I did not find it hard to put myself in Ali's place, to imagine what he must have felt. I saw him struggling with the suspicions running through his mind, questioning himself. Something had happened, but what? He admitted that he searched constantly for the root of the misunderstanding: a careless word, an inappropriate gesture, a joke in poor taste, a lack of attention, some failure on his part. He continually replayed the last few years of their relationship. There had been no obvious drama, mishap, or misunderstanding. Their friendship had been open and transparent. They told each other everything, confided their secrets in each other. So why this harsh about-face? I think they did not have the same perception of things, that clear divergences existed, but they never brought them up. The story about the apartment was just a pretext. Mamed's wife could never have influenced him to that extent.

Ali had spent three years pondering the cause of this inexplicable breakup. The way he explained it to himself was that Mamed had changed. Time and distance might have played their role in the wear and tear on their relationship. He clung to the image of his friend as a man of his word, a faithful friend, but decided that Mamed had taken another path in life, discovered new horizons, and didn't want to be bound by a relationship that reminded him of his youth and adolescence. Maybe he thought of their friendship as a book he had read too many times. Now it was time to start a new one.

Each time, Ali found the beginning of an explanation but was unable to follow it to the end of the argument. He had heard a story about two Egyptian friends, writers who had chosen to use the same pseudonym. They were so inseparable that people called them twins. They were different but melded together by a bond that had been severely tested in Nasser 's political prisons. When they married, they managed to persuade their spouses that their friendship was sacred, even more important than their conjugal lives. But the Egyptians' story was an exception. The reason they were used as examples was that complete harmony reigned between their families.

Whenever Mamed felt well enough, he worked on his posthumous letter to Ali. As soon as his wife was away and his father was asleep, he wrote. This letter was immensely important to him. Even his illness was eclipsed while he wrote to his friend. When he was writing, he felt better. His ideas were clear. Two doctor friends came to see him from time to time, and told funny stories to cheer him up. They left as soon as they saw that he was tired. They were the jokers among his old gang at medical school. They loved risque stories, and they never ran out of steamy gossip. I no longer felt like telling jokes. I was at Mamed's disposal. I spent hours with him. I didn't ask him anything; I read crime fiction. I kept thinking about this friendship that was ending in drama, and I realized that I had never had a close friend.

One morning, Mamed asked Ghita to bring the children to see him. Ghita called me. It was a Monday in winter, and the sun was shining.

Mamed wanted to speak to the children. Yanis and Adil were conscious of the gravity of the occasion. They held each other's hands, not allowing themselves to cry. "Come here, so I can kiss you both. Stick together no matter what. Take care of each other. Life is beautiful, life awaits you. Be confident, and generous. Do not humiliate or bring shame on anyone. Stick up for yourselves. Go now. Be happy!"

Ghita cried. Mamed put his hands on her eyes. Night entered his room, never to leave it.

Mamed was buried in the cemetery of the Mujahideen, the freedom fighters. It was a simple grave, under a tree. Ali was among the crowd of mourners, one man among many others. His sorrow was immense. He felt alone. I decided not to disturb him.

IV

The Letter

Ali,

I have been carrying this letter within me for years. I have read it and reread it, without actually writing it. From the day when I first grasped the seriousness of my illness, I wanted to spare you. You will find my attitude strange, and probably unfair. It took us more than thirty years to construct our friendship, and I did not want sickness, suffering, and unhappiness to destroy it. You see, I'm your friend, and I did for you what I would have liked you to do for me, had a fatal illness had the temerity to attack you.

I had this idea when I was at my lowest, at a time when I had not yet realized that death is part of life, and that when we leave life, we should not punish those who survive us. I knew better than most that death is really the illness, not the actual moment when everything stops. What is death? The long days, the interminable nights of insomnia, when pain bores its mark into your body until you lose consciousness. The hours waiting in a hospital room until someone calls you for an examination. Death is the test results, the numbers, the speculation about the unknown. Death is the silence, the frightening abyss we watch approaching us.

I could not spare my wife and children this grief. But I could spare you, simply by provoking an argument, by questioning your honesty, which I knew to be your most sensitive point. I needed to push you away, to cast you aside, with your suspicions, your questions, your extreme sensitivity, your sense of injustice. By detaching you from our friendship, I was pushing you away from my death, hoping you could turn the page.

I suspected that this strategy would not work as well as I had planned. I had foreseen that you would resist, that you would try to find out what was really happening, and do everything you could to understand the torment in your heart. I knew you were deeply hurt, and that you would not give up easily. This is precisely what I feared. Your intelligence and the strength of your conviction could make my plan fail. Above all, I wanted to avoid having to share my death with you, because I know what you are like. You would have been there, living through every moment of the progression of this damn disease; you would have been at my side, waiting with me to the end; and I would have had to read the approach of the darkness in your eyes. You were a mirror I could not bear to look into, out of weakness, wounded pride, and, I have to confess, perhaps out of a terrible jealousy unworthy of our friendship. Your face would have been there between sickness and death, at the frontier of the abyss. I would have seen the beginning of the end in your eyes. Do you remember that Humphrey Bogart film? You're the one who explained to me that the "Big Sleep" is death, and because of this, the film was unintelligible, although it was superb.

Now I am lying in a bed that is slowly turning into a tomb, and I know you are right.

Together we shared intense moments, especially when we were in the hands of the imbecile military officials, who spoke bad French, because they could not speak to us any other way, and that was all part of the humiliation their superiors wanted to inflict on us. You were strong because you understood and refused to submit. We complemented each other. I had a big mouth. I knew how to talk back, to fight if necessary. You withstood blows, too, but you weren't able to return them. You were the cerebral one; I was the physical one. Actually, I was both, but in these circumstances, I preferred to flex my muscle. We were dealing with brutes, who understood only the language of brutes.

Our friendship has been a beautiful journey. Neither of us has ever done anything petty, unworthy, or mediocre. We took great care in our relationship, cultivating our friendship openly, without ambiguity, without lies. When our wives appeared, there was a moment when we wavered, but we both hung on. They had a hard time accepting the strength of our friendship. There were some crises. They could never understand that our bond could sometimes be stronger than the bond we felt with our families. Jealousy is a banal sentiment, but normal. We just need to understand it, and not be surprised when it bursts into flame.