Sherazade

by Leïla Sebbar

  'You managing my life for me, now?'

  'Me?' Basile shouted. 'Are you a moron? I'm just saying exactly the opposite!'

  'Oh! All right. I didn't understand.'

  Pierrot, who hadn't said a word, quoted the Algerian and Vietnamese women fighters, other women who had taken part in wars of Libération and who, when independence was won, found themselves deprived of the liberty and equality they'd fought for . . . Sherazade whistled in admiration.

  'You do know a lot. . . if you're in power one day, it'll be super for women. I'll fight for that.'

  She was playing with Basile's .38. The shot went off smack into the left eye of Che Guevara whose poster had been yellowing for months on the wall. Basile yelled out and snatched the .38 out of Sherazade's hands.

  'Wait, I was going to have a go at the other. . .'

  'What other?'

  'That one, next to Marx . . . I know his face. You see him everywhere.'

  'What? Bob Marley!'

  'You're crazy, completely crazy!'

  'What the hell! They're all dead . . .'

  Pierrot and Basile exchanged glances, taken aback. Sherazade always disconcerted them.

  Sherazade turned to Pierrot. 'And now, don't ever call me a bird again or I'll do you in . . .'

  Pierrot moved over to her and put his arms round her. He was going to kiss her neck when he felt something cold against his forehead. It was Basile's .38.

  'Not that one, Bill . . .' Sherazade broke loose and they began to laugh.

  *Autonomes, an extrem left-wing group in the 1970s. See also note on p.69. (Trans.)

  Krim

  They'd been playing one at a time, or in unison, and when they stopped Krim was the first to hear Sherazade crying. They'd work with a tape-recorder, after listening to a piece on the hi-fi that they'd re-purchased cheap from receivers Krim knew well because he did jobs for them on occasion. The tape-recorder was first-rate too. They'd got really good equipment to work with, as Pierrot, who knew what was what, never tired of telling them.

  'What are we going to do?'

  Up till now, Sherazade had never cried, or at least none of them had ever seen or heard her crying.

  'What are we going to do?'

  They knew nothing about her. Her first name. And they weren't even sure of that. One day, she'd said her name was Camille Z. Pierrot had asked her to produce her identity papers. She'd flown into a rage.

  'You a cop? That's news!'

  They'd never mentioned the matter again.

  And now she was crying.

  None of them said a word. All three were thinking perhaps Sherazade had been crying for ages and they'd been so engrossed in enjoying their music they knew nothing about it. They'd been singing and laughing and drinking lots of beer. They were having a good time and she . . .

  Pierrot especially felt upset. More than Krim and Basile, he thought; and immediately – shit. I'm in love. He didn't want to be the first to go into her room. It was impossible. He urged Krim to go and see Sherazade. He knew Krim had a French girlfriend who didn't come to the squat and who he visited at her place. She had a bed-sitter and a job. She was five years older than him. Pierrot didn't know her. He was sure Krim was not in love with Sherazade.

  'You go Krim. She quite likes you.'

  At that moment the front door slammed and Eddy came in, holding up Driss.

  'I found him downstairs, on the pavement. He's drunk I think. He can't get a word out.'

  Pierrot helped Driss on to his bed. They were used to finding Driss in this state. He always managed somehow to get back somewhere near the squat, before collapsing in a sort of drunken stupor, when he wasn't in need of a fix. Driss, contrary to other addicts, didn't seek the company of other druggies to chat, shoot up, drink, get stoned together . . . He wandered around aimlessly, all by himself and couldn't stand the other junkies. He only met them when he spent the evening at the Kiss Club, staying right through to the small hours. The others dressed the same as him, had the same gestures, the same position as him. He didn't know them and that was all right with him. He wouldn't see them again till he spent the next evening there. No one said much – the music prevented anything being heard – they accepted each other, while preserving their anonymity, just as they were, for the moment, for one night, sitting side by side on the stained imitation leather benches, with holes in them, too narrow to rest on properly.

  The squat-mates didn't inject. Some of them smoked pot that they got in Holland or Morocco. Basile also got some from the Caribbean Rastas who pretended they were Jamaicans living in exile in Paris. They had plenty and were sufficiently expert for it always to be good quality. Crack was beginning to get too dear. When they couldn't get it for a reasonable price, or by some fiddle, they did without. They had shown Sherazade how to smoke and to distinguish the adulterated grass that she also used. She didn't smoke much. She said, laughing at herself, she'd rather read. 'It's my drug, my vice.' She smoked with them on the evenings when they threw a party and invited their buddies – to let their hair down.

  Driss

  They dreaded the state Driss got into when he was strung out. He became violent. They could see him suffering and didn't know what to do. None of them had any smack. Some of Driss's mates who sometimes dropped in were pushers, dealers, but they weren't always around when needed, and they tried to calm Driss who wouldn't listen to anyone and began an endless unbroken monologue:

  'He's the one who chucked me out he's a bastard he never loved me he loves the other kids the kids by his second or third wife he doesn't love me I'm the son of the woman he repudiated he sent her back to Morocco back to her village back to her mother with the two youngest and me why did he keep me with him I wanted to go back there where my mother is and he said no he always says no when I want something his latest wife is young he does everything for her and her kids for me nothing he never helped me at school I worked all by myself if I had bad marks he hit me one day he put salt on my wet skin and beat me with his belt when I tell anyone that they don't believe me I've got Arab pals their fathers aren't like that they don't hit them they ask if everything's all right my father the first job I got as a welder with my CAP. he took all my dough and every month he said I had to give him my wages cos he'd spent a lot of money bringing me up in the end I'd had a bellyful I left his wife was only too pleased she always says he's too soft with me I left I wanted to go to Morocco but I hadn't got any dough I wanted to see my mother she's been gone seven years I haven't seen her again my father stops me going back to Morocco I was born there I was five when I came here with my mother first to Gennevilliers and afterwards to Sarcelles when my mother arrived my father was shacked up with a Frenchwoman my mother wanted to go back my father told her he'd leave the Frenchwoman if she'd stay she stayed but it didn't work out my father lived with my mother and he went on seeing the Frenchwoman I saw him once with her in a café I told my mother she knew she quarrelled with my father he repudiated her she left after that my father married a young Moroccan woman a cousin from his village she came here for him when I left my father's place I worked and with the money I went to Morocco to see my mother she'd asked for a divorce I didn't know this she'd remarried a man older than my father but he hadn't any children he was nice to her and took care of my brothers and sisters he works my mother says she's all right but I couldn't stay there with no work and no money my mother's new husband said I could stay but I said no and I think my mother would rather I worked in France I left my mother said I could go there any time I liked but I'm not going back there my father when I came back to his place instead of welcoming me like a father welcomes his son where we come from he locked me in a room and beat me saying he'd been told I was stealing cars I was a hooligan I swore it wasn't true he didn't believe me he said his house wasn't my home any more he cursed me he said he didn't want to see me again I put my things in a case and left I found my old job and lived all alone in an empty house I was miserable I did my own washing and cooked for
myself I hadn't got my mother or my sisters or anyone to do all that for me I couldn't stay there but I got to know a girl a French girl who went to college she was head over heels in love with me I quite liked her nothing more I never saw her family nor her house I used to go back with her as far as the comer that's all when I phoned I said it's Philippe and as people say I haven't got an accent they don't take me for an Arab her mother thought I was French she called her daughter to the phone and so I could talk to her she told me if her father knew he'd smash my face in he's her stepfather and he's a cop since I've been staying here I don't see her any more I get news of her from a pal he gives me letters from her but I'm not so keen to see her she's too keen it's a bloody drag once before I came to live here a cousin saw me in the street he'd come to invite me to his wedding I went to the party and saw my father with his wife and kids I wanted to say hello he refused to greet me in front of everybody it was a public insult he disowned me afterwards I heard he'd been told I was a junkie and the cops were after me and they'd been to my father's place and talked about burglaries and break-ins and my father had disowned me in front of them and told them if he saw me if I came back he'd hand me over to the cops himself I can't afford the smack out of my pay it's eight hundred francs a gram I'm not going to sell my arse either so I do some break-ins and sell what I find so I get money for smack but with my father it's finished I don't see him any more he doesn't exist any more I'd rather go to prison than go back to him . . .'

  Driss spat with contempt as he spoke, he shouted and sobbed and finally fell asleep.

  Farid

  Pierrot left Eddy keeping an eye on Driss. They had got to know each other in Sarcelles. Eddy dropped in at the squat from time to time to play music with them; he played the sax. When Djamila started to share Sherazade's room, Eddy came more frequently and Driss offered to let him stay in his room.

  Basile and Krim were watching TV. Pierrot asked, 'Where's Sherazade?' Krim replied that she was asleep. Pierrot went to her room and peeped through the door that was ajar and looked at her as she slept. The walkman had been thrown on the bed. She was fully dressed. She'd still got on her trainers, her leather jacket; the scarf had slipped to one side, yellow and red on the red bedcover. Pierrot daren't touch her. She wouldn't sleep comfortably in those tight jeans, with her jacket fastened up to her neck and those trainers that must be making her feet perspire. Pierrot didn't like sleeping in his clothes. He always slept naked, even in winter. He approached Sherazade, stretched out a hand towards her, but as she stirred he withdrew it immediately. He continued to watch her. Now and again he heard her give a stifled sob. Near the bed he saw a writing pad and a little black and red notebook. He took a blank sheet of paper and wrote, 'Sherazade, I love you. Pierrot,' and placed the paper near her cheek. She would see it as soon as she woke.

  Pierrot went back to join Krim and Basile; after a quarter of an hour he suddenly jumped up out of the red armchair and rushed to Sherazade's room. He heard a sound and stopped. He wanted to tear up the note he'd just written her but he'd put it so close to her cheek that he risked waking her. He looked through the halfopen door. She had stirred and crumpled the sheet of paper in her sleep. She turned over and the note disappeared under her short curls. Pierrot moved away and came back to sit in the red armchair. It was a miserable evening. He picked up a plan of the outskirts of Paris and unfolded it on the floor.

  The TV was switched on but no one was watching it. Basile was glancing through Libération and reading the small ads aloud, Miscellaneous and Lonely Hearts. He was looking for a job. Like Pierrot he'd passed his baccalauréat. He'd started studying law at Assas, but regularly got into fights with the Fascists and there were punch-ups nearly every day. He nearly got picked up by the cops. Since then he'd done temps, he'd been a courier, furniture-remover, done washing-up for West-Indians who made him work like a slave. He'd decided to go back to university while doing a period of training with the newspaper Libération, but at the end of the training he hadn't found anything. He was still a militant member of a group when he met Pierrot. They'd decided to go off together next holidays if they could get a job as long-distance lorry-drivers in the countries of the Middle East as far as Pakistan. If they liked the work they'd keep on for a year or two. Basile was looking for offers among the small ads. Meanwhile they had to get their heavy-duty driving licences. Naturally they would be travelling through Italy. Pierrot knew that members of the Red Brigade were hiding under assumed names in other Italian groups. They were teaching urban guerrilla tactics to the French and found them good pupils, attentive and conscientious; they were all very young, younger than Pierrot, hardly any of them were more than twenty. It was in one of these groups that Pierrot had met Farid. He was a very idealistic Algerian immigrant, who must have read enthusiastically everything about the Algerian war that he had neither lived through norknown. This history, the history of his own country, had passed him by, like so many others, as he was too young, and because he was an immigrant, living so long in France that it had needed the independence movement to awaken in him a stifled repressed nationalism. He had discovered the exaltation, the determination of those who prepared the war of Algerian Libération, but the cause was no longer the same. It was not so clear-cut, nor so simple. He was a rebel, he would have liked to be a revolutionary. A rebel like Basile, Pierrot, Krim, Driss, all those at the squat and in certain political groups. Pierrot read in Sans Frontière of Farid's suicide. Why had he gone to Finland to die? Had he really committed suicide? Basile went to the funeral in a Parisian cemetery with the family, friends and comrades. There was no area reserved for Muslims in the cemetery, and anyway, was Farid a Muslim? He said he was first and foremost an Algerian. In these groups there was no question of religion. They never spoke of it. For the first time Pierrot saw Basile unhappy. He didn't speak a word the whole day. In the evening he asked Eddy to play his sax.

  Eddy played the sax for Basile, sitting in the red armchair.

  Basile

  Krim was eating a sandwich he'd just made for himself; the others were not hungry. He had put too much harissa in and was puffing like the deuce, as if to blow out the hot spice . . . He was shaking his hands, snapping his fingers and hopping from one foot to the other, as if to say how much the harissa was burning his mouth, tongue and throat. 'Water! water! water!' He ran to the kitchen and drank in silence, in the face of Basile's and Pierrot's show of unconcern.

  Pierrot was now examining the plan of Paris. He had left the North when he was about nineteen; though he'd soon have been in Paris for eight years he didn't like this city and didn't know it well. He couldn't understand foreigners' enthusiasm for the capital. For his part, he always followed the same route without paying any attention to Paris. He knew exactly where he'd find his mates for a demo, a meeting or a break-in . . . and since he'd been living at the squat he didn't have to move from one dreary room to another, having to rely on the chance of someone or other putting him up. He lived like an underground revolutionary, never giving his name or address. Basile didn't take himself so seriously, nor was he so serious; more curious, more able to brazen it out when, as he told Pierrot, he gate-crashed fabulous parties where he was actually out of his element, and he was never invited but he nearly always got to know about them from his mates who gave him the tip-off and he turned up just as if he'd been expected. He always managed to dress just right, without overdoing it; he always hit on the correct detail which would draw attention to the originality of his outfit, of which all the other elements, trousers, jacket, shoes were exactly right for this particular party, this particular group where nobody knew him and everyone hung around him because they found him good-looking, self-assured and attractive. So he had built up for himself an evening social life in which the most diverse and antagonistic elements of society found themselves in contact and who, on those occasions, made advances to each other. There, punks, yobbos, businessmen, intellectuals, artists, people in advertising and entertainment all rubbed s
houlders. Basile gave faithful accounts of these parties which Pierrot despised, but when Basile talked about them Pierrot listened and laughed at his imitations, and the way he described and commented on them. In the end he began to admire him for being able to get about so easily, without any hang-ups. He envied this physical and mental freedom which he himself did not have.

  Basile didn't tell Pierrot, because he thought he would disapprove, not out of prudery but on political and moral principles, that women chatted him up, sometimes several in one evening; about two or three o'clock in the morning he had to make up his mind which one he would go off with for a hectic end to the night, to be followed by a copious late breakfast in a fine flat with a glassed-in balcony or a conservatory opening off the french-windows. When he ended up in a four-star hotel, he wasn't so pleased. Once he could frankly have kicked himself for landing up there, but it only happened once; if it had happened again he would have given up going to hotels; about eleven o'clock in the morning a Caribbean girl arrived with the breakfast tray, wearing the obligatory white apron and white cap on her straightened hair; she was absolutely businesslike, black skirt, white blouse buttoned up to the neck. He was the person who opened the door. The woman was in the bath. He looked at the chambermaid who looked him straight in the eye; luckily, he had thought to throw a towel round his waist. He took the tray, put it on the table at the end of the bed, dressed quietly, scribbled an unsigned note with a felt pen on a paper napkin, 'Sorry. Urgent appointment.' To the women who picked him up like this he said his name was Louis or Bob, invariably eliciting, 'Like Armstrong . . . or Marley . . .'

  'Yes. That's right.'

  He left. The woman was singing in the bath. He heard her calling 'Bob! Bob!' He shut the door quietly and recited a prayer that he wouldn't meet the young Caribbean chambermaid, for it was at times like these that the words came back to him that he'd learned in his childhood in churches or from pious grandmothers he'd known in Guadaloupe.