“I understand, I shouldn’t have done it”: David Diop “At Night All Blood Is Black”

While many books contains first lines that we forget the second we pass over it, others remain with us for years after we initially read the book. Ellen Foster telling us, “When I was little I would think of ways to kill my daddy. I would figure out this or that way and run it down through my head until it got easy,” rattles in our heads when we put the novel down. Annie Ernaux telling us, “My father tried to kill my mother one Sunday in June, in the early afternoon,” stays is our head as Ernaux details the intersections of class, religion, and domestic violence.

The opening of David Diop’s At Night All Blood is Black exists within the same vein, providing an entry point into the novel and continuing to ring in my mind long after I finished the book. Diop’s opening paragraph begins,

. . . I know, I understand, I shouldn’t have done it. I, Alfa Ndiaye, 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 tell. 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, will never know who I really am.