Demoiselles of Numidia

Contents Cover Other Titles Title Page Copyright Contents Epigraph Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Acknowledgments Credits Landmarks Cover Cover Title Page Table of Contents Start Copyright Print Page List i ii iii iv v vi vii viii ix 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 
 
 
 
 ALSO BY MOHAMED LEFTAH
 Captain Ni’mat’s Last Battle
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Originally published in French as Demoiselles de Numidie in 1992 by Éditions de l’Aube, La Tour d’Aigues, and reprinted in 2006 by Éditions de la Différence, Paris
 Copyright © Nezha Leftah, 2006
 Published by arrangement with Agence littéraire Astier-Pécher
 English translation copyright © Lara Vergnaud, 2023
 Production editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas
 Text designer: Jennifer Daddio / Bookmark Design & Media Inc.
 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 267 Fifth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016.
 Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com
 The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
 Names: Leftah, Mohamed, author. | Vergnaud, Lara, translator.
 Title: Demoiselles of Numidia : a novel / Mohamed Leftah; translated from the Lara Vergnaud.
 Other titles: Demoiselles de Numidie. English
 Description: New York : Other Press, 2023. | Originally published in French as Demoiselles de Numidie in 1992 by Éditions de l’Aube, La Tour d’Aigues, and reprinted in 2006 by Éditions de la Différence, Paris.
 Identifiers: LCCN 2022049867 (print) | LCCN 2022049868 (ebook) | ISBN 9781635420661 (paperback) | ISBN 9781635420678 (ebook)
 Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.
 Classification: LCC PQ3989.2.L427 D4613 2023 (print) | LCC PQ3989.2.L427 (ebook) | DDC 843/.92—dc23/eng/20221214
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022049867
 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022049868
 Ebook ISBN 9781635420678
 Publisher’s Note
 This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 a_prh_6.0_143736962_c1_r0
 
 
 Contents
 
 Cover
 Also by Mohamed Leftah
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Epigraph
 
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 
 Acknowledgments
 Credits
 
 
 
 Anyone who has ever loved bears a scar.
 —ALFRED DE MUSSET
 
 
 
 Numidian, adj. & n. (XVI c.; lat. Numide, gr. Nomas, Nomados, lit. “nomad”)
 Of or relating to Numidia, an ancient kingdom in North Africa; (zool.; rare) the demoiselle crane
 cicatrice, n. (XV c; lat. cicatrix, fr. cicatrice)
 The scar of a healed wound;
 (bot.) a scar on the bark of a tree
 
 
 
 
 In this ancient land of Numidia, Nouar, the plural of “flower,” is how we refer to syphilis, a disease that has long inhabited men’s bodies and haunted their minds.
 Could this strange and poetic designation be explained by the fact that in the Numidian tongue, many female names are also the names of flowers? Femme-flowers who, after the fleeting bloom of love, leave their paramours with petals embedded in their flesh, both badge of honor and mark of shame: Nouar, flowers of syphilis?
 Note how that last word whistles from start to finish, like a rattlesnake darting out (to then abruptly coil up). Whereas the word Nouar evokes a bed of flowers, an orchard whose most verdant tree, its sexual organ, is attacked by a canker, or rather chancre; the syphilitic chancre.
 Imagining that these femme-flowers are indeed to blame for these syphilitic flowers, some, seemingly in response, see blossom on their own bodies—the cheeks generally, sometimes the forehead, rarely the breasts or vagina, though those vital parts, when afflicted, only become even more splendid and tragic—another strange flower, no less simultaneously glorious and shameful: a cicatrice.
 (A kind of revenge, if you will; a twin to the masculine syphilis, when this elegantly named scar appears between a woman’s legs.)
 Given the options—wound, scar, cut, mark, cicatrice—I barely hesitated, and you’ll see why, before settling on the last one, though I should have considered the weighty word “stigmata” first, I think. The miraculous stigmata that appeared on the hands of saints, but also those branded in red iron on the bodies of galley slaves, the stigmas of hysteria, or those that designate the orifices of certain insects and of pistils.
 That resonant, polysemic