by Salim Bachi
“I worked for the military police! They gave me a taxi licence for violences rendered. Now I’m my own boss.”
“What’s your name?” asked Sinbad.
“Charon. Round here, they pronounce it Karun. I transport anyone who wants to take a seat in my ferry!”
He began laughing as if he’d just told the funniest joke ever. Sinbad squirmed on the back seat, feeling uncomfortable. In the front, the Sleeper watched the road as if the conversation had nothing to do with him. He watched Carthago stretching away in every direction at each junction, the sea sparkling like a carpet of rubies.
“You’re an honest man, sir,” said Sinbad. “Why else would you feel the need to tell us that you used to work for the secret police?”
“I give you Charon’s word, I never lie to my passengers. It’s not the done thing in this job. They’re nice guys who usually don’t say a word and accept their fate. Occasionally, it’s more difficult… they aren’t all like you. I’ve had some… who didn’t understand what was happening to them.”
“Are you talking about your old job?” asked the Sleeper.
Sinbad was sweating despite the air-conditioning.
“Mr Charon, don’t be angry with him,” said Sinbad. “He has no idea how things are done. The questions he’s asking aren’t important.”
The driver stopped his taxi. He took his time before turning round to face Sinbad.
“He doesn’t know how things are done but, like every other son of a bitch who gets in my taxi, he does deserve some kind of explanation. I’ve nothing to hide. I’ve worked for the military police, military security, the army and the cops, and I’m proud of it! Do you have a problem with that?”
Sinbad said nothing and slumped even lower. He would have liked to disappear into the folds of the upholstery.
“I obeyed orders!” yelled the driver, starting the taxi again and revving the engine with a deafening roar. “I cleared the town of its troublemakers. I put them in my boot, like your dog, sir, and I drove them to basements from which they never emerged again. They were all butchered, one by one. When I use the word ‘butchered’, that has nothing to do with what really went on. They used the same techniques as the paratroopers in their time. They had even improved on some of them. There were rumours that they had perfected their investigative methods.”
Dog began growling in the boot. There was the occasional loud thump as if the animal were trying to escape by throwing itself against the metal body of the car. His master was gazing at the sea, which faithfully kept pace with them, as memories flooded his mind. When Dog began howling, he shouted at him to be quiet. Dog fell silent as death.
“Your dog is well-trained. My passengers weren’t as obedient as that. You could hear them shouting. Some of them soiled the boot. I had to clean everything up afterwards.”
He continued, thoughtfully, “It’s a hard job. But you get used to it, don’t you? The worst, sir… Here, take this…”
He leant forward, opened the glove compartment and pulled out a handgun.
“A Beretta!”
The driver lifted the barrel into the sunlight and the weapon glinted strangely.
“I had to kill them sometimes because they were making too much noise. Then I’d take them to Cape Matifu.”
The name rang a bell. As if Cape Matifu were the exact place where he and Dog had emerged from the Cave. People said that the Sleepers had been able to rest there after being driven out of Ephesus. But those were just ancient legends.
“That was before the town became as intolerable as it is now! At night, it was a very quiet, very pleasant place, where life was good. I’d open the car boot and fire at random. I’d empty the whole cartridge. Occasionally, some of them kept groaning—a bit like your dog, sir. Then I’d drag out the bodies and set fire to them. You wanted me to be honest, didn’t you, Mr Sinbad?”
Sinbad didn’t say a word. He remembered Cain and his brother Abel and the first drop of blood shed.
The taxi continued on its way, as silent as the grave.
“BOULEVARD CHE GUEVARA; Rue Ben M’Hidi; Place de l’Emir Abdelkader…”
Still in the taxi, Sinbad was identifying the places they passed to his guest, and Carthago was coming to life in the traveller’s mind. He certainly remembered boulevards, streets and squares, but the names had changed, arrayed now in death’s ceremonial livery.
What had become of them? Ben M’Hidi, Che Guevara, Abdelkader… they were all dead now.
The Sleeper thought back to the years he’d spent with them, sharing hopes and dreams that, although dead and gone, lingered on in the minds of the living. Had he fallen asleep yesterday after Ben M’Hidi had been arrested, or the day before yesterday after Emir Abdelkader had been captured? Had he gone into exile in Damascus to spend the rest of his days with the wise old man, amid prayers in the Umayyad Mosque? Perhaps he had died in Bolivia, trapped in the jungle, abandoned on the revolutionary path? Or, going back even earlier, was he washing Jugurtha’s feet, kissing Jesus’s feet, accompanying the Prophet on his hegira? He might be Jewish, Roman or Berber; he might have walked with the Arabs alongside their caravans; crossed the Atlantic on a slave ship; perished in the silver mines of Mexico; prostrated himself before the Kaaba or kissed the wall of the Temple in Jerusalem. Because it had been an eternity since he’d fallen asleep beside his companions, guarded by that ageless dog as the centuries accumulated.
One question, though, kept pestering him like a persistent mosquito: why had he woken up here? And where had the six other Sleepers gone? To which countries or continents? What were they going to tell mankind? Why had he been the only one to inherit Dog? Or had the creature divided itself up so as to accompany each Sleeper, the way that the monstrous beast of ancient legend had been cursed with several heads and thousands of fangs? Seven hideous mouths gaped and growled on five continents: they were about to devour the light.
Carthago suddenly appeared at the bend of a street and tumbled down to the contracting sea like a dirty carpet. As if God had decided to punish men by giving them an untameable mistress who would claim their lives aboard galleons crammed with gold and silver. But the time of the armadas had passed and he was the only one who remembered them. The present has no desire to recall anything of the past: it gropes around in the half-light, building a ghostly reality out of indistinct fragments.
“Being honest would mean…” continued Sinbad, as if also waking from a dream.
“No reasons, no honesty, just brute force,” broke in the taxi driver, looking more and more like a gargoyle. “That’s all those bastards understand.”
“Nonsense!”
“Shut your mouth, you pedlar of crap! You bloody second-hand-clothes salesman, drug-dealer, pimp… You and your sort stick your cocks into the whorehouses of the world and come back to unload your diseases on us. All the hairdressers in Carthago have AIDS because of you. And you come here and talk to us about honesty?”
“You’ve murdered anyone who had a soul. There’s no one left except creatures like you… gorgons, ghouls, the Devil…”
The driver stopped his taxi. He leant forward and, shaking, reached for the glove compartment.
“Are you looking for something?” asked the Sleeper.
“What, you… you…”
The Sleeper had the Beretta in his hand. God knows what magic he’d used to spirit it away. The driver wasn’t in the least surprised. Maybe he’d never put it back in the glove compartment. Maybe, being stupid and arrogant, he’d actually given it to that strange man himself. He heard the click of the gun being cocked.
“I’m not the one who… I’m as innocent… as the sheep or the lamb, that’s right, as the Eid lamb!” The gargoyle was backing down. It entreated Sinbad, “Tell him… I’m innocent… as innocent…”
“As the Agnus Dei.”
Sinbad was satisfied with this response. Anyway, he felt as though he couldn’t relax unless he was continually on the run from something in this town.
Who knows? If more men had shared his new friend’s moral fibre, he might never have set foot on a ship again.
“Get out of the car,” said the Sleeper.
The driver opened the door.
“Don’t even think of trying to get away. I’ve never fired a gun, but I’m sure I’ll manage to hit you at this distance.”
One by one they climbed out of the car and, as if by some miracle, they found themselves in the middle of nowhere. Carthago was an enchantress with all kinds of solitary places up her sleeve, vast stretches of land where death could roam free.
“Open the boot!”
The Sleeper kept the gun trained on the taxi driver. The animal snarled, snuffled and growled even louder. It sounded as if it had grown during the journey. Dog had turned into the famished Creature waiting for sustenance and reward.
“Please, I’m begging you…”
“Open it!”
Dog was also thinking. He recognized his master. By his smell. He even gave him a name. Ooourugarri, Ooourugarri the Sleeper. The name referred to the strange smell of his master, Ooourugarri. Dog wasn’t hungry any more, Dog had eaten his fill. His master had given him permission to eat. Ooourugarri was a good master when he wasn’t sleeping. Ooourugarri had slept a long time with his friends, the other six. At the beginning of Time, Dog had kept watch over the Seven Sleepers. Then the Sleepers had awoken, taken a name and Dog had divided himself to follow each man as he left. Ooourugarri was the last Sleeper and Dog had divided himself one last time to follow him. When the last Sleeper, whose name was unpronounceable, awoke, the Prophecy would be fulfilled, according to the legend that Dog did not know but sensed in the depths of his animal memory. And: the weighing out on that day will be just; as for those whose measure of good deeds is heavy, they shall be deemed successful. And as for those whose measure of good deeds is light, they shall be deemed to have made their souls suffer loss because they disbelieved in Our communications. Thus spoke Time; and Ooourugarri was the last Sleeper. He was the one who was to announce the Coming of the Messiah. He was a good master, thought Dog. A master who stroked him and fed him when he was hungry. And Dog had eaten so well that he felt heavy now, and happy that he could rest here. After he had eaten, Dog had walked in front of Ooourugarri and his new friend, the Traveller, for a long time. He talked a lot. Dog didn’t understand all of it. But he knew that the Traveller was a good man. Dog would not eat him; Ooourugarri, his master, would not allow it. Dog didn’t eat often, so Dog was often hungry. Very hungry. Ravenously hungry. As hungry, in Dog’s mind, as he had been in the morning light when he had divided himself and had first emerged from the Cave where he had been watching over the Seven Sleepers. Now Dog could rest in the house of the Traveller, the man who talked and talked and talked, but who was a Good Man and who wouldn’t be good food for Dog; not as good as that Bad Man who had locked him in the iron cave, not nearly as good. In the Cave, he would often burrow in the soil to feed on those dark balls that he managed to dig out of the dust. That wasn’t good food for Dog, but Dog couldn’t leave the Cave, and Time had forbidden him to eat the Seven Sleepers. Poor Dog.
THE SLEEPER AND SINBAD were strolling along Boulevard Che Guevara in the light reflected by the sea. It was very hot and the sun was impassively casting a fiery glow over the streets of the town and the people walking about. A sea breeze blew between the columns and lifted the dresses of the veiled women. The Sleeper didn’t recognize this strange uniform. He remembered the women of Carthago covering themselves with a white haik and wearing a gag over their nose and mouth, an ancient forerunner of the surgical mask. Only their arms and legs were bare, ornamented with bracelets of gold, or of copper for the women of more modest means. The more provocative women flaunted their bare legs and wiggled their behinds like dancers, while the older women could stare brazenly at the men passing by without any fear. Most of these men, inflexible as justice itself, were also badly dressed, wearing neither their old corsair costumes nor the restrictive French uniform of tight shirt collars and straight trousers. They either wore jeans teamed with an ill-matched T-shirt or opted for Commander Massoud’s Afghan-style garments with a long beard hanging onto their chest which, in the case of the hairiest men, stuck out all over the place as if defying the fundamental laws of Newtonian physics.
The white veil had then disappeared and been replaced by a long, plain, black dress that followed the contours of the body more closely and was topped off by a headdress covering the hair and ears, like an astronaut’s helmet with an oval opening, which made the face look longer, like a marrow. It had to be more practical, thought the Sleeper, much more practical than the white sack of Algiers or the black sack of Constantine, the two colours of mourning which had imprisoned women. But why didn’t they walk around with nothing on their heads, their hair blowing in the wind, and their legs bare? Had women still not freed themselves from their chains? Some of them dared to walk in the light, beneath God’s sun, with uncovered heads, eager buttocks and slender ankles: goddesses and bewitching sirens whom he liked to watch weaving between the arcades and the sea, which cast silvery flashes on the walls, like a vast broken mirror.
“Square Port-Said!” announced Sinbad, who was taking his role as tourist guide seriously.
But the Sleeper knew the square which sloped up towards the Opera House. In his time—although memory can be unreliable—it was Square de la République; then, later on, Square Aristide-Briand; and then Square Bresson during the war, the one that had seen Carthago give birth to Square Port-Said on gaining independence after a long and painful labour.
Hadn’t he attended the inauguration of the Opera House, now the National Theatre, in 1853, under French rule, then watched it burn down twenty years later? Hadn’t he seen it rebuilt, just before the Great War, in 1914? Time had enabled him to go up on deck and sail through the centuries, while his companions slept in that dark Cave guarded by a dog which was now by his side. Or else, more likely, all those events had been a dream: the Great War, the millions of deaths. The Sleeper had even borne arms in the colonies to defend the Empire, like all those natives who’d had their faces painted for a foreign war, then sailed off for another, even more violent, conflict, as if the Demiurge, that entity who’d fashioned Dog, Death and Time, had set the stage for this bloody tragedy in which he was both the Spectator and the Tempter.
In the Sleeper’s mind, the Opera House, overlooking this square with its palm trees, symbolized both a stage where the tragedy La Kahina had been performed in Arabic in 1954, on the eve of the Algerian war, and the world that witnessed every kind of horror: an endless danse macabre shook the stage and carried off the souls of the dead seated in the ancient auditorium, who always stood up at the end of the show to applaud the actors, clacking their bones and jaws.
“Did you know, my dear sir, that a play called La Kahina was put on in this theatre in 1954, a century after it was built. No more celebrations. What a premonition! Especially when you know that the Berber warrior-woman was the Joan of Arc of her day and spent her whole life fighting the Arab invaders!”
Sinbad had the irritating habit of exclaiming loudly all the time, which startled Dog, who bared his fangs without making a sound.
They were sitting on a bench in Square Port-Said in the shade of a giant Latan palm, whose outspread fronds sheltered the two men and Dog from the fierce heat of the sun.
Further down the square, the waves cast needles of light over the sky, and they could hear the heady lament of the surf, a hypnotic refrain which soothed Sinbad, transporting his thoughts to shores where he had once anchored. He saw again those enchanting cities: Granada and Cordoba, Rome and Florence and, farther away, Damascus and Bosra. Finally Paris, whose brilliance was now on the wane.
Sinbad was just about to say something when the sky and sea exploded into pieces. The world was reduced to sound and fury.
Ooourugarri had been felled along with the tree. And Sinnnbaaad. Dog hadn’t moved. He breathed in the smell of blood an
d cordite. Dog thought it was a good smell. Dog bounded over to his master and licked his face for many minutes. Ooourugarri opened his eyes and looked around, just as he’d done after his long sleep in the Cave. He dusted down his clothes and stood up. Hundreds of branches and leaves fell to the ground in pieces, like a hail of grapeshot. All around, people were screaming and crying, and Dog liked that. His hunger thundered in his belly like a thousand guns, even more powerful than the explosion that had scattered the bodies of around ten men, women and children, but which had only skimmed the surface of his mind like a mundane signal, a bell summoning him to his quarry. If his master hadn’t held him back, he would have pounced on the wounded and dead and would have devoured them, appeasing the monster roiling in his stomach. Mut the divine was also standing there in the light, the goddess who had claimed her due and was waiting to capture other souls. Dog had no soul. He had a stomach. That was enough. He also had a master, Ooourugarri, who was leaning over Sinnnbaaad, the man who smelled of salt and sweat, and was trying to rouse him. If Sinnnbaaad were dead, Dog could eat him at last. Dog hoped his master, Ooourugarri, would let him cleanse the world of this person who would thwart their plans. Dog was sure of it, his master cared for Sinnnbaaad, and that wasn’t right. There was no need for love. In the Cave, he had waited without love for his masters to wake and to divide himself whenever one of them walked the world’s path again. He had been the faithful guardian of their sleep without love. That was Dog’s mission, a faithful guardian without a memory. The Demiurge denied memory. He thought up a world, shaped it, then destroyed it at will when it was time to begin again. Dog was convinced it was time for destruction. If not, why had Ooourugarri, the last of the Sleepers, finally awoken? And why had faithful Dog divided himself for one last time? Could Sinnnbaaad thwart the Demiurge’s Plan? Could he prevent the complete destruction that crawled in Dog’s stomach like a ravenous hunger and was only waiting for the tolling of the bell to set Dog on the world to devour it? It had to be here, in this town where blood was being shed, where the dead called to the dead, where children lost their eyes, became deaf and orphaned, that the destruction, followed by the recreation, of the World would begin, with him, Dog, and his master, Ooourugarri. Dog hoped Sinnnbaaad was dead, dead at last. Dog could no longer put up with his prattling. He could no longer tolerate the Sailor’s endless babble.