intensely satisfying. For the first time in years he loosens up and takes stock of the different pieces of his life laid out in front of him. Give him a few more minutes or years and he’ll be ready to talk about it.
Al watches him in silence. Being a drug dealer, he smokes weed every day, but he is careful not to give himself over entirely to the effects of the tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. His commercial activities serve to subsidize a personal habit of considerable proportions. As for his other expenses, he mixes gigs on the local Paris circuit with posting flyers. He’s never gone near benefits. Avoids all state registers like the plague. His latest song is called “Escape from Sarkoland.” He’s pleased to see Ahmed again. He sits there quietly smoking his joint, waiting for his friend to regain the power of speech. To pass the time, Al grabs a sheet of white paper and a pen and sets about drawing a mash-up of a Disney cartoon: Mickey is taking a hit while Scrooge McDuck, the big daddy dealer in Duckburg, looks on disapprovingly. Ahmed pipes up.
“The thing is, Al, I’ve always killed women. You remember, the only story I ever wrote at school was about the wanderings of a prostitute-killer. He didn’t touch them; he didn’t fuck them. He got his kicks from stabbing them. At the time it seemed perfectly innocent to me. Just a story for the times. Then it became like an obsession. More and more of these images of death played out in my head. I would slice women in half as I passed them in the street; I’d gut them while in a state of serious inner turmoil. It became almost impossible to look women in the eye. The thought of trying it with anyone filled me with horror. I could let things roll if a chick was really into me, but it was that or nothing at all. How can you look at a girl, joke around with her, when all you’re doing is picturing cutting her into pieces? You read American Psycho , yeah? So in my head, I was Patrick Bateman.”
“Listen, man, you haven’t killed anyone. All this shit is just images in your mind. It’s not real, okay?”
Ahmed makes as if to speak, thinks again, and swallows the words that form in his head. The day it became real, I lost my nerve. Not here. Not with Al. This meeting with himself is going to have happen some other time. Something has become unclogged, and that’s a good thing. For the first time he lets his mind return to that warehouse. To what happened that night. The night his life ended. Al watches him calmly with an expression that seems to say Don’t worry, man. It’s all chilled here. If you want to talk, talk. If you want to be quiet, be quiet. It’s cool, yeah . . .
“Deep down you’re right—I haven’t killed anyone. Not everyone can say that. In this world there are people who really do kill women and orchids.”
Al gets to work on another cone. As he hands Ahmed the joint he explains that this weed is properly spiritual, uplifting.
“See, down here in this shithole of Paris, what are we? Twenty yards above sea level, tops. Where this charas is made, in Himachal Pradesh, they’re five or six thousand yards up. So when you smoke this, even here in this little third-floor apartment, it sends you sky high . . . It totally cancels out the five miles between us and the roof of the world.”
Two lungfuls later and Ahmed is practically teleported to that very place. He’s in Tibet, Everest, the mountain plateaus of Kyrgyzstan . . . Who cares where? He’s stopped knowing what it means to know anyway. If the first joint had charged him with meaning, this one was freeing him of it. Over there—far off in the distance—a shaman is reciting an age-old mantra. It’s strangely reminiscent of Robert Wilson. A white Robert Wilson whose distorted chanting echoes through the smoke rings . . .
Not quite. Not quite so, oh noooo, baby, not quite so, it ain’t so, no, no, no . . .
Ahmed is tripping to the rhythm of the world. The images
Al watches him in silence. Being a drug dealer, he smokes weed every day, but he is careful not to give himself over entirely to the effects of the tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. His commercial activities serve to subsidize a personal habit of considerable proportions. As for his other expenses, he mixes gigs on the local Paris circuit with posting flyers. He’s never gone near benefits. Avoids all state registers like the plague. His latest song is called “Escape from Sarkoland.” He’s pleased to see Ahmed again. He sits there quietly smoking his joint, waiting for his friend to regain the power of speech. To pass the time, Al grabs a sheet of white paper and a pen and sets about drawing a mash-up of a Disney cartoon: Mickey is taking a hit while Scrooge McDuck, the big daddy dealer in Duckburg, looks on disapprovingly. Ahmed pipes up.
“The thing is, Al, I’ve always killed women. You remember, the only story I ever wrote at school was about the wanderings of a prostitute-killer. He didn’t touch them; he didn’t fuck them. He got his kicks from stabbing them. At the time it seemed perfectly innocent to me. Just a story for the times. Then it became like an obsession. More and more of these images of death played out in my head. I would slice women in half as I passed them in the street; I’d gut them while in a state of serious inner turmoil. It became almost impossible to look women in the eye. The thought of trying it with anyone filled me with horror. I could let things roll if a chick was really into me, but it was that or nothing at all. How can you look at a girl, joke around with her, when all you’re doing is picturing cutting her into pieces? You read American Psycho , yeah? So in my head, I was Patrick Bateman.”
“Listen, man, you haven’t killed anyone. All this shit is just images in your mind. It’s not real, okay?”
Ahmed makes as if to speak, thinks again, and swallows the words that form in his head. The day it became real, I lost my nerve. Not here. Not with Al. This meeting with himself is going to have happen some other time. Something has become unclogged, and that’s a good thing. For the first time he lets his mind return to that warehouse. To what happened that night. The night his life ended. Al watches him calmly with an expression that seems to say Don’t worry, man. It’s all chilled here. If you want to talk, talk. If you want to be quiet, be quiet. It’s cool, yeah . . .
“Deep down you’re right—I haven’t killed anyone. Not everyone can say that. In this world there are people who really do kill women and orchids.”
Al gets to work on another cone. As he hands Ahmed the joint he explains that this weed is properly spiritual, uplifting.
“See, down here in this shithole of Paris, what are we? Twenty yards above sea level, tops. Where this charas is made, in Himachal Pradesh, they’re five or six thousand yards up. So when you smoke this, even here in this little third-floor apartment, it sends you sky high . . . It totally cancels out the five miles between us and the roof of the world.”
Two lungfuls later and Ahmed is practically teleported to that very place. He’s in Tibet, Everest, the mountain plateaus of Kyrgyzstan . . . Who cares where? He’s stopped knowing what it means to know anyway. If the first joint had charged him with meaning, this one was freeing him of it. Over there—far off in the distance—a shaman is reciting an age-old mantra. It’s strangely reminiscent of Robert Wilson. A white Robert Wilson whose distorted chanting echoes through the smoke rings . . .
Not quite. Not quite so, oh noooo, baby, not quite so, it ain’t so, no, no, no . . .
Ahmed is tripping to the rhythm of the world. The images
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