I woke that morning with the sun already high in the sky, burning through the thin curtains of my small apartment. The heat pressed down on me, a suffocating reminder that the day would be long and unchanging. I had no particular reason to get out of bed, but I did, as if on instinct, performing the motions of living without thinking too much about them.

Outside, the streets of Algiers were empty, bleached by the unrelenting sunlight. The world felt distant, unreal. It was as if I were moving through a landscape that belonged to someone else. The same café, the same dust on the road, the same worn faces of the people who passed by me with blank, expressionless eyes. Life in this city was always like that—each day indistinguishable from the last, weighed down by the same emptiness.

At the café, I ordered a coffee and sat by the window, staring out at the sea in the distance. The horizon stretched out, endless and indifferent. I often came here to pass the time, though I wasn't sure if it made any difference whether I sat here or in my apartment. Still, it felt better to be out in the world, even if that world seemed to mock me with its silence.

It was in this numb haze of routine that I received the news: my mother had died.

The telegram was brief, no more than a few cold words announcing her death and the time of her burial. Tomorrow. I read it twice, then folded it neatly and placed it in my pocket. I finished my coffee and paid the bill. There was no particular emotion, no great sorrow or shock. Just the quiet, practical acknowledgement that I would have to take the bus to the home where she had spent her last years, where I had placed her because it seemed easier than having her live with me. I never visited often. I suppose I hadn't seen the point.

The funeral was hot, suffocating. The sun burned my skin as we stood by the graveside, the priest droning on with words that sounded empty to me. The others in the procession wept quietly, and I watched them with a strange detachment. I felt like I should have cried, but I didn't. Instead, I stared at the sky, at the blazing sun above, and the sweat dripped from my forehead, stinging my eyes. The heat was unbearable. That was all I could think of—how hot it was.

Afterward, I returned to my life. Nothing had changed, not really. My mother was gone, and yet her absence felt no different from the distance that had always been there when she was alive. It wasn't that I didn't care—it was that I didn't know what to care about. The world moved on, as it always did, indifferent to the small dramas of human life.

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A few days later, I ran into Raymond. He was an acquaintance, not quite a friend, though we spoke from time to time. He told me he had trouble with a woman he had been seeing, that she was causing him grief. He asked for my help, and I agreed without thinking. It didn't matter much to me. One way or another, life was always filled with pointless complications. What difference did it make if I helped him or not?

It was through Raymond that I met the Arab. He was her brother, I think. The details are vague now. We were at the beach that day, Raymond and I, along with a few others. The sun was bright, so bright that everything seemed to blur at the edges. I felt dizzy from the heat, the sand burning beneath my feet. We saw the Arab by the water, and Raymond started toward him. I followed, out of a kind of inertia, though I didn't really care what happened next.

There was a struggle, but I don't remember it clearly. I remember Raymond shouting, the glint of a knife in the sun, and then the Arab was gone, leaving us alone on the beach, surrounded by the stillness of the sea. Raymond was bleeding, but not badly. He wanted to go back, but I lingered.

The sun was unbearable. It pressed down on me like a weight, blinding me, suffocating me. I wandered toward the water, the world swimming in the heat, the sweat dripping down my back. And then I saw him again—the Arab, standing near the rocks, the knife flashing in the sun.

I don't know why I did it. The gun was in my hand, Raymond's gun, and before I could think, I fired. The sound of the shot echoed in the air, shattering the silence. The Arab fell, and everything was still again, except for the sun, still burning above us.

There was no reason for it, no logic. Just the sun, the heat, and the weight of the day pressing down on me. It could have been anyone; it could have been no one. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. As I stood there, the gun still hot in my hand, I fired again, and again, as if trying to silence the unbearable brightness of the sky. But the sun didn't care. It kept shining, indifferent as always.

Later, they would call it murder. They would ask why I did it, try to find a reason, a motive. But there was none. I had no answers for them, only the memory of that endless, blinding sun, and the heat that made everything meaningless. In the end, I suppose, that's all there is—the sun, the sand, and the silence that waits for us all.