Harraga (7 page)

The house was built by an officer of the Ottoman court – an
Effendi
– a certain Mustafa Al Malik, whose name and coat of arms can still be seen to the left of the entrance, carved into an ornate marble plaque worn away by the years. Which is why people in the neighbourhood refer to us as
the House of Mustafa.
It's a little unfortunate, since the man had a terrible reputation for being a paedophile – though back in those days, such crimes were tolerated in polite society.

The house's charm comes from the primitive mosaics, the nooks like the holes in Gruyère cheese into which are set old brasses, narrow corridors and the steep staircases which meander this way and that. Mystery pervades this house, around every corner is a ghost in a
djellaba
, a goateed genie rubbing his lamp, an overweight courtesan chained to a wizened old crone, a pot-bellied vizier plotting against the Caliph. Of course there is nothing really there, and yet you feel as though you might encounter anything.

I grew up shrouded in this atmosphere, so it is hardly surprising that it has distorted my sense of time. Things would be different if I had grown up in an overcrowded tower block in some blighted suburb, on a marshy plain buffeted by the fumes from factories. Here I have space to dream to my heart's content, all I lack are the funds. My salary is more conducive to sleepless nights than idle days.

 

After the death of the Turk, the house embarked upon a new career. Whether by a twist of fate, or because it was built on the highest point of what would later be called the Rampe Valée – named after the Maréchal de France and Governor-General of Algeria whose contemporaries said he ruled with an iron fist in a velvet glove – but whatever the reason, the Turkish officer was succeeded by a French officer, a certain Colonel Louis-Joseph de la Buissière, who was a viscount besides. His name and coat of arms are carved on the right-hand side of the pediment on a garlanded marble plaque eaten away by time. Nothing is known about his military career. I assume he earned his rank by proving himself on the battlefield, unless it was his by virtue of his ancestry. The fall of Charles X in 1830 brought about his own fall since, being a legitimist and a romantic, the colonel refused to allow the tricolour to replace the white cockade on his regimental pennant. He resigned his commission before he could be dismissed by Republican
arrivistes
and melted into the crowd of nobodies in Algiers. He was also a respected naturalist whose name features in the prestigious gazettes that paper the attic. He criss-crossed the wilds of Algeria on foot, by caleche, under the blazing sun, pencil in hand, making notes and sketches of everything the desert could offer up to his insatiable curiosity. He filled several volumes with extraordinarily meticulous drawings. It's funny how beautiful a bitter, stunted, sprig of goat's-foot can become beneath the scientist's pencil. But little minds have little respect so the gazettes ended up in the attic where they have fed generations of mice hungry for knowledge. The world is as it is, made up of scholars and simpletons; what the former create the latter destroy. Somewhat belatedly, in the grip of who knows what passion, the colonel embraced Islam and married one of its daughters, a certain Mériem, the youngest child of a respectable apothecary in the Kasbah and took the name Youssef, which is simply the Arabic spelling of Joseph, favoured son of Jacob and Rachel. It was generally accepted that the colonel was a devout believer and he is often cited whenever someone feels the need to demonstrate how Islam is superior to all other religions. It has to be said that when famous Christians convert, it's a bonus, which is why there's so much media hype about Western celebrities who suddenly go over to Islam. I don't really understand why these people embrace Islam with the sort of bluster usually reserved for defecting to the enemy. There's a lot of
nah, nah, nah-nah, nah!
in their neurons. Now, a Muslim who converted to Christianity wouldn't admit to it under torture, he wouldn't tell his confessor, he would continue showing up to the mosque, fervent and fearless as a Taliban. It doesn't matter, let people believe whatever they want as long as they don't use it as an excuse to go around bumping people off. As it says in the Book: ‘
I have sent to you the Qur'an and Muhammad to close the prophetic cycle of revelations.
' Thus it is permitted to grow and to improve, which is precisely what the viscount serenely did. The good Youssef died in the odour of sanctity at the ripe old age of ninety-something, he passed away in bed surrounded by relatives and friends, but there were those in Paris who were puzzled by his curious end. Being so far from civilisation, they expected him to die a violent death, to kick the bucket in some unseemly fashion, or at the very least to expire from some fever obscure enough to be considered exotic. And perhaps in the end he did, though in those days people were more likely to die of old age, starvation, an excess of sun or a kick from a horse though I'll admit one could also die of a malaria epidemic, a plague of locusts or a dagger between the shoulder blades. The colonel left an estate that was enough to tempt the most disinterested observer, since he had substantial properties in Barbary as in his native Sologne. There ensued a confabulation between solicitors and much coming and going between Algiers and Paris. With consummate skill, the shysters quickly scoured the law books to see what portion they could reserve for the rich and what pittance might be left to the poor and order was thereby restored. They evicted old Madame Mériem with only her memories while the French branch of the de la Buissière family succeeded in clinging to their inheritance.

The house was entrusted to a certain Daoud Ben Chekroun, a Jew from Bab Azoun who made a living brokering property deals between the retreating Turks and the advancing French and would end his life as rich as Croesus. At least that's what it says on the daguerreotype we have which depicts him hunkered, leaning against a tumbledown hovel, one hand flicking a bull's tail flyswatter, as hairy and dishevelled as an old gorilla. But I suppose it's possible for a man to be rich and underhand. And we can't rule out the possibility that he hoodwinked the photographer who in all good faith immortalised him in his poverty. The local elders of Rampe Valée, who convene their meetings in a
café maure
at the bottom of the valley, could think of no better names for the Turk's citadel than
the Frenchman's palace
,
the Convert's fortress
,
the Jew's lair
,
the crow's nest
,
the fox's den.
The names stuck and did us considerable harm. Applied to us, devout Muslims since birth, in a free, independent, overzealous country imbued with Arabo-Islamic contempt, ‘convert' meant ‘
kafir
', ‘Frenchman' was synonymous with
harki
– the name given to the traitorous Algerians who fought with the French during the War of Independence – and what could the word ‘Jew' mean but ‘thief'? The fact that we earned our living as indefatigable shopkeepers only served to fuel the rumours.

 

It is to Monsieur Louis-Joseph that we owe the magnificent fireplace in the parlour, the passageway that leads into the garden, the conversion of the
hammam
into a bathroom and of the baker's oven into a modern kitchen. He cleverly solved the water problem by sinking a well in the garden and installing a labyrinthine network of pipes. Being warm-hearted and compassionate, he erected a public drinking fountain on the street which, in the short term, bankrupted the local trader who peddled this precious commodity and in the long term sparked a bitter war between those who voted to keep the fountain and the free water, and those who maintained the water was poisoned and brought forward as many snivelling witnesses as there were beggars in the medina. While he was about it, Monsieur Louis-Joseph installed a splendid grandfather clock in the hall whose golden pendulum was later substituted for a lead weight by some light-fingered person. Ever since, weighed down with lead, it has groaned as though being tortured. Having converted to become Youssef, he had his study-cum-oratory decorated with beautiful tiles bearing
suras
from the Qur'an calligraphed by great poets, he divided the ground-floor living room in two, placing a stunning
mashrabiya
down the middle to create one side for the men, the other for women. On the first floor, he had a gynaeceum – a harem – built, sealed on four sides, and fitted with all the modern conveniences so beloved of subjugated females: a coal-fired stove, a pitcher and a washbowl. He raised the walls surrounding the house and topped them with shards of glass to reinforce the prison atmosphere I find so painful now that there is fighting in the streets, now that I have reinforced the doors and windows and no longer go out. Finally, he installed a charming ablutions area where the faithful could perform
wudu.

 

After Ben Chekroun had finished his labours, the house fell into the hands of an immigrant newly arrived from far-off Transylvania. We never quite knew what that meant, but we suspected that he was Romanian by day, Hungarian by night and a ferryman in times of trouble. It was as he took his last step down the steamship's gangplank that the rogue and the stranger met by sheer chance. It is possible that, as has been attested, the deal was struck quickly and quietly in the best interests of all concerned. But that is simply legalistic jargon, a magical incantation; I am more inclined to believe that two deaf-mutes could not have made more noise in trying to make themselves heard. Ben Chekroun was, after all, a man of some importance and the newcomer was not just anyone. He is remembered as a character who might have stepped straight out of the silver screen. Perhaps it is possible to be born in the Carpathians and retain one's humanity, but our character believed only in the supernatural. Vampires were his friends, he spoke of them as of some eternal truth. When he arrived, he bore the unpronounceable name Tartem-something-or-other; his first name, a real tongue-twister, was Crzhyk-I-forget-what. A simple greeting was a real mouthful. Back in the snow-capped mountains of Transylvania, he had served a
Voivode
– a warlord – descended from the race of Phanariotes about whom the literature of the region has nothing good to say. In short, he had learned from a master the gentle art of treachery. I suspect the negotiations were dramatic and long-drawn-out and attracted a vast crowd. A quick trip to the town hall and suddenly our friend Tartem-thingumabob declares himself ready to die for the country of Rousseau. Immediately, the insults hurled at him by first-generation immigrants ceased. Overnight, he became just another
pied noir
like everyone else. Back then, integration simply meant shucking your shoes and donning a beret. Once you'd done that, you could run around proclaiming that you had truly arrived. ‘
Ze suis frantuzeasca?!
' he roared, as the Negroes on the docks waiting for corvettes might have yelled ‘
Bwana, bwana!
' I assume people said such things, it was in the spirit of the times, part of the local colour of the period, like gas streetlamps. From that day forth, he styled himself François Carpatus. He cannily established a reputation as an excellent repairman, which brought customers to his ironmongery-cum-seed-merchants-cum-grocery-cum-haberdashery-cum-gunsmiths-cum-perfumery, a chaotic Aladdin's cave of the kind that existed long ago. A terror of vampires, hitherto unknown in our part of the world, mysteriously spread through the
medina
and with it the remedies to be rid of it, from garlic braids to consecrated wooden stakes. It was François Carpatus who converted our barn into a shop, something that proved extremely profitable for those who came after him – all except for Doctor Montaldo, the last occupant of the house before we arrived. Nor was it particularly profitable for us, since by then the Algerian government had decided to adopt the Soviet model of feeding a starving populace, and we were not granted a licence to run a shop (Papa dreamed of owning a delicatessen stocked with everything that anyone could want).

Towards the end of his life, at the turn of the twentieth century, M. Carpatus suffered a mysterious ailment, a sort of delirium tremens brought on by an overdose of garlic. After a number of fruitless treatments, he emigrated to the United States and was never heard of again. American vampires clearly did not recognise him as one of their own.

It's difficult to know exactly what happened next, the machinations and the manoeuvres, the whole business was shrouded in secrecy, but the house was bought by . . . a certain Daoud Ben Chekroun! By this time, Carpatus was no longer in his right mind and may rashly have sold his assets at a knock-down price; then again, pretending to be mad can be a great advantage in negotiations.

 

All sorts of ridiculous rumours have been circulated by wagging tongues about the aforementioned Mustafa, Louis-Joseph-Youssef, Ben Chekroun, Carpatus. A crooked Turk, a Frenchman who stumbled into the melting pot of Islam, a wandering Jew, an abominable snowman from the Carpathians, a Doctor Schweitzer who died on the job. What better tales to inspire a wandering storyteller? As children we lapped it up, we delighted in these far-fetched stories which also enhanced the prestige of our house. Genies, vampires, hidden treasures, apparitions by prophets, paranormal phenomena, Jewish fables, we had stories enough to while away many a pleasant evening. Other people might have envied us.