Harraga (14 page)

From one door to the next

Hushed is the silence

The wind has nothing worthwhile to report

The crowd is running on empty

The nightmare draws out its shadow

My heart aches.

To say I love you to the walls

And hearken for an answer

Beggars reason.

Where can it be, the path

Which from the unknown

Will fashion my native soil

My love, my life

And my death?

Suddenly, I have begun
to dread coming back to this house. This is new only yesterday I would be halfway home before I’d even left the Hôpital Parnet. In my haste, I would rip my white coat. This house is my haven, my personal history, my life. One question nags at me, unsettles me, slows my pace. It worries me. The answer, I know, will be there when I get home, Chérifa will be slumped in front of the TV, flicking through the channels or counting her toes, or she’ll have taken off without so much as a note – she can’t write, cannot even formulate thought, so alien is writing to her – and yet still I come back here, one moment fretting and fearing the worst and the next hoping for the best, I cling to that thought though it does not seem to put an end to the agonising uncertainty. At times, I walk more slowly, at times more quickly, and here and there in the twisting alleyways that irrigate this city I allow myself to be buttonholed by the women who wait on their doorsteps, I stop and take the time to give them the latest news about their case. They listen to me, beating their breasts or covering their faces with their hands, stammering
oh
and
ah
. There are times when I find this gesture infuriating, when I see it as an abdication of responsibility, a thoroughly masculine cowardice; sometimes I browbeat them to the point where I fear for their lives and sometimes my heart bleeds and so I give them news that will have them singing and dancing all night. Dear God, how tenuous their life is, it hangs by a thread, a word, a glimmer, a law. And how absurd my own life.

Chérifa is bored. I’ve noticed that she’s become less voluble, less frivolous; she is brooding, preoccupied, serious. I scarcely recognise her. She is like a caged bird that has forgotten how to sing, to splash in its bath, to hop and skip for joy – a joy it can scarcely remember, one too distant and too fleeting to gladden the heart. Chérifa is like a living doll, in her glassy eyes there is a faraway look; are they staring at the bars or past them to a distant something that glimmers in the sky, rustles in the wind, sings in the trees? I’m reminded of the story of the man who was born blind and who, one day, for a fraction of a second, recovers his sight – a miracle – and in that second he sees a sleek, handsome rat scurry along the wall. And ever after, when something is being described to him, he asks, awestruck and anxious: ‘Does it look like the rat?’

The honeymoon period is over: our chats, our games, our rambles through the winding passageways of the house in search of some forgotten ghost no longer leave Chérifa spellbound, open-mouthed, eyes shining. I’m almost tempted to tell her the story of M. Seguin’s goat being eaten by the big bad wolf, but that might reawaken the nomad in her and if I opened the door, would she even be able to resist the call of the sea long enough to say goodbye? The thing is, I’ve grown attached to her; the only solitude I can imagine now is in her company. Dear Lord, how much do our lives truly belong to us?

Something has changed in her, I can feel it, I can sense it. What did I do? What has happened to her?

Pregnancy – of course! – and all the upheaval that entails. The swollen body, the leaden legs, the hot flushes, the swirl of hormones, the mood swings, the sudden cravings that affect the very core of one’s being. I’ve seen some odd cases at the Hôpital Parnet, women who chew their fingers, gnawing the bone down to the marrow, others who tear their hair, there are even women who stare at the ceiling like saints, oblivious to the hustle and bustle, to the midwives, to the cheeping of the chicks and the silences of the angels; there are the women who hit out at the nurses, lash out at their husbands, their brothers. There are the stately, old-fashioned princesses who come to us by chance or out of the goodness of their hearts; we crowd around to admire them, cajole and flatter them, but there is nothing to be done about their delusions, they are not of this world; with an imperious wave they brush us away like insignificant germs. They are difficult to deal with, the very fact that they are carrying the family heir means they are constantly in a state. There are the mother hens, feathery as eiderdowns, who amble between the cubicles pecking at each other; life does not bother them, they love the chaos, they love the crowing, they are always in good spirits. No sooner have they laid this baby in a manger than they are back to bustling about the house, clucking all the while. Every woman who comes to us has her own story, none of them banal. Then there are other problems, and God knows Chérifa has her share: youth, inexperience, vain hopes, bad dreams and I don’t know what else, her mood swings, her wilfulness, those things she has inherited. She is volatile, fierce and aggressive one minute, dazed and sullen the next. Love and sex and all the bother and the upset that goes with them, they destroy, they damage, they scar. Chérifa is young, she’s wild, she can’t resist the lure of the sensual. I have long since left behind the agonies of desire but there was a time when I too rolled around on the floor like an addict in withdrawal.

What can I do?

It’s a fact, I take her out less and less. Not at all, if truth be told. Where can we go? Algiers is no place for a quiet stroll, it’s exhausting; women find themselves constantly followed, pointed at, harassed. The old men spout shrill scathing proverbs, the old crones make disparaging remarks as we pass, the cops wolf-whistle and stroke their truncheons suggestively. The little boys are the worst. They shout, they make obscene gestures, they walk behind us, egging on the crowds. It says a lot about their upbringing that hardly are they out of the womb than they’re waging war on womankind. The more I think about them, the more they remind me of the film
Gremlins
. What a story: in the dim recesses of ancient China (an antique shop somewhere in the heart of Chinatown run by a venerable old man more ancient than his antiques), an American explorer – half crackpot, half bumbling inventor but wholly charming – discovers a curious creature, a strange furry animal with eyes like a lemur and ears like a panda, a creature so adorable anyone would want to take it home. The man offers to buy it: it would make an ideal birthday present for his son. The ancient Chinaman demurs. The American lays down another $100 bill. Still the old man refuses:
With Mogwai, comes much responsibility. I cannot sell him at any price.
But the old man’s grandson rushes after the American and secretly agrees to sell the creature, warning the man:
keep him out of the light, especially sunlight, it’ll kill him. Second, don’t give him any water, not even to drink. But the most important rule, the rule you can never forget, no matter how much he cries, no matter how much he begs, never feed him after midnight.
These are the three commandments for anyone who would have a Mogwai under their roof. Our explorer agrees to these conditions and returns to present-day America – about three blocks away. Everything happens as it was foretold. The man’s son is delighted, as is his mother since she doesn’t need to feed or wash the new pet. And then one night, the boy feeds the creature after midnight, then spills a glass of water on his head in broad daylight. What follows is horrendous: the adorable Mogwai spawns a vicious creature, a Gremlin, which immediately begins to multiply. By the end of the film, America the indomitable is on its knees, besieged by these mischievous scamps who scream and laugh and pillage, eating and multiplying until they can overrun the planet and destroy it. This is a long-winded way of saying that I, too, felt under siege. It’s impossible to face down everyone and so you bow your head, you cross the street, you put a compress on the wound. Typically, the few decent men, the genuine believers, the humble fathers – those lifeless men – express their compassion by not lifting a finger, by giving the impression that there is much they would say if only life were not so short. Afterwards, they resent us, they are embarrassed by our misfortune which serves only to emphasise their own. This country may lack many things, but we have no shortage of would-be sermonisers, of lazy bastards happy to leave you to sweat, of pathetic cowards quick to fade into the background. What with me trying to look like a fashionable mother and Chérifa’s hip and glamorous clothes, we were an affront to the prevailing air of sanctity. We reeked of brimstone, of bitches on heat, of shameless heresy, our insolence knew no bounds. ‘Like mother, like daughter’ people whispered as we passed, squinting at us, pursing their lips. One day, I’ll tell them exactly what I think of their ‘absolute perfection’. Because they think they believe in Allah, they think that means they can do what they please, throw bombs and worse, sermonise from dawn to dusk, Monday to Friday. Is it my fault that Chérifa has the beauty of a fallen angel and I look like a Madonna? The streets of Algiers are dismal, dirty, choked with seething crowds, what is there to do but stare longingly through grimy shop windows and fend off rogues? It’s true I scold Chérifa more than I realise. She’s petulant by nature and I’m turning into a cantankerous old crone, I’m starting to lose the plot, I’m sick to the back teeth of the
bled
, I’m eaten up by worry, I’m missing Sofiane, I’m worn out working at the hospital. The compromises and cuddles of traditional family life are not Chérifa’s thing. And the best that can be said about housework is that she loathes it.

If only she could read! My library is filled with treasures, the viscount and the saintly doctor left behind books enough to last us till the end of time. The others also left books by the basketful, but they’re potboilers, I keep them out of pity. Aside from a respect for the old, Papa instilled in us a love of the printed word that I have never outgrown. Everything else, I could live without. Over time, I’ve made my own additions, a handful of pearls and dozens of third-rate novels bought by the kilo and mottled with aphids and fly specks. I had to buy them in order to ride out my grief, to survive my time in the wilderness. I think I’ve probably read more books than a monkey eats peanuts in its life. The whole house is stuffed with them and I could get more if she needed them. But Chérifa doesn’t realise what she’s missing. For every single person on this planet, there is a book that speaks directly to them, that is a revelation, that tells them everything they need to know. To read that book – your book – without being forever changed is impossible. The problem with people who know nothing is that you have to explain everything, and the more you explain, the more they shut themselves off. They cling to their ignorance, it keeps them warm.

I decided it was time for a spring-clean. It was all I could come up with to keep us busy. Chérifa shrugged. I was about to suggest a tactical retreat but it was too late, the young hate it when their elders go back on their word. We put on our battle dress, tucked our skirts into our knickers, tied our hair back with bandanas and then set off, full steam ahead. This was spring-cleaning Algerian style – slopping water everywhere until it seeps under the rugs, making a racket loud enough to wake the dead, whipping up such a commotion a person could lose her marbles. It is a continuation of domestic housework by military means, a complete clear-out; it is the tradition of the harem.

This is how I learned to do it, this is how I do it, full stop!

By eight o’clock that night, we had made little progress and the house was a disaster area. We laughed, we larked, we vied to see who was faster, we set each other challenges, we slogged heroically, we mopped, we swabbed, we dusted, but it was joyless and half-hearted. In the thick of spring-cleaning, it occurred to me that playing the skivvy in order to ward off disaster was the worst thing to inflict upon a girl in love. I imagined how terrified Chérifa must feel, now that she glimpsed the yawning chasm between the dreams she had cherished and the reality I was offering. But when you have nothing, what can you offer? Sadness leached into our deepest thoughts and by a process of cross-contamination we polluted the atmosphere. Our laughter was too loud, too forced, our conversation filled with too many things unsaid.

Sometimes the defeat precedes the attempt, as it did in this case. When you’re waiting for the end of the world, all bets are off.

The evening was pleasant, but it left a bitter aftertaste. It started out well enough, we were intoxicated by the whiff of disinfectant mingling with the soothing aromas of tea and Turkish delight. Lolling in our slippers, we began to drift off, exhausted from the big clear-out. I acted just in time, I put on a CD of Rachmaninov in his heyday to open our hearts, awaken us to the beauties of the world. A vast, sweeping, subtle music echoed through the house, happiness, rapture, golden dreams and carefully crafted mysteries. In this old place which broods upon its secrets, beauty produces ghostly harmonics. When I opened my eyes again, I saw Chérifa’s face, she was deathly pale, she was about to throw up on the rug. Great music is not really her thing, she didn’t know it existed, that it existed long before she was born. I put on some classic Aznavour, then Paradès singing
fado
that could level a granite mountain, then something by Malek, the Franco-Moroccan singer, then Idir, the Franco-Algerian singer, and seeing that even this was new to her ears, I slipped an old, scratched vinyl disc on to my battered old record player. Something recorded during
Am Charr
, the Year of the Great Famine, in 1929 or 1936. On the record sleeve, an old, tattooed woman sits cross-legged at the door of her tent staring out at the desert and written on the luminescent sky in a florid, cursive font is the title of a spaghetti western:
The Whore and the Flautist
. From the speakers came a threnody channelled from the bowels of the earth, one that would have put a herd of elephants to flight. The old woman, a famous
cheikha
from before the war with a rasping drawl, was lamenting the misfortunes of a young girl of noble birth abducted by slave traders and sold for thirty
douros
to an evil madam who immediately put her to work on her back. Straightaway we are plunged into pathos and misery. The girl’s apprenticeship was swift and brutal; the once beautiful, joyous maiden sank into a deep depression. Then the harvest ended and so began the orgiastic season for the peasants. Amid the fantasies and feasts, libations and copulations, black magic and honour killings and heaven knows what. The summer sun is sweltering. As news of the girl’s beauty and her doe eyes reached even the blind and the deaf in the desert, men came from fields in far-flung places to straddle the newest arrival. A brave troubadour who visited the bordello between society balls fell madly in love with her the moment he slipped into her bed. It is at this point in the story that the words of the chorus become clear: ‘Enter my friend, enter, higher still you’ll find my heart, it belongs to he who claims it!’ Thirty times the
cheikha
sings the words, heartrending whimpers from the depths of her being. She would not be more convincing if she were in the throes of death. The minstrel carried off the girl on a thoroughbred stolen from the village
cheikh
and so our lovebirds are caught up in a gruelling adventure, pursued by the guards of the monstrous madam and the henchmen of the notorious
caïd.
The tale might have ended there on a hopeful note, since to flee is in a sense a synonym for salvation, but no, the poet decided to follow heartbreak to its logical conclusion: the couple are caught, the flautist’s throat is cut and his body dismembered on the public square while his young lover is shackled and dragged back to the hovel where she will live out her days in untold pain. Since the dawn of time, the struggle to be free has led to tragedy.