David Henniger and Driss

David Henniger and Driss have no established personal relationship before the road accident that joins their lives. Their connection begins when David, driving with Jo, fails to stop for two men beside the road and the car strikes one of them. Driss is first present as an injured stranger and then as a dead man whose identity and family ties force the Hennigers to face the human consequences of the collision. The story makes their relationship one of responsibility without familiarity: David knows Driss through the irreversible harm he has caused, while Driss cannot answer or explain himself.

The Collision

The collision occurs as a sand gust dims the moon and makes the road difficult to see. Jo asks David to use the high beam; when the road becomes visible again, she sees two men running toward the car with raised hands. One also holds a cardboard sign advertising fossils. Jo tells David to stop, but the car continues forward and strikes a person. The sudden impact ends the possibility of treating the roadside encounter as an inconsequential interruption: a sign and two people seeking the attention of passing motorists become the point at which David’s journey is bound to Driss’s death.

The scene is filtered through Jo’s perception, which first frames the men’s sign as a likely scam. That suspicion does not establish what Driss intended; it instead shows how little the occupants know about the people in the road before acting. The contrast between the Hennigers’ uncertainty and the certainty of the collision matters to their relationship with Driss. They do not know him, but that lack of knowledge cannot undo what has happened. The narrative’s emphasis falls on the gulf between their brief decision not to stop and its permanent consequence.

The Body at Azna

After the collision, the Hennigers bring the victim with them to Azna. His identity is still unknown to them, and they have no clear idea whom to call. They regard bringing him along as the logical action in a foreign country, yet the presence of the body makes the situation awkward and impossible to keep separate from the rest of their stay. The staff ask whether the car should be cleaned; David refuses and says the police in Taza must be called. His response marks an immediate practical acknowledgment of the incident, even as the dead man remains unnamed.

The body is taken from the car and placed in a garage, away from the guests. Later, the garage is air-conditioned, and a man keeps vigil beside the dead boy, praying near a pot of mint tea. David thinks of the body there and of the refusal of Benihadd to take it away that night, because there is no morgue at his post and arrangements must wait until morning. In the quiet after these exchanges, David hugs Jo; still, neither knows what to say, and the facts between them feel stifling. The narrative calls them assassins, a stark moral designation that makes plain how the accident has altered the way the Hennigers understand themselves in relation to the person they have killed.

Driss Is Named

The connection becomes specific when the old man arriving at the gate is asked about the dead boy. He identifies him as Driss, his only son. Until then, David and Jo have brought an unknown victim into the estate; now the body belongs to someone whose loss can be named through a family bond. The father’s brief identification gives Driss a place beyond the Hennigers’ account of the crash, while making their responsibility harder to contain within an accident involving strangers.

When David later enters the crowded garage with Richard and Hamid, the lights are on and Driss’s father stands beside the body, visibly shaken. David looks at Driss directly for what he recognizes as the first time. He cannot find the appropriate emotion, though he manages to appear grave and astonished. He waits rather than offering a handshake, sensing that the gesture must come later; as his fear recedes, he begins calculating the probable financial damage. The sequence places outward respect and inward calculation side by side. David is present before Driss and his father, but his attention shifts toward the cost to himself, revealing the distance between acknowledging the dead and fully apprehending the bereaved family’s loss.

Responsibility Without Intimacy

Hamid introduces David to the father as the man who was driving the previous night and says that David declares his innocence before God. The exchange does not make David and Driss personally acquainted, nor does it establish that the father accepts David’s account. Instead, it frames their connection through competing forms of knowledge: David can state his position, while Driss’s father stands beside the body of his only son. The father’s expressionless tears and clenched hands register grief without turning the encounter into a simple exchange of accusation and defense.

The relationship’s narrative force lies in this imbalance. Driss is not developed here through a conversation with David or through any shared history; he enters David’s life at the instant of death, and his identity emerges through the grief of those who knew him. David, by contrast, remains alive to explain, wait, fear, and calculate. The collision therefore binds them without granting either mutual recognition: David must confront Driss as the person struck by his car, while Driss’s father has to meet him as the driver responsible for the death. Their brief, unequal connection becomes a measure of the distance between declaring innocence and facing the consequences of another person’s loss.