Chapter Three
Amin, Amin. She used to love repeating my name. She would press her lips against my cheek while uttering the first syllable, then raise them to pronounce the second, then the first, then the second… I’d begun to walk now, as if in a trance, my mind floating upon a stream of memories, and I repeated my name to myself, as if to recover the old intoxication. But the voice of Sumaya, which I’d imagined was calling me, evoked the ghost of my father from the dust of oblivion – from that forgetfulness with which love armed itself against my other life experiences. Love had practically effaced every trace left in my mind of my relatives and my many friends. Whenever a wave from the past overcame me, it came carrying various images of the same woman: as she caresses me and scolds me,
