wind and the desert have the same nature. The desert is supple. It won’t let life assert its hold. If you suppress it in one place, it grows in another. To be of the desert. To be that is to understand this. And all the prisoners here know that if you suppress the desert, its billions of sequins will fly off to a new home.