Free Chaos of the Senses by Ahlem Mosteghanemi Page B

I’d fallen under the sway of love in all its insanity, and I began conversing with him outside the bounds of logic.
    ‘But I don’t know anything about you,’ I said.
    ‘That makes it all the nicer.’
    ‘And all you know about me is whatever illusions you harbour about muslin.’
    ‘It doesn’t matter.’
    ‘Do you believe you can keep the trains from whistling inside me?’
    ‘Absolutely.’
    ‘And do you think it will be easy for us to be lovers at a time like this that’s so opposed to love?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘But we’re headed for a romantic involvement . . .’
    ‘Quite necessarily, Madame!’
    By the time I’d gathered my astonishment-scattered wits to say something else, he was signalling for the waiter to bring the bill and call us a taxi.
    Within minutes we were headed for a farewell when we were still approaching love’s door.
    Like my voice, his cologne wasn’t high-pitched this time.
    ‘When will we see each other?’ I asked.
    ‘I’ll call you,’ he said.
    He left me no room for anything but an exclamation mark.
    ‘Call me? How?’
    ‘Don’t worry. I know everything.’
    ‘But . . .’
    ‘I know.’
    As the taxi descended with us towards Constantine’s usual noisy bustle, we, with one bend in the road after another, were climbing love’s steep mountain path, whose silence grew ever deeper as we ascended.
    Then suddenly, as we were waiting at a traffic light, he asked the driver to let him out. As I looked on in amazement, he handed him a note and told him my exact address, instructing him to deliver me to my doorstep. He leaned towards me as though he were going to plant a kiss on my cheek. Instead, he whispered in my ear, ‘It’s better for us not to come all the way back together. It’s safer for you this way.’ As an afterthought, he added, ‘I’ll miss you.’
    Then he got out, leaving me in a state of stunned surprise.
    * * *
    It was love, then. This was the way it always presented its credentials.
    In a state of emotional fluidity, along would come a man against whose directness and unpretentiousness I’d taken no precautions. I’d reassure myself that nothing was in the offing, since he wasn’t that handsome or charming. Then, when I was least expecting it, he would say something confusing that no man had ever said before, and suddenly he would become the most important of them all.
    It was usually when I was in a state of bewildered amazement over him that catastrophe would strike. After all, love is nothing but being struck by the thunderbolt of surprise!
    So here it was again, going away and leaving me hanging on question marks. I found myself in a state I’d never experienced before. As I got out of the car, a mix of peculiar sensations suddenly came over me and I rushed into the house as innocently as a woman who’s just come back from a shopping trip or a visit, not from a tryst in an unknown location with a man she doesn’t know but who knows her!
    I closed the door to my room and hurriedly took off my black dress as though I were trying to cast off an accusation.
    I sat down on the edge of my bed: exhausted, scattered, my eyes darting to and fro. I was trying to understand exactly what had happened to me, to recall everything that man had said over the past hour and a half. I wanted to recover all the details of our conversation, in the course of which he hadn’t asked me more than one or two questions whereas I had plied him with one question after another. But my interrogation of him had been to no avail, since I’d ended up with even more questions than before, among them: Who could this man be? Where had he got all that information? How did he know my address?
    Logically speaking, of course, I should have known a lot more about him than he did about me if he was nothing but a character out of a story I’d written.
    However, my creativity had been reduced to nothing but attempts at outsmarting him now that I’d discovered my ‘other’ story as