Décrouvir le pot aux roses

Houari Boumédienne was born in Algeria and educated at the Sorbonne in Paris. While he was at university, he met a foreign tourist along the Champs Elysée, a Canadian woman named Monique, who, he thought, was very beautiful.

They fell in love, had a whirlwind romance, and got married. Then, after he was able to get a student visa, he moved with her to Montréal, where they both were medical students at the University of Montréal.

After they graduated from medical school, they opened a clinic in Hochelage-Maisonneuve, one of the poorer neighbourhoods of Montréal. They had to struggle, but they were able to make it work. Then they had children.

Generally, their quarrels were not violent, and they always seemed to patch up their differences. There was a problem of religion, because Houari wanted the children to be raised as Muslims; but Monique gave in on this matter, though Houari allowed her to bring the children to church and even went on occasion himself, on Palm Sunday and Easter.

There was a problem with Houari’s infidelities: Monique was aware that he had cheated on her a couple times with the Brazilian receptionist while she was pregnant; but she believed that he loved her, and only did it because he was weak. Monique didn’t think that Houari was a chauvinist like other Muslim men; he was mild-mannered and treated her with respect, and she loved him.

Then, they bought a house together in Laval, north of Montréal, a two-storey brick Canadian bungalow. While he was carrying a box of her stuff upstairs to the attic, a little black book fell from the top of the box.

He put down the box to read it, and he was shocked by what he read. It was his wife’s diary, and in it was a lurid description of a brief but very passionate affair with another man. It was very explicit; his wife described in minute detail some of the things that she had done with her lover. He couldn’t believe it! He was sure that his wife was cheating on him.

That night, after the children were in bed, Houari confronted Monique with the diary. She was angry that he had read it; she felt violated because she felt that he shouldn’t have been reading it. She assured him that the affair had taken place before they met in Europe, when she was young, but she pointed out that he had no right to be angry, since he had cheated on her while she was pregnant.

In an effort to make amends, she said, "I'm sorry that you had to see it, I didn't know that I still had it. I should have burned it."

In a rage, he slapped her. She tried to stab him with some scissors that she saw on the vanity, but he grabbed her hand, bent it back, and sprained her wrist.

While she sat on the bed, painfully holding her wrist, he said calmly, still panting, “I never knew that you were such a whore.”

Then he picked up the scissors from the floor and stabbed her to death, puncturing the carotid artery of her throat.