The Disappearance of Mr. Nobody


 
 Cover Page
 About the Author
 Title Page
 Copyright Page
 The Man Who Took His Face Off and Left
 
 1 Evasion
 2 Scramble
 3 Transparency
 4 Vulgarity
 
 Hell Looks Out of the Window
 
 5 Ingenuous Preliminaries
 6 Someone is Hiding a Secret
 7 The Compass of the Heart
 8 Pure Fate
 9 A Narrow, Crowded Path
 
 
 
 
 Landmarks
 
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 About the Author
 Title
 Copyright Page
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 Ahmed Taibaoui is a professor at the Faculty of Economics, Business, and Management Sciences at the University of Bouïra in Algeria. He was awarded the Tayeb Salih International Prize for Written Creativity (2014) for his novel Mawt na’im (Death of a Sleeper), as well as the President of the Republic Award for Young Innovators (2011) for his novel al-Maqam al-‘ali (The High Eminence). He lives in Algiers.
 Jonathan Wright is a translator and former Reuters journalist. His previous translations from the Arabic include Khaled Al Khamissi’s Taxi, Youssef Ziedan’s Azazeel (winner of the International Prize for Arabic Fiction, 2009), Saud Alsanousi’s The Bamboo Stalk (winner of the IPAF, 2013), Hammour Ziada’s The Longing of the Dervish (winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Prize), Ahmed Saadawi’s Frankenstein in Baghdad (shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize), Mazen Maarouf’s Jokes for the Gunmen (shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize), and Hassan Blasim’s God 99, The Madman of Freedom Square, and The Iraqi Christ (winner of the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize). He lives in London. 
 
 
 
 This electronic edition published in 2023 by Hoopoe
 113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
 One Rockefeller Plaza, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10020
 www.aucpress.com
 Hoopoe is an imprint of The American University in Cairo Press
 www.hoopoefiction.com
 Copyright © 2019 by Ahmed Taibaoui
 First published in Arabic in 2019 as Ikhtifa’ al-sayyid la ahad by Editions El-Ikhtilef and Editions Difaf
 Protected under the Berne Convention
 English translation copyright © 2023 by Jonathan Wright
 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
 eISBN 978 1 649 03216 4
 Hardback ISBN 978 1 649 03215 7
 Paperback ISBN 978 1 649 03214 0
 WebPDF 978 1 649 03217 1
 Version 1
 
 
 The Man Who Took His Face Off and Left
 
 1
 Evasion
 I HAVE A KNIFE IN my kitchen. I’ve never been an aggressive person, but if this disgusting old man goes on jabbering away I’m seriously thinking of finding a new use for that knife. I’ll cut his tongue out, and some other organ if necessary. I’m out of cigarettes, the weather’s so miserable it makes you aggressive and, on top of all that, he’s giving me good reason to finish him off. Removing someone from the land of the living might be a reasonable solution, even for someone like me who has only trivial reasons for doing so. This Uncle Mubarak, as everyone calls him, is an uncle to everyone, not an uncle to anyone in particular. He’s public property, vulgar and delusional. He likes to hear people say things that suggest he’s respected, though he doesn’t deserve any respect. That’s what I learned in his café when I had the impression he deserved a certain respect in deference to his gray hair. It was my mistake from the beginning—when I opened the door and let him into this den of mine, and earlier when I let him break down the barrier I had set up between myself and others. Being alone is bad, but having to deal with other people is worse. I haven’t spoken to anyone for days. I’ve sold my phone. I don’t have anyone to call or anyone to call me. Throughout the past year, Mubarak is the only person I’ve spoken to for more than five minutes.
 He’s still nattering away. I turn on the television, which has served no purpose since I came to live here. He’s trying to prove to me that somehow he understands everything that’s happening in the world. The Jews are the cause of all the misfortunes and intrigues that have befallen us, he told me. This is his second visit to me. It’s close to nine o’clock in the evening. I have a little balcony that looks out on a square that’s surrounded by buildings and frequented at night by lecherous dogs and cats. I often sit there and stay up till dawn. Silence is wisdom, he says in summation.
 I’ll spit in his face or take my clothes off and sit down naked with him so that he goes off and leaves me. My suspicions tell me that that’s what he wants. He deprives me of my only outlet—sitting on the balcony and observing the banality of the world when it’s shrouded in darkness, or reading by a low light that doesn’t draw the attention of my neighbors. I do that after midnight and sometimes I even worry that the glow at the end of my cigarette might give me away. Living on the top floor