Anouar Rahmani's Official Website

Chapter One of my first novel, published in 2016 and subsequently banned in Algeria. This text revisits the story of Mother Mary through a radical shift: imagining her as an Algerian woman, devoid of sanctity. The question is no longer divine election, but survival under patriarchy. written and translated from Arabic to English by Anouar Rahmani

She shook the tree trunk with the strength of a girl desperate to live, but nothing fell, only the ominous fate, as she tried to give birth to a mirror that resembled her, to throw it into the sterile valley, to hide her wasted honor and the family’s poisonous words.

She kept clutching it, gritting her teeth, screaming and crying violently, clawing at her thighs, wrestling with fate in children’s tears and saliva dripping from her mouth as she lost control of her glands. She wanted to expel this great guilt quickly, to satisfy the higher will of a filthy society.

Her heartbeat irregularly, fast, then slow, touching the sensitivities of a tragic scene forged by social hypocrisy: within her, around her, and in everything erased in between. A tragic scene, shaped by the thoughts she secretly carried in her head, a head condemned to imagine nothing but the contours of an unknown future, where perhaps she could forget this living present that made her give birth to her first child in the woods, under the tree, just as Mary did in the Qur’an, at the age of fifteen.

Her black skirt, dirty shoes, and sad face, stained with the ugliness of this painful memory, were witnesses to a crime: the martyrdom of childhood.

She gripped the tree trunk with one hand and the dirt with the other, throwing it and screaming, “Get out, get out!” The fetus did not understand. He stalled her while she screamed in pain. She pushed him hard as he clung to her insides, unwilling to fall into the well of this terrifying world he had already heard too much about while swimming inside her. She clenched her teeth as if biting through the pain, pushing until a ray of his voice pierced the outer world. His eyes caught sunlight sneaking through the cedar branches, and his head opened the gate of life, creating a smooth, sticky music at the threshold of that deep house—his feet striking like hammers, driving nails into her coffin, the one she had wished for so desperately, but in vain.

When the last toe emerged, and the birth was complete, he cried out—hating his human fate, hating the breath of hypocrisy that filled this great ‘nation’. Maria held him in her trembling hands, gazing at him with overwhelming joy and unbearable sorrow, a terrible contradiction etched across her face. Her wide smile only deepened the confusion, as tears dug into her skin, carving out a single question: “Why is this happening to me now?”

She held him to her small chest and walked gently toward the valley, still gazing, holding. She didn’t dare throw him away. She didn’t want to. But she had to. If she brought him back to her family, they would both die.

She didn’t have time to give him a name. All she could see in him was the word scandal. Even maternal instinct quickly reduced to zero, stripped of meaning by society’s oppression. The survival instinct overpowered the maternal one. And if she truly carried two instincts within her, one longing to be the mother of future children, and the other to be the mother of this one child without ever being allowed to keep him, they were now locked in a silent war.

She took off her shoes, holding her fetus stained with puerperal blood, and continued walking toward the valley. She stood for a while, looked at her reflection in the water to make sure it was really her and not someone else, then cried for the last time. She sat on the edge of a rock, in front of her some scattered spikelets stirred by a breeze that seemed indifferent to Maria’s fate, the same breeze that once rejoiced with her, and now did the same, unchanged despite her sorrow.

She kept staring at her newborn son, who had left her the moment he was born. She pulled out her small breast and began nursing him with milk mixed with fear, betrayal, and social oppression. The child sucked greedily, as if he knew it would be the last time he felt his mother’s warmth. And before he could be satisfied, Maria laid him down with sudden detachment, as if even she couldn’t understand why. She placed him atop the rock and stood watching him, crying, screaming, forcing herself to play the role of a cruel, unfeeling mother just to convince herself she could leave him.

She stood there, gazing at him like a general inspecting his army, with all the force and contempt of a commander. She remained as still as an electric pole, motionless in her postpartum state, yet paradoxically full of energy, like a mare in the wild. Though still young, the horror of the moment had summoned within her the full strength of madness and lucidity, an overwhelming detachment from the world.

She imagined him being devoured by wolves. Then she thought of the human wolves she lived among and realized that no beast could harm her child more than society itself. She thought of thieves and strangers, then understood that no one could wound him more than the mother who would abandon him.

She looked at him one final time, then ran away without looking back. His voice grew more distant as tears poured from her eyes, her heart, her lungs, her breasts, her lips, her lust, her soul, her pores—every inch of her. That day, she renounced her nature, her highest instinct, and became a human wolf for the first time in her life, like all the wolves who had made her do it.

The scream and the rock echoed the same rigidity, the same numbness, a pain laced with insensitivity. Her scream soaked into the rock and bloomed from the valley as a grotesque flower of biological betrayal: the image of a baby fighting the air with his hands, driven by a primal reflex of survival. She defied the laws of nature amidst the valley’s green thirst for mineral salts that might one day sprout from the decay of a body left too long in silence.

She had been just a girl who loved to play with others her age. Her adolescence knew only a vague sense of desire, not yet fully formed, not yet corrupted. She had only ever heard words like “shame” and “haram” whispered around her. She always remembered her mother striking her pubis and saying, “This is your honor. This is you. This isn’t yours, it belongs to the family. Never return without it. This is our daughter. Not you.”

Those words stripped her of all sense of childhood. Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind, teaching her to live for something she didn’t understand, something that would later become a weapon of crime.

Before that, Maria had lived in a world dominated by men, and her femininity existed only in innocent games—playing ؛luqaf؛ or ؛ghumiza؛, skipping rope, going to school like every other girl. She welcomed the piece of cloth in the sky they called “honor,” the same cloth that clouded her genitals and bound her with collective shame. She swore by her defeats, walking kilometers to reach school. Still, childhood dreams made even the harshest realities bearable—except the ones forced upon her without consent.

One winter day, like any other, she left school alone. Snow covered the village, and she picked wildflowers along the way. A man pulled up in a car and said, “Maria, are you Si Makhlouf’s daughter?” She replied politely, “Yes, sir.”

“Come with me,” he said, “I’ll take you home.”

Maria sensed something strange in his tone, a malice cloaked in kindness, but her childhood ‘naïveté’ let her step into the car.
“My name is Omar. I’m your father’s friend,” he said. “Don’t you remember? I slaughter sheep during Eid.” She relaxed, vaguely remembering him.
“The road is blocked by snow,” he added, “I’ll need to take another way.”

But his hand began creeping onto her thigh, rough, ugly hands swollen from the cold.

“You’ve grown, my daughter,” he whispered.

Fear engulfed her. She turned her head every which way, hoping he would stop. But he didn’t. He gripped her leg with all his strength, and when the pain was unbearable, she tried to push his hand away, whispering in a voice closer to breath than to sound: “Let go. You’re hurting me.”

On the back seat was a book smeared in oil. The torn pages looked like her thoughts—chaotic, stained. One word stood out: ‘Love..’

 Maria, desperate, imagined a thousand ways to escape. She even considered using the book as a weapon, but it was too light.

He parked the car in a place so godforsaken it felt like even the angels had turned away. Justice didn’t stir.
He stripped her—not violently, but ‘politely’, as if that made it better. He didn’t tear her clothes. He bit her, groaned, and forced himself onto her. She kicked, bit, screamed—but he only grew more excited.

When it was over, he took a handkerchief from his filthy coat and wiped her genitals, as if that could erase what he had done. She cried without sound, watching her bruised vulva breathe in shame. She didn’t even know what rape was, only that something precious—something sacred—was gone.

“Put your clothes on,” he said. “Don’t tell your parents.”

She couldn’t reply. The trauma was too big for words, for thought, for breath. Her dreams were shattered. Her nightmares, born.

On the way back, everything familiar turned alien. There was the tree where she used to play hide and seek. There, the chalk marks from skipping rope. Inside the car, a plastic amulet with a verse from the Quran swayed before the mirror. And Muammar, humming an old song as if nothing had happened—nothing except the annihilation of a girl in bloom.

He dropped her off at home. “Thanks, Muammar,” her father said, smiling. “Society is full of bastards. We’re lucky to have people like you.”
Muammar replied, “It’s my duty.”

Maria stood burning. Her father was thanking the man who raped her. And the rapist, proud of his crime, replied with icy grace: “No thanks for the duty.”

That was the moment Maria understood what society really was. A moment that would never leave her.

Her childhood vanished. Sex lost meaning. Nothing mattered now except hiding her shame from her mother and family. She was reduced to a hymen meant to survive until marriage. “Honor” was no longer hers—it belonged to the patriarchy.

From that night on, Maria couldn’t sleep. The memory of “Si Muammar’s surgery,” as she came to call it, haunted her dreams, colonized her body, and buried her innocence.

She screamed every night, living a nightmare she hadn’t chosen but that had been chosen for her.
Perhaps it was divine destiny that wanted her to suffer like this, or maybe it was the doing of a great novelist named “God,” who knew how to entertain. Maria saw the malice of the society she lived in and understood that her life would be a long struggle—it would not be served to her on a golden platter as she had once imagined.

Her mother called out in her usual fantastical tone, reminding her of her slavery to men:
“Maria, come help me in the kitchen.”

Maria silently wiped away her feelings and went to help, choosing to peel onions so she could cry freely.

Her school days were nothing but silent, sad, and full of fear. She often went to school without combing her hair. She once dreamed of becoming a doctor, but now her only wish was to go back in time and never get in the car with Si Muammar.

In a rare moment of courage, Maria stood before her parents and said, her voice steady with conviction:
“Mom, Dad, I’ve decided to quit school and devote myself to the house.”
Her father smiled:

“May God be pleased with you, my daughter. Thank God you’ve made the right decision.”

She might have rejoiced at her father’s approval, but she remembered she was trapped in despair. Her unhappy adolescence refused to leave her alone.

She looked out the window—its glass clouded by cold and humidity, the frame swollen and no longer able to close—and saw children playing innocently outside.
She touched her lips and cried silently, her tears growing brighter each time the sun broke through the clouds. Then came the nausea. She ran to the bathroom and vomited—the first sign of pregnancy.

Maria wrapped herself in her blue wool shawl and went to her neighbor, Sakina. After a long chat, she asked, smiling to mask her pain:
“Sakina, how does a woman know she’s pregnant in the first few months?”

Sakina laughed loudly. Maria didn’t. She rephrased her question:
“But what are the signs?”
“When you get married, you’ll know,” Sakina replied.
“But I want to know now.”
“There’s nausea and dizziness, among other things,” Sakina said.

Maria stood up and left without saying goodbye. Sakina, confused by her behavior, shrugged and went on singing.

For days, Maria moved through the house like a ghost, speaking to no one, doing only what was asked of her. Then she had an idea—her blind grandfather, who lived alone and whose care rotated among the women of the family. If she went to live with him, she could hide her pregnancy. It would appear as an act of kindness, but in truth, it was her way of covering a crime she never committed—she had simply been at the scene.

She turned to her mother and said, nervously scratching her hair and nose:
“Mom, how about I go live with Grandpa? He needs help, he’s an old man.”
Her mother gasped:

“What’s wrong with you? Are you crazy? You want us to send our virgin daughter to the top of the mountain with a blind old man who can’t defend you?”

“But Mom,” Maria replied, “there’s no one there but the trees and my grandfather.”

Si Makhlouf entered the room:
“What about your blind grandfather?”

“She wants to go live with him,” her mother said angrily.

Makhlouf kissed Maria’s head and said:

“He’s an old man who’s been abandoned by everyone. And you, my daughter, you want to help him? I won’t stop you. Tomorrow morning, I’ll take you to him.”

Maria seized the moment:
“But I want to go now.”
He nodded. Maria accepted.

She quickly packed a few clothes and left with her father for the mountain. The sky there felt close, like the source of her ominous fate. The only eyes that could follow its script were those that could not see.

Her grandfather welcomed her warmly, but soon his orders became endless. Every time he asked for something, Maria would spit toward the sky and get to work, her way of defying the cruel author behind the clouds.

Months passed. Each week, her belly grew. Whenever her family planned to visit, Maria ran to the woods to hide. She tried again and again to miscarry, but the fetus clung to her, clinging to life.

Then, on a miserable and emotionless day, Maria gave birth and left the baby behind.

As she fled the battlefield of her birth, she felt a thread slicing through her heart. The unity of time and space shattered within her; the sky and earth became hollow numbers without meaning. With the umbilical cord still dangling, all she could feel was disbelief. She no longer believed in anything—not family, not tradition, not God.

She arrived back at her grandfather’s house and fainted. He called for milk. She awoke, sobbing. He touched her face and held her in his arms. She cried until sleep took her.

When she awoke at nightfall, she ran to the valley searching for her son, desperate to find him alive. She ran like a madwoman, like a mother who remembered too late. She sniffed the rocks and cried out:
“My son, where are you, my love?”

She returned home, grabbed her grandfather’s old dagger, and headed to the village. She searched for Si Muammar’s house for two hours, then found it—the same car that had carried her to this fate. She climbed into the car, cried, and waited. When he came out to relieve himself like an animal, she crept behind him and slit his throat. His pants tripped him as he bled out into the dirt. She stood over him, watching.

Once she was sure he was dead, she returned home, replaced the dagger, and went to sleep as if nothing had happened. She had just turned sixteen. In one night, she had become a murderer.

She slept as if she hadn’t abandoned her child. As if she hadn’t orphaned him. As if he weren’t perhaps already dead. She slept like a ship adrift on the Dead Sea—silent, still, empty.

She woke at midday, washed her face, combed her hair, and noticed her grandfather hadn’t called for her. She found him motionless on the bed. When she shook him, his cane fell—and with it, so did he. Dead.

Panicked, Maria dashed barefoot down the mountain, the tall trees rustling behind her. She reached her father and said:

“Grandpa is in heaven.”
He said nothing, only covered his eyes so as not to break down. Maria embraced him.

After the funeral, Maria often wandered the forest in search of her son. She never found him. But she never stopped searching. It became her new daily task. And she always smiled. She didn’t ask why she had left him. She hadn’t left a person—she had discarded something that clung to her. It wasn’t even her searching anymore. It was instinct.

Days later, she received a marriage proposal—or more accurately, a legalized rape. A 35-year-old man named Abdel Rahim asked for her hand. Her father accepted without consulting her.

Abdel Rahim was kind. He brought gifts. Maria played the role of a young bride, dressing up, pretending, lifting her bra, wearing fine underwear. She wanted to feel desire again. But she also feared he would discover her past. She wasn’t a virgin. She wasn’t honorable. She wasn’t human in a society of men and cows.

Days before the wedding, her mother gave her a crude lesson in sex. Maria just nodded, pretending to be naïve. But she knew everything. She was not just a bride—she was a mother. She remembered her child. She wanted to heal through Abdel Rahim’s body, but the crime lived in her flesh. She would never make love legally.

Still, she told herself everything would be fine, even though she knew it wouldn’t. Her body said otherwise. Her hair, her heartbeat, her eyes—all betrayed her.

The house buzzed like a town awaiting a dragon’s wedding. Drums shook the walls. Children misbehaved. Girls danced like women, but they didn’t know what a woman truly was.

Maria emerged in her bridal gown, surrounded by music and jealousy. She was stunning. She danced like someone possessed. Her smile was wide. Her makeup made her look ten years older. But inside, she was still a girl. Still grieving. Still hunted.

And then came the final realization:
This wasn’t just a wedding, it was the burial of her past, of her memory, of everything.
She danced because there was nothing left to do.
She smiled, but the smile was a blade.

At that moment, she understood:
God, the society, the novelist in the sky, they were all the same. They were playing with her life.
And she stopped believing.

Why is he afraid of the dead? Why does he long for life? Why is death still death if life fills it? Why is life still life if death kills it?

These unconscious questions detached her from reality. She walked like a machine, pretending to be happy. Women took her by the wrist; others held candles at sunset, carrying his luggage as part of the spiritual rites society used to perform to break the sacred hymen.

Maria got lost in their glances. She had a flashback: her birth, parting from her son Jesus, her grandfather, her childhood games, her mother teaching her the rituals of lust and how to arouse a man. She remembered Abdul Rahim, who loved her sincerely, and to whom she sincerely hid things. She never wanted to lie, but could never tell the truth.

She was led to the sacred matrimonial chamber to complete the blessed insemination. The chirping exceeded the size of true joy. Every woman wished the wedding would fail. The entire village awaited the scene where the bride’s family would shoot gunpowder into the sky, celebrating the preservation of her honor until it was taken by her husband. Everyone suffered from sexual repression. Their fantasies knew nothing of truth.

Some women didn’t believe a man’s penis could be as big as a stick. Some teenage boys imagined sex as merely inserting it into a small hole, hurting her, licking a little, and then being done.

Abdul Rahim lifted her veil, and she lifted her lust. He kissed her neck, suckled gently behind her ear, and moved slowly toward her lips. Maria trembled. Her longing for her son was mixed with lust for Abdul Rahim. She touched the coarse hair on his chest. He undressed, kissed her, lifted her by the waist, licked her feet, undressed her gently, and dragged her mouth across his body. She felt beautiful pain. But fear of scandal made her close her thighs as if saying: “Don’t.”

He understood her hesitation. It was her first time. He tried to warm her up. He wrote his stories on her skin, leaving marks of his manhood. The chirping outside drowned their moans. Everyone waited for news of her “complete virginity.” Was she “honorable”? A virgin?

Time passed. Nothing happened. Seconds became a measure of honor. One woman joked: “Her hymen must be rough.” “To which the other replied: “Or she has two.” They laughed.

Inside, Maria became a toy in Abdul Rahim’s hands. He filled her with lust. Her youth made her appear like a full-figured woman, though she was barely sixteen. He searched for his treasure with his tongue. Her orgasm would crown his pleasure. He grabbed her, sucked her nipples, surprised to find milk. He ignored it. A mystery of women, perhaps.

As he penetrated her, he saw her tears—like a weeping spring. She returned to childhood. She needed a breast to rest on, but had only his rough, naked body. He didn’t know what to do. Was it fear or love? He wiped her tears, hugged her. Maria continued crying. Her son’s image consumed her.

Her father, outside, sweated, terrified of scandal. The obedient daughter could not let him down. She tried to forget her son, blend into this bitter reality. She opened her thighs, turned her head to the left, and stared at the candles meant to ward off evil. But tonight, she was the evil in their eyes.

Everyone still waited. Silence fell. A heavy atmosphere lingered. All eyes on the door, waiting for Abdul Rahim and the bloodied handkerchief of honor. This village had a phallus, it had to be used to validate morality.

Abdul Rahim slapped her twice, spat on her. He began raping her violently, front and back, taking revenge. She sobbed. He screamed. Their cries pierced the night. Villagers laughed, then women began singing to cover the sounds.

Eventually, silence returned. Abdul Rahim came out with the handkerchief. Her father smiled, extending his hand, but Abdul Rahim threw it down, spat, and said:

“Your daughter is divorced three times.”

Then he left.

The father stood frozen. Some guests left; others, scandal-hungry, stayed in spirit. He entered. Maria lay naked, wrapped in a blanket. She whispered painfully:

“Father, I am a virgin.”

Yes, still a virgin in conscience, if not in flesh. But if she told the full truth, she’d be confessing to murder. What’s the point? She’d be killed by law or by “honor.” Her mind told her to remain silent.

Only her son kept her alive. She still believed he lived. A mother’s heart knows. But her morality, youth, and beauty denied her peace. Rituals bound her. Her father dragged her by the hair, naked before scandal-hungry crowds. The narrator, again, did nothing. He liked what society liked. Society was God.

She was silent, in denial. Her lips barely moved: “I am a virgin.”

Yes, she is still a virgin despite everything that happened to her. She never chose to lose her virginity. She remains a virgin in her conscience, not in that sexual organ. But how could she tell the truth? Despite it all, she still retained a certain intelligence. She knew that if she confessed the whole story, she would also be confessing to murder.
What was the point now? She would be killed, whether in the name of honor or the name of the law. Her mind told her to stay silent and to speak the truth all at once.

The only thing keeping Maria alive and away from suicidal thoughts was her son. Despite everything, she still held a deep hope of finding him. A mother’s heart never lies—his heart still beat in the cavity of her own, his voice still rang in her ears. Her son was still alive, and she had to find him. Now was not the time to die.

Maria’s age, her morals, her manners, and her beauty did not allow her a single moment of peace to go in search of him. She was trapped by the rituals of the village and the alphabet of its rotten morals.

Her father grabbed her by the hair and dragged her naked in front of the crowds, starving for scandal, pulling her as though she had just lost every last shred of honor, as if her body no longer held any value. She was exposed in their eyes, even if she didn’t know it.

The narrator, as always, did nothing to save her. He seemed to love what society loved and hate what society hated. It was very clear: society is God.

Her father dragged her, and she made no sound, nor did she show any sign of pain. She was in a state of denial. Her lips moved faintly, as if whispering: “I am a virgin.”

He dragged her while sobbing, yelling, “What a waste of my upbringing. How could I have raised a Dereli like this? What’s wrong with you, you little whore?”

He dragged her while cursing. The young men of the village gathered to feast their eyes on her naked body, memorizing every inch of it, knowing they might not see another until marriage. Some even chose to masturbate to preserve the image.

He dragged her home, whipped her naked body, crucified her on a tree in the middle of the house, and began lashing her with what looked like a whip, screaming as Maria’s mother wailed and lamented like a madwoman.

After torturing her all night and tearing her soul apart dozens of times, demanding to know who had done this to her, and hearing her repeat over and over that she was still a virgin, he finally broke down and screamed like a giant ogre. His honor was tarnished forever. The only thing stopping him from killing her was the hope of learning who the culprit was, so he could kill them both.

He left her crying in pain and sat alone, sobbing like a child. Maria was completely unconscious of what was happening. All she could think about was her son, instinctively, but without emotion.

In the morning, her father ordered that she be denied food, forced to stay that way, or, as he put it, “like a dog.” Although in this case, even the guard dog fared better than her.

In this merciless society, Maria was now the worst person alive. Despite all the murderers, criminals, extremists, thieves, and rapists in the village, she was the one who deserved punishment, even though she was the victim. Not just a rape victim, but a victim of an entire society with outdated values and shallow ideas of morality.

Maria was simply female. Do you understand the crime now?

Some boys were playing and talking about the body they had seen the day before. It was a miracle for them to glimpse such a body at that age. They even entered into a philosophical debate about the true shape of a woman’s genitals, drawing what they saw in the dirt with reeds. In that village of deprivation, Maria’s body had become the dream of every man and boy. Many children climbed the house fence just to catch a glimpse of it.

The inhabitants of this village had mastered all the rituals of terrorizing a woman’s body. To them, a woman was nothing but a body, nothing but a tool to satisfy a man’s desires and serve him in slavery. That’s why the “eternal shame” must always be covered.

Amid all that black noise, Maria found some comfort in singing to ease her pain. She sang local songs in a frail voice, softer and weaker each time, as she lost more strength.

That night, while everyone slept, Maria heard footsteps approaching. They moved stealthily to avoid waking others, crunching softly on pebbles and stone. It was the sound of feet—no doubt. Maria searched with what little motion her head could manage, terrified of yet another rape, her body already weary from the rot of society.

The sound stopped, but Maria kept searching. Suddenly, a hand closed over her mouth, and a young man’s face appeared. He placed a finger over his lips, signaling her to stay quiet.

She looked closely. In the darkness, some details of his face became visible. From his cautious eyes, she recognized Oma, her childhood friend from before she went to school. Maria calmed slightly, inhaling the sweet scent of childhood, not even knowing why. Though her body still trembled with the trauma of masculinity, she tried to understand why he had come.

He took the gum out of his mouth and whispered, “Maria, you must run. You have no place here. If you stay, you will die.”

Maria stared at him for a moment, then asked, “But where will I go? Where will I go, Omar?”

“God’s earth is wide,” Omar replied. “Run wherever life is still possible. Anywhere but here. We don’t have much time.”

Omar cut the ropes that bound her with a pocketknife, gave her a dress and a niqab, and helped her get dressed.

For the first time, Maria met a man who didn’t care about her body. He helped dress her without the slightest hint of lust. She was confused by him, but didn’t have time to dwell on it. She donned the black abaya and veil, and Omar lifted her gently to avoid making noise. He helped her climb the fence, then followed her, holding her hand to guide her down.

He gave her his sandals to walk in, remaining barefoot.

The darkness merged with the blackness of the veil, and only her eyes were visible. They walked quickly toward the forest near the highway. They entered one of the reed huts Omar and his friends had built during childhood games. He lit a candle and placed it on the small table.

He gave her some olives, dry bread, cheese, and water. She devoured them like a starving animal, as if she hadn’t eaten in years.

Omar kept gazing at her with a tenderness mixed with quiet love. His face calm, his eyes glowing under the candlelight. He said in a heroic tone, “Maria, don’t be afraid. Everything will be okay.” Then he sighed, smiling gently to ease the tremor in her body.

“Do you remember when we used to play? When we pretended to be aunt and neighbor, or bride and groom?”

Maria sighed. “If I had known what marriage really was, I’d never have played it, even as a game.”

“Don’t forget the beautiful moments,” Omar said. “Don’t forget your childhood. Always be yourself. Don’t hesitate to try again. And above all, don’t lose hope—because you are human first, and humans are made to hope.”

“Now go to sleep. In the early morning, you’ll take the bus to Algiers.”

Maria’s eyes widened in fear. “Algiers? But I don’t know anyone there. What will I do?”

Omar took her hand. “Maria, here, you know everyone, and look what that gave you. Go where no one knows you. Go where you can be free and safe. Start a new life. Because here, there is no life left for you.”

Maria stared at Omar, tears in her eyes. She was leaving a part of herself behind in that cursed village—her son, the Christ, who was destined to live without parents. Deep in her heart, Maria still believed he hadn’t died.