 Pushkin Press presents At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop, translated by Anna Moskvakis, performed by Dion Graham. We embraced each other by our names, one thing, our friendship. Who thinks betrays? Pascoquinha, Maria de Ponce, I am two simultaneous voices. One long, the other short. Shekhamadu Kani, ambiguous adventure. One, I know. I understand. I shouldn't have done it. I offer indiae, son of the old, old man. I understand. I shouldn't have. God's truth, now I know. My thoughts belong to me alone. I can think what I want, but I won't have. The ones I might have told my secret thoughts to, my brothers-in-arms, who will be left so disfigured, maimed, eviscerated, that God will be ashamed to see them show up in paradise and the devil will be happy to welcome them to hell, but never know who I really am. The survivors won't know a thing. My old father won't know, and my mother, if she is still of this world, will never find out. The weight of shame will not be added to the weight of my death. They won't imagine what I've thought, what I've done, the depths to which the world drove me. God's truth, the family honor will be spared, the honor of appearances. I know, I understand, I shouldn't have. In the world before, I wouldn't have dared. But in today's world, God's truth, I allow myself the unthinkable. My voice rises in my head to forbid me. My ancestors' voices and my parents' voices all extinguish themselves the minute I conceive of doing what, finally, I did. I know now, I swear to you, that I understood it fully the moment I realized that I could think anything. It happened like that. All of a sudden, without warning, it hit me brutally in the head, like a giant seed of war dropped from the metallic sky. The day Mademba Diop died, ah, Mademba Diop, my more than brother, took too long to die. It was very, very difficult. It wouldn't end. From dawn into evening, his guts in the air, his insides outside, like a sheep that has been ritually dismembered after the sacrifice, except Mademba was not yet dead, and already the insides of his body were outside. Sample complete. Ready to continue?