Gray, Black and white

Chapter 3: Burn your Art gallery

Day after day,then night after night. Algerian people were waking and sleeping with the endless prayers for the independence of Algeria. In 1955,a lot of soldiers knew that it's their duty to be a part of a battle . They knew that the guns that they're holding can be a roller coaster that can either levitate them to life , or drag them down to death. Bilal was one of those who wanted to fight and sacrifice their lives to Algeria, but he already knew that his duty was to draw maps and diagrams in that secret room.  On a warm day of spring, he woke up to the sound of gunshots and leather boots of the army , stepping forcely on the rocky ground and rumbling everywhere. When he decided to take a glance, he saw a group of soldiers grabbing Noureddin , tying his hands , and aggressively dragging him into a truck. Claire was running behind the truck , shedding tears and screaming as loud as she could until she slipped and fell. Bilal tried to calm her while asking about the situation. It was evident that Mr Noureddin was caught helping the Algerian army while pretending to be a betrayer, but the question that remains is who told the French army about him. It's a question of trust and betrayal, and the answer is stuck in that palace. «It's obviously not his daughter » A maid said, then looked at Ali. Ali was shaking and afraid to be blamed then said:« Do you think that I can betray someone who saved my life several times? Maybe I'm somehow an idiot , but I'm not shameless.» Another maid had been gazing into Bilal, but Bilal said nothing. He thought that he had been trusted by every single one living in the palace, but there's people who hated his kindness, and people who had been hoping for his death as soon as possible.That maid had the desire to get him in trouble, so she blamed him, but Bilal denied her doubt , since he hadn't do anything except drawing plans and maps, and sometimes he spent time chatting with Claire. Outside the walls of the palace, Bilal told nobody about neither his job nor NourDin's espionage on the French conquerors. He told neither his parents nor his sister Khadidja about Nour din, and among all people he knew and trusted, only Ali knew about it. Bilal was honest and everybody knew it , so he suggested for the maids to check his workshop , and seek for strong evidence to deny his strong loyalty to Mr Noureddine. The maids made a great mess in the workshop, they ruined most of their artistic maps and paintings. They destroyed his working place , but none of them could touch the masterpiece hanging on the wall which he painted with Claire. Inside his desk drawer, a maid has found a small envelope. Bilal used to fill his desk drawer with small pencils that can't be used anymore to keep them as a souvenir, but he had never put an envelope there except the one that his father gave to him. Inside the envelope, the found a letter destinated to a French family name"charles' ' , and the countent is a report about all of what Mr Nour din have done as a spy working for the Algerian army. Bilal knew that was orchestrated by someone who gave him complete trust. It was either Ali or Claire,or else, one of the maids were a spy working among them and wanted to implicate him as something that he jad no idea about. He knew that any word he would say could put him in trouble, and he knew that nobody was going to believe him since Ali and Claire denied his loyalty, so he had nothing to prove or to deny. He just threw everything behind him , and ran as fast as he could, with an unknown destination. Ali grabbed a gun since he was the only one among them, he dragged the trigger and targeted his friend, then with a low voice he whispered: «Sorry my brother, but my life, and my parents lives are endangered ». A shotgun hit Bilal in the leg , but he kept running anyway, leaving blood traces behind him. He knew that he would be either dead or caught. He just prayed for a better tomorrow. For hours, he had been laying along the rocky floor , under the Devil's bridge in Constantine. He was lucky that the injury wasn't deep enough to impede his walk, but still, he had suffered a lot to drag himself with one leg to get to under the bridge while everyone was seeking for him. He had been trying to stop the bleeding with a piece of tissue that he found on the earth, besides green glass bottles of champagne thrown there. He had been handling the ache to survive, he fainted and woke up several times, he felt the heat of arsons and the freezing ice in that injury. He had seen blurry mirages, and colorless glances between heel and heaven, between peace and war, and between life and death. He suddenly saw a man's shade appearing through the light, but he couldn't distinguish between the light and the darkness, but he smiled because he thought that it was the reaper coming up to squeeze the life out of him , since he was already prepared to die. But his smile vanished as he realized that it was Ali who found him under the bridge. Ali calmed him , and threw his gun away, he seemed to be able to trust. Bilal looked at him and said:« where have you been, I thought I was going to die, and why did you shoot me , you jerk! I thought that I'm not going to make it out alive». Ali replied «Sorry for that, I had to do that to save us.

_ How about Claire?

_She fainted after she saw you bleeding, or probably because she have seen the envelope.

_Hehehe, women! She had been acting to be brave the whole time.

_Bilal I think you should go back to her.

_Are you dumb? Everybody there blamed me to be a liar that I'm not! Besides, it's over for me and her; she doesn't trust me.

_ I'm sorry for that!

_ what are you apologizing for? By the way, did you found out who had been that betrayer who put that envelope in my drawer?

_It was me!

_are you kidding?

_ No, I've been pretending to be working for Mr Noureddine, but a french soldier offered me a chance to work with them as a spy .It was a month ago since I've been doing this , and I want you to join me. I consider you as a brother , that's why I told you. Bilal, let us go to France on a boat that a french soldier will offer for us, and let them wage their stupid war. 

_it was you! I should've known that from the beginning, you betrayer!

Bilal punched Ali, and Ali punched  him back. That little childish fight from their childhood remained in their memory, and turned out into a real fight between two closest friends. Despite the fact that he was injured and color blind, he knew how to punch and how to fight, but he didn't know how to kill. Their fight was a mixture of pain, blood, sweat and tears, and of course, a bitter mixture of trust and betrayal. They both ended up on the floor, but Bilal didn't give up yet. Ali pulled Bilal from the collar to punch him again, but Bilal grabbed a piece of glass from a shattered Champagne bottle , then he stabbed him in the stomach. As blood started to come out, he stabbed him twice in the neck that Ali couldn't move anymore, he couldn't breathe anymore, and finally he died. Bilal didn't know that blood's color was red, he only saw a dark gray liquid dripping out from Ali's body. Even if he betrayed, disappointed him, but still, he kept considering him as a friend and a brother until the moment he closed his eyes . Bilal dragged Ali's cadaver and threw him into the river, then he kept wiping his tears and stood that crazy feeling of guilt after killing someone close to him. That feeling was smothering him so bad through his walk into a final destination: home. His village appeared from miles away, but he noticed the gray smoke , it was for him a little bit darker than they gray sky. He ran as fast as he could to check it, then saw the biggest flames of fire spreading along their wheat field. That was the nightmare that followed Bilal's father through the nights.

It was the biggest fear, and the greatest loss for their family. Bilal knew that it was an arson, and a revenge sent from Noureddine who were stuck in jail. He didn't seek for any answers to fill his curiosity. He only took his father's old truck and took his family to a better place to live. He decided to take them all to northern Constantine, as far as he could from that town. He decided to burry that day in his memoried and move on. While driving, he stopped by the workshop he had been working in . Bilal's parents knew that their son was suffering from Achromatopsia, and they known that he's a talented painter as well, but they didn't expect that he would own a great art gallery in such a small room like that one. Some of his works were maps and diagrams, and some of them were colorful drawings that came from his failure of color painting.

There were paintings thrown on the ground.

A painting of a green sky and a blue land accompanied with pink clouds. A purple night and a red tree. A river with yellow water and dark greenish rocks. They all looked realistic more than what they looked like in reality, even if the colors were in contradictions. Bilal took a lighter from his little pocket and lit the fire on a random painting. The flames were spread everywhere, and the smoke of fire was mixed with the smell of acrylic. He ruined his workshop and turned it into a wreck of paintings and emotions buried within them. It was painful for him to do that , but that was for him a revenge of the broken noses and promise he had been through. Nobody believed in him when he spitted the truth out of his mouth, so he swore on his life not to leave a single souvenir of his existence in that place. At the end, he came out one circle again, the gray and black of his sights came out to reality, and all the colorful brushes turned into pieces of black coal that he used to draw with, and all the beautiful oily paintings turned into ashes on the ground carried with the winds. It wasn't that easy for him, so he started shedding tears, but he didn't regret his decision. The only painting that was still safe was that one he made with Claire, so he grabbed a wet rag and covered it with it, then left the flames spread over those wooden painting boards, over the ground, along the walls. He took his family on the truck and left that town in peace.