-For Everybody His Own Hell- Short Story Written By Mouna Ben Haddou, Translated By Mohamed Said Raihani

"Dream, from my viewpoint, is an extension of Reality. Thanks to dreams, many things are achieved. The major inventions were dreams in some people’s imaginary before becoming a beautiful reality. We should be proud of our dreams. We should be proud of our addiction to dream...".

Mouna Ben Haddou




She took a deep breath out of her burning cigarette: “How can she put an end to her life? Stifling? Hanging herself? Or swallowing a packet of drugs like in films?”…There are thousands of ways to stop her pain. Despair and low spirits engender only pain.

She rained her tears, washing away her wrath and sadness. She will leave this wild prostituted word. She has no place in all this fake life. Despite her goodness and popularity that make of her a wonderfully sociable girl, she sees in that only weak points added to her broken repertoire. An invisible smile escaped her. With the cigarette angrily seized between her lips, she cannot see anything. Her laugh is nothing but a subterfuge that she usually use against the strength of the tides rising high inside her, throwing her to the utter darkness.

All day long, her parents are quarrelling. Quarrels from sun-rise to sunset. Only bed reconciles them at night... This cursed life! She cannot understand that: Insults and offences in the morning then hugs and kisses at night. What kind of man is her father and what kind of honour is left for her mother?

She closed the door to evade talking about her parents, she moved to the neighbouring room to recollect her past life (…). She does not know how many cigarettes she has smoked. This may be the third cigarette-box. She does not care for her health. She may be smoking to take revenge against herself or just to blow away her worries or again to seek a slow death by burning herself internally.

By committing suicide, she will do nothing new. Her bright eyes will be eager to meet the imminent death and today is the appropriate occasion to fulfill her dream. She gathered her strengths to pass through the terrible tunnel and sign her final departure in such a daring, enviable style. She believes in another life across Death. Another life where she will have more wonderful things and lead a more peaceful life with no pains or sins: A world of spiritual purity.

As for me, I will miss her despite her foolishness. I have never ceased to love her from all my heart. She is my comrade. Despite everything, she has been like a spring-time puff of air in a hot summer, for me.

I still remember that unlucky day when she quarreled with her mother. She broke out nervously at hearing her mother insulting her for being old maid. She was both injured and sarcastic:

- ‘Mum! Where have you been when I was in need of you?(…) Why are you looking at me like that ? I have been smoking for such a long time. This is my only relief’.

She wiped away the tears cascading down her cheeks. Her mother would stop her, both shocked and surprised:

- ‘Shut up, girl! For everybody his own hell! ’

- ‘Where have you been when I was a lost, wandering soul. You’re not my mother. I will root out my origins. I will tear my veins in two. I will choose my ultimate refuge. I will move away from you and your trivialities. Sorry, mum! You have come too late, I don’t want to hear anything anymore. Sorry is the usual word to be said in such circumstances but sorrow is useless when there are plenty of deep injuries. Farewell, mum!’

She sneaked upstairs to the place where she feels safer and nearer to the sky, the only eye-witness to her life. To the rhythm of hard rock-and-roll music, with the ultimate cigarette between her lips and a sarcastic smile distorting her face, she blows out her last breath in the middle of a spot of coagulated blood, drawing down the curtains of a play where she was the central character with her tortures, worries and shattered dreams.

Some tender hands have shaken me out of my nightmare. I looked up to find my girlfriend’s mother asking me about her daughter who had been sitting next to me watching ‘For Everybody His Own Hell!’, the film.

I was so absorbed by the events of the film that I did not notice her withdrawal. My eyes were automatically directed to the door opening on the stair-cases swirling up to Hell. The mother’s eyes followed my eyes’ movements and in no time she was hysterically climbing up the stairs.



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* The writer, Mouna Ben Haddou, is a Moroccan poetess & short-story writer , born in Ksar El Kebir. She has published many poems and short stories on different Arab periodicals.



* The translator, Mohamed Saïd Raïhani, is a Moroccan translator, scholar & short-story writer , born on December 23rd 1968 in Ksar El Kébir. He published in Arabic "The Singularity Will " (Semiotic Study on First-names) 2001, "Waiting For the Morning" (Short stories) 2003, "Thus Spoke Santa Lugar-Verde" (Short stories) 2005, "The Season Of Migration to Anywhere" (Short stories) 2006. he is getting ready for printing:"Beyond Writing & Reading " (testimonies) and "Kais & Juliet" (An E-Love Novel).



* "For Everybody His Own Hell" is the fifth narrative text in the "The Moroccan Dream", An Anthology of Moroccan new short story directed by Mohamed Saïd Raïhani.

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