Arab Jazz (19 page)

Every day, wallah!

Society’s vengeance on those it mistreats

Shot like rabbits, strangled between our sheets

Treated like the enemy

As if we was back in some colony

Blanking our lives from your memory

But we’re in this, we’re from this vicinity

We’re here you hear me, fuck you to anonymity.

A break with a heavy bass line, AC/DC-style, then a new voice takes over. It’s rougher, more violent. Rachel takes out an earbud and raises her eyebrows at Jean, who mouths “Mourad” back at her.

From the lowest of the low, I’m gonna raise my cry

We were born into a trap, suckled on fear

Nothing to lose, we can fuck it all up here

Our fathers faced the wall, waiting for the trigger

The Arab’s the pariah, yeah we remember Algeria

Now the black boy’s the danger, the savage they can’t keep in

Way back when it was the Jew, made to purify and free the Aryan

I’ve not forgotten a thing, purgat’ry’s my cousin

Black on Jew, Arab on brother

We eat each other, fuck each other, make each other suffer.

Another change—this time Rachel doesn’t need Jean to guess that it’s Alpha, whose tone is sweeter, at times verging on a stammer.

That’s enough, that’s going too far, don’t take me for the enemy

Unity I tell you, that’s our life guarantee

The system’s always lining up the next victim

Int’rested in one thing: to nail you for a crime

To shut you in a box, to put you in the dock

So eager for it they call upon their Book

What am I asking? That our lives be worth something

I’m free of hate, I’ll say it again

Don’t go thinking you can get us complying

With a fifty-cent coin just ’cause of the gold lining.

Rachel pulls out the earbuds.

“I don’t get it . . . How did they switch from politically minded young guys to the closed-up individuals they are now? Long story short, Ruben joined the Moroccan Hasids, and his sister looked like she was going the same way until her mysterious disappearance. As for Alpha and Mourad, they’re regulars at the same prayer room as Moktar on rue Eugène-Jumin. So how come Aïcha and Bintou never caught the fundamentalist bug?”

“Why would they? During major epidemics, some family members are affected while others aren’t. One of life’s great mysteries.”

“A mystery, yes, perhaps. But imagine what it must be like seeing your brother going down that path, becoming someone else? Must be weird.”

“Well you’ll have all the time in the world to ask them tonight at your little Skype-party. Tell me, do you remember who the imam at the prayer room is? It’s our friend Abdelhaq.”

“Abdelhaq Haqiqi—I’d forgotten about him! His little brother Hassan . . . He went down, didn’t he?”

“No, still on remand. But I reckon it would be a plan to pay Haqiqi a visit, just to catch up on any family news . . .”

Rachel pauses for a moment before continuing.

“Three Salafists and a fanatical Lubavitcher. One of their younger sisters is reported missing, and the other two are anything but fundamentalists. Their best friend gets murdered, the crime scene smacking of religious impurity. What does it mean? Common sense—not to mention the current climate—demands that we focus on the Salafists, but then there’s Rébecca’s disappearance . . . Radical Muslims and Jews involved in the same mess—doesn’t it seem a bit much to you?”

“I’m not going to start quoting Goebbels again, even if you are asking for it . . .”

“On the other side there’s Laura’s family history. In Niort, Commissaire Jeanteau paid the parents a visit to tell them about their daughter’s death, and he called me afterward. Their reaction was bizarre, as though it had absolutely nothing to do with them. The wife spoke about devils, made out that their daughter only ever visited to sully them, to cover them in ‘the filth of the earth’. Something must have gone wrong when Laura last visited. Something out of the ordinary. The mother’s words were too precise. We’ll probably have to question her on her own because, according to Jeanteau, her husband stopped her from saying anything more.”

“It’s been slammed since last night! We’ll have to knuckle down if we’re going to follow all these leads . . . Oh yeah, about Mercator . . . He’s suspicious of our dear friends in the eighteenth, Enkell and Benamer. Basically he’s convinced that Enkell is lying to him, that he knows something about the call from the telephone booth, but that he’s deliberately holding back some info. When I asked him if Benamer was still Frédéric Enkell’s right-hand man he replied: ‘Evil exists, Hamelot, and sometimes it gets itself together.’ Those were his exact words. He also spoke about the stench of death. By that point I thought I was going to suffocate. I had to get out of there—meet you somewhere lively instead of at HQ.”

Rachel turns pale, repeats the name, “Benamer . . .”

“What about Benamer? What is it?”

She shakes her head slowly before deciding to go on.

“Benamer . . . A brief encounter that’s left me feeling grubby ever since. He ran a seminar at Cannes-Écluse when I was a trainee officer. He had this magnetism about him that attracted me right away. I wanted him—a bit like when you want to get off with the guide at ski camp. Little did I know that what I’d mistaken for magnetism was really malice. That I discovered at the end of the internship. He had no qualms in presenting the most horrific things as though they were perfectly normal, always in this insidious manner. For him, it was purely a matter of technique: how am I going to get a confession? It barely mattered whether the suspect was guilty or not. Screwing was all about technique too. He was relentless. He made me orgasm the first time. After that, I felt like if I didn’t fake it, he would just keep on going, that . . . I don’t know—he scared me, I think. He thought I’d faked it and he gave me this look of real scorn. He was testing me, ultimately. And I was glad I didn’t pass. Deep down he reminded me of the devil . . .”

She falls quiet, closes her eyes, and then snorts.

“Alright, come on—action! How about we warm up by seeing Haqiqi? No, let me get it! My treat . . .”

21

Abdelhaq Haqiqi, self-styled imam of the semi-clandestine Srebrenica prayer room, is pissed off beyond belief. For the past two hours, since the end of Fajr prayers, he’s been there, watch in hand, listening to these good-for-nothings’ endless discussion of the extremist comic Dieudonné’s last TV appearance. They take turns to speak, saying the same thing a hundred times over, giddy on consensus. Haqiqi’s followers are developing an infuriating tendency to confuse the prayer room with the local coffee shop. And as head of this community of true believers, he finds himself playing the part of the café owner who’s unable to chuck out the embittered soccer fan, the one who spends the morning after a game running a postmortem on the match, or the boozed-up, Le Pen–supporting unemployed dude who thinks everything’s gone to shit because of the Arabs and the blacks (the Jews too, though he’d only say so in select company). No way he can throw out this handful of unholy, hopeless down-and-outs and losers: they’re his clientele, his butts in the seats. Nothing they like more than churning out great streams of verbal diarrhea, with the usual suspects always bobbing on the surface like hippo crap: the CIA and the Jews were in on 9/11; Dieudonné getting banned from the air by Zionist media puppets; the rector of the Grande Mosquée de Paris is in the pocket of the Freemasons; halal that’s not halal . . . Abdelhaq does his best to cling to a branch on the muddy bank. It’s strange for him, though, because not long ago he thought just like them, bathing in the same filthy water, taking comfort from its amniotic warmth. This was before he met Aïssa. Before he developed an interest in the material nature of the world for the first time in his life. The fact is he does still think like them, but he no longer gives a damn. His goals are now terrestrial rather than celestial. And that’s changed everything.

The morning regulars are there: Mahmoud, Brahim and—the worst offender by far—Robert.

“Did you see him saying . . .”

“Yeah, but what about the Jews, the media . . .”

“Okay, obviously, man, they run it all!”

“Yeah, tell me about it, it stinks! Every time it’s the same . . . He dresses up like a Jew, so he’s anti-Semitic. Just like that, yeah. Know what I’m saying?”

Abdelhaq tries his best to leave them to it and think about his own situation. Shit! Just when everything’s starting to go like clockwork, Aïssa wants them to hit the brakes. It’s because of that girl. He’s still not sure why she was such a threat, but Aïssa seemed to know what he was doing . . . Anyway, if everything has gone to shit then it hasn’t got much to do with him. All he did was make a small selection error by sending his three best players to the meeting at Sam’s. Only Moktar had stood firm. Time had been of the essence, Sam lost his cool and cobbled together a plan B which involved pairing up a psychotic Sahelian Salafist with a psychopathic killer from Alsace. From then on, the entire operation was a free-for-all. Right now everyone’s stuck in neutral, wasting time, and it’s not good. There was something divine about the way it was all panning out until this happened. But the time has come for compromise . . . Perhaps he’s being tested, as they say . . . On top of this, he has to keep his people sweet, and they’re not the easiest to chill out. Same for those other idiots who barely ever get off their asses. Benefit-scrounging Islamists who live with their parents and don’t give a shit about anything! Fucking hell, roll on the day when someone like Sarkozy takes over . . . No jobs, no cash! These three guys wouldn’t even be capable of carrying out a suicide attack—what are they good for, honestly?

“Oi, Abdelhaq! No jokes, man, the Jews, they’re mocking us, aren’t they?”

“You know, Robert, the Prophet, may God’s peace and blessing be upon him, said that they were all liars.
Inshallah
, when the
dawla islamiya
is reestablished, they will know their rightful place as
dhimmi
. But the majority, I am sure of it, will, like you, take the right path that leads to truth.”

“But I’ve never been a Jew!”

“No, Robert, of course not, and the Prophet himself, may God’s peace and blessing be upon him, certainly preferred the Christians of all the people of the Book. What I’m saying is that you have found the way, you have opened your heart to the light, and that they will too, without a doubt . . .”

Answers like this come naturally to him. It’s what he has always thought, for as long as he’s been aware of his thoughts. But he can no longer bear spewing out such babble. The moment he hears himself say it he can practically feel Aïssa’s look of contempt. “Don’t you think that you’re above all that, Abdelhaq? Why do you give a fuck about Jews, Christians, cretins? Would you join the jihad? Would you go and blow yourself up just to kill five Iraqi soldiers and some redneck from Kansas? Do you really believe there’s any sense in that? And don’t tell me that everyone has a part to play in this great struggle, that everyone has the chance to attain the longed-for status of martyrdom . . . I can see in your eyes that you don’t believe it anymore. The virgins, the rivers, the delicious fruit and the houses made of gold bars . . . You wanted them so much that you couldn’t wait until paradise to obtain them!”

“Hey, Abdelhaq, have you seen this? Sweets with gelatin made from
halouf
. It’s only come out because of that mad cow shit . . . They’ve been making us eat pork all along! That was their plan, yeah—to make us come here to eat pork. To turn us into pigs. Shit, man, I swear it, one day I’m getting the fuck out of here.
Inshallah
, I’ll go to Mecca or Medina. I swear it, brother!”

“
Inshallah
, Brahim,
inshallah
 . . .”

How much longer am I going to have to put up with this bullshit, let alone answer it? How much longer? Fucking hell, Aïssa! What the hell are you doing to me?

Sure enough the telephone decides to ring right then. It’s Mohand.

“Hey, can I swing by?”

“
Salaam alaikum ya khouya
. Lucky you called—I’ve been so busy I nearly forgot about our meeting. I’ll meet you at Onur’s as planned.”

“At Onur’s, okay . . . I’ve got to go to there anyway. I’m in a rush.”

“
Barak allahu fik
, my brother, see you in a bit.”

A forced smile on his lips, Abdelhaq turns to the three worshippers. Sitting or half-flopped on their prayer mats, they’re wearing the requisite uniform: prayer cap, white
kamiss
down to below their knee, three-quarter-length Nike or Le Coq Sportif track pants, and sneakers sporting the same logos.
How can they afford all that on jobseeker’s allowance? Fair enough, they don’t spend anything because they still live with their parents. Fuck, why was I born an Arab? I’d have been right at home with the
Front National!

“Brothers, I have a meeting. A young believer who is making his first steps on the path but is not yet fully ready. I’ve got to shut the prayer room for two hours. I’ll be back in time to lead the next set of prayers . . . 1:57 p.m. today.”

Ten minutes later, Haqiqi is standing outside Onur’s. He smiles at the owner while he nods at a young man sitting in front of a glass of tea. Mohand—twenty-five years old, well-pressed jeans, Burlington moccasins, Lacoste polo shirt—joins him outside; they walk side by side up to parc de la Villette, the imam and the supposed brother who’s seen the light. They head up the park’s central walkway, dodging the crowds of people. When they reach the Grande Halle, Mohand goes on the offensive.