Harraga (6 page)

What about university students? Girls at university were ferried between the halls of residence and lecture halls by bus. How many such buses weave through the streets of Algiers? I don’t know, in this ossified city things grow like mushrooms. They’re everywhere, those buses, each one full to bursting. What are they really ferrying around? I asked myself. Boys with beards and girls in
chadors
, the boys dare not talk, the girls dare not move and the drivers careen through the city as though obeying secret signals. There’s nothing very educational about it. In my young day, buses did not go unnoticed, or were clapped-out Russian wrecks, half-eaten with rust and smoky as a damp cigar. We would sing ‘Qassaman’, ‘The Internationale’, ‘Le Déserteur’, we would spit on the bourgeoisie and their lackeys, make drivers nearly crash by flashing them a glimpse of breast, or by pretending to take down their registration number so we could denounce them to the KGB. Times have changed.

The journey home was painful. I dragged my feet, my heart in my mouth. The neighbourhood seemed seedy and unpleasant and the house – my house – gave me a cold welcome. I needed that. And yet I loved this grey dusk, caught between sun and moon, between waning day and emerging night. Relief comes, hope is reborn, we dither on the doorstep, fumbling with keys, eager to cross the threshold. We are done with the world, we retreat to our refuge, we shed our coats. Somewhere deep within us, an internal clock or a guardian angel activates a switch and we settle down to dream like children. For the poor, this is the true meaning of happiness. We relax, we move to a gentler rhythm, we do housework and minor repairs, potter around brooding over our uncertainties, we take a bath if the water has been reconnected, make a call if the phone lines are working, settle in front of the TV if the power cut is over, laze around, read a book, do a little cooking, water the plants, sprinkle insecticide to keep ants at bay, do some knitting. Then there are the evenings when the only thing we can think to do is prop our elbows on our knees and bury our face in our hands. Life is blank, it is useless to fuss.

What was it Mourad said . . . a little female sympathy? How dare he say that to me! What am I, a bear, a rock, a machine? What does he really know about me? What does he really know about women? He’s a man, he knows nothing. He probably thinks there is such a thing as male sympathy. What a romantic.

Am I seeing things? There . . . hanging on a coat peg in the hall? It is! It’s a panther-pink pullover with flowers
in
blue fabric crudely sewn on the front. If it’s not mine – and I know it’s not – then it must belong to Chérifa.
Snff . . . snff
. The house smells of weapons-grade plutonium perfume. A quick tour reveals a G-string in the bath, a bead necklace on the cooker, a handkerchief under the phone, a powder compact next to the TV, a pencil in the vase, a pair of ballet pumps hanging from a nail in the corridor, a beanie hat dangling from the handle of a dresser. The girl strews her possessions in her wake, she’d have a job going undercover in a detective movie. Where can she be at this hour? If she doesn’t come back to collect her belongings, it means she’s lost. No, the little minx would do anything to reclaim her treasure, it’s all she has.

Later, under a sofa cushion, I found a little handbag, the kind of preposterous clutch bag a bride might carry, so tiny that just trying to get your keys inside could result in losing a finger. It reminded me of the story of a chimpanzee in a laboratory, putting his hand into a jar, grabbing a piece of fruit and discovering to his consternation that the narrow neck would not allow him to withdraw his fist. I’m not sure which is sadder, mocking the chimp or thinking that we’re smarter. I dared not open the clutch bag, but I opened it anyway; my house, my rules. Inventory: a pencil stub, a brush, a pin, a coin, another pin, a full-length photo of someone. Well, well, would you credit it . . . ? A man. Thirty-five? He looks ordinary . . . or rather conventional, his every feature conforms to the new biology of exceptional Algerians: chubby-cheeked, pot-bellied, fat-arsed, he sports a hirsute adornment around his mouth which, depending on circumstances, is intended as a sign of moderate piety, an aid to seduction or a proof of intelligence, he is dressed like a mobster at a mafia cocktail party. It’s all so tacky, the minute these people have money in their pockets, they’re all over the place. There is a self-consciousness to the way he holds his head and a twitchy nervousness deep in his eyes. It’s an expression I know only too well, in every photo I look as though I’ve been startled by a one-eyed badger. He’s a little young to be her grandfather but too old to be a brother or a schoolfriend, although all families are dysfunctional. Obviously, the possibilities do not end there: an uncle, a cousin, a neighbour’s husband. Then again he could be a drug trafficker or a bar owner, professions that are all the rage in the new biometry. The Chérifas of this world are their preferred prey. Or he could be . . . as I racked my brain, I realised I knew this reprobate, I’d seen his ugly mug somewhere. A celebrity? Yes, that was it. What was he? A sportsman, a politician, a captain of industry, an artist with connections to the ministry? Whatever he was, he was some sort of bigwig.

What was the connection between the man in the photo and Chérifa’s swollen belly? It was a question I could not help but ask myself. And now I have.

It had been three days since I saw that old trout from the rue Marengo and now, bang on time  –
knock, knock
– she shows up, all hot and flustered. And – unusually for her – she didn’t beat around the bush.

‘Oh, my dear, young people today, you simply can’t depend on them! They’re here one minute and gone the next! They’re only too happy to have us worrying and fretting over them, when all we want at our time of life is a little comfort, a little peace, but you might as well ask the town council for running water. How is it that I’ve never met this girl? The clothes she wears! What’s her name? Where’s her husband? What was she thinking, going out last night and coming home after midnight? Where did she go? And what was she doing, storming out again at dawn in such a terrible temper?’

‘Ah, Tante Zohra, what a coincidence! I was just going to pop round to see you. I hadn’t heard from you and I was starting to worry!’

I know how Tante Zohra’s mind works, I’ve heard it all before and I’ve learned the best thing to do is bombard her with information and bamboozle her.

‘Were you talking about Chérifa? Pretty little thing, don’t you think? She’s my cousin’s youngest, you know – the cousin who moved to Oran just after the War, back when the Americans were bombing the mountain villages because they thought we were hiding Nazis. Then, when they realised that we were only hiding ourselves, they came back and showered us with chocolate bars. The kids stuck to them like leeches, the Yanks adopted them as mascots and we never saw hide nor hair of them again. Up in Kabylia, we had nothing to eat but acorn flour, green olives and goat’s cheese. Oh, I nearly forgot, up in the mountains our favourite fruit was figs, we used to pick them off the trees. You can’t till the soil up in Kabylia, it’s all rocks. So, anyway, this cousin of mine is on his deathbed and, sensing that the end is near, he’s asked his youngest daughter to visit the family on his behalf. Our family is scattered to the four winds, Allah alone knows us by our lamentations. You know better than I how widely scattered the Kabyle people were, hounded from town to town when we weren’t hounded out of existence. Well, anyway, little Chérifa, she comes, she goes, and likely will for some time, because, like I said, there are cousins everywhere, furtive exiles weighed down by sorrow and homesickness. And being an insomniac, she keeps odd hours. But what’s to be done, Tante Zohra?
C’est la vie
!’

‘And how is Sofiane? Did he go to Oran, surely he must have gone to say his goodbyes to this cousin of yours?’

The way she just came out with it! She’s a cunning shrew, trying to trip me up.

‘No, no, my dear, you know Sofiane, he always did have his head in the clouds! Remember how whenever he passed your house he pretended not to see you?’

My little performance earned me a week of peace and happiness. The old bat didn’t believe a word of my rigmarole, but it hardly mattered since all she needs to do her scandalmongering is her tongue and a little spit.

That night, I didn’t sleep a wink. I scrubbed the house from top to bottom, I might even have cleaned it twice. While I was about it, I did the laundry, then I pottered around. I felt like I was in Kubrick’s
The Shining
just before all hell is unleashed. On my wanderings I discovered a makeshift corridor on the second floor running from the back of an old wardrobe to a sort of box-room – it was beyond me how I had never noticed it before. The door to the box-room creaked like it was a thousand years old. Slave quarters? A place to hide when things were tough? It was probably something constructed by the Turk, those people have a lot going on under their fezzes. Inside, I expected to find a skeleton or see a ghost surge forward and slip between my legs, but nothing. The room smelled of mildew. No gold doubloons, no pirate map, no clue what to do next. Some day I’ll leave a sheet of mysterious drawings here that will help my successor live, secure in the knowledge that his life will be rich and carefree. A pinch of gold dust, and the results would be better. This rickety old house evolved over time, there’s always something left to explore.

Then, suddenly, my knees gave out. I’d overexerted myself. I went back to the living room and lay down, I read a book. I went into the kitchen and made some herbal tea and sipped it as I watched the cockroaches gorging on scraps of food. It’s been a long time since I’ve waged war against them. The future belongs to cockroaches. In some old scientific magazine I read that the more you persecute them the stronger they get, so I leave them be in the hopes that indolence and overeating will kill them off. Then, sadly, I listened to the radio babble on about this and that, a phone-in for parish-pump problems from far-flung, probably fictional listeners convinced their nightly ramblings are advancing some great cause. Tonight’s topic: civic-mindedness and household refuse. To a man (and woman), they put the blame on everyone else, not one of them was prepared to take any responsibility. The pathetic fools. When you’re this deluded, better to keep your mouth shut and not spout such drivel! When you’ve made your bed, you have to lie in it.

Then I wept and wept and wept.

I can't help but wonder
what times they are I'm living through. Things fell apart so quickly. Was there ever a before? Did I ever really live? Did I ever have anything other than my beloved parents who died too soon, my idiot little brother who disappeared into himself or is in the process of doing so? And Yacine, my big brother, who died by the roadside having known no greater love than his rickety old banger. It is easy to be overwhelmed by such emptiness. What century is it out there? The din and the dust that reach me in brutal waves have nothing of interest to say to me. The world has taken a wrong turning, ominous Islam and garish consumerism are battling it out with mantras and slogans. Their conflicting cacophony makes my ears hurt. Here in Algeria, even time itself – humanity's world heritage – is torn between rabid reactionism and a ghastly futurism; its energy, its drive, its clarity have all been sapped. To embrace such twisted logic is to embrace the void. To say one thing is also to believe the contrary, it is to plunge furiously, hobbled and blinkered, into the fray. Why the blindfold? I don't know. Time to these mutants is what dark glasses are to the blind man, it speaks to their inability to see and their inability to do. Through their fault or Voltaire's, my life has gradually shrunk to nothing, to less than nothing, to a series of fits and starts between waking and sleeping before it stops altogether just as the clock in the hall fell silent when its master died. Time, where I am concerned, is a hodgepodge, a thing of shreds and patches, it blends scraps of my – happy but unfinished – childhood, a little of what I read, a lot of what I watch on television, fragments of dreams, a goodly helping of what fury proclaims to the four winds and, on a day-by-day basis, dictates my course of action. I have fashioned a life for myself that does not depend on money or on incense, I have no truck with religion, with clutter or procrastination. Or perhaps this is simply the way things are when you retreat to a desert island, when you sit rusting in a traffic jam. You make do with what you have. To be perfectly honest, I've never understood where wishes come from nor how disappointments are made, all I know is that I don't care a tinker's curse for the rantings of the truth-mongers. Like Penelope, I am deaf to suitors, committed to my work. My loneliness is my shield.

In this life, you have to hold your own if you hope to emerge unscathed.

The house – my house – has left me no choice. There are mornings, those gloomy mornings that seem like a painful prolongation of the night, when I feel as though I am a prisoner, albeit a willing one since I have no place else to hide. The house is over two hundred years old, I keep a weather eye on it, but I know, I can sense, that one day it will crumble with me inside. The house dates back to the seventeenth century, to the Regency of Algiers. The rooms are poky, the windows Lilliputian, the doors low and the stairs, which are treacherous, were clearly made by carpenters who had one leg shorter than the other and very narrow minds. This perhaps explains – if explanation be needed – why everyone in my family grew up to have one calf muscle thicker than the other, a pronounced stoop, a waddle like a duck and very narrow minds. It has nothing to do with genetics; the house made us that way. Back then, the perpendicular was a mystery, since in this house lines never marry at right-angles, because they were never introduced by the mason's trowel. It is a shock to the eyes. The nose, too, since a musty smell impregnates the walls. Sometimes I feel like an ant in a maze, sometimes like Alice in Wonderland.