Sherazade

by Leïla Sebbar

  Bobigny

  Sherazade reappeared the day set for them to do a break-in in Bobigny. She went to her room, picked up the letters and the ads which she put with a few items of clothing in the overnight bag slung across her shoulder.

  Pierrot was so upset he couldn't speak; it was Krim who called out to her; anyway she wasn't meaning to leave again immediately. She was keen to see them.

  'You coming with us?'

  'Where to?'

  'Bobigny.'

  'What for?'

  'We'll explain. Pierrot knows that area well, he's shown me on the map. He's got a buddy in Bobigny. They've done a recce. There's an isolated house. The owners often go away for the weekend. It's a rich place. Everything's set. You'll hold the shooter. Krim'U stand guard; Mouloud and Pierrot know their jobs. We mustn't forget the gloves, we won't need the balaclavas. Mouloud's brother got nicked on account of finger-prints . . . Pierrot says that if this comes off, next time he'll do a hold-up, it brings in more: he says his group needs dough, more than we do . . . He'll do it by himself or with Basile . . . I couldn't give a fuck for their group . . . So what about it?'

  'It's bloody silly, I've just found a job. A shop where they sell super togs. You should just see. In the Halles. You feel like taking the lot.'

  'We can do a stick-up job there too.'

  'No way.'

  'If you say so. You coming?'

  'You'll take me on your bike? The Yammi?'

  'Yes, if you like.'

  'Afterwards, you can teach me to ride. It's easier outside Paris.'

  Pierrot prepared the tools, pistols, gloves . . . map, they'd study it in a café together with the sketch plan that Mouloud had drawn on the spot of the house, the surrounding streets, the waste ground.

  'If anything goes wrong,' Pierrot remarked, tapping the map, 'there's a cemetery nearby. It's even a Muslim cemetery, Krim, you hear that? And you too, Sherazade, that's just for the two of you, 'cos I want to be cremated, I've already let my folks know, they're Communists, so they agree.'

  'What you saying all that for? It's dangerous?'

  'It's always dangerous. Let's go.'

  The owner of the house was crazy about electronics. He'd got everything you can think of in the way of the most sophisticated equipment. Pierrot and Mouloud were dazzled. They couldn't carry everything. 'We'll take the latest models and come back for the rest, said Mouloud, sick at having to leave all these things, polished, tidily stored, labelled. Sherazade held the pistol like in the films, firmly without wavering. She told the lads not to talk so loudly and to hurry up. They kept saying, 'We can't leave that, we can't.' There was no money or jewellery to be found.

  Mouloud opened a cupboard and screamed so loud he frightened Pierrot and Sherazade.

  'Belt up!' Pierrot said.

  'Come and see, come and see.'

  Pierrot and Sherazade looked in the cupboard which he'd flung wide open. That was where the cop kept his uniform, immaculate. Mouloud saw the riot helmet, the kepi. He looked for the riot shield but couldn't find it and took the truncheon.

  'That really makes me fucking mad, Pierrot, you've seen that . . . I could die . . . Wait.'

  He went to the kitchen and came back with a serrated carving-knife and a pointed bread-knife. He set about ransacking the place. In the garage he'd spotted an axe, he used it to smash the furniture which was tough. He tore down the curtains, smeared the walls, split open the armchairs and couch, in the bedroom he overturned the bed, the chest-of-drawers and the cop's wife's dressing-table, whose mirrors shattered against the wardrobe. Pierrot tried to stop him. He was making a row, it was all going to be screwed up, all because of that uniform, it was too stupid. He knew that Mouloud had done time, after years in care from where he'd always run away. The cops had ill-treated him, insulted him . . . He wouldn't stop, if Pierrot would just leave him alone. Mouloud took a pair of scissors and cut the uniform into almost even strips, the shirt as well and pierced holes in the kepi. He wanted to keep the riot helmet – as a souvenir -but Pierrot forced him to leave it behind and threatened to bash his face in if he didn't leave immediately with him.

  Sherazade shoved the pistol in his back for a joke, but Mouloud was so shaken that he put his hands up. This grotesque gesture brought him down to earth again and the realization of the risks they were all running, after they'd wrecked the house and murdered the cop's ghost.

  When they passed the Muslim cemetery that he'd shown Sherazade on the map of the outskirts of Paris, Pierrot slowed down and said to Mouloud, 'You nearly sent us all there . . . You can thank God, if you believe in him.'

  Instinctively, Mouloud, whose mother had taught him the fatiha when he was a kid and still spoilt him because he was the only boy, began to recite the prayer, although he always said to anyone who'd listen to him that he didn't believe. However he found himself having more and more discussions with his former pals from the shanty-town who had suddenly become Muslims; they said their faith brought contentment and it's true that when he talked to them now they gave an impression of such serenity, such amazing happiness that he got worried about himself. Were they out to convert him? He resisted, but he still went out of his way to meet them because it did him good to listen to them and they taught him a lot. It was the first time anyone talked to him about the Qur'an. They explained it to him. They told him the history of the Arabs, of Islam . . . He no longer felt humiliated because his father collected the French people's shit and he and his brothers had been seen on the estate in handcuffs.

  'Mouloud! What's eating you?'

  'Nothing. I'm thinking.'

  'Oh! fine! What about?'

  'I'm just thinking, that's all . . . with this job, it's all over.'

  'What is?'

  'Break-ins, hold-ups, all that, I've had a bellyful.'

  'It's because of the cemetery and God that you're saying that?'

  'Dunno. Perhaps.'

  Pierrot's Peugeot, a 504 estate car, was piled full to the roof. They had to drive fast as the load could attract attention. They went straight to the fence's depot. Pierrot exchanged some of the cameras for light arms and false identity cards. Basile had left to spend two or three weeks in Guadaloupe, stopping over in Martinique for some contacts. Pierrot Waited for him to return to tell him about this job.

  Julien Desrosiers

  Sherazade had gone to bed in the big room, near the phone. She'd put the watercolour on the Chinese table beside the bed. She had to be at the dress shop at nine o'clock the next morning, in the Halles, where she'd gone the previous day with Zouzou. She'd dropped asleep straight away, in her T-shirt, with her clothes chucked all anyhow on the carpet at the foot of the bed. She'd folded her bra and panties and taken care to hide them under her slacks before getting into bed.

  Julien stumbled over one of Sherazade's shoes in the doorway. He switched on the light. She was there. He began to whistle softly as he removed his jacket and Palestinian scarf.

  Sherazade was asleep.

  The shutters had not been lowered. It must be five o'clock. Julien looked at his watch and hummed, 'It's five o'clock and Paris is waking . . . It's five o'clock and I'm not sleepy . . .' and immediately broke into the song that was on everyone's lips at that time,'. . . five a.m. and I'm wide awake, my teeth are chatt'ring, I shiver and shake, I turn up the sound . . . In the rumpled blue sheets, in bed all alone, I toss and turn, can't get to sleep . . . I begin to panic, cigs all gone . . . I've run out of Kleenex and nothing to drink . . .' Julien had even bought the record: the song was called Chagrin d'amour.

  Sherazade was asleep. Sherazade was there. He gazed at her. It was nearly light. He didn't need to switch on the light in the room. He was born in 1953, one year before the Algerian War, he would soon be thirty, how old was she? He'd no idea. She hadn't said much up to now. . . Her mother's wardrobe, that's all . . . he couldn't even remember how that had come up. She must be the eldest girl of a large family and most probably Algerian, if that was her real name. He could
be twice her age. He gazed at her; from the end of the bed she looked fifteen. And himself . . . Suppose she was under age? He hadn't thought of that. Standing next to the sleeping Sherazade he was suddenly struck by the incongruity of this affair. He remembered what she'd said when she talked of her mother's wardrobe. At five in the morning, sitting in the wicker armchair, facing the sleeping girl, it dawned on him. 'Shit! Shit and shit again!'

  He shut himself in his bedroom and put on Mahler's Lieder. He felt like hearing a woman's voice, Frederica von Stade's voice. He turned up the volume. Too bad if it woke her up. He wasn't sleepy.

  It was nearly midday when Julien woke. He hadn't any work appointments. In the bathroom he remembered Sherazade. The bed had been made, nothing was lying around, no sign of her presence, as if no one had been there. He simply noticed the watercolour was on the Chinese table. He shaved, got dressed without washing, cleaned his teeth, didn't bother with coffee or orange juice and rushed to the library. He asked one of the regulars if he'd seen a girl about seventeen, dark, curly hair; green eyes, wearing a biking jacket with gilt buttons, she came there fairly often, he'd have recognized her. The reader snapped back that he didn't come here to pick up birds, was he expected to notice every bit of skirt . . . Julien went to the fast-food. On his way back to Beaubourg he remembered he'd forgotten to switch on his answer-phone. He hadn't even given Sherazade his number. What a stupid clot!

  He didn't live far away. He left a note for Sherazade on the door, simply giving his phone number. If she was passing. If she felt inclined . . . He had to consult some rare books at the Bibliotheque Nationale. He went on with his research till the library closed. He was told he would find certain books in the Library of the Institute of Oriental Studies where he was quite at home since deciding to learn Arabic, after two years' post-graduate studies in Aix-en-Provence. His parents would have liked to see him register at the University of Bordeaux, but Julien preferred Provence to the Bordeaux region. He hadn't even asked Sherazade if she spoke Arabic. He liked the idea of talking to her in Arabic; perhaps she'd be more talkative in her native tongue? He promised himself he'd surprise her. He'd spent several months in a medresa in Cairo and went to all the Egyptian films, just like the immigrant workers that he met in the special cinemas where they only showed films in Arabic. Perhaps Sherazade wouldn't like his accent. When he'd travelled in North Africa for his studies, going from Morocco to Tunisia, he'd noticed that the Arabs pretended not to understand him. Eventually he'd had to familiarize himself with the Maghreb demotic and when he arrived in Tunisia they didn't make fun of him any more and took him for an Algerian. He was working simultaneously with the colonial archives and those of Arabic literature and Arab civilization. When he talked about this, people were always surprised that he took the same interest in such different works – so antagonistic – as they said. But these contradictions, if they existed, didn't worry him. He was curious about everything that constituted the most distant history, that of his own people, and that of two peoples, two civilizations who have been in close contact from the time of the Crusades. Julien was planning to travel in the Maghreb and the Middle East and search for ancient and modem manuscripts that he knew existed and which he'd promised to find for Sinbad Publications. He'd managed to obtain videos of Arabic films that he intended to show Sherazade as well as some American films, and the Godards and Eustaches that he was sure she hadn't seen.

  He liked sophisticated machines, he was interested in robots, but at the same time he was crazy about old manuscripts, libraries, archives. When he talked about these things to his mother, she was worried.

  'But you're forgetting the other things, my boy.'

  'What other things?'

  'Books, machines . . . cinema. All that, pictures, museums, libraries . . . There are other things in life.'

  'Of course!'

  'You say you're all alone . . . I don't understand.'

  'Because I live alone, is that it?'

  'No. You know very well. I often talk about this to your father. He thinks the same as me.'

  Before going to the cinema, Julien bought some cheeses and a pineapple. He'd go home as late as possible. When he saw the note on the door and recognized it as the one he'd put there that morning, he nearly left again. He would phone Enrico, his friend from Oran who he'd met again in Aix-en-Provence, then in Paris, a Jew whose family had been living in Tlemcen, then in Oran ever since the Spanish Inquisition. They often argued about points of history concerning the Jews, Arabs and Berbers in North Africa. They had nearly fallen out over the Kahina. Enrico maintained that she and her people practised the Jewish religion, Julien laughed at this legend. Enrico had said he would do some research on this and Julien would have to give in. They sometimes ran into each other at the School of Oriental Studies or the BN. Julien teased Enrico about his research which never seemed to advance. Apart from Ibn Kaldun's writings, all the rest was airport romances; he ought to go to Algeria, into the Aures mountains . . . the Algerian and Overseas archives had not been exhaustively studied . . . Perhaps he would be in luck. Enrico worked in computors. He did business deals and was interested in everything to do with North African Jews and Arabs. He personally subsidized research and fringe magazines that were beginning to make a name. He told Julien that in two or three years he would set up a Judeo-Arab Press.

  Julien did not go to Enrico's. He watched an Egyptian film with Farid al-Attrach. He was not sleepy. About two in the morning he went for a walk round the Halles and Beaubourg; he looked at the few passers-by, as if he might see Sherazade.

  Zouzou and France

  He had no idea that, at that very moment, Sherazade was with Zouzou and France, who worked with her in the dress shop in the Halles, 'letting her hair down', as Zouzou put it, at a party they'd been invited to by a wealthy supplier to the boutique. The two of them, Zouzou and France, often went together to these crazy, extravagant parties where the champagne flowed and which gangs of youngsters gatecrashed the first time they went, and were accepted and in demand at afterwards, providing they were attractive and amusing. They weren't required to have brilliant university careers or be well connected. They were invited for themselves, for the charm and grace they exhibited when they danced and chatted, when they put themselves out to please. They knew how to be the life and soul of a party. They were good fun. The new yuppie circles, with their good education and excellent taste, were prepared to let themselves be exploited, for one evening, by these crazy, cocky, captivating young things, most of whom were born in the concrete jungle of the suburbs. They had nearly all been involved at some time or other in the petty crime or major criminal activities common to their native housing estates. They were fascinated by the outward signs of everything up-to-date, always attracted by anything flashy, but sufficiently critical to wear or use it with their tongues in their cheeks; they went in for everything that came directly from the USA, music, electronics, clothes, but were choosy and the label 'Made in USA' was not enough. They scrounged and ferreted and rooted around, succeeding, each in their individual way, in being absolutely with-it, if not actually setting new trends. Dress-designers' eagle eyes could immediately pick them out at these parties and fashion photographers always chatted them up, in the hope of getting them to pose for photos which would be the inspiration for inexpensive ready-mades which would sell well. These gangs of outlandish young things might herald a new craze, they mustn't be neglected, you never know, you must stay in the swing – and when your job involved display, the social comedy, society games, it was essential to keep your eyes open. It was exciting to have them around to look at; they weren't as dirty as the punks who'd been haunting these parties at one time, and they didn't drink so much beer: there was no risk of them flinging bottles at the high windows of the warehouses transformed by talented architects into magnificent residences with interior gardens, fully grown palms and luxurious fountains. The gangs travelled from oriental palaces to modem-style minimalist flats, with bare floor and wa
lls and no furniture, or just one huge natural leather couch and a few mirrors. One of these gangs had once spent the evening at an eighteenth-century town house, so elegant that for several days afterwards when they met in the fast-foods when there were no parties at private houses or at the clubs currently all the rage, they had reminded each other of all the valuable objects and pictures by great masters. One of them suggested a burglary, which would save him two years apprenticeship as an electrician, 'Don't count us in,' retorted the others who didn't want to give up their evening parties where the luxury made them forget hours spent in queues at job centres, hours standing in shops at the Forum, hours spent in the sickening smell of hot croissants and tarts which they sold non-stop to commuters on the RER. They didn't complain, they didn't bemoan their lot; they had fun; they took everything in, sharpening their wits and all their senses at these parties as they paraded and showed off for a joke but not only. Some of the gang were amateur photographers, others drew comic strips. The best-looking among them hoped at least once to make such a stir that a cinema director, a photographer, an advertising agent, would suggest giving them a trial part, taking a series of fashion photographs, employing them as models . . . It had been known to happen. Why not to them?

  Zouzou and France were always with the gang, especially on Friday and Saturday evenings. They had dragged Sherazade along with them, when she hadn't felt like going back to the squat, nor to Julien's, too early in the evening. They didn't wear fancy-dress, but Zouzou and France got themselves up so as to attract attention. The owner of the boutique let them wear a selection of clothes which served to show to the best possible advantage the Italo-American design-name which she displayed in her windows. She was not aware that her assistants were making use of items from this sort of trousseau which she'd entrusted to them, combined with other articles picked up from Josse-lyne's at the flea market and new stocks from the fifties. France, who came from Martinique, was always acting the Hollywood heroine from bush, jungle and tropics, revised and improved on to suit her whims as a half-caste trying to charm Paris, while spitting with disgust, Rasta fashion, on Babylon – the corrupting, moribund West of the Whites.