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Authors: Hassan Blasim
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die of hunger. No, no. In the kitchen there’s a pan of soup on the table. I don’t know if he’d like last night’s soup, and besides, there’s bread on the table too if he wants it...
‘I suddenly had a horrendous attack of hysteria and started pounding on the door and screaming for help. Every now and then I would check the reaction of the damned wolf through the hole. Where are the neighbours? Have they had wolves as well? No, no, I can’t possibly die here in the bathroom. I thought it would be better to be eaten by the wolf than to die in this horrible way and not be eaten! I was looking in the mirror and going over my fears to myself. Perhaps I could wrestle with the wolf and make good my escape. Perhaps he would just wound me. And even if he bit an entire arm off that would be better than rotting to death in the bathroom. I splashed water on my face, brushed my teeth and examined my reflection for more than a quarter of an hour. I kicked the wall, raving and cursing. Then I had an idea: why not open the door, throw the towel at it and see how far I get? But, brave guy, what if the wolf pounces instantly and you can’t escape? I did another round of shouting and banging on the walls, hammering on them with the shampoo bottles until they broke. Then I collapsed on top of the toilet seat again. I cupped my hands and drank water from the sink, then burst out crying. I threw myself on the cold tile floor and curled up like someone with a religious zeal to disappear from this world.
‘Late on the second night, I decided to put an end to this nonsense. Either he ate me or I would eat him myself. I felt an amazing energy, driven by my thirst for revenge. I would tear apart this worthless, cowardly wolf. I would cut him up and roast his flesh, and his head too. Fuck that! I opened the bathroom door ever so slowly. The wolf jumped to its feet. I ran with all my strength and leapt towards it. The last thing I remember was when the wolf leapt towards me.
‘It was a cold and frightening darkness. Solid darkness. The only thing that helped me in the emptiness was remembering what happened in those last moments, although the horror of having my body disappear paralyzed my attempt to be patient and to await the mercy of God in that darkness. What I had thought is that, when you die, no thread of memory survives, no awareness of the life you lived; quite the opposite of what happened in my case. Although death, as absolute nothingness, is no more than an assumption. I wanted to shout out to ask for help but I didn’t know where my mouth was or even how I could shout. What was the mechanism or the motions I had to perform in order to shout? How could I work out where my foot was, or how could I find my hair to touch it? Was I dead? The problem with that darkness was not that you couldn’t remember what it was like to perform some action or other. The trouble was that, in the sea of darkness, you lose the means to perform it. You remember how to look, for example, but you no longer have the tools that make it possible to look. At the same time, I felt that I still existed as a small point of consciousness somewhere in the world. I don’t know how long this lasted. The small point expanded. The breathing, and a sense that my skin was somehow warm, began to come back, slowly at first but at a rate that gradually accelerated.
‘Apparently I had hit my head on the edge of the small nightstand and lost consciousness. I bled a little. There wasn’t any wolf in the flat. It had vanished as if into thin air. The flat door was closed and only the bathroom door was open. I put on a shirt and took my mobile phone from the pocket of my trousers, which lay on the floor close to where the wolf had been before it disappeared. Rather warily, I wandered around the rooms. There was no one at home but me. I sat down on the edge of the sofa and turned on the television. There was a repeat of the Oscars award ceremony. Brad Pitt
‘I suddenly had a horrendous attack of hysteria and started pounding on the door and screaming for help. Every now and then I would check the reaction of the damned wolf through the hole. Where are the neighbours? Have they had wolves as well? No, no, I can’t possibly die here in the bathroom. I thought it would be better to be eaten by the wolf than to die in this horrible way and not be eaten! I was looking in the mirror and going over my fears to myself. Perhaps I could wrestle with the wolf and make good my escape. Perhaps he would just wound me. And even if he bit an entire arm off that would be better than rotting to death in the bathroom. I splashed water on my face, brushed my teeth and examined my reflection for more than a quarter of an hour. I kicked the wall, raving and cursing. Then I had an idea: why not open the door, throw the towel at it and see how far I get? But, brave guy, what if the wolf pounces instantly and you can’t escape? I did another round of shouting and banging on the walls, hammering on them with the shampoo bottles until they broke. Then I collapsed on top of the toilet seat again. I cupped my hands and drank water from the sink, then burst out crying. I threw myself on the cold tile floor and curled up like someone with a religious zeal to disappear from this world.
‘Late on the second night, I decided to put an end to this nonsense. Either he ate me or I would eat him myself. I felt an amazing energy, driven by my thirst for revenge. I would tear apart this worthless, cowardly wolf. I would cut him up and roast his flesh, and his head too. Fuck that! I opened the bathroom door ever so slowly. The wolf jumped to its feet. I ran with all my strength and leapt towards it. The last thing I remember was when the wolf leapt towards me.
‘It was a cold and frightening darkness. Solid darkness. The only thing that helped me in the emptiness was remembering what happened in those last moments, although the horror of having my body disappear paralyzed my attempt to be patient and to await the mercy of God in that darkness. What I had thought is that, when you die, no thread of memory survives, no awareness of the life you lived; quite the opposite of what happened in my case. Although death, as absolute nothingness, is no more than an assumption. I wanted to shout out to ask for help but I didn’t know where my mouth was or even how I could shout. What was the mechanism or the motions I had to perform in order to shout? How could I work out where my foot was, or how could I find my hair to touch it? Was I dead? The problem with that darkness was not that you couldn’t remember what it was like to perform some action or other. The trouble was that, in the sea of darkness, you lose the means to perform it. You remember how to look, for example, but you no longer have the tools that make it possible to look. At the same time, I felt that I still existed as a small point of consciousness somewhere in the world. I don’t know how long this lasted. The small point expanded. The breathing, and a sense that my skin was somehow warm, began to come back, slowly at first but at a rate that gradually accelerated.
‘Apparently I had hit my head on the edge of the small nightstand and lost consciousness. I bled a little. There wasn’t any wolf in the flat. It had vanished as if into thin air. The flat door was closed and only the bathroom door was open. I put on a shirt and took my mobile phone from the pocket of my trousers, which lay on the floor close to where the wolf had been before it disappeared. Rather warily, I wandered around the rooms. There was no one at home but me. I sat down on the edge of the sofa and turned on the television. There was a repeat of the Oscars award ceremony. Brad Pitt
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