Khalil by Yasmina Khadra

Author:Yasmina Khadra [Khadra, Yasmina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2021-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

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The next day, my twin sister called to tell me that Rayan’s mother had dropped by to give her the things I’d left at her son’s place. “Where do you want me to bring them?”

“I’m in Antwerp for two or three days. Drop them off at Issa’s—you know, the baker’s. Rayan’s mother, how was she? Did she come in to see our mother, or did she just hand you my things on the landing?”

“She was the same as usual. She stayed with us a half hour, no more. We drank tea and talked about our village, about Morocco. Things aren’t great down there, you know? And how about you? How did it go with Yezza? Did you call her?”

“Yes.”

“Why was she having a fit? She didn’t want to tell me anything—she said it was just between her and you.”

“She’s going crazy,” I replied curtly.

I went back to rue Heyvaert to stand watch. No police car stopped in front of the Turk’s store. In the evening, I took a chance and patrolled around the disused workshop in the hopes of running into Ramdan the mason or a brother. I hoped in vain.

On the third day, I summoned my courage and returned to my workplace. I was tired of wandering around in a parallel world where nothing gave me any comfort. My boss didn’t make a scene. He swallowed the story about my sister’s attempted suicide and immediately pivoted to instructing me about the deliveries that needed to be made.

A week later, a young man turned up at the furniture store. He bought a single bed, a night table, and an armoire, paid in cash, and asked me to follow him to his apartment to set up the pieces he’d just bought. “We won’t need to put anything in your van,” he said. “I’ve got my own. That way I save on the delivery charges.”

He was a pretty likable kid. He seemed well educated, with his student’s spectacles and his close-cropped hair. He lived alone in a shabby apartment building at the far end of a residential suburb. He helped me unload the furniture into a little two-room apartment on the third floor and waited in the living room while I finished assembling the bed and the armoire.

I was packing up my equipment when a voice boomed out behind me: “So how do you like your new pad?”

That voice! It was like hearing the muezzin’s call.

I leaped to my feet.

Lyès was standing in the doorway, freshly shaved and bursting out of a red-and-black tracksuit too small for him. I hadn’t recognized him right away without his beard. I was so happy to see him that my screwdriver slipped out of my hand. Who said anything about doing without my brothers? What a load of crap. I’d tried to make myself believe I was capable of living without them, but Lyès’s reappearance had been enough to return my priorities to their proper order. My doubts, my fears, my frustrations went up in smoke.

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