Crack

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I found nothing to add, and I wondered what Mohammed Bouazizi had felt at the moment when the photograph Bilel had shown me was taken. Was he in pain? Could he hear? Was he aware of the people gathered around him? Had he sunk into painless, comforting dreams—or into a black, voiceless coma?

Bilel recognized someone waving at him from two tables away and stood up, inviting me to join them. I declined with a vague flick of the hand. In the ashtray before me, the cigarette butts lay curled and shriveled like the corpses of worms. I noticed Suhail had left his beer almost untouched, and I began to finish it in slow, scattered gulps. Then, I began listening to the music coming from the stage. It was a surprising rock piece, devoid of electric guitar, where the harshness of the drumbeats melded with the stretched, snowy sighs of the violins ; carried by a melancholy voice that at times plunged into rift-like darkness, then surged into vulnerable brightness—and I gladly felt the voluptuous gravity of the bass vibrate under my skin. Across the room, the bartender served customers with fluid, precise movements, unconsciously performing a choreography in sync with the music's rythm. I watched the partygoers with a mix of envy and dread, as a sensory void gradually spread through me, and I began nodding my head stupidly. I slowly surrendered to the thrilling pulses ; the desire to join the dancers swelled inside me like bubbling magma—finally, I sprang forward. For the first time in my life, I felt the joy of throwing my limbs into the rhythm of the music, letting myself be possessed by the erratic pulse of the instruments that resonated inside my chest and through the fibers of my muscles. I had left my body. And yet, I was nothing but that now—a bundle of nerves charged with electric jolts. No more than a skeleton shaken by a song, a mound of sand lifted by a gust of wind.

As I reached the stage, I found myself face-to-face with the singer: a strangely tall and thin woman with hollow temples, her face covered by a mask of beaded threads that twitched sharply, reflecting the pink lights of the spotlights ; a rain of dawn seemed to pour down her face. Her thick eyebrows, partially revealed through the veils of swaying pearls before her eyes ; her graceful undulations suddenly shifting into brutal hip thrusts ; her frail, trembling voice plunging at times into ferocious abysses—all instilled a magnetically confusing doubt: was this creature a man? But what truly mesmerized me was her vacant gaze, utterly disconnected from the audience. As she drew out those perfectly opaque syllables with a voice both technical and languid, she seemed to hover in some splendid elsewhere. I stared at her distant eyes, her skin blending into the bluish haze of stage smoke, paralyzed in an animal-like rapture.

And then everything shifted. I saw Suhail, just a few meters from me, dancing in front of a boy who smiled at him idiotically. He was tall, unbearably handsome. Multicolored lights slid rapidly across their faces ; droplets of sweat ran down their cheeks. Their eyes never left each other, and a dreadful complicity throbbed between them. I felt a glacial, metallic typhoon rip through me from the inside. Alone and frozen in the middle of the crowd, I collapsed inward, as if into a cosmic, nauseating void. Then, our eyes met. Suhail faced me, briefly startled ; then his expression swiftly recomposed. He gave me an affable, questioning smile, whose falseness was almost imperceptible. I wanted to close my eyes, to dissolve into a silent scream. A careless dancer bumped into me hard, nearly knocking me over. The musical pulses, suddenly brutal, pounded my brain with mechanical blows. Forcing my way through the moving, suffocating labyrinth of the blind crowd, I reached the nearest terrace, breathless.

Once the door closed, the roar of the party was reduced to muffled thumps, half-drowned by the dull murmur of the waves and the wind. The violence of the lights and the profusion of bodies had given way to the melancholic, shimmering emptiness of the nocturnal sea, on whose surface danced indistinct, aqueous stars. But the landscape brought me no peace. An invisible hand was methodically strangling me; a swarm of needles whirled in my skull, buzzing as they tore through my brain, drawing from it a thick dew of hatred, disgust, and shame. I panted in panic, imagining with horrifying clarity Suhail kissing the boy, making love to him. I would have sacrificed so much to be someone else, to be one of those cool and attractive guys—and yet, deep down, I despised them all. Thoughts of violence flared in my mind, staggering and fleeting as lightning. I wanted to slam my skull with all my strength against the railing to ease the pain. But gradually, as I fought stubbornly against this perverse distress, the rage and terror began to fade. I then noticed Nour a few meters away, leaning against a wall; she was watching me with an expression both concerned and distant. I gave her an insincere smile.