The Nightmare begins with Saidi pitting his protagonist, Ben Chadiza, against his antagonist, the sorcerer. A group of seven sorcerers are described as they surround Chadiza: “It was a macabre scene, which under other circumstances the sophisticated Mr. Benjamin Chadiza would have unwisely attributed to his rather flamboyant imagination” (Saidi 421). The definitions of the specific words in this quote speak volumes about its underlying meaning. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, macabre means: “comprising or including a personalized representation of death.” Mr. Chadiza is described as someone sophisticated: “having a refined knowledge of the ways of the world, cultivated in particular through vast experience”. By using these words, Saidi gives Chadiza the identity of personified worldly knowledge and foreshadows the character's courtship with death which continues throughout the story in the person of the sorcerer. Saidi further identifies Chadiza and his wife as the "children" in this allegory by saying that Chadiza had "cried like a little child" during his nightmare and, upon awakening, had been comforted by his wife in a manner resembling a mother comforting her child: “His wife put her arms around him and soothed him with her warmth, pressing her breasts to his chest and whispering comfort into his ear” (422). The sorcerer also refers to Chadiza as "my son" in paragraph 39 (425). Near the end of the story, it is revealed that Chadiza's wife, Maria, is the sorcerer's biological granddaughter and that her mother had abandoned the sorcerer "because of his witchcraft" (427). Mr. Chadiza and his wife are therefore identified as the children of this sorcerer in a figurative and literal sense. But they are much more than that. The...... middle of paper ...... there goes from indifference to respect and from apathy to pride. The sorcerer loses his fragile hold on the villagers' fears until he finally finds himself facing "his own Armageddon" (426). Saidi's choice of the word Armageddon to describe the death of the sorcerer is indicative of his role as representative of the "dark ages" of the people and marks the end of his reign: "The place or time of a final battle and conclusion between the forces of good and evil” (Merriam-Webster). As the people of the village remark that Chadiza was a “wonderful man,” they turn away from the remains of the fire and speak of birth (427). The daughter who turned her back on the mystical ways of her father initiated a change in the morals of her people. With the death of the mystic, a new era was born. People turn their backs on the dead and walk towards them as a new day dawns..