Alain marries Virginie in the crypt of Saint Joseph’s Oratory in Montréal. For all intents and purposes, it is the happiest day of his life. The groom is surrounded by his in-laws, his best friend and his parents, Lebanese Egyptians who fled the wars in the Middle East for Québec, where they waged another sort of war—an intimate and merciless family war of divorce, lawyers and damage. The evil eye bides its time. As the celebration approaches, Alain goes from bad to worse. His insomnia, anxiety and illness are back. And today, his cousin Édouard, his best man, loses his footing, swept into the mad mechanics of denial of biblical proportions.
Alain prays for fate to spare him, for his big day to be one of celebration and healing, but a cursed name resurfaces from the past—a name that immediately takes shape in a voice, a body, a story. Everything we try to forget, everything we refuse to see, everything we hate demands its pound of flesh.
As you make your bed, you must lie in it. Because life, ya Alain, is a dormant trap in the prison of time. Yes, life, ya ebni, it doesn’t last: some joy, deep pain, a thousand secrets, a thousand dangers.
