He felt himself shrink and diminish, becoming the size of a cockroach under the weight of an elephant's foot. He approached the bed, his spirit crushed, shivering from a cold that wasn't there. Instead of finding the woman who had dazzled him moments ago in her lavish office, he found, on the small table beside the luxurious bed, his wife Matilda's divorce papers, signed by Judge Hillary Salazar. As he reached for the paper, he felt a stiffness in his hand, followed by a wave of darkness; he could no longer hear or see anything. He heard the judge's voice from nowhere, giving the boy a striking order: 'The roasted piglet, Bonaparte!' The boy came with the lunch tray, and he saw himself extending the same hand towards the tray of piglet that the judge, or the sorceress, had ordered at the beginning of the visit in honor of the brilliant lawyer and future mayor of the city. His appetite surged despite the shame of his nakedness, his smallness, his exposure, and his miserable state. Strangely, the piglet was served in bed on a white sheet in the very plush spot where the woman he had been waiting for was supposed to recline, naked as Eve as she had promised, the woman for whom he had crawled into this room intending to possess her with the vigor of a stallion. But the just—or unjust, it made no difference—judge screamed at him as usual, though he couldn't see her shadow in the room: 'You eat on one condition!'

About the Author:
Abu al-Abbas Barhayel is an Algerian writer, born in 1947. His published works include:

• Shazaya al-Ayyam wa Fawasel al-Ahlam (Fragments of Days and Intervals of Dreams) (Poetry Collection), Dar Al-Khaldounia - Algeria, 2011.
• Al-Ta'un fi Tayba (The Plague in Thebes) (Novel), Dar Al-Shaimaa - Algeria, 2011.
• Al-Habbah al-Sawda' (The Black Seed) (Novel) (Part One), Dar Al-Shaimaa - Algeria, 2011.
• Sanabel wa Qanabel (Ears of Corn and Bombs) (Novel), Dar Al-Farabi - Beirut, 2011.
• Al-Sayf wal-Rasas (The Sword and the Bullet) (Novel), Dar Al-Farabi - Beirut, 2012.
• Shu'bat al-Zaytoun (The Olive Branch) (Novel), Dar Al-Farabi - Beirut, 2012.

Book Details:

• Publishing House: Dar Al-Farabi for Publishing and Distribution
• Author: Abu al-Abbas Barhayel
• ISBN: 9786144320716
• Number of Pages: 272
• Year of Publication: 2013