Gray, Black and white

Chapter 5: he left me among his pieces

It had been a month since Bilal and his family settled in an old house in Constantine. Bilal's father wasn't used to leaving the work in a farm, but he was obliged to work in trade.Bilal recovered from his injury and could walk again on his leg with nothing impeding him. His life became a nonsense for him since he lost everything: his lover, his job, his farm , his art. He hardly accepted the fact that he can only see the world in black and white, but he noticed that his sights started becoming weaker day after day. Things started to look a little bit blurry for him, and he couldn't even afford glaces to help him.

In a warm starry night of August 1955, he decided to look for a way out of that small house, he thought of a suicidal, but it turned out that it's just a straight way to hell. As an artist who lost everything in his life, he wanted to die as soon as possible, as a hero instead of a coward hiding in his father's house, trying to get as far as he can from people's eyes. He decided to join the army, even with his weak , blurry uncolorful sights, he wanted to die in a holy way in the war yard, or at least, to live as a hero who helped even a bit in the victory of Algeria against the French colonizers.  Before he left, he put a sheet of paper under his sister Khadidja's bed. He asked through it his mother to sew for him a white shroud, and from his father to craft for him a wooden coffin. He was so certain that he wouldn't make it alive from that war, but he had hoped to get back home without a leg or an arm at least.He left at midnight so that nobody notices him, and  it was so easy for him to join the Algerian army since they've been hoping for their number to increase. He joined Zighod Yousef in attacks of northern Constantine, and he helped realize victory with some shots in a gun. Back then , it was only the beginning of his risky trip to the biggest victory , the independence of Algeria 

      After seven years of serving in the Algerian army, and facing death in his battles against the French army, He got used to the heat of hell burning his soul to ashes in the war yard. He met up with friends that considered him as a brother, just like Ali did, then he lost them all. Everytime he grabbed his heavy gun to shoot, he got confused about what to target, and his sights became more blurry than before. He used to carry his mates' bloody cadavers on his back after every battle in the morning, then shed tears on his pillow every night. He cried so hard through the nights, for the friends who fought with him, for that one friend who got killed by him, for that naughty girl who smiled at him and loved him, for those parents who raised him and gave him the tenderness he needed then got left by him.

In the war's yard , flashbacks kept remaining in his head , playing that movie again, in black and white, but the thing he wanted the most was to drop that gun and grab the brush and the drawing palat again to draw his memories and keep them immortal after his death. One day, on a war's yard, where everything looked terrifying, and the bells of death started playing their melodies, then the reaper started knocking the doors of some brave soldiers who fought for the independence of Algeria. Bilal was lying on the ground, floating on a blood lac. It wasn't his lucky day since he got shooted by an unknown soldier, and he carried that bloody injury on his chest then kept pulling the trigger until he couldn't move and fell on the ground again. That moment when he looked up to the sky, and started shedding tears and blood started coming out from both of his mouth and his injury, everyone thought that he would die, but for him , it was the most beautiful moment he had ever been through. He finally managed to see the blue of the sky, the green of the herbs and the brown of the mug. It was so artistic and magnificent for him. It was just a glance, but a treasure to him. He closed his eyes peacefully, and a drop of tear came out of his eyes along his sweating face. He smiled at the bright shiny sun when reflected on his eyes, then he whispered with that little bit of air saved in his lungs «I finally figured out what does it means to be an artist, it means to be crazy alone forever, then finally, after I die in this blessed land, fighting for peace in a war, in this cruel world, feeling the venomous pain of a burning bullet torturing my soul to death, is it okay to close my eyes and sleep a little bit on the green herb of Algeria?» 

                           

   Paris's streets were full of people, an opportunity for that little lady to run away from her mother's mercy. She got dressed up in black , and wore a big hat on her head, then she put on lipstick so that people won't recognize her pretty face. Claire bought tickets and went back to Algeria to see her father who got out of jail after years of being stuck there. For Noreddin , he was stuck in his mind looking for a real answer to his question «who betrayed me». Through the Algerian revolution, he felt like a rat trapped in a maze». His daughter arrived in Algeria right after the revolution, she saw people celebrating their happiness with gunshots to the sky, where their beautiful fumigated smell felt like the aroma of amber. She gave her father a big warm hug , that tells about how much she messed him.Even the emptiness in her eyes was filled with a beautiful glitter. The first thing she asked about was Bilal , and whether he's still alive. She looked for him everywhere, until she consequently met up with a soldier who had been working with him. That soldier's name was Djilali, he told her a lot how brave and courageous he was, and how come he was full of contradictions like an artist who left the peace in masterpieces and threw himself in war to bring back that peace again. He wanted Algeria's freedom so badly that everyone called him " the crazy suicider" . He told Claire about how much he loved her even if he wasn't by her side, and how he had been talking about her, just like a beautiful fading memory that couldn't let it vanish from his mind. Thanks to God, Bilal, after getting hit by a shot , didn't die . He spent months in the hospital, but when he opened his eyes , he saw nothing: neither the colors that he saw one day in his life when he was about to die, nor the black and gray and white he used to see. He became completely blind, and his health collapsed so bad that the doctor told him that he had only a few days left to live. Claire, after she knew that he's still alive, spending his last moments in the hospital, she ran as fast as she could to apologize to him,and see his glittery color-binded eyes , and hold his artistic hands. He didn't know that Claire came back to Algeria, and he didn't even expect that she'd ever find him. What kept him smiling is his high hopes for a better future for her, and the fact that the revolution is over and Algeria got rid of the colonization. His war was literally over, but he wanted to make one last wish before his soul was set free. He asked the nurse to grab him a piece of coal and a sheet of paper. Bilal was totally blinded and all he could see was the gloomy darkness in his eyes, so he decided to draw like a child with blinded eyes. As Pablo Picasso once said « it took me a few hours to paint like a pro, but a whole lifetime to paint like a child ». He grabbed that piece of coal and started drawing lines, he didn't want to make it ugly or beautiful, he just gave that burnt piece of wood an opportunity to float freely on that paper and skate along its corners. At the end he didn't get a beautiful sketch of skies and land, he just got an image of a girl holding the Algerian flag with her hands, that woman was Claire. In real life, Claire was running in the scales of the hospital with her red hills as fast as she could, she was so excited to see Bilal and apologize for him. When she arrived at his room she saw him lying on the bed and the primary IV bag hanging on it with an extension tubing that leads to his arm. She thought that he was sleeping, so she hit him in the shoulder to wake him up , but he didn't wake up. It was the moment when he finally closed his blind eyes and rest in peace, when he finished his little sketch and dropped that piece of coal from his hand. A few seconds ago, he really heard the reaper knocking his door, his soul was smothered by doom , until the blood stopped running in his veins and his heart stopped beating, then he emptied that little bit of air that lasted in his lungs spelling his last words« Allaho Ackbar» . 

She cried as hard as she could, and screamed as loud as she could. Her life had to be a pity for not being able to apologize to him,but deep inside, she knew that Bilal never wanted her to live that way. He just wanted for the big smile on her face to appear clearly just as they used to appear in his paintings when he draw her on the blessed land of independent Algeria.