Her voice gentle, she continues: “That peacock feather is haunting me.” She picks a few flakes of peeling paint from the wall with her nails. “It has haunted me from the beginning, from the first time I had that nightmare. That nightmare I told you about the other day, the child harassing me in my dream, telling me that he knew my biggest secret. That dream made me afraid to go to sleep. But the dream gradually wormed its way into my waking hours as well… I used to hear the child’s voice in my belly. All the time. Wherever I was. At the baths, in the kitchen, in the street… The child would be talking to me. Harassing me. Demanding the feather…” She licks the tip of her nail, turned blue by the remnants of paint. “In those moments all I cared about was making it cease. But how? I prayed for a miscarriage. So I could lose that bloody child once and for all! All of you thought I was simply suffering the same neuroses as most pregnant women. But no. What I am about to tell you is the truth… what the child said was the truth… what he knew was the truth. That child knew my secret. He was my secret. My secret truth! So I decided to strangle him between my legs, as I gave birth. That’s why I wouldn’t push. If they hadn’t knocked me out with opium, the child would have suffocated in my belly. But the child was born. I was so relieved when I regained consciousness and saw that it wasn’t a boy-as in my dream-but a girl! A girl would never betray me, I thought to myself. I know you must be dying to find out my secret.” She turns around. Lifts her head to look at the green curtain and slithers toward the man like a snake. As she reaches his feet she tries to meet his vacant eyes. “Because that child was not yours!” She falls silent, impatient to see her man finally crack. As always, no reaction, none whatsoever. So she becomes bold enough to say, “Yes, my sang-e saboor, those two girls are not yours!” She sits up. “And do you know why? Because you were the infertile one. Not me!” She leans against the wall, at the corner to the hiding place, looking in the same direction as the man, toward the door. “Everyone thought it was me who was infertile. Your mother wanted you to take another wife. And what would have happened to me? I would have become like my aunt. And it was exactly then that I miraculously bumped into her. She was sent by God to show me the way.” Her eyes are closed. A smile full of secrets pulls at the corners of her mouth. “So I told your mother that there was a great hakim who worked miracles with this kind of problem. You know the story… but not the truth! Anyway, she came with me to meet him and receive amulets from him. I remember it as if it were yesterday. All the things I had to hear from your mother’s mouth on the way. She called me every name under the sun. She was yelling, telling me over and over that this was my last chance. She spent a lot of cash that day, I can tell you. And then I visited the hakim several times, until I fell pregnant. As if by magic! But you know what, that hakim was just my aunt’s pimp. He mated me with a guy they had blindfolded. They locked us up together in the pitch dark. The man wasn’t allowed to talk to me or touch me… and in any case, we were never naked. We just pulled down our pants, that’s all. He must have been young. Very young and strong. But seemingly short of experience. It was up to me to touch him, up to me to decide exactly when he should penetrate me. I had to teach him everything, him too!… Power over another’s body can be a lovely thing, but that first day it was horrible. Both of us were very anxious, terrified. I didn’t want him to think I was a whore, so I was as stiff as a board. And the poor man was so intimidated and frightened that he couldn’t get it up! Nothing happened. We kept far away from each other, all we could hear was our jerky breathing. I cracked. I screamed. They got me out of the room… and I spent the whole day vomiting! I wanted to give up. But it was too late. The following sessions got better and better. And yet I still used to cry, after each one. I felt guilty… I hated the whole world, and I cursed you-you and your family! And to top it all, at night I had to sleep with you! The funniest thing was that after I fell pregnant, your mother was endlessly going off to see the hakim, to get amulets for all her little problems.” A dull laugh rumbles in her chest. “Oh, my sang-e saboor, when it’s hard to be a woman, it becomes hard to be a man, too!” A long sigh struggles out of her body. She sinks back into her thoughts. Her dark eyes roll. Her ever-paler lips start moving, murmuring something like a prayer. Suddenly, she starts talking in a strangely solemn voice: “If all religion is to do with revelation, the revelation of a truth, then, my sang-e saboor, our story is a religion too! Our very own religion!” She starts pacing. “Yes, the body is our revelation.” She stops. “Our own bodies, their secrets, their wounds, their pain, their pleasures…” She rushes at the man, radiant, as if she holds the truth in her hands and is giving it to him. “Yes, my sang-e saboor… do you know the ninety-ninth, which is to say the last name of God? It’s Al-Sabur, the Patient! Look at you; you are God. You exist, and do not move. You hear, and do not speak. You see, and cannot be seen! Like God, you are patient, immobile. And I am your messenger! Your prophet! I am your voice! Your gaze! Your hands! I reveal you! Al-Sabur!” She draws the green curtain completely aside. And in a single movement turns around, flings her arms wide as if addressing an audience, and cries, “Behold the Revelation, Al-Sabur!” Her hand designates the man, her man with the vacant gaze, looking out into the void.

She is quite carried away by this revelation. Beside herself, she takes a step forward to continue her speech, but a hand, behind her, reaches out and grabs her wrist. She turns round. It’s the man, her man, who has taken hold of her. She doesn’t move. Thunderstruck. Mouth gaping. Words hanging. He stands up suddenly, stiff and dry, like a rock lifted in a single movement.

“It’s… it’s a miracle! It’s the Resurrection!” she says in a voice strangled by terror. “I knew my secrets would bring you back to life, back to me… I knew it…” The man pulls her toward him, grabs her hair, and dashes her head against the wall. She falls. She does not cry out, or weep. “It’s happening… you’re exploding!” Her crazed eyes shine through her wild hair. “My sang-e saboor is exploding!” she shouts with a bitter laugh. “Al-Sabur!” she cries, closing her eyes. “Thank you, Al-Sabur! I am finally released from my suffering,” and embraces the man’s feet.

The man, his face haggard and wan, grabs hold of the woman again, lifts her up, and throws her against the wall where the khanjar and the photo are hanging. He moves closer, grabs her again, heaves her up against the wall. The woman looks at him ecstatically. Her head is touching the khanjar. Her hand snatches it. She screams and drives it into the man’s heart. There is not a drop of blood.

The man, still stiff and cold, grabs the woman by the hair, drags her along the floor to the middle of the room. Again he bangs her head against the floor, and then, brusquely, wrings her neck.

The woman breathes out.

The man breathes in.

The woman closes her eyes.

The man’s eyes remain wild.

Someone knocks at the door.

The man-with the khanjar deep in his heart-lies down on his mattress at the foot of the wall, facing his photo.

The woman is scarlet. Scarlet with her own blood.

Someone comes into the house.

The woman slowly opens her eyes.

The breeze rises, sending the migrating birds into flight over her body.