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Authors: Ahlem Mosteghanemi
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themselves.’
This man was astounding. His words were as unsettling as his silence, his logic was as complex as it was simple, and his answers were nothing but the outlines to more questions.
And although he left me no room to ask him any ‘normal’ questions, I discovered that, by the laws of his own logic, I could legitimately corner him and draw him into telling truths that could only be extracted from him in an upside down, backwards sort of way.
So, a bit sarcastically, I said, ‘You’re a man who tries to get other people to ask questions in reverse. So, would you have the guts to answer my questions?’
‘Well,’ he replied with a playful defiance, ‘that depends on how smart you are!’
So, upping the ante, I asked my first question: ‘What name would you have liked to have?’
His reply bowled me over: ‘The name you chose for me in your book suits me quite well.’ He giggled as he said it.
I couldn’t believe my ears. What he’d said meant that he knew who I was. But who was he to be talking to me as though he’d just stepped out of a story I’d written?
‘I haven’t chosen a name for you yet!’ I retorted playfully.
‘So be it,’ he quipped back. ‘It’s fine with me to remain nameless!’
‘But,’ I admitted, ‘this bothers me. Can’t you take off your cloak of mystery for just a little while?’
‘Only love strips us naked, Madame!’
‘Am I to understand from this that you aren’t in love?’
I could see my question dangling from his silence. So I posed it in a different way: ‘Has love ever stripped you naked?’
‘It did happen once. After that, I put on my disappointment, and I haven’t taken it off since.’
With girlish triumph, I said, ‘So, there’s no woman in your life?’
‘Madame,’ he replied, ‘how much silence do I need to answer your questions?’
What I was supposed to understand him to mean was, ‘Madame, how much patience do I need to put up with your nosiness?’ or perhaps, ‘. . . to answer your stupid questions?’
It wasn’t this politely worded insult that drew me up short, but, rather, a certain polite word he’d used.
‘Why do you call me “Madame”?’ I asked. ‘Who told you I was married?’
He smiled and said, ‘There are women who were born to be addressed with this title, and to call them anything else would be an insult to their womanhood!’
Before I had a chance to take satisfaction in his reply, he continued, ‘Apart from that, your marital status doesn’t matter to me any more.’
The way he’d worded his last statement took me by surprise. It seemed to conceal precedents of some sort, or something he wanted to divulge.
‘Why do you say “any more”?’ I asked.
‘Did I really say that?’ he replied mischievously, answering my question with a question.
Then he said nothing more.
It was obvious that he knew something about me. The worrying thing was that I still didn’t know anything about him. So I decided to carry on with the challenge, adopting his own topsy-turvy method of posing questions.
I said, ‘I’ve never met anybody like you in this city. So I’m curious to know what city lives in you.’
As though he’d divined the aim behind my question, he retorted, ‘My answer to a question like that won’t do you any good. Like authors who live in one city in order to write about another, I live in one city so that I can love another, and when I leave it, I don’t know which of the two cities had been living in me, and which of them I’d been living in. At present, I’m a vacant flat. I left Constantine for love, and she left me out of disappointment!’
‘Are you from Constantine? That’s strange. I thought you were from somewhere else.’
‘Let’s say I am.’
‘So, what kind of work do you do? I mean, what would you have liked to be?’
Chuckling at the way I’d rephrased the question and the sarcastic tone in which I’d corrected myself, he said, ‘Actually, I wanted to
This man was astounding. His words were as unsettling as his silence, his logic was as complex as it was simple, and his answers were nothing but the outlines to more questions.
And although he left me no room to ask him any ‘normal’ questions, I discovered that, by the laws of his own logic, I could legitimately corner him and draw him into telling truths that could only be extracted from him in an upside down, backwards sort of way.
So, a bit sarcastically, I said, ‘You’re a man who tries to get other people to ask questions in reverse. So, would you have the guts to answer my questions?’
‘Well,’ he replied with a playful defiance, ‘that depends on how smart you are!’
So, upping the ante, I asked my first question: ‘What name would you have liked to have?’
His reply bowled me over: ‘The name you chose for me in your book suits me quite well.’ He giggled as he said it.
I couldn’t believe my ears. What he’d said meant that he knew who I was. But who was he to be talking to me as though he’d just stepped out of a story I’d written?
‘I haven’t chosen a name for you yet!’ I retorted playfully.
‘So be it,’ he quipped back. ‘It’s fine with me to remain nameless!’
‘But,’ I admitted, ‘this bothers me. Can’t you take off your cloak of mystery for just a little while?’
‘Only love strips us naked, Madame!’
‘Am I to understand from this that you aren’t in love?’
I could see my question dangling from his silence. So I posed it in a different way: ‘Has love ever stripped you naked?’
‘It did happen once. After that, I put on my disappointment, and I haven’t taken it off since.’
With girlish triumph, I said, ‘So, there’s no woman in your life?’
‘Madame,’ he replied, ‘how much silence do I need to answer your questions?’
What I was supposed to understand him to mean was, ‘Madame, how much patience do I need to put up with your nosiness?’ or perhaps, ‘. . . to answer your stupid questions?’
It wasn’t this politely worded insult that drew me up short, but, rather, a certain polite word he’d used.
‘Why do you call me “Madame”?’ I asked. ‘Who told you I was married?’
He smiled and said, ‘There are women who were born to be addressed with this title, and to call them anything else would be an insult to their womanhood!’
Before I had a chance to take satisfaction in his reply, he continued, ‘Apart from that, your marital status doesn’t matter to me any more.’
The way he’d worded his last statement took me by surprise. It seemed to conceal precedents of some sort, or something he wanted to divulge.
‘Why do you say “any more”?’ I asked.
‘Did I really say that?’ he replied mischievously, answering my question with a question.
Then he said nothing more.
It was obvious that he knew something about me. The worrying thing was that I still didn’t know anything about him. So I decided to carry on with the challenge, adopting his own topsy-turvy method of posing questions.
I said, ‘I’ve never met anybody like you in this city. So I’m curious to know what city lives in you.’
As though he’d divined the aim behind my question, he retorted, ‘My answer to a question like that won’t do you any good. Like authors who live in one city in order to write about another, I live in one city so that I can love another, and when I leave it, I don’t know which of the two cities had been living in me, and which of them I’d been living in. At present, I’m a vacant flat. I left Constantine for love, and she left me out of disappointment!’
‘Are you from Constantine? That’s strange. I thought you were from somewhere else.’
‘Let’s say I am.’
‘So, what kind of work do you do? I mean, what would you have liked to be?’
Chuckling at the way I’d rephrased the question and the sarcastic tone in which I’d corrected myself, he said, ‘Actually, I wanted to
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