Is gone.

A few moments drift by in silence. Then “Al-Qahhar” returns, audible through the window, from the passage, from behind the door. The woman comes back into the room and stops next to the man. Standing. Her left hand still telling the black prayer beads. “I can even inform you that while I’ve been away you have breathed thirty-three times.” She crouches down. “And even now, at this moment, as I’m speaking, I can count your breaths.” She lifts the string of prayer beads into what seems to be the man’s field of vision. “And now, since my return, you have breathed seven times.” She sits on the kilim and continues, “I no longer count my days in hours, or my hours in minutes, or my minutes in seconds… a day for me is ninety-nine prayer-bead cycles!” Her gaze comes to rest on the old watch-bracelet holding together the bones of the man’s wrist. “I can even tell you that there are five cycles to go before the mullah makes the call to midday prayer and preaches the hadith.” A moment. She is working it out. “At the twentieth cycle, the water bearer will knock on the neighbor’s door. As usual, the old woman with the rasping cough will come out to open the door for him. At the thirtieth, a boy will cross the street on his bike, whistling the tune of “Laïli, Laïli, Laïli, djân, djân, djân, you have broken my heart,” for our neighbor’s daughter…” She laughs. A sad laugh. “And when I reach the seventy-second cycle, that cretinous mullah will come to visit you and, as always, will reproach me because, according to him, I can’t have taken good care of you, can’t have followed his instructions, must have neglected the prayers… Otherwise you’d be getting better!” She touches the man’s arm. “But you are my witness. You know that I live only for you, at your side, by your breath! It’s easy for him to say,” she complains, “that I must recite one of the ninety-nine names of God ninety-nine times a day… for ninety-nine days! But that stupid mullah has no idea what it’s like to be alone with a man who…” She can’t find the right word, or doesn’t dare say it, and just grumbles softly “… to be all alone with two little girls!”